Asklemmy

I'm going to be working on only buying domestic goods going forward. Yes, it will increase the cost of goods overall, but that's a given when we're going from an unreasonably cheap standard to one built for supporting our own people. I've already been careful to mostly focus on domestic produce and goods, all that the tariff package will do is encourage me to continue on that journey.

Oranges grown in Argentina and flown in (with all the damage that planes do) should not be cheaper than those grown in Florida. Mexican chiles should cost more than the ones from New Mexico and Arizona. Coffee from Ethiopia or other places around the world ought to cost more than from Hawaii or elsewhere in the USA. That's just the plants - never mind the meat, the fish, the dairy, or the hard goods.

I don't want to buy cheap shirts made in Malaysia or the Philippines. I want to buy good quality clothing from American companies from American retailers on store shelves. I want that to be the standard everyone lives to. Whether we like it or not, tariffs are the only way to change the aggregate behavior. I don't want half of my stuff to be plastic crap made in China under their torturous labor laws. I want to be surrounded by quality goods made here in the USA by American workers. I entirely support the tariffs and their higher-order effects, even the increased costs. In fact, I think the projected values are too low, because it might still be cheaper to import. We need to enforce tariffs that make it cheaper to produce and build here in the USA, with Americans working to the benefit of Americans.

Getting into the 'plastic crap' also, I don't want America to 'recycle' plastic by shipping it abroad and going with the policy that says that if it's out of sight, it's out of mind. I want us to actually work to recycle our plastics, to reuse every scrap we can, because it should be cheaper to recycle and reuse domestic product than it is to import new or to export that which should be recycled.

So sure, I expect to see higher costs. I expect that my dollar will be stretched thinner for a time. But if the government stays the course to enforce high tariffs, and then uses the payments from irresponsible companies who import rather than employ Americans to pay off the national debt, we'll all be better off.

PS - I want export tariffs too, so that it's more valuable to sell domestic goods to Americans than to market them abroad.