[quacked]

The two American political parties are so perfectly shielded by their own ideological blinders to avoid any possibility of national protectionism against offshoring and outsourcing that I don't think there will ever be any kind of movement against this.

The conservative base is unfriendly to foreigners and foreign cultures, and claims to prefer American-made goods and services, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who causes consumer prices to raise substantially--which they would have to do in order to support American workers creating products rather than our offshored counterparts. And the business owners and shareholders who love to outsource generally aren't true blue voters.

The liberal base is in theory pro-union and pro-worker, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who suggests economic discrimination in favor of native-born industries and workers.

[stronglikedan]

In my opinion, it's because the two party divide has reached the point of extremism on both sides, and extremists act on emotion rather than logic or reason. Up until a couple of decades ago, they both did a good job of keeping their more extreme members out of sight and mind. Now they're embracing and amplifying them.

[gorbachev]

It's not extremism. It's plain old American capitalism.

Both parties are being funded by the same people, so both parties play ball with the same set of funders.

[lenerdenator]

> The conservative base is unfriendly to foreigners and foreign cultures, and claims to prefer American-made goods and services, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who causes consumer prices to raise substantially--which they would have to do in order to support American workers creating products rather than our offshored counterparts.

Currently, the head of the party is raising and lowering tariffs at will, so I don't quite think this holds anymore.

[apawloski]

Agree. It is harder to manufacture in America when the party leader breaks critical parts of your supply chain with rapid and unpredictable tariff changes. It is impossible to lower consumer prices on a good by raising taxes on it.

This is not even mentioning the astounding corruption of a president and his family personally and directly benefiting from these tariffs threats.

Does the party not understand the realities of this? Do they understand and are just lying about it because they're afraid of the leader? Afraid of admitting that they're wrong? I believe people are usually rational but I do not understand a rationalization where choosing to harm American manufacturers and consumers on the whims of a visibly corrupt leader is good, actually.

[wat10000]

He is able to do so only to the extent that he can convince them that prices aren't rising, or he's not causing it.

[epolanski]

I really find the state of American (but not only) politics dreadful where everything is seen under the lenses of conservatives vs liberals.

Most people I know, everywhere in the world have mixed views on most topics.

Let alone the fact that ideologies tend to change, modern rights are way more populist and economically-socialist than they were 2 decades ago. See Poland, Hungary, Italy, etc, where governments make money fall on the poorest, on the elderly, etc ignoring their historical electorate (middle class).

[quacked]

I agree, but the fact of the matter is that for voting purposes there are two "teams" in the US, and they vote and argue in public down pretty well-defined ideological lines. If you know the two or three most strongly-held moral-political beliefs of an American, it's highly likely that you can guess another 150 sociopolitical beliefs they at least profess to hold to their friends.

[functionmouse]

You must understand, we're only allowed to vote for good cop or bad cop over here.

[refulgentis]

People one-on-one have heterodox views, no one likes to think they just take it all wholesale from some amorphous ideology without a leader.

If I could filter "conservatives are X and liberals are Y and it makes no sense" type thought, I would, because it's a driver of this impression.

[gamblor956]

liberal base is in theory pro-union and pro-worker, but will immediately guillotine any internal party member who suggests economic discrimination in favor of native-born industries and workers.

Well, yes, because discrimination on the basis of where someone was born is illegal. The American liberal base is, and has always been, fine with economic discrimination in favor of those in America (without regard to where they were born or their residency status).

[happytoexplain]

There is a stereotype that conservatives are "less fine" with outsourcing than liberals. I'm not saying it's strictly true, but it's a very strongly embedded stereotype if it's not true.

Also, you're resigning the biggest part of the conversation (immigration and residency policy and enforcement, especially with regards to employment) to an implication in a parenthetical?

[yongjik]

Protectionism may work in some cases, but even when it works, it works by making things more expensive. People don't buy American cars because it's cheaper to make similar cars in Mexico. Fine, so let's force companies to make cars in America. It's now more expensive (otherwise we won't be importing from Mexico in the first place).

You add more and more protectionism, it may get some jobs back, but the price is that things get more and more expensive. And not by a few percent, more like by 50% or more. (Just think of how much money an American worker needs to have an ordinary middle-class life compared to a Mexican worker.)

Now consider how much people were angry over the Covid-era inflation and how it was a major factor in Trump coming back (and looks like it's going to be a major factor in Republicans losing the mid-term election this year). Nobody wants prices to go up. Americans say they want protectionism but what they want is a fairy tale protectionism where jobs comes back but prices magically stay stable. It cannot happen, and if the choice is between some other group of Americans in Michigan getting better jobs and you getting your SUV at a "reasonable" price, people will choose the latter. (I'm not digging at Americans - the same is going to happen everywhere.)

It's basically "It's extremely hard to defeat capitalism at its own game." Nobody likes capitalism, but that doesn't mean you'll get popular by defying capitalism.

[quacked]

Well, of course, I agree with you. That's why I said I don't think it would happen.

I personally wouldn't mind a world where consumer goods were much, much more expensive and difficult to acquire, even though it would mean that my life would feel harder and less wealthy than it does now.

What I don't understand is whether or not there's any path to take besides watching the country gently sail along the sunset path into oblivion. Is that it? We gave away the keys to the country's wealth generation mechanism, and now we're at the mercy of the global economy to do whatever it wants? I don't want to compete with foreign firms who can hire foreign labor to compete with me and sell on my territory, but do I simply have no choice?

[xyzzy123]

I think all of your points are valid and I can't really see any part if your argument that isn't at least directionally correct. But then I'm left wondering:

Why is protectionism working for China?

[jerkstate]

I think you need to look at the data before making assertions like this.

> People don't buy American cars

53% of cars sold in the US are assembled in the US versus 18% assembled in Mexico.

> things get more and more expensive. And not by a few percent, more like by 50% or more.

The total cost of manufacturing wages only account for 5-15% of the MSRP of a vehicle. So moving manufacturing from an expensive country to a cheap country only changes the price by maybe 10% due to the impact of wages.

[_DeadFred_]

What happens when you remove the velocity of money from the economy and replace it with companies that count on their employees receiving government assistance in order to be able to live? Are things actually cheaper for the average worker long term in our current scenario? Or is it a temporary affordability in exchange for a worse economic future? It seems like things still have to keep getting worse and worse to be financially viable in our current cycle (clothes are Kleenex quality like sci-fi books joked would be issued in a UBI future, enshitification is in everything).

When a system takes the money from the economy and delivers it to the capital class and foreign workers, what happens to that economy? We don't know. We're gambling it will somehow be ok. We are also losing the 50% of taxes that comes from individual workers, so add in losing that velocity of money vector going through the government as well.

It doesn't seem like a sustainable system, nor a cheaper system. Only a very risky short term gamble.

[eigenman]

Things may get more expensive, but if more Americans can live a middle class life even accounting for the inflation of consumer goods I think that is a good tradeoff.

[only-one1701]

Yeah I’m sure the savings will be passed onto the consumer, genius

[rayiner]

Excellent analysis.