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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

(www.molsonhart.com)
842 points putzdown | 4 comments | 15 Apr 25 13:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.244s | source
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jonathanstrange ◴[15 Apr 25 14:05 UTC] No.43692877[source]▶
It's easy to bring manufacturing back, just give it a decade or two, but impossible to make it internationally competitive without large-scale market regulation such as tariffs or handing out government subsidies.
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1. firejake308 ◴[15 Apr 25 14:13 UTC] No.43693000[source]▶
My problem with large-scale market regulation is that it also increases the price of inputs for companies who would otherwise be interested in building a factory in the US. Do you have a solution for that?
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2. js8 ◴[15 Apr 25 14:19 UTC] No.43693116[source]▶
Why would you incentivize foreign companies to do that, when you want American companies to build factories in US?
3. Ajedi32 ◴[15 Apr 25 14:34 UTC] No.43693353[source]▶
Inputs are cheaper (and thus have lower tariffs in an absolute sense) than outputs. I think the author underestimates the ability of the market to adapt to incentives.

They're still correct though that there are plenty of good reasons why we don't do manufacturing in the US right now, and tariffs do absolutely nothing to change that reality, they just artificially make the alternative worse at significant expense to consumers.

4. jonathanstrange ◴[15 Apr 25 16:19 UTC] No.43695030[source]▶
I feel misunderstood. I'm definitely not advocating for tariffs. The point is that even if this strategy worked for bringing manufacturing back (it won't in general and widespread because of labor shortage), it would result in products that are not going to be internationally competitive.