@Stigma pre-coffee and a bit sleep-drunk, so I might be all over the place here.

So yeah, chip production is increasing in the US, but not exactly because of the tariffs.

This is fair, because I do recall their having announced this before all this tariff business started.

Anyway, I've been having trouble finding what I had before on this, so I'm just going to wing it.

1) none of these tariffs will be out of nowhere. They will be reciprocal tariffs on goods from nations who have been charging tariffs on US-made goods, some for decades. If they drop theirs, we'll drop ours.

2) we've been allowing these other countries to fuck us over for decades now. Both American political parties sold out the working class. When a country such as China taxes American-made goods, and also undercuts prices by using slave labor, we can't compete and our plants shut down. There's a semiconductor plant near my house that never operated due to this; built in 2009 or 2011 or so, the facility has since been converted to other uses by other companies. If the US had had tariffs on Chinese-made semiconductors back then which had made prices more competitive, the American company would have had a chance. This is just one example, and one I'm well aware of because it's so close to my house and I've met people laid off by the semiconductor company, some of whom moved their families across the country to work at this plant once it opened.

3) back to how these tariffs are only affecting imports from countries who charge tariffs on imports from us: if these tariffs are going to be so harmful to us, why haven't their tariffs harmed them over the decades? If anything, protectionism seemed to help a lot of these countries. We've been importing Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, etc. cars since before I was born, but I don't recall seeing any American-made cars when I've been overseas. I'll admit that Toyota is a better car (I've driven nothing but Toyotas every time I had a choice), but Chrysler, Ford, and GM make some decent vehicles too. They'd be competitive on the world market if there actually were free trade.

4) I've watched the collapse of the working class in America. Most jobs areb low paid service-related now, rather than highly paid skilled labor. This is the beginning of bringing those jobs back.

5) the people who are screeching loudest about this: a) foreigners who have been fucking us over, b) people who hate Trump and will oppose him at every turn like in the memes in this thread, and c) disingenuous democrats who advocated for similar protectionist policies when Trump wasn't in office yet.

6) it might take years before the desired effects take place. I for one, am willing to do this. I just hope it doesn't get undone by Congress and/or his successor.

@Stigma @Typo-MAGAshiv

I'm genuinely trying to drill into the aim and repercussions of this thing, divorced from ideological positions.

Same. I've honestly tried to look at Trump's actions to try to find even a kernel of good faith effort to bring back American jobs and help America's working classes as Trump is selling them and MAGA fans are buying them. However, it always seems to come down to,

They're fucking stupid, whichever way you slice it...

I also have the same pattern failure difficulty getting MAGA fans to engage questions in good faith. They always revert to You just hate that Trump is trying to bring efficiency to government and jobs back to USA, Leftists this, Biden that, Trump Derangement Syndrome the other, You just hate America... This goes back to trying to engage Republicans over the first Gulf War. SO many people are supporting it all uncritically on emotion and partisanized fantasy, and fly off the handle with emotive ad hominem if you come at them with anything other than Unconditional Positive Regard for the President's actions and policies.

@Stigma For something like this to have a chance of working, the tariffs need to be enshrined in law by Congress so those who make business investment decisions can factor them into risk-return calculations in determing where to build production facilities. Since these were just announced by the President and could be undone in a few years by the next President, the prudent move would be to hold off on investments and have lobbyists work on exemptions/getting them repealed. I'm skeptical that significant production will move to the U.S. because of these tariffs. It's absurd Europe has tariffs still on U.S. goods, but seems like there are other ways we could apply pressure to get them removed. More of a focused approach targeting especially bad actors like China would have been better. And an advanced economy like the U.S. doesn't need to make everything (e.g., shirts, shoes, other basic products unrelated to national security).