If they had bought American floodlights they had saved 255k in tarrifs. So if they had paid 200k for the floodlights they would have still been better of.

One could argue, that there might be no American Floodlight Company - well here is the incentive to build one.

Secondly the money isn't lost, it goes to the state. Like a tax, but it is called differently. With this 255k more the state can now subsidise the local floodlight industry.

If anything of the above comes to fruition... That's a different matter...

> Secondly the money isn't lost, it goes to the state. Like a tax, but it is called differently. With this 255k more the state can now subsidise the local floodlight industry.

Is that what is planned? The US has a lot of dept internationally I assumed the additional money goes into paying that back, or at least stabilize the dollar somehow

During the last Trump trade war with China, there was about $28B paid out to American farmers as “Market Facilitation Payments”. So basically the taxes collected from our own tariffs went to subsidizing the impact of retaliatory tariffs. The whole thing is pretty dumb.

Floodlight companies don't appear overnight. I suspect they won't appear at all, given the instability of the tariffs and the fact that the next President (or even the current one) could wipe them off, rendering their shiny new Floodlight factory completely useless overnight. This extends to any industry.

Tariffs need to be stable and updated with several months of advance notice - otherwise they don't serve their purpose.

It still is a very possible effect.

Yes, less chaos and more predictability would be better obviously but the theoretical foundation is somewhat solid.

> Like a tax,

It is a tax

A tax on foreign labor, to be exact. (Not foreign products or materials per se).

Actually it's an import tax - the importer pays it, not the foreign worker.

Yes, true of course.

But I meant that if you take an example of tshirt production that gets sold in the US, with fabric that comes from Bangladesh, one producer in Vietnam, one in the US. The final price consists of materials, labor, shipping. Both effectively have materials and shipping tariffed and for the Vietnam company additionally the labor is tariffed.

So the only difference is the application of the tariff on the labor for the Vietnam company.

> Secondly the money isn't lost, it goes to the state. Like a tax, but it is called differently. With this 255k more the state can now subsidise the local floodlight industry.

Alternatively the taxes can be lowered so that overall the American consumers don't lose buying power (imports get more expensive but people also have more money to spend).

Thanks to the chicken tax we already know how this will develop: The US floodlight company will sell those US-made lights these lights for ~400k (so at the margin of market price plus tariffs), and no one outside the US will want to buy them. This is literally what already happened with the US car industry.

There are many companies all over the world focused on local markets. The car industry is strategic, but I wouldn't mind buying a floodlight from a company that doesn't export anything.

So you want a worse floodlight at a higher price because of government protection?

If it employs an American and helps recreate our middle class... Yes I do.

First they came for the floodlight maker's job. Next they will come for yours.

There is no unemployment problem. Producing floodlight is not high paying job. If things become more expensive, more people will fall out of the middle class because they will no longer be able to afford what they previously could.

There is an enormous problem with sub-employment. Scores of Americans "employed" in activities such as Uber/Lyft driving, food delivery and quasi-prostitution (OnlyFans and adjacent).

Floodlight making would be a huge step up for Americans leaving small towns for terrible jobs in big cities.

Check the problem with drug addiction in small and medium cities.

> Next they will come for yours.

Like "they" came for middle-class Americans in stable US government jobs?

If they cared about re-creating a middle class with jobs, they wouldn't have started with wantonly eliminating so many of them using a method similar to checking if the packaged spaghetti is cooked. Toss it randomly at the wall and see what sticks.

Is that your vision for middle class jobs? Government? And who will pay for these... The "rich"?

What are you talking about? Who said anything about vision for jobs?

You and I both want an employed middle class. Why are you okay with "them" coming for the middle class as long as it Government jobs? These magic employment factories are not going to spring up overnight. So in the mean time why not care about the families and lives being rocked for having the audacity to get what was a stable job that could provide security for their middle class family with the added benefit for those that value their work in civil service over joining the Ferengi?

> And who will pay for these... The "rich"?

Me for one (Im not rich), I recognize what this county provides and the opportunities available. Why be against helping that which helped you? If some people dont want to that, okay, renounce citizenship, leave the country. They can be free of a government taxing the people who benefited the most from the previous generations taxes that paid for the collective government effort providing the conditions the newly wealthy, and the much wealthier now benefited from. Musk immigrated to this country because he wasn't going to have the same opportunity to turn the money he had into the fortune it is by staying in South Africa. Yet instead of using the opportunity his American created money bought him and carefully pruning the weary looking government tree so it could grow back stronger and healthier, he took a chainsaw to it. There's more money to be made at his stage of wealth with an even weaker government; that path has greater profit and simultaneously, the chance to pull up the ladder he climbed on the backs of the middle class. So should the "rich" pay their dues? Yes, just as I do and for the same reason. Otherwise, it's the "rich" who are the freeloaders.

Is that your vision for middle class jobs? Wait til the "rich" buys whats left of the country's economy at discount, then graciously allow the masses to work in their floodlight factory for scraps 6 days a week in a new private owned unregulated job economy with no oversight for worker protections?

> helps recreate our middle class

These tariffs are probably the worst way to try to do that. America had its best “middle class” when companies and CEOs were heavily taxed and when unions were thriving. The politicians ranting about “bringing jobs back to America” are the same ones that dismantled the things that actually _made America great_, and if they actually cared about the quality of living for most Americans they would do actual work to get there instead of alienating our economy to benefit themselves and their rich friends.

> state can now subsidise local floodlight industry.

Ha! State wants to cut taxes for corporations and billionaires. That’s where the money is most likely going to go.

Inflation go brrrr!

That is not even remotely correct. The American Floodlight Company would sell the floodlights for slightly below the 392k - the total amount these guys paid. Something like 350k and tell the consumers they just saved "42k". Because the alternative is? Import it and pay huge tariffs. This is what happened last time with washing machines.

The protectionism also means American Floodlight Company no longer needs to innovate. Because they can keep producing the same lights over and over again. What are people going to do? Look for innovative floodlights overseas and pay huge tariffs?

It also means American Floodlight Company products cannot be exported. It is costlier and not innovative. Japanese, Chinese, Koreans brands are going to leave them behind.

In the meantime, American Floodlight Company is a business, not a charity. They will find loopholes like get cheap parts -- this will be easier as world moves on to newer, more efficient lights, so that overall input costs are low - despite the tariffs. Then assemble it in US and claim it to be "Made in USA".

Win, Win for the company while the consumers can take a hike.

Yes that's the most likely outcome, but OP asked for the benefits - and I guess my explanation is the naïve thinking that lead to the tarrifs in the first place

It offsets the cost of cheaper Chinese labor and material costs. With the goal of making "made in the USA" products price competitive where they were not before.

In the abstract this possibly makes more jobs in the USA for manufacturing these items. It also keeps the entire process conducted in US Dollars that stay entirely within our borders which is theoretically better for currency stability and value.

In Theorie of a crazy orange men and a spaced out tech billionaire

Even the spaced out tech billionaire seems a bit uncomfortable with it; it's mostly just Trump's fixation.

Of course it what you describe is a lasting situation, no one outside of the US would buy from an industry that is only propped up by subsidies, whose product is available for cheaper elsewhere, and likely subject to counter-tariffs. From there, the USD-labelled trade outside of the US would decrease, which makes it a less interesting proposition for foreign companies to hold USD, and, by extension, T-bonds.

US companies that actually made viable products for the international market would now have to compete with artificially subsidized companies on their costs, risk getting caught in tariffs, and, unless they build a critical product, probably see their international sales decline.

It harms 100% of Americans which means it harms the 50% of Americans who advocate for science, education, and health. Anything that causes any harm to this group in any way at any cost is what that other 50% wants and derives the benefit from.

Some people from the companies that will go bankrupt as a result of that will be able to find work assembling floodlights.

American products are too expensive, so nobody buys them. Import taxes make imported products more expensive so that they are even more expensive than the American products. The hope is that this makes it cheaper for American consumers to buy American products than to buy imported products.

But the elephant in the room is that the American-made products are now so expensive that you cannot profitably export them to any other country. So you have effectively limited the market size to purely the internal American market. And that means Chinese companies might have much better economies of scale. Because they can capture customers worldwide and not just inside America.

But most likely, the house of cards will fall over before you ever ship the first American-made product: Headlights need injection-molded parts. Since this was historically almost fully outsourced, the U.S. has almost no production capacity in this area. Building these factories takes 2 to 5 years. That means, unless everyone is fully convinced that these taxes will stay in effect for at least 5 years, nobody is going to build the necessary manufacturing capacity. And good luck finding US investors who are happy to invest millions into a factory with a predicted 5% profit margin.

Negatively polarize the Democratic Party out of their anti-trade posturing (sweatshops! outsourcing pollution! look at the rust belt!) for a generation?

Huh?

Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were huge free traders, and Barack Obama largely carried on that bi-partisan tradition.

But the resurgent left of the Democratic Party, inspired by the anti-WTO “Battle of Seattle” and led by folks like Elizabeth Warren, made free trade toxic to enough of the party that Hillary Clinton in 2016 felt she needed to come out against Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership which she herself had taken a lead in negotiating.

Trump ostensibly killed it, but it was already dead. Even an incredibly beneficial trade agreement—both economically and strategically—had no constituency of consequence on Capitol Hill. With Trump’s “help” maybe one will reemerge.

The TTP was structured as the economic equivalent of the Island Chain containment. It's conception lead to Made in China 2025 which wasn't rolled back just because USA withdrew from TPP.

Obama had the right idea, Trump if he understood it (lol) would have used it to screw China instead of giving China a free pass by withdrawing from it.

Note that China <-> US relations soured under Obama, well before Trump came into the picture and most of it was a direct result of TPP and policies like it designed to contain China economically.

Straight from the horses caretaker mouth

Lutnick: "It's time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here and your grandkids work here. We let the auto plants go overseas."

United States Secretary of Commerce ladies and gentlemen!

Nobody seems to talk about tariffs used as a negotiating tactic.

There are unfair trade practices other countries have imposed against the united states, and raising tariffs starts negotiations.

That said, don't know how unfair other countries were per-country, and how negotiating has benefited from the tariffs.

I assume the idea behind the tariffs is to force foreign countries into trade negotiations, the results of which will presumably benefit Americans.

What the actual motivation is, you'd have to ask Trump in a setting where he'd tell you the truth rather than putting on a show for the public.