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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

The Trump administration’s tariff scheme appears less and less likely to bring manufacturing jobs back to U.S. shores.

Businesses across the country are crunching the numbers and realizing that, despite Donald Trump’s insistence, they can’t balance out his tariff hikes across the supply chain.

“Some manufacturers who had plans to open factories in the country say the new duties are only adding to the significant obstacles they already faced,” Bloomberg reported Friday.

That’s because the supply chain to produce those goods in the United States simply isn’t there, requiring companies to import raw materials and factory equipment—which Trump’s tariffs have made unaffordable—from abroad.

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[-] Boddhisatva@lemmy.world 238 points 2 months ago

You don't say. That kind of seemed obvious from the very fucking start. Trump is absurdly incompetent or he is actively working to destroy the country. I honestly can't tell which it is.

[-] SnotFlickerman 86 points 2 months ago
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[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 38 points 2 months ago

Trump may be incompetent but the architects of project 2025 are, unfortunately, not. Trump is merely their most useful idiot.

[-] athairmor@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

Oh, they’re incompetent, too. They are just very effective at installing their incompetence into the government.

[-] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The Heritage Foundation is not new; their last big project was Ronald Reagan, and they were very successful in destroying the economy in the long run. That also started us down this path that got us to Trump to begin with.

Trump would never have happened if there wasn't mass amounts of economic hardship.

I think "evil" is a better word to describe them.

[-] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 months ago

Trump may have never happened if the fucking dnc supported bernie in 2016..

[-] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Or if Florida didn't rig the 2000 election for Bush, or if the Supreme Court never ruled that money = speech and corporations = people, or if Nixon didn't snuff out the hippie movement with the War on Drugs, or if the FBI never killed MLK Jr. for him being a socialist, or if Ronald Reagan and Joe McCarthy were unsuccessful in their Red Scare movement in the 1950s, or if FDR didn't compromise with capitalists and went full socialist instead.

There are lots of things to point to.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

I really think it’s just not a plan, but a bunch of individual wishlists. It’s not that evil is incompetent but it’s a bunch of people each pursuing their own agenda, each using the orange fool to get what they want. The part where we may get lucky is each is too egotistical to work together, and Trump is to weak a leader to make them all head in the same directions.

It’s not a bunch of incompetent fools, is a herd of evil cats

[-] Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 months ago

Sorry, I had to.

[-] Xanza@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago

He's working very hard to meet his campaign promises. They were too grandeur. The government needs a massive increase in revenue to be able to meet the promises he's made. If you sit down and think about it, this is the easiest way for the federal government to increase revenue without directly increasing taxes. Then he does wild deportations to distract everyone from what he's doing.

All to keep the top 1%'s share of total adjusted gross income to share of total income paid at 26.3% and 45.8%. Crazy to me that the top 1% of earners cry so hard about contributing a proportional amount in taxes.

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago

I honestly can't think of promises that would require more money.
And the simplest way to do it is to just spend the money. The government isn't required to have money in order to spend it.

The richest make more money when they sell more and the stock market does better. The tariffs hurt them more than a tax increase would because they can't dodge revenue loss and market devaluation.

He's not running a grand plan. He's not a mastermind. He's doing exactly what he said he would. He had to get back into power to avoid consequences. He did so by putting all the awful people with irrational agendas into positions of power so they would support him. He doesn't give a shit about the 1% unless they're helping him, and he doesn't give a shit about the 99% unless they're voting for people who can help him.
All the "distractions" are him letting the people who got him into power do what they want, because it doesn't hurt him and he doesn't care.
The deportations aren't a distraction, they're the point for the racists who directly helped him.

It's not about who in society it helps, rich or not. It's about who in his cabinet it helps. Everyone else can go fuck themselves.

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[-] SaltSong@startrek.website 5 points 2 months ago

If you sit down and think about it, this is the easiest way for the federal government to increase revenue without directly increasing taxes.

Except that when tariffs are this high, they discourage imports and purchasing. It's self-defeating.

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[-] hydrashok@sh.itjust.works 97 points 2 months ago

But you mean your company isn’t willing to make a years long investment in on-shore manufacturing capacity when the scales that make it advantageous to the company can change in any direction, at any point, for any made-up reason, by any amount? Don’t they love investing in America?

/s+++

[-] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 39 points 2 months ago

Never listen to the reason they claim to be doing something, look only to what they are doing. And that, quite clearly, day after day indicates that they are doing everything they can to destroy the USA, as quickly as possible. Once one has determined what they are doing, then ask who does this benefit.

[-] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The thing is, it doesn't really benefit anyone. If you're Russia, for instance, it would be better to destroy the entire democratic world than just the United States, and Trump could have done that if he'd just moved more slowly on some of his actions (for instance, if he'd remained quiet about Canada until after our election then we'd be in a very different situation now.) Trump's just an idiot, plain and simple, and the people he surrounds himself with are either idiots themselves or too cowardly to call the idiots out on their idiocy.

It's a mistake to think that either he or his handlers have some kind of master plan and that everything Trump does is the result of expert manoeuvring that just looks like stupidity. That promotes defeatism and gets people to surrender prematurely. As long as people stand up to Trump, he will lose.

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[-] KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca 37 points 2 months ago

Tariffs aren't designed to bring manufacturing back. It's designed to crush the US economy for Daddy Putin. It's designed to starve out the plebs. It's designed to bankrupt companies to be bought by the billionaire class for pennies on the dollar.

[-] monotremata@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 months ago

You left out the most important reason: getting people to come kiss Trump's ass to ask for exemptions. Nothing is more important than getting Trump the sycophancy he has to settle for in lieu of respect.

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[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 34 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The way I see, ~~Trump's~~ the Trump Administration's motives are:

(1) Plunder the government of anything of value.

(2) Cause a recession so rich can buy everything up on the market.

(3) Sabotage America geopolitically on behalf of foreign adversaries, most notably Russia.

(4) Cement power in their control and go after any rivals.

Edit: For clarification, I don't think it really matters what part of this is Trump himself versus the people he surrounds himself with and permits as the executive to do what they're doing in their own personal agendas that align with one or more of these 4 points.

[-] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 months ago

Nah.

These are definitely someone's motives but not Trump's.

He's old and tired and petty. All he cares about is his ego, which he supports with power, revenge, and attention.

Trump doesn't have any kind of plan other than waking up every day and stroking his ego.

[-] TipRing@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

Exactly, it's like thinking he had a plan the whole time to bankrupt his casinos or any of his other many failed ventures. He is just bad at leadership because his narcissism constantly self-sabotages, like with his casinos he constantly made terrible and expensive changes and his ego wouldn't allow any one working for him to challenge him, so he'd blame everyone, stiff contractors, fire competent staff who could actually turn the situation around and the next thing you know the casino is failing despite it being basically a sure bet for profit in that time and place.

It's the same here, the country will collapse because he isn't just a bad leader, he is a collection of toxic qualities that almost guarantee bad organizational outcomes even given very positive starting conditions.

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[-] lennybird@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah that is fair and I should've elaborated this as the Trump Administration. As in, Trump doesn't care because he both successfully ran from prison, and is now able to golf pretty much all he wants. If anything he probably resents America for refusing to vote for him in 2020. So now all the pilot fish surrounding Trump who helped get him elected for their own end are reaping their end of the bargain.

So naturally you've got the Russian assets (Gabbard, Flynn, Trump himself), the zealots like Mike Johnson and Stephen Miller, the corporate oligarchical opportunists like Musk. The power-hungry (like Trump's sons, JDV, etc.), and so on. It's a big fuck-you to America and it ultimately matters little to me whether it's Trump or the broader Republican party. As far as I'm concerned they all made this; they all enabled it. They are criminal cartel.

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[-] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 28 points 2 months ago

That's the point. Destroy America but keep idiots voting for it.

[-] mriswith@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Well they want to almost destroy America, that way the rich can buy up everything for cheap and become even more pwoerful. They're literally trying to recreate the situation that caused the rise of oligarchs in Russia.

And the idiots vote for it because they've been brainwashed by propaganda to think they'll be part of the elite once it's over.

[-] Zenith@lemm.ee 24 points 2 months ago

This is what I’ve been saying, building factories is already an expensive and time consuming process, then you slap high prices on everything you need to make a factory work it’s going to be out of reach for basically anyone and the few who can afford it likely wouldn’t anyway because like this describes it’s not fiscally responsible but also the US is in decline why would you be putting an enormous investment into a wildly unstable system? If you want manufacturing in the US building factories needs to be reasonable price wise and you need consumers with the funds to do the consuming, neither of which can be delivered now

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[-] HubertManne@piefed.social 23 points 2 months ago

The math is such that I expect to see companies that make things in the us leave. Makes more sense to build in the UK and add the 10% tarriff for your thing made of chinese parts than absorb the XX% chinese tarriffs and have to raise the price even more in the us. If the product is sold abroad at all its a slam dunk to move out.

[-] skozzii@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 months ago

The world has no appetite for his big beautiful luxury goods store.

USA used to be the managers and leaders of these factories, now he wants them to be the grunt workers and for some reason people are all for it.

[-] Ledericas@lemm.ee 21 points 2 months ago

you were warned months before, and even before the election. dont act surprised, you thought his only legislation was tax cuts, but it wasnt , he was pushing things further along the line for PUTIN.

[-] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

So first Trump prevents any ex-allies to the US from trading with them

Then Trump prevents factories from being opened in the US to produce goods locally

What kind of 6D backgammon is this?

[-] Alenalda@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

The kind where shelves go empty soon. I remember walking round the grocery store during covid and everything being empty, felt like a dream. Now it's a nightmare.

[-] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 months ago

the supply chain to produce those goods in the United States simply isn’t there

This is what everyone has been saying ad-nauseum since this whole shit show started.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

Right, this is why an intelligent leader might use tariffs to bring back manufacturing, in a very targeted way and matched with incentives to help build what is missing.

This is someone who heard that you could use a hammer in conjunction with nails to build a house so starts swinging mjolnir in every direction

[-] Ledericas@lemm.ee 10 points 2 months ago

It was never possible even under normal circumstances

[-] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 months ago

Just imagine the profits from artificial scarcity, end of times riots and price gouging the ever living shit out of every citizen you can.

[-] arakhis_@feddit.org 8 points 2 months ago

back to the mines!

[-] NutWrench@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago

You can't make long term plans for building factories, sourcing raw materials and hiring people if the Dynamite Monkey in Chief can blow it all up on a whim.

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[-] JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

So how come the people in MANUFACTURING couldn't see his proposal in MANUFACTURING was a big crock of shit?

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[-] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

BRB, setting up my backyard forge after years of not smooshing any metal. Looks like it's up to people like me to make all this complicated tool&die

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this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
661 points (100.0% liked)

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