[Brian Griffin]

“The purpose of the tariff is to promote industry in the USA. It works every time. 20% is more than enough. Learn history.”

The Chinese economy was built on the hard work of young women from rural villages who worked on one-year factory labor contracts for about $1,000/year.

I’m sure the rate is much higher now, probably around $6,000/year.

That’s about $3/hour. Other Chinese factory workers might get $5/hour.

Raising the effective cost of Chinese labor to $3.60/hour or $6/hour with a 20% tariff will still allow the hard-working Chinese to beat out $10/hour+ US labor.

An excellent knowledge of history is never a substitute for basic math or basic reasoning.

[central_va]

You are looking at this all wrong. To actually understand what is going on you have to look at the cost of labor per unit. Corporations keep these figures a secret because if you knew the truth there would be rioting in the streets. Believe me they know down to the second how long it takes to build a unit of their product. So you have to make an educated assumption on labor.

For example TV's. I would guess there is ONE labor hour in a typical TV imported form China(or elsewhere). I make this guess based on the rule of thumb that it takes 30 man-hours to make a car. This is documented fact. So my assumption is that a TV needs 1/30 of the labor to make compared with a car. Not a bad assumption so we'll go with that.

So when you buy a $500 TV you will pay for 1 man-hour factory labor. So let's say the TV is made in China. Labor is $3.00/hr. If that TV was made in the USA the labor would be $30.00/hr. The TV would cost $530.00 with higher domestic labor costs. So to make up that difference in labor costs a 20% import duty would do that little trick just fine. You could make TV's in the USA again and still have money left over! Well until your competitions moves back to the USA.

Don't disagree with me you'll look like an idiot.