i It should not only being about buying things cheaper. If our companies knew that fact they would start making them here again.
Our companies do know that fact. Also, many of our companies are also trying to sell to the (much larger) global market, and not just the US market. Something rather important to consider.
We tried implementing a large protectionist tariff on tires a few years ago. (It didn't go very well.)
Quote:
The tariff also forced consumers to spend $1.1 billion more on tires than they otherwise would have — or roughly $900,000 per U.S. tire industry job created. And retaliatory tariffs imposed by the Chinese further hurt our economy. In early 2010, China’s Ministry of Commerce imposed tariffs ranging from 50.3 to 105.4 percent on American poultry imports, which “reduced exports by $1 billion as U.S. poultry firms experienced a 90 percent collapse in their exports of chicken parts to China,”
