If you ask me, the biggest issue with Trump's tariffs is that he'll be in power for only 4 years and what he's trying to achieve with the tariffs are supposed to take way more than 4 years to yield any substantial results.
The tariffs, it seems, are to achieve two things:
• Make Americans buy American
• Make other countries sign better trade deals with the US
Americans buying American means these tariffs would make foreign goods more costly so Americans would have to mainly buy American goods.
This would take years to yield reasonable results because Americans would have to invest heavily in production to supply the goods foreigners mostly supply currently, and who is going to invest that heavily when Trump would be out of office in 4 years time and a new president could take away all the tariffs bringing foreign goods back?
Not a very wise investment, most wouldn't like to make that. Plus Trump doesn't even have to be out of office for the tariffs to be taken away, Trump might just change his mind any day and take the tariffs away or pause them like he has just done.
If he doesn't do that on his own, the consequences of the tariffs might force him, so who would invest in benefiting from producing America as a result of tariffs when tariffs could be taken away any day?
Signing better trade deals with the US is great and can be done in less than the 4 years I mentioned, but didn't seem like the major goal Trump was aiming for. The major goal seems to be buying American.
Maybe this is the major goal but Trump is making it look like it isn't so that countries would think what he actually wants is people to buy American and take it more seriously rather than as a bluff.
If so, that is quite brilliant, except at the same time it seems all of these stuff Trump is doing is just market manipulation and a particular market outcome is his goal rather than any of these other things we're thinking.
The End
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Thank you!
Well, that seems to be a good strategy but from another point of view, America cannot produce all they need. There are still things other countries produce they would need. And if the import duty of this is high, it would definitely give rise to scarcity of the product and an increase in that price thereby causing inflation on the long run.
Everything that has a good side, definitely has a bad side.
You're right. There are actually a lot of problems with the tariffs, I only talked about what I considered the major ones that makes it unnecessary in the first place 👍🏾
"Interesting perspective! Do you think any president would’ve had enough time to see those long-term tariff goals through?"
8 years sounds more like it, that's the thing. 4 years is too little.