As a Latin American, I can't help but buy the American Exceptionalism thesis, and seeing you guys in this situation humanizes you so much. The US has such a strong bureaucracy and high bar for competence that you generally lack the immune system required for detecting con artists and social climbers - at least in politics. Ask a random Argentinian or Brazilian what politicians Trump reminds them of, and you'll get a seemingly endless lists of genuinely stupid, borderline sociopath populists. Follow up with a question on what are the consequences of having arbitrary, ever-changing tariffs on most goods for the purpose of industrialization, and you'll get a laugh, then a sad face.
Import-substitution is bad for econ 101 reasons that most people who have an axe to grind against Dems would've been absolutely capable of grasping only a few years ago. Now, it seems so many are willing to turn off a part of their brains for this short-sighted wishful thinking. "Well, the official narrative is that we're doing this to get manufacturing back, so let's wait and see" is something most people would immediately perceive as bs if a Dem was sitting in the Oval Office. Seeing a politician campaign on a stupid platform, and then getting surprised he actually shoots himself in the foot spending political capital pursuing is also very Latin American.
The good part is that the soon-to-be-coming recession the federal government just fabricated out of thin air is fully self-inflicted, and therefore somewhat easy to fix. The bad part is you have (at least) 4 more years of this lunacy, so it might take a while.
Import-substitution is bad for econ 101 reasons that most people who have an axe to grind against Dems would've been absolutely capable of grasping only a few years ago. Now, it seems so many are willing to turn off a part of their brains for this short-sighted wishful thinking. "Well, the official narrative is that we're doing this to get manufacturing back, so let's wait and see" is something most people would immediately perceive as bs if a Dem was sitting in the Oval Office. Seeing a politician campaign on a stupid platform, and then getting surprised he actually shoots himself in the foot spending political capital pursuing is also very Latin American.
The good part is that the soon-to-be-coming recession the federal government just fabricated out of thin air is fully self-inflicted, and therefore somewhat easy to fix. The bad part is you have (at least) 4 more years of this lunacy, so it might take a while.