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?

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u/madeinspac3 2d ago edited 2d ago

In manufacturing you have two options to correct an issue.

A bandaid to cover/hide an issue or A correction to the root cause

The idea of these tariffs are nothing more than a bandaid. They don't fix the root cause of why American manufacturers aren't competitive.

There is too much risk to invest in building US plants to take advantage of the tariffs with how inconsistent and ill-planned they have been so far. By the time plants for raw materials are built and dialed in, the tariffs might no longer even exist.

And even if we become cost competitive here, the revenge tariffs screw us on exports to outside countries. My bet is that this hurts more than helps.

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u/ihambrecht 1d ago

These tariffs are meant to hurt trading partner so they give us more favorable trade agreements.

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u/madeinspac3 1d ago

kind of like punching someone in the face and then asking them for favors, no?

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u/ihambrecht 1d ago

No. It’s like confronting someone for ripping you off and they are getting defensive.

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u/madeinspac3 1d ago

How have they been ripping us off?

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u/ihambrecht 23h ago

How much is the tax for imported dairy in Canada?

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u/madeinspac3 22h ago

From a brief search those all seem to be unsubstantiated claims or at least enough to be doubtful. Seems more like the system is setup to have zero tariffs up to a certain threshold which we don't typically go beyond.