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I'm only gonna say this once - Tariffs hurt the lower and middle class

I saw Trump on this Bloomberg interview in Chicago today and realized he does not understand economics.


And here's a simple example -

Solar panels

They are made very cheap and sent to the US. Here's the impact:

1) Panels are made elsewhere - so the factories that were never built and employees that were never hired stay that way.

2) They are so cheap that they make economic sense for homeowners and commercial users to install them and save money on energy and help the environment.

3) Many new jobs a created - which includes the importers, distributers, installers and yes, financers that create the lease agreements that help make economic sense of panel use to generate electric.


Impose tariffs - the contractors that install them lose all that work, the homeowners pay more for electric, the power companies have to add capacity to their networks...

Other stuff -

Increasing the costs of things to consumers costs them more - building factories that people in the US are not willing to work in will not elevate the American Worker - only education will do that.

Nobody is raising there kid to work in a factory. Nobody. We are just going to pay more and alienate our suppliers...

Where it could work:

If there are producers in place here, we can protect them, but should be on a sliding scale based on what we can export
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You know what hurts the working class….. importing cheap labor.
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fun4us2b · M
@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout Cars are a great example because we make them here - so a sliding tariff to help offset labor inequalities and price dumping can help level the playing field.

And again, many cars made in USA are loaded with imported electronics that we just aren't making here - so by adding a tariff to those imports will push up domestically made car prices...

I don't feel it's a broad stroke thing and increasing costs on imported is going to hurt consumers - not to mention that with 4.5 % unemployment - there are not nearly enough workers to fill many jobs...

Globalization has been bad for us, but it's not so cut and dry to unwind it....

Also, saying Trump and Harris are aligned on this - actually scares the crap out of me...both idiots
@fun4us2b The tariffs Biden has in place now make sense because those products have an American alternative. Whereas Trump wants random tariffs, which will definitely hurt American workers, like they did the last time.
Tariffs are like any other government regulation. Sometimes they're good, depending on context, but they're never good when done across the board.
fun4us2b · M
@BohemianBabe I agree - there should be a method. Many building materials and components are imported. If tariffs are imposed too quickly there will be a reduction in the number of viable projects since more money is needed to buy products, which will put tradespeople out of work immediately..
Strictmichael75 · 61-69, M
@MayorOfCrushtown @MayorOfCrushtown So no what happened when orange man said he would have the cars assembled in the US rather than in Mexico?
Rhe car companies built factories that use machines to assemble rhe cars and didn’t create jobs expected!
And the tariffs are paid by the Americans where orange man has said it will be paid by the exporters!
@MayorOfCrushtown yes, but not because they take up the jobs, leaving you without. It's because immigrants are reliably self absorbed, not in your community, hard working and likely to quietly take lots of abuse. They're often latin Americans fleeing socialism. They're the perfect community busters in your town.