Well, I'm hoping the tariffs will increase the value of older tractors because the newer ones just significantly went up in price. (I have an
L285 I want to sell.) The problem I have with tariffs is a price increase is justifiable if you get a better product for more money, but if you get the SAME OLD product for more money, well, y'all gitt'n hosed, son.
There are some industries we don't want to bring back to the US. As an example, our city bought baseball caps with the city logo embroidered on each one.
Turns out NOBODY in the entire US of A makes baseball caps! They're made in third world sweatshops, under tents, by underage slave labor (well . . . ) who, if they are lucky, might make 30 cents an hour before it gets stolen from them. That's why baseball caps are cheap - very low labor costs - and baseball caps are NOT vital to our national security. If they were made here and we actually paid a living wage to the employees, baseball caps would be ten times the cost they are now.
We had the embroidery (the value added) done by a company in Miami, which to the best of my knowledge is still part of the USA. The caps were cheap, the embroidery wasn't. (And we've sold over 4,000 caps in a town of 2,000 people!)
I think the shotgun approach to tariffs - tariffs on EVERYTHING is wrong. There shouldn't be tariffs on stuff we don't want to make (baseball caps) because there are no US producers and we really don't want any. A company making low value baseball caps is a company which ISN'T making higher value aerospace or medical products - and those are the business we want to get to come back here and protect once they are here.
Can we make tractors here? Yes, we can, and we did. Should we? That's where it gets murky. Some parts are more effectively sourced from overseas. Some parts are best made here. What's the US-made content of "this" tractor? (This is the same discussion the car world is having.) Do tariffs apply to the entire vehicle or just the imported parts, and at varying amounts depending on where the parts are from?
The only real winners right now are the accountants who have to figure this out. Recall what Mark Twain said - "For every problem, there is a simple, fast answer - which is wrong." Across the board tariffs to "restore American manufacturing", whether it is tractors, automobiles or baseball caps isn't going the "fix" the problem, it will just make things more costly and thus reduce our standard of living.
If tractors cost more, the things that tractors "produce" such as food, land clearing, road construction, even mowing the back 40, are all going to cost more - there's a significant knock-on effect when the tools, the machinery of production - the producers of wealth - are hobbled.
Old Chinese curse - may you live in interesting times. We do.
Best Regards,
Mike/Florida
