America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

Isn't the point of capitalism to not have a plan and let the market figure it out?

Capitalism as such went out the window with tariffs.

That's what we did, and it moved everything to China.

I'm sure that the capitalists would disagree in this instance.

How are markets going to figure anything out with tariffs changing every day, depending on the mood of dear leader?

No, purely free markets (which weren't free to start off with) went out the window.

That's a problem for the markets to suss out.

Countries that believe that are dominated by those who plan.

Citation needed. How did those five year plans go?

They've sussed out that if you suck up to him he'll give you an exemption. Of course if you are a medium sized business you are screwed and have to wait in line, but you'll get your chance as long as you can hold on through the summer.

In two years of course it won't matter.

It's a principle of capitalism, but taken to the extreme, it's just a strawman. At this point, I think we are pretty sure that some interventions make capitalism better.

This post is specifically about Industrial Policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_policy

But other effective interventions are anti-trust and demand-inducing regulation (e.g. people want to fly because they know it's safe).

The free market (which I think people also include in capitalism) would correctly predict labour intensive jobs would be outsourced. This is very much a feature (comparative advantage), not a bug. I realized a lot of supposedly free market people don't even know the basics of it. Politically the free market has become an identity associated with national greatness and a sense of control of ones destiny. The dominant feeling seems to be if you have a free market, you will win everything (which is actually opposite from the truth).

sounds about right.

No, of course not. That's oversimplifying to the point of idiocy.

Markets do not mean that an Industrial strategy / Industrial policy is not needed.

Markets respond to incentives created by such a strategy.

> They've sussed out that if you suck up to him he'll give you an exemption

It's a very thinly veiled protection racket. People do tend to repeat the plays that they know.

The point of Capitalism is Marx needed a straw man to tear down. The world has never seen what he envisioned.

What you might call capitalists very much plan. They don't believe in central planning where one "guy" makes a plans and everyone else implements them, but they do plan.

> they do plan.

I've just sat through a long meeting with lots of Jiras and Q2 objectives. Trust me, there's planning. Lots of planning.

China, who do have an industrial strategy. It worked for them.

Seem to be doing OK, actually

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_of_China

Marx never said that capitalists didn't plan. In fact, the possibility of the transition from late stage capitalism/imperialism to socialism is based on that very fact, capital got concentrated in very big companies with internal planification. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Republic_of_Wal...