It’s actually not. If you’re starting a business right now with the goal of selling to customers all over the world, setting up shop in America is not looking good. You’d pay exorbitant tariffs on inputs and machines.
It’s better to manufacture out of the country and let US consumers eat the tariff cost on import while keeping your operations efficient outside of the US tariff zone.
> If you’re starting a business right now with the goal of selling to customers all over the world
If you do that now in the USA, there’s a fairly large risk that your exports will be taxed, and, with exports to the USA tanking, there’s excess production in the rest parts of the world, so prices will go down outside the USA, at least temporarily.
⇒ If you’re starting a business in the USA today, you should only aim for the domestic market.
I want to believe that, but the president is not doing this by himself. His was re-elected democratically by a majority of voters, and he enjoys the support of the house, the senate, and the federal courts. I fear that the problem lies in the hearts and minds of the American people.
As a Canadian, it has been hard to stomach. I thought we were brothers working together towards a common future. It would be a lot less heartbreaking if this really was caused by a single individual.
That's not what MAGA world wants though. They want products made here, sold here, bought here. MAGA world does not care about the rest of what the world's people do. If they want to buy our stuff, great, but then blame other governments for taxing American products like there's no blame to share.
Sure, but in that case, tariffs on finished goods are the way to go. You'll first recover the assembly business and then over time you could reshore more of the inputs.
But like, it's not the 1950s anymore, basically every product consists of parts from all over the world.
> with the goal of selling to customers all over the world
No, I think you're missing the point. This is not to create world-class companies, capable of selling abroad. This is to inject money and optimism in small, local, antiquated businesses that have been long priced out of any competition with the rest of the world.
Who's going to invest in a business that's only profitable as long as we keep these insane tariff level up and will take several years to spin up? (Plus where are they going to get the machines to do the actual work? Those are being tariffed too!)
Unfortunately the largest cotton producing country is china, followed by India.
My grandparents actually worked and met at a denim factory in west Texas which was renowned for its cotton production. Growing up I remember giant cotton fields which have all been replaced with strip malls and sprawl.
It’s going to be a multi-year project at the very least. And even then probably still cheaper to make clothes in Vietnam.
But that’s what MAGA wants and Trump clearly, like Putin, doesn’t want to go anywhere so maybe start now? I can see, like you, how tragically comedic this situation is.
If the bank can not finance your stuff maybe Trump knows some people who can borrow you money? On preferential conditions, of course… who knows, maybe he gets into loan business himself.
Cool, so in a year or three the fabric factory would be up and running. Oh wait, we need to first build a factory for the machines we need in the fabric factory...
