I’d also note that Trump’s doing all of this with an eye towards increasing manufacturing in the USA.
The monthly wage of labor, in China, seems to be around RMB 2000 per month (about $280). A US worker is probably making about $2800 per month.
To tariff products to the level that the US becomes competitive, you’ve got to raise taxes on them large enough to multiply the cost by 10x. Anything else and you’re just not covering the wage difference that underlies all of the mining, refining, and manufacturing that underlies the price you’re given.
A tax of 100% still only doubles the price of stuff, so you’re looking at creating import taxes of 900% plus. And that’s assuming that the US can simply take over all of the manufacturing that we’re relying on the rest of the world for, that there’s just people sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for manufacturing jobs to come back before they’ll enter the labor market. More likely, you will need 5-20 years to build all the factories and you’ll need to try and draw people out of air conditioned data entry jobs, convincing them to come back to working on a loud, dangerous, hot factory floor. And after that, you have to contend with the issue that we simply don’t have the same population head count to match all the people who were available to work, abroad. Prices will need to be higher to lower demand enough, to allow the US head count to be able to make everything. 900%+ import taxes are just the start for getting the ball rolling.
To the extent that Trump’s tariffs haven’t been the leading cause of inflation in the US, it’s because they’re way far away from what they need to be to do a danged thing about offshoring.
From a Republican standpoint, there was value in trying to diversify our manufacturing partners, trying to staunch the flow of money into an authoritarian state that’s eyeing invasion into Taiwan and the South China Sea, etc. But that was all better handled with the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Trying to restore low-level manufacturing back to the US is like trying to convince everyone that we need to become subsistence farmers again. Like, yeah, we could become self-reliant - farm our own food, sow our own clothing, mill our own wheat, build our own homes with our bare hands, etc. I suppose that would be cool and manly, but how about you (Donald Trump) show me how to do that first and, if you actually make it and survive the winter in Minnesota, then maybe the rest of us can look at all the fun you’re having to we can hold a vote on whether the rest of us really want to follow suit.