http://www.framingthedialogue.com/archives/winners-never-cheat/

My questions do have implied answers, but most people do not pay attention would never recognize that. You make some good points except:

1. labor is cheaper there while more efficient here, but not enough. Maybe our labor costs are too high? Shipping on huge boats may be cheaper, but living in the Midwest, they still would have to truck the goods to me.

3. I don’t think that the price increases are nefarious. It is just business. When your costs go up so should your prices and those prices are paid by the rest of us.

4. I know and you know, but reporters won’t dig just a little deeper to let the rest of the country know. The reporter should have done that rather than let the politician get away with those remarks.

Thanks for the comments.

You’re joking, I’m sure, but this struck me as the stupidest line from your post. Clearly millions of manufacturing jobs have been “transported” overseas since the ’50s, either via companies moving their factories moving overseas or by US companies losing out to foreign competition. Outsourcing allows white-collar firms to do the same thing with many other jobs that only require only phone or Internet connections.

Tariffs are a dangerous tool, to be sure, but certainly each country has a sovereign right to protect its citizens when appropriate. It’s just a question of weighing costs against benefits. For example, the US pumps $10 billion in subsidies to the corn industry each year, which some say has bankrupted the Mexican corn industry. So when faced with a subsidized competitor you can understand the concerns for protecting certain industries.

Your questions include some implied answers but I think you’re missing some key points:

1. The Chinese can afford to build and ship steel pipe cheaply because of they have are much lower labor and related costs for manufacturing. There is also much less regulatory oversight in the areas of consumer safety (as we saw with the toothpaste and leaden toys incidents) and employee safety, which saves a ton of money (but adds harm to workers and consumers). Shipping on huge boats is much cheaper and more efficient compared to truck-based shipping.

2. The claim that “subsidies are then paid for by the same Chinese people … Chinese workers will be required to receive higher wages to pay for the subsidies resulting in higher prices for their produced goods” make sense in a textbook but lacks a connection to reality. The Chinese government currently holds the largest foreign currency reserves ($2.27 trillion) of any nation. They can basically spend or subsidize whatever they want without having to tax their workers.

3. Construction projects that require steel pipes will be more expensive if tariffs increase their price. But I don’t see any nefarious plot to increase energy prices; just a wish (misguided or not) to provide direct assistance (besides handouts or welfare) to US steelworkers.

4. Manufacturing employees in the targeted industries (steel) and their parent companies (e.g. the Luxembourg-based Tenaris owns Maverick Tube Corp), mostly, plus the politicians in the districts and states where they live.

5. Perhaps, but many already do.