This has all been very well studied and Friedman is wrong. He's also not talking about what trump is doing. He's talking about specific targetted protectionist measures; which yes, have a history of helping develop and maintain local manufacturing and industry. Very different to Trump's blanket tariffs.
Without Reagan's huge steel and computer tariffs, I'm sure the US industry would be even worse off.
Yeah, because what trump is doing is worse. He's not only being protectionist, he's being isolationist. He has guaranteed that virtually every trading partner will be looking for new sources for the products they used to buy from us. That's not speculation, the same fucking thing happened last time around when soy farmers lost 10%+ of their market to Brazil. Not only that, but he is weakening the dollar as the global reserve currency, pushing our allies to look at BRICS as a stable reserve instead.
This is hurting American businesses too - where are manufacturers supposed to buy computer trips now that we're taxing trade with Vietnam and Taiwan? The US isn't even close to getting chip fabrication even close to competitive and won't be for another decade
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u/MasterDefibrillator 2d ago
This has all been very well studied and Friedman is wrong. He's also not talking about what trump is doing. He's talking about specific targetted protectionist measures; which yes, have a history of helping develop and maintain local manufacturing and industry. Very different to Trump's blanket tariffs.
Without Reagan's huge steel and computer tariffs, I'm sure the US industry would be even worse off.