Fair ? Unfair ? To whom ? To mfg. in protected countries ? To those folks it's more than fair, it's a windfall, with potential for producing some of the same results as gov. subsidies: Higher prices and less need for competition driven product improvement or customer service. Import duties can be red herring excuses to raise prices (and profit margins for those protected) while providing no product improvement. Those protected manufacturers win, along with the peddlers of their products who may and often take a markup in the tariff inflated prices they pay to manufacturers. Consumers in protected countries lose by higher prices and less competition induced product improvement.
In the context of "fair" to current U.S. manufacturers (and BTW, are there really any, Or just a couple ? Or just a few U.S. assemblers of foreign mfg. products ?), I'm sure (and think I know, having put up with a fair amount of it myself) B.S. bureaucratic compliance is an expense, but my admittedly less experiential based opinion is that such expense is probably present in other countries besides the U.S.. Where such B.S. costs are less, there's perhaps and also the likely costs associated with greasing the poles of corruption that scumbag political hacks slid down to a greater or lesser degree.
If the argument is about saving U.S. Jobs: To the degree that solar manufacturing is automated, I say the jobs argument is B.S. It's to the point that labor, like it or not, is now a more/less fungible commodity. Those in the labor force who retrain and scratch for what will be an ever declining need of their services will probably do better than those who bemoan the passing of the glory days of labor. Either way, a lot of jobs are gone - some out of the U.S. for sure because of that labor fungibility. But at least as many or more have simply vanished into a future of increased automation driven productivity. Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player here.
Overall, I don't buy the idea that U.S. required B.S. compliance is that much greater than other places, at least not to the extent that tariffs can be justified. Such tariffs do not work to give better prices or to improve products anyway. If anything, they tend to be regressive.
In the context of "fair" to current U.S. manufacturers (and BTW, are there really any, Or just a couple ? Or just a few U.S. assemblers of foreign mfg. products ?), I'm sure (and think I know, having put up with a fair amount of it myself) B.S. bureaucratic compliance is an expense, but my admittedly less experiential based opinion is that such expense is probably present in other countries besides the U.S.. Where such B.S. costs are less, there's perhaps and also the likely costs associated with greasing the poles of corruption that scumbag political hacks slid down to a greater or lesser degree.
If the argument is about saving U.S. Jobs: To the degree that solar manufacturing is automated, I say the jobs argument is B.S. It's to the point that labor, like it or not, is now a more/less fungible commodity. Those in the labor force who retrain and scratch for what will be an ever declining need of their services will probably do better than those who bemoan the passing of the glory days of labor. Either way, a lot of jobs are gone - some out of the U.S. for sure because of that labor fungibility. But at least as many or more have simply vanished into a future of increased automation driven productivity. Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player here.
Overall, I don't buy the idea that U.S. required B.S. compliance is that much greater than other places, at least not to the extent that tariffs can be justified. Such tariffs do not work to give better prices or to improve products anyway. If anything, they tend to be regressive.
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