I hope you’re right, and that these tariffs (taxes on us) are just a negotiating tool.
I have no problem with the tariff tax. Tariff tax is not progressive, and I am not a big fan of progressive tax. There is no plan closer to the fairtax.org plan than Trump’s 10% tariff. It is a universal sales tax.
Trump has said many times he is attempting to eradicate middle-class income taxes. A “fair tax” or even a non-progressive tariff tax might accomplish some of this.
Also, if we can open markets through our tariff negotiations, then that’s another win. I do not care about China’s widgets in the interim. China is already caving on items dearest to the US consumer.
Wrong! The formation of the middle class in this country was the result of good paying union jobs.
Union membership in this country was at its peak in the 1950s. The manufacturers were making money to grow, and union employees were able to buy a house, 2 cars and raise a family on one salary. That’s certainly not the norm today.
The major shift in the offshoring of jobs started in the 1980s and accelerated from there.
If you buy a couch from your local furniture store, you are helping not only the owner of that store, but all its employees. And unless you have money to burn, you’re going to buy a good quality product that is less expensive as opposed to one of the same quality that’s more expensive.
Is it possible that the unions outgrew their intended purpose? That in a very short period of time, unions expanded their power exponentially and demanded increasingly costly employee benefits?
In my opinion, this was all predictable. Because these demands were the only way to justify their existence and purpose for collecting dues.
For me, the teachers union turning against children during COVID was my final straw. They can all rot with all the other overpowered bureaucracies. They own the education dept, good riddance to both.
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Most is direct ship from China. But even if I did walk into a brick and mortar building, not buying American is never going to have the full effect. I watched it happen in real time. And yes, we did it to ourselves because of greed and ignorance. Trump has illuminated that mistake, but the haters refuse to see it.
Stop with the pretzel thinking to be anti-Trump. We need this to change, and we all know it.
It happened so quickly. In just 10 years, between 1999 and 2009, North Carolina’s furniture manufacturing industry lost more than half of its jobs. The chief culprit was increased competition from lower-cost furniture imported from Asia — mostly China. The U.S.-China Bilateral WTO Agreement, signed in November 1999, had opened the door to Chinese imports by lowering U.S. tariff barriers and easing the way for China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).
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Yes, and some would claim that’s the case, especially those in upper management positions.
But last time I checked, union contracts are negotiated between the union and the company. And although unions negotiate for their members, it would be self-defeating to negotiate a contract that would put the company out of business.
Looking at this chart it’s not hard to see who’s really screwing over companies.
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I agree, it’s all about greed.
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I am a big fan of stake holders holding stock holders accountable. I do not think unions are the answer, if they were, then the CEO pay would be more reasonable.
In a multi billion dollar company, CEO pay is not the problem. Unions are not the answer. Neither is government minimum wage for that will not measurably raise anyone’s standard of living.
We need stake holder ownership with a vote. It is a simple employee, stake holder equity type system.
Oh well, none of that will happen. But bringing manufacturing home will happen. And CEO salaries are not the big problem.
They say we could not afford American products or we won’t work in the factories. Maybe if the CEO earned less, the worker earned more and was incentivized for ingenuity and efficiency, prices would normalize, eh?
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The US was the only western country that was still not a pile of rubble in the 1950’s – we were the only real game in town. The basic problem is that welders working at GM were demanding (through their unions) $30 per hour in the 1960’s, whereas Japanese welders would work all day for $30. Unions killed those jobs faster as the US was increasingly no where near competitive on labor. Now robots do a much better job welding and work 24/7 with no benefits for the cost of electricity. Unions will still have a role making sure the handful of robot technicians get paid a living wage, that is until we have maintenance robots that can repair the line robots.
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A worker is paid in wages, a CEO is paid primarily in wealth. His job is to make sure the company remains profitable to satisfy the shareholders. If workers are paid more, prices would rise to maintain profit margins.
How would profit margins be maintained if costs go up?
So, since none of us will solve this problem, I have a question:
What is wrong with the USA charging the same tariff to a country that it is charging the USA?
I know that is not the case now, but once all of this tit for tat is settled out and China comes begging to the table since their economy is in shambles and they see other countries like India taking their business, does it not make more sense to just charge a country the same tariff that they are charging the USA!
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The two (CEO pay and worker pay) have nothing to do with each other. A CEO’s fiduciary duty is not to the customer. And it is not to America. And it is not to the employees. And it is not even to himself. A CEO has a LEGAL fiduciary duty to ONLY the stockholders. If he does anything else, the stockholders can sue him for breach of his duty.
This is something most Americans don’t realize.
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I’m just going to chime in here since I worked for 21 years for a US manufacturer in NJ.
When I started in the company in March of 2000, about 75% of everything was made in-house and up through the mid-90s, everything was made in house.
By the time I left in early 21, we were not manufacturing anything, simply decorating products made overseas.
When I say decorating, I mean laser engraving, hot foil stamping, Color inkjet, etc.
The major acceleration shift started about 2003. This is also when I started traveling all over the world getting those factories up to speed.
The epitaph? The 80 year old company was sold and cored out at the end of 2024. It is now a shell, in name only company in North Carolina.
The moral of the story as far as I’m concerned is that if you want cheap Chinese garbage, let them flood us and make us serfs. Yes, they take our little paper money and impoverish us in the process.
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I was with you until the end.
How is trading us their hard goods made with limited commodities and human labor… in return for paper, impoverishing us? It’s a scam we’re running on them. We’ve been taking advantage of the world for years.
If only it was that simple.
Our economy has evolved from a manufacturing economy to a services economy. So, I’m not sure how tariffs would translate from durable goods to say, Google advertising, which is composed of zero’s and one’s.
Our economy has been by far the greatest economy on the planet, ever, yes, we do have a deficit and debt that needs to be delt with, but we didn’t get to be the best by accident. And IMO, along with 99% of the world’s economists, think that taking a chainsaw and a sledgehammer to it is not the right way fix the problems that we have.
I agree that China is a problem and has been for some time that should be delt with, but Canada?
We are the mightiest and strongest because of our friends and allies, why on God’s green earth anyone would want to come in and flip over that apple cart is a mystery to me.
I can understand your confusion. The whole world is confused. Trump is confused as well. We know that because of his sporadic, nonsensical tariff orders, and his inability to provide any clear messaging on what the justification and end game is. One day it’s to reduce fentanyl, one day it’s to eliminate income taxes, one day it’s to bring jobs to the country. Now some numbskull will say it’s to do all these things, as if Trump has stumbled upon some magic concoction nobody else has discovered yet. SMH.
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Some of us have realized this was our first big mistake.
The booming economy you described is not serving the low and middle class very well, is it? is taxing the rich going to change that? Nope.
Good paying manufacturing jobs was our bread and butter. Small towns like Hickory NC could thrive on a few furniture plants.
And unions are worthless in the service industry.
I just can’t wrap my head around how many people don’t want manufacturing back. Or equal access to markets who sell to us. Or want to increase taxes.
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