One of the ways that Trump reminds me of Bush Jr. is that you never want him to do anything you agree with, because he’ll fuck it up and discredit it. Trump’s tariffs are the platonic essence of fucking up a good idea.
Let’s run thru this:
Companies and individuals need predictability. Everyone has pointed this out, but it’s still true. You can’t lay on new production if you don’t know if the tariffs are here to stay or not.
It takes time to increase production so tariffs should come in like a lamb. Personally I’d have most tariffs increase by 1% every month or two, depending on how long a specific type of production takes to increase, until it reached my target. Companies can’t just spawn in new production, this isn’t a video game.
If you can’t produce it you shouldn’t tariff it unless you have hard currency issues. Mostly self-explanatory: tariffs are used to make domestic production economically viable. If you can never produce it tariffs don’t make sense unless you don’t have enough hard currency to import things you really need, usually capital machinery. This last part doesn’t apply to the US.
If domestic production has a better use, tariffs may be a bad idea. Right now the US is ramping up energy production to it can concentrate on AI. Putting tariffs on Canadian energy is thus stupid, since the US can’t build enough energy fast enough. Related: aluminum production is massively energy intensive. Tariffing Canadian aluminum means you need to use American energy for refining. Is that the best use of American energy right now? (I mean, a case could be made that AI is overhyped bullshit, but Trump isn’t saying that.)
Maybe you want to export goods to another country, and they’ll tariff you if you tariff them. Tariffs often need to be negotiated between countries. If everyone just tariffs everything, that’s the end of international trade. Generally the idea is “you specialize in X, we’ll specialize in Y and we’ll trade.” Comparative advantage is overstated and only works when there are no significant free capital flows, but it’s also true that no one can produce everything they need: not even China right now, or the US in 1950. So “tariffs on everything” is moronic.
Tariffs without industrial policy rarely work. If no one can afford to build up industry, or if the regulatory environment makes it hard, all the tariffs do is increase prices. Biden actually had pretty decent industrial support programs going and Trump is dismantling them. He should, instead, have left them in place while putting strategic tariffs in place to further support them.
Needless to say Trump is bad on all these issues, because he’s a tard.