Technology

Blind, overall tariffs can’t work anywhere.

Pretty much every country, including US, has successfully applied targeted tariffs to specific things for specific reasons. Usually you’re protecting an existing industry, but you could even build a supply chain by balancing it with targeted incentives, and bringing them together with a long term strategy to grow that specific segment.

For example, we used to have a complex strategy for helping legacy car manufacturers transition to new technology. We had incentives to build a market, manufacturing incentives and other assistance, we had targeted loans and guided research to build the technology, obtain the resources, build the infrastructure, we had well targeted tariffs protecting them from specific “predatory” countries, and much more. In a decade or so, our legacy automakers would have transitioned to new technology, with at least similar manufacturing presence in the us and a strong global presence. It was slow, bumbling and inconsistent but it would have worked. Now we’re likely to end up with failing manufacturers unable to compete on the global market, and with their us market shrinking to nothing as they continue to focus on large, inefficient, outdated, polluting technology that can only be sold locally.