Hi Lars,

If we accept your premise, i.e. why invest in the US since you can't export, then why should people invest in, say, the auto industry, or the energy sector, or aircraft manufacturing? Trumpeter/Red Banner makes old kits. Revell/Monogram makes old kits. Airfix makes old kits. Tamiya makes old kits. Hasegawa makes old kits. I can go on. Just because they're old doesn't mean there's a demand for them.

So there aren't any "significant" plastic model manufacturers in the US. Have you ever asked why that is? Is it because of low demand? It is because of changing demographics? Or, is it because of changes in the economics of scale models, and that a combination of oppressive regulations and restrictive trade barriers, coupled with exploited cheap labor, made production uneconomical in the US? Could tariffs actually create a level playing field for a new US manufacturer?

So, I'll posit a question for you, and let's see if it can be answered. Why is it a bad for the US to impose tariffs that are equivalent to any other country's tariffs, but it isn't bad for others countries to impose tariffs on US, or other countries, products? As I've already pointed out, the Chinese impose massive tariffs on imported plastic models (regardless of the originating country), but nobody really seems to care that this occurs. In fact, it seems as if it's excused. Thirty years ago, the same people saying today what the US is doing is somehow a moral equivalent of starting a Great Depression, were saying back then this is the exact policy that needed to be implemented. What changed?

Jon