Trump says these tariffs are about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. We don't have workers that want to work in Manufacturing, or have the skills even if they wanted to. Back in 2009, Obama invited Steve Jobs to dinner and asked him if he'd be willing to bring jobs back to the US. Jobs told him Apple cannot. He said there aren't anywhere near the number of skilled engineers to build and manage factories to make Apple's stuff, and totally insufficient workers to work at those factories.
China has two advantages, both of which are a real problem for the US. It still has a very large pool of people willing and able to work in factories for not much money. And I've been to China. The work ethic there is very different than here. Chinese people as a whole are much more willing to put in long hours and work very diligently than US people. We're used to shorter hours with more pay. Chinese industry also has been ramping up very quickly its own robotics technology to build factories that need far less people than factories in other parts of the world, including the US. So, even as its population plummets, and the number of people needing factory jobs to survive also plummets, they're getting ready for this with robots and computers replacing factory workers. Oh, and the robots and computers they are using for their factories, guess where they're made? Yup, China. Doesn't look good.
China has two advantages, both of which are a real problem for the US. It still has a very large pool of people willing and able to work in factories for not much money. And I've been to China. The work ethic there is very different than here. Chinese people as a whole are much more willing to put in long hours and work very diligently than US people. We're used to shorter hours with more pay. Chinese industry also has been ramping up very quickly its own robotics technology to build factories that need far less people than factories in other parts of the world, including the US. So, even as its population plummets, and the number of people needing factory jobs to survive also plummets, they're getting ready for this with robots and computers replacing factory workers. Oh, and the robots and computers they are using for their factories, guess where they're made? Yup, China. Doesn't look good.