I took the referral from Noah Smith and read this piece and agree, it's excellent. I recently read Chip Wars, so much of this was familiar terrain and complemented that work nicely. I think there are many centrist Democrats like me that can agree that the "everything bagel" approach is counterproductive. Interesting tidbit: I worked in US Customs as a Commercial Import Operations Specialist in the Port of San Francisco in the 90's. I spent many a Saturday in the office, on overtime pay of course, redlining invoices that contained Korean DRAMs in order to ensure that anti-dumping duties were assessed against Hynix and LG, and at the time it was debatable whether or not any good was coming from that effort, 90% of which happened in my office (being the closest port to Silicon Valley). I suppose me and my millions of dollars of revenue collection into the Treasury (minus a $50k annual salary for me) would be summarily executed by the DOGE ignorami of today. Anyway, anti-dumping aside, I think a more productive example of how tariffs CAN work is that, in the early 90's, imports of computer "parts" were free of duty, and imports of completed computers were assessed a duty of 3.7% of import value. This setup incentivized a broad and thriving industry (in the Bay Area and Texas at least) of computer assembly in the US, much of which I personally witnessed as a visiting federal officer. All of that left for China and elsewhere over the next few years, as a result of the ITA (Int'l Telecomms Agmt of '97), which made most tech products duty-free. I don't pretend to know if that production and jobs would have left anyway; I only know that it did. (Much like auto and NAFTA before it, in '93.) In contrast to the conventional wisdom at the time, hindsight is clear that allowing China into the WTO (another accomplishment of the 90's, successor to the GATT) was a huge mistake, as democracy did not accompany capitalism, and so instead of evolving into another EU-type of mostly peaceful trading partner, they are part of the global shift toward autocracy.
I'm really surprised at the highlight around the washing machine tarrifs as I believed the general consusus was that the data showed it to be incredibly inefficient. The cost per job was north of $800k for the consumer cost with the tarrifs in place dramatically increased prices, and once they were expired prices dropped.
This work around USA ship industry shows how often industrial policy only creates industry that can succeed while protected or subsidized and not competitive on its own.
a chip reserve is questionable because chips become obsolete relatively quickly. a reserve would need to operate as a buffer between producers and users, more like a wholesale warehouse with significant inventory which needs to turn over regularly.
Where would you place the need to simply produce more STEM graduates/blue-collar people who want to staff the fabs and work in this industry? How might we encourage that culture more broadly (I say that seeing as China is graduating millions of engineers every year). Also I'd assume Trump & Co's opportunity zones would work quite well for industrial areas standing up fabs, low regulation/taxing/government should be decently conducive towards re-spawning this industry in the US, I would think.
I took the referral from Noah Smith and read this piece and agree, it's excellent. I recently read Chip Wars, so much of this was familiar terrain and complemented that work nicely. I think there are many centrist Democrats like me that can agree that the "everything bagel" approach is counterproductive. Interesting tidbit: I worked in US Customs as a Commercial Import Operations Specialist in the Port of San Francisco in the 90's. I spent many a Saturday in the office, on overtime pay of course, redlining invoices that contained Korean DRAMs in order to ensure that anti-dumping duties were assessed against Hynix and LG, and at the time it was debatable whether or not any good was coming from that effort, 90% of which happened in my office (being the closest port to Silicon Valley). I suppose me and my millions of dollars of revenue collection into the Treasury (minus a $50k annual salary for me) would be summarily executed by the DOGE ignorami of today. Anyway, anti-dumping aside, I think a more productive example of how tariffs CAN work is that, in the early 90's, imports of computer "parts" were free of duty, and imports of completed computers were assessed a duty of 3.7% of import value. This setup incentivized a broad and thriving industry (in the Bay Area and Texas at least) of computer assembly in the US, much of which I personally witnessed as a visiting federal officer. All of that left for China and elsewhere over the next few years, as a result of the ITA (Int'l Telecomms Agmt of '97), which made most tech products duty-free. I don't pretend to know if that production and jobs would have left anyway; I only know that it did. (Much like auto and NAFTA before it, in '93.) In contrast to the conventional wisdom at the time, hindsight is clear that allowing China into the WTO (another accomplishment of the 90's, successor to the GATT) was a huge mistake, as democracy did not accompany capitalism, and so instead of evolving into another EU-type of mostly peaceful trading partner, they are part of the global shift toward autocracy.
I'm really surprised at the highlight around the washing machine tarrifs as I believed the general consusus was that the data showed it to be incredibly inefficient. The cost per job was north of $800k for the consumer cost with the tarrifs in place dramatically increased prices, and once they were expired prices dropped.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/higher-prices-extra-jobs-lessons-from-trumps-washing-machine-tariffs-185047360.html
This work around USA ship industry shows how often industrial policy only creates industry that can succeed while protected or subsidized and not competitive on its own.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-cant-the-us-build-ships
a chip reserve is questionable because chips become obsolete relatively quickly. a reserve would need to operate as a buffer between producers and users, more like a wholesale warehouse with significant inventory which needs to turn over regularly.
Where would you place the need to simply produce more STEM graduates/blue-collar people who want to staff the fabs and work in this industry? How might we encourage that culture more broadly (I say that seeing as China is graduating millions of engineers every year). Also I'd assume Trump & Co's opportunity zones would work quite well for industrial areas standing up fabs, low regulation/taxing/government should be decently conducive towards re-spawning this industry in the US, I would think.