Nailed it. Again. "My view is that American strength was the product of a producer society, and American weakness is the product of a consumer society." That so many fret about the prices of stuff, is because they are consumers.
What people don't want to hear is that we have to make the American worker MORE productive (even though we are #1) through innovation, efficiencies, etc. Sorry, folks, that's just the way it is.
Only way to do that is to lead the field in the "law of increasing returns".
Nonetheless, it's how we became the wealthiest nation with highest standard of living in history.
The only way tariffs could help in that transformation is if it was a temporary part of a larger strategem to give a boost to onshoring and retooling in order to jump start and accelerate innovation.
And I believe that's exactly what Trump is trying to do. I don't think tariffs are his strategy, rather a tactic in a broader dynamic strategy.
I do think the administration could communicate that better though.
I agree that is what he's attempting to do but whether it will work or not is another story. It's somewhat uncharted territory, although they are comparing it to what Nixon did in 1971. I don't think a disruption of the status quo is necessarily a bad thing because the status quo was only benefitting the same people who are howling about the stock markets. I think Trump is right to not care too much about them, as the top 10% own 93% of public traded equities. The top 10% is not his base and also they are the ones who made out like bandits during the Covid craziness. Kind of hard to feel sorry for them. Also, I saw a meme of him tweeting "No crying in the casino." I wonder if that's real because it's kind of awesome actually.
I'm not even sure they're worrying about having to have more productivity. I think many are worried about having to be productive, period. Working in a large international production facility you see just how lazy most Americans are and how they throw fits if it means they have to get off their butts more than 2x an hour. Plus, management sure isn't going to make them work.
I hope you’re right, but waiting for the political class and financiers to improve the lives the working man doesn’t have any historic precedent. Hearing the proponents of this scheme tell workers to learn to “fix robots” is as heartless as Hillary telling coal miners to “learn to code.”
@Ryan Gardner Does every generation need to learn from scratch not to believe politicians’ promises? Easy work for more pay sounds like something from the Jetson’s era.
“Onshoring” is a nice thought but mostly doomed to failure. If we get some of it for semiconductors, that’ll be good for national security purposes. Otherwise it’s a false idol.
High tariffs as gambit to get other countries to lower theirs could be worthwhile. Hopefully that’s what happens. Otherwise, tariffs are just lose-lose for all. period.
Americans should be both producers AND consumers. In fact the same applies everywhere. The artificial economist driven split between consumers and workers is a mistake.
(I just reviewed this and I’m sorry about the length!)
I would like to hear a little more as well, Chris. Do economists really split “economic man” between producers and consumers? I don’t want to go back to village life where farmers produce food and exchange that for black smith produced farming tools (and I’m not saying that to be a smart ass it’s just as soon as I try to suss it out I get hung up on what a producer is). If we restrict our analysis to the modern, developed world, 99% of what our household consumes is produced by capital. My wife and I enjoy it when we can buy something made by the same person that produced it: art, produce from farm stands, let’s say a nice meal created by a chef who owns the restaurant. After that it gets complicated.
If we’re calling factory workers producers that’s a different narrative. It shifts definitions around a little bit, but it’s not unreasonable. As I sit here retired from the managerial class I don’t think I can speak for factory workers, but I think there is probably pride in helping to create something that contributes to economic well-being of our country and provides a good wage and the promise of a comfortable retirement. Perhaps even believing that the factory will provide a good life for your children as well (of course, we as humans experience our world within the confines of our experiences — factory work that paid well and employed you until retirement really only began in the early part of the 20th Century and it probably lasted for two generations before we realized that even the most successful companies had a finite lifespan).
We live outside of Rochester now so we can help my mother-in-law (who has a spectacular pension btw) and we are constantly reminded of the manufacturing companies that once made this region prosperous. That shadow of Eastman Kodak is cast across the main freeway that leads to our little airport. The remnants of Kodak struggle on, but the main buildings are mostly empty. The economy now is kept alive by the universities and the associated health service. A local news headline this morning was “Rochester Business Owner Struggles to Full Positions”. I clicked on it to discover it was about a donut shop. I get the problem. Those jobs don’t promise much and they don’t create a lot of pride in what you produce.
If I were to guess about the producer-consumer hypothesis I would have to look at our first canceled industrial titan, Henry Ford, now unwelcome in polite society, whose measure of success was his goal of producing a car that was priced so that his factory workers could realistically own one. Pride in what you do, and pride in being able to buy the fruit of your labor. Ford had his faults but his measure of success was enjoyed by at least a couple of generations.
I’m just distinguishing between “artisanal” and “manufactured.” Artisans are producers, they use their own capital, including significantly their labor to deliver product. Virtually everything our household buys is manufactured by corporations where investment is through public or private equity, the capital required to buy (or lease) land, machinery, and labor which create the product. A worker sells their labor (what we call wages and benefits) to the corporation and the corporation pays for that labor with capital (equity or revenue allocated to working capital).
This is how I understand how our economy produces product for the overwhelming amount of goods being purchased. Other’s might have a different understanding or way of expressing it.
OK so this is a concept that's still gelling and may not be totally correct.
Economists tend to split things by function because it makes the math possible. Hence even though every worker is also a consumer they split the two up into separate things.
No one doubts that, as a consumer, you want the best value thing. That's not always the cheapest (maybe you want your thing to taste better, run for days not hours on a battery charge, last for years not months ) but generally speaking you want cheaper rather than not because you can buy more of cheaper with the same amount of money.
However one of the inputs to the price paid as a consumer is the wages of the people making it, shipping it, selling it to you etc. Hence as a consumer in theory you want those wages to be reduced. However that's not necessarily the case all the time. If those wages are higher then those people, because they are also consumers, have more money to spend on stuff and therefore may not be as hard pressed and forced to buy the absolute cheapest chinesium crap. Instead they may buy the stuff you make that costs more but is "better". And because you have more money from making sales to these people you have more money to buy stuff from them that you want.
Now obviously (and this is where autarky and protectionism goes wrong) simply ensuring that people can only buy from local suppliers means the local suppliers won't face competition and will generally produce a more expensive inferior product. But - and this is where I think Trump's 10% tariff works - if there's some external competition potentially possible the local suppliers are still incented to be efficient and produce quality because if they are more than 10% worse / more expensive then the foreign suppliers can provide the better product cheaper.
you describe: a first actor “you” who is a consumer who wants the best value…but then there is a “you” who has more money because of making “better” stuff that people prefer…and it seems to me that the “best value” has to depend on what the consumer can actually afford. I have no idea what “autarky” is but from personal experience I do know that as my income rose so did my sense of what I could afford. Once I drove a used Honda Civic and today I pay a lot more for gas to drive a used Lexus SUV.
Autarky is the word for a country (usually) trying to become self-sufficient as much as possible with minimum to no imports. This kind of doctrinaire self-sufficiency is currently best illustrated by North Korea, but in the past lots of parts of Latin America (e.g. Brazil) tried it and failed miserably.
I am hearing a lot of “personifications” in the current debate about who is helped and who is harmed by this, that and the other change or threat of change in the economy—the nurses aid who every cost will be greater because of tariffs and the dope-smoking Call of Duty player who wants someone to pay for his F-150 was one such example of many I’ve heard or read in the last few days.
Consuming should be the natural result of producing, in a healthy society. There is great healthy pride in making things, only unhealthy pride in merely consuming. Things earned, especially by sweat, are valued.
Let me sum up what they're really concerned about:
Slavery is profitable for the slaver. That is globalism. It's not a belief system or dogma...it's simply a financial weapon....a business plan of grifterism.
What the MSM or the so-called financial experts won't tell you is that productivity is the biggest driver of prices in a truly free market. We just happen to be the most productive country on earth based on the output of the individual worker. Tariffs that are time sensitive and applied properly could eventually drive prices down because it will disincentivize state-sponsored competition of our rivals.
That's what the plutocrats want:
Pitting American businesses against state-backed foreign rivals, subsidized by us (the tax payer)...talk about a perverse incentive.
Onshoring businesses will allow the invisible hand to lower prices after the market has adjusted because the more we manufacture the lower the price of each unit becomes to produce. All economist know this, but are unwilling to admit what everyone learned in economics 101:
Prices are subject to the law of increasing returns because capital costs are fixed, therefore the more we make; the more the cost is distributed across the system.
And that's what they fear:
Their money is made by INCREASING the cost across our domestic system
Consumers, yes, as long as it’s not the cheap junk that has assaulted our senses in the last 35 years. Seeaters and T-shirts so thin you can see through them, cheap plastic crap chat breaks in s week, shoes that can’t be repaired so must be thrown away. Cheap goods have cheapened our values.
Americans used to be both producers and consumers, but in the proper order. They would produce more than their immediate needs and save the rest. When they consumed, it was for long-sought but attainable goals (new house, car, education) obtained through preparation and effort. This is no longer the way our society works. Now we consume more than our immediate needs and borrow for the rest.
Three societal changes drove this:
1) People now measure their success using a comparative instead of absolute baseline (keeping up with the Jone's). Too many are now determining if they have reached their own life goals, if they even set any, by whether their stuff is as good/plentiful as other peoples stuff. Thus a rush to acquire stuff without even knowing why they want it. The rise of media (TV, then the Internet) as a means of showing idyllic but unrealistic lifestyles exacerbated this tremendously. The marriage of sales to psychology which produced modern marketing contributed also.
2) the rise of "easy" credit for almost anyone (buy now, pay later). If you have a pulse and some form of income whether earned or unearned you can leverage yourself into an unsustainable position. Bigger houses, nicer cars, buy anything you can think you can make the payments on (until you can't). I got an offer from Amazon to finance my purchase of some puzzles using credit over 6 months!
3) The gradual disintegration of family as the primary source of hope and satisfaction. Prior generations planned and lived to have children, provide for their well-being and improve the opportunities that they had through education and a better world. The size and importance of families has decreased. Young people now generally believe that having more than one or two children is nearly impossible. They see it this way because Change #1 makes them try to give every child everything, and Change #2 makes it likely they will be deeply enshrined in debt before more the third child comes along. I have a dear relative who wanted five children as a teen. Now 37, he doesn't believe anyone can "afford" this. Probably because his current debt is about six times his annual income, which more that twice the median income level in the U.S.
Our biggest weakness as a nation is our inability to produce mission critical components.
Whether it be essential pharmaceuticals, microchips, or even the basic steel, copper, and lead which we need in order to manufacture other things, we would be neutered should a war with those who produce those things for us breaks out. It is essential for our nation to refocus our domestic manufacturing in order to rectify these shortcomings. If we don't, we could soon find ourselves, as a nation, in dire straits.
The biggest hurdle in reviving these industries in America are absurdly over reaching governmental regulations. We need to slash these barriers and keep on only those which directly secure the physical welfare of the workers and the environmental cleanliness of the operation. I'm not talking about keeping carbon neutral B.S.. Rather, insuring that American workers are safe on the job, and that we do not pollute the environment with toxic waste.
Tariffs alone won't overcome these monumental blocades. Methodical, surgical, deregulation along with either modest tariffs or a value added tax on items are what is needed.
I genuinely think that President Trump is attempting to achieve this, while destabilizing the economy of our most capable foreign adversary; China.
I know what you mean by 'inability' That is, we lack the infrastructure to produce those essential items. As a society, we have the knowledge to do almost anything. But we have been disabled by regulation, unfair tariffs, regulation, taxes, regulation, currency manipulation, and regulation. Long list, I'll admit, but if we can remove these obstacles, some of these essentials will drift back across our border.
And ironically, we lack the only type of regulations that would help actual consumers: for example, "major appliances shall be designed to last a minimum of 10 years", "Product packaging shall be minimized as to waste generated..."
I am from Rochester. Most of my family worked at Kodak, and a National Merit Scholarship from them paid most of my private college tuition. Back then, they had over 50,000 employees in Monroe County. The surrounding counties never recovered from the loss of all those wages and under the malign influence of Governor Hochul, the City of Rochester is not just a slum but is exporting its family breakdown, drugs and crime to the rest of Monroe County, which is also becoming slums. I will no longer live in blue state Hell. I was both assaulted and molested by a sexual deviant that moved into a project built in our suburb against our will. This person’s presence, his actions, and the total refusal of the staff involved to either believe me or discipline him (despite the obvious wound he inflicted and the lack of any wounds on him) were all the products of criminally negligent Democratic politicians. I should have sued the school and the deviant for sexual assault (he compulsively exposed himself) I am from Rochester. Most of my family worked at Kodak, and a National Merit Scholarship from them paid most of my private college tuition. Back then, they had over 50,000 employees in Monroe County. The surrounding counties never recovered from the loss of all those wages and under the malign influence of Governor Hochul, the City of Rochester is not just a slum but is exporting its family breakdown, drugs and crime to the rest of Monroe County, which is also becoming slums. I will no longer live in blue state Hell. I was both assaulted and molested by a sexual deviant that moved into a project built in our suburb against our will. This person’s presence, his actions, and the total refusal of the staff involved to either believe me or discipline him were all the products of criminally negligent Democratic politicians. What really angers me is why he wasn’t suspended or expelled. He didn’t even get detention because he was poor and African-American, which meant he had no accountability or responsibility for his behavior. He belonged in a locked ward, not a suburban high school… and the Democrats that arranged for him to be there belonged in the penitentiary.
I was the CFO for an opioid treatment company with clinics across the country, and I can tell you, as I visited a great number of them, that when you have 7,000,000 working aged men out of the workforce, they fall into abject misery. There's no hope and a lot of them drown their sorrows. So, Alex Berenson needs to do a walking tour.
On that note, the US has consolidated into primarily three industries, finance, tech and sick people. Food too, BUT that's pretty much it. Everything else has been in a stranglehold of our US Government sell-out to other countries and, particularly, to China corruption.
Domestic policy hasn't been a focus in DECADES. Clinton sold us out to get Democrats a pot of gold to stay in power - yeah - that's FUCKING NAFTA...Instead of revisiting all the stupid regulations the government was putting in everyone's way to earning a living, Clinton flipped the party for the Republican class of corporate donors.
From personal experience as a working aged male who was in contracted tech before the pandemic: This is true. Biden's brain-dead sellout cadaver completely gutted my industry. There hasn't been a single private sector job open in my tech niche since about 2023. Only government. It started with lockdowns and layoffs. Then came the OSHA mandates in '21, you couldn't find anything because of vaccine requirements. It ended with just about everything deteriorating to a point where there is nothing left. When Trump was in office in '19 I was typically getting 3 interviews a week between contracts, and they were highly competitive to get me working for them. If I didn't like a place or manager, I could move laterally easily. Now? What's an interview? I don't even remember - and I am not doing that work any more. To say I have spite for these people is an understatement.
Basically Trump has announced to the world "fuck this game". "I'm starting a new one....or you can sit on the sidelines."
The situation is drastic which calls for "drastic" measures. Its less about tariffs, but more importantly about putting everyone on notice to force them to the table.
That's absolutely right, and I am on board for it. Screw the Globalist sellouts and the grifters. The plan was working great in 2019. Make America That Again.
Oh, you mean the people that go into "work," "work" for MAYBE an hour a day, get paid really good money, go home and complain about working for an hour? Yeah, that needs downsized.
And a drugged and drunk populace is incapable of forming a resistance. That’s why the Sackler family isn’t in prison. We have a huge internal and ignored drug trade by profiteering corporations. One top FDA man publicly quit in disgust after pointing out exactly where the ingredients came from and being ignored.
I’m with you, Chris. I didn’t get Berenson‘s take at all. Maybe I’m naive but I don’t think drugs are as big of a problem. What I see with my sons (23 & 26) is a despair over lack of jobs. Younger one has his bachelor’s in computer science and wants to do software development but so do millions of other people, apparently. Older one has been working for several years, first in an Amazon warehouse and now as a collections agent, getting his bachelor’s in finance online - yet he sees California paying $20 an hour for fast food and he barely makes $21. We need to bring back good, high paying American jobs. All the ones that got outsourced to India, or China, or Poland, or wherever! My 401k is down but I think it’s a temporary pain. This isn’t going to get better overnight but I think Trump is on the right track and the corrections are long overdue.
Berenson just can't quite kill that little leftist homunculus.
This is what all his friends are saying. He just can't let go of some of his previous positions that were aligned with the establishment....like this and Ukraine.
He's come a long way though. It's like an infected vestigial organ that you have to remove.
We've had him under a 5 year intense and invasive "operation" to excise it.
Berenson went right when all his peers went left on the covid narrative. Other than that sliver of independent thinking, he remains a liberal journalist/writer that doesn’t have a clue about the working man.
I think he's "softening" up a bit on other issues. Example Ukraine and the iNsUrReCtIoN.
But what he likes to do is float trial balloons (or limited hangouts) as he's working through his cognitive dissonance. This process usually happens after a period of "silence" on issues that he may pivot on.
Its fine by me. He's a good man and I think he takes the time to at least think through his positions...unlike the cacophony of barking on social media...but his default position is always starts left of center
That’s very nice of you to say about him. My take was he was good initially on covid but really was quite dug in when others spoke out/revealed things that he had no idea about. He was not open minded but rather obstinate & jerky.
Maher is so overrated. He speaks with authority & is dumbfounded when someone tells him otherwise. Not that hard to do a little research before opening your mouth Bill.
It seems Alex has been slipping backwards, the last few pieces don't seem to align with the pieces just before the election where he finally said he would support/vote for Trump. The comments tell all and in this most recent piece his opening struck me as odd like "Many of if you support Donald Trump." And don't kill the messenger. My first thought is he's still coming from the hard left hence the opening warning and absolutely has to write this piece. That's how I interpreted it.
That’s what I sensed years ago. He’s pretty unsure & thin skinned. Being in an echo chamber for so long keeps you from critical thinking & zero bravery to step out of line.
Yep. His lefty roots continue to put out shoots. But his work and his instincts on covid were exactly right. Do you think he’ll eventually come around? I’ve often wondered if his views on drugs are somehow linked to his fondness for gambling.
I’m taking a break from covid - read /followed everything. Check out the Brownstone Institute substack. They did a 10 part series on covid 5 yr anniversary (& you can listen!). Debbie Lerman is also thorough excellent researcher. You’d like her substack.
Coffee & Covid is much, much more than Covid, trust me. He’s been covering the Trump tariffs in great detail … and it’s free! I will check out Brownstone. Thanks!
They do add up. My boyfriend subscribes to Taibbi so he forwards good ones to me. My can’t miss Substack (other than Chris Bray and Simulation Commander) is Jeff Childers’ Coffee & Covid. Free everyday except for Sundays and every day is amazing.
The thing that should raise suspicion is that the loudest outcry against the tariffs are coming from those who created this terrible imbalance in the first place. If Almighty God were to strike Davos like Sodom & Gomorrah, the resistance to these principles would be far weaker.
I've spent my 40+ year career in the Industrial auction business, closing manufacturing facilities around the U. S.
I can say with certainty that most of these jobs were "off-shored" to reduce wages and avoid manufacturing union power. There are some many critical products no longer manufactured anywhere in the U.S. that I am truly frightened over our ability to support our economy.
Please, please, please write a book about a "40+ year career in the Industrial auction business, closing manufacturing facilities around the U. S." You have stories to tell.
There are many reasons for closures, outcomes at a sale, and also reasons for hope in the process. Chris, I will reach out when there is a juicy story attached. Perhaps I should just start posting this shit to my own Substack...
The whole thing is a juicy story, Bud! Let Chris come find you, work things out so you can tell every story you've got to tell, somehow. This is a really great opportunity.
I hope you get a chance to help reopen many of these facilities, or open new ones in the near'ish future.
Way too much ink is being spilled. Not Chris of course, because he's simply pointing out different POVs, and that that's a positive thing.
From all the gnashing of teeth, you'd think tariffs are a crime against humanity.
Its funny how all the people who couldn't pay back their student loans are now tariff and equities experts!
That said, it's not as much about using tariffs as a way to reset trade, but more about resetting EVERYTHING.
In most cases, if one person in a "boat" starts shooting holes in the bottom, you shouldn't start shooting holes to fix it...unless you have an extra boat and the other party doesn't, and you have a life preservers to "save" anyone you "need" on the "new" boat.
Sometimes you kick over the checkerboard, because you can. And sometimes you win by "losing" the slowest. We will win that game. Already are.
It'll be a "gnat" 1-2 months from now imo. Everyone except China will capitulate...which will eventually force China to capitulate.
Why would I? You seem intelligent and I bet our foundational views are similar.
Im as libertarian as a libertarian gets....except I don't buy into dogma.
Sure it would be better to use the knobs and levers of pareto optimality. But that's neither the system we have now, nor is it feasible/realistic to transition to here in the intermediate term.
I align with Bastiat...but even Bastiat, if he were alive, would recognize a transition would be fought tooth and nail, and would take a generation.
He would recognize that sometimes you do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Read my other comments. Youll see that i don't believe in tariffs, but I think they're necessary as a temporary tool to force other parties to the table.
As Ive stated multiple times, this will be a mute subject a month from now.
I mostly agree with that. But if that's the case most other commenters on this article will be wrong. Tariffs can't both be a negotiating tactic and boost domestic manufacturing. It has to be one or the other.
I see it your way as well. We, the salt of the earth taxpayers, have allowed ourselves to be beaten down, robbed and left nearly for dead. What could we have done? Well, I think we did it. We elected a flawed and to some an intensely dislikable man, who happens to love his country and has been graced by God with the personality and experience to wage the war that has long been against us. He won't save us, but just maybe he will help us save ourselves.
If you’ve ever marveled at the American Catholic architecture of the late 1800’s early 1900’s, or at the beauty of the inside of a 1890’s pocket watch ( which the owner never saw), the hinge plates on a door made in 1887, you’ll understand where American greatness came from. They made things with the express belief that they were building for the glory of God, He who sees all. They weren’t building for themselves, they were building for God.
Take the Constitution, it only works if the people are God fearing Christians. Honesty and Virtue built the actual things that remain to this day.
As Guy Clark sang, “Stuff that works, stuff that holds up, the kind of things you reach for when you fall.”
1. I follow Alex’s Substack. He’s 99% correct on all things the Branch Covidians did during the scamdemic and the harm they caused. He’s also correct on what the Regime did/does to censure Americans. He is 99% wrong on anything related to Trump. He has Long TDS. This is mostly caused by his erroneous belief that after being proved correct on the lies of COVID and the DeathVaxx he will be rehired at The NY Times and invited again to all the cool kids’ Manhattan parties. 2. You are 100% correct about the value of producing things. Example: as a Naval Academy grad I have extensively studied the Pacific Ocean campaigns in WW2. An honest appraisal of its history leads to no other conclusion than We won because of our ability to outbuild Japan in ALL war materials- bullets, boats, airplanes, guns… etc and produce an seemingly endless stream of men to use them, and not because of superior leaders or tactics. We were a nation of producers then. 3. You are also 100% correct that the tariff battle is a 100-year decision. We either decide to rebuild our ability to produce things and stop the massive stripping of American resources and wealth, or there won’t be any decisions to make in another 100 years. Economic security is national security.
4. The elites and all their media allies are screaming about tariffs because their personal grift machines are coming to an end. With the end of the USAID gravy train and the coming end of being bought off (e.g., bribed) by the massive payola from China et al, their true motivations are coming to light. At this point, they’re actively rooting against their own country. A pox on all their houses.
America may be the richest country in the world, but every other country has been living high off the hog on our trade deficits for decades
To make things worse, we’ve protected them with our military, a very expensive service provided free of charge
This slowly started to infect us with financial sepsis and now our diagnostics are flashing red & beeping
When we import more than we export, factories close, middle class wealth drops, social problems like drug addiction and crime skyrocket, families break apart, and our national debt grows out of control
Sound familiar?
If we stayed on this path, our country would implode
Trump is fixing America before it’s too late
A little short term pain in exchange for the long term Golden Era
You will be proven wrong just like you were in Covid when you called for lockdowns that killed small businesses.”
Trump was elected to fix our border, deport the illegals & fix our economy. And that’s what he’s doing, on several fronts - Disrupting a system that is/was destroying our country. I’m with him 100%. These bankers & hedge fund elites have their heads up their as*es. They only care about how much green is flashing on their computers. Since 2008 they’ve been given the gift of easy money, he’s taken away the punch bowl & they don’t like it. How dare he! Most regular people understand the status quo has ruined a good chunk of America & are willing to live through some uncertainty & maybe higher prices for a chance at a better future for our kids & grandkids. We all got a glimpse of just how bad that future looked with all that happened the last 5 years. Trump also brought us DOGE.
I buy several tons of copper hydroxide each year. I have two sources, Mexico and Germany. Talking to the salesman from the German company last week and he said, "We are going to have to start reacting the copper at our Houston plant instead of at Hamburg."
Tariffs.
Look, we have huge copper reserves in the US, some of the richest ore in the world. The Chinese, not so much. But the Chinese have fifty-five primary copper smelters. The US has three, one of which is not operational. We send virtually all of our concentrated ore offshore for smelting. We closed the last lead smelter ten years ago. We use a lot of lead for bullets, or we did. The military is all in on lead-free ammo. I wonder why?
The US can't even produce basic metals because of the endless environmental litigation and infinite investment uncertainties that attend basic resource production in the US. The Excel pipeline that was a done deal until it wasn't. The Pebble Mine, etc.
You can't understand Trump's tariff logic if you divide it from his promise of a, "Golden Age of Energy Dominance." No more delusional, "war on coal". Australia and Canada have Natural Resources economies. The US has been wasting trillions of dollars destroying ours. Tariffs are taxes. Like a VAT only better, they are dynamic and constantly have the legitimate possiblity of being reduced or eliminated by reformed business practice. Like my copper supplier.
Compare this to useless mandates to reduce hydrocarbon fuel consumption. It's all wasted expense. Tariffs are revenue for the Government. A tax that no one sees. And one you might not have to pay if it's sourced in the USA.
I'm a free trade guy. I buy lots of stuff from China. But I am trying to understand Trump's thinking. If we can render the environmental lawyer's bar impotent, and start exploiting our vast energy and mineral resources we are going to goose our economy big time. Who cares if you are paying more for your underwear, oil paints and canvases. Sure tariffs on anything is a drag on the economy. But it is also real revenue for the government. You want inflation, let the government spend borrowed money.
Cheap energy is going to boost the economy like crazy. Primary manufacturing will rapidly increase, because cheap energy and tariffs, combined with predictable investments, will turbocharge expansion and job creation. And a labor shortage from hell. Which will drive wages higher.
I see what Trump is thinking. I think it might work too.
Alex is a pain in the ass. I’m on the side of Chris, Schachtel and American sovereignty.
Victor Davis Hanson, Frank Gaffney, Batya Ungar, Blaine Holt and Mike Benz .. and to a degree, Jesse Watters, hit the nail on the head- Trump is resetting the World Order. He’s doing what should have been done 50 years ago.Eradicating the cancer of globalism.
All of the tentacles. The tariffs are a major step In the right direction.
Making things makes us prosperous as a people, and prosperous people are forward thinkers, planning to make more things and prosper.
Billions, perhaps dozens of billions, have been spent to convince people that free trade is good for the country's economic health, and protection is the death knell of everything wholesome and happy, but history says otherwise. Our country became the world's industrial powerhouse under protective tariffs, and it has become a joke, a nation of pouffes, in their absence. Sending your economy into a global market without protection for your industry is like sending your daughter to school without clothes.
The opponents of the tariffs fail to make great arguments for the simple reason that the existing path was pushing most of the country steadily towards ruin and a permanent poverty, and that means it wasn’t working for anyone but the rent-seekers and the upper-middle-class servants of the investor class.
even if it "works" will all this tariff negotiation really increase trade much? my impression is that an awful lot of what impedes trade is non-tariff barriers like regulatory requirements, standards, etc.
they won't tariff your chicken, they'll say "no chicken with those hormones" and "no cars with that bumper height" and "no wheat with that pesticide" or "no furniture that used that sort of leather curing."
has anyone looked at this? is there any useful work on how much of trade is blocked by NTB rather than just tariffs?
might be a relevant discipline to explore just now.
they won't tariff your chicken, they'll say "no chicken with those hormones" and "no cars with that bumper height" and "no wheat with that pesticide" or "no furniture that used that sort of leather curing."
That and a long list applies to Europe
Even if they give zero tariffs the list of non-tariffs barriers is huge.
Nailed it. Again. "My view is that American strength was the product of a producer society, and American weakness is the product of a consumer society." That so many fret about the prices of stuff, is because they are consumers.
What people don't want to hear is that we have to make the American worker MORE productive (even though we are #1) through innovation, efficiencies, etc. Sorry, folks, that's just the way it is.
Only way to do that is to lead the field in the "law of increasing returns".
Nonetheless, it's how we became the wealthiest nation with highest standard of living in history.
The only way tariffs could help in that transformation is if it was a temporary part of a larger strategem to give a boost to onshoring and retooling in order to jump start and accelerate innovation.
And I believe that's exactly what Trump is trying to do. I don't think tariffs are his strategy, rather a tactic in a broader dynamic strategy.
I do think the administration could communicate that better though.
Pretty much what Bessent was saying on Tucker.
I agree that is what he's attempting to do but whether it will work or not is another story. It's somewhat uncharted territory, although they are comparing it to what Nixon did in 1971. I don't think a disruption of the status quo is necessarily a bad thing because the status quo was only benefitting the same people who are howling about the stock markets. I think Trump is right to not care too much about them, as the top 10% own 93% of public traded equities. The top 10% is not his base and also they are the ones who made out like bandits during the Covid craziness. Kind of hard to feel sorry for them. Also, I saw a meme of him tweeting "No crying in the casino." I wonder if that's real because it's kind of awesome actually.
We agree. And I'm not one for doing something, just for "somethings" sake.
As you say it's an experiment. But I believe it can't be worse than the current paradigm.
Tariffs are intended to replace the income tax, "The External Revenue Service."
That's tariff-related, but a different topic.
Yeah, unless you pass a constitutional amendment to limit or eliminate the income tax, all you’ve done is added another tax…
There is work to be done for sure.
I'm not even sure they're worrying about having to have more productivity. I think many are worried about having to be productive, period. Working in a large international production facility you see just how lazy most Americans are and how they throw fits if it means they have to get off their butts more than 2x an hour. Plus, management sure isn't going to make them work.
“Communicating it better” means tipping off the countries from whom you’re aiming to gain concessions.
Can't argue with that.
But that doesn't mean they're mutually exclusive.
I hope you’re right, but waiting for the political class and financiers to improve the lives the working man doesn’t have any historic precedent. Hearing the proponents of this scheme tell workers to learn to “fix robots” is as heartless as Hillary telling coal miners to “learn to code.”
I hear what you're saying. I'm not even talking about robots, etc. And, yes, it would be cruel if that what actually happened.
But I don't think optimization and efficiencies will be "felt" by employees. In fact i think it'll feel like the work is "easier" for more pay.
@Ryan Gardner Does every generation need to learn from scratch not to believe politicians’ promises? Easy work for more pay sounds like something from the Jetson’s era.
“Onshoring” is a nice thought but mostly doomed to failure. If we get some of it for semiconductors, that’ll be good for national security purposes. Otherwise it’s a false idol.
High tariffs as gambit to get other countries to lower theirs could be worthwhile. Hopefully that’s what happens. Otherwise, tariffs are just lose-lose for all. period.
Americans should be both producers AND consumers. In fact the same applies everywhere. The artificial economist driven split between consumers and workers is a mistake.
Go on -- I'd hear more about this.
(I just reviewed this and I’m sorry about the length!)
I would like to hear a little more as well, Chris. Do economists really split “economic man” between producers and consumers? I don’t want to go back to village life where farmers produce food and exchange that for black smith produced farming tools (and I’m not saying that to be a smart ass it’s just as soon as I try to suss it out I get hung up on what a producer is). If we restrict our analysis to the modern, developed world, 99% of what our household consumes is produced by capital. My wife and I enjoy it when we can buy something made by the same person that produced it: art, produce from farm stands, let’s say a nice meal created by a chef who owns the restaurant. After that it gets complicated.
If we’re calling factory workers producers that’s a different narrative. It shifts definitions around a little bit, but it’s not unreasonable. As I sit here retired from the managerial class I don’t think I can speak for factory workers, but I think there is probably pride in helping to create something that contributes to economic well-being of our country and provides a good wage and the promise of a comfortable retirement. Perhaps even believing that the factory will provide a good life for your children as well (of course, we as humans experience our world within the confines of our experiences — factory work that paid well and employed you until retirement really only began in the early part of the 20th Century and it probably lasted for two generations before we realized that even the most successful companies had a finite lifespan).
We live outside of Rochester now so we can help my mother-in-law (who has a spectacular pension btw) and we are constantly reminded of the manufacturing companies that once made this region prosperous. That shadow of Eastman Kodak is cast across the main freeway that leads to our little airport. The remnants of Kodak struggle on, but the main buildings are mostly empty. The economy now is kept alive by the universities and the associated health service. A local news headline this morning was “Rochester Business Owner Struggles to Full Positions”. I clicked on it to discover it was about a donut shop. I get the problem. Those jobs don’t promise much and they don’t create a lot of pride in what you produce.
If I were to guess about the producer-consumer hypothesis I would have to look at our first canceled industrial titan, Henry Ford, now unwelcome in polite society, whose measure of success was his goal of producing a car that was priced so that his factory workers could realistically own one. Pride in what you do, and pride in being able to buy the fruit of your labor. Ford had his faults but his measure of success was enjoyed by at least a couple of generations.
What do you mean by "99% of what our household consumes is produced by capital"?
I’m just distinguishing between “artisanal” and “manufactured.” Artisans are producers, they use their own capital, including significantly their labor to deliver product. Virtually everything our household buys is manufactured by corporations where investment is through public or private equity, the capital required to buy (or lease) land, machinery, and labor which create the product. A worker sells their labor (what we call wages and benefits) to the corporation and the corporation pays for that labor with capital (equity or revenue allocated to working capital).
This is how I understand how our economy produces product for the overwhelming amount of goods being purchased. Other’s might have a different understanding or way of expressing it.
OK so this is a concept that's still gelling and may not be totally correct.
Economists tend to split things by function because it makes the math possible. Hence even though every worker is also a consumer they split the two up into separate things.
No one doubts that, as a consumer, you want the best value thing. That's not always the cheapest (maybe you want your thing to taste better, run for days not hours on a battery charge, last for years not months ) but generally speaking you want cheaper rather than not because you can buy more of cheaper with the same amount of money.
However one of the inputs to the price paid as a consumer is the wages of the people making it, shipping it, selling it to you etc. Hence as a consumer in theory you want those wages to be reduced. However that's not necessarily the case all the time. If those wages are higher then those people, because they are also consumers, have more money to spend on stuff and therefore may not be as hard pressed and forced to buy the absolute cheapest chinesium crap. Instead they may buy the stuff you make that costs more but is "better". And because you have more money from making sales to these people you have more money to buy stuff from them that you want.
Now obviously (and this is where autarky and protectionism goes wrong) simply ensuring that people can only buy from local suppliers means the local suppliers won't face competition and will generally produce a more expensive inferior product. But - and this is where I think Trump's 10% tariff works - if there's some external competition potentially possible the local suppliers are still incented to be efficient and produce quality because if they are more than 10% worse / more expensive then the foreign suppliers can provide the better product cheaper.
you describe: a first actor “you” who is a consumer who wants the best value…but then there is a “you” who has more money because of making “better” stuff that people prefer…and it seems to me that the “best value” has to depend on what the consumer can actually afford. I have no idea what “autarky” is but from personal experience I do know that as my income rose so did my sense of what I could afford. Once I drove a used Honda Civic and today I pay a lot more for gas to drive a used Lexus SUV.
Autarky is the word for a country (usually) trying to become self-sufficient as much as possible with minimum to no imports. This kind of doctrinaire self-sufficiency is currently best illustrated by North Korea, but in the past lots of parts of Latin America (e.g. Brazil) tried it and failed miserably.
Thank you for your explanation.
I am hearing a lot of “personifications” in the current debate about who is helped and who is harmed by this, that and the other change or threat of change in the economy—the nurses aid who every cost will be greater because of tariffs and the dope-smoking Call of Duty player who wants someone to pay for his F-150 was one such example of many I’ve heard or read in the last few days.
Makes good sense!
Consuming should be the natural result of producing, in a healthy society. There is great healthy pride in making things, only unhealthy pride in merely consuming. Things earned, especially by sweat, are valued.
Yes. They're inextricably linked.
Let me sum up what they're really concerned about:
Slavery is profitable for the slaver. That is globalism. It's not a belief system or dogma...it's simply a financial weapon....a business plan of grifterism.
What the MSM or the so-called financial experts won't tell you is that productivity is the biggest driver of prices in a truly free market. We just happen to be the most productive country on earth based on the output of the individual worker. Tariffs that are time sensitive and applied properly could eventually drive prices down because it will disincentivize state-sponsored competition of our rivals.
That's what the plutocrats want:
Pitting American businesses against state-backed foreign rivals, subsidized by us (the tax payer)...talk about a perverse incentive.
Onshoring businesses will allow the invisible hand to lower prices after the market has adjusted because the more we manufacture the lower the price of each unit becomes to produce. All economist know this, but are unwilling to admit what everyone learned in economics 101:
Prices are subject to the law of increasing returns because capital costs are fixed, therefore the more we make; the more the cost is distributed across the system.
And that's what they fear:
Their money is made by INCREASING the cost across our domestic system
Exactly. First the subsidy slush fund USAID is dismantled, then the subsidy slush funds of other nations are exposed via tariffs.
Consumers, yes, as long as it’s not the cheap junk that has assaulted our senses in the last 35 years. Seeaters and T-shirts so thin you can see through them, cheap plastic crap chat breaks in s week, shoes that can’t be repaired so must be thrown away. Cheap goods have cheapened our values.
Yes. Globalist corporatism has stifled creativity and quality.
Americans used to be both producers and consumers, but in the proper order. They would produce more than their immediate needs and save the rest. When they consumed, it was for long-sought but attainable goals (new house, car, education) obtained through preparation and effort. This is no longer the way our society works. Now we consume more than our immediate needs and borrow for the rest.
Three societal changes drove this:
1) People now measure their success using a comparative instead of absolute baseline (keeping up with the Jone's). Too many are now determining if they have reached their own life goals, if they even set any, by whether their stuff is as good/plentiful as other peoples stuff. Thus a rush to acquire stuff without even knowing why they want it. The rise of media (TV, then the Internet) as a means of showing idyllic but unrealistic lifestyles exacerbated this tremendously. The marriage of sales to psychology which produced modern marketing contributed also.
2) the rise of "easy" credit for almost anyone (buy now, pay later). If you have a pulse and some form of income whether earned or unearned you can leverage yourself into an unsustainable position. Bigger houses, nicer cars, buy anything you can think you can make the payments on (until you can't). I got an offer from Amazon to finance my purchase of some puzzles using credit over 6 months!
3) The gradual disintegration of family as the primary source of hope and satisfaction. Prior generations planned and lived to have children, provide for their well-being and improve the opportunities that they had through education and a better world. The size and importance of families has decreased. Young people now generally believe that having more than one or two children is nearly impossible. They see it this way because Change #1 makes them try to give every child everything, and Change #2 makes it likely they will be deeply enshrined in debt before more the third child comes along. I have a dear relative who wanted five children as a teen. Now 37, he doesn't believe anyone can "afford" this. Probably because his current debt is about six times his annual income, which more that twice the median income level in the U.S.
Our biggest weakness as a nation is our inability to produce mission critical components.
Whether it be essential pharmaceuticals, microchips, or even the basic steel, copper, and lead which we need in order to manufacture other things, we would be neutered should a war with those who produce those things for us breaks out. It is essential for our nation to refocus our domestic manufacturing in order to rectify these shortcomings. If we don't, we could soon find ourselves, as a nation, in dire straits.
The biggest hurdle in reviving these industries in America are absurdly over reaching governmental regulations. We need to slash these barriers and keep on only those which directly secure the physical welfare of the workers and the environmental cleanliness of the operation. I'm not talking about keeping carbon neutral B.S.. Rather, insuring that American workers are safe on the job, and that we do not pollute the environment with toxic waste.
Tariffs alone won't overcome these monumental blocades. Methodical, surgical, deregulation along with either modest tariffs or a value added tax on items are what is needed.
I genuinely think that President Trump is attempting to achieve this, while destabilizing the economy of our most capable foreign adversary; China.
I know what you mean by 'inability' That is, we lack the infrastructure to produce those essential items. As a society, we have the knowledge to do almost anything. But we have been disabled by regulation, unfair tariffs, regulation, taxes, regulation, currency manipulation, and regulation. Long list, I'll admit, but if we can remove these obstacles, some of these essentials will drift back across our border.
And ironically, we lack the only type of regulations that would help actual consumers: for example, "major appliances shall be designed to last a minimum of 10 years", "Product packaging shall be minimized as to waste generated..."
Consumer is an interesting word in this context. Some consume Chinese crap from Walmart, others consume opioids.
Off subject, but these days Chinese products (Holosun, for example, versus Trijicon) are sometimes considered superior by savvy users.
I remember when we laughed at the “Made in Japan” labels.
I am from Rochester. Most of my family worked at Kodak, and a National Merit Scholarship from them paid most of my private college tuition. Back then, they had over 50,000 employees in Monroe County. The surrounding counties never recovered from the loss of all those wages and under the malign influence of Governor Hochul, the City of Rochester is not just a slum but is exporting its family breakdown, drugs and crime to the rest of Monroe County, which is also becoming slums. I will no longer live in blue state Hell. I was both assaulted and molested by a sexual deviant that moved into a project built in our suburb against our will. This person’s presence, his actions, and the total refusal of the staff involved to either believe me or discipline him (despite the obvious wound he inflicted and the lack of any wounds on him) were all the products of criminally negligent Democratic politicians. I should have sued the school and the deviant for sexual assault (he compulsively exposed himself) I am from Rochester. Most of my family worked at Kodak, and a National Merit Scholarship from them paid most of my private college tuition. Back then, they had over 50,000 employees in Monroe County. The surrounding counties never recovered from the loss of all those wages and under the malign influence of Governor Hochul, the City of Rochester is not just a slum but is exporting its family breakdown, drugs and crime to the rest of Monroe County, which is also becoming slums. I will no longer live in blue state Hell. I was both assaulted and molested by a sexual deviant that moved into a project built in our suburb against our will. This person’s presence, his actions, and the total refusal of the staff involved to either believe me or discipline him were all the products of criminally negligent Democratic politicians. What really angers me is why he wasn’t suspended or expelled. He didn’t even get detention because he was poor and African-American, which meant he had no accountability or responsibility for his behavior. He belonged in a locked ward, not a suburban high school… and the Democrats that arranged for him to be there belonged in the penitentiary.
Exactly! Mostly consumers with only so-so wages.
I was the CFO for an opioid treatment company with clinics across the country, and I can tell you, as I visited a great number of them, that when you have 7,000,000 working aged men out of the workforce, they fall into abject misery. There's no hope and a lot of them drown their sorrows. So, Alex Berenson needs to do a walking tour.
On that note, the US has consolidated into primarily three industries, finance, tech and sick people. Food too, BUT that's pretty much it. Everything else has been in a stranglehold of our US Government sell-out to other countries and, particularly, to China corruption.
Domestic policy hasn't been a focus in DECADES. Clinton sold us out to get Democrats a pot of gold to stay in power - yeah - that's FUCKING NAFTA...Instead of revisiting all the stupid regulations the government was putting in everyone's way to earning a living, Clinton flipped the party for the Republican class of corporate donors.
From personal experience as a working aged male who was in contracted tech before the pandemic: This is true. Biden's brain-dead sellout cadaver completely gutted my industry. There hasn't been a single private sector job open in my tech niche since about 2023. Only government. It started with lockdowns and layoffs. Then came the OSHA mandates in '21, you couldn't find anything because of vaccine requirements. It ended with just about everything deteriorating to a point where there is nothing left. When Trump was in office in '19 I was typically getting 3 interviews a week between contracts, and they were highly competitive to get me working for them. If I didn't like a place or manager, I could move laterally easily. Now? What's an interview? I don't even remember - and I am not doing that work any more. To say I have spite for these people is an understatement.
This is exactly my experience.
Yup. Well said.
Basically Trump has announced to the world "fuck this game". "I'm starting a new one....or you can sit on the sidelines."
The situation is drastic which calls for "drastic" measures. Its less about tariffs, but more importantly about putting everyone on notice to force them to the table.
That's absolutely right, and I am on board for it. Screw the Globalist sellouts and the grifters. The plan was working great in 2019. Make America That Again.
Kobayashi Maru
Maria— re: "the US has consolidated into primarily three industries, finance, tech and sick people. Food too, BUT that's pretty much it. "
Dang, but that is what I'm seeing, too.
How about the industry of government employment?
Oh, you mean the people that go into "work," "work" for MAYBE an hour a day, get paid really good money, go home and complain about working for an hour? Yeah, that needs downsized.
Margaret— You're quite right. (Where's my coffee?)
Fifth area of economic activity is government and “ NGO” activities. Represents at least 20% of the economy of the U.S.
And a drugged and drunk populace is incapable of forming a resistance. That’s why the Sackler family isn’t in prison. We have a huge internal and ignored drug trade by profiteering corporations. One top FDA man publicly quit in disgust after pointing out exactly where the ingredients came from and being ignored.
Sadly, Food and Sick People kinda go together.
🙌
I’m with you, Chris. I didn’t get Berenson‘s take at all. Maybe I’m naive but I don’t think drugs are as big of a problem. What I see with my sons (23 & 26) is a despair over lack of jobs. Younger one has his bachelor’s in computer science and wants to do software development but so do millions of other people, apparently. Older one has been working for several years, first in an Amazon warehouse and now as a collections agent, getting his bachelor’s in finance online - yet he sees California paying $20 an hour for fast food and he barely makes $21. We need to bring back good, high paying American jobs. All the ones that got outsourced to India, or China, or Poland, or wherever! My 401k is down but I think it’s a temporary pain. This isn’t going to get better overnight but I think Trump is on the right track and the corrections are long overdue.
Berenson just can't quite kill that little leftist homunculus.
This is what all his friends are saying. He just can't let go of some of his previous positions that were aligned with the establishment....like this and Ukraine.
He's come a long way though. It's like an infected vestigial organ that you have to remove.
We've had him under a 5 year intense and invasive "operation" to excise it.
Berenson went right when all his peers went left on the covid narrative. Other than that sliver of independent thinking, he remains a liberal journalist/writer that doesn’t have a clue about the working man.
I think he's "softening" up a bit on other issues. Example Ukraine and the iNsUrReCtIoN.
But what he likes to do is float trial balloons (or limited hangouts) as he's working through his cognitive dissonance. This process usually happens after a period of "silence" on issues that he may pivot on.
Its fine by me. He's a good man and I think he takes the time to at least think through his positions...unlike the cacophony of barking on social media...but his default position is always starts left of center
That’s very nice of you to say about him. My take was he was good initially on covid but really was quite dug in when others spoke out/revealed things that he had no idea about. He was not open minded but rather obstinate & jerky.
He is at first. That's why he has to go through that process i mentioned.
Once he realizes that the facts on the ground (even though we've known the facts all aling) are irrefutable is when he starts that process.
I’m not interested in changing Berenson’s mind…he should be changing ours.
“little leftist homunculus”
LMFAO!!!
He reminds me of Bill Maher in some regards. Bill struggles to see the light but just can’t let go of his Stage IV TDS.
Maher is so overrated. He speaks with authority & is dumbfounded when someone tells him otherwise. Not that hard to do a little research before opening your mouth Bill.
Exactly
It seems Alex has been slipping backwards, the last few pieces don't seem to align with the pieces just before the election where he finally said he would support/vote for Trump. The comments tell all and in this most recent piece his opening struck me as odd like "Many of if you support Donald Trump." And don't kill the messenger. My first thought is he's still coming from the hard left hence the opening warning and absolutely has to write this piece. That's how I interpreted it.
That’s what I sensed years ago. He’s pretty unsure & thin skinned. Being in an echo chamber for so long keeps you from critical thinking & zero bravery to step out of line.
Yep. His lefty roots continue to put out shoots. But his work and his instincts on covid were exactly right. Do you think he’ll eventually come around? I’ve often wondered if his views on drugs are somehow linked to his fondness for gambling.
I think he would've if Trump hadn't won because we would be living under Marxism probably the rest of our lives.
Sometimes people have to experience it to "get" it.
Do you read Michael Shellenberger at Public? Very good research & balanced reporting (former lefty).
Love Shellenberger.
I’m taking a break from covid - read /followed everything. Check out the Brownstone Institute substack. They did a 10 part series on covid 5 yr anniversary (& you can listen!). Debbie Lerman is also thorough excellent researcher. You’d like her substack.
Coffee & Covid is much, much more than Covid, trust me. He’s been covering the Trump tariffs in great detail … and it’s free! I will check out Brownstone. Thanks!
Matt Taibbi at Racket is great also but I didn’t want to do another subscription.
They do add up. My boyfriend subscribes to Taibbi so he forwards good ones to me. My can’t miss Substack (other than Chris Bray and Simulation Commander) is Jeff Childers’ Coffee & Covid. Free everyday except for Sundays and every day is amazing.
Usually the first, and sometimes, only stack I'll read in a day. LOVE Jeff!
Add Jupplandia. Right on!
Never heard of it. 😒
Taibbi is far more balanced and less of an ideologue.
The thing that should raise suspicion is that the loudest outcry against the tariffs are coming from those who created this terrible imbalance in the first place. If Almighty God were to strike Davos like Sodom & Gomorrah, the resistance to these principles would be far weaker.
I've spent my 40+ year career in the Industrial auction business, closing manufacturing facilities around the U. S.
I can say with certainty that most of these jobs were "off-shored" to reduce wages and avoid manufacturing union power. There are some many critical products no longer manufactured anywhere in the U.S. that I am truly frightened over our ability to support our economy.
Please, please, please write a book about a "40+ year career in the Industrial auction business, closing manufacturing facilities around the U. S." You have stories to tell.
Perhaps a retirement project. Right now I'm still busy closing plants around the country.
I would come watch you do that. With a few days to prepare, I'd jump in a car and come take notes.
There are many reasons for closures, outcomes at a sale, and also reasons for hope in the process. Chris, I will reach out when there is a juicy story attached. Perhaps I should just start posting this shit to my own Substack...
The whole thing is a juicy story, Bud! Let Chris come find you, work things out so you can tell every story you've got to tell, somehow. This is a really great opportunity.
I hope you get a chance to help reopen many of these facilities, or open new ones in the near'ish future.
Who ends up buying the mfg equipment you are selling? Does it go overseas? Sold for scrap?
Assets seldom go overseas, and are almost never scrap. Most get recycled back into the economy and go back to work.
Chris Bray— This one got me smiling.
"See that? Viewpoint diversity. People hashing it out. Calmly."
Mostly calm, except on Paul Offit’s Substack where it’s just plain vicious with knives out when you explain your opposition to vaccines using data.
Way too much ink is being spilled. Not Chris of course, because he's simply pointing out different POVs, and that that's a positive thing.
From all the gnashing of teeth, you'd think tariffs are a crime against humanity.
Its funny how all the people who couldn't pay back their student loans are now tariff and equities experts!
That said, it's not as much about using tariffs as a way to reset trade, but more about resetting EVERYTHING.
In most cases, if one person in a "boat" starts shooting holes in the bottom, you shouldn't start shooting holes to fix it...unless you have an extra boat and the other party doesn't, and you have a life preservers to "save" anyone you "need" on the "new" boat.
Sometimes you kick over the checkerboard, because you can. And sometimes you win by "losing" the slowest. We will win that game. Already are.
It'll be a "gnat" 1-2 months from now imo. Everyone except China will capitulate...which will eventually force China to capitulate.
If everyone capitulates, then free trade will flourish again, and it won't really help domestic manufacturing or production. What will reset?
Im not going to go around and around on this.
Why would I? You seem intelligent and I bet our foundational views are similar.
Im as libertarian as a libertarian gets....except I don't buy into dogma.
Sure it would be better to use the knobs and levers of pareto optimality. But that's neither the system we have now, nor is it feasible/realistic to transition to here in the intermediate term.
I align with Bastiat...but even Bastiat, if he were alive, would recognize a transition would be fought tooth and nail, and would take a generation.
He would recognize that sometimes you do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Read my other comments. Youll see that i don't believe in tariffs, but I think they're necessary as a temporary tool to force other parties to the table.
As Ive stated multiple times, this will be a mute subject a month from now.
I mostly agree with that. But if that's the case most other commenters on this article will be wrong. Tariffs can't both be a negotiating tactic and boost domestic manufacturing. It has to be one or the other.
I see it your way as well. We, the salt of the earth taxpayers, have allowed ourselves to be beaten down, robbed and left nearly for dead. What could we have done? Well, I think we did it. We elected a flawed and to some an intensely dislikable man, who happens to love his country and has been graced by God with the personality and experience to wage the war that has long been against us. He won't save us, but just maybe he will help us save ourselves.
Well put.
If you’ve ever marveled at the American Catholic architecture of the late 1800’s early 1900’s, or at the beauty of the inside of a 1890’s pocket watch ( which the owner never saw), the hinge plates on a door made in 1887, you’ll understand where American greatness came from. They made things with the express belief that they were building for the glory of God, He who sees all. They weren’t building for themselves, they were building for God.
Take the Constitution, it only works if the people are God fearing Christians. Honesty and Virtue built the actual things that remain to this day.
As Guy Clark sang, “Stuff that works, stuff that holds up, the kind of things you reach for when you fall.”
G-d fearing observant Joooos don't quite cut the American mustard, ehh Mister George?
1. I follow Alex’s Substack. He’s 99% correct on all things the Branch Covidians did during the scamdemic and the harm they caused. He’s also correct on what the Regime did/does to censure Americans. He is 99% wrong on anything related to Trump. He has Long TDS. This is mostly caused by his erroneous belief that after being proved correct on the lies of COVID and the DeathVaxx he will be rehired at The NY Times and invited again to all the cool kids’ Manhattan parties. 2. You are 100% correct about the value of producing things. Example: as a Naval Academy grad I have extensively studied the Pacific Ocean campaigns in WW2. An honest appraisal of its history leads to no other conclusion than We won because of our ability to outbuild Japan in ALL war materials- bullets, boats, airplanes, guns… etc and produce an seemingly endless stream of men to use them, and not because of superior leaders or tactics. We were a nation of producers then. 3. You are also 100% correct that the tariff battle is a 100-year decision. We either decide to rebuild our ability to produce things and stop the massive stripping of American resources and wealth, or there won’t be any decisions to make in another 100 years. Economic security is national security.
4. The elites and all their media allies are screaming about tariffs because their personal grift machines are coming to an end. With the end of the USAID gravy train and the coming end of being bought off (e.g., bribed) by the massive payola from China et al, their true motivations are coming to light. At this point, they’re actively rooting against their own country. A pox on all their houses.
From DC Draino:
“Let me break this down for the Panicans:
America may be the richest country in the world, but every other country has been living high off the hog on our trade deficits for decades
To make things worse, we’ve protected them with our military, a very expensive service provided free of charge
This slowly started to infect us with financial sepsis and now our diagnostics are flashing red & beeping
When we import more than we export, factories close, middle class wealth drops, social problems like drug addiction and crime skyrocket, families break apart, and our national debt grows out of control
Sound familiar?
If we stayed on this path, our country would implode
Trump is fixing America before it’s too late
A little short term pain in exchange for the long term Golden Era
You will be proven wrong just like you were in Covid when you called for lockdowns that killed small businesses.”
Trump appears to want to move the economy away from financialization and back to production.
I think that's wise. I was born in 1952 and grew up when our country actually worked.
People will object that America then was imperfect. My rejoinder is, duh.
We all knew that our country was a place of massive, even violent contradictions.
But it was much better than this husk of a country we have now.
If Trump is able to at least partly reverse the massive (and, I think, knowing) mistakes of recent decades, then I wish him well.
Trump was elected to fix our border, deport the illegals & fix our economy. And that’s what he’s doing, on several fronts - Disrupting a system that is/was destroying our country. I’m with him 100%. These bankers & hedge fund elites have their heads up their as*es. They only care about how much green is flashing on their computers. Since 2008 they’ve been given the gift of easy money, he’s taken away the punch bowl & they don’t like it. How dare he! Most regular people understand the status quo has ruined a good chunk of America & are willing to live through some uncertainty & maybe higher prices for a chance at a better future for our kids & grandkids. We all got a glimpse of just how bad that future looked with all that happened the last 5 years. Trump also brought us DOGE.
That's what Peter Grant thinks too - https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/04/tariffs-wall-street-versus-main-street.html
Thank you Chris , your optimism is helpful & adds clarity.
I buy several tons of copper hydroxide each year. I have two sources, Mexico and Germany. Talking to the salesman from the German company last week and he said, "We are going to have to start reacting the copper at our Houston plant instead of at Hamburg."
Tariffs.
Look, we have huge copper reserves in the US, some of the richest ore in the world. The Chinese, not so much. But the Chinese have fifty-five primary copper smelters. The US has three, one of which is not operational. We send virtually all of our concentrated ore offshore for smelting. We closed the last lead smelter ten years ago. We use a lot of lead for bullets, or we did. The military is all in on lead-free ammo. I wonder why?
The US can't even produce basic metals because of the endless environmental litigation and infinite investment uncertainties that attend basic resource production in the US. The Excel pipeline that was a done deal until it wasn't. The Pebble Mine, etc.
You can't understand Trump's tariff logic if you divide it from his promise of a, "Golden Age of Energy Dominance." No more delusional, "war on coal". Australia and Canada have Natural Resources economies. The US has been wasting trillions of dollars destroying ours. Tariffs are taxes. Like a VAT only better, they are dynamic and constantly have the legitimate possiblity of being reduced or eliminated by reformed business practice. Like my copper supplier.
Compare this to useless mandates to reduce hydrocarbon fuel consumption. It's all wasted expense. Tariffs are revenue for the Government. A tax that no one sees. And one you might not have to pay if it's sourced in the USA.
I'm a free trade guy. I buy lots of stuff from China. But I am trying to understand Trump's thinking. If we can render the environmental lawyer's bar impotent, and start exploiting our vast energy and mineral resources we are going to goose our economy big time. Who cares if you are paying more for your underwear, oil paints and canvases. Sure tariffs on anything is a drag on the economy. But it is also real revenue for the government. You want inflation, let the government spend borrowed money.
Cheap energy is going to boost the economy like crazy. Primary manufacturing will rapidly increase, because cheap energy and tariffs, combined with predictable investments, will turbocharge expansion and job creation. And a labor shortage from hell. Which will drive wages higher.
I see what Trump is thinking. I think it might work too.
Alex is a pain in the ass. I’m on the side of Chris, Schachtel and American sovereignty.
Victor Davis Hanson, Frank Gaffney, Batya Ungar, Blaine Holt and Mike Benz .. and to a degree, Jesse Watters, hit the nail on the head- Trump is resetting the World Order. He’s doing what should have been done 50 years ago.Eradicating the cancer of globalism.
All of the tentacles. The tariffs are a major step In the right direction.
Alex was so right during the pandemic, against so much pressure and hate, that I'll always have patience for him, even when he's tedious about Trump.
Agree with that.
He's right here as well.
Making things makes us prosperous as a people, and prosperous people are forward thinkers, planning to make more things and prosper.
Billions, perhaps dozens of billions, have been spent to convince people that free trade is good for the country's economic health, and protection is the death knell of everything wholesome and happy, but history says otherwise. Our country became the world's industrial powerhouse under protective tariffs, and it has become a joke, a nation of pouffes, in their absence. Sending your economy into a global market without protection for your industry is like sending your daughter to school without clothes.
100 year decisions is a good way of framing it.
The opponents of the tariffs fail to make great arguments for the simple reason that the existing path was pushing most of the country steadily towards ruin and a permanent poverty, and that means it wasn’t working for anyone but the rent-seekers and the upper-middle-class servants of the investor class.
Related:
https://x.com/boriquagato/status/1909411651608318032
useful question:
even if it "works" will all this tariff negotiation really increase trade much? my impression is that an awful lot of what impedes trade is non-tariff barriers like regulatory requirements, standards, etc.
they won't tariff your chicken, they'll say "no chicken with those hormones" and "no cars with that bumper height" and "no wheat with that pesticide" or "no furniture that used that sort of leather curing."
has anyone looked at this? is there any useful work on how much of trade is blocked by NTB rather than just tariffs?
might be a relevant discipline to explore just now.
6:03 PM · Apr 7, 2025
they won't tariff your chicken, they'll say "no chicken with those hormones" and "no cars with that bumper height" and "no wheat with that pesticide" or "no furniture that used that sort of leather curing."
That and a long list applies to Europe
Even if they give zero tariffs the list of non-tariffs barriers is huge.
Not much of an issue elsewhere