> It includes a broad range of components used in electronics manufacturing, specifically naming touchscreens, batteries, and electric motors. General components like transistors are also named on the list as well as more specific components used in televisions, cameras, and radio receivers. [..] Notably, the list does not include cellphones or completed televisions.
So, this will, er, serve to discourage companies from making consumer goods in the US, with buying consumer goods from China becoming relatively more attractive? Doesn't seem very well thought out.
Well, more likely the companies making them will just move production elsewhere or go out of business. Components are big part of the cost of your average consumer device, and margins mostly aren't high.
It depends a lot on exactly what kind of production facilities we’re talking about moving. Simple plastic injection mold shops? Sure, maybe. Multi-billion dollar chip fab plants? Not so much.
Right. It is extraordinarily difficult to just pack up a high-tech factory and move it to another country. Actually moving the plant and machines is the easiest part, the hard part is the people. Training people to be experts at high tech jobs takes a lot of time, and even then you're losing the decades of experience and the high concentration of likewise experienced and well-trained suppliers nearby.
Of course we could just move the people here too, but our current immigration policy doesn't seem too fond of that approach either.
I'd say the other hard part is finding manufacturers you can trust. You have to think that you're basically exporting company secrets when you manufacture offshore.
Another reading is that the thought going in to the tariffs was not directed toward helping Americans, but rather creating headlines big enough to crowd out reporting on the various scandals of the administration.
Trump has been talking about the need for tariffs and industrial policy since the 1980s. This is not some scheme he's cooked up on the spur of the moment.
The Foxconn plant deal in Wisconsin is just so disgracefully bad - over $4B in incentives to get 3,000 jobs. That's over a million per employee.
It's very reminiscent of sports stadium deals. Except the companies that run sports teams typically haven't had to put suicide nets around their buildings.
I think that's been in the works for a while, long before any of this tariff talk has been happening. Might have been before trump came into office, but I can't remember for sure
No, Foxconn came along after the election. Trump has been carrying it around as one of his bigger economic successes.
I just have to wonder if Foxconn is now turning the screws to Trump. Give us some protection against the other Chinese display manufacturers or we'll scale down the project.
So, this will, er, serve to discourage companies from making consumer goods in the US, with buying consumer goods from China becoming relatively more attractive? Doesn't seem very well thought out.