How does it hurt the US for consumers to be able to buy cheap goods from China that would cost a lot more if made here? Cheap clothes are not a national security issue.
The US should be self-reliant on things like electronics, software, industrial equipment, but for many classes of items there is no benefit in pushing up prices for US consumers.
Environmental factors for one. Moving cheap crap around long distances is a huge source of pollution. One of the core ways we can actually reduce CO2 emissions to consume less stuff, and bulk Temu crap is the worst of it.
Then comes the human rights factors of forced and unfair labor. Your cheap t-shirts are made off the backs of ethnic minorities not allowed to leave the factory site after their 12+ hour shifts.
Finally comes industry hallowing. Yes, America and Canada and Mexico DO want to produce clothing. No, it will never be $5 or less for a t-shirt. Maybe that's fine. The issue is not that clothes are too expensive - almost everything you see at the thrift store is headed for the trash bin.
> Yes, America and Canada and Mexico DO want to produce clothing.
"America" meaning what?
American government - really? Why prefer low paying jobs vs high paying ones?
American CEOs - want to increase share price and their annual bonus. Would prefer to offshore.
American consumers - may like "Made in USA", but given a choice prefer cheap "Made in China" vs expensive
American workers - would prefer high paying jobs, or just stay at home collecting government handouts.
We're basically at "full employment", with even fast food companies finding it hard to hire people. I'm sure unemployed US software developers would prefer if US companies would hire them vs offshoring, but where is the demand for low paying jobs?
> Moving cheap crap around long distances is a huge source of pollution. One of the core ways we can actually reduce CO2 emissions to consume less stuff
Perhaps, but we could also help save the planet by all becoming vegetarian, or by staying home rather than flying, etc. In any case, I don't think Trump is looking to reduce consumption or international trade - he (appears) to just want to reduce trade imbalance and/or increase US independence.
> Then comes the human rights factors of forced and unfair labor. Your cheap t-shirts are made off the backs of ethnic minorities not allowed to leave the factory site after their 12+ hour shifts.
Do you think these workers would be happier without a job, or that US adding import taxes to Chinese-made clothes is going to cause Chinese manufacturers to pay more, or reduce working hours? What scenario are you thinking of where US import taxes on Chinese goods would be beneficial to Chinese workers?!
I don't care what Trump intends or says he intends. Ending de minimis was one of the highest value things anyone has done since 2000.
Diet changes are one of the hardest things to effect. And taking away travel has horrible effects on destinations, international relationships and more. Those are all losses for us as a culture.
Slave labor clothing from Temu is not.
Short of invading China, we can't fix their labor issues but we can stop paying for it.
If chattel slavery was still going on, you may not be able to end it but you can stop funding it.
The cost of doing this is.. no more cheap ass clothing from Shein. Not the end of a culture, not a violent uprising, not a revolution. Just no more bad fashion built on slave labor.
we gonna stop consuming everything built on slave labor (starting with say … most if not every phone in circulation)? or you just selectively shooting the breeze acting if you or anyone gives two shits about this?
I actively choose to buy more expensive electronics with known supply chains. I am sure slave labor still sneaks in - the electronics supply chain is crazy wide and depends on rare minerals.
There is no ethical basis for exploiting slave labor. That this makes cellphones and vibrators more expensive isn't something that can trade off with ethical cost.
I would say that many of those cheap goods are simply trash that people buy impulsively that either collects in their homes or ends up in landfills in a short period of time. Fast fashion being a well known one, where people buy lots of cheap clothes that are of poor quality and may only be worn once before being thrown out. We don't need these things and the environment doesn't need to be full of landfills of this junk either.
Maybe, but you're basically describing the entire US consumer culture. I'm originally from the UK, but moved to the US decades ago at age 25. The difference between the two cultures in terms of consumer behavior is huge. Companies like Black and Decker (tools) or Kitchen appliance manufactures make different products for these two markets to account for the different tastes - US consumers prefer semi-disposable quality products that are cheap vs UK preferring higher quality at a price. e.g. using metal vs plastic parts, etc.
Teenage fashion (e.g. Shein) is probably a poor example to focus on though since, even disregarding fast fashion, teenage clothes don't have a long usage period - they get outgrown or fashion changes, etc. The price/quality point of Shein is well suited for this.
People find it hard to conceive of another human being so mentally degraded that they just don't understand what's going on. But that's what's happening here. Watch the interview segment where the photograph of a guy's knuckle tattoos with inserted text labels in helvetica font is discussed for an example of how stupid this person is.
That interview managed to be jaw-dropping even after all this time with Trump in the public eye. The interviewer kept trying to move on, and Trump kept coming back to it to insist that the obviously-photoshopped letters and numbers in that photo were actual tattoos. Not that the real tattoos might somehow decode to that, but that the literal letters and numbers "MS13" were on the guy's knuckles, from a photoshop where those weren't even trying to look like tattoos, but were obviously just added by some online rando "decoding" the real ones. He truly seemed to believe it, and it's... just, WT actual F? The image clearly isn't even trying to fool anyone! It's not even credibly a fake! Someone just obviously superimposed those on it, without trying to conceal what they had done!
It's easy to forget that Trump is a gullible senior citizen like any you might find in any retirement community in Florida until you see an interview like that.
Of course the US should focus on goods related to national security over clothing, but small value imports directly impact US electronics manufacturers like Parallax and TI.
I imagine it was easier to do this than to inspect every shipment from china for microcontrollers.
Again I don’t agree with the way they are handling it.
I think they just use this as another form of taxation.
If a $20 pant doubles to $40, it still beats a domestic one (if there is even one) with one hand.
If the US really wants to reboot manufacturing, first I agree with what you said, it should focus on national security goods as well as higher value add goods. Second, the US should actually lower the tax for machines that build these items and import them to build up these businesses, and third, then it should move upstream i.e. to build those machines domestically and push the taxation higher.
There's the argument that if clothes were more expensive, manufacturers would be forced to compete on quality instead of volume, fast fashion would die to ye olde good days where people had fewer but better quality clothing and the environment would be be better off.
Culturally, I don't think we're going back to that. And if you talk to any boomer or older person who remembers what that was like when they were kids they'd hated it.
I'm generally in favor of more diversification, but I really don't think tariffs are the way to go about it. Especially not general tariffs with no conditions for their reduction or removal.
There are other ways to diversify sourcing and encourage internal production.
There's nothing rational about these tariffs in stated aims or implementation.
If your desired goal is to reduce our dependence on Chinese imports you should actually be completely against what this administration is doing. The doubled cost of importing equipment to build new factories, the unpredictability of policies changing by the month discouraging investment, the locking up of our economy (consumer and industrial) from everything we currently rely on doubling in price. All of these are things that will destroy domestic industry, and at this point it should be painfully clear that there is no plan for actually constructively growing our economy. Yet meanwhile killing the constructive attempts by the Biden administration (eg CHIPS), because you can't have the other team be successful at helping the country!
Then let's look at some of the second order effects. A container of cargo going to a US (eg Amazon) warehouse has to pay tariffs up front, whereas a direct-from-China purchase can pay the tariffs at the border with cash-in-hand. So that gives a leg up to Chinese vendors and marketplaces.
Think about Chinese companies building out factories in other countries. The tariff tax enthusiast response is to imagine we'll respond by raising tariffs on those countries as well like some game of wack-a-mole. But the reality is that trend will be spreading Chinese investment and influence even further throughout the world, and any post-facto attempt at punishment will just push that country fully into the Chinese sphere of influence!
When examined, every single action by this administration seems to be much closer to supporting the desires of our adversaries rather than helping our own situation. It's hard to know exactly whether these people are directly working for foreign interests, just following the winds of social media campaigns working hard to promote edgy feel-smart but society-killing memes, or somewhere in the middle with a wink-wink. But regardless, we need to pull up hard from this societal embrace of team-sport ignorance if we want to have any future that isn't being a hollowed out backwater.
The externalities for all the cheap stuff we import are too high and the market will never do anything about them.