"The real story of how Element Electronics started as a supporter of Trump's trade war but quickly became a victim is still a mystery, as even the company doesn't seem to know why the tariff plan was changed so radically."
It changed so fast because Trump changes his mind every day. You cannot rely on what he says. You cannot trust him. The lie checkers say he lies an average of 8 times a day. He can destroy your livelihood in one day as he did with this company. He also would not pay his worker companies and got sued which he didn't care - he just kept the cases in court and the companies couldn't keep paying lawyers, so a number of them went out of business. Others took Trump's offer of pennies on the dollar in order to stop paying their lawyers. He is "red tide" to any one who does business with him and that includes every citizen of this country now that he is the boss.
The problem with government interventionism is that it becomes a self-feeding monster, constantly intervening to fix problems it created in the first place. Unlike what is claimed by Progressives or the Buchanan populist wing, you can't legislate fairness, every attempt has the exact opposite.
The other elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss is that a trade imbalance is a natural result of wealth and growth. We are a wealthy nation so it is normal that we will consume more than we produce and what we produce will be more higher value items versus items with not enough margins to make it equitable to manufacture versus purchase from those less wealthy. Take it from a macro to a micro level. Someone is wealthy will always buy more than someone who isn't. While someone who isn't wealthy can find far more value in producing lower cost items to sell to those who are. You won't find (usually, there are always exceptions) someone who is wealthy working on the local assembly line, but he will be purchasing the products made there or somewhere down that supply chain.
This is a mess we got ourselves into long before 'free trade' agreements, instead, in the 60s and 70s when the government tried to put in protections in place to protect union employment. Instead of innovating to keep up with foreign producers (a good example is Japan's steel and auto industries), unions lobbied the government to block or tax their imports. They kicked and screamed against innovation because it would take fewer people on their rolls to make a product. If they let the market play out, they would have innovated and still been competitive. Some may have lost their jobs, but they would have been created elsewhere.
The government interventionism cycle.
