The left calls tariffs a sales tax on Americans. It’s not. What happens when you put a tariff on China? China eats the tariff because there are several low labor cost competitor countries. If you put an across the board tariff on other countries, they will eat the cost to remain competitive. That is generally how it works for low barrier to entry goods. Most of what China sells.
For high barrier to entry goods like cars, you set the tariff at a point where they choose to build the product in the US. Thus avoiding the tariff. Why does that happen? Because the US is the biggest and most profitable market for most international goods.
What about strategic things like steel? That will cost a little more (but decrease with energy prices). However, material costs are a very small fraction of the cost of consumer goods. Labor and overhead are much bigger factors. And typically, other countries will not move a strategic good to the US.
What about exports if the other countries do something similar. Well they already are. Tariff targeting will get them to lower their tariffs and make it better for our goods. And a lot of things we export are things that they don’t make or make to our level.
That is the short version.
I agree that they are thinking it could solve some of their employment problems. It could also be as you stated to move things further away from possible unrest in the more populated areas of the eastern coastal zone. From that standpoint the area could be better defended against public uprising. However, long term China watchers are saying there is more going on here. Xi is getting desperate. Is there some military strategic move being made here as well? They know that Taiwan has that entire coastal area in their crosshairs.
Like I already mentioned, reading those tea leaves of what the CCP is up to is difficult. Xi does not look well and he is being pressured to name a successor. Has he lost some control over the military or is that a head fake to expose more traitors in the ranks?
The West is taking things more serious and quickly addressing gaps along the first and second island chain. What do they know? The US has already foiled a couple of possible invasion attempts by China. Around the time of Pelosi's visit to Taiwan a couple of years ago there was one such attempt. There was an amphibious group that was turned back by US forces that suddenly dropped into the area. We were watching them for months build up that force by satellite imagery. China was forced to retreat and offload their forces - also noted by satellite. That whole incident got no coverage in Western media.
Something has drastically shifted in the region in last few years. Indonesia has decided to push China back by running off Chinese Coast Guard vessels out of their waters. Their naval capacities are much stronger than the Philippines so China backed down. Japan is also taking the threat very seriously. Hopefully all the changes can be just enough of a deterrent to make Xi think twice if he should try to start some kind of move to shift focus off the economic crisis hanging over China - something authoritative despots have done in the past. North Korea is also positioning itself to take northeast areas of China on their border should China become too weak to fight back and are distracted. All the happenings on their southern border with the south are distraction. They feel they are owed that area anyway. None of the players in that axis trust each other and though they publicly try to put on the face of friendship and unity, behind the scenes they are all jockeying for advantage and hedging their bets. Interesting times we are living in for sure.
Thanks for your feedback.
Thanks for the intel. Last I knew we had 3 or 4 carriers there; the English had a carrier there; the French had a carrier there; and the Japanese had two jump carriers there. But the Japanese call them something else. The US was actually flying F-35s off the Japanese ships. The Japanese pilots are probably up to speed by now.