Common sense from Ross Douthat

Now for my own view. I think trying to reshore some manufacturing and decouple more from China makes sense from a national security standpoint, even if it costs something to G.D.P. and the stock market. Using revenue from such a limited, China-focused tariff regime to pay down the deficit seems entirely reasonable.

I am more skeptical that such reshoring will alleviate specific male blue-collar social ills, because automation has changed the industries so much that I suspect you would need some sort of social restoration first to make the current millions of male work force dropouts more employable.

And I am extremely skeptical of any plan that treats pre-emptive global disruption as the key to avoiding a deficit crisis down the road. The “instigate a crisis now before our position weakens” has a poor track record in real wars — I don’t think trade wars are necessarily different.

Here is the full NYT piece.  And from Armand Domalewski on Twitter: “there is no industry in America with stronger protectionism than the shipbuilding industry. The Jones Act makes it illegal to ship anything between two points in the US on a ship not built in the US and crewed by Americans. And yet America’s shipbuilding industry is nonexistent”