To artificially inflate the cost of imported goods in an effort to reinvigorate the American manufacturing sector is to incorrectly assume that there is a manufacturing sector ready and capable of not only being reinvigorated, but reanimated.

The tariff facts and figures being thrown around in Washington, D.C., and in the media reek of a nostalgia campaign that seeks to fool us into thinking that if we simply make imported goods more expensive (and thus American-made goods more competitive), that we will magically return to the American Golden Age where anyone with a high school diploma could get a union job that paid enough for a nice house, a few kids and a summer vacation every year. This is an absurd lie.

The time for tariffs was 50 years ago, when American manufacturing infrastructure was still alive but demand was waning. Protectionist tariffs cannot and will not reanimate the corpse of American manufacturing. They will simply continue the same process by which the vast majority of the American people will pay more and get less while our elected leaders lie to our faces about the hows and whys. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, but a dangerous one in this instance.

Timothy Hart Jr.
Portland