China Trade War Didn't Boost U.S. Manufacturing Might

[CousinIT]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-trade-war-didnt-boost-u-s-manufacturing-might-11603618203

WASHINGTON—President Trump’s trade war against China didn’t achieve the central objective of reversing a U.S. decline in manufacturing, economic data show, despite tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods to discourage imports.

The tariffs did succeed in reducing the trade deficit with China in 2019, but the overall U.S. trade imbalance was bigger than ever that year and has continued climbing, soaring to a record $84 billion in August as U.S. importers shifted to cheaper sources of goods from Vietnam, Mexico and other countries. The trade deficit with China also has risen amid the pandemic, and is back to where it was at the start of the Trump administration.

Another goal—reshoring of U.S. factory production—hasn’t happened either. Job growth in manufacturing started to slow in July 2018, and manufacturing production peaked in December 2018.

. . .

Manufacturing job growth began to slow when the trade war started, and had nearly stopped growing before the pandemic.

. . .about 75% of the increase in manufacturing jobs occurred before the first tranche of tariffs took effect against China in July 2018, when annual growth in manufacturing jobs peaked and then began to decline. By early 2020, even before the pandemic reached the U.S., manufacturing job growth had stalled out, and factories shed workers in four of the six months through March

[Buckeyeblue]

1. The tariffs were really just decorative. Just a symbol.

If you really wanted to impose tariffs to "force" manufacturers to bring those efforts back into the country, the tariffs would need to be 300-500%. You would have to make it so the prices passed on to consumers made the goods non-competitive.

All these tariffs did was cause prices to go up a little. But at the higher prices the goods are still affordable.

But the downside is the retaliation. And that hits US farmers the hardest, since that's about all we are exporting.

I think focusing on manufacturing jobs is the wrong direction. We need to focus on the more skilled jobs at are being outsourced and off-shored. Banks, just for instance, are off-shoring a number of back office, operational and IT jobs to to different countries. Not only does this cost us good paying jobs that often serve as a stepping stone for better jobs through promotions, but many banks are playing with fire with personal data.

I would would impose taxes on corporations that outsource this type of work. And I would make corporations disclose to their customers when this type of work is being off-shored.

[keithbvadu2]

2. After all, trade wars are 'easy to win'.

Heard that from Trump.

[Xolodno]

3. The stupidity of the Trump tariffs, is this;

1. Wasn't enough to force manufacturers back into the US.

2. If it was enough, the cost of the goods would hurt the economy. If you have to spend a shit load more on goods (and they would still cost a lot if manufactured here in the US), that leaves you less money to spend on other goods
.
3. In the global economy, its not too hard to circumvent tariffs. Unless there is a trade union of several countries.

4. Many US companies moved manufacturing off shore but kept the service sector jobs here. The tariffs forced layoffs of those jobs.

5. The retaliatory tariffs could put certain industries (like agriculture soybeans) into another nation permanently. What stopped other nations before was the cost of entry into the market, now you just made that cost affordable.