America has the potential to become an industrial behemoth. That it has not already with a quarter of the twenty-first century now in the rearview mirror is an absolute travesty.
At one point, not too long ago, the United States was the world’s uncontested industrial leader. But in recent decades, owing to a self-hating political establishment nestled in Washington, our once robust manufacturing base has been carved out of cities like Detroit and exported to Beijing and Tijuana.
This shift of industry from West to East began in the mid 1980s as cheaper markets, starting with Japan, then China and India, and more recently, Mexico, Africa, and South America, overtook the United States in many facets of industry, offering sweatshops replete with laborers that charged pennies on the dollar.
Though the products they made were noticeably of lesser quality, it has been a longstanding tenet of neoliberalism that a reduction in quality, however significant, is a small price to pay for the overseas expansion of capital markets.
I am OK with import tariffs on stuff that is also made here in the states! I am also OK with tariffs on brands that were moved out of the country to exploit cheaper labour!
If they impose tariffs based on geography instead of the item – the American consumer will be impacted through the purchase of items NOT made in the US but imported from a tariff-rich country.
Our government needs to be careful when they implement this and they need to make sure that the American made goods don’t increase in price for the greed of the manufacturer!