re: A Yahoo Finance flash story popped up with columnist saying Trump’s tariffs would be worse

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There is no honest way to describe tariffs as anything other than inflationary. Tariffs are a tax that will raise costs on the US consumer.

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Then why didn’t we have crippling inflation under Trump’s tariffs originally?

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There is no honest way to describe tariffs as anything other than inflationary. Tariffs are a tax that will raise costs on the US consumer.

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Untrue- did not happen in Trumps first term- it did bring the Chinese economy to its knees though.

We need to be training people to be able to fill skilled manual labor jobs. Focus on keeping those industries here in the US, if through the assistance of tariffs, so be it.

But we don't need to tariff the shite out of menial, no-skill industry. Keep the costs down for consumers and those low pay, low IQ jobs where they belong--on someone else's soil.

You're never going to be able to find a US company that can pay American workers to make cheap flip flops and make it be financially viable. Those days are over. Fine. Outsource that stupid shite out to some foreign shithole.

Definitely don't try to bring that industry here because the Chamber of Commerce clowns will just import in more "refugees" to fill their labor pool.

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Focus on keeping those industries here in the US

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Outsource that stupid shite out to some foreign shithole.

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And you want the federal government picking the winners and losers?

tariffs are inflationary.

I dont understand why thats so hard for some here.

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We need to be training people to be able to fill skilled manual labor jobs.

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The market already provides this opportunity. They're begging for apprentices to get trained.

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Focus on keeping those industries here in the US, if through the assistance of tariffs, so be it.

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Those jobs aren't really subject to the tariff discussion.

The tariff discussion is for the lowest level, most unskilled labor jobs.

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But we don't need to tariff the shite out of menial, no-skill industry. Keep the costs down for consumers and those low pay, low IQ jobs where they belong--on someone else's soil.

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Then we agree.

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You're never going to be able to find a US company that can pay American workers to make cheap flip flops and make it be financially viable.

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Correct. The jobs are worthless. These companies cannot be profitable if they have to pay min wage (with all the other regulatory and labor/union issues). The only way the massive increase in cost of goods would make this profitable is via tariffs significantly increases the cost of the goods for consumers (aka, the inflationary effects of tariffs, which is the point of tariffs).

This is basically a wealth redistribution program via government, which takes money from consumers that would otherwise flow to more profitable, advanced economic sectors and force it into the lowest-level sectors on earth above subsistence agriculture). Nobody has yet to explain how this is a good thing for America.

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If skilled labor industry that produces American jobs at a middle class wage had to have a tariff in place to keep those industries here and employing real Americans, I'd be for it. The middle class is getting hammered.

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Short term they'll still get hammered. Long term you're just talking about transferring wealth from one American to another, because no wealth is actually created from tariffs. And that's IF, and that's a big IF, the most optimistic outcome of tariffs is the "Conservative" Treehouse version of reality.

I'm not a big fan of wealth transfer or giving the federal government the power to pick which industries they happen to favor.

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Its pretty amazing to find someone who argues that tariffs are anything other than inflationary. ITS THEIR ENTIRE PURPOSE

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We funded the government with tariffs for most of our existence. From 1635 to 1943, $100 in America was worth virtually the same amount. There was a slight spike around 1915, and then it has increased exponentially since then. If tariffs cause inflation like you claim, why was our currency relatively stable for 300 years under tariffs?

Under tariffs, inflation has risen and fallen. Inflation has never fallen since around 1940 after we moved away from tariffs. The buying power of money has gone up and down, until around 1931, when it has done nothing but drop.

The data suggests that tariffs are not the cause of inflation unless we really increased tariffs around 1913 and 1941. It seems like there might be something else that is causing the inflation. I wonder what happened in 1913 to start causing this unending inflation? I wonder what the government has done since 1931 that it didn't really do before? Debt spending has gone crazy since then, but I'm sure it's the tariffs that just suddenly started being the problem.

officialdata.org

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So your response to tariffs being inflationary is to describe a multi-step process that is only tangentially related to tariffs, but also shows that tariffs are, in fact, inflationary.

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There is room for tariffs to be beneficial. Can they be bad? Yes.

I wish you would fight against income taxes as hard as you fight against tariffs. Income taxes are WAY more inflationary than tariffs. By magnitudes.