You may be wondering at President Trump’s fondness for tariffs, which of course are taxes on imported goods, having the effect of raising the price of said goods to the US buyer. For example he just announced a 25% tariff on imported autos.
I note the media are not explaining why he is doing this, beyond observing that it makes it more likely that those goods be made in the US as it thus becomes cheaper to do so to avoid the tariff. I thought I might take a stab at explaining his motives, which begin with having more manufacturing done here in the US.
Under 20 years of Obama/Biden/Bush free trade policies, the US has become a place that imports most of its manufactured goods. We don’t make a lot here. As long as the world is at peace and not under threat, this isn’t a huge problem. We get cheap goods from abroad, send money there and everybody is happy.
Except a very large percentage of our manufactured goods come from China. China is also viewed as our main competitor for hegemony — the military adversary which poses a credible threat to us and makes no bones about it.
This is problematic because wars grind through a vast amount of manufactured stuff - most notably arms and explosives. Thus wars are won by manufacturing nations. Russia is prevailing against Ukraine because it manufactures arms and Ukraine must import most of theirs from the US and to a lesser extent Europe.
A US that doesn’t manufacture much stuff - which we are now - isn’t a credible military threat. A credible military threat is exactly what we need to be to keep others with hegemonic ambitions (mainly China) from attacking us.
This is a major reason why President Trump wants to bring manufacturing back to the US. It will help restore our military credibility. The more credible our threats of force, the less likely they are to be challenged, the less likely we have to fight. It is “if you would have peace, prepare for war” in action.
It is also true that as a major customer of China’s manufacturing sector, our buying much less from them reduces their income stream and creates economic problems for them. This is a secondary benefit.
Manufacturing jobs tend to pay good wages to the blue collar workers who are the backbone of Trump’s coalition of supporters. A healthy home-grown manufacturing sector will go a long way toward improving the lifestyles of our blue collar workforce.