[fulladder]

The belief of Trump and his allies is that the last 40 years of free trade has been extremely favorable to college educated "elites" and extremely unfavorable to the working class. They see foreign trade as having hollowed out American manufacturing, and therefore they see the shutting down foreign trade as a way to reverse this decline. While they are aware that doing so will hurt college educated professionals, they don't care because they feel those people have had it too good for too long.

[api]

I get it and even sympathize, but I don’t think it will work for three reasons.

First is the uncertainty they are creating. Factories take a long time to build and staff and cost millions to billions depending on size and industry. Who in their right mind is going to invest that to build factories that are only economically viable under a tariff regime that could vaporize after the next election? Or if Trump changes his mind? Which he has a history of doing. Chaos like this is anathema to that kind of long term investment.

I am not opposed to the idea of trying to rebalance trade and repatriate manufacturing. Not at all. But it can be done skillfully, strategically, and without panicking global markets. This economic pivot is less well planned and executed than Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The second reason it won’t work is that there’s way more competition today. After WWII during those glory days of US manufacturing everyone talks about Europe was destroyed and much of Asia had not yet industrialized. We were not just selling to a domestic market. We were selling to a world that had no alternatives. That’s just not true anymore.

The third reason it won’t work is that these tariffs are going to be massively inflationary and that will wipe out any gains the working class gets from more or better jobs.

Meanwhile they are doing nothing to address cost disease in housing, health care, or education.

Housing is the big one and I haven’t heard a peep. Instead of using Federal leverage to tilt at windmills like trans people using bathrooms, they could use that power to push states to regularize zoning and allow more home construction. “No more Federal highway funds unless you implement a plan to reduce housing costs.” Now that would help the working class and the young. It would also help things like the birth rate, which I know a bunch of people on the right are freaking out about. Reducing the #1 cost barrier to family formation would help a lot.

In short I think they’re doing a terrible erratic job of implementing a dubious strategy. This is going to fail, and we will all get poorer as a result. China will be the largest beneficiary since even more of global trade will now shift to them. They are now seen as stable, responsible, and reliable while we look like a basket case.

[lenerdenator]

I think that's the belief of his voters in the Upper Midwest, but not necessarily Trump himself. He's the college-educated elite. He's playing them like a fiddle. He knows that they will absorb the damage from this, not the elites, who are far more connected than they are college educated.

[techpineapple]

the irony is I don’t think there’s any way this hurts the college educated more than the working classes, as most things do.

[mathfailure]

Where did you take this from? Trump is not from working class. Working class might've been his 'platform' for the election, but he's already elected now, he basically has no incentive now to fight for the rights/interests of his voters, he has his own wallet that needs to finally get filled. Unless you think he really aims for a 3rd term.

[JackYoustra]

Sure, it's just that though, a belief. The vast majority of the poor have prospered from free trade; indeed, the costs they complain the most about (health, education, housing) are the biggest categories of things that _can't_ be traded.

[jghn]

> The belief of Trump and his allies

Trump and his allies are all college educated elites.

[ViktorRay]

But these beliefs have been core to the American left for decades. Even left wing intellectuals like Noam Chomsky have attacked the neoliberal trade agreements I think.

Trump’s populist right wing fans have adopted traditionally left wing views. What’s surprising is so many left wing people are supportive of free trade when they were against free trade during the Reagan era.

[kalkin]

I don't think the left has been automatically in favor of tariffs--or at least I'd appreciate evidence for that claim. The complaints about free trade deals that I've seen have tended to be about provisions that treated various labor and environmental regulations as restraints on trade. It's fair to say that left-liberal people are paying more attention to the downsides of tariffs than they were, but I don't think it's a simple reversal of positions.

[alphabettsy]

I’m not sure what your sources are but if Bernie Sanders is the left, then he’s been saying the same thing for a long time and continues to. Maybe there’s some nuance to it?

2025 https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-s...

2011 https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/senate-speech-...

[tokai]

MAGA Communism is apparently a thing.