I don't think the population at large fully appreciates just how bad things could (and most likely will) get once these pre-tariff stocks are depleted. There is no magic wand to stand up new supply chains for the gazillion products we import from China overnight or even in the next several years. This promises to be more dramatic than the COVID supply shock only this time the damage will be entirely self-inflicted and - maybe - unrecoverable.
Sadly I agree with unrecoverable. Not only China is not stupid and is not waiting around, but also this idea that American people under democratic system can withstand longer oppression than a hard core regime that makes people missing every day, is astonishing. We will have Americans riot on the streets, meanwhile Chinese people will just get a tad smaller rice bowls. And then you have Canada, India and most significant countries there that this Administration continues to offend. Canada is going thru rounds of serious talks to take up large amounts of goods produced in China, so is India. We might be at the point that if/when a new Administration comes and is ready to restart talks, China may say "sorry we don't have anymore hands/factories to produce goods and we are very happy with what we sale to Canada/China/[insert any country name that is not US]".
Side note, how is bringing back manufacturing really what American people want? Do you want to live next to a huge factory polluting air and creating unbearable noise? You think you children can or want to work as hard as Chinese folks doing repetitive tasks in stinky inhumane factories? At what rate? $2 per day? The reason it all got pushed outside of USA is exactly because the level of lifestyle Americans wanted and like. Now apparently we are being told by this Administration that "having cheap goods is not American dream."
I think it'll have to get /really/ bad in the US before anything close to a general strike/popular riot happens. We have plenty of bread and circuses to go around in the meantime.
This is what I don't get. We don't have masses of unemployed people waiting in the ranks to fill a large amount of new jobs, as unlikely an outcome as that even is. Which means any large uptick in people working in manufacturing would have to come from some other industry. So what jobs would we give up for it?
The people that want the manufacturing back don't live downwind of the pollution and can't hear the robots screwing together the widgets. They're hanging out in the Hamptons.
I don't think that people realize that this is bigger than just the tariffs now. Even if Trump completely backs down, he's shown himself to be too unstable to do business with. I don't think that I'm exaggerating when I say that American hegemony is in terminal decline because of this. Maybe forcibly removing Trump (which will never happen) can help slow the decline, but the international community is still going to divest from America.
Yeah. Trump 1.0 had a lot of the same mindless flailing but I think a lot of folks were prepared to write it off as an aberration. For him to be reelected after everything (and I mean everything) shows the world that, no, it really is true that a considerable segment of the American populace will gleefully burn it all down as long as they can totally own the libs along the way.
Quite so. JD Vance has shown himself to be at least as xenophobic as Trump, and while one might say it's the job of the VP to help sell the President's ideas it's very obvious that these two individuals are just the incumbent leaders of a much larger American political movement oriented around international isolation and zero-sum transactionalism. The gradual erosion of American supremacy as a safe default assumption in almost every field has led to an intellectual retreat into a geographic fortress mentality which helps to explain the verbal and economic aggression toward Canada and Mexico. It's like a Civ/HOI player cashing in all diplomatic and economic chips in favor of full military mobilization.
The whole Pax Americana/Invisible Empire concept is dead now. Competitive great powers feel liberated from it and erstwhile allies are just never going to believe it again.
The markets continue to assume that there won't be any impact. When they do talk honestly you see Bloomberg interview finance leaders saying they aren't making big bets because they have no idea what to expect.
that's the key. "the subprime risk is contained", remember that? Anyone who claims they know what the economy is going to do 6 months from now should prove it with their stock portfolio.
Supply chains are incredibly complex. Even if a supplier is based in the U.S., they might be reselling Chinese-made goods. When tariffs hit or restrictions are imposed, those suppliers may simply stop selling the affected products. That can leave entire factories unable to operate due to missing components, which often take months to redesign or source alternatives for.
In theory, real-time trading systems could reduce the impact of such disruptions. But in practice, global logistics still runs on Excel sheets, emailed quotes, phone calls, and months-long shipping cycles.
If I were a medium to large business (I suppose small businesses will get screwed anyways, they wouldn't have the resources to handle challenges like this) how would I even prepare for such scenarios? Even if we assume I am somehow smart enough to predict something like this a full two years in advance. My employer is doing disaster recovery plans for data/software etc, which seems a million times easier than planning for alternative suppliers etc for manufacturers of physical goods
Well, it's a mirror of the Idiocracy mob's failure to anticipate the existential threat and potential damage caused by climate change. Informed, honest, ethical leadership is the cure but isn't popular enough. An ignorant populace is much easier to manufacture the consent of for cynical manipulation of popularity contests in avoidance of doing what's essential for the selfish, temporary, immediate benefit of a greedy few.
