2mo ago

Manufacturers say Trump has made opening U.S. factories impossible

newrepublic.com /post/195070/donald-trump-tariffs-manufacturers-opening-factories

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.

102 comments

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.
- Why not both?
- Trump may be incompetent but the architects of project 2025 are, unfortunately, not. Trump is merely their most useful idiot.
  
  Oh, they’re incompetent, too. They are just very effective at installing their incompetence into the government.
- Sorry, I had to.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
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+++
- It's not even that entirely
  You can't build X here unless every component is also produced... here. The component factories can't be built here here until there's factories building the subcomponents for them, AND a buyer for them here.
  A button up shirt needs cotton -> chemical treatment -> dyes -> fabric, base chemicals > plastic pellets -> buttons, AND the machines to do all of those processes. It's like 7 or 8 different factories just to produce a shirt with buttons on it. Imagine how many factories it is for anything more complex.
  Then in comes your point of needing commitment when it's not even certain for more than a week, nobody is going to build out entire supply chains in that scenario.
  
  Gamers Nexus just talked to some PC manufacturers about this.
  "We assemble PCs, made in America from these parts"
  (motherboard, CPU, graphics card, PSU, ...)
  So what if, for example, the motherboard manufacturer moved to the US?
  Well that's an assembly of a hundred or so other Chinese components. And the equipment needed to manufacture it would need to be imported.
  Ok, but what if all those hundreds of factories were built in the US?
  Well, they all use imported aluminium and steel and plastic, etc., and require their own imported machines to produce...
  "Is any part of your PC entirely made in the US?"
  "The shipping labels? And maybe some packaging"
  
  That is a very good point that I hadn’t considered, thanks for your response.
  To your point, that just makes it even more of a ridiculous proposition.
  
  Another example would be Trump saying that US farmers now have unprecedented access to the UK market for sales but the US uses growth hormone which is banned in the UK and Europe. It's very unlikely they're going to designate a non growth hormone section of their farm just to ship beef overseas.
  Which would only be financially sound if for some reason there is significant demand for American beef in the UK which.. Why would there be?
- You mean “cOnCePts Of a PlAn” don’t count?
- You mean any knowledge at all about anything or thinking ahead , which this administration hasn't done at all, seeing as they and DOGE have just cut jobs everywhere and then these agencies have to hire people back because they're understaffed and shit is falling apart.
- You got to stop to call them incompetent. It's on purpose. They're traitors and are yearning for a crash.
  
  There are easier, safer way to crash the economy that are far less public
  I get the feeling those who insist there is a plan, just don't want to admit the emperor has no clothes
  
  Don't fall for the simple explanation. Both answers are true. The objectives are all about greed and betrayal, but the means are still heavily driven by incompetence. Just because someone is a criminal does not make them a competent criminal.
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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Why Greenland?
  It destroyed the Baltic alliances that are a PITA for Russia
  Why kill academics?
  Our economic dominance is a PITA for Russians
  Why destroy the dollar?
  Ibid
  Why kill NATO?
  Ibid
  Seems like a lot of work for a lazy old man who’s not in fear from Russian mobsters
- You're giving him too much credit. His motives are:
  get richer
  have people kiss his ass so he can feel like a big boy
  That's it.
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.
- 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.
- Leave Russia out of it. It's your own rigged election system and lack of real competition that led to this
  
  I'm not American nor living in the USA.
- People keep ignoring this...
  
  I don't personally think it's true. I think Trump's first term he spent all day and night on putins dick and this term he is trying to achieve a similar staying power. He wants to be more powerful than Putin.
That's the point. Destroy America but keep idiots voting for it.
- 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.
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
- ironically, much of the domestic industrial policy Biden signed into law was intended to do exactly this but Trump reversed course because corrupt reasons
  
  A combination of incentives and targeted tariffs only where necessary. For example, you might have incentives to build out EV chargers, incentives to buy EVs, “carrot and stick” to encourage legacy manufacturers to start building EVs, incentives for new EV companies, incentives for battery recycling companies …. Then come out in a dominant position for a new technology product, destined to build jobs and wealth for decades! Or you could, you know, throw that all away and then throw money at the dead tech of half a century ago
- “Consumers with the funds to do the consuming” well wouldn’t that be grand. Unfortunately that would involve paying people and executives are allergic to basic decency even when the core of it is ultimately selfishness.
- Also need regulatory approval, plus funding talent and all the employees for said factories, and then manage the logistics from the factories to distribution warehouses then to the stores.
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.
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.
- Only the 1% are getting tax cuts. This was all known before the election but people are dumb.
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?
- 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.
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.
- Before Reaganomics and globalism the middle class was strong and built on the shoulders of blue collars, why do you think they forced globalism down our throat? So they could make stuff cheaply and could eradicate the middle class. I hate Trump and what he stands for, but globalism was something the left was fighting against back in the day because the left realized the consequences of losing manufacturing jobs in first world countries.
  
  they also saw reagan was a easy to manipulate stooge, especially after his alzheimers starting to affect him, they took even greater advantage of him.
  
  What made those jobs great for the middle class wasn't the fact that they were blue collar manufacturing jobs, it was the fact that they were unionized.
  Unions and high top tax brackets built the American middle middle class between the fourties and the eighties. Yes, offshoring allows companies to seek lower wages elsewhere, but the solution to that is not sweatshops at home. You need to start by building up strong labour rights and investing in education and infrastructure, which drive investment in job growth. Stop trying to regain all the jobs you lost and work and improving the jobs you have.
  Yes, leftists have been warning about globalisation for decades, and they're right, but lets not pretend that what Trump is doing is even in the same continent as a solution.
  
  What made those jobs available was economic opportunity, investment, building a greater whole over time. You don’t win a game of checkers by knocking over the board or a race to the bottom to become the next third world poverty labor. You win with a focussed strategy to push one checker to the other side and “king” it.
  Biden was taking the right approach with the chips act , infrastructure spending, and renewable energy investments. Maybe it wasn’t flashy or loud or immediate, but would have actually built a dominant position in new technologies, including us supply chain and lots of us jobs. The biggest flaw was we needed to stick to the plan for a decade or two, but that’s what you gotta do.
  
  All socialist ideologies are globalist.
  "Workers of the world unite" ring any bells? "All war is class war?" Globalist rhetoric. The idea that artificial divisions like nations are weapons against the people.
  You are, ironically, using the word the way Reagan and his kind used it, as an ill-defined nationalist slur to protect local profit margins.
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
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.
- ...in the 80s.
  
  That’s what people keep forgetting: this is not new. It took us decades to offshore our supply chains, decades to move out low profit manufacturing. Now it’s gone. Long gone with few remnants, and we need to start over. It will take time and investment, incentive and support, and can only be done with an actual strategy and sticking with it. For decades..
  Maybe a factory can be built in a couple years, but a supply chain is many factories building different things, supported by resource acquisition that’s different from what we currently do. A supply chain is decades
Just imagine the profits from artificial scarcity, end of times riots and price gouging the ever living shit out of every citizen you can.
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.
- As well, why would you when you can just hunker down for 4 years and wait for the next administration to get rid of the tariffs? They already have millions and billions invested outside of the country. Why spend that much again for a potentially short term problem?
back to the mines!
It was never possible even under normal circumstances
So how come the people in MANUFACTURING couldn't see his proposal in MANUFACTURING was a big crock of shit?
- Because the people writing him checks aren't the people doing all the actual work.
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
But they'll be able to build big beautiful factories with huge tarriffs on all the building supplies and equipment right?
- If the collapse was going to happen anyway then it would've been best for Trump to sit out the election and let it happen under Biden's watch.
You mean that this plan was not fully thought out and is just another reactionary policy that will do more harm than good? Shocking!
Assuming rebuilding manufacturing is the intended goal, how feasible is it to start at the local level, as if in a preindustrial society? That means towns would be going back to having their own smiths, bakers, butchers, like in preindustrial times? Guess that's a consequence of deindustrializing—go back to making handmade stuff since the local businesses that once mass-produced closed long ago.
- Feasible? Only in smallish communities surrounded by arable land. The urban and suburban life needs large scale industry to function at all.

102 comments