One of the many and sometimes contradictory ideas behind the president’s new tariff world order is reshoring production and jobs to the U.S. The American consumer would sponsor this transformation through higher prices, and in some cases the loss of their own jobs. Some things would be reshored, and others wouldn’t, but there’d be a price to pay either way. 

The chemical benzene illustrates what likely would and wouldn’t happen in a tariff-heavy economy. It’s a clear liquid made mostly out of carbon. Each molecule is like a little ring.  

“This is a building-block chemical,” said Al Greenwood, deputy news editor for ICIS, a market intelligence firm for the chemicals industry. “It’s used to make plastics for picnic dinnerware, plastic plates, engineering plastics used in automobiles, washing machines.” 

The U.S. is a plastics powerhouse. In fact, it’s the largest exporter of polyethylene plastic in the world.

“The U.S. consumes more benzene than it produces,” said Greenwood. So it imports some from South Korea, which had a 25% tariff Wednesday morning — now that’s temporarily down to 10%.

But if one goal of these moving tariffs is to reshore U.S. production, Greenwood said that’s not going to happen with benzene because of how it’s made.

“Benzene is a byproduct of refineries mostly, and nobody is going to expand a refinery just to make more benzene.”

You don’t build a chick hatchery just to get more eggshells. So, if you want more, you import it now with potentially higher tariffs

“Companies that buy this benzene, they’re gonna have to eat the cost,” said Greenwood.  

So tariffs aren’t likely to bring new benzene jobs. They’re just a new cost. The Tax Foundation estimates “Liberation Day” tariffs would cost U.S. consumers $1,500 per household this year. And there are other products that, like benzene, we’re gonna pay more for but probably won’t be moving here.

“We do not expect that industries will reshore if the labor calculation and the capital outlay at the beginning does not make sense,” said Erin McLaughlin, a senior economist at The Conference Board.

“Sneakers, textiles, things that don’t require advanced or smart manufacturing but are fairly labor-intensive and are fairly low-dollar,” she said. 

What could come back? Or, put otherwise, what jobs would consumers pay higher prices to bring back?

“Light industry, such as semiconductors, so a lot of automation and high-tech manufacturing,” said Christopher Tang, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management. 

He said pharmaceuticals can come back too. “Because the footprint is not high and also the physical labor content is also not high.”

But unlike with benzene, there’s a price we don’t easily see. Using blanket tariffs to resurrect jobs in one industry can cost jobs in another. That’s what happened last time.

“Industries pulling back on hiring,” said Kadee Russ, a professor of economics at the University of California, Davis. She crunched some numbers from when President Trump applied tariffs to steel and aluminum in his first administration.

“Like if you squinted, you could see maybe 1,000 new jobs in steel production, but there were about 75,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in firms where steel or aluminum were an input into production,” said Russ. 

The Tax Foundation estimates the original “Liberation Day” tariffs would have cost the economy the equivalent of 605,000 jobs.