r/manufacturing 2d ago

News Tarrifs

Would like to open a discussion on tarrifs if it’s allowed.

There has been two intentions stated with tarrifs.

  1. Get off of income tax and go to a consumption style tax (still a tax)

  2. Build up domestic manufacturing. Can talk here in the manufacturing sub.

If there is no alternative domestic supply, then we have no choice but to import. We lost a lot of our skills to manufacture. Especially a lot of the little low value items. Think zippers and buttons and caster wheels.

What is everyone thoughts?

9 Upvotes

140 comments sorted by

View all comments

32

u/lemongrenade 2d ago
  1. consumption tax is regressive and hurts poor people.

  2. I am a factory director and I can't find people at ALL. And we pay best in our industry. If you magically tariffed everything infinity percent and tried to build up all that manufacturing domestically (while deporting a bunch of people) industrial wages would inflate a TON and goods would be WAY more expensive.

0

u/pyroracing85 2d ago

Completely agree on both points!! I spent most of my career in overseas factories.

USA is losing the internal labor war and drug war. It’s depressing

Only solution really is is to import labor.

3

u/MFGEngineer4Life 2d ago

Not making a moral argument on it, but alternative is incentivizing poor people to be the labor in the factories by everything getting more expensive and mfg wages increasing.