No. Jesus Christ. Don’t ignore what I said and substitute other issues. It’s entirely about the scale of the operations (and industries), supply chains, the number of engineers China can throw at any given problem, the cost of manufacturing plants, etc. The US simply can’t produce transistors, say, at sufficient scale to compete with China and disrupt existing supply chains, and they certainly don’t want to invest the enormous amount of capital needed to do so.
Look, there’s nothing wrong, in theory, with tariffs, used narrowly and carefully. But Trump’s approach isn’t just a blunt instrument - it’s taking out a splinter by hitting the patient with a car. It’s monstrously destructive to the economy as a whole and workers in particular. Trump’s operating from oligarchy-friendly policy distilled down into a single word. Because Trump is an idiot, his advisors bring up a word to encapsulate some reform that they think will be popular (e.g. immigration, trade), because that one word is all that Trump can remember. It’s supposed to act as synecdoche, but he’s an idiot, so suddenly it’s all - and only - about the wall and tariffs, and Trump pushes those as solutions for things they can’t possibly impact, uncaring about the damage he does on the way (because he doesn’t know or care about any of the issues). So sure, he ends up diverging from the oligarchy’s desired policies, not because he has different ideas, but, having latched onto that one word, he feels that in order to “win” he has to see it through, and starts ignoring advisors about anything else that doesn’t involve that word.
It’s 100% the oligarchs’ agenda, but being implemented by a shit-flinging chimp.
