One of the primary arguments given by certain political figures as to why we need tariffs is that it will protect American jobs. So by showing that it costs more jobs than it protects, that can help the average person realize that tariffs do not protect jobs, at least not in all cases.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/business/energy-environme...
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/261363-us-hits-...
> The economy is $14 trillion
The US economy is about $19T, it was $14T about 10 years ago.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...
I thought thats just the talking heads for the plebs that watch daily news.
I have always understood this as crony capitalism until the economic collapses and they need to pull back these anti-capitalist measures.
Take aviation, for example. Do you think the United States exports airplanes built by 'trade in good faith'? Or is Boeing a company that is largely propped up by government largess? Or, if not, would you say that Boeing achieved market and technical dominance via government support in decades past? What about Silicon Valley? It only exists in California because of military contracts and very generous R&D funding for universities in the 70s and 80s.
Yet, similar behaviours on the part of other countries are considered 'not trading in good faith'.
The United States has done the same thing, when it was behind in industrialization to the United Kingdom. Heavy tariffs on foreign goods, in order to prop up its own domestic sector.
Once they get their auto industry together, to the same level of quality as US manufacturers, they won't need that tariff.
Federal reserve and fiscal policy are 1e9 times as important to job creation as this tariff. Would it be bad for the economy if someone invented a machine to make solar panels cheaply without any labor at all? No. That would be good because we could have lots of solar panels and save the planet.
Important to remember these tariffs were not conceived of as a job creation scheme. They were created to produce a windfall for investors who bought the bonds of bankrupt US solar companies. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-23/jpmorgan-...
I think that, for the White House, the tariffs have an added benefit of quashing an industry that more and more competes with coal. For reasons of graft, an obnoxious "heartland" brand and some weird fetishization, this administration is deeply obsessed with coal---one of the worst industries in the country to work for, which kills countless people via pollution.