Good stuff Dtrain,
A bit of trivia, in 2023 the US exported $1.03T in services and imported $0.78T in services. While not subject to tariffs per say, they (our exports) do get hit with various barriers that per the US Trade Representative office impose "severe" limits on what we can export on that front. So that kind of gets back to the "fairness" issue. The world loves our money flowing to them but get persnickety when theirs flows to us.
Even though I grew up at the lowest rung of the middle class I've done fairly well, was able to retire at 57 (60 now) and while probably not as wealthy as the typical participant here, I'm in solid shape, and am high enough up the socioeconomic scale that turbulence on Wall Street affects me noticeably (without coming close to threatening viability). and as a "have" I do have a motivation to preserve the status quo. "Works for me." But in that I was dismissive of the fact that people younger than me didn't have it quite so easy, and it gets more difficult they younger the cohort are. So I now have more sympathy than I did, and I'm more attuned to how destabilizing steep socioeconomic gradients can be. That makes me no longer as willing to say everything is fine going forward.
It's true the US is wealthy by worldwide standards and even our middle and lower classes are better off by the top level numbers than they were in the past. I'm not at a point where I feel that imbalanced trade barriers (goods or services) is the price the poor should pay. I don't see a boosted manufacturing sector threatening the service economy. I think the blue collar demographic having more money and opportunity would boost the service sector.
Looking at it nationally we seem to have two major issues: a debt we seem on the brink of losing track of, and strategic vulnerabilities that if they are manifested threaten the entire economy. Generally I'd say we'd want to be capable of keeping our infrastructure intact (power/energy, transportation, communication, healthcare, ???) and need both capability and capacity to maintain of even rebuild them. So I tend to see the difference between using something like tariffs on a fairness principle, as a way to broaden opportunities for the lower economic groups, or to protect strategic interests, as distinctions without a difference. I personally see the strategic need as the most urgent and critical, and the other two as consequences of it that in some respects make it a win-win, though probably not for me as some of the multinationals in my portfolio might make me less money for a while. That strategic vulnerability is the one I cant see a way around without using some form trade barriers so that all the types of business that feeds into it remain viable and overseas competition can't dump artificially cheap alternatives into our market to destroy them. I suppose the other option would be to put the government in charge of all those feeder industries, and use taxpayer subsidies to make them competitive, or simply have the taxpayer eat the cost of making things that can't be sold, and trust that the government will make things that work if they are ever needed.
My native libertarian "free trade" ideal has begun to feel a little Pollyanna-ish over the last 5 years. And I'm gradually coming around to thinking that if trade can't be free in both directions, then it should at least be as fair as we can make it in both directions, and if necessary even make strategic carve outs for the most critical industries to national security writ large.
When you get to the debt it's more a matter of do we tell everyone to tighten their belts, or do we do what we can to stack the deck more in our favor to try to outgrow it (that would include domiciling as much of any sort of business here as we can). I don't see either one working because of politics, but that's sort of a different discussion.
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