This is an oversimplification, they can change incentives, and sometimes increase investment.
> lead to less activity
I do agree money will be divested from the US as they become more and more expensive to deal with (leading to "less activity"), and like I said this will rechannel the economy between the rest of the world. The trade-off is that the US becomes a manufacturer and exporter again (leading to "replaced activity"), some manufacturing capability is duplicated (leading to "more activity" though redundant/less productive), and the currency devalues.
But I'll admit I'm well out of my depth here, and I'm being booed off the stage. All the same, I don't think I'm wrong here. Protectionism isn't new, and lots of countries do it, it's just novel that the world's largest economy and bastion of free trade is doing it to such an extreme.
I don't think getting booed off the stage is a good way to end the discussion. The US is already a major exporter, of the goods we have an advantage at producing: simple foods, refined oil, advanced machines. Forcing farmers to plant avocados in potato fields isn't really going to help anybody, and neither is transferring oil refinery engineers to working on optimizing garmet factories. This will all take place against a backdrop of a poorer world with fewer dollars to spend on our goods, so it won't help our export sales either. Europe and China need to earn the dollars they buy our wheat with somehow - and without buying from them, I don't see how they'll do it.
It seems like an almost impossible task, especially if compromises aren't made on tariffs (I expect they will be). The US does have military leverage as the sole supplier of advanced weaponry to many countries, but I think the USD would need to massively downgrade for America to become an net-export market once again.
Once again, I'm well out of my depth to be able to speculate here. But ostensibly globalization hasn't worked for the working class of America, and that has led to the current state of affairs.
This is an oversimplification, they can change incentives, and sometimes increase investment.
> lead to less activity
I do agree money will be divested from the US as they become more and more expensive to deal with (leading to "less activity"), and like I said this will rechannel the economy between the rest of the world. The trade-off is that the US becomes a manufacturer and exporter again (leading to "replaced activity"), some manufacturing capability is duplicated (leading to "more activity" though redundant/less productive), and the currency devalues.
But I'll admit I'm well out of my depth here, and I'm being booed off the stage. All the same, I don't think I'm wrong here. Protectionism isn't new, and lots of countries do it, it's just novel that the world's largest economy and bastion of free trade is doing it to such an extreme.