How messed up are Trump Supporters?

[John V]

Because:

1. it is better to export low value added activity abroad than to keep it at home, and if foreign tariffs accelerate that so much the better?

2. Tariffs always distort allocation of domestic resources by shifting available investment and labor from efficient and competitive industrial sectors that should be kept and expanded to inefficient and uncompetitive industries that should be jettisoned.  If a foreign nation is willing to abuse its own resource allocation, who are we to complain?

The economy overall is not always worse off if a sector is losing rather than winning.  You can only win overall for yourself by not fighting battles with others that’s not worth winning.  With trump we instead devote our resources to winning battles that we are better off losing or not fighting.

Clear?

Wow, when you cut out the insults and vulgarities you come across as intelligent.

Yes, tariffs hurt the overall economy. However, I disagree that it's always best to write off certain sectors in order to achieve maximum efficiency. The country is made up of individual people. If a healthy manufacturing sector is necessary to preserve a healthy middle class, then I don't mind paying more for some goods in order to maintain that sector. You could argue that it would be more efficient to let it go, raise taxes, and support those workers through transfer payments, but IMO the dignity that many people derive from a decent job is an important intangible worth preserving.

That said, in general I don't think Trump sees most of his tariffs as being long-term. He probably thinks other countries will blink and remove their tariffs before too long.