No Stupid Questions

This is like how do you oppose bulldozing through the rainforest of Panama, while taking a hard line on everyone’s right to medical care. Yeah a machete and a scalpel are both knives but they’re not both the same

If you don’t support tariffs to bring back manufacturing jobs

I also don't support prohibition to improve crop output.

Tariffs don't create manufacturing jobs. Subsidies do.

This post is all over the place. Temporary indiscriminate tariffs on every trading partner won't bring manufacturing jobs to America. What does that have to do with helping Taiwan?

Nobody is "against tariffs" - they are used everywhere. We are against this ridiculous random implementation that makes no sense. Mr. Trump is not using them like a scalpel, to grow manufacturing here, I don't think he cares about that. He seems to think they are some way to bully other countries into doing what he wants.

US manufacturing output is far larger than the amount we import form China.

US manufacturing made about $2.5 Trillion in 2021: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/manufacturing-output

US imported from China about $0.5 Trillion in 2021 (all goods, not just manufacturing): https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

China could defeat most western countries without firing a single shot, just by cutting off their access to Chinese exports.

I disagree with this assumption!

We don't rely on China, we benefit from trading with them. Some of our goods go there, we get some of their goods. If a war breaks out and that trade stops; we have plenty of manufacturing capacity. And the point of having allies is that we would expect assistance in the event of a war, so we don't expect US manufacturing to even completely fill the gap (similarly our allies would expect the US to help if China were to target one of them... except that the current administration is alienating everyone but Russia...).

If you look another level down into what each country manufactures; the US makes a lot of military equipment, and imports a lot of consumer goods form China. Our military would not lose much capacity by a loss in trade with China, but US consumers would lose some of their consumption options. Guess which one matters when it comes to war?

I don't support tariffs as a tool to increase American manufacturing jobs because they don't accomplish that goal. This is not a political belief; it's derived from evidence. Many sources available, here's one: https://files.taxfoundation.org/20180627113002/Tax-Foundation-FF595-1.pdf

Using tariffs as a diplomatic tool is only effective in extreme cases. Diplomacy is difficult and so many things are interrelated. If a tariff threat makes China capitulate to our position on Taiwan, why not just use a tariff threat to bring China completely into line on every other position? Tariffs are blunt, and cause harm (economic and diplomatic) to broad areas of both countries unrelated to the specific issue. Topical example: sanctions on Russia did not change their position on Ukraine, even though those were far more severe than just a blanket X% tariff and were supported by many other countries (multi-lateral as opposed to uni-lateral). If we want to influence China's position on Taiwan, diplomacy is more effective than tariffs.