I have seen a lot of know-it-all democrat voters posting in the last few days about how Trump's economic strategy is bound to fail and those who voted for him for economic reasons are fools. Obviously I am extremely sceptical of these people, as economic literacy has never been a strong point of progressives (not to mention how they are all suddenly experts, like how they were for virus propagation, climate change, etc.).
Nonetheless, I myself am no economist. Can somebody with a better understanding explain the strategy to me, and also any potential ways in which it COULD backfire in the way progressives are suggesting?
In many other countries, yes easily, America though, not really for a simple reason:
You have so much land that is BOUNTIFUL in resources that is grossly mismanaged. California should be a food production powerhouse and there's so much gas reserves and oil available still. So setting up production in the US wouldn't be hard it's the red tape that hampers it so removing that and introducing tarrifs is a good carrot and stick approach.
This is the answer OP.
The United States is easily capable of meeting our own production needs and then some.
But we'd actually have to try to do it. We'd have to throw out a lot of bullshit regulations, we'd have to seal our borders and prevent the entry of low skilled foreign workers. And we'd have to disincentivize foreign goods that could have been made here.
And we'd probably have to abolish women's rights but like the rest of that stuff that needs to happen anyway. But you don't need to say that part when you're talking to normies.
Yeah I definitely understand that America is capable of being self-sufficient. I long for the pre-WW1 isolationist policies if only because of their knock-on social effects. It would probably be better for the rest of the world as well if America turned its focus inwards.