The Commerce secretary was on CNBC yesterday am talking about how the tariffs will bring back manufacturing jobs to US. Then a few seconds later was talking about having Apple (and other companies) make their products in the US using robotics. So very few actual American humans getting jobs.
He's also fond of saying we're going to make trillions from the tariff payments, but we'll all be buying American products. The math does not check out.
The government will take trillions from the American populous, then when all manufacturing comes back to the US, tariff revenue will drop to zero. But Americans will still pay the higher prices to the corporations.
It actually does sound genius if you don’t value humanity or nations. If you’re trying to build something different this does sound like some interesting staging of some new society. I think it’s insane but it sure does look intentional in all regards.
No one in their right mind is gnna build a factory based on anything Don says or does. The guy will change his mind by tmrw, then again by Monday. There will be no tariffs by Tuesday. This country is a joke.
Even in a slightly different universe where Donny is rock solid and committed to tariffs, by the time you build a factory Dems might have taken Congress and/or the presidency. Not even true believers would build a factory in this environment.
Bill gates was in the news only a few days ago saying confidently that in 10 years humans will need to work only 2 days per week. People cheered this believing this means it will be utopia and everyone will be fat and happy. He was really talking about what you are. Massive change is coming. Get ready for massive human misery and total poverty for the vast majority of us. MAGA is only ensuring it happens for sure and faster. These people hate you. You don’t even exist to them. If you don’t want this future you need to act now.
I remember a guy at work fantasizing about having himself cloned so he could send the clone in to do all the work for him. I told him that scenario would end up with both him and the clone sitting at home and arguing about who was going to have to work and both of them getting fucked. It is the same holy shit type of stupidity. They can't even conceive of things turning out badly.
So he wants a slave lol? His clone would still be sentient and would be no different from enslaving anybody else. Meanwhile his clone still needs food to eat and a place to sleep so he's just become a two-person household with 1 income.
What he's saying is he wants to have an income but not have to work for it. He wants UBI
I'd love a clone. We would easily be able to split my job in two, with minimal increase in food expenses, and we could play video games together and keep each other company. That sounds amazing. I would share the work though, I couldn't make someone work for me.
i don't think "wow these guys really are trying to tear it all down and build dystopian corporate feudalism" is much of a conspiracy theory. It's pretty much the open aim of the tech-bro faction of the extremists, competing with "patriarchal theocratic dystopia" and "white supremacist fascist dystopia" from other subgroups.
Brother it only sounds genius to genuinely dimwitted people lol.
You just gonna cosplay robocop next to the 350 million starved corpses? Don't be an idiot, it's not a movie lmao. As soon as the shelves are empty and the country is failing they will all be dragged through the streets and hanged by the panicking mob. I just hope that it's televised
These guys believe they will survive and do better. Thrive and have power. It doesn’t matter if they succeed or fail, they are going to try to do it and the outcomes will be disastrous but it doesn’t matter because they are keen to believe they will succeed in some way no matter what.
Are they dim? I dunno but they are orchestrating a complex and robust amount of change across the USA and the world with all they are doing, and they told us they want a technocracy, that Yarvin was their man.
I’m not worried that they are dumb or smart. I’m worried they are Fanatical.
What kind of idiocy is this? It's the ideology of nation states and arbitrary lines on a map that's at the very heart of this crap.
A child born in Lithuania today can grow up to be an American and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Nations are exploitative bullshit. They have zero value except to those at the top. QED
A nation or state is an can be much different than just the pessimistic views but I do agree with you to some degree.
Nations are how we have organized our societies and taxes to support our laws and civilization. It’s complicated and probably could be done butter but I wouldn’t leave it to the leadership shaping this world now to do a reasonable job finding and moving to a better model.
yeah Jingoism is one of the most baffling and frustrating reminders of tribal egoism overruling common sense in the modern world.
Post ww2 and now especially post digital age, there is simply no goddamn reason whatsoever for resource wars and direct national control of certain land areas. In an age of ubiquitous real time global communication and modern distribution speeds, The entire justification for "protection" of one's "own population" via military aggression is basically "he was gonna do it first!" ... now, look... fine that's probably SOMETIMES true because our base instincts are pretty greedy and selfish. But it's pretty blatant that virtually all remaining conflict (including the growing belligerence of the U.S.) is actually driven entirely by ideology and individual ego.
I dunno if they'll all use robots. I can envision an endgame where they impose "worker discipline" to create an abused underclass that makes all the stuff inside America.
And I'm not even using my imagination to envision that. I'm just looking at America's history.
Higher tech factories like cars and phones will use robots, but for regular things? They'll use people!
People will be so desperate for work and survival, they'll work anywhere for any price at that point. Minimum wage will be reduced or removed "for the people" and you'll get to work in a factory stamping a box for 10 hours a day, for 2 whole dollars!
Actually, well manufacture so much, other countries will move their factories to over here for the cheap price of la.. I mean Hugh quality American goods!
Another factor no one seems to mention: externalities -- in particular, pollution and burdens on our infrastructure. Assembly operations can be relatively clean, but manufacturing, drilling, mining, and minerals processing generate pollution and can use a lot of electricity, and our grid is already struggling to provide the power needed by AI modelling, crypto-mining, and charging e-vehicles. No politician seems to be even acknowledging that past generations' worth of industrial and chemical sites created thousands of sites that remain heavily and dangerously polluted to this day, let alone insisting that we manage it better this time.
It's no coincidence that New Jersey, home of so much of the heavy industrial (and chemical, petrochemical, and electronic) job-creating activity in the US since the 19th-C., still has -- googles -- "115 Superfund sites listed on the National Priorities List (NPL)" "as of 16 August 2024", and that's after 36 additional sites have been cleaned up and deleted from the list.
IMHO, de-offshorization and re-industrialization must also revolutionize our traditional model of: 1) letting corporations and their executives, boards of directors, and principle shareholders do whatever they want; 2) evade fiscal responsibility and criminal culpability for their pollution via shell corps. and strategic sales and bankruptcies; 3) rinse-and-repeat. Ideally, we'd price-in and anticipate likely pollution risks and force corps. to fund escrow accounts (along with continual monitoring of factory operations, to prevent anticipated future costs' outstripping a corp.'s escrow funds, which might have to be increased every year or so) for cleaning up their pollution regardless of their legal status and financial solvency for a very long stipulated duration (say, 101 years).
You could relocate 100% of manufacturing to America, but those goods would then be being made with tariffed materials, so the price wouldn't go down, in fact it would go up as corps mark their products up to recoup the costs of building new factories, to say nothing of the surcharge for the 'made in America' sticker they slap on as rubes celebrate the privilege of paying more for less.
Not once we have a full return to child labor, and get rid of shit like OSHA and the EPA, so we can mine those materials in the US cheaply, at the mere cost of the sweat, blood, and spare limbs of our own kids.
This basically distills the tariff gambit down to its one-two punch of wealth transfer:
a tax on consumption (to offset huge tax breaks for the wealthy), followed by
higher prices for domestically produced goods (to increase profits for the wealthy)
At some point normal people are going to lash out en masse and it’s not going to go well for the super wealthy. Why can’t they just pay their fucking taxes?
Power. Once money can no longer satisfy their need to hoard, they desire power. And they have more power when we have less. Being able to buy an election isn't good enough when there's still a chance the populace can choose differently.
Elon Musk could, from his personal fortune, end world hunger. Also all homelessness in the USA. Fund cures for multiple diseases.
And when done he would still be a billionaire. Still have more than he could ever spend.
What does he do instead? Break election laws, fuck over hundreds of millions of people, destroy government programs that help people, steal private data, and assist in manufacturing a global economic crisis.
All so he can have more that he won’t ever be able to spend.
No one is making factories in America when in 4 years the next president could remove all this bullshit and then your factory goes broke.
You can't invest in a climate where you have a toddler throwing tariff tantrums every other week and expect anyone to be able to safely navigate his nonsense.
If my Argentinian experience helps, the end result is a few companies having no competition will sell refurbished, defective crap at extremely inflated prices.
A shirt here can cost 120 bucks and if you are lucky it'll last 3 washes, brand new laptots you can take apart and see the solders and tape with notes from the guys who repaired them after they came back for warranties in other countries.
We try this every hundred years, and the math never maths. The last time we did this it caused the great depression. And now the idiot in chief thinks he can bully the world economically, when the world has moved on from our bullshit.
The world started to shift after the 2008 crash happened since it showed we're not reliable. Trump 1 solidified to everyone that we can't be trusted. Now we're on Trump 2 and America is going to get put into its place.
There are also categories of things that can't be produced in the US. Coffee, avocados, diamonds etc. I haven't heard Krasnov explain how they are going to move the diamond mines from Lesotho back to the USA. :)
Rare earth minerals too. China controls something like 90% of global supply. Even if you "bring all the manufacturing back" US would need to import ridiculous amounts of raw materials (which are heavier and more expensive to ship than parts or finished products).
Avocados are grown in CA & Mexico. Tequila (Mexico), Champagne (France), and Scotch Whisky (Scotland) are not produced in the US. New Years Eve 2025 is going to suck.
That's the thing these people don't understand. The manufacturing sector employing large parts of the population in the US is never coming back, even with the assumption that tariffs will bring back manufacturing. That ship has simply sailed.
And besides, this is a trend that was happening in western countries anyway, i.e manufacturing being brought back, but with a much higher degree of automation.
And whether its robots or humans is immaterial really. The fact is that work was originally contracted out of the US for the sole reason of lowering costs and increasing profits. If by some miracle the manufacturing process does return to the US then the cost to the consumer will be considerably higher no matter who or what is making it.
Which means it ain’t coming back. Some idiot was blathering about how great it will be when textiles are made in the USA again. Uhh, how? “In the factories.” Dude, those were bulldozed or turned into warehouse space 30 ago.
And american workers just don't have the skills other countries do in producing specialized things like these anymore because they haven't done it in decades like other countries have.
So america will end up having worse quality products at a more expensive price because labor costs will be higher but with less expertise.
We can learn, but it doesn’t matter since there isn’t a rational reason to try and bring manufactured for current stuff back. That said, we need to, for more strategic purposes have production capabilities for a lot of things.
I agree. I’m quite sure every business has already done the numbers and it still makes more business sense to weather this storm than it is to go through all the hassle, upheaval and associated costs to bring it back to the US.
Exactly. All these “wins” will be the undoing of republicans in 2026, the presidency in 2028. It’s such an easy formula- “are you better off now than you were 4 years ago - if you’re not a billionaire that is?” People talk about how they’re for on party of the other, but they vote with their pocketbook. Trump knows he only has another 17 months to make all of this seem better before they get hammered in the mid terms.
Plus, why build a factory that’ll take 3-4 years to complete when the tariffs are going to be gone about the time it comes online? Besides, tariffs will increase the gross profit dollars for everyone as long as people buy their crap, bit of an unknown how that volume will be impacted. So the high costs will just means more profit dollars, and don’t think they won’t put a bit extra in for the big guy.
It does amaze me that legal slavery is still a thing in the USA.
People really need to care about the rights of criminals a lot more, because if you don’t all that has to happen is you get labelled a criminal and suddenly you have no rights.
Fair point. The US does already have a huge cheap labour/slavery system within its prison system but as far as I’m aware they don’t make anything anywhere as technical as mobile phones etc…but it certainly could be applied for other products I guess and would keep those costs down.
One of the collateral benefits of Donnie economics is that more and more people will be unable buy cars, and thus, their health will improve because they will be able (forced) to get more exercise walking and riding bikes!
Also, like, the fact that the US already has the world's second largest manufacturing sector, and all of the hand wringing about manufacturing jobs is straight gaslighting.
Wonder who's making and repairing those robots though.
And who's going to be able to buy those phones?
Like, I'm no economist by any degree, but, part of being able to sell things is a person being able to afford it. But with their plans of recession and depression (and further a whole swath of people being jailed, ah fuck)...
They're going to make prisoners make these things aren't they? Meanwhile probably going to civil war.
If labor rights were the same around the world - everyone had guaranteed rights to time off, breaks, minimum pay - then would it be brought back? Is the reason we exported labor because our workers have more rights now, and we want to exploit workers whose countries don't protect them?
Also, they don't account for the fact that even if companies moved manufacturing back to the US, it would take years to happen.
I can't remember where I read this, but economists said that once countries move on from manufacturing, they become service-based economies, which are more profitable than manufacturing-based ones.
There aren’t enough Americans to do the jobs anyway. Robots are the only option if you don’t want to offshore them. The entire trade war is fucking stupid.
It can take up to 4 years to set up a plant. I would think that most companies might try to wait that time out before spending millions on a move to appease a 70 year old toddler.
Yeah, no company is going to spend the money setting up expensive new manufacturing in an unstable country. They'll just pay the tariffs and pass along the costs to the consumer
Well, obviously the generous, philanthropic corporations and investors and politicans will all take the extra profit generated and funnel it into the larger US economy, as well as into taxes to to reduce the cost of living and increase welfare so as to balance out the reduced jobs. Duh.
Trump wants them for his voters—or wants his voters to vote for him because he promises the jobs.
The actual few controversial economists behind Trump want manufacturing back so that in event of war with China, USA can match or outmatch Chinese production.
They'll bring back jobs for the robots of America. Fox news know we're heading towards a Futurama and want to get a jump on it. I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
If the US economy survives the dozens of trillions that will be wiped off the stock exchanges, and the rampant uncontrollable inflation that will last over a decade while any of this starts to happen then some of the citizens will be able to buy true USA made.
It would take decades to set that factory up. That’s not even accounting for the chips and raw materials sourcing. These people are astronomical idiots.
Also, the US is essentially at full employment and they’re deporting people. Who the fuck is supposed to work in these factories?
Well the good thing is with tariffs making products more expensive we’ll have less disposable income to buy these amazing American products!
And everyone knows companies love to make major, massive business decisions like expanding/relocating to America when the president of America makes massive economic decisions by himself and gives like 1 week notice they’re happening. That’s exactly the kind of stability companies loooooove.
The people who are saying they want these jobs brought back to the US are 100% people that would not be doing these jobs. Who wants to stand at an assembly line for 8-12 hours a day assembling components for the iPhone?
More opportunities are a good thing don't get me wrong but I don't believe for a second the people who are cheering for these jobs to come back to the US will be submitting an application.
This will also take many years, if not decades, to bring all of this manufacturing back to the US. You can't build electronics manufacturing plants overnight. Things like microchip manufacturing literally can take a decade and tens of billions of dollars in investment. There are also only a handful of companies that make the equipment that can make microchips, and those are typically contracted out many years in advance. You can't simply call one of them up and say "Hey, can you send me a machine next week?"
The same goes for any large scale manufacturing - car factories, clothing factories, etc.
Plus, we don't have the people here that do these jobs currently, at least not in the volume we would need, so we would have to train them all. Many of these jobs would demand much higher wages than what they demand in other countries, so guess what, the end product will cost more. But if you think your wage will go up to compensate, you have another thing coming. This administration does not want wages to go up. Republicans constantly shoot down minimum wage increases, which is why the federal minimum wage, and the minimum wage in red states is still $7.25/hour, which will not even pay for necessities in most places.
on CNBC, but said by the fucking Secretary of Commerce. Or do you think the trump-appointed SoC takes his talking points from CNBC writers? 🤦♂️
It's one thing to doubt statements made by the news organisation about the administration, but to doubt statements made by the administration and its members, just because they happen to have been made while on a news show, is fucking dumb.
There is a huge difference between "CNBC says X", and "The Secretary of Commerce, while on CNBC, said X"
This is not a statement of CNBC that we're discussing. It's a statement of the SoC.
Again, this isn't CNBC saying it. Here's a direct quote of words from Howard Lutnick's mouth, on camera!
"You're going to see robotic production of iPhones and the jobs that are going to be created"
He thinks robotic automated production is going to create enough jobs. Even though those robots themselves are able to be produced mostly in largely-automated factories.
Manufacturing is good at creating jobs overseas because labour is cheap, lives are cheap - cheaper than robots.
In America, labour is expensive, because there are actually some measure of labour standards. Robots are cheaper and less of a hassle for factory owners. And do not create as many jobs as manual manufacturing.
He said there will be "millions and millions" of jobs maintaining manufacturing robots. Idiotic 😂
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u/SchnaapsIdee 1d ago
The Commerce secretary was on CNBC yesterday am talking about how the tariffs will bring back manufacturing jobs to US. Then a few seconds later was talking about having Apple (and other companies) make their products in the US using robotics. So very few actual American humans getting jobs.