According to Trump and his sycophants this was all part of the plan. They never intended to stick with those tariffs. They were only there to force countries to negotiate.
Nah! I think he is having a Liz Truss moment! China is now selling its US treasuries, so the 10-yr bond market is heading towards 5% to attract buyers! That will make the US government debt problem far worse! That's very similar to what the markets did to the lettuce!
He cannot impose a 120% tariff on Chinese goods because Midwest SMEs and even larger fabs have to use Chinese components.
Take the small-scale sawmill market. The two market leaders are Woodmizer and Woodland Mills -
Woodmizer: All-American, salt-of-the-earth sawmills. But bearings, wheels, and electric motors (and countless other bits and pieces) all from China. So what happens when tariffs make those parts double in price or impossible to get? The answer: No sawmills. No jobs. No customers. No rural independence.
Woodland Mills (Canada): Entire product line made in China, sold mainly to American homesteaders. Tariffs mean the price of a small sawmill — once $4,000 or $5,000 — jumps by thousands overnight. The “back to the land” dream becomes unaffordable. Guess who gets hit hardest? Small-town builders, rural communities, DIY folks —
Trump’s own base!
Fabs and electronics: Even fabs that
make their own boards don’t smelt their own copper, bake their own PCBs, or machine every bracket. The supply chain for a single $300 controller box can include a dozen countries. Break one link, and it’s game over.
Tariffs at this level don’t encourage "reshoring" — they just crush small to medium manufacturers who
don’t have the margins or scale to relocate supply chains overnight. The big guys can (maybe) but Mom-and-Pop engineering outfits across the Midwest? Not a chance.
And it’s not just a temporary disruption — it becomes structural. It hollows out the domestic manufacturing base by forcing shutdowns, killing competitiveness, and raising costs for consumers.
Then we come to electronic components - ouch! (Hint - try building a car, or indeed anything, without them!)
While the U.S. still has several high-quality manufacturers of electronic components—Vishay, Bourns, AVX, and others—they do not have the production volume to fully replace the flood of cheap, high-volume parts that come in from China, Taiwan, South Korea, and other parts of Asia.
Most of these U.S. firms focus on specialty components for aerospace, defense, and medical applications, i.e. high-reliability and high-spec parts for niche markets. They are not built for mass-scale consumer electronics production at the volume and cost levels needed to replace Asian imports.
China has built entire cities and regional supply chains that revolve around component manufacturing (e.g. Shenzhen). These hubs produce billions of units per day of resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors, etc., they benefit from economies of scale and hyper-competitive pricing and are deeply integrated with assembly and testing facilities
You can't just "turn on" that kind of infrastructure in North America overnight. It would take years and billions in investment to even come close.
A US fab will not be able to order elsewhere right now - all they're getting to hear is "Get to the back of the queue!"
