So your point is moot: tariffs are a tax on your own population, ostensibly to stimulate local manufacturing but in practice it is just another tax. Protectionists will immediately reach for this mechanism because they believe - in spite of all the evidence - that this time around it will work. It never does.
Manufacturing is so intertwined now that all tariffs do is to reduce the buying power for those at the bottom of the totempole, whereas those higher up hardly feel any concrete effect. Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come.
"Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come."
I said nothing of the kind. You are injecting that statement here yourself.
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Returning to the topic of interest:
Tariffs do work: they protect certain industries and keep them onshore.
For instance the manufacture of nuclear warheads by the USA is an onshore industry and will remain so. I am certain that Japan or North Korea could eventually make a cheaper and probably even a better nuke but b/c I don't want to be forced to do periodic quality control tests and checks. The USA chooses to keep the industry here.
But as far as I am concerned, I'd also like to keep hand tools as a protected onshore industry.
So your point is moot: tariffs are a tax on your own population, ostensibly to stimulate local manufacturing but in practice it is just another tax. Protectionists will immediately reach for this mechanism because they believe - in spite of all the evidence - that this time around it will work. It never does.
Manufacturing is so intertwined now that all tariffs do is to reduce the buying power for those at the bottom of the totempole, whereas those higher up hardly feel any concrete effect. Whether other countries are stupid or not has no bearing on the discussion, that's just a distraction and the way the USA has been wielding tariffs over the last period is destructive in ways that will affect the country for decades to come.