The threat made by the US President-elect to impose a 35% tariff on the products of US companies that are manufactured offshore will almost certainly backfire.
Not only does America impose one of the highest corporation taxes in the world (see Comment), but the higher labour costs at home would temporarily reduce the competitiveness of US brands in the home market. Companies would thus expose themselves to competitor brands from countries such as China – that would simply dump products on the US market to win market share whilst they enjoyed a price advantage.
The few US companies that survived this onslaught would have had to automate heavily to compete. In doing so they would have shed most of their US labour force. Therefore it would not just be a case of getting back to “square one”, but be virtually “square zero” for the US economy. So much for Trumpanomics.