So you don’t mind paying one way(subsidize), just the other way(tariff) is bad?
My argument for subsidies is that if you want to ensure that we have production capacity for a militarily strategic good, then just subsidize it.
That would require an analysis of how much base production we would actually need to subsidize, realizing that we can usually quickly scale up production so long as the expertise is in-country, and then targeting the subsidy to one or two producers. If there’s already more than that, why subsidize at all?
Now look at tariffs. A fair percentage of the comments in here about maintaining production of steel for strategic reasons are worried about China. We buy hardly any steel from China and not that much from Russia. So what’s the point of the tariff? It’s certainly not to protect strategic production.
I think it is. China will just get worse on the trade cheating unless they are slapped. China needs to be slapped in many areas. I see this as kind of an easy warning which shows great restraint on POTUS’ part. I personally do not think is nearly strong enough. Strategic materials is a part of it for me but there are other reasons we shouldn’t play nice with China. Competing with commie gubmint owned factories using labor working for slave wages is a fool’s game I do not think we should play. Tariffs help take away their slave wage advantage. I like the idea of tariffs much better than subsidies.
“We buy hardly any steel from China...”
China dumps it’s steel into Mexico and Canada, then it gets here via NAFTA.
“So what’s the point of the tariff?”
Same reason we need a Wall.