May be more opportunities for EE in the USA coming...

[maginnovision]

Every moderately sized business and larger is already subsidized by tax breaks, rebates, and refunds both at the federal and state/local levels. The entire EV market is subsidized federally for example, with some states offering even more. You're pretending these things don't already happen.

I'm not arguing for any of this. I think it'd be great if ALL our manufacturing could come back home but I personally wouldn't want there to be any incentives other than the companies having the guarantee that they wouldn't have their goods locked down where they couldn't be used.

Using tariffs wouldn't be redistributing wealth though, it'd be giving people perspective on the cost of goods based on our standards of living. They'd be free to spend their money on whichever goods they wanted. The tariffs would only be about levelling the market regardless of where the goods come from. A microwave from India would be roughly the same cost as one from Japan or America. If the costs were the same for the domestic and foreign version some people would prefer the domestic version, keeping that money from leaving the country which is a good thing for the domestic markets.

The problem comes when you go extreme like North Korea and you can't actually manage to do everything domestically and costs for foreign goods you require, even when some production is domestic, are so high that your currency is all but useless. You either pay and the domestic costs skyrocket or you only produce what you're able to domestically.

Realistically things probably won't change much but this covid crap where some countries are holding goods or goods aren't able to move freely could push some companies to move things around, a sort of rebalancing of assets globally.

It is redistribution of wealth. A cheap microwave is tariffed to be more expensive. That's money taken directly out of the pocket of the consumer and put into the pocket of the domestic manufacturer who would otherwise not exist. Reverse distribution, perhaps? Keeping domestic money in the domestic market also means keeping foreign money out. A US company with twice the operating costs cannot compete with companies elsewhere. Many American companies make their money overseas and that will come to an end. Trade worth billions will be lost. Tariffs aren't going to change that as those only protect the internal market.

Sure, redistributing from the customer to the manufacturer as opposed to from the customer to the manufacturer. Costs going up is not redistributing. It's costs going up. I actually think most people would end up being fine with it. I know too many people replacing smart devices every 6-12 months, new tv's, constantly buying new cars. It might teach them to consider how much they're spending and what they're really spending it on. Don't forget that to hit the goals some americans want(universal healthcare, UBI, no poor people, no oil etc...) all but requires that consumers money doesn't leave the country and we can export items at good margins as well. Or perhaps just dominating the world markets. I don't know, I haven't looked too deeply into because I don't expect things to change that much. What I'm saying is... I disagree with what you call redistribution of wealth when the options would still be available and they wouldn't be forcing you to buy anything.

[floobydust]

Politicians can't wave a magic wand and bring high-tech manufacturing back home. Fabs are planned many years in advance, they cost $2-$10B. Nevermind who is doing the packaging.

Remember the Foxconn Wisconsin LCD plant ?
"2017 to construct a $10 billion display panel plant and create up to 13,000 jobs in the state’s southeastern corner over the next 15 years." $4B in tax breaks and incentives.
Construction hasn't even started, negotiations died over what level of tech the plant is, and of course it's never going to materialize beyond the political ploy it is.
Foxconn's latest carrot is it's going to be a medical ventilator plant. Anything to lead on the morons 

[Rick Law]

Ideally, tariff is a way to buy time to re-balance.  Tariff balance out the lower "outsourced" cost to even out the higher domestic cost temporarily.  As technology and other factors lower the domestic cost, tariff will then be unnecessary.  But that is only the ideal case.  If domestic cost is never lowered enough, the added cost to the consumers is the permanent added cost we have to pay because we decided to have such specialties/industry domestically.

The question therefore is, do we really need this industry/specialty/technology to be a domestic one.  The answer to this question is also mixed - for example, programming.  One may need only some programming done locally (such as the software controlling national defense) but not all programming.  Then the question changes to, how much do we need to maintain a viable programming industry domestically.

Defining the questions is the easy part.  Deciding who should answer them is the hard part.  Politicians in general are far better at taking care of their own wallet than ours.  We need Politicians who is truly selfless and patriotic; selfless alone is hard to find, let alone selfless and patriotic.  On top of that, we need these rare politician to be knowledgeable with technology issues, economics, international affairs ... ...  So pretty much, it is whichever politician who is around at the time, and chances are, they don't know enough in the subject matter necessary for the decisions at hand.

There is no perfect answer that everyone will like.  There are only answers that most of us would dislike less over other answers.

[maginnovision]

There really is no right answer. You just do what works until it doesn't or someone happens to have a better way and is able to make it happen. The way the government is set up it's sometimes amazing anything gets done.

[cdev]

Small scale manufacturing of unique niche products is a very interesting, positive new aspect of electronics that creates very useful skills.