Steven Greenhouse at The Guardian:
The president and his aides insist that higher tariffs on more than 100 countries – making goods imported from overseas more expensive – will spur domestic manufacturing. “The ‘Made in USA’ label is set to resume its global dominance under President Trump,” the White House spokesperson Kush Desai claimed recently. But few economists see that happening. Ann E Harrison, an economics professor and former dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, said the erratic, on-again-off-again rollout of Trump’s tariffs has already gone far to doom the president’s hopes of inspiring a huge wave of manufacturing investment. “For the policy to be successful, it has to be consistent over a long period,” she told the Guardian. “People need to believe it’s going to last. Some factories take five years to plan and build. You’re talking a long-term play. But Trump keeps changing his mind. Even over the last six months, we’ve had very little consistency.
“The other problem is that he’s old, and no one is sure he’s going to be around that long. These policies need to be consistent, and that’s not happening.”
Economists point to another question mark that is causing corporate executives to think twice about building factories in the US. In May, the US court of international trade ruled that Trump’s blanket tariffs are illegal – a decision that is under appeal.