What is the reason for tariffs (go on record)

Best case scenario we get more access to international markets.

Massive manufacturing is never coming back here when they’re 3 years away from a new president.

I agree it's a massive sales tax on consumers, which will help him justify extending the tax cuts without looking like he is growing the deficit.

I don't think there is any chance it's feasible it replaces income tax, considering that requires action by Congress probably within the next 2 years.

I think he is treating it as a negotiation tactic and will announce victory over a handful of countries when they agree to lower their tarriffs.

Don't think bringing back manufacturing jobs that are out sourced to most of these countries is an actual honest goal

I have become more and more convinced that the goals of all this chaos are political rather than economic.

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Bring back manufacturing to the US

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To a degree this, through either growing our exports and overall business growth or some businesses being brought back here. I don't think this is going to be some massive shift in manufacturing globally though, some industries it might. Many won't change drastically, but businesses should be able to grow internationally.

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Tariffs are reciprocal and we’re being treated badly (pretty much debunked at this point)

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Not sure what you are claiming has been debunked here? I think there is some to this but mainly because of this point:

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It’s a negotiating tactic and tariffs will be rolled back at some point

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They've said multiple times they want the other countries to eliminate their tariffs on our goods as well as negotiating new agreements to lower some of the entry barriers our products have on global markets. This is the main goal here.

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Trying to break the economy to bring down interest rates and inflation

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Some of this, though they aren't "breaking the economy". They have also flat out said they need to get the T-bill rate lower to refinance our debt.

When I read the title, I thought you meant the tariffs other countries put on us.

The rationale was multi pronged

1.Level trading field
2.Bring jobs back to US with incentive to build manufacturing plants here
3.Raise tax revenue without having to tax Americans

This shite is so dumb and you have tons of people on the right trying to spin it, saying that average normal working class people don't have any connection to the stock market and that is just obviously not true. Even if you were going to work on the trade imbalances, this is not the correct way to go about it.

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Trump is poking everyone with a stick to get their attention which has been neglected for decades. Some manufacturing will come home or set up domestically. Some trade will be more open to American products.

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This is where I’m landing. As many complaints as I have with Trump, he knew what he is doing.

I don’t take tariffs or trade imbalances as 0 sum game.

We will never have an equal trading partnership with most of the world. It’s impossible for us to have equality with Madagascar, Lesotho, etc. that’s ridiculous.


That being said a lot of the world gets to have a benefit of us having the world’s most affluent and third largest customer base. Other countries have basically built an economy off of us taxing, regulating, and minimum waging ourselves out of a production workforce. When you combine that with Trump’s view on nato and military spending, it makes sense.

We have homeless people and unaffordable healthcare in America while large portions of the world can avoid those things largely off of the backs of American globalization. It’s not every country. I.e. Sweden doesn’t have free healthcare off of the backs of America, but a lot of the world gets a benefit of not having to play world police to care for their citizens.

I’m not saying Trump is correct. I’m not saying tariffs are good. I’m just saying that Trump is poking things due to the imbalances he see.

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It can’t be all of the above, because rolling back after negotiating won’t bring back manufacturing. And you can’t roll back tariffs without selling out national security if that’s your reason, etc. So what is it?

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I don’t believe every country is just going to go to zero tariffs. Some will and some will keep tariffs which we then reciprocate.

The main reason to tariff everyone is China. You can’t just tariff China.

And once you get some countries on board I suspect you can remove tariffs on countries we really don’t do that much business with or don’t actually have a deficit with.


And let’s say every country does go to zero. You can still bring jobs back because it will be easier to sell in other countries. You target certain industries you want to grow. If that’s autos because you will be selling more cars to Europe and China, then we will need to make more cars to sell.