reuters.com
www.reuters.com

A U.S. federal court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs from going into effect, ruling that the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from nations that sell more to the United States than they buy.

  • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    324·
    4 days ago

    I am under no impression that manufacturing would return to the US to create jobs. If it did came back it would have needed to be highly automated. That being said, for me it is a moral imperative that we stop mass consumption of goods produced by people in abhorrent conditions. Bring it back here automate it all. Like Apple says they couldn’t produce the iPhones here but put enough pressure and I bet they’ll figure out a way; doesn’t Huaweii have a factory making phones with no humans in it at all? I do agree that the haphazard nature of the implementation meant that this was doomed from the start. But I was hopeful.

    To address your second point:

    I would argue that mangoes aren’t a necessity to your diet, you can replace them with fruits that do grow in the US. But I agree monoculture is a huge issue that has a somewhat easy solution but no one wants to touch the farmers living of the governments teat. Tariffs could have been a good tool to stop subsidizing them, without having a collapse in their agricultural sector.

    • spongebue@lemmy.world
      11·
      4 days ago

      for me it is a moral imperative that we stop mass consumption of goods produced by people in abhorrent conditions

      Yes, I’d love to see a decrease in the cheap utter crap we are producing/consuming on this planet, and of course I’m all for humans being treated properly. But blanket tariffs with no apparent consideration of how people are generally treated in those countries (only how we are tariffed) won’t encourage anyone to solve that.

      I would argue that mangoes aren’t a necessity to your diet, you can replace them with fruits that do grow in the US

      It was a flipping example. There are plenty of fruits you can replace that with. And in the winter we have hardly any fresh produce and have to rely on, for example, Chile (which has its summer conveniently during our winter. Yay geography). IIRC a ton of the world’s garlic comes from China. Could we survive on our own locally-produced food alone? Perhaps. Would we have the same variety we enjoy today? Probably not. Year round? Almost certainly not. Can it all be done as quickly as these tariffs are implemented? Fuck to the no!

      • Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        16·
        4 days ago

        It doesn’t matter if he considered the conditions because he can’t force them to stop exploiting their workforce. But the net effect would have been a floor to the price of production at a global level so corporations would have to choose between slave labor, complex supply chains and overseas shipping costs or domestic labor with lower shipping costs and somewhat simpler supply chains.

        Yes the economy would suffer. Medicine is bitter. The option is watching the train derail in slow motion.

        • spongebue@lemmy.world
          4·
          3 days ago

          It doesn’t matter if he considered the conditions because he can’t force them to stop exploiting their workforce

          Sure he can. Or at least use it as a tool to help curb it. Anyone with the authority to exercise tariffs (in this case, that turned out to be the issue, but aside from that) can say that x industry in y country is exploiting their workers and products related to that industry is subject to whatever tariff they choose to implement. They may even use their powers (if only advocacy here) to help those affected. Thing is, Trump doesn’t give two shits about any of that, so if any progress is made in the areas in which you’re concerned it’s out of dumb luck and nothing else.

          If Trump’s message is to be trusted, he wants to make deals and have more people buy from us, meaning global consumption might shift (assuming deals are made and all) but certainly not go down

    • Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 days ago

      It’s a shame you’re being downvoted for making valid points. I think the problem is that many people can’t endorse a trump policy, even if it might eventually have an unintended positive outcome. I don’t blame them either - I get the impression that a lot of the tariff stuff we’ve seen so far has been market manipulation for the benefit of shit-sack and his wealthy backers.

      • ExtantHuman@lemm.ee
        2·
        3 days ago

        I’ve acknowledged like the ~two times he had a good idea. This is not one of them, and wouldn’t accomplish what the OC wants to see accomplished.

        It’s a bad idea all around. On top of being illegally executed.