It's been a long time coming. Sentiments like this in the article highlight why:
> “Nobody wins,” he said. “China is America’s factory.”
China is a sovereign country on the other side of the world. Making the entirety of your supply chain dependent on it is madness. And while the article strains to talk about "blue and purple shirts" you should probably be more concerned about where the pharmaceuticals are made.
This article is writing from the perspective of those who are set to lose money on this horrible system of commerce. From my perspective they failed to read the writing on the wall and ran the system into the ground because it was the only way for them to keep their profit margins juiced.
> “We’re not talking about higher prices and companies figuring out ways to pass that on,” Santos said. “We’re talking about actual disruption to the supply chain.”
They say this as if it could only be a bad thing. What happened to the spirit of innovation and commerce in this country?
>What happened to the spirit of innovation and commerce in this country?
Manufacturing doesn’t have as much space to innovate; we moved on to greener pastures. Decoupling our economy from China somewhat could be an intelligent decision, but there’s absolutely nothing intelligent whatsoever about picking up a fucking hammer and taking it to our economy to spite the rest of the world. We could have acted against US-China trade without simply wiping it out overnight and bringing down economic hell upon the American people. Utterly ridiculous, bad faith horseshit in my opinion.
Look back at COVID and notice how much innovative and commercial energy went into market-cornering and grift. Chaotic environments like those created by the recent tariff announcements are great for those who want to make a quick buck at others' expense, not so good for those who want to innovate/invest for the long term.
That's a terrible comparison as much of COVID public policy called for a shut down of the economy, offices, and even paid people to sit at home and not work for significant portions of the year. There were also other perverse incentives in place to further this damage.
Our current situation is entirely different and must be viewed using more appropriate comparisons.
I went to the dollar store and stocked up on some cheap shampoos and things I like to use.
I'm loaded up on TVs monitors and other stuff already.
We need to do something to shake up global supply chain, we will see what happens because the global system that the US and allies put in is going down the drain unless if we do something.
China being an authoritarian country becoming the center of everything probably won't be good for us.
Easier for us to hurt ourselves now than the Chinese to hurt us more later. We can choose where to stab ourselves instead of someone else stabbing us later on.
We did have sensible measured policy to incentivize high value manufacturing in the US: the CHIPS act and the IRA. They were working, and cost peanuts relative to the damage to the economy this administration's policy has already done.
>Easier for us to hurt ourselves now than the Chinese to hurt us more later. We can choose where to stab ourselves instead of someone else stabbing us later on.
I think most people go their whole lives without ever having to stab themselves or be stabbed. Stabbing yourself, as a human or metaphorically as country, seems like a pretty bad idea, even when you might suspect that someone (or another country) might maybe do it in the future.
