this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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It's a well-written article about why tariffs won't work. I think everyone on Lemmy probably knows that already though. What I found interesting is that every developed country seems to follow the same trend. Pushing for going back to manufacturing might be the national equivalent of "I don't want to grow up!".
This seems like a way better approach:
its really not. 'its happens to every developed country!' is an intellectual cop out. first off: if it was inevitable that any developed country will stop manufacturing, then by definition eventually no country will have manufacturing or some countries are prevented from developing in order to maintain a manufacturing base. The former is impossible and the latter is a morally bankrupt position.
the reason manufacturing has declined is because western societies have over fitted for cheap goods and a decaying economic base. there are other ways than tarriffs to resolve the problem but they all end up as a tax that needs to be paid.
There are broader impacts than just middle class issues; there is a lack of local resources and familiarity that prevent confluences of ideas/know how across domains.
the cold hard truth is western societies need to bring a much larger and broader fraction of their consumption in house in order to maintain a reliable and robust economy.
From what I understand, manufacturing hasn't stopped, or even declined. It's still going strong, it's just a much smaller percentage of the GDP now. Here's a chart that shows that trend (the source of the chart itself looks like some business-y site, but they say the data is drawn from the UN):
Here's a scary chart showing the decline of manufacturing:
But notice that it's as a percentage of GDP
So I don't think anybody's saying that we need to stop countries from developing, just that once a country develops a strong manufacturing base, they don't have to limit their economy to only or mostly manufacturing.
it depends on the sector; there are critical components to our advance technologies we're 100% dependent on other countries for. robotics in particular is absolutely fucked for the computing components they need and low cost electronics. both problems are easily resolved by building highly automated factories in the US to produce them.
GDP wasn't part of my analysis. the issue is we've over fitted and are dependent on a number of outside partners and a absolutely fucked middle class. No one cares if its a shrinking portion of total GDP. Farming is also a shrinking share while simultaneously increasing in output.
the problems are that when you encounter disagreements with remote nations you cant compensate for the friction quickly because you literally outsourced all the labor and knowledge to the entity you're now in a disagreement with.
What should be happening is nation require %age of critical manufacturing be required 100% manufactured within their own borders ensuring a maintained skill set and worker base that can be grown if needed without causing giant increases in overall costs.
TMSC is a great of example of the problem. even when we tried to force them to manufacture a percentage in the states it took years to spin up a single foundry. Same issue is happening when companies try to out source software/engineering development. Those skills are hard to replace unless they're actively being developed and practiced.
Manufacturing related jobs can and will come back, we just need to make a concentrated effort to do so without making it an all or nothing proposition.
What we should be doing is placing high taxes on companies like apple/microsoft/google/aws that is deferred for the next few years to meet certain manufacturing goals and if they do get there and maintain the ratio then they dont have to pay those taxes. If they dont then they have to pay the back taxes + high and higher taxes each year they dont meet them.
I bring up the GDP only to point out that some graphs with scary numbers don't really mean much. I don't think "GDP go up" means the middle class isn't getting fucked.
Broadly, I agree that we should manufacture more. I just think that the jobs aren't "coming back", and framing it that way leads to people arguing along political lines. I'd be interested in seeing more of a breakdown than the charts I posted above. Which manufacturing industries have kept growing in the US? Clearly not electronics, as you point out. I like your tax-based proposal, though.