By now it it's well known that globalization is for a fantasy world that doesn't exist, and people should stop listening so much to economics professors. Trade barriers need to go up to re-orient things. Unfortunately, Trump is unlikely to do it competently.

It is, but our political system isn't wise enough to care. It's pissed away a lot of other strategic industries for stupid reasons in the mean time. And with the nationalization of politics, I'm not sure farm state senators will continue to have the ability to focus on serving their constituents' interests in the future like they have.

Not really. It's all language games.

This is just the mirror image of the liberal conceit they can magically change reality by forcing people to use different words or over-elevating some story (old or new) for ideological reasons.

The lesson from this is that it's all stupid, not just my-side's version, and it should stop.

Because the US can't "easily subsidize the shipbuilders, pay for training programs, and so on." It has an ideological dysfunction that prevents that. Even if you could manage to get a program like that passed, there's a large chance it'd get cut in 10 years by some libertarian to pay for yet another tax cut.

> We have no problem with subsidizing farmers and roads so why not shipbuilders if it keeps our navy competitive?

That's only because of how the Constitution apportions senators and the electoral college. Farmers are spread out in a way that gives them disproportionate political power.

However, it's not uncommon for a company or industry to fail to develop a competitive advantage, and then go bankrupt and disappear.

Without the Jones Act, it's quite possible that the US shipbuilding industry may have ended up even more moribund than it is now, decades ago.

Oh definitely. They often don't have the experience to question what they're told or see the holes and deceptions in it. For instance: they'd be more easily fooled by a fake deadline. Or in this case, they may trust and follow their leader like a little zealot, even when he's wrong and doing bad things.

It has a lot to do with naivete and not having the confidence to stand up when needed.

There's a lot of easily indoctrinated, exploitable idealistic youth out there. A lot of organizations run on them.

Get your pink hat on, it's time to waste your energy on the wrong things.

> Keep ignoring the world in front of your eyes. Edit: Also if you think the "world of maximal opposition has failed" that's very amusing as the level of opposition was extremely low.

Trump got elected, despite being portrayed constantly as both hopelessly incompetent, totally unacceptable politically, and as existential threat to democracy by his opponents and most of the media; being subject to multiple criminal investigations by them; having huge protests against him; and more than $1.4 billion spent on advertising against him. He was opposed to the legal maximum, and anything more would have gotten into armed militia territory.

But your experience with IT equipment does not generalize to all trade between the US and China, which includes more than just IT equipment.

> This is weasel language that purports to convey a lot of meaning, but is (I feel intentionally) light on actual facts.

I don't think it's weaselly, rather it's one of those areas that's not black and white and there is a lot of variation, which does not lend itself to a crisp, succinct summary. One of the cases in the original article I linked was the supplier gives a little on margin, and the importer overall pays more due to the tariff, but not the full amount, and that's what the second article seemed to be describing.

> P.S. citing easily observable facts are not a political attack.

That kind of thing can totally can be part of an attack: the most effective attacks usually start with easily observable facts (and then omit others to fit the desired narrative), because that gives them more credibility. And I didn't mean to imply that you were making an attack, I was just noting that rhetoric is in the air due to the frequent political attacks, which often leads to it getting repeated.

> P.P.S. additionally, had this administration annonuced a comprehensive plan to make capital available to American industry to step up and onshore the manufacture of these goods, I would be singing a very different tone.

And we can agree that would be a good thing.

And then, maybe when the idea actually gets pursued, it won't seem so controversial because all the energy was wasted before it was actually a thing.

> Continue to pish posh while they continue dismantling the republic.

If you don't want it dismantled, you can start by not getting distracted by dumb stuff and/or taking the bait. Then, the next step is to realize the politics of maximum opposition failed, and try something else.

Yes, I have. You didn't understand my comment, which was the motives for the tariffs (hint: they're not there to distract from Elon).

Trumps opponents, collectively, have been crying wolf. They've been saying we're just around the corner from a a dictatorship for years, and Trump had a whole term and a dictatorship didn't happen.

And we're talking about some new-style political correctness here, but you're jumping to "we may never have elections ever again!1!!." If there's actual danger, people need to fucking stay focused and not get distracted and habitually overreact. Overreaction does two bad things: 1) it burns up your credibility, because it's a lie; and 2) when acted upon it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as it triggers reactions of its own.

> I believe Trump would have lost if this was a fair election.

Election denial? Not a good look.

> In the wolf story you refer to the wolf was real.

Only at the the end, not at the beginning. In the beginning, the boy was lying to get attention.

> The real moral of that story is that the villagers should have trusted the boy (to prevent his death) and help him, as he in fact saw a wolf (who ate him in the end).

No it isn't. The real moral is don't lie, otherwise people stop trusting you and bad things will happen. It's explicitly stated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf: "The moral stated at the end of the Greek version is, 'this shows how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them'".

If you get something so basic as that wrong, it calls everything else you say into question.

> The story says that the boy lied, but as he died that story would have been told be the villagers who let him die. The wolf was real (he ate the boy), the villagers made up a story after the fact of how the boy had it coming as a lier to justify their position.

> It is a story about people who are more afraid of the scary story and the messenger who tells it, than of the actual danger itself. About people who despite warnings let the boy get eaten, because they checked the first two times and the evil wasn't directly evident to them.

As far as I can tell, that's your imagined head-cannon. Here's the actual original story: http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/oxford/151.htm

> There was a boy tending the sheep who would continually go up to the embankment and shout, 'Help, there's a wolf!' The farmers would all come running only to find out that what the boy said was not true. Then one day there really was a wolf but when the boy shouted, they didn't believe him and no one came to his aid. The whole flock was eaten by the wolf. The story shows that this is how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them.

The boy lived; the farmers believed him, and were not afraid of the story so were fooled for a time; there was no coverup.

Apparently not: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/world/us-tariffs-canada-c...:

> When Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on China during his first term in the White House, some studies found that part of the cost was passed on to American consumers. Suppliers in China also cut their prices in many cases to offset part of the cost of the tariffs. [emphasis mine]

> I will tell you exactly who will pay the increase (and then some, because there's always juice on top of juice): we will; you and I, and every person and family we know. That's who.

It's worth noting that you're basically quoting a line of political attack. From the same article I linked above:

> Democrats spent the weekend hammering the message that Mr. Trump was responsible for making life in America more expensive.

> “In one reckless move,” said Representative Gabe Vasquez, Democrat of New Mexico, “the president just raised the price you pay for gas, the truck you drive to work, a computer for your small business and everything at the grocery store, from avocados to tequila.”

Underneath all that noise, I'm sure things are far less simple than any side's attacks claim. Unfortunately, all almost anyone hears on any issue are political attacks, which are blasted from the rooftops.

The mistake you're making is only considering first order effects (gov collecting tariff taxes), and ignoring second and greater order effects (how people respond to those taxes).

The truth about tariffs is actually more complicated: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/opinion/trump-tariffs-tra...:

> A good place to start disentangling things is the argument ad nauseam over who pays for tariffs — the consumer or the foreign producer? Contrary to what both sides sometimes assert, the question has no simple answer. “Despite over a century of theoretical debate on the incidence of tariffs, sound empirical evidence on who bears the burden of trade tariffs is sparse,” according to a 2015 article in the University of Chicago’s Chicago Policy Review.

> ...It’s true that up front, a U.S. tariff is levied on Americans, not foreign producers. But what really matters is who bears the ultimate cost. If the foreign producer continues to charge the same amount at the border, then the final price goes up by the amount of the tariff, and the American bears the full cost. But if the foreign producer cuts its price at the border by the amount of the tariff so that the final price paid by the American is unchanged, then the foreign producer bears the full cost of the tariff.

> Typically, the cost will be split. Americans won’t have to bear much of the cost of the tariff if the foreign producer is willing to accept a smaller profit to hang on to its share of the U.S. market. That calculation will vary product by product.

Huh? Trump's not engaging in some conspiracy to protect Elon. He's always liked tariffs, and this is him doing what he believes.

Cut it out with the weird conspiracy theories. They're not helpful.

This order is "power is being used for evil and for darkness"? Come on, cut it out with the hyperbole. It does no one any favors.

> Not if they change the constitution. https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-propo...

Backbencher proposes something dumb that'll almost certainly go nowhere? The sky must be falling, and that's proof!

I'm not a fan of Trump, but his critics have pretty much squandered their credibility, and his political opponents have dumb strategies and even dumber priorities (if you can even take them at their word).