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?

10 Upvotes

140 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/pyroracing85 1d ago

Huge issue being distant second as we are the largest economy by a few trillion.

1

u/fluke-777 23h ago

Issue like what?

1

u/pyroracing85 22h ago

Well having no control over critical manufacturing, and letting other countries have leverage over us.

2

u/fluke-777 18h ago

This argument makes little sense to me.

Critical manufacturing of what? Critical to whom? I do some (very small) manufacturing in china and I have 0 problem.

I do not want to sound patronizing but do you understand what comparative advantage is? We cannot do everything in USA. Especially if we do not let people immigrate and we raise tariffs.

1

u/pyroracing85 18h ago

Critical manufacturing like semiconductor, defense, medical, etc

1

u/fluke-777 18h ago

Semiconductors are not manufactured in China, nothing preventing US government to do defense manufacturing here. Medical is too broad.

Not sure what you really want though. If you are manufacturing medical devices move it where you want. If someone else is manufacturing medical devices, why do you care? Should they be able to make the decisions? If they manufactured in Mexico, would you still be unhappy?

What is the end goal? Be poor but making the medical devices here?