This news is obviously important and shows a key trend in the vehicle industry but dailymail is utter garbage as a news source and in no way trustworthy for facts.
Would recommend truth seekers visit one of the following:
I agree and sorry for linking to dm piece (I'll be more careful next time). I see though the link was changed - not by me though (you cannot change a link after submission which would be handy). Also it would be more appropriate/accurate as it now appears that I submitted a link which I actually did not.
The factory that makes the Cruze is set up to make the Cruze and it will continue to make Cruzes, just 16 hours a day instead of 24.
They might be able to work in another model on the same platform as the Cruze but they can't build Cruzes for 16 hours a day and then switch to building trucks.
GM does typically offers reassignments but maybe workers expect to be called back at some point.
The price of gasoline at the pumps has gone down due to the dip in Oil Markets.
So people were drawn back to SUVs and Trucks. I don't many give much thought to Climate Change. Lots of people drive Trucks with Crewcabs as a social symbol rather than a work vehicle. And could easily get by with a Car. There's a certain masculinity tied to it.
People are able to easily get more money loaned to afford these more expensive vehicles as well.
The best trucks are around 25 mpg highway, sedans can be over 30 mpg (it's a big category; a larger, high performance sedan will use more fuel than a smaller one and so on).
Which is comparable, but it also ends up being an extra gallon of fuel every 100 miles (on a base of about 3 gallons per 100 miles).
The biggest gains are at the lower end. Far more gas is saved by going from 10mpg to 20mpg than from 20mpg to 40mpg. Just look at the math:
10,000 miles per year at 10 mpg = 1000 gallons of gas
10,000 miles per year at 20 mpg = 500 gallons of gas
10,000 miles per year at 40 mpg = 250 gallons of gas
You save 500 gallons going from 10 -> 20 mpg, but only 250 gallons going from 20-> 40.
Of course it's best to use the highest mpg you can, but the benefit drops proportionally as it gets higher, so it's harder to justify the extra expense when a lower mpg vehicle (but still relatively high) might be much less expensive to buy and maintain and possibly even have less environmental impact to manufacture. After all someone has to mine the Lithium etc. in all those batteries.
Of course it's best to use the highest mpg you can, but the benefit drops proportionally as it gets higher, so it's harder to justify the extra expense when a lower mpg vehicle (but still relatively high) might be much less expensive to buy and maintain and possibly even have less environmental impact to manufacture.
The trucks and SUVs in OPs post are both more expensive and more material intensive than a 35 mpg sedan. I agree with you about the tradeoff as you go up the mileage scale from there, but there are lots of medium sized vehicles that just destroy trucks and SUVs on those metrics.
Motorcycle owner here. I routinely get 60-80 mpg, depending on smoothness of traffic, terrain, tire pressure, and load.
Of course, this isn't a fair comparison. Personally, I'd love to see much wider use of HOV lanes, possibly with a steep up-front permit cost for people who refuse to carpool. (By the time this happens, though, we'll probably all be using just-in-time self-driving cars.)
On my 2017 Subaru Forester I routinely make about 29 mpg when going to and from work. (Which nicely coincides with my 29-mile commute.) According to the car passport, it should be getting 26 mpg in city, 32 on highway, 28 overall, but I am not sure what kind of traffic is considered "city", "highway" and so on.
The forester mileage (I drive one) is highly sensitive to driving style. You can only get above 30mph by being very conservative - shifting up at 2000RPM, coasting whenever possible, accelerating like you're pressing on eggshells.
Just put up the instantaneous-mileage screen and you'll see how hard it is to keep it in the higher range.
That's what I do (drive with the mileage screen on). I coast a lot, and in general am pretty gentle on the gas pedal, except when I need to join the traffic, where I sometimes apply the full pressure: CVT is a bit different from what I am used to but seems ok.
Im sure this is a dumb question but why are your energy wasteful activities ok but others' are not?
Who gets to decide that? Maybe you flew 5hrs somewhere and your jet fuel environmental damage ends up being larger for the year than the suv driver who didn't make any long distance trips
I think this points to a basic issue. The only way forward is progress like Tesla and Impossible Foods and not in some elites choosing which wasteful activities are ok and which aren't
buying phones and computers that fly, yes FLY, from China is acceptable to many because they don't see it. however they see a lone driver in a CUV/SUV and freak out without thinking beyond the fact that most families can afford one or two cars and don't have specific vehicles for commuting. So it is far easier to lump guilt on what you see or have to see versus what you cannot.
The way forward isn't tied to any particular brand. Its pulling back from a marketing driven world which has convinced people that not only do they need all of it they deserve it.
According to Wikipedia 1mile in a plane is equivalent to 1 mile in a 4 seat car per person. So your personal emissions from say round trip SF to NYC is the same as driving a car for 8200 miles. And that doesn't include the other enviromental impacts. In other words travel is arguably a very environment unfriendly thing you to do
The difference between driving an SUV in towns and taking a flight is that there aren't many more fuel-efficient ways to cross the pacific.
Agree with the sentiment, though. We all want to make improvements. The strongest way to cut waste probably is less around making our current lifestyles cleaner (electric cars, easier to grow food), and more around making our lifestyles themselves cleaner (walkable cities, stop eating as much, or as much meat).
EDIT: Yeah, maybe I shouldn't ever cross the Pacific. It is a luxury in itself.
Whoa, hit a raw nerve there. Seems like you feel 'people' have been a bit holier than thou, a bit preachy about this whole 'I'm doing my bit why aren't you'?
I got to break it to you, this is not about making sure you get your fair share of the pie. This is about there being any pie at all.
And whatever the reason is that people are deliberately choosing massively more costly vehicles (in terms of gas and capital costs), there needs to be a lot more persuading of people in their purchasing decisions. It needs to be not cool to buy a truck to drive to the office.
I'm sure their will be an electric F350 (massive torque! The Model S P85 weighs half as much but has 50% more) but do we all need to drive one to work?!
You ARE being preachy. You're calling people who drive SUVs 'rude about' actually being climate deniers, with zero effort applied to try to understand and empathise with what might motivate these people.
It's so easy to point to other peoples apparently wasteful behaviour from a distance, and much easier than introspection. So the question is reasonable: Have you "deliberately" been on a not-absolutely-necessary long haul flight this year? Because then you don't really have anything to tell families who prefer SUVs.
This 'If you're not a vegan bicycle rider don't tell me what to do' logic is absurd.
The point is that people have so little understanding of what is going on with the climate they won't even modify their behaviour slightly, even when getting a sedan with higher efficiency and better safety will cost them much less.
So no, I'm not calling SUV owners rude, it's a rhetorical device to highlight that they are metaphorically thumbing their noses.
Forget about the environment! Being hit by an SUV instead of a mid-sized sedan increases your risk of death by over 50%, even if the SUV has no cargo in it and the driver is commuting, alone, to work.
Choosing SUVs and trucks and other oversize vehicles that are bigger than your actual use case calls for also violently inflicts greater risk of death and injury upon other road users at no benefit to you.
This is because doubling the weight of two cars in a collision does not make either driver safer; it's a zero sum game. (It's also because bigger vehicles reduce visibility for everyone else.)
It also indirectly creates more congestion -- the vehicles have to fit on the road, slowing maneuvers at intersections and making it less feasible for jurisdictions to manage traffic by repainting N lane roads as N+M lane roads with narrower lanes.
I'm all for getting a large vehicle if you actually use it to haul, but I get angry[1] whenever I see people driving around massive brand new pickup trucks with totally empty beds, two rows of seats, and all the luxury passenger-oriented option as a "lifestyle choice" because it "looks cool" to their buddies. It's essentially a sedan with a bunch of wasted weight and horsepower that fulfills the same goal a T-shirt reading "I'm a real man who needs a truck" would fulfill.
[1] Although I temper my anger with a grain of salt since maybe they do use the bed, just not this time. My anger is against the general trend, not any individual. Still, two rows of seats in a pickup truck is usually the tipoff that the owner primarily uses the vehicle like a sedan. And when I do see stuff in the bed, it's rarely something that wouldn't have fit in a station wagon or minivan. It's just so rare to see someone actually using a pickup truck to haul the kind of weight that kind of horsepower is made for...
People buy trucks for two purposes: utility (ability to haul loads, etc) and transportation. The higher utility comes at a price (more gas), and in general this balances with how frequently you require the the utility of a truck. Currently, gas prices are low, so someone who uses the utility less frequently may be more inclined to purchase a truck.
Weather? Errands to run at lunch? I'm not the OP but I am in a similar situation. I walk or ride a bike to work for about 80% of the work days in a year but I do drive a compact SUV to work sometimes. We bought it because we have a large family. I can only afford one vehicle for my family so it's practical when we all pile in but feels "wrong" when I drive it by myself. But sometimes a need is there so I use it when I have to and offset the waste of it as best I can by walking or riding a bike when the weather allows for it.
There are numerous good reasons to buy a truck or SUV that supersede the question of emissions. Absolutely, the question of emissions should be on the list of considerations, but unless one can understand all the buying reasons/decisions for a particular buyer, one should not rush to judge.
Kids is the biggest. Small cars absolutely are horrible to deal with two kids in car seats. Plus, most need some ergonomic fix for the back seat access. A couple with two kids (or Lord help you three) is not probably buying an SUV.
Truthfully, if some designer got off their butt and designed a car that focused on actual use of the car in American, then SUVs wouldn't be so popular. Just saying people don't need a SUV is ignorant.
And, honestly, at this point, living in a city, I feel like I can either just hop in an uber or I need to borrow a truck for the utility. So, maximum utility-wise, it almost seems to me (as someone with an active lifestyle who drives away from the city for activities) that owning an SUV/truck to drive part time and using ride sharing for basic commute is the best compromise.
You move to New York and limit yourself to one kid, of course!
New York is the only market that I'm aware where you can ask for a (one) car seat when you request an Uber. It worked fairly well when I went to visit, but most cars only have one seat, so if you have two kids you're still out of luck.
> You move to New York and limit yourself to one kid, of course!
Yeah, no
> New York is the only market that I'm aware where you can ask for a (one) car seat when you request an Uber. It worked fairly well when I went to visit, but most cars only have one seat, so if you have two kids you're still out of luck.
Interesting. I wonder why only New York? This is another one of those corporate decisions that I would really like to know how they arrived at.
I was being a bit facetious with the first part. I was also curious about why only New York and was thinking they would institute it elsewhere.
For example, in Madrid we were often being told having toddlers in taxis was a big issue, as the law isn't very clear on the legality of it. You'd think that type of market would be ripe for providing a competitive edge.
We have a kid in New York; we have our own car seat that fits fine in any car, be it an Uber, a taxi cab, or a friend's car.
I also don't really see why you necessarily have to limit yourself to one kid; there are plenty of taxis that aren't small sedans, and most Uberlike apps allow you to sit in the front, so you could pop two kids and a spouse in the back, and ride up front.
Just curious, how portable is that car seat, and would you mind providing a link?
Most car seats I've seen are difficult to transport, mainly because they are heavy, bulky, don’t fit onto a stroller, and they certainly don’t roll. Once I found out Uber had that feature in New York I didn't even bother doing additional research for that trip, but could benefit from the knowledge in future trips.
I've never had to compare to to any other, but I'd say "fairly portable", especially since it comes with a stroller that can go in the car's trunk: https://urbinibaby.com/product/omni-plus/
We've done two plane trips with her so far, and obviously the car seat has come with every time, and it's worked out very well.
I'm not sure whether the car seat is heavy or not - just earlier, I was discussing laptop weight with someone, and I definitely don't mind carrying heavy things - so I honestly don't know if I'd call it heavy or not. It feels fine to me, and if I had to take her somewhere in a car without the stroller, it would be annoying, but much less annoying than owning a car in the city :P
The point of my statement is that you would use the SUV/Truck for hauling around the kids to school/sports/roadtrips when you need a larger car and use uber or walk when you are just transporting adults or going quickly to the grocery store.
Your experiences doesn't necessarily equal that of millions of other people. Owning a vehicle for part time driving and Uber for everything else is likely not very cost effective for many, if not most people. Never mind the assumption that Uber, or something like it, exists everywhere.
Not intended as an insult, but that's city thinking.
I don't know what city he's living in if that's city thinking. Owning a car, and paying for an Uber equivalent as your regular commute seems like the most expensive and annoying option you could pick, short of using a horse and letting it live in your living room.
It's certainly city thinking, I agree. However, if the demand for personal vehicle ownership in cities drops but stays level in suburban and rural areas, the overall demand still drops (or, perhaps, doesn't grow in the next decade).
I guess my point was that personal ownership of small cars will be the first to decline as self-driving and service-based (Uber and the like) car use increases.
The SUV/Truck car market I believe will last a little bit longer because a large part of the use of those things is for transportation and storage of personal belongings as well as numerous children, which Uber/Lyft don't cater as easily to.
Mainly, it's cultural. I remember challenging my friend on why he wanted to drop $50K on a large truck. His only practical reason was it would be easier to pack for camping trips. American's tend to buy excess space that is rarely used. A big truck for those few times a year you have to haul something. A big house for the annual Thanksgiving dinner.
People are buying more trucks and SUVs and fewer small cars?
I own a Nissan Leaf and a motorcycle that gets 50mpg. That gets cancelled out every year when I hop on a cross-country flight to visit my parents in FL. But I still get to signal my environmental concern every time I drive the Leaf!
Newer model Subaru Outback is a good example. It looks something like an SUV, but the shape shows that it descended from a station wagon, not a pickup truck.
Almost all SUV's are crossovers these days, including the three row ones. There are still some on truck frames like the Suburban but the market has almost entirely shifted. I assume they're cheaper to build that way, lighter, and also drive more like a car than a truck.
I think the big reason we see more unibody SUVs/trucks is that people don't need the body-on-frame rigidity as much as the automaker needs to meet CAFE standards (in the US at least).
I have to wonder if the timing of this announcement isn't a coincidence, given the relevance to Trump's platform, and Ohio and Michigan being swing states...
Yes, looks like they tried not to sway the vote. But yeah, I'm sure this isn't the first layoff in these states anyway, which is probably why they went Trump.
I wonder if there will be more layoffs and an offshoring scramble in the lead up to Trump taking office for fear of his administration enacting penalties, etc.
>> what the company believes will be a continued shift from cars to crossovers and trucks.
This part hints (to me anyway) that they may have waited for the election. Trump seems to be a fan of fossil fuels, so that would suggest cheap oil will be around for a while and people will be more willing to buy bigger vehicles. The article also points out that these vehicles are not selling well enough to support 3 shifts, so it probably has very little to do with union concerns. I suspect it's just a straight business decision based on a market forecast which was solidified by the election. They probably waited a bit for the election to feed that into the forecast.
In energy policy, Trump wants to make coal more affordable compared to renewables. Applying similar logic, he should work to enact legislation to prohibit automated vehicles or make them very expensive so they can't be deployed widely.
In 2020, Trump can point to this piece of legislation and tell voters: "Silicon Valley billionaires tried to put a million truckers and taxi drivers out of work, but I prevented that!"
I wonder how that would sit with Peter Thiel.
Anyone who expects the upcoming all-Republican government to be innovation-friendly may be in for a rude awakening. I have a feeling that many "job protection" solutions from Congress will be similar in spirit to the state laws that prevent Tesla from selling cars directly. In other words, there will be more legislation that's friendly to established business but hostile to SV's cherished "disruption". (Republican voters said loud and clear that they haven't liked being disrupted.)
I find Trump repugnant and don't think he's remotely fit to lead the U.S. but what has he said that makes you think he's going to be against private-sector-driven innovation?
Sectors that require, or are helped substantially by, the government to innovate will almost certainly suffer but what makes you think he would interfere with private enterprise?
Trump doesn't like business regulation and seems to want to make it easier for businesses to operate. Obviously that has negative consequences some some things but would also mean he wouldn't interfere.
Where he does want to make changes is in regards to trade and outsourcing jobs and manufacturing to foreign countries.
As far as Republican leadership in the House and Senate, there is no doubt that they'll play favorites with lobbyists but Trump's main appeal was that he WASN'T like that. If he is like that, we'll have a Democratic Congress in two years and a new president in four.
As far as what he has said, he wants to (to paraphrase) "bring back manufacturing jobs" and "make stuff in america again". The only way that happens is if the current way becomes prohibitively expensive or the "old" way becomes absurdly cheap. Either alone is probably not enough, barring some massive depression and wage reduction.
He wants it to be easier for certain businesses to operate, so he wants to cut environmental protection to cut the costs of companies that pollute, this means they can produce more (pollute more) and employ more people.
He could well be anti automated driving vehicles, it is widely accepted that one of the first casualties of the introduction of automated vehicles will belong distance lorry drivers. There are approx 3.5 million drivers employed in the US right now, even if we see only 25% of jobs going in the next 10 years that is an extra 850,000 unemployed people. And not only are they unemployed but their skill set is no longer required, so they are either long term unemployed or they need to retrain. I imagine many will be older people and they will not be in a position to retrain significantly, so they become competition for low paid manual work, further depressing wages in this sector. So even if you do get a job the wage is likely to be much lower than that of a truck driver.
These could be protected (for a while) if they introduced anti-automation policies and laws. This sort of short term thinking is right up the republican street.
It's just speculation that he'd be anti-automated vehicles. I agree with you in regards to environmental protection but you can't extrapolate that into thinking Trump will be against everything you're in favor of.
Until Trump proves otherwise, I'll continue to think he's not going to act like current Republican leadership, because he didn't act like that during the primary or general election and his platform doesn't line-up with someone who would be against self-driving vehicles.
I just meant that he could take that stance and it would be in line with his statements pre election. Personally I don't see it happening because the biggest drivers in automated driving are currently Google and Tesla, both are US companies. If the leading lights in this sector were Volkswagen and Beijing Automotive Group then he could certainly fall the other side of the argument.
We just don't know yet. His public talks have been to a white blue-collar audience, so if you take the things he's said there to represent his platform, then it's pretty clear that he's not in favor of replacing drivers with automation.
But what is he saying in private to people like Peter Thiel? We have no idea... And amusingly, Hillary was heavily criticized by Trump proponents for stating the obvious about public vs. private stances. Every bit of Hillary's private talks was dug up, but we know essentially nothing about Trump's real intentions. (Maybe Wikileaks could get on the case? Hah.)
He's largely talked about tax breaks and trade reform to encourage more companies to bring things back to the U.S. that are currently done overseas. I don't recall him ever talking about eliminating technology that replaces human labor. I think it's way too big of a leap to speculate on that until he shows signs of moving in that direction.
There's a lot to dislike about him and I don't think it's fair to speculate on positions of his he's given no evidence to merit speculation on.
This interpretation is stunning to me. The Trump base is not savvy Republican mucky-mucks -- it's _exactly_ the people who would be directly and immediately impacted (for the worse) by these technologies. It's a very clear path from "Tesla, Google, and Uber created automated trucking technology that eliminated 2.3 million jobs" to "Donald Trump did nothing to stop the destruction of 2.3 million jobs."
One might make subtler arguments about how this (and much) technology indirectly benefits all of civilization in myriad ways, even in the face of causal fallout like that mentioned above, but we have not one scrap of evidence that subtle arguments will either be employed or considered.
I keep hearing that, and yet Congress and the Presidency changes hands constantly. I would think gerrymandering has a greater impact on local and state level elections.
Gerrymandering has a clear effect on the House. Some of the districts that were redrawn in my home state (Ohio) are completely absurd and if you look at their shapes, their only purpose is to maximize Republican's chances at winning districts.
Still, as Trump showed, you can flip the needle to the other side.
The Senate can't be Gerrymandered but a lot of people argue it's not fair for California and New York to have the same level of Senate representation as North and South Dakota.
I would say the effect is not that strong since, as I said, it changes hands quite often. Besides, it's not like Democrats don't use the practice to their advantage whenever they gain control of a state legislature. I would prefer they both stop the nonsense and base it on county lines.
>> The Senate can't be Gerrymandered but a lot of people argue it's not fair for California and New York to have the same level of Senate representation as North and South Dakota.
Only from people that don't understand how Congress works. Making the Senate more fair for large states against small states just turns it into another House of Representatives. Which, of course, favors one party over another which I'm sure is the basis for the argument.
The Senate can't be Gerrymandered but a lot of people argue it's not fair for California and New York to have the same level of Senate representation as North and South Dakota.
And thus demonstrating that they didn't pay enough attention in that civics class because "it's stupid and when am I going to need to know this?", where it was clearly explained why it's done this way. Hint: feature, not a bug.
Globalization is a form of private sector innovation (also an effect of innovation in transportation and communication) and he was elected to shut it down. So yes, absolutely.
India actually uses a rather simple strategy to keep car jobs. We simply tax all car imports at 100%. Full car kit imports that need to be assembled in India are taxed at a lower rate and companies that manufacture and setup local supply chains get tax concessions. Guess how global car manufacturers respond.
In a labor heavy supply chain like car manufacturing, it still boggles my mind why major consumer markets like the US would allow easy car imports at all.
It will be interesting to see Trump attempt to follow through on his promise to eliminate NAFTA and slap tariffs on imported goods. Somehow I doubt he will have a lot of support from congress on that goal, as pretty much every senator and representative is in the pockets of big multinationals who have already moved their manufacturing overseas or to Mexico.
This is one area he really can't ignore. A lot of people voted for him because he promised to bring their jobs back and they're very keen on seeing manufacturing return to the US.
Your comment dismisses any concern that tariffs could be a bad thing, and ignores literally hundreds of years of research and experimentation that shows trade barriers to have negative effects on economic health and international peace. He may have little support from congress because congresspeople believe it to be _a bad idea_.
I suspect your average Congressman has never read a single one of those studies but have gotten letters from donors telling them that they want free trade deals.
It's pretty hard to convince someone in Pennsylvania that free trade deals are good for them when the only factory in town just shut down because China flooded the marked with unbelievably cheap steel.
I'm not really arguing the relative merit of free trade in terms of local effects. I'm questioning your premise that, in order to oppose tariffs, one must be somehow bought by corporate interests.
I understand tariffs aren't good when taken alone, but what else can you do to put the US on an even playing field? We want to have strict environmental laws, which make manufacturing more expensive and then companies move to where there is no EPA so we lost jobs and new laws are a net negative for the environment.
My opinion is that there should be tariffs to make up for the differences in laws anywhere without similar laws - if you want to pay workers pennies a day no problem, but you're going to pay the difference on the way in. China might let you destroy their local environment but you'll pay for the effects of your pollution on the way in.
Trade deals should come with negotiations that will help us with our global warming problem at the very least - if you want to have a trade deal you'll need to match or beat the regulations we follow or the tariff will reflect an approximation of the difference in cost.
I think that it is a bit problematic that the majority of those for free trade also want policies that discourage domestic manufacturing like an increase in minimum wage and increased environmental regulations.
Paying a price on goods entering the country will not encourage the manufacturing of those goods to come back to the US, it will only reduce the flow of goods coming in, increase the prices consumers pay or reduce selection. Also, dont you think the natural reaction of any country on the other end of such a tariff would be to slap a tariff on our goods and services? So the net result is lower international trade overall. The result of that is that goods have to be manufactured in thousands of places (inefficient) rather than a few place for distribution globally (highly efficient).
I don't think tariffs should be used to keep manufacturing here - but if you get to move your manufacturing to China and pay people less than you would in the US and use a process worse for the environment I think it's really silly not to put something in place to discourage that. If China puts into place labor laws and environmental laws similar to ours, then sure no tariff should be in place.
Otherwise we're just rewarding companies (many of which are American) with access to our market without having to follow any of our laws.
A tariff is a tax on the local population, not a penalty to the origin country. The tariff is added to the sales price so the origin country is repaid. It makes the price of foreign goods higher for local purchasers to allow the local market to be competitive.
If it doesn't bring manufacturing jobs back (which it won't) it will do nothing, but lower sales. the amount lowered depends on the size of the tariff, and how much that makes the products unaffordable to the locals.
Things aren't so simple. A tax (tariff in this case) negatively affects both sides of a transaction. The effect on our side is then mitigated because the money from that tax lets us reduce other taxes in our own country.
So yes, in the end it does work out to be a penalty to the origin country.
The only local harm relates to marginal utility, but this is offset by the benefits of national security and improvements to the mix of different types of employment.
So you would support the state of New York putting tariffs on any goods and services coming from the state of North Dakota because they have lower wages?
What about the state of California putting tariffs in place on any company incorporated in state Delaware because Delaware corporate law doesn't have certain investor protections in place? I could list countless examples of US States that have less stringent regulations but still have free trade and open borders.
My point is that is impossible to harmonize all regulations and even if it was would have no clear universal benefits.
Have you ever wondered why all credit card statement comes from North Dakota? Or why companies are incorporated in Delaware? It's not because they have the strictest regulations. I don't hear Republicans demanding that we erect trade barriers between states to keep jobs where they started in the first place.
The truth is the Chinese population is willing to except regulations that allow awful environmental practices because the manufacturing that harms the environment is a significant opportunity to improve their standard of living. Let's not forget that only a few generations ago they were literally starving to death.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Bringing the Chinese population into the global trading network resulted in one of the most drastic, beneficial, and impressive increases in standard of living ever. Better yet China is now moving to reduce the environmental impact by moving into higher skilled manufacturing.
It really sounds like you're using the "studies have shown" fallacy.
What I see with "free trade" agreements is exploitation and creative accounting. Send your manufacturing one mile across the border to hire cheap labor through "third parties" that have much weaker workers' rights laws, no healthcare, and lax environmental oversight.
Then send those products back to the US and reap tremendous profit, while having your hands clean of any environmental or human exploitation because it was done on another "set of books" across the border. Same amount of damage, but we reap massive profits while keeping our noses clean. What's not to love about that ?
Except that over time, wages across the boarder rise. We have seen that in mexico and china. We saw that here in the US when textile manufacturing moved from New York and Boston to North Carolina. All of these same arguments against free trade were used early in american history with interstate commerce. North Carolina allowed child labor in textile mills and had low wages. Are you telling me New York is worse off because Investment Banks replaced the Textile District in Manhattan? I don't think so. America needs to continue to increase sophistication of the economy by moving to higher skill services and products and protect our fellow citizens harmed by the transition. The answer isnt to start a trade war with mexico and china in the hopes the we can go back to having child labor in textile mills and family farms.
do you realize you just made a pro child-labor argument ? You're saying exploitation of children was justified because NYC became a great city with investment banks and expensive rent. The same argument could be used to justify slavery: "Oh look how well it helps the cities where all the money is stored! We can't possibly have equality for all because that would reduce the massive profits of the few!"
Exploitation is not ok, even in the short run, even if it produces a good outcome for the few who benefit from it. The massive profits made off the backs of mexican workers aren't going to mexicans, they are being exported back to the shareholders of the US companies who sent their manufacturing there.
> America needs to continue to increase sophistication of the economy by moving to higher skill services
Therein lies the inequality. Notice you said America needs to. We need to maintain that differential so that the exploitation keeps working. Because shareholders can't reap massive profits if everyone increases their sophistication. You have to keep the slaves in their proverbial cage, lest they run away.
You are drawing the literal opposition conclusion of my argument. The fact that North Carolina allowed child labor was part of how they pulled manufacturing out of the north east, but over time, as the benefits of the economic growth produced wealth, it was able to eliminate awful practices like child labor.
My argument is that trade with the developing world will pull them out of poverty, decreasing global inequality, and as the population becomes wealthy, they will demand more labor, environmental and social protections. This is supported by the history of the developed worlds progress over the last 30 years.
I am not suggesting we preserve a differential between regions or countries. I am suggesting that free trade tends to create equilibrium over time as wages converge. I am also suggesting that tariffs and trade barriers preserve economic disparity as it keeps assets, labor, capital and knowledge locked behind these barriers.
I think a cursory reading of history supports this argument first with the development of the American economy and now the global economy.
Last point: China is now experiencing outsourcing of textile and furniture manufacturing to Vietnam and other counties because wages have become too high.
You are right, but the manufacturing workers see hypocrisy. We have lots of tarrifs in the form of licensing and visa requirements for doctors and lawyers and software engineers. We also have tarrifs on poor people / welfare with visa requirements (except Mexico in practice). Either remove visa requirements on high skill labor, or add tarrifs for external goods. Let usa join European Union if you are not ready to have a global Union.
> it was able to eliminate awful practices like child labor.
I dont see how the free market eliminated child labor. I see government regulation as eliminating child labor.
I agree with you on the principle that putting more dollars in poor economies is a good thing. But I cannot reconcile that with the fact that those economies are attractive to businesses primarily for the purpose of circumventing rules and established practices that help us (healthcare and environment, for example).
I was watching videos on youtube about the Bangladesh shipbreaking industry. All these western corporations used the ships to make money, then circumvent all environmental regulation by disposing / selling them to Bangladesh for scrap where the toxins go into the sea, workers paid $2/day have no safety gear for dealing with chemical/fall/crushing/burning hazards, and the handful who own the companies reap tremendous profits selling the scrap steel. Everyone wins...except for the poor, who risked/reduced their lives for the awesome consolation of a few bucks (not even considering any marine life that once lived nearby).
My argument is not that free markets solve all problems. I freely accept that only government can solve collective action problems like global warming, create universal education and health care, prevent the race to the bottom tendencies of competitive commerce that incentivized bad practices like child labor and environmental pollution; but you will never be able to strengthen divergent regulatory systems unless you have unified economic relationships. Globalization that creates greater interconnected economic systems will result in improved safety standards in all of these markets. We are seeing that play out in the developing world; but this is not an immediate process - it takes generations. It takes the local population fighting for better systems. It takes the pressure from trading partners like the U.S. demanding that employee protections be put into place. Isolating ourselves behind a wall of tariffs is not going to help these ship workers in Bangladesh.
Protectionist policies lead to economic slowdown, destruction of wealth and hurts common consumer. Lessen USA already learned when it first stared at the problem during Japanese Cars invaded US market. An average American is way better off because of Toyota and Nissan than what protectionist nonsense would have done.
Not to mention none of it prevented USA from creating Tesla.
Americans need to be really lot more confident about their place in the world instead of following third world policies of protectionism.
The majority (well, technically a minority whos votes counted more) just voted for protectionism. If Trump wants to be more than a 1 term president he needs to at least make it look like he's following through. This is issue #1 for a huge chunk of his support base.
I don't think Trump's alternative was any less protectionist. Not all issues on agenda are equally important for Trump or his supporters. A decision on SC judges for example will be a cakewalk for trump but any decision on trade or immigration would be much more muddy in my opinio
> Somehow I doubt he will have a lot of support from congress on that goal, as pretty much every senator and representative is in the pockets of big multinationals
Or maybe because they don't want to anger a lot of still employed people that could lose their jobs when other countries impose counter-tariffs on american exports?
It just takes less employees to make the same value of goods. That is painful for people, but the solution isn't starting a cycle of countries raising tariffs. We want our goods to SELL.
You think tariffs and trade duties imposed on other products like jet engines, and servers and other high value manufactured goods isn't a problem?
Don't forget that trade barriers can affect the service sector too. Trade wars aren't good for anyone.
History is on my side of this argument. Do you have a reasoned argument to over come the result of a trade war leading a disruption in the supply chain of walmart that leads to higher prices of all consumer goods and lower selection of products? I'd like to hear it. I would also be interested to hear how you think such a disruption would not hurt the very demographic that was hurt the most by globalization and clearly
Bought into the scare tactics deployed by Trump. I would also love to hear how you think a trade war and tariffs would actually bring back a steel mill in Youngstown Ohio, or textile mills in Statesville North Carolina. I would also remind everyone, that globalization and free-trade has been primarily a conservative, Republican ideology that the Democrats excepted overtime.
I am not trying to scare anyone, I'm simply pointing out several hundred years of economic theory and evidence that point to capitalism and free trade yielding real benefits for a consumer oriented economy.
121 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 237 ms ] threadWould recommend truth seekers visit one of the following:
http://fortune.com/2016/11/09/general-motors-layoffs-ohio-mi...
or
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-generalmotors-layoffs-idUS...
@HN admin
They might be able to work in another model on the same platform as the Cruze but they can't build Cruzes for 16 hours a day and then switch to building trucks.
GM does typically offers reassignments but maybe workers expect to be called back at some point.
I mean, I get that people are climate change deniers, but there is no need to be rude about it.
The price of gasoline at the pumps has gone down due to the dip in Oil Markets.
So people were drawn back to SUVs and Trucks. I don't many give much thought to Climate Change. Lots of people drive Trucks with Crewcabs as a social symbol rather than a work vehicle. And could easily get by with a Car. There's a certain masculinity tied to it.
People are able to easily get more money loaned to afford these more expensive vehicles as well.
Which is comparable, but it also ends up being an extra gallon of fuel every 100 miles (on a base of about 3 gallons per 100 miles).
10,000 miles per year at 10 mpg = 1000 gallons of gas
10,000 miles per year at 20 mpg = 500 gallons of gas
10,000 miles per year at 40 mpg = 250 gallons of gas
You save 500 gallons going from 10 -> 20 mpg, but only 250 gallons going from 20-> 40.
Of course it's best to use the highest mpg you can, but the benefit drops proportionally as it gets higher, so it's harder to justify the extra expense when a lower mpg vehicle (but still relatively high) might be much less expensive to buy and maintain and possibly even have less environmental impact to manufacture. After all someone has to mine the Lithium etc. in all those batteries.
The trucks and SUVs in OPs post are both more expensive and more material intensive than a 35 mpg sedan. I agree with you about the tradeoff as you go up the mileage scale from there, but there are lots of medium sized vehicles that just destroy trucks and SUVs on those metrics.
Of course, this isn't a fair comparison. Personally, I'd love to see much wider use of HOV lanes, possibly with a steep up-front permit cost for people who refuse to carpool. (By the time this happens, though, we'll probably all be using just-in-time self-driving cars.)
Just put up the instantaneous-mileage screen and you'll see how hard it is to keep it in the higher range.
Who gets to decide that? Maybe you flew 5hrs somewhere and your jet fuel environmental damage ends up being larger for the year than the suv driver who didn't make any long distance trips
I think this points to a basic issue. The only way forward is progress like Tesla and Impossible Foods and not in some elites choosing which wasteful activities are ok and which aren't
The way forward isn't tied to any particular brand. Its pulling back from a marketing driven world which has convinced people that not only do they need all of it they deserve it.
(Passenger miles really aren't so bad, an airliner with a few hundred people on it is doing a lot more work than a commuter's SUV)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_avia...
Agree with the sentiment, though. We all want to make improvements. The strongest way to cut waste probably is less around making our current lifestyles cleaner (electric cars, easier to grow food), and more around making our lifestyles themselves cleaner (walkable cities, stop eating as much, or as much meat).
EDIT: Yeah, maybe I shouldn't ever cross the Pacific. It is a luxury in itself.
Yes I know it's impractical advice but it's technically not wrong and hopefully also funny.
-Lots of fun, at least for a little while
Cons:
-Perhaps increased possibility of not making it across
-Would have to quit your job(maybe file this one under 'pro' instead?)
I got to break it to you, this is not about making sure you get your fair share of the pie. This is about there being any pie at all.
And whatever the reason is that people are deliberately choosing massively more costly vehicles (in terms of gas and capital costs), there needs to be a lot more persuading of people in their purchasing decisions. It needs to be not cool to buy a truck to drive to the office.
I'm sure their will be an electric F350 (massive torque! The Model S P85 weighs half as much but has 50% more) but do we all need to drive one to work?!
It's so easy to point to other peoples apparently wasteful behaviour from a distance, and much easier than introspection. So the question is reasonable: Have you "deliberately" been on a not-absolutely-necessary long haul flight this year? Because then you don't really have anything to tell families who prefer SUVs.
The point is that people have so little understanding of what is going on with the climate they won't even modify their behaviour slightly, even when getting a sedan with higher efficiency and better safety will cost them much less.
So no, I'm not calling SUV owners rude, it's a rhetorical device to highlight that they are metaphorically thumbing their noses.
Choosing SUVs and trucks and other oversize vehicles that are bigger than your actual use case calls for also violently inflicts greater risk of death and injury upon other road users at no benefit to you.
This is because doubling the weight of two cars in a collision does not make either driver safer; it's a zero sum game. (It's also because bigger vehicles reduce visibility for everyone else.)
It also indirectly creates more congestion -- the vehicles have to fit on the road, slowing maneuvers at intersections and making it less feasible for jurisdictions to manage traffic by repainting N lane roads as N+M lane roads with narrower lanes.
I'm all for getting a large vehicle if you actually use it to haul, but I get angry[1] whenever I see people driving around massive brand new pickup trucks with totally empty beds, two rows of seats, and all the luxury passenger-oriented option as a "lifestyle choice" because it "looks cool" to their buddies. It's essentially a sedan with a bunch of wasted weight and horsepower that fulfills the same goal a T-shirt reading "I'm a real man who needs a truck" would fulfill.
Some references:
http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2014/pounds-kill... http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2002/suvs-really... http://www.accessmagazine.org/articles/fall-2012/slower-road...
[1] Although I temper my anger with a grain of salt since maybe they do use the bed, just not this time. My anger is against the general trend, not any individual. Still, two rows of seats in a pickup truck is usually the tipoff that the owner primarily uses the vehicle like a sedan. And when I do see stuff in the bed, it's rarely something that wouldn't have fit in a station wagon or minivan. It's just so rare to see someone actually using a pickup truck to haul the kind of weight that kind of horsepower is made for...
Great if you hit a Prius though.
Truthfully, if some designer got off their butt and designed a car that focused on actual use of the car in American, then SUVs wouldn't be so popular. Just saying people don't need a SUV is ignorant.
New York is the only market that I'm aware where you can ask for a (one) car seat when you request an Uber. It worked fairly well when I went to visit, but most cars only have one seat, so if you have two kids you're still out of luck.
Yeah, no
> New York is the only market that I'm aware where you can ask for a (one) car seat when you request an Uber. It worked fairly well when I went to visit, but most cars only have one seat, so if you have two kids you're still out of luck.
Interesting. I wonder why only New York? This is another one of those corporate decisions that I would really like to know how they arrived at.
For example, in Madrid we were often being told having toddlers in taxis was a big issue, as the law isn't very clear on the legality of it. You'd think that type of market would be ripe for providing a competitive edge.
I also don't really see why you necessarily have to limit yourself to one kid; there are plenty of taxis that aren't small sedans, and most Uberlike apps allow you to sit in the front, so you could pop two kids and a spouse in the back, and ride up front.
Most car seats I've seen are difficult to transport, mainly because they are heavy, bulky, don’t fit onto a stroller, and they certainly don’t roll. Once I found out Uber had that feature in New York I didn't even bother doing additional research for that trip, but could benefit from the knowledge in future trips.
We've done two plane trips with her so far, and obviously the car seat has come with every time, and it's worked out very well.
I'm not sure whether the car seat is heavy or not - just earlier, I was discussing laptop weight with someone, and I definitely don't mind carrying heavy things - so I honestly don't know if I'd call it heavy or not. It feels fine to me, and if I had to take her somewhere in a car without the stroller, it would be annoying, but much less annoying than owning a car in the city :P
Not intended as an insult, but that's city thinking.
I guess my point was that personal ownership of small cars will be the first to decline as self-driving and service-based (Uber and the like) car use increases.
The SUV/Truck car market I believe will last a little bit longer because a large part of the use of those things is for transportation and storage of personal belongings as well as numerous children, which Uber/Lyft don't cater as easily to.
I own a Nissan Leaf and a motorcycle that gets 50mpg. That gets cancelled out every year when I hop on a cross-country flight to visit my parents in FL. But I still get to signal my environmental concern every time I drive the Leaf!
What's a 'crossover'?
crossover = looks like an SUV, but is built on a car body/platform and thus generally smaller
I wonder if there will be more layoffs and an offshoring scramble in the lead up to Trump taking office for fear of his administration enacting penalties, etc.
It certainly isn't, and this won't be the last.
This part hints (to me anyway) that they may have waited for the election. Trump seems to be a fan of fossil fuels, so that would suggest cheap oil will be around for a while and people will be more willing to buy bigger vehicles. The article also points out that these vehicles are not selling well enough to support 3 shifts, so it probably has very little to do with union concerns. I suspect it's just a straight business decision based on a market forecast which was solidified by the election. They probably waited a bit for the election to feed that into the forecast.
I see plenty of small cars around, but they're the Prius, Civic, Accord, Corolla, Camry, Fit, Golf, and Mazda3.
Shouldn't voters have access to all relevant economic information prior to an election?
Both mean that in the case of autos, Trump won't be able to bring manufacturing home in terms of jobs.
In 2020, Trump can point to this piece of legislation and tell voters: "Silicon Valley billionaires tried to put a million truckers and taxi drivers out of work, but I prevented that!"
I wonder how that would sit with Peter Thiel.
Anyone who expects the upcoming all-Republican government to be innovation-friendly may be in for a rude awakening. I have a feeling that many "job protection" solutions from Congress will be similar in spirit to the state laws that prevent Tesla from selling cars directly. In other words, there will be more legislation that's friendly to established business but hostile to SV's cherished "disruption". (Republican voters said loud and clear that they haven't liked being disrupted.)
EDIT: I expanded this comment into a post on Medium: https://medium.com/@pauli/disruption-in-america-please-hold-...
The reality is that they help out their friends. There's only one way to generate jobs for coal miners.
Subsidize electric vehicles?
Also known as corruption.
Sectors that require, or are helped substantially by, the government to innovate will almost certainly suffer but what makes you think he would interfere with private enterprise?
Trump doesn't like business regulation and seems to want to make it easier for businesses to operate. Obviously that has negative consequences some some things but would also mean he wouldn't interfere.
Where he does want to make changes is in regards to trade and outsourcing jobs and manufacturing to foreign countries.
As far as Republican leadership in the House and Senate, there is no doubt that they'll play favorites with lobbyists but Trump's main appeal was that he WASN'T like that. If he is like that, we'll have a Democratic Congress in two years and a new president in four.
He could well be anti automated driving vehicles, it is widely accepted that one of the first casualties of the introduction of automated vehicles will belong distance lorry drivers. There are approx 3.5 million drivers employed in the US right now, even if we see only 25% of jobs going in the next 10 years that is an extra 850,000 unemployed people. And not only are they unemployed but their skill set is no longer required, so they are either long term unemployed or they need to retrain. I imagine many will be older people and they will not be in a position to retrain significantly, so they become competition for low paid manual work, further depressing wages in this sector. So even if you do get a job the wage is likely to be much lower than that of a truck driver.
These could be protected (for a while) if they introduced anti-automation policies and laws. This sort of short term thinking is right up the republican street.
Until Trump proves otherwise, I'll continue to think he's not going to act like current Republican leadership, because he didn't act like that during the primary or general election and his platform doesn't line-up with someone who would be against self-driving vehicles.
But what is he saying in private to people like Peter Thiel? We have no idea... And amusingly, Hillary was heavily criticized by Trump proponents for stating the obvious about public vs. private stances. Every bit of Hillary's private talks was dug up, but we know essentially nothing about Trump's real intentions. (Maybe Wikileaks could get on the case? Hah.)
There's a lot to dislike about him and I don't think it's fair to speculate on positions of his he's given no evidence to merit speculation on.
One might make subtler arguments about how this (and much) technology indirectly benefits all of civilization in myriad ways, even in the face of causal fallout like that mentioned above, but we have not one scrap of evidence that subtle arguments will either be employed or considered.
Gerrymandered districts have made that nearly impossible.
Still, as Trump showed, you can flip the needle to the other side.
The Senate can't be Gerrymandered but a lot of people argue it's not fair for California and New York to have the same level of Senate representation as North and South Dakota.
>> The Senate can't be Gerrymandered but a lot of people argue it's not fair for California and New York to have the same level of Senate representation as North and South Dakota.
Only from people that don't understand how Congress works. Making the Senate more fair for large states against small states just turns it into another House of Representatives. Which, of course, favors one party over another which I'm sure is the basis for the argument.
And thus demonstrating that they didn't pay enough attention in that civics class because "it's stupid and when am I going to need to know this?", where it was clearly explained why it's done this way. Hint: feature, not a bug.
In a labor heavy supply chain like car manufacturing, it still boggles my mind why major consumer markets like the US would allow easy car imports at all.
This is one area he really can't ignore. A lot of people voted for him because he promised to bring their jobs back and they're very keen on seeing manufacturing return to the US.
Your comment dismisses any concern that tariffs could be a bad thing, and ignores literally hundreds of years of research and experimentation that shows trade barriers to have negative effects on economic health and international peace. He may have little support from congress because congresspeople believe it to be _a bad idea_.
It's pretty hard to convince someone in Pennsylvania that free trade deals are good for them when the only factory in town just shut down because China flooded the marked with unbelievably cheap steel.
My opinion is that there should be tariffs to make up for the differences in laws anywhere without similar laws - if you want to pay workers pennies a day no problem, but you're going to pay the difference on the way in. China might let you destroy their local environment but you'll pay for the effects of your pollution on the way in.
Trade deals should come with negotiations that will help us with our global warming problem at the very least - if you want to have a trade deal you'll need to match or beat the regulations we follow or the tariff will reflect an approximation of the difference in cost.
I think that it is a bit problematic that the majority of those for free trade also want policies that discourage domestic manufacturing like an increase in minimum wage and increased environmental regulations.
Otherwise we're just rewarding companies (many of which are American) with access to our market without having to follow any of our laws.
If it doesn't bring manufacturing jobs back (which it won't) it will do nothing, but lower sales. the amount lowered depends on the size of the tariff, and how much that makes the products unaffordable to the locals.
So yes, in the end it does work out to be a penalty to the origin country.
The only local harm relates to marginal utility, but this is offset by the benefits of national security and improvements to the mix of different types of employment.
What about the state of California putting tariffs in place on any company incorporated in state Delaware because Delaware corporate law doesn't have certain investor protections in place? I could list countless examples of US States that have less stringent regulations but still have free trade and open borders.
My point is that is impossible to harmonize all regulations and even if it was would have no clear universal benefits.
Have you ever wondered why all credit card statement comes from North Dakota? Or why companies are incorporated in Delaware? It's not because they have the strictest regulations. I don't hear Republicans demanding that we erect trade barriers between states to keep jobs where they started in the first place.
The truth is the Chinese population is willing to except regulations that allow awful environmental practices because the manufacturing that harms the environment is a significant opportunity to improve their standard of living. Let's not forget that only a few generations ago they were literally starving to death. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
Bringing the Chinese population into the global trading network resulted in one of the most drastic, beneficial, and impressive increases in standard of living ever. Better yet China is now moving to reduce the environmental impact by moving into higher skilled manufacturing.
What I see with "free trade" agreements is exploitation and creative accounting. Send your manufacturing one mile across the border to hire cheap labor through "third parties" that have much weaker workers' rights laws, no healthcare, and lax environmental oversight.
Then send those products back to the US and reap tremendous profit, while having your hands clean of any environmental or human exploitation because it was done on another "set of books" across the border. Same amount of damage, but we reap massive profits while keeping our noses clean. What's not to love about that ?
Exploitation is not ok, even in the short run, even if it produces a good outcome for the few who benefit from it. The massive profits made off the backs of mexican workers aren't going to mexicans, they are being exported back to the shareholders of the US companies who sent their manufacturing there.
> America needs to continue to increase sophistication of the economy by moving to higher skill services
Therein lies the inequality. Notice you said America needs to. We need to maintain that differential so that the exploitation keeps working. Because shareholders can't reap massive profits if everyone increases their sophistication. You have to keep the slaves in their proverbial cage, lest they run away.
My argument is that trade with the developing world will pull them out of poverty, decreasing global inequality, and as the population becomes wealthy, they will demand more labor, environmental and social protections. This is supported by the history of the developed worlds progress over the last 30 years.
I am not suggesting we preserve a differential between regions or countries. I am suggesting that free trade tends to create equilibrium over time as wages converge. I am also suggesting that tariffs and trade barriers preserve economic disparity as it keeps assets, labor, capital and knowledge locked behind these barriers.
I think a cursory reading of history supports this argument first with the development of the American economy and now the global economy.
Last point: China is now experiencing outsourcing of textile and furniture manufacturing to Vietnam and other counties because wages have become too high.
I dont see how the free market eliminated child labor. I see government regulation as eliminating child labor.
I agree with you on the principle that putting more dollars in poor economies is a good thing. But I cannot reconcile that with the fact that those economies are attractive to businesses primarily for the purpose of circumventing rules and established practices that help us (healthcare and environment, for example).
I was watching videos on youtube about the Bangladesh shipbreaking industry. All these western corporations used the ships to make money, then circumvent all environmental regulation by disposing / selling them to Bangladesh for scrap where the toxins go into the sea, workers paid $2/day have no safety gear for dealing with chemical/fall/crushing/burning hazards, and the handful who own the companies reap tremendous profits selling the scrap steel. Everyone wins...except for the poor, who risked/reduced their lives for the awesome consolation of a few bucks (not even considering any marine life that once lived nearby).
Not to mention none of it prevented USA from creating Tesla.
Americans need to be really lot more confident about their place in the world instead of following third world policies of protectionism.
Or maybe because they don't want to anger a lot of still employed people that could lose their jobs when other countries impose counter-tariffs on american exports?
you mean all those empty intermodal containers that head out of our ports ?
It just takes less employees to make the same value of goods. That is painful for people, but the solution isn't starting a cycle of countries raising tariffs. We want our goods to SELL.
You think tariffs and trade duties imposed on other products like jet engines, and servers and other high value manufactured goods isn't a problem?
Don't forget that trade barriers can affect the service sector too. Trade wars aren't good for anyone.
Trade wars start real wars.
I am not trying to scare anyone, I'm simply pointing out several hundred years of economic theory and evidence that point to capitalism and free trade yielding real benefits for a consumer oriented economy.