Trump's Big Bet: Americans Will Tolerate Downturn to Restore Manufacturing

It&#x27;s not like the government and the private sector will be able to restore manufacturing quickly. The process will take a while and will cost.<p>I doubt most people will tolerate a longer-term downturn in the hope that a bunch of manufacturing will materialize. And I doubt that companies will want to do that. They moved manufacturing overseas to cut costs and get around labour.<p>As for lower prices, I doubt that&#x27;ll happen either.

Is there are reason to think suddenly a bunch of manufacturing pops up and pushes prices down?<p>I’m not convinced there’s any real strategy here.

It&#x27;s worth remembering that he&#x27;s betting with <i>our</i> money, not his own.<p>(Even if he likes to imagine it&#x27;s already his.)

The downturn, and it will be dramatic, will affect Americans <i>now.</i> Restoring manufacturing will take <i>years</i>, and when manufacturing comes back to America, <i>if</i> it comes back, it will be replete with a lot of automation and providing very few jobs.<p>Only an idiot would tolerate this bet for longer than a couple of lost pay periods. In other words, Trump is losing this bet, <i>bigly.</i>

The numbers aren&#x27;t difficult to see. Biden&#x27;s worst day for S&amp;P was -5.5% from his first day in office. Today, Trump&#x27;s second term is down -8.7%. He has steep ground to make up if he wants his 8 years to compare to Joe Biden&#x27;s 4. Tesla&#x27;s loss alone is $621 B. <i>All</i> Federal spending is $44,400 per taxpayer, so Tesla&#x27;s capitalization leaving the market is significant at over $4000 per taxpayer.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;data&#x2F;tracking-trumps-economy-2025-01-27&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;data&#x2F;tracking-trumps-economy-2025-01...</a>

If Trump really wanted to restore US manufacturing the policy should be pretty different. It takes a long time to set up factories and the like and you don&#x27;t want to disrupt existing manufacturing supply chains so if should all be planned out months or years in advance. Instead it chops and changes daily along with threats to annex Canada and the like.