The propaganda on tariffs is that foreign imports are bad and domestic manufacturing is good. And plenty of the conservative community accepts this, because they aren’t trying to buy direct from overseas. This guy is an outlier - a MAGA dude who is attempting to import a $2000 widget from Spain for whatever reason - and not representative of the average American voter.
Trump’s statements on tariffs aren’t even strictly false. Businesses can and do shave their margins, eating some percentage of the cost of tariffs, in order to keep their bulk exports competitive. You’re just not going to see that happen on a one-off specialty import, because the guy in Spain isn’t trying to be competitive at scale with a rival US industry.
We’re already seeing more high value manufacturing happening within the US to evade Trump’s tariffs. US tariffs on Japanese imports during the 1987 trade war brought electronics and auto manufacturing into the country in the same way. That’s why we’ve been building Toyota Cars in Kentucky for decades.
Now we’re seeing Samsung and LG planning plants in the US. We’re seeing the same from BMW and Volkswagon. Is this smart trade policy? Feel free to inject your own economic orthodoxy below. But to say its not working as intended… No. The US has enormous influence in global trade. What Trump’s doing has absolutely reversed the flow of manufacturer outsourcing.
The problem with people like this is NOT the fact that they were dumb enough to believe Trump’s lies about tariffs.
The real problem is them crying more about having to pay the tariffs themselves than about having been blatantly lied to.
The propaganda on tariffs is that foreign imports are bad and domestic manufacturing is good. And plenty of the conservative community accepts this, because they aren’t trying to buy direct from overseas. This guy is an outlier - a MAGA dude who is attempting to import a $2000 widget from Spain for whatever reason - and not representative of the average American voter.
Trump’s statements on tariffs aren’t even strictly false. Businesses can and do shave their margins, eating some percentage of the cost of tariffs, in order to keep their bulk exports competitive. You’re just not going to see that happen on a one-off specialty import, because the guy in Spain isn’t trying to be competitive at scale with a rival US industry.
We’re already seeing more high value manufacturing happening within the US to evade Trump’s tariffs. US tariffs on Japanese imports during the 1987 trade war brought electronics and auto manufacturing into the country in the same way. That’s why we’ve been building Toyota Cars in Kentucky for decades.
Now we’re seeing Samsung and LG planning plants in the US. We’re seeing the same from BMW and Volkswagon. Is this smart trade policy? Feel free to inject your own economic orthodoxy below. But to say its not working as intended… No. The US has enormous influence in global trade. What Trump’s doing has absolutely reversed the flow of manufacturer outsourcing.