President Trump announced his new higher tariffs yesterday with considerable fanfare. Predictably most Democrats hated them, Republicans mostly liked them. Some details provided here.
The most important thing these will do is to get other nations to lower their tariffs and barriers on US goods, in the quite likely hope that Trump will lowers his in reciprocity. The other really important thing they will do is bring manufacturing for the US market. back to the US.
This will create US manufacturing jobs which tend to pay well. More importantly, reshoring manufacturing will increase the believability of our military threat, paradoxically reducing the likelihood we will have to actually take military action.
Going into World War II, the US had a big manufacturing sector which rapidly converted to producing the wherewithal for war, making the US famously “the arsenal of democracy.” We need to rebuild that capacity, and absolutely must produce vital pharmaceuticals and microchips in quantity here at home.
