> are Americans willing to either accept wage decreases in line with non-Americans, or accept price increases that would cover the cost of paying American wages? The answer is definitively "no", and thus reindustrialization cannot happen.
The answer is not "definitively" no. Trump ran on tariffs and definitively won. And I know many people (myself included) who would happily "accept price increases that would cover the cost of paying American wages". Most of these people are low/middle income Trump voters. Trump won the $30k-100k voters a year. Harris won all other income brackets.
The prominence of the inflation narrative and outrage over egg prices indicates otherwise. Nobody would be happier than me to see my country, my state, and my city all have healthy manufacturing sectors for locally-sourced essentials, but import taxes won't do that unless you're also willing to strategically subsidize industries for 20 years or more, and nothing about the current admin shows they have any grasp of long-term strategy.
There is no strong evidence to suggest tariffs were a major cause of the recent (starting in 2021) inflation, just read the wiki on it [1]
Trump started his first bout of tariffs in 2018, long before any surge in inflation.
The TLDR cause was the pandemic. Basically supply chain broke down and didn't recover as fast as demand did.
The surge in egg prices is due to bird flu. Again, nothing to do with protectionism.
> but import taxes won't do that unless you're also willing to strategically subsidize industries for 20 years or more
Again, if you just open your mind and read the actual history in America on this topic, you can see that tariffs did indeed bolster American industry, again just read the wiki on it [2]
The answer is not "definitively" no. Trump ran on tariffs and definitively won. And I know many people (myself included) who would happily "accept price increases that would cover the cost of paying American wages". Most of these people are low/middle income Trump voters. Trump won the $30k-100k voters a year. Harris won all other income brackets.