Will high tariffs make America great again?

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We are now in the beginning months of the new Trump administration in this country. Although I am very supportive of some of the things this administration is doing, such as attempting to close down all of the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, I am very skeptical about one of main things they are proposing to do: use high tariffs to bring manufacturing jobs back to America [a main Make America Great Again (MAGA) objective]. The idea may sound great on the surface but I am highly skeptical about the practicality of making America self-sufficient in that way and the real effect that high tariffs would have. It seems to me high tariffs would just raise the cost of many goods here in America, raise the cost of living, increase inflation. And because modern manufacturing utilizes so many robots and so much automation, I am doubtful about the amount of benefit that would be realized by the American worker if it were done. I doubt that the gain would be worth the high cost. It is an idea that may sound really great to the masses, it may bring a lot of votes at election time, but I am doubtful about its practicality. I just read an article that I thought was quite insightful on this topic:

Why China Laughs at the Idea of Americans Taking Their Manufacturing Jobs

I call attention to the following excerpt from the article:

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The biggest reasons why China and not the U.S. has come to be the world’s “sole manufacturing superpower,” or “the world’s factory,” are its greater labor supply and thus lower wages, more efficient domestic business and supply chain ecosystem, and relatively lax regulatory environment. Tariffs alone won’t change these underlying factors for the U.S.

“If you think about producing a laptop in China versus the U.S.,” says Yuan Mei, assistant professor in the School of Economics at Singapore Management University, “in China a lot of parts and components of the laptop are produced within China, so shipping those components within the country is pretty cheap.” Many other components, like chips, are produced in other Asian nations, like Japan and South Korea, which also means relatively cheaper shipping to China than to the U.S.

But the mismatch between America’s workforce and China’s is perhaps the biggest obstacle to shifting a significant amount of manufacturing from China to the U.S. In the U.S., as of March 2025, just under 13 million workers are employed in the manufacturing sector, while just over 7 million Americans are unemployed. China’s manufacturing sector, meanwhile, employs more than 100 million people, while high unemployment and low regulations suppress wages and labor conditions.

While many Americans—80% of respondents to a CATO Institute survey—agree in principle with the idea that the U.S. would be better off if more Americans worked in manufacturing, far fewer would actually want to take such a job themself: only 25% of the CATO survey’s respondents said they believed they would be better off in a manufacturing job.

Moreover, economists have noted that much of the manufacturing work that could be transplanted to the U.S. may actually be more efficiently automated, or done by machines instead of humans, while many of the jobs that would be needed may require skills that the U.S. is short on.

The manufacturing sector relies heavily on engineers, Mei says, and engineering is among China’s most popular college majors. In the U.S., on the other hand, a large proportion of engineering and tech talent is international students—and with the Trump Administration’s crackdowns on immigrants and international students, there might eventually be, Mei says, a “gap in the supply” of engineers that the U.S. needs to boost its domestic manufacturing.

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In this regard, I think of all of the American men between the ages of 25 and 54 who are living with their parents, living off government disability payments, or living off wives or girlfriends, in preference to working. They prefer laying around playing video games and watching pornography to working. Are they going to be the new factory workers in the new America?

Another question: How many years do you think it would take to transform America in this way? Are the American people going to be willing to put up with sharply higher prices for years (for the time that it will take)? Or will they vote for a different political party in the next election?

The Trump idea of sending all of the illegal immigrants back to their home countries is another thing that troubles me. With all of the Americans who are uninclined to hard work, I think doing it would have severe repercussions.

I am quite amazed that there are so few among the Republican congressmen who challenge these ideas. Why are there so few independent thinkers among these congressmen? Are they all just afraid to oppose Trump? Can’t any foresee bad outcomes? If bad ideas bring bad consequences, conservatives will pay for it in future elections. It is certainly not my wish to see the Liberals come back, but I sense danger in impractical ideas.

There seems to be a lot of conservatives who see Trump as some kind of God. I am afraid I don’t. I never have. I do have a mind of my own.

15 Apr 2025