The issue is though, this isn't the 1800s when the foreign goods were tables,tea pots or wagon wheels that any old idiot can make in his garage modern consumer goods require tons of specific manufacturing , speculation and economies of scale.
It took over 30 years for us to get here. It will take time to fix. That's why you have to have tariffs as well as direct business grants from the government. With direct stipulations that they have to hire X number of Americans. They have to buy American made parts. etc. Those two thinks work together will help build factories. You also have to think about what would happen if global shipping did get disrupted again? We're still bleeding from the last time.
The main cost of living issue is housing prices.
you need a lot of manufactured goods to make that house.
The average American spends half their income on rent or their mortgage
If we had more manufacturing jobs, on average their incomes would be higher because their labor was more desirable. Then they wouldn't have to spend as much of their income on rent. This isn't the only factor here, but it is a factor. It would also help if our monetary system wasn't based on giving money to banks to buy assets to have a line go up.
The issue with that is one his corporate buddies don't want it but even besides that the boomers don't want it. They depend on the cost of housing staying high so they can take out HELOCS forever
Yes, but as JD Vance pointed out, our country has to have manufacturing for out military. America went from one of the biggest car manufacturers to plane manufacturers during WWII. So businesses and boomers can take the loss. It is an existential threat, even more than White incels.
America's main economic power was that the US dollar was a valuable currency so foreign companies wanted to sell to the us consumer to get more of dollars.
People use the US dollar because we won both WWII and the cold war. That was all military/CIA.
With Tarrifs America will lose that and it's soft power.
Manufacturing is a kind of soft power. So we've lost our manufacturing soft power, which affects our military power. We've lost our media soft power, because of nepotism. We've lost our education power, because of naval-gazing. Our intel agencies are so weak, they can't even kill a US president anymore. So we need hard power, and the soft power that it brings.
One he thinks foreign countries are literally stealing from America
What he means is money that could be going to working class families in America, is going to working class people in other countries. We print money, buy things from other countries. Which is pretty cool, but we've used it too much. It's a poison pill that's made us weak.