[HN Gopher] US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20...
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US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
Author : belter
Score : 1701 points
Date : 2025-04-02 20:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| dralley wrote:
| 25% on South Korea, 32% on Taiwan, 36% on Thailand, 46% on
| Vietnam
|
| What a massive and moronic blow to our soft power.
| TomHenderson3 wrote:
| It's not just soft power. It is also economic power. Also, note
| that there is a baseline 10% on all countries.
| bigyabai wrote:
| America's leading supply chains just went up in smoke. The
| fallout is going to be pretty funny from an international POV,
| methinks.
| wozer wrote:
| Might cause a global recession, though. And that might be
| less funny.
| ldng wrote:
| Really curious on how it will blow-back on Americans. Because,
| make no mistakes, _it will_.
| cmurf wrote:
| The cost to move these industries to the U.S. exceeds the
| cost of these tariffs. The market will pass the cost of what
| are import taxes to the American consumer, resulting in
| inflation.
|
| True, the shareholders will take a pay cut too, because
| something less than 100% of American consumers will just suck
| it up without changing their behavior. But in aggregate, we
| will all save less.
|
| If inflation takes off again, maybe eventually there's some
| monestizing of debt. But in less than 4 years these tariffs
| will go away, which is why companies won't spent billions of
| dollars investing in state side manufacturing that'll take
| maybe 5 years to plan and build. Therefore I'm not sold on
| the montizing debt motivation yet.
| tnt128 wrote:
| Why in 4 years they will go away? Is that assuming the new
| administration will reverse course? It's my understanding
| that generally country don't lower tariffs voluntarily.
| They are usually bargaining chips.
| sunflowerfly wrote:
| We have tried this before about 100 years ago. Supply
| chains and economies were not nearly as interconnected as
| they are now. Read the history of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff
| Act.
| cmurf wrote:
| Tariffs may not even last 4 months. Trump demanded Powell
| reduce interest rates, the FRB declined. The might be
| Trump's way of forcing the Fed to reduce interest rates,
| by inducing a recession with massive inflation. And then
| Trump takes the tariffs away once the Fed gives him what
| he wants.
|
| FRB won't reduce interest rates if there's inflation
| alone. They'd only reduce interest rates if the economy
| also slows down into recession territory.
|
| That's the short term view.
|
| In the long term view, they are the biggest tax increase
| in the history of the country, therefore they are
| potentially the biggest tax decrease in the history of
| the country. Political fodder, even for a corpse.
| floxy wrote:
| >Tariffs may not even last 4 months.
|
| (c) Should any trading partner take significant steps to
| remedy non-reciprocal trade arrangements and align
| sufficiently with the United States on economic and
| national security matters, I may further modify the HTSUS
| to decrease or limit in scope the duties imposed under
| this order.
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/regu...
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| Written as if he was a king.
|
| "I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. Bow and
| appease me".
| atoav wrote:
| Yeah but we Europeans told you for decades that your
| presidency is dangerously overpowered. Guess some things
| you have to find out yourself.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| 100% I have been raving about this for as long as I
| remember. Most folk nod, but say "it could never happen
| here".
| tialaramex wrote:
| Even the Americans, the State Department has (had?)
| people whose job is to help with nation building and
| they'd learned that if you copy-paste the US model you're
| basically just setting up a dictatorship in advance, the
| "President" will seize power, whoops.
|
| It's impressive they got to forty odd Presidents with
| only one civil war so far, but it's just luck and it
| didn't last.
| flubert wrote:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Tom+Wolfe+%22dark+night%22&t=ff
| ab&...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It's my understanding that generally country don't
| lower tariffs voluntarily. They are usually bargaining
| chips.
|
| Tariffs are a tax. Tax on us, the people buying goods.
|
| It's a massive tax increase. People are slowly waking up
| to that fact.
|
| Rolling back the tariffs is giving everyone a tax cut.
| Well, tax cut back to baseline of what everyone expected.
|
| As people realize that _they_ are the ones paying the
| tariffs, this is going to be very unpopular.
| simne wrote:
| It depends.. For some goods possible to just immediately
| raise prices, for others, business will try to compensate
| from another source.
|
| As example, Daimler stated, they will cut cheapest models
| from export to US, so some segment will got less concurrent
| market, and probably prices will raise.
|
| Probably, this is because Daimler have much higher profits on
| expensive models, so they could just lower profits on them.
| Other variant, also possible, expensive niches are more
| tolerant to price raise.
|
| For small countries, tariff raise nearly guarantee prices
| rise, but US is big country, things are not so simple.
| atoav wrote:
| You mean there _might_ be some niche product that:
|
| 1. has no US parts in the supply chain
|
| 2. has a importer that is willing to sacrifice itself for
| the greater good
|
| A faint drop of hope in an intergalactic ocean of despair.
| simne wrote:
| You are just asking things not matter. So you are not
| looking for truth but you are looking for create more
| despair.
|
| Be calm, ask right questions and you will got truth.
| belter wrote:
| Effective total tariffs on China will be 54% effective 9 April.
| No way US does not go into recession...
|
| And wait for the response from the trading partners...
| fakeironman2 wrote:
| Correction: average tariffs on China prior to today was 42%
| https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-
| trad.... This means after today, average tariffs on China
| will be 76%.
|
| China is already in a Great Depression, and this tariff hike
| guarantees China to be in 30+ years of economic depression.
| belter wrote:
| Between the US and China, I would be putting my money in
| China, who by the way, leads in AI.
|
| "I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America." -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-
| chi...
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Don't worry, acoording to Trump this will generate billions and
| billions of dollars and America will be rich as it never has
| been before. /s
| belter wrote:
| Yeah, billions and billions: https://youtu.be/u_aLESDql1U
| xp84 wrote:
| The more I think about Trumpian strategies the more I suspect
| that he got some friends together (or they came to him) and
| decided they'll short everything, then he'll do this for a
| while. He and those friends would be able to 'generate
| billions' that way, by _legal_ insider trading (since we
| learned that anything he does "in an official capacity" is
| legal and he can pardon anyone who ever got caught).
|
| Last term he did some tax on bauxite that had a similar
| effect of costing billions to a whole industry that processes
| or buys aluminum, but one of the few bauxite mines in the US,
| run by a Trump ally of some kind, made bank.
| mindslight wrote:
| Can't hear you! USA. USA. USA.
|
| Politically it's going to be just like how most everyone fell
| into line fervently supporting the Iraq War when the corpo
| media told them to. Then after the unavoidable truth finally
| seeped in, equivocation and rationalization from " _I didn 't
| really support it_" to " _we were misled_ ". With _a lot_ more
| visible economic pain, of course.
|
| Then that anger from having been "tricked" will be used as raw
| energy to drive the next con, and so forth. A broken clock is
| at least right twice a day, but these low information voters
| will sabotage themselves _every single time_.
| runarberg wrote:
| > but these low information voters will sabotage themselves
| every single time.
|
| It is generally not cool to blame the voters. There was a ton
| of misinformation preceding the Iraq war as you point out,
| but even then there was a massive popular opposition to it.
| Hundreds of thousands protested against the war before the
| invasion in New York and Washington DC. Some polls showed
| that 5% of all Americans participated in a rally or a protest
| in the weeks leading up to and following the invasion. And
| despite that popular opposition, among politicians there was
| a bipartisan support and just a handful of MPs opposed to it.
| Meaning the public was never really given a choice. In short,
| the Iraq war was the fault of the politicians and the
| politicians alone, the voters came nowhere near it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
| mindslight wrote:
| Yes, I went to a few of those protests. Despite the
| popularity of opposition, there were still plenty of people
| arguing in support of attacking Iraq. In fact I'd say that
| _most_ people were in support of it. "They hate us for our
| freedom", "fight them over there instead of here", and
| general reflexive arguments supplicating to power. That's
| the dynamic I'm talking about.
|
| Whether invading Iraq would have still happened without
| that popular support is besides the point. The point is
| there was full-throated support from many people, who would
| reflexively reject dissent while parroting corpo media
| talking points, and who then only came to see what a poor
| idea it had been over time.
| swat535 wrote:
| What's the actual strategy behind the current US administration
| slapping tariffs on everything? Feels like they're handing them
| out like Halloween candy. Is there a long game here, or is it
| just managed chaos and alienating trade partners for short term
| optics?
| ironyman wrote:
| People like Navarro believes a non-trivial amount of
| manufacturing can be coaxed back to the US from China and
| Vietnam.
| sitkack wrote:
| Only if we tank our currency and create a huge population
| of people willing to work for a buck oh five.
| cmurf wrote:
| Kill people's savings, might happen. Discretionary
| spending is about to get clobbered. Restaurants may be at
| the top of that list, and travel.
|
| I rather doubt Walmart is going to increase the price of
| only Chinese made goods 25%. I think everything goes up
| 25% and they pocket the margin as long as they can get
| away with it.
| astrange wrote:
| > Kill people's savings, might happen.
|
| It doesn't work because it's basically illegal to be poor
| in America, or rather to live like a poor person in a
| developing country. Because of theories about
| gentrification and such we just banned everything like
| SROs, company dorms, etc.
|
| It worked for a little while in the 2000s because earlier
| flight from cities had left a lot of empty housing open
| to gentrify, but none of that is left.
|
| There's a few classes of people left like supercommuters
| and people who live in RVs in the Amazon warehouse
| parking lot, but not going to run a big factory like
| that.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You clearly have never lived in Louisiana.
| int_19h wrote:
| That's a sacrifice they are willing others to make.
| maxglute wrote:
| https://www.ft.com/content/fba87dd3-514a-41c2-b2b9-ea597ffbd.
| ..
|
| https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese.
| ..
|
| The TLDR is Miran sold to Trump US can Plaza Accord everyone,
| devalue USD to reindustrialize US, draw down US
| debt/commitments, keep exorbitant privelege... all by
| slapping tariffs (Trump's fav hammer) to scare countries into
| signing (converting) existing US commitments to "century
| bonds" in US favour while tying them to US orbit for
| foreseeable future. Is US strong enough to coerce others to
| sign on? IMO doesn't matter, this seems like plan
| specifically tailered to Trump preferences and ego, so as
| long as Trump thinks so Miran gets the job.
|
| E: there is logic to the plan, logic that appeals to Trump ->
| US strength and monetary manipulation skills can force others
| to fall in line. And TBH countries have fallen in line in the
| past.
| danny_codes wrote:
| Yeah that's not going to work. America is about to find out
| that the era of bully pulpit is over. Why work with a
| recalcitrant and quite frankly obnoxious US when you can
| cut bilateral EU/Asian deals?
| thiht wrote:
| Can we please stop acting like Trump and MAGA behave
| rationally?
| mcfunley wrote:
| Category error to think there's a strategy. Trump doesn't
| even know what a tariff is. People try to project a strategy
| because it's probably too discomfiting to believe that the
| greatest superpower the world has ever known elected a
| complete nimrod king.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm on the side of free trade and dont think there is a
| single policy. The strongest arguments I can think of are:
|
| 1) raise tax revenue in a way that partially falls on foreign
| nationals
|
| 2) reduce trade deficits and foreign purchasing of
| treasuries.
|
| 3) Increase relative power if other economies are damaged
| more than the US. There are situations where zero and
| negative sum strategies are optimal, like war, where it is
| better to have a larger % of a smaller overall pie.
|
| 4) stimulate demand for us labor
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _2) reduce trade deficits and foreign purchasing of
| treasuries_
|
| None of the GOP budgets reduce the deficit. Trump's blew
| them out even further.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im talking about trade deficits, not budget deficits. Im
| not convinced trade deficits are a bad thing to begin
| with, but that is a whole sperate can of worms.
|
| My understanding is that yes, the national debt is still
| increasing, although the administration is counting on
| tariff funds to supplement revenue. Would you agree?
| danny_codes wrote:
| And they are trying to push through a massive tax cut.
| So.. yeah unclear what the goals are here
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the national debt is still increasing, although the
| administration is counting on tariff funds to supplement
| revenue_
|
| Not the debt, the deficit. The debt is the card balance.
| The deficit are new swipes. Nothing in the current policy
| package is about deficit (let alone debt) reduction.
|
| (Valid on trade deficits. I guess we can run trade
| surpluses if we give up dollar hegemony. That, of course,
| means no more deficits.)
| mahogany wrote:
| > My understanding is that yes, the national debt is
| still increasing, although the administration is counting
| on tariff funds to supplement revenue. Would you agree?
|
| Let me see if I am following. The tariffs are ostensibly
| about spurring domestic industry so that American
| companies can flourish and we don't have to pay tariffs
| on imports of foreign goods in the long term. Is that
| right? If so, then long term, aren't we hoping that the
| "tariff funds" are small? But they are simultaneously
| supposed to supplement revenue to pay down debt too?
| xfp wrote:
| Trump is using century-old misinformation about tariffs to
| raise tax revenue to pay for tax cuts on the wealthy. In
| reality, it's an added tax on all spending that accelerates
| inflation.
|
| Tariffs are theoretically supposed to encourage domestic
| production, but rely on the false premise that all raw and
| intermediate materials can be sourced domestically at a cost
| below the import price. That has generally proven to not work
| unless tariffs are in the hundreds of percent. But at that
| level, import taxes tend to poison entire sectors due to
| supply lag instead of drive domestic economies.
| jonifico wrote:
| Interesting, do you have a source to get more information
| about this?
| xfp wrote:
| It's a bit difficult to nail down direct citations for
| what is basic knowledge of how tariffs work in reality.
| It's covered in AP/college macroecon and U.S. history
| classes.
|
| Wikipedia's articles on Smoot-Hawley and the Tariff of
| Abominations both have sections on their effects.
|
| In short, we'll see a brief rise in the domestic economy,
| then a sharp recession. One of the reasons SE Asia,
| BRICS, and the EU have been so active to disconnect
| themselves from the U.S. is they don't want to get caught
| up in the U.S. economic failure like they did in the
| 1930s.
| wrvn wrote:
| This type of approach is called protectionism, the
| Wikipedia article is pretty good and goes into the
| implications of it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism
| floxy wrote:
| Here is what they say anyway:
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-
| pr...
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/regu...
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-
| pr...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| They claim that they are "reciprocal" tariffs, and their
| chart shows them at exactly half the tariffs they claim are
| imposed by the target or 10%, whichever is higher. But it is
| suspicious that the column on their infographic showing the
| foreign tariffs has fine print indicating that includes other
| non-tariff things that you can't easily calculated as a neat
| rate the way tariffs are. And, some people running the
| numbers have determined that the quoted foreign "tariff"
| amounts are consistently the US trade deficit in goods with
| the target country divided by that country's exports to the
| US, with a minimum of 10%.
|
| So, despite being labelled "tariffs", the actual basis for
| calculating the "reciprocal tariffs" _has nothing to do with
| tariffs_.
| defrost wrote:
| It's hard to have insight on what the US admin is thinking
| behind the public facing statements, however this _might_ be
| of interest:
|
| _Why Trump's tariffs are better than you think -- and much
| worse_
|
| subscribe! https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/03/06/donald-trump-
| tariffs-im...
|
| or read now, maybe subscribe later: https://archive.md/H46RG
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| A rebirth of mercantilism. Peter Navarro is a huge fan of it,
| and in his heterodox fever dreams, laments that most of the
| world abandoned it several centuries ago. In his mind, a net
| surplus of currency is every bit as important as having a
| strong military. People like Lighthizer have drunk the
| coloured sugar-water.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >25% on South Korea, 32% on Taiwan, 36% on Thailand, 46% on
| Vietnam
|
| Harley Davidson moved some of its production to Thailand in
| 2018 to avoid a 31% tariff the EU had on US manufactured
| motorcycles, announced in 2024 it was moving more production
| there, and prior to today had plans to sell the Thailand
| produced bikes back into the US, as the US had a 0% tariff on
| bikes. Not surprisingly Thailand has a 60% tariff on imported
| motorcycles.
|
| This tariff jumping is real. I guess we will see how it works
| out for the US.
| dralley wrote:
| Just think how many companies moved production from China to
| Vietnam to avoid China tariffs, and now tariffs on Vietnam
| are larger than on China.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| It's just going to be a game of whack-a-mole as production
| and dumping shift to the less taxed countries. In the end,
| manufacturing won't shift to the US while labor costs are
| too high for factory workers. And the only way to remedy
| that is tanking the currency.
| Server6 wrote:
| Tanking the currency is literally step 2 in their plan.
|
| https://www.nordea.com/en/news/mar-a-lago-accord-
| explained-a...
| h0l0cube wrote:
| It's obviously the only real end game to this policy.
| Asia needs to divest itself off US bonds, which China has
| been slowly doing the background of late. No matter how
| it plays out, it's looking like higher interest rates,
| inflation, and foreclosures for everyday citizens and
| SMEs are going to be on the cards for the US, and it's
| going to take something akin to religious faith for
| people to tolerate the hardship on the way to this
| promised renewed prosperity.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Note that the new 34% China tariffs are on top of the
| existing 20% blanket tariffs Trump has already imposed on
| China, so it's really 54%.
| https://x.com/EamonJavers/status/1907540655871521264
| dralley wrote:
| Bessent didn't sound too sure in that interview. Given
| how many members of the cabinet lie on camera flagrantly
| multiple times a week and how even the numbers on their
| little poster were total BS pulled from thin air, I'm not
| gonna give him benefit of the doubt.
| marsten wrote:
| This underscores the difficulty companies have trying to
| navigate through this. Even if Trump doesn't change his mind
| tomorrow, as he's liable to, he's only around for another
| four years and for most companies that's not enough time to
| justify a supply chain overhaul.
| belter wrote:
| The full list:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/trump-reciprocal-tariffs-cou...
|
| 10% tariffs on the Heard Island and McDonald Islands which are
| uninhabited, and can be reached only by sea, which from
| Australia takes two weeks by vessel. And also 10% on Svalbard
| and Jan Mayen which is also uninhabited. That will teach them
| not to ripoff the USA!
|
| Oh NO tariffs on Russia or Belarus. None.
| vidarh wrote:
| Both Svalbard and Jan Mayen are inhabited. Jan Mayen only by
| about 35 people, though. Svalbard has both Norwegian and
| Russian settlements, but of course entirely too small to have
| impact on US trade.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Svalbard imports a lot of snowmobiles though, given their
| population. From what I know a substantial fraction, if not
| most, are from Polaris so made in the US[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.polaris.com/en-us/snowmobiles/owner-
| resources/he...
| vidarh wrote:
| "A lot" is rather relative here given the total
| population is around 2.5k people.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| True but I think relative numbers are relevant in this
| context.
| prawn wrote:
| Those first two islands aren't even thought to have been
| visited by any human for many years!
| belter wrote:
| That makes the fact that they were able to rip off the USA
| in trade even more outrageous! :-)
| treetalker wrote:
| But can't you feel the liberation?
| generj wrote:
| I guess I didn't want to buy any new tech anyways.
|
| Thanks Tim Apple.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Can always vacation somewhere you can pickup gear and bring it
| back with you. Not customs advice.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| As long as it is less than $10000 in value. It is an
| interesting point though, if tourism outside the country will
| increase just for shopping.
| generj wrote:
| If you bring back goods worth more than $800 it has to be
| declared and a duty paid.
|
| Judging from the changes (currently paused) to the de minimus
| shipping rules (also formerly $800) I'd expect the threshold
| to be lowered substantially. Possibly arbitrarily while I'm
| on a trip and have already bought the goods.
|
| The risk being if detained by DHS for who knows how long is
| not worth saving $400 on a MacBook personally.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It is highly unlikely my iPhone or Macbook will be checked
| for newness when on my person, or the iPads in my kids'
| hands. I'll just time these purchases around trips to
| Mexico or Europe.
|
| Anything more powerful I will rent or colocate outside of
| the US in a rack somewhere, moving bits instead of atoms.
| In short, unless you spend _a lot_ on tech, or tech that
| isn 't portable, workarounds in some cases are available.
| Certainly, if you're trapped in the US (or you need goods
| that are impossible to import on your person), you're hosed
| and will be exposed to the tariff costs.
|
| I am allergic to kowtowing to stupidity.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| It was reported that they're getting rid of that as well.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| This is how a lot of people around the world live their
| lives. Dubai wisely provides this as a service to surrounding
| countries, to their great enrichment.
| generj wrote:
| It creates a lot of incentives for corruption though.
|
| It's not at all uncommon in Latina America from my
| understanding for wealthier people to fly up to Miami, buy
| a ton of iPhones for family and friends, then bribe the
| customs agents to look the other way.
| codedokode wrote:
| Well, US has a "beautiful ocean" around which makes this plan
| a little costly.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| ~19M people live on the US-Mexico border alone in the US
| [1]. I am not ignoring nor unsympathetic to those who
| cannot, for whatever reason, make a trip outside of the US
| happen, but surfacing it as an option for those who can.
| When you are trapped within a suboptimal system, you have
| to find ways to hack around it.
|
| [1] https://www.southernborder.org/border_lens_southern_bor
| der_r...
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Ah, so like good old times in the Eastern Bloc ;)
|
| My parents did certainly smuggle a fair bit on their
| trips. I'm so happy Americans can learn that experience
| too! :> (I don't. Why are you hitting yourself.)
| acdha wrote:
| When I lived in San Diego, tons of people would walk or
| drive across for better deals - teenagers would even take
| the trolley and walk over since their money went so much
| further. I've heard that this is also common in Washington
| and Maine.
|
| If the savings is enough, it's guaranteed that people are
| going to try this. San Diego claimed a 158% increase in egg
| seizures last month, there's no way you aren't going to
| have people try that with iPhones.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/nx-s1-5342554/eggs-border-
| sei...
| Marsymars wrote:
| In Washington/Maine it's typically Canadians shopping in
| the US - groceries are cheaper in the US unless the CAD
| is doing particularly poorly.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Matches the expectation analysts have had from December 2024 [0]
|
| "In the baseline scenario, we assume that the US will raise its
| effective WATR against Chinese goods by a total of 20 percentage
| points over 2025-27. We expect the effective tariff rate on China
| to rise by 5-10 percentage points in 2025, owing to the
| imposition of tariffs related to fentanyl smuggling disputes. Mr
| Trump will further phase in tariffs from late 2025 with a wider
| range of excuses and policy tools, eventually bringing the
| effective WATR facing Chinese exports to about 30% by 2027."
|
| [0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/the-impact-of-us-tariffs-on-china-
| thre...
| generj wrote:
| For China maybe, I doubt any serious analysts were expecting
| this high of tariffs on most other countries, like Mexico, the
| UK, and Canada.
|
| The methodology of counting non-price barriers on certain goods
| then applying it across the board on all goods as tariffs is
| bonkers. Doubtlessly they aren't including all the non-price
| tariffs the US imposes on other countries either.
|
| I'm extremely skeptical the EU has effective tariff rates of
| 40% on all US goods, and furthermore skeptical that if so the
| US doesn't have countervailing effective tariff rates at the
| same rate.
| fabian2k wrote:
| Are those in addition to existing tariffs?
|
| And there are a lot more countries in that list, South Korea and
| Taiwan are going to really hurt for electronics. And I assume
| Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and other countries will hurt for
| other good that are made cheaply there.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > And I assume Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and other
| countries will hurt for other good that are made cheaply there
|
| Vietnam and Bangladesh would hurt American consumers (clothes).
| Cambodia not really.
|
| Silver lining, Brazil and Colombia (edit: and the rest of Latin
| America) are kept at baseline, and Philippines is now the
| lowest tariff developing Asian economy.
|
| We'll probably see a significant amount of capital returning to
| Philippines (who saw de-industrialization when South Korea
| signed their FTA with Vietnam).
|
| > Are those in addition to existing tariffs?
|
| Yes (Edit: not sure now, I'm hearing some say they include the
| 2017 tariff regime of flat 10% - smh shows how this was just a
| political ploy that answers for such a critical question are
| mixed)
|
| (Edit 2: was right initially - thanks u/inverted_flag)
| fabian2k wrote:
| So 54% on China, and this might not be the end of it as
| countries will retaliate and Trump might increase them even
| further.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > as countries will retaliate
|
| Depends on the country. India is negotiating a Bilateral
| Trade Agreement by mid-2025, Vietnam has sent a trade
| delegation to DC to negotiate as we speak, and tariffs on
| Colombia, Brazil, Philippines, and Turkiye are the lowest
| for middle income countries.
|
| The harshest pain will be felt by Cambodia and Vietnam,
| because both are part of ASEAN like Philippines and share
| similar trade partners (Japan, SK), Bangladesh as they have
| an FTA and significant capital from India, and China as EU
| (looking at you Poland and Czechia), Turkiye, Japan, SK,
| and India are now cost competitive
|
| You'll be seeing more "Made in Philippines", "Made in
| Colombia" "Made in Turkiye", "Made in Brazil", and "Made in
| India" shirts, auto parts, and assembled electronics now.
|
| We might also see a return of Malaysia in the semiconductor
| industry, as they are now cheaper than Taiwan - great for
| whoever buys Intel Foundry Services (Penang reax only)
| tass wrote:
| As soon as Malaysia gets anywhere near a significant
| capacity of semiconductor manufacturing they'll also get
| increased tariffs. Or, the the tariffs will end and it
| will return to Taiwan.
|
| Stability is necessary for any big shifts to be worth
| taking.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > As soon as Malaysia gets anywhere near a significant
| capacity of semiconductor manufacturing
|
| You mean since 1971 when Intel opened their OSAT in
| Penang?
|
| Malaysia was THE hub for electronics manufacturing until
| 20 years ago when China became cheaper.
|
| In fact, it was the same businessmen in the Penang
| electronics industry who largely invested in China's
| electronics industry.
|
| Also, semiconductors are exempted so my whole thread is
| moot about that. Electronics manufacturing though will
| return (and already started due to most companies China+1
| strategy).
| oezi wrote:
| But will investors make any long term decision given the
| unreliability of the US administration? Who would invest
| in manufacturing in a country if the tariffs could be
| gone tomorrow again?
| alephnerd wrote:
| The examples I listed are countries where manufacturers
| ALREADY invested in capacity well before this happened.
|
| Supply chains have gotten way more resilient after Zero
| COVID in China and Vietnam caused a lot of supply chain
| craziness.
| yibg wrote:
| Seems unlikely, at least in the near term. These are
| LARGE amounts of good to be shifting, and they don't
| shift overnight. Plus, if the tariffs calculations are
| really based on trade imbalance, who's to say Columbia
| won't get slapped with more tariffs as soon as they start
| making and exporting more goods to the US. Pretty risky
| to be opening up a bunch of factories only to be tariffed
| to death right after.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > These are LARGE amounts of good to be shifting, and
| they don't shift overnight
|
| Hence I listed countries where manufacturing in those
| industries was significant until 10-15 years ago or where
| investment has largely moved beforehand.
| inverted_flag wrote:
| > Yes (Edit: not sure now, I'm hearing some say they include
| the 2017 tariff regime of flat 10% - smh shows how this was
| just a political ploy that answers for such a critical
| question are mixed)
|
| https://xcancel.com/EamonJavers/status/1907540655871521264#m
| alephnerd wrote:
| Complete tariff list -
| https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/3B0CC9EA63B82/media%2FGnjqy...
| belter wrote:
| What happened to Canada?
| ldng wrote:
| They responded with a middle finger plus a boycott and the
| message was received loud and clear ?
| fabian2k wrote:
| You obviously don't put tariffs on your own states /s
| busyant wrote:
| At the moment, the automotive tariffs still stand and go into
| effect ... tonight? tomorrow?
|
| Looks like they got cold feet on a blanket Canadian tariff.
|
| But the whole process is so chaotic and subject to mood
| swings that I expect more holes and carve-outs than a block
| of PDO emmentaler.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Canada already has a customized tariff.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| An interesting observation is that the tariffs are half of what
| the other country is charging. Does that mean this was a common
| strategy across the board? Or was strategic importance of goods
| considered?
| generj wrote:
| There's a 0% chance other countries were charging tariffs
| across the board on US goods at the rates claimed.
|
| The EU simply doesn't charge 40% rates on the bulk of US
| goods. Let alone the random countries that all somehow have
| 10% tariff rates in the US.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| >the tariffs are half of what the other country is charging
|
| And that figure is questionable. Read "including currency
| manipulation and trade barriers". This is the same presidency
| that believes the "EU was made to screw USA over", and
| accused them, Japan and practically every other major economy
| of manipulating _their own_ currency to harm US. It 's
| improbable that rate has any basis in reality, but surely a
| detailed breakdown of how they came to that number will be
| published.. not.
| astrange wrote:
| > And that figure is questionable.
|
| It's made up. It's based on our trade deficit with them,
| which has absolutely nothing to do with tariffs.
| District5524 wrote:
| Exactly. Calculation for actual figures is based on trade
| deficit, everything else is just a fat lie. "White House
| officials said its levies were reciprocal to countries,
| such as China, which it said charge higher tariffs on US
| goods, impose "non-tariff" barriers to US trade or have
| otherwise acted in ways the government feels undermine
| American economic goals" (from BBC) Non-tariff barrier
| usually means regulation US exporters don't like,
| including data protection, EU not wanting to buy junk
| food from the US, most of which apply to EU companies the
| same way anyway... There is no point in asking for a
| reduction of these tariffs, and will probably never
| happen.
| qwertox wrote:
| It's even wild to consider that countries like Ecuador are
| taking advantage of the US. An absolutely absurd idea.
| District5524 wrote:
| Let's not forget the biggest of EVILs, Lesotho, with its
| 50% tariff. Mr Trump has just noticed that they have
| cornered the US economy. (A strange coincidence, Trump has
| recently said nobody has ever heard of Lesotho being a
| country...)
| Hikikomori wrote:
| The numbers are not accurate.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yeah, no, those numbers in the left column are not correct.
| astrange wrote:
| The list of countries lists Taiwan separately from China,
| but also lists Heard Island separately from Australia.
|
| Also includes British Indian Ocean Territory. The only
| people who live there are on a US military base on Diego
| Garcia.
| belter wrote:
| Just leaving this here from 2023...
|
| "In America, estimates say that Chinese suppliers make up 70-80
| percent of Walmart's merchandise" -
| https://retailwire.com/discussion/walmarts-open-call-continu...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Walmart has been trying to strong arm China into eating the
| cost of tariffs.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-02/walmart-k...
| | https://archive.today/Q5CNc
| paxys wrote:
| "Hey China, pay the tariffs or we'll go to another country."
|
| "You mean the countries with tariffs even higher than ours?
| Best of luck."
| morkalork wrote:
| Walmart is a drain on communities anyways, aren't their
| employees on food stamps at some ridiculously high rate?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It's not like mom and pop stores are equipped to source
| things locally any better than Walmart. They would also be
| relying on the same imports from abroad, but would not have
| the bargaining power that Walmart has.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| I'd rather buy from Walmart than Amazon. At least Walmart
| pays local taxes and has some level of quality assurance on
| their merchandise.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I'm assuming you mean you prefer buying local vs online
| because Walmart's online marketplace has the same level of
| qa as Amazon it seems.
| astrange wrote:
| > aren't their employees on food stamps at some ridiculously
| high rate?
|
| Welfare like food stamps is a subsidy /against/ Walmart, not
| for it. You are supporting the employees by paying for their
| food, which means they can negotiate for higher wages, which
| means Walmart pays them more.
|
| An example of the other kind would be literal wage subsidies,
| which are sometimes paid so companies will hire mentally
| disabled people.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| what is stopping everybody from exporting to the one guy that
| knuckles under completely and circumvent the circus?
| vFunct wrote:
| Trump really thinks America is in the 1950's. He thinks people
| want to work at factories doing manual labor. He doesn't
| understand that we DON'T want to work at factories. Americans
| like our plush corporate office jobs building intellectual
| property. We aren't oxen doing physical labor.
|
| And we designed it that way. We pay thousands of dollars to each
| citizen in our public schools to teach them calculus, literature,
| world history, and science, so that they DON'T work at factories
| doing manual labor like we were oxen. We're supposed to be doing
| more valuable jobs in intellectual property and services.
|
| It's going to be hard lesson to be learned by Trump and his
| working class supporters when the inflation hits them because our
| economy doesn't have any workers that want to work at factories,
| but it'll have to be a lesson they learn the hard way.
|
| The correct economy is to let people do labor they're best at. If
| a foreigner can make a shirt cheaper than an American can, LET
| THEM. Our economy is already taken by the people that design the
| shirts.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| > It's going to be hard lesson to be learned by Trump and his
| working class supporters
|
| They won't learn any lessons.
|
| The impacts will be felt years from now, when the Democrat are
| in power, and... you know the rest.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Well, the unfortunate beauty of touching the incredibly hot
| stove of Tariffs is that the pain is immediate and obvious.
| So assuming that these tariffs go through as is, we'll
| immediately launch into one of the worst recessions we've
| seen with price increases unlike anything Americans are used
| to.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| A tariff of some +x% doesn't cause a +x% increase in retail
| prices. The ratio is somewhere between 2:1 and 10:1 for
| most products, depending on the markup, local value add,
| taxes, etc...
|
| The real damage is business uncertainty, inefficient
| capital allocation, etc... all of which takes years to
| fully impact the economy.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| This is only true in the ordinary situation of using
| tariffs. Such as targeting specific markets or exports in
| order to bolster the local market.
|
| Tariffs on literally everything have an immediate
| outsized impact as businesses need to rapidly readjust
| and renegotiate prices on everything. Not only that but
| there's the second order effects too, such as Trump's
| interactions with Canada resulting in destroying tourist
| and seasonal travel from up north to the border states.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Uncertainty will be priced into the price of things
| moving forward, I've already started adding 10-15% to my
| BoM over today's prices to account for the possibility of
| future price increases and I'm definitely not the only
| one.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| These tariffs are a disaster, but this is is quite a neoliberal
| take. So if we aren't the oxen, who is? Vietnam? And that's
| morally acceptable?
| vFunct wrote:
| Yes. They - or other poor countries - are. And it's their
| responsibility to grow their citizenry in a neoliberal world.
| Economics doesn't care about liberal concern tools.
|
| China eliminated poverty through neoliberalism. The rest of
| the world can, too. This is the benefit of neoliberalism: it
| lifts the world out of poverty through free trade and self-
| selected efficiency.
| gtsop wrote:
| Because we all know there is no amount of factory manual
| labour going on in China.
|
| Did you even think for a second before writting this?
| vFunct wrote:
| Oh you prefer China went back to Mao's Cultural
| Revolution agrarian economy from the 60's before
| neoliberalism?
|
| Did YOU think for a second about what you wrote?
| gtsop wrote:
| You said america worked hard to get rid of manual factory
| jobs and then you gave the example of China as a state
| that followed their neoliberal example. But China is the
| Earths factory and they have hundreds of millions doing
| manual factory work. You contradicted your own arguments.
| Not sure what you are asking me right now.
| vFunct wrote:
| I specifically said China eliminated poverty, not factory
| jobs. Not sure where you got that from.
|
| The neoliberal trajectory is a gradual growth from
| agrarian economy to a services/IP economy. Factories are
| a step along that way.
| gtsop wrote:
| > Americans like our plush corporate office jobs building
| intellectual property. We aren't oxen doing physical
| labor.
|
| > So if we aren't the oxen, who is? Vietnam? And that's
| morally acceptable?
|
| > Yes. They - or other poor countries - are. And it's
| their responsibility to grow their citizenry in a
| neoliberal world.
|
| Here you clearly state that the way for vietnam to stop
| being oxens is by growing in a neoloberal world. Then:
|
| > China eliminated poverty through neoliberalism. The
| rest of the world can, too. This is the benefit of
| neoliberalism
|
| You praise China for growing this neoliberal world, but
| you forgot that Chineese people are still oxens.
| vFunct wrote:
| Oh I did not know the Chinese economy stopped growing?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This is an example of moving the goalposts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts
|
| It's impossible to engage meaningfully with you if you're
| going to rely on argumentative fallacies and ignoring
| everything that is said to you.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Capitalism needs justification. Neoliberalism is an awful
| policy. Do I need to school you on the history of US
| foreign intervention?
| vFunct wrote:
| You think eliminating poverty is an awful policy?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| What you just did is called a straw man.
|
| Besides, many countries are not poor by accident.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_i
| n_r...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_th
| e_U...
| vFunct wrote:
| So, none of that matters to what I said, since I
| specifically talked about eliminating poverty. That's
| what a "straw man" argument actually is, when you decide
| to argue against something else entirely, like foreign
| intervention, instead of poverty.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Now you're getting it. Adamantly trying to focus on
| "eliminating poverty", when my original comment was about
| the morality of neoliberalism, is a straw man argument.
| I'm glad that after enough contemplation you have come to
| understand this.
|
| So, if you'd like to address my original comment, I'm all
| ears, otherwise this discussion is a complete waste of
| time. Before you do that, though, it would be prudent to
| learn about what neoliberalism actually is, and why
| foreign intervention is directly related to it and your
| original premise. Once you do that, we'll be able to have
| a fruitful discussion.
|
| An excerpt from _The Divide_ :
|
| > People commonly think of neoliberalism as an ideology
| that promotes totally free markets, where the state
| retreats from the scene and abandons all interventionist
| policies. But if we step back a bit, it becomes clear
| that the extension of neoliberalism has entailed powerful
| new forms of state intervention. The creation of a global
| 'free market' required not only violent coups and
| dictatorships backed by Western governments, but also the
| invention of a totalizing global bureaucracy - the World
| Bank, the IMF, the WTO and bilateral free-trade
| agreements - with reams of new laws, backed up by the
| military power of the United States
|
| https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9781786090034
| vFunct wrote:
| You DO believe in eliminating poverty, right?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| You are fixated on a straw man, clearly too ignorant of
| the subject material to have a discussion on this.
|
| I provided resources. Read them and get back to me,
| otherwise there is no reason to continue, since your aim
| seems to be controlling the narrative and not actually
| engaging in substantial discussion.
| vFunct wrote:
| This doesn't sound like you want to eliminate poverty?
|
| You complain I brought up the straw man of poverty, but
| that's the entire point of neoliberalism: to make people
| wealthy. It's NOT to start wars or bring disease or
| famine or whatever. It's an economic system designed to
| bring about wealth, as demonstrated by neoliberal
| policies that removed poverty from much of the third
| world.
|
| This is why I don't trust socialist: I have never heard a
| socialist say "I want to eliminate poverty". And in fact,
| they seem to take pride in being impoverished while being
| ashamed of any bit of wealth.
|
| It's Ok to have nice things. You DON'T have to be poor.
|
| We don't care if people are rich. We are if they are
| poor, and we believe that's a problem.
|
| And our track record of eliminating poverty around the
| world over the last 50 years through neoliberal free
| trade should be celebrated, not discouraged.
|
| You're welcome.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Again, I have no interest in engaging with someone who is
| clearly extremely ignorant about neoliberalism and US
| foreign policy, and who is fixated on engaging in straw
| man arguments. Stop embarrassing yourself and let it go.
| vFunct wrote:
| Instead of congratulating yourself on your sheer
| brilliance all the time and how you like to declare
| yourself to be superior, maybe look at why your arguments
| aren't convincing to others?
|
| I'd recommend you take a point-by-point look at what
| you're saying vs what I said and see if what you said had
| any relevance to any of my literal sentences.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Let it go. You're not even discussing the subject matter
| anymore, and are arguing about the meta. No one is
| thinking in terms of superiority except yourself. This is
| a toxic discussion, and it is over. Have your compulsive
| last word.
| vFunct wrote:
| Look at what you wrote. Nothing you stated had any
| relevance to neoliberalism. I talked about neoliberalism
| eliminating poverty, and you brought up invasion.
|
| Neoliberalism is what I say it is, not what YOU say it
| is.
|
| Additionally, you have yet to answer why you believe
| poverty shouldn't be eliminated.
| charlie90 wrote:
| China didnt eliminate poverty, it merely shifted dirty work
| to other poor countries (other SE asian countries). Just
| like the US did. Just like all countries will do until they
| run out of poor countries and the pyramid scheme of
| globalization collapses.
|
| Not everyone gets to have a cushy intellectual office job.
| Somebody has to do the coal mining.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| I did not know that having most of your industries run in
| part by government under five years planning was a
| neoliberal method.
| vFunct wrote:
| It exactly is. Neoliberalism is a mix of free market
| policies and government planning and intervention when
| that fails.
|
| Oh, you didn't think neoliberalism was free-market
| libertarianism, did you? If it was that, it would be
| called that already.
| Miner49er wrote:
| We have plenty of workers that want that kind of work, we're
| just deporting a good chunk of them.
| Loughla wrote:
| We have less than zero workers who want to do the physical
| labor of factory jobs for prices paid to workers in places
| like China and Vietnam.
| vFunct wrote:
| Especially given the luxury lifestyle that even the poorest
| suburban 20-something American male lives in today. They
| get to play video games all day and watch any movie at home
| with any food from around the world that can show up at
| their doorstep of their parents home at a moments notice.
| The aristocrats of 150 years ago could NEVER imagine such
| luxuries.
|
| And Trump expects our population of suburban aristocrats to
| work hard at factories...
| charlie90 wrote:
| Yes. Outsource the manufacturing. We have important
| intellectual work to do like optimizing ad sales.
| rozap wrote:
| Hey now, we're also using AI to automate debt collection
| phone calls.
| tootie wrote:
| He has repeatedly invoked the 1890s actually. Big fan of
| McKinley.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| I agree with this. People seem to forget that factories and
| other manual labor positions were hard to fill. No one wanted
| to do them anymore in America. I don't remember the timing, but
| there were articles about the whole situation. Well, those jobs
| went to other countries.
|
| Bush Jr. was all about outsourcing to India and other
| countries. The India population were thrilled to take office
| gigs for Microsoft and Google and any other tech company.
|
| The whole "put me to work" in middle-America doesn't exist
| anymore. They don't want to do that type of work.
|
| I do think a missed opportunity is not increasing defense
| manufacturing in the US. That could mean a lot of jobs and
| skill-based jobs. NASA is another failed opportunity where it
| could be a huge skill and labor opportunity for America. I
| remember the thousands of workers on the shuttle program being
| devastated. I'm not saying we need another shuttle program, but
| the next evolution of NASA, aerospace, and defense would be
| great for jobs and America.
|
| We have no one left thinking about the long-term big picture
| for America - and we now have a president trying to destroy
| America. Any current politicians are focused on just staying in
| power, more so than they ever have.
|
| I think Bill Clinton was the last president to focus on
| America.
|
| Even Obama failed to deliver to the American people. He was too
| focused on drone strikes.
| threeseed wrote:
| > I do think a missed opportunity is not increasing defense
| manufacturing in the US.
|
| They are trying to. But zero chance EU capitulates on this:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us-officials-object-
| european-p...
| watwut wrote:
| Obama was completely blocked by Republicans. That is when
| they started to oppose anything accross the aisle on
| principle.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Even Obama failed to deliver to the American people. He was
| too focused on drone strikes.
|
| I agree how Obama continued Bush's "war on terror" was a
| disappointment, but to state that as the reason for his
| relatively limited accomplishments is profoundly unserious.
| The Mitch McConnell's strategy was to do anything Obama did
| for no other reason than to make him look bad, because
| McConnell realised that Obama had the potential to be the
| most consequential president since FDR, with broad public
| support.
|
| They used every trick in the book to hold up votes, to not
| schedule votes, voting against popular policy they themselves
| supported just a few years ago out of principle, etc.
|
| I don't know how anyone could have forgotten this; the
| Republican party was not serious good faith participant in
| the democratic process long before Trump came along.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Pretty sure the broadcast plan as been to make more Americans
| oxen for the cart...
| cmurf wrote:
| These guys are untrustworthy liars. I assume there are thousands,
| possibly tens of thousands of carve outs for the tariffs, based
| on bribing the POTUS or approved affiliates.
| chvid wrote:
| How did the value added tax (which is paid by all companies
| including domestic ones) become the same as import duty?
|
| The only way that you can make that tariffs charged to the USA is
| the level Trump claims (ie. 39% in the EU) is if you include VAT.
| qwertox wrote:
| Some of the workers won't understand that EU companies also
| have to pay the same VAT in the EU, so they think it's correct
| reasoning.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| VAT is not paid by companies. It is paid by consumers and
| _collected_ by companies. The US have the sales tax, which is
| similar.
|
| It absolutely does not make sense to count VAT as a "tariff". I
| am sure they know it.
| butterknife wrote:
| My company pays VAT surplus to government every quarter since
| the VAT we collect on our products and services is higher
| then the VAT we pay for our purchases. How are we not paying
| it?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You are answering your own question: companies collect VAT
| from consumers and pass it on to tax authorities.
|
| Then, as the company is VAT-registered what it purchases is
| either VAT-free or VAT paid can be deducted from the amount
| of VAT collected from consumers (as you said).
|
| Bottom line: companies do not pay VAT on their own
| purchases, they only pass on VAT collected from consumers.
|
| Obviously companies do make actual payments to the tax
| authorities but the point is that these are not from their
| own funds, they only effectively act as tax collectors.
| butterknife wrote:
| You are right I suppose. We pay it and then we can get
| some of it returned.
| bildung wrote:
| You get _all_ of it returned. 100% of the VAT you paid on
| things you as a company bought you 'll get back from the
| tax office.
|
| And when selling products, you'll send 100% of the VAT
| collected from consumers to the tax office.
|
| VAT doesn't affect a company (besides the bookkeeping).
| teemur wrote:
| "Paying" is a bit too ambiguous term. Let's say we go to
| have a lunch, but I forgot my wallet at the office. You pay
| my lunch and once we are back at the office, I pay you
| back. Who paid my lunch, you or me? Your company pays VAT
| in the technical sense you paid my lunch and your company
| does not pay VAT in the economical sense I paid my lunch.
| arlort wrote:
| No, VAT is actually paid by companies (and also consumers of
| course), it's one of the subtle differences between VAT and
| sales tax.
|
| The "thought experiment" you can make is the case of
| something not ending up being sold. In a VAT regime the
| manufacturer will have already paid the VAT on the inputs but
| since the customer hasn't paid the VAT on the finished
| product the manufacturer won't get their money back on the
| VAT they already paid (there might be other tax rebates or
| write offs, but that's a different matter)
|
| In a sales tax regime the tax is only paid by the final
| consumer so if the manufacturer doesn't sell the product they
| are not out for any additional tax
|
| Still doesn't change that neither of those are a tariff by
| any definition
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| A VAT-registered company is either able to purchase VAT-
| free or is refunded the amount of VAT it pays (by
| offsetting against the VAT it has collected, up to getting
| actual refunds).
|
| Effectively VAT is only paid by consumers.
|
| NB: in you example if the company has paid more VAT than it
| has collected in the period then it gets an actual refund.
| arlort wrote:
| > Effectively VAT is only paid by consumers.
|
| Yes, absolutely, in 99% of cases that is true. But
| conceptually there is a difference.
|
| > NB: in you example if the company has paid more VAT
| than it has collected in the period then it gets and
| actual refund.
|
| Yes, which is what I said as well. But the refund in
| itself is an additional step on top of the tax system and
| the money does get paid by the company in the first
| place. There is indeed a difference in how the cash flow
| of a company looks like.
|
| That's the entire point of VAT, to make tax evasion
| harder by making everyone pay at every step and figuring
| out later the refunds
|
| This is not a criticism of VAT or anything else by the
| way, as I said, in 99% of cases the company will get the
| VAT fully refunded and not pay anything on net over the
| fiscal year
| jbverschoor wrote:
| VAT = Value Added Tax. Tax should be paid whenever there
| was value added to a product/service, and it was sold.
|
| The manufacturer has paid VAT, and will get back the paid
| VAT from the tax authorities. It then adds value (value
| added tax). It has to charge VAT of the full amount. So,
| the company in the chain pays VAT over the profit of that
| product/service. For example (assume 20% VAT):
|
| Company 1 creates something with 0 cost, and sells for 100.
| Needs to add VAT (20) and pay that to the tax authority. 20
| has been collected.
|
| Company 2 buys it for the 120, packages and labels it, then
| sells it for 180 but needs to add 36 VAT. The company will
| file a tax return of 20-36, so will effectively have to pay
| 16 to the tax authority. Another 16 has been collected.
|
| Consumer buys it for 216 and doesn't get any VAT back.
|
| Effectively, 20 + 16 = 36 VAT has been collected over time.
| The tax return can only be done by companies with a VAT
| registration. In some cases the VAT burden can be inverted
| in b2b transactions and within the EU. This is there so
| companies don't have to do cross-border tax returns.
| vdupras wrote:
| Maybe that applying VAT to imports is done asymmetrically? If,
| for example, I'm a US citizen importing a european widget, will
| federal and state sales tax be applied on import?
|
| If they're not, then this might be why they're considered thus.
| cmurf wrote:
| Uhh... Whether you're a citizen isn't a factor. There's no
| federal sales tax, although these tariffs act as an import
| tax that will increase the wholesale costs. And state sales
| taxes don't apply to imports or wholesale transactions, they
| are retail tax (or also often a use tax if a sales tax wasn't
| previously imposed).
|
| VAT is not only a retail sales tax, it'll apply anytime the
| widget is somehow modified (value is added).
| throw310822 wrote:
| Not really, because the point of tariffs is that they apply
| only to imported goods, creating a preference for local ones.
| If VAT is applied equally to imported and local goods it's
| not a tariff, it's a tax that consumers pay in any case.
| oramit wrote:
| People keep making the mistake of thinking that there is any
| sort of logical consistency to Trump policies.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| People keep making the mistake of thinking there is no
| logical consistency to Trump policies.
|
| He has an agenda.
| Cpoll wrote:
| What is that agenda?
| g-b-r wrote:
| To have as much fun as he can in his final years.
|
| He's most entertained by messing up anything good he runs
| into.
| prawn wrote:
| I know he's a very different person with very different
| interests, but I can think of little worse than spending
| ANY years having to put on a suit and makeup every single
| day.
| goatlover wrote:
| To go down in history as this great figure who increased
| American territory and the power of the executive branch
| while making America this economic giant that doesn't
| depend on the global economy, because he thinks economic
| policies still work like they did in the 19th century.
| inverted_flag wrote:
| An ill-specified, inconsistent agenda that he and his
| cabinet lack the IQ to achieve.
| treis wrote:
| Trump has had a thing for tariffs for like 40 years now.
| zerocrates wrote:
| He has talked about VAT, but in terms of how they ended up with
| those numbers, people noticed that the claimed rates don't have
| anything to do with the actual tariff/VAT/etc. rates, they're
| just based on the relative size of the US trade deficit with
| each country.
|
| The gloss will be "this way captures all the various unfair
| things they're doing to us that are the cause of all these
| trade deficits" but that's just, well, gloss.
| 0xy wrote:
| Not if you include trade barriers like the DMA, a law which is
| used to milk US technology companies through vague court
| rulings with arbitrary fines.
|
| The EU is the undisputed king of vague laws that are applied
| principally to competitors with arbitrary fines.
|
| How do you implement GDPR? Don't ask us, but if you violate it
| watch out!
|
| How do you comply with DMA? Don't ask us, but if you violate it
| watch out!
| 0x_rs wrote:
| Inheriting a strong economy beating all expectations that was
| just about to end its fight with inflation and burning it all
| away in a pump and dump crypto scheme fashion, while doing
| nothing (or even working to expand) unprecedented wealth
| inequality. Good luck, going to need it. The world reserve
| currency status is faltering, and so will the benefits it allowed
| US economy.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Agree with everything you wrote.
|
| It's almost like Trump and his administration are trying to
| purposely hurt America.
|
| I don't want to be melodramatic, but if Russia had a ultra
| long-term plan to hurt America, it might look like this.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > just about to end its fight with inflation
|
| Inflation will decline only when the deficit declines.
| oezi wrote:
| If there is a deficit at all. Looking at the monetary flows
| it seems most of the deficit outflows where just flowing back
| into the US through the stock market.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Interest is paid on the deficit, and once the interest gets
| large enough, there's a runaway doom loop.
| oezi wrote:
| It depends on who is spending. If American consumers or
| the American government borrow to consume, what you say
| is right.
|
| But it was US monetary policy for decades now that the
| deficit doesn't really matter, because the world trusts
| the US and loans the money back.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > If American consumers or the American government borrow
| to consume, what you say is right
|
| Consumer borrowing is paid back, so it does not
| contribute to inflation. Government just issues more debt
| to pay off the debt, and that leads to collapse.
|
| > US monetary policy for decades now that the deficit
| doesn't really matter
|
| AKA kicking the can down the road. The bill will come
| due.
| 0xy wrote:
| The US economy was not strong in 2024. Cost of living was
| literally the most important election issue, and it is what
| decided the election undoubtedly.
|
| It's partially because elites said 'the economy is great! look
| at my stocks!' while consumer goods had increased in price by
| 100% or more in only 4 years.
| silisili wrote:
| The economy has not been 'strong' since at least 2019.
|
| CPI is a joke that just subs out everything when it gets more
| expensive. Oh food is only up 3%, let's ignore we were pricing
| beef and eggs and now we're subbing in chicken and tofu.
|
| Inflation has been borderline runaway from 2019-2024. Just ask
| anyone who isn't rich.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| That's the part where "unprecedented wealth inequality" comes
| in. By most metrics, 2024 was an excellent year and the US
| was far ahead other developed countries [0] in growth, labor
| market, consumer spending, net household wealth, and much
| more; the fundamentals were solid and no figures could point
| to a major economic downturn at that point, certainly not in
| a predictable manner. In 2025 the 90th percentile accounts
| for over half all consumer spending, the median household
| hasn't reaped the same benefits high-income, high-spending
| ones have. There is no indication this will change, and may
| get worse with the current and proposed policies.
|
| 0. https://www.ft.com/content/1201f834-6407-4bb5-ac9d-18496ec
| 29...
| simmerup wrote:
| Pushing Vietnam into Chinas arms I see. Oh America.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Current EU tariffs on US goods... Product
| Category Tariff Rate
| ----------------------------- -------------- Dairy Products
| (e.g., cheese, butter) Up to 50% Processed
| Foods (e.g., chocolate, confectionery) 30-40% Alcoholic
| Beverages (e.g., whiskey, bourbon) 25% Steel and
| Aluminum Products 25% Automobiles
| 10% Industrial Goods 5-10%
| dralley wrote:
| Trump thinks VAT is comparable to a tariff. VATs are not
| directly comparable to tariffs.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| These are ex-VAT.
| simne wrote:
| I'm sorry, but could you provide link, where stated, VATs
| applied to import?
|
| - As I know, usually VAT deducted from exported goods, but I
| really don't know how VAT work with import - usually on
| import used tariffs.
| g-b-r wrote:
| The VAT is applied at the time of sale to the end consumer,
| it's irrelevant if the product is imported or manufactured
| locally.
| xp84 wrote:
| So strange to take VAT into account when it's not
| discriminating between local or import. By that logic the
| US has a 5-10% tariff on everything too since we have
| sales tax in like 47 states.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| The thinking may be that the asymmetry in taxes itself
| cause a trade imbalance. What can the country _do_ with
| the extra tax money they receive compared to the lower
| tax country? They can spend it to fund infrastructure,
| goods, and jobs inside their own borders.
| AnAfrican wrote:
| https://vatdesk.eu/en/import-export-and-
| vat/#:~:text=of%20VA...
|
| >Yes, imports of goods are subject to VAT, with taxation
| taking place when the goods clear through customs.
| acdha wrote:
| Weren't things like that 25% steel and aluminum tariff added in
| response to Trump's earlier tariffs, and allowed to lapse in
| 2020?
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2018/886/oj/eng
|
| https://www.gtlaw.com/en/insights/2025/3/eu-to-impose-tariff...
| District5524 wrote:
| That's a bit misleading. Make no mistake, current US tariffs
| are UNIVERSAL. Not specific to e.g. chicken or automobiles or
| purebred horses. They cover absolutely everything. While you
| may see 38% or more tariff on chocolate, chocolate export to
| the EU from the US is hardly an important issue. And for dairy
| products, the tariff is a fixed euro amount per weight, not %.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...
|
| https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/search?origi...
| nottorp wrote:
| I wasn't touching the first two categories anyway, tariffs or
| no tariffs.
|
| First one because I don't understand why i should risk a milk
| based product that has traveled for months across an ocean. Or
| even from another EU country, when I can buy stuff made in a
| 200 km radius around me.
|
| Second one because afaik it's legal to call "chocolate"
| something that does not contain any actual cocoa in the US.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > Second one because afaik it's legal to call "chocolate"
| something that does not contain any actual cocoa in the US.
|
| Well, no. It cannot be called "chocolate" if it is something
| that consumers would expect to be made from actual chocolate.
| However, it can contain the term "chocolate" if cocoa or
| another cacao product is the sole source of its chocolate
| flavor, and as long as consumers have a pre-established
| understanding that it is likely to not be made from
| chocolate. For example, people generally understand that
| chocolate cake is likely made with cocoa, not chocolate, and
| so it can be labeled "chocolate cake". If there is no such
| general understanding, the product must be labeled "chocolate
| flavored".
|
| (See the US FDA CPG Sec 515.800, "Labeling of Products
| Purporting to be 'Chocolate' or 'Chocolate Flavored'")
|
| Now if we could just get them to stop calling chocolate
| products with dairy in them "dark" (I'm looking at you,
| Hershey...)
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Cheese is the obvious one here. I can get a variety of
| foreign cheeses even at my local big-box grocery. Much better
| options than most domestically produced cheese.
|
| Irish/Finnish butter (Kerrygold/Finlandia) is also fairly
| popular here.
|
| If properly refrigerated, milk can last for months especially
| if pasteurized.
|
| You can also evaporate milk and it will last nearly forever
| unrefrigerated if kept dry
| nottorp wrote:
| > If properly refrigerated, milk can last for months
| especially if pasteurized.
|
| But why take the risk when you can have fresh?
|
| > You can also evaporate milk and it will last nearly
| forever unrefrigerated if kept dry
|
| Is that still milk?
|
| Cheeses yes, I randomly buy fancy cheeses. But most of my
| purchases are still boring predictable _recent_ local
| cheese.
| AnAfrican wrote:
| Careful: The rate mentioned for alcoholic beverages (and
| confectionery) may include Excise Duty. Excise Duty usually
| have the non-discriminatory aspect of VAT : they're also
| applied on local production.
| piokoch wrote:
| Interesting that people are downvoting heavily those
| information. If reality does not match our view of the World,
| well, let's ignore reality. The truth is that EU kept higher
| tariffs on US goods than the other way, Trump is changing that
| and there is an outcry, because it was Trump who did that. If
| that was Kamala, nobody would even notice.
| xfp wrote:
| I'm taking bets, do you think the tariffs will:
|
| 1. be rescinded/paused in [0,2) days;
|
| 2. be rescinded/paused in [2,4) days;
|
| 3. be rescinded/paused in [4,7] days;
|
| 4. not be rescinded/paused.
| floxy wrote:
| 3.5) rescinded/paused [30-61) days. There will be some bluster,
| and then announcements with the large trading partners like
| Japan, South Korea, etc., that some new deals have been struck.
| userbinator wrote:
| _that some new deals have been struck._
|
| I believe that was the plan all along. He's just doing it
| aggressively with tariffs.
| paxys wrote:
| 5. All of the above.
| Karupan wrote:
| Genuine questions: why are they calling it "reciprocal"? Is the
| US just matching the tariffs set by the other countries?
|
| Also, this announcement has wiped out any plans of buying tech
| products this year, plus a holiday to the US and Canada later in
| the year. Good thing too, as the entire globe is probably staring
| down the barrel of a recession.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Because when the blowback comes, people will be looking to cast
| blame for starting this whole trade war, and when that time
| comes Trump will point to the word "reciprocal" and say "we
| didn't start this, we were only reciprocating".
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > Is the US just matching the tariffs set by the other
| countries?
|
| No. Trump claims that the new tariffs are a 50% _discount_ on
| what those countries tariff US goods at. (Even if that 's
| questionable - is VAT a tariff?)
|
| If he's correct, or anywhere close, this is a "tough love"
| strategy to force negotiations. We'll see how it goes. It also
| plays to his base - why should we tariff any less than they do
| us? And they have a point, it's the principle of the thing.
| f33d5173 wrote:
| It's so quaint to me that people actually believe his
| rhetoric. How long do you think people will put up with high
| prices before they turn on him?
| barbazoo wrote:
| If high prices are inevitable, what's their endgame? Are
| they actually incompetent or are people too pessimistic
| about what they're attempting to do?
| f33d5173 wrote:
| Prior to yesterday's announcement, the claim regarding
| tarrifs was that the goal was to bring manufacturing back
| to american soil. This is unlikely to happen in any case,
| but it requires at minimum that consumers put up with
| high prices for a while (with "a while" being measured in
| years, if not decades). Actually, the "liberation day"
| tarrifs strongly agree with this goal: after speculation,
| the administration announced the formula for these new
| tarrifs, which has nothing to do with counter tarrifs or
| trade barriers as claimed, and instead comes from a ratio
| of the trade deficit in goods and the overall amount of
| trade. In other words, countries that export a lot of
| goods to the US (and the US doesn't have commensurate
| goods exports to) get high tarrifs. This makes sense if
| the goal is to incentivize manufacturing in the US, by
| making manufactured goods from outside more expensive.
|
| There is another camp that thinks that trump doesn't
| really have a goal per se, and is rather doing all this
| as an exercise in showing off his strength and to draw
| attention to himself. This camp holds that eventually
| trump will get bored, or the public will turn on him, and
| he'll need to get rid of tarrifs to save face. We call
| these people "optimists".
| cldellow wrote:
| > If he's correct
|
| He's not.
|
| According to [1], the White House claims Vietnam has a 90%
| tariff rate.
|
| According to [2], 90.4% is the ratio of Vietnam's trade
| deficit with the US -- they have a deficit of $123.5B on
| $136.6B of exports.
|
| The same math holds true for other countries, e.g. Japan's
| claimed 46% tariff rate is their deficit of $68.5B on $148.2B
| of exports. The EU's claimed 39% tariff rate is their deficit
| of $235.6B on $605.8B of exports.
|
| Who knows, maaaaybe it just so happens that these countries
| magically have tariff rates that match the ratio of their
| trade deficits.
|
| Or maybe, the reason Vietnam doesn't buy a lot of US stuff is
| because they're poor. The reason they sell the US a bunch of
| stuff is because their labour is cheap to Americans. (They do
| have tariffs, but they're nowhere near 90%: [3].)
|
| America's government is not trustworthy. Assuming that what
| they say is truthful is a poor use of time.
|
| [1]:
| https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1907533090559324204/photo/1
|
| [2]: https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/southeast-asia-
| pacific/vi...
|
| [3]: https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/news/vietnam-gives-us-
| tax-b...
| rsynnott wrote:
| > If he's correct
|
| Trump is not in the business of being _correct_, or indeed
| caring about correctness as a concept.
|
| And no, these are, obviously, not the actual tariffs, don't
| be silly.
| graeme wrote:
| Someone calculated the formula used. They divided the trade
| deficit of each country by total trade of each country and
| assumed that was all a tariff.
|
| So for example Indonesia and the US traded $28 billion. The US
| has a 17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. 17.9/28
| =0.639, or 64%, which is assumed to be all caused by tariffs.
| So they divide by two and impose 32%.
|
| Anyway no the US isn't matching tariffs they're dramatically
| exceeding them.
| tim333 wrote:
| That's a bit of a messed up way to calculate things.
|
| I also think the US deficits are hugely overstated because
| much of what the US produces is intellectual capital rather
| than physical goods and the profits are made to appear in
| foreign subsidiaries for tax reasons. Like if I buy Microsoft
| stuff in the UK, Microsoft make out it was made in Ireland
| for tax purposes, but really the value is created in and
| owned by the US. The US company both wrote the software and
| owns Microsoft Ireland. So much of the perceived unfairness
| Trump is having a go at isn't real.
| peterbecich wrote:
| You raise an excellent point that US corporate tax evasion
| is exaggerating the trade deficit. However, from the
| perspective of winning US elections, I think it does not
| change the issue that the trade deficit falls more on de-
| industrializing Midwestern states, and the corporations you
| are referring to are concentrated in Northeastern and
| Western states.
|
| Secondly, if Microsoft or Apple makes the profit appear in
| Ireland, it cannot move that money back to the domestic US,
| right? So as long as the money sits overseas, it would not
| count towards US trade and thus the deficit calculation is
| fair.
| oezi wrote:
| They don't move the profit back to the US, but through
| Ireland and the Netherlands they move it out of the EU
| mostly to some tax havens in the Caribbean. From there
| they use them for their stock buybacks, which I think
| equals mostly flowing back into the US.
| pishpash wrote:
| Again, not flowing back to the right people. All of this
| could have been solved by sane redistribution, but no.
| It'll still be redistribution but in a cruder, less
| apparent form.
| graeme wrote:
| If the profits went back to Apple HQ directly they would
| serve to raise the share price and allow stock buybacks
| and stock based compensation for employees. Same as they
| do now.
|
| You may not like a tech company succeeding at exports and
| having a rising share price, but that is distinct from
| the overall point which is that properly considered these
| are US exports obscured by the US tax code which
| incentivizes profits abroad.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This is no longer true. Said loophole was eliminated in
| 2017, and completely closed in 2020.
| graeme wrote:
| That's a great point. I checked into this, and if and when
| the profits are repatriated they indeed only show up in the
| capital account, not the current account.
|
| However, in practice even if not repatriated those exports
| show up in the us economy. Profits raise the share price,
| which allows stock grants at higher values, effectively a
| wage as one example.
|
| I wonder how big an effect this phenomenon you highlight
| has. Must be a fairly large overstatement of the US trade
| deficit.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| If the US has a trade deficit, doesn't that mean the US is
| trading make-believe pieces of paper for real goods.
|
| Like, if I scribble on a piece of paper and then trade you
| the piece of paper for an incredibly engineered brand new
| laptop, is that bad for me? Is this a sign of my weakness?
|
| I know economics can be complicated, and probably "it
| depends", but why is a trade deficit bad? Why does the
| Trump administration want to eliminate trade deficits?
| googlehater wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out. As a follow up, if the US has a
| trade surplus, they seem to just slap 10% in both columns.
| tootie wrote:
| It's just spin. The new duties are purely punitive.
| phorkyas82 wrote:
| It's like the blaming in a playground fight; who started first?
| For context:
| https://nitter.net/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
| jdb47 wrote:
| Would be good to know -
|
| Who are the people coming up with these specific rates?
|
| How are they modeling this system?
| frogperson wrote:
| I am certain they didn't use any liberal math or science or
| history to arrive at these numbers. It's all just made up by
| incompetent yes men.
| lsllc wrote:
| According to the BBC reporting, it appears that for each
| country he's charging 50% of the tariff they place on US goods
| coming into those countries, or a baseline of 10% for some
| countries like the UK.
|
| (sorry, this is a BBC live news ticker link):
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A3a34...
|
| And a picture of the chart they had showing the per-country
| tariffs:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A7f78...
| lawlessone wrote:
| its not tariffs
|
| Trump took the trade surplus the US has with those countries
| and calcuated the percentage from that.
| lsllc wrote:
| Interesting - I haven't seen that mentioned in any of the
| coverage, do you have a source for that?
| ammo1662 wrote:
| A lot of comments have already mentioned that. You can
| also calculate it by yourself.
|
| For example, in 2024, the total value of US trade in
| goods with China was approximately $582.4 billion,
| comprising $143.5 billion in exports and $438.9 billion
| in imports. [0]
|
| (438.9-143.5)/438.9=67.3%
|
| [0] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-
| taiwan/peo...
| tempestn wrote:
| The trade deficit the US has with those countries, or the
| surplus they have with the US, as a percentage of the
| country's total exports to the US.
|
| It's an incredibly simplistic calculation that definitely
| doesn't equate to the country's tariff rate.
| cco wrote:
| It's trade deficit divided by total exports divided by 2.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| As someone interested in "curious discussion", what are some of
| the positives we can take away from this? Is this a new standard
| for economic policy?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I can't think of any positives.
|
| Trump is saying the positives are the it will force companies
| to build stuff in the US, thus increasing our domestic
| manufacturing and increasing jobs. I don't see that happening
| in a significant way, but who knows?
|
| But if that does happen, then the huge amount of revenue that
| Trump thinks is going to come to the government's coffers won't
| happen, and that revenue is meant to offset some of the tax
| breaks for the wealthy, so we're kinda screwed either way.
| ReflectedImage wrote:
| Well it's positive for various countries that benefit from an
| end to US dominance over the world. :p
|
| So for the US itself? The theory would be that the tariffs will
| increase US manufacturing sector. But the cold hard truth is
| that it isn't the 1830s anymore and last time tariffs were
| tried happened to line up exactly with the Great Depression.
|
| Even an competent administration would have great difficulty
| making tariffs to restore manufacturing work in the US, if that
| is even at all possible. It fails because other countries just
| put the same tariffs back on the US.
|
| So with the Trump's administration some kinda of serious
| economy meltdown is almost certainly the result.
| energy123 wrote:
| Autarky is just bad economic policy because comparative
| advantage is too powerful. Nobody benefits from this. The US
| loses and everyone else loses. The US loses the most however,
| both economically and in soft power.
|
| This isn't even the China model. Slapping tariffs on raw inputs
| guarantees that US industry cannot compete internationally.
| This is more like the North Korean model.
|
| While there are positives to targeted industrial policy, there
| are no positives to autarky.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > The US loses the most however, both economically and in
| soft power.
|
| Yes. It loses most because 10-20% of world trade is for value
| added in the USA. The one exception is the USA of course,
| because their percentage is 100%. So USA is 100% effected,
| the rest of the world is 10-20% effected as they continue to
| happily trade with each other without tariffs.
|
| I dunno about everywhere else, but in Australia the effects
| are already noticeable. Trade with the USA is dropping, and
| trade with Canada is growing.
| est wrote:
| > This isn't even the China model
|
| It's 1400-1840 China model
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism#China
| raytopia wrote:
| Buying American stocks and companies is about to be a lot
| cheaper.
| ianpurton wrote:
| It may reduce consumerism in the US and therefore be beneficial
| to the environment.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| It is possible for things to simply be foolish. Insisting on
| balance is not the same thing as curious discussion.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Trump is going for a 1-2 punch. First tariffs and then tax cuts
| to soften the blow of price increases. It also puts republicans
| in a choke hold to force the tax cut legislation through, because
| the fallout of tariffs with no tax cuts would be a death knell
| for the party.
|
| Maybe in a sim city game this would balance out, but it's a tall
| order for a real world scenario. Prepare for a bumpy road ahead.
| gigatexal wrote:
| It's all a grift for the wealthy anyway. He doesn't care about
| the hurting 50k a year worker. Low income MAGA voters are just
| fodder for Trump to enrich himself and the wealthy around him.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _It also puts republicans in a choke hold to force the tax
| cut legislation through, because the fallout of tariffs with no
| tax cuts would be a death knell for the party._
|
| I mean, they could vote down the "emergency" Trump is using in
| order to obtain the authority to enact these tariffs instead,
| and that would be so much less work. But of course they won't
| go against their Dear Leader.
| beAbU wrote:
| omg do you think elon started playing simcity recently, trying
| out all these ridiculous things, and now he's advising donald
| to do same in the real world, because he's convinced it'll work
| based on the simcity experience?
| tnt128 wrote:
| I don't buy the blanket statement that the consumer always pays
| the tariff. It depends on what alternative companies have. If a
| company can purchase the same clothing from Chinese, Vietnamese,
| or Mexican vendors, a tax on China only could make the Chinese
| vendors lower the price or risk losing the business.
|
| However, a blanket tax on every country, regardless of available
| alternatives, would leave businesses with fewer options and make
| it more likely that the cost is passed on to consumers.
| taeric wrote:
| For taxes to work in raising money, they have to be paid. So,
| if the goal is to make revenue from the taxes, then raising
| costs is expected?
|
| If the goal is to incentivize alternatives, then the tax has to
| be such that it raises the price above the gap there now. So,
| even if you do drive people to an alternative source, the new
| price will be higher than the old. (Unless the thought is that
| people were choosing to not buy the cheaper source to begin
| with?)
|
| I suppose you can argue that some suppliers have such a margin
| that the tax could be an effort to get them to cut into that? I
| have not seen evidence that that is the case?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Of course! That definitive statement is rhetoric.
|
| The payer of a tariff is decided by the relative elasticity of
| supply and elasticity of demand.
|
| Sometimes the seller will eat it. Sometimes they buyer will eat
| it. Sometimes the product wont get made or sold.
| kazinator wrote:
| The objective reality of the situation is that there is a
| transaction between a buyer and a seller. That _transaction_ is
| what pays the tariff, VAT, property transfer tax or whatever
| vampirical suckage by whatevername.
|
| Both transacting counterparties are robbed.
|
| How that is distributed between them is a matter of which has
| more alternatives. E.g. if the seller has lots of prospective
| buyers, most of whom are not subject to the tax, then the
| market price they demand is not sensitive to the rare buyer who
| does pay the tax.
|
| If a big fraction of the seller's prospective buyers face a
| tax, then it makes their product or service look more expensive
| to a good chunk of the market, which exerts downward pressure
| on the price. The downward pressure on the price means that the
| seller effectively pays some of the tax, through lost revenue.
|
| So, the transaction pays the tax as such, but how much of it is
| distributed between buyer and seller depends on the degree of
| influence of the tax on the price point.
| lottin wrote:
| > If a company can purchase the same clothing from Chinese,
| Vietnamese, or Mexican vendors, a tax on China only could make
| the Chinese vendors lower the price or risk losing the
| business.
|
| This example implies producers are already in competition with
| one another, so it's unlikely that any of them can lower the
| price much. On the other hand, if some producers leave the
| market due to the tariffs, then there's less competition
| overall and the other producers can charge more.
| oasisaimlessly wrote:
| > This example implies producers are already in competition
| with one another, so it's unlikely that any of them can lower
| the price much.
|
| Non sequitor. Differing production conditions between
| countries would result in differing profit margins.
| AnIrishDuck wrote:
| The concept you are describing here is "tax incidence" [1].
|
| Tariffs are taxes.
|
| I'm sure lots of hours will be spent researching the incidences
| of these across many industries.
|
| As you note, one major factor is the presence of substitutes,
| but there are several others.
|
| 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This is true, but the amount of production in China dwarfs
| everyone else, and definitely what America can bring up anytime
| soon, so two consequences:
|
| A. Tariff for Chinese goods will be reflected in consumer
| prices pretty much directly.
|
| B. Domestic suppliers if the same goods have very limited
| capacity, giving them the pricing power to raise their prices
| by the tariff amount, and take it as extra profit.
|
| Take for example cars. We will see American cars go up by the
| same amount as imports as long as they are oversubscribed on
| capacity.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| The exemptions...
|
| >Some goods will not be subject to the Reciprocal Tariff. These
| include: (1) articles subject to 50 USC 1702(b); (2)
| steel/aluminum articles and autos/auto parts already subject to
| Section 232 tariffs; (3) copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors,
| and lumber articles; (4) all articles that may become subject to
| future Section 232 tariffs; (5) bullion; and (6) energy and other
| certain minerals that are not available in the United States.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I thought the tariff goal was also to fix the issue with
| Pharmaceuticals where the R&D happened in the US, the company
| then "exported" the IP to the EU factories, and now import the
| drugs back. This results in a US tax rate of 0%.
| fspeech wrote:
| Exempting chips alone doesn't make sense. Does Intel have to
| pay 20% on ASML lithography machines or more on Japanese ones?
| Meanwhile TSMC can fab chips in Taiwan and export to the US
| without tariffs.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Americans have been hurt for 50 years ... yes manufacturing going
| overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn't do
| enough to help affected workers. Buuuuuut - placing tariffs on
| our allies that will likely lead to a recession makes no sense.
|
| Devaluing the dollar and subsidizing production in the US makes
| far more sense.
|
| But I'm not an economist or anything.
| bibanez wrote:
| Devaluing the dollar makes paying national debt more expensive
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| No it makes it cheaper because the US is in a unique position
| of issuing debt in its own currency.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| You can both be right. Old debt is cheaper to pay but new
| debt more expensive. And the government runs a deficit so
| new debt is always accruing.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| New debt is only more expensive if you have to exchange
| something of value to obtain the USD to pay down the
| debt. But since the Fed can expand the money supply at
| will, it's essentially creating new USD out of thin air
| which can be used.
|
| (This is how the US has been able to sustain such a large
| debt without any real consequences.)
|
| What will happen though is that interest rates on T bills
| will rise, so yes, in that sense, it does eventually
| become "more expensive" to service new debt. But again
| it's in nominal dollar terms and so it's just a matter of
| issuing more dollars. The trick is to do this in a way
| that doesn't devalue the dollar thus triggering an
| inflationary cycle.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| It's an impossible trick. The chicks come home to roost.
| You can't have an exponential forever.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Americans have been hurt for 50 years
|
| No they haven't. They've benefitted from it.
|
| Because now most Americans don't slave away in unsafe factories
| 7 days/week for dollars an hour.
| refurb wrote:
| How about steel mill jobs paying $35/hr?
|
| Saying Americans haven't been hurt they've benefited applies
| to white collar workers only - no change to jobs and cheaper
| goods.
| palmotea wrote:
| >>> Americans have been hurt for 50 years
|
| >> No they haven't. They've benefitted from it.
|
| > Saying Americans haven't been hurt they've benefited
| applies to white collar workers only - no change to jobs
| and cheaper goods.
|
| And that's a big reason why Trump won: white collar
| workers, like the GP, lecturing blue collar workers, while
| being ignorant of their actual situation.
| ringeryless wrote:
| And what Trump has been doing does not actually serve
| blue collar workers. Republican policies don't serve blue
| collar workers in general: anti union policies, for one.
| Republican policies serve billionaires and make no
| attempts to hide this, but they win blue collar votes
| from foolish people who believe culture war narratives
| matter. The culture war was invented to distract from
| class war waged by billionaires against the working
| class, hello.
| palmotea wrote:
| You've just repeated the Democratic party line, designed
| to cover their ass for their inaction and inattention.
| Democrats will lecture the blue collar working class to
| not believe their lying eyes and trust the Democrats,
| then lecture them on how they have to because Republicans
| are so much worse.
|
| It's a dumb strategy, and it isn't working anymore.
| threeseed wrote:
| Plenty of white collar jobs have moved overseas e.g. IT,
| marketing, call centres. Especially with remote work.
|
| The point is that as a country it has adapted by people
| moving into industries that aren't able to be easily
| outsourced.
| vkou wrote:
| The US today produces more steel than it ever has in its
| history, with ~1/10th of its peak workforce.
|
| Those jobs aren't coming back.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| The error is assuming that Americans are homogenous. Wealthy
| ones benefited tremendously by reducing their production
| costs while the less fortunate were put into international
| labour productivity competition.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Well, does the American public make it viable for a
| politician to push for expenditure of taxes on supporting
| the "less fortunate", say in terms of re-education or, you
| know, subsidizing social safety nets? If income inequality
| was such an issue, why did Americans put into power a
| billionaire to design the economy _twice_? Lol
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| Income inequality does not have a chance of standing as
| relevant issue in corporate media. Furthermore social
| media has become a significant suppressor by shaming
| (perhaps not the right word) people of their
| circumstances. As a result the perceived public opinion
| is far from actual opinion of the people on the relevant
| issues that Bernie Sanders often speaks about.
|
| Whereas some did vote for the Trump in spite to make
| others suffer as they already do.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| And yet, we have a system where the less fortunate could,
| simply by choosing to, make the government use some of the
| wealthy people's money to make things better for
| themselves. This has been done in the past in the US,
| during the years that many consider America's best. In
| other countries, the poor don't have this option.
|
| But, they choose not to. To some this choice is noble, to
| others it's foolish. Either way, what can you do?
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| When the wealth redistribution were done in the past
| there happened to be a strong movements that backed the
| change. I don't see prospects of that happening in the
| foreseeable future given the new technologies of
| surveillance and deception.
| topspin wrote:
| > They've benefitted from it.
|
| They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact
| opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.
|
| > Because now most Americans don't slave away in unsafe
| factories 7 days/week for dollars an hour.
|
| Now they're collecting disability in their unsafe
| neighborhoods, getting morbidly obese while their substance
| abusing kids play vidya games in the basement into their 30s.
|
| Yes, it's really like that. People want their factories and
| incomes back. I don't claim that anything happening here is
| going to deliver that, but that's the pitch they're voting
| for. To their credit, at least they're pursuing that in lieu
| of some UBI ideocracy made of fantasy money.
|
| As for you: it's fine to point out all the ways they may be
| misguided and/or misled, but unless you have an alternative
| that doesn't amount to expecting everyone to somehow earn an
| advanced degree, and then discover it's next to worthless
| (even before "AI",) your really not contributing much. So
| what do you have?
|
| Anything?
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| > They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact
| opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.
|
| People vote against their own interests constantly. This is
| literally evidence of that.
| topspin wrote:
| > vote against their own interests
|
| The go to midwit rationalization for every electoral
| loss.
|
| Note the abject lack of anything resembling an
| alternative.
| sunshowers wrote:
| > They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact
| opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.
|
| This conundrum, like so many others in public discourse, is
| downstream of the widespread but fundamentally incorrect
| belief in free will (which in turn is downstream of belief
| in supernatural powers, because free will sure as hell
| isn't explained by anything in nature).
|
| Nothing is in anyone's control. There's no such thing as
| "eyes wide open". People's behaviors are 100% downstream of
| genetics and environment. Some people behave rationally
| some of the time, and to the extent they do so it is
| because the environment set them up to do that. There is
| absolutely no coherent reason to generalize that into the
| idea that most people vote (or do anything else)
| rationally.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| You shoe-horned two things together - free will and
| rationality.
|
| Just because free will doesn't exist, doesn't mean they
| didn't act "rationally" (whatever that even means in this
| case).
|
| Deindustrialization and Nikefication in the past several
| decades isn't "rational" long-term behavior either.
| sunshowers wrote:
| I mean in their actual self-interest rather than, say,
| what they have been made to believe is in their self-
| interest.
|
| > Deindustrialization and Nikefication in the past
| several decades isn't "rational" long-term behavior
| either.
|
| Maybe, but I was responding to "They benefitted from it
| so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide
| open. Twice."
|
| There's an implication here, and in a subsequent reply
| that people voting against their interests is "[t]he go
| to midwit rationalization for every electoral loss", that
| people exercised free will when they voted.
|
| This is plainly incorrect, because free will quite
| clearly does not exist. No one has ever shown the kinds
| of violations in the laws of physics that would be
| required for free will to exist.
|
| Since free will does not exist, there is simply no a
| priori reason to believe that people voted in their
| interests. People's voting decisions, like everything
| else they do, are out of their control. To the extent
| that they vote in a particular way that's good or bad for
| them, it's driven purely by luck and circumstances.
|
| It is this a priori belief that people vote or act in
| their own interests that's the real "midwit
| rationalization".
| Johanx64 wrote:
| > There's an implication here, that people exercised free
| will when they voted.
|
| There's no such implication.
|
| > This is plainly incorrect, because free will quite
| clearly does not exist.
|
| > Since free will does not exist, there is simply no a
| priori reason to believe that people voted in their
| interests.
|
| What are you even talking about.
|
| People (and living beings in general) acting in their own
| self-interest - pretty much all the time - it is the most
| universal general principle of life if there ever was
| one. This doesn't require or involve free will.
|
| How well a biorobot (no free will!) executes in pursuing
| his self-interests, is the selection critereon.
|
| Now, the people make mistakes pursuing their self-
| interests, doesn't mean they aren't acting in their self-
| interest. Because they sure as hell are - all the
| frigging time! It's their whole firmware!
|
| Deindustrialization / nikefication all the way through
| the value chain except the very, very top last step of
| the value add - hasn't been in their self-interest, it
| isn't in the interests of their nation either.
|
| It's only in the self-interests of short-term thinking
| shareholders that min-max asset valuations with great
| costs to everyone else but themselves.
| sunshowers wrote:
| > People (and living beings in general) acting in their
| own self-interest - pretty much all the time - it is the
| most universal general principle of life if there ever
| was one.
|
| Base evolutionary instincts to survive don't translate to
| humans living in complex modern societies acting in their
| self-interest.
| happosai wrote:
| People who voted that wouldn't want to work at factories
| with working conditions and salaries Chinese factories make
| everything they consume. They also don't support the unions
| that would make working bearable in factories. Even if
| somehow factories would return and pay reasonable
| compensation, that would make the products so expensive
| most Americans couldn't afford them. People would have to
| consume a lot less. Which may be a good thing for the
| planet, but I doubt that's what the voters are prepared
| for.
| threeseed wrote:
| > People want their factories and incomes back
|
| But are they willing to work for below minimum wage for
| ridiculously long hours ?
|
| Because otherwise that factory will be uncompetitive
| against China, Vietnam, India etc.
|
| Unless of course you want to resort to tariffs which will
| instead transfer that cost onto everyone.
| theuppermiddle wrote:
| The richest country in the world cannot save their own
| citizens from poverty. Not to mention most number of
| millionaires and billionaires. Obviously the solution is to
| impose tariffs based on some made up numbers. Wonderful
| idea!
| squigz wrote:
| > Now they're collecting disability in their unsafe
| neighborhoods, getting morbidly obese while their substance
| abusing kids play vidya games in the basement into their
| 30s.
|
| > People want their factories and incomes back
|
| Sounds like what they really want is safety and hope for
| their futures. I'm not sure going back to the way things
| were - good or bad - is the way for society to move forward
| though.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact
| opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.
|
| Have you considered the platform that the Republicans have
| actually been running on? Was it one of economic policy?
| Did you consider why they attacked DEI and minority groups
| (including LGBTQ)? Because they would not have won on this
| roughshod economic policy.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| >>People want their factories back.
|
| Did you ever work at a factory? I did. I would most
| certainly prefer to collect a pension and play video games
| (which I do now in retirement). Anyone would.
| topspin wrote:
| Doomsaying prognostications, odd questions, free will talk
| for some reason, evidence free assertions about voters and
| their interests, doubts and fears...
|
| And precisely 0.0 alternatives offered.
|
| I can't imagine anyone being surprised that we've ended up
| with Trump et al. When all you offer is un-actionable
| thoughts and cowardly status quo, no one will listen to
| you. Meanwhile, the cohort of disenfranchised, disposable
| people grows around you until they fear the status quo more
| than they fear change.
|
| Congratulations!
| khazhoux wrote:
| Now they're safely home, unemployed.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Yeah ... talk to someone who worked in the 50s and 60s in
| Detroit.
| intermerda wrote:
| Or anyone who worked as a switchboard operator. Nobody did
| anything to protect their jobs!
| sawdusto wrote:
| I've met a lot of people in St. Louis working various factory
| jobs. Making different kinds of specialized equipment, food
| products. I think they get paid $25+ an hour starting out. A
| fair amount seem like tedious jobs.
|
| There's around 12.8 million people in the US working in
| manufacturing.
| fnord77 wrote:
| > No they haven't. They've benefitted from it.
|
| some benefit. many have been in a state of perpetual
| poverty/welfare, but we don't see those in the official stats
| because the rich are so rich here it skews numbers
| palmotea wrote:
| > Americans have been hurt for 50 years ... yes manufacturing
| going overseas was a huge change and many administrations
| didn't do enough to help affected workers. Buuuuuut - placing
| tariffs on our allies that will likely lead to a recession
| makes no sense.
|
| Yeah, some tariffs aren't a bad idea. But this plan? Just
| stupid, without any thought or strategy behind it.
|
| The tariffs should be used more strategically to reorganize
| supply chains, not these blanket tariffs of low cost _and_ high
| cost places. And probably ratchet them up slowly, to give time
| for production to move, instead of a big bang of putting them
| up everywhere.
|
| So tariff China and Mexico, not Canada and Germany.
| whereismyacc wrote:
| America got richer and outgrew the phase where tons of factory
| jobs made sense. It seems pretty clear to me that well-paying
| manufacturing job in developed countries were the product of a
| particular moment in time where poorer countries couldn't do it
| yet. Now they can. It was never going to last.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I live in NJ and people often make a lot of noise every time
| there's a report of people moving out of NJ because of high
| taxes and high housing costs (yet NJ's overall population has
| increased).
|
| To me, it makes sense: NJ is a place where you live to make a
| high salary (proximity to NYC and Philadelphia) and raise a
| family (very good public school systems as a result of those
| high taxes). When you no longer have a need for those
| circumstances, you move.
|
| Likewise, the US is not a great place for certain types of
| manufacturing because the labor and raw material supply chain
| simply isn't there. Why not focus on the things that we are
| good at instead?
| 93po wrote:
| It was never going to last if the US allowed for very low
| cost imports from those countries. This is literally one of
| the largest points of tariffs - protecting domestic
| manufacturing. We could have had high tariffs the whole time
| and offshoring would have been much less pronounced. I'm not
| saying that would have been a net positive, but to say it
| would never last is only true under certain circumstances.
| whereismyacc wrote:
| You were still going to lose export markets as
| international competition grew, and you were still going to
| shift to higher value-added service jobs as the economy
| developed.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| > Americans have been hurt for 50 years
|
| Can you please explain a bit more about this 'hurt'?
|
| My understanding is that a significant majority of sources of
| US 'hurt' are internal and there has been ample opportunity to
| vote at least some of it away, but the votes keep going in the
| direction of making it worse.
|
| The worst thing about it is that the situation has essentially
| been perpetrated on the citizens of the US by those with power
| and influence for the simple human weakness of greed.
| Unfortunately they've got the power and resources to
| effectively do large scale "convincing".
| TrackerFF wrote:
| From what I understand, de minimis exemption has also been
| removed.
|
| That is a huge, huge deal. It effectively means that all goods
| imported from China will be slapped with a 30% import tax, as
| soon as said goods arrive the US border / customs.
|
| Usually what happens then, is that the courier will pay that tax,
| and then bill the recipient later on - as well as charge some
| fee/fees for the work done.
|
| This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from China
| with free shipping can end up costing $10, because you're paying
| $0.25 in VAT or import taxes, and $10 to the shipping courier for
| doing the paperwork.
|
| If that is the case in the US, I fully expect total chaos and
| mayhem when all the Temu / AliExpress/ Wish customers start
| receiving extra bills for their orders.
|
| (That's just from the most obvious consumer example...then you
| have pretty much everything else. Goods, commodities, etc.)
|
| EDIT: I found more info here https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-
| sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
|
| So it is even worse, you either pay $25 per shipment, or 30% -
| whichever is higher. Then later it moves up to $50 per shipment,
| or 30% - whichever is higher.
|
| a $1 item with $1 shipping will end up costing you as much as $52
| after June!
| apparent wrote:
| So is AMZN stock up?
| tempestn wrote:
| Most of the stuff on amazon comes from China, so I doubt it.
| danols wrote:
| Do you expect their annual turnover to go up? They might get
| a bigger slize of the pie but the pie itself is getting
| smaller. Pre trade AMZN was down 7%
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Well, given that 90% of stuff on Amazon is relabeled crud
| from Ali Express...
| apparent wrote:
| Yeah, but it sounds like the tariff is a higher percent for
| single item shipments. That means that aliexpress would
| sell less to individuals and more to Amazon resellers.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Down 6% in premarket, will have to wait and see but likely
| wont help them much as tariffs will impact a significant
| amount of their products regardless.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| In addition to what everyone else has said, if Europe goes
| through with the new "Big Tech tax" and/or tariffs on digital
| services, AWS would presumably take a big hit.
| themagician wrote:
| Courier will only pay the tax if it's a DDP solution, and then
| bill it back to the actual merchant. FedEx, DHL, and UPS
| provide this as an option. If it goes USPS, or no DDP solution
| is in place, it's going DDU and it will simply be stuck in a
| sufferance warehouse or at the local post office until the
| recipient comes in and pays the bill.
| jquery wrote:
| Well, the good news is almost nobody is gonna like this, so I
| don't anticipate it lasting beyond Trump's presidency, assuming
| he makes it 4 years at this rate. The bad news is that even
| after tariffs are removed, it will take years for prices to
| recover, if they ever do.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| They're going to try to make sure we never have fair
| elections again. I'm not saying they're going to succeed, but
| they're sure as hell going to try, which is terrifying.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Actually one policy that Biden kept in place after the 2020
| elections was the Trump Tariffs.
|
| I think we are underestimating how popular protectionism is
| with progressives, it may turn out to be an unusual alliance
| between disaffected voters on the far right and left
| outnumbering free trade advocates in the center of both
| parties.
| flowerthoughts wrote:
| In Europe, Alibaba has their own warehouse in the Netherlands.
| I wonder if that's to be able to do a single "international"
| import. Could the same happen in the US?
| trinix912 wrote:
| Aliexpress does that as well, with a warehouse in Hungary.
| They ship the products there, import them en masse as a
| business, then relabel and send them off to the recipients.
| omnimus wrote:
| Alibaba is Aliexpress. They have multiple warehouses around
| europe.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| They may be compelled to do that; there's 1.3 million
| packages from Chinese retailers a day coming in through the
| Netherlands, but since they're all individual packages, they
| fall under a threshold for import taxes. There's now calls to
| drop that threshold so that people pay import taxes for small
| items as well, and / or to compel Temu and co to stop
| shipping individual packages but do it in bulk.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The exemption for low value imports was removed a few years
| ago, see other comments near this one in the discussion.
|
| Purchases from Temu pay EU VAT according to the location of
| the purchaser, and an electronic system means the money
| sent to Temu gets to the EU and the package can sail
| through customs.
| nottorp wrote:
| > This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from
| China with free shipping can end up costing $10, because you're
| paying $0.25 in VAT or import taxes, and $10 to the shipping
| courier for doing the paperwork.
|
| Not the big China exporters, not any more. They all include
| taxes in the price on your country specific web site, ship to
| their warehouses inside the EU, handle taxes and your local
| courier just delivers.
|
| Now if you're talking DHL yes, they have you fill forms upon
| forms and charge you for the forms you didn't ask for. But if
| that happens, no one will have time to process all the forms so
| private imports from China will simply ... halt for a while.
| Until Temu/AliExpress/etc sort out for the US the same system
| they use in the EU.
|
| If in the US, I'd hold on any direct purchases from China for
| 3-6 months.
|
| > So it is even worse, you either pay $25 per shipment, or 30%
| - whichever is higher. Then later it moves up to $50 per
| shipment, or 30% - whichever is higher.
|
| Hah. That's DHL commission territory :) Definitely hold from
| direct purchases until Temu sorts it out for you.
| seszett wrote:
| > _Until Temu /AliExpress/etc sort out for the US the same
| system they use in the EU._
|
| The thing is, the EU specifically set up a structure to make
| this easier for sellers and transparent for customers (the
| "import one-stop shop") and I don't see the US government
| doing any effort to make importations more seamless.
| nottorp wrote:
| Didn't know that. I'm just a stupid EU sheep.
|
| Incidentally, even Amazon US uses that facility. They
| charge me my local VAT plus some change ("exchange rate
| whatever" commission, something under 1%) and the package
| arrives in my hands via courier without any further
| interaction.
|
| Even Mouser has set up a warehouse inside the EU in the
| past years. They went from a pain to order from to a
| pleasure.
|
| Just to emphasise, this system has been set up for ages
| because you did need to pay VAT on imports anyway. Even
| without any special tariffs. And that means a visit to the
| post office in person.
| bgnn wrote:
| Yeah EU doesn't have a special tariff per se, but they
| wanted a responsible legal entity in EU to deal with taxes
| and customer rights so they created this structure.
|
| US just doesn't want anything imported. Doesn't help to set
| up US entity. You will have to pay this amount. Though, it
| helps with $1 orders if they import them and process them
| in bulk.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| For reference: https://vat-one-stop-shop.ec.europa.eu/one-
| stop-shop_en
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Well, the point of the action in the US is to _stop_
| imports, not just tax them, so manufacturing moves into the
| US. The minimum fee per item is clearly punitive.
|
| Not that that matters, most manufacturing will simply never
| be in the US ever again, and having punitive taxes like
| this will simply drive up costs massively.
| orloffm wrote:
| If I buy something from amazon.co.jp or Apple and it arrives
| from Japan or China with DHL/UPS, I don't do anything at all
| in Poland. It's all transparent, I just get the package for
| the price on the website.
| nottorp wrote:
| From which Apple store? If it's your local store of course
| they have VAT built in.
|
| Interesting about amazon japan, never tried it. Have you
| tried amazon us?
|
| Edit: interesting, amazon.co.jp seems to be its own thing.
| My login works on amazon US and all european country sites,
| but it doesn't work on the JP site.
| terinjokes wrote:
| Amazon is pretty good at handling VAT and all the import
| paperwork if it's sold as "Fulfilled by Amazon",
| regardless if it's the local Amazon site, or the US or
| Japan sites. I've ordered from all 3.
|
| Even eBay has sorted this out now for orders from the US,
| with VAT and import fees baked into shipping costs. They
| give sellers the address for their warehouse in Chicago.
| eBay then forwards as the seller of record.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Even eBay has sorted this out now for orders from the
| US
|
| Shit. Telling me that can be expensive. I might check
| ebay US now for some retrocomputing fun...
| Symbiote wrote:
| Fulfilment doesn't have to go through eBay for this.
|
| If I sell a package on eBay.de to a buyer in the UK, I
| get a customs tracking number to show eBay has collected
| the required UK VAT. That goes in the form when buying
| the delivery label and completing the customs (export)
| declaration.
|
| The EU prepared for years setting this up. It meant all
| the national post offices updating their systems, and
| integrating the private parcel delivery companies. It was
| planned before Covid, then delayed because of the concern
| for possible disruption.
|
| The USA seems not to have done this planning, and
| certainly hasn't allowed the months it will take to
| prepare for it. At least they may have some of the other
| half of the system, having set that up for exports to the
| EU/UK.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Many of extra bills are absolutely not going to get paid.
| danso wrote:
| FWIW eliminating the de minimis exemption had already been
| proposed by President Biden late last year:
|
| https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statement...
| pembrook wrote:
| De minimis exemption expiring has been a planned thing for
| years through administrations of both parties. Trump admin has
| been delaying the already planned expiration during the Biden
| years to use as a negotiating carrot.
|
| Basically it just means Temu/Aliexpress/Etc. will ship their
| goods to the US in bulk instead of bypassing customs on
| individual small orders, and distribute from domestic
| warehouses, having to now compete with US producers who do the
| same thing.
|
| It does completely kill any business built on dropshipping
| individual orders from chinese factories without ever touching
| inventory however.
| silisili wrote:
| I'm inclined to believe they're already doing something like
| this. I don't shop them but my wife uses Shein and Temu
| pretty often, and commented last year that more and more
| stuff was shipping from the US rather than overseas now.
| basisword wrote:
| >> If that is the case in the US, I fully expect total chaos
| and mayhem when all the Temu / AliExpress/ Wish customers start
| receiving extra bills for their orders.
|
| All three of those stores are very popular in my part of
| Europe. So there must be some workaround.
| basisword wrote:
| >> If that is the case in the US, I fully expect total chaos
| and mayhem when all the Temu / AliExpress/ Wish customers start
| receiving extra bills for their orders.
|
| All three of those stores are very popular in my part of
| Europe. So there must be some workaround. Based on your edit I
| would guess that they would import a bunch of orders in one
| shipment to make the 'per shipment' charge small per
| item/order.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I suspect that this $25/50 per _item_ policy is to prevent
| people from claiming a lower value than the actual price of the
| item. I 've received international packages marked "gift" with
| a value of $10 that I had paid much more for.
|
| I doubt the US will even manufacture substitutes for most of
| the things I liked and ordered from AliExpress. People with
| hobbies primarily supplied by Chinese manufacturing (like mine-
| electronics, 3D printing, FPV drones) are just going to be
| paying more for the same thing. There's no way we'll get an
| American substitute for niche products- all the US chip fabs
| are going to be filled with orders for higher dollar parts.
|
| Note that the fact sheet says per item, not per shipment. So
| there doesn't even seem to be a way to make one big purchase of
| several items to pay a single fee. They will hit you for every
| item in the shipment.
|
| Quick edit: I also note that the fact sheet makes a distinction
| between things sent through international post vs. other means.
| If you send via UPS/FedEx/DHL there will be regular customs
| fees (34%?), and through post you will have the $25/50 per item
| fee. So I will definitely have to pay attention to the shipping
| method for anything bought from AliExpress from now on.
|
| Quick edit 2: I literally have a PicoCalc from ClockworkPi
| coming in the mail in a few days- I guess we'll see if DHL
| charges me any extra fees.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I wonder how item will be defined. If I order a pack of 100
| tiny magnets from AliExpress, is that $30 or $3000?
| tommica wrote:
| Also people buying stationary stuff from China, how will
| their pricing be?
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure how it'll work in the US but in the UK when
| I'm buying cheap Chinese stuff on eBay there are usually
| two options - have it posted from China which is cheapest
| but slow, or order it from a UK distributor who has bulk
| imported from China which costs a bit more but arrives in
| a couple of days. I guess everything will move to the
| latter system?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| To add some color: when I've placed orders like this in the
| past the small items didn't come packed like consumer goods
| in a nice box but in something like a zip lock bag or an
| envelope.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from
| China with free shipping can end up costing $10
|
| This is what strikes me about these new tariffs... for all the
| concern about how it's going to impact the US economy (and I
| don't doubt it will), this is STILL far, far, less
| protectionism than literally every other country in the entire
| world. Donald Trump's justification for all this is that the
| U.S. is propping up the entire world economy to it's own
| detriment, and I'm not sure he's necessarily wrong here.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Based upon someone's imaginary example?
|
| "less protectionism than literally every other country in the
| entire world"
|
| I ordered from Temu and it's shipped from China and arrives
| at my door with my local sales tax applied -- because Temu
| abides by Canadian law -- but otherwise with no additional
| fees. Got a pair of headphones and a three timer device
| yesterday for $10 CAD.
|
| Or you know, Trump's constant yapping about Canada's diary
| tariff. In reality the US ships 4x more dairy to Canada
| tariff free than the reverse, and we, by design, do not
| target sending dairy to the US. But Trump takes advantage of
| the poorly informed and/or stupid, and it works amazingly.
|
| >U.S. is propping up the entire world economy to it's own
| detriment
|
| If you're sitting in the richest large country in the world,
| literally at the height of its economic accomplishment, and
| you _really_ buy it when someone tells you that you 're the
| victim, you might be profoundly misinformed and with
| literally zero context of reality.
|
| The US has an amazing amount to fall, and it's going to
| happen. And when you're working on the assembly line doing
| extremely low value work, having been ostracized by the
| entire planet, enjoy how you made the libs pay.
| gizzlon wrote:
| Sounds like a good idea, but how are they actually going to
| implement and enforce that?
|
| Do they open every package? What stops Temu or whatever from
| just keep sending them? I mean drugs get through so ..
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Yeah, the stopping drugs thing is just performative
| propaganda. It's really about the money, and the attempt to
| punish China (which will in fact mostly hurt Americans as
| much or more, anyways). If it were about the drugs only,
| there wouldn't be such punitive measures, and the press
| release wouldn't mention the fact that China doesn't have a
| de minimus exception.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Great. AliExpress was the RadioShack of 2025. No way I'm
| spending $25+ for a strip of SMD resistors, and I expect to
| never see them available in the US at a price that makes sense
| as a hobbyist. This isn't helping anyone, will prevent a lot of
| prototyping, and just be a bad experience in life. Thanks for
| ruining the fun of the last 5-10 years of DIY electronics
| golden age.
|
| I had plans to build some animatronic Halloween decorations for
| this year over the summer. I'm not going to spend hundreds to
| thousands of dollars on parts that nominally cost less than
| $50.
|
| My own pain is minor though compared to everyone I know who
| uses Temu and other things to basically outfit their life. This
| will be insanely regressive as they have the least to spend on
| "on brand" products, which themselves are imported too. This is
| like "super sales tax for the poor." Me, I'll just save my
| money and wait for the next president to undo the mess. My
| buddies not as successful monetarily as me? Their quality is
| life is going down the drain.
| ToDougie wrote:
| People will just ship large quantities and then warehouse
| them in the US.
|
| Sounds like you have some cool projects planned.... do you
| have any pics/links you can share?
| merek wrote:
| This article has more information, such as
|
| > The 10% rate would be collected starting Saturday and the
| higher rates would be collected beginning April 9.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-liberation-day-2a03...
| inverted_flag wrote:
| Here's the brilliant formula they used to determine those tariffs
| by the way:
|
| https://xcancel.com/orthonormalist/status/190754526581875103...
|
| https://xcancel.com/corsaren/status/1907554824180105343
|
| It's trade deficit divided by total exports divided by 2
| lysace wrote:
| This feels fairly close to Idiocracy (2006).
| olejorgenb wrote:
| Can someone explain if there's any logic at all to counting a
| countrys VAT as part of its tariffs? In my home country VAT is
| ultimately charged the end-customer and this happens regardless
| of the origin of the goods. How can this be a seen as a tariff?
|
| Besides, isn't the "Use tax" most(?) American states have more or
| less equivalent in function?
| lysace wrote:
| There is no logic to it. It's just the US going insane and
| Americans nodding along.
|
| https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/04/02/no-vat-isnt-a-tariff-but...
|
| https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/news/are-value-added-ta...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/as-trump-reciprocal-tariffs-...
|
| etc, etc.
|
| The only reasonable reply as a consumer and/or cloud-service
| purchaser: Economic wide-scale boycott of the US.
| simne wrote:
| US formally don't have VAT, when most other developed countries
| have.
|
| As I know, US states few decades spent on talks about implement
| VAT, but have not achieved agreement yet.
|
| For equivalent, most US states have trade tax, could be
| returned with set of rules. So, on some abstract level it could
| be considered as far equivalent of VAT, which is also could be
| returned with set of rules.
| czzr wrote:
| VAT has nothing to do with this.
| simne wrote:
| What you know about number of companies need to make modern
| automobile? What about CPU/GPU?
|
| To be more concrete - estimate number of companies, which
| stay between mineral deposit and discrete GPU board which
| you could fit into your computer?
| kergonath wrote:
| > Can someone explain if there's any logic at all to counting a
| countrys VAT as part of its tariffs?
|
| There is no logic. VAT isn't tariffs and is not discriminatory.
| In the same way as trade imbalance is not theft. It's just
| Trump trying to find reasons to complain and present the US as
| a victim.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The only logic is that since the USA doesn't have a VAT
| system, there is no way to do export VAT rebates.
|
| > Export VAT rebates mean to refund the VAT paid in various
| domestic production stages to exporters. The purpose is to
| ensure that the prices of exported products are free of taxes
| in order to maintain a level playing field for international
| markets.
|
| So that can't exist at all for American exporters, since the
| USA doesn't use VAT, their goods are taxed at a higher rate
| (as far as the exporters are concerned). It's confusing, but
| Trump could have just asked for negotiations to get rid of
| this distortion.
| rpep wrote:
| Other thing is that when you're VAT registered, as a buyer
| of parts you reclaim VAT on things you purchase as inputs.
| So the tax on the final product is what matters.
|
| With US sales taxes you accrue tax all the way up the
| chain.
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| What?
|
| Sales tax exemption is a thing when buying items for sale
| or materials for items for sale.
| physicsguy wrote:
| In many states in the US, if you go and buy materials, as
| a business, you pay a sales tax. There are exemptions and
| partial rebates, but there's nothing across all
| industries, and it varies by state. So if you were a
| farmer you might find you were exempt on fertilizer and
| tractors but not on a pickup truck.
|
| That's different to a VAT, because there, as long as
| you're a registered business for VAT purposes, _all_
| purchases you make are exempt from VAT - either you don
| 't pay it when you purchase and are invoiced by a
| business, or you can claim it back if you keep receipts.
| Companies have to register for VAT when revenue hits a
| certain amount; here in the UK it's PS85k for e.g.
| AnAfrican wrote:
| >either you don't pay it when you purchase and are
| invoiced by a business
|
| As a business you pay VAT when you purchase. And you
| collect VAT when you sell. Then you pay to the government
| the difference between collected VAT and paid VAT. That's
| what the "Value Added" part means.
| physicsguy wrote:
| No, if you provide a VAT number, in business to business
| transactions, companies will not normally charge VAT in
| the first place, so you don't pay it when you purchase in
| many cases as a business.
|
| However if you go into something aimed at consumers, and
| make a purchase, they're normally not set up for this,
| which is why you're able to reclaim when you have paid
| it.
| AnAfrican wrote:
| This may be an arrangement set up in some jurisdictions
| and probably widely used nowadays.
|
| The default (as in << the original setup >>) is what i've
| described.
| AnAfrican wrote:
| > So if you were a farmer you might find you were exempt
| on fertilizer and tractors but not on a pickup truck.
|
| There are items that generate a non-deductible input tax
| in VAT countries (often entertainment items or cars). But
| usually, those will be the exception and deductible would
| be the default.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow. When I read the rules for Norway [1]
| it appear the importer (in Norway) pay the VAT on the
| imported goods (as opposed to the the seller for domestic a
| domestic business). But it's nothing that indicates that
| this amount payed does not enter the ordinary VAT
| accounting. Ie.: the amount payed will in effect simply be
| forwarded to the end-customer, just like domestic goods. I
| don't understand how a "VAT rebate" would come in play
| here?
|
| > Export tax rebates involve the return of indirect taxes
| that have been levied on inputs used to manufacture goods
| that are eventually exported out of the country. These
| taxes can include VAT, ...
|
| So this seems to be about imported goods being more
| expensive in US, not the other way around? Ie. if a US
| company import some product from Norway they have to pay
| VAT to Norway? And if they subsequently sell a derived
| product back to Norway they do not get refunded this VAT?
|
| [1] https://www.toll.no/no/bedrift/import/importguide#merve
| rdiav...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| So let's say you make something in Europe, you pay VAT on
| the inputs, when it is sold to someone, they pay VAT, you
| take the VAT that the consumer paid and deduct the VAT
| you already paid to make the thing, sending the rest to
| the government, who only gets 20% on the thing, it
| doesn't get 20$ + 10% + 5% + .
|
| You have to keep receipts of the VAT you paid to make the
| thing to do this, Europe doesn't like sloppy paper work,
| and rightfully so. Except...America doesn't have VAT, so
| there are no VAT rebates, they pay taxes on inputs and
| the consumer pays 20% on the finished item. But you are
| also right: if Norway exports a thing to the USA, they
| aren't getting a VAT rebate either from the sales tax
| paid on the thing in the states (or does Norway get a VAT
| rebate on things exported to non-VAT countries? I'm not
| sure).
|
| But really, VAT is a better way, you avoid double
| taxation. The US should really just adopt it and make
| their VAT system compatible with Europe.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| So that make short of sense, except according to this
|
| "Selling goods to customers outside the EU
|
| If you sell goods to customers outside the EU, you do not
| charge VAT. However, you may still deduct the VAT that
| you paid on related expenses, such as for goods or
| services purchased specifically to make those sales."
|
| So the inputs are not more expensive to American
| importer. Yes the European company is compensated for the
| VAT they paid on an input, but this is a tax to begin
| with. Which the US companies not pay. So this is not
| unfair to the US company..
|
| Or is there something I'm not getting?
| omnimus wrote:
| I dont get it. VAT is end customer tax applied exactly
| once. The rebates exist so importers, suppliers, resellers,
| shops dont pay VAT multiple times. This applies to every
| product local or imported.
|
| With special case of digital goods this for a looong time
| meant that software sold from outside EU over internet was
| around 20% (VAT) cheaper because VAT was ignored by the
| companies. That's quite a big advantage especially for US.
| And a reason why EU wanted VAT to be applied equally. Many
| companies still ignore it but it's illegal now.
| AnAfrican wrote:
| I don't see how it's even possible to negotiate .
|
| VAT countries apply VAT on all domestic transactions (and
| that includes imports). VAT countries do not apply VAT on
| exports because they _rightly_ assume that the importing
| country will apply VAT or whatever sale tax equivalent is
| in place in their territory.
|
| This is not a distortion. There's really no other way to
| make it work.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| A tariff is a tax specifically on foreign goods. It is an
| artificial barrier to trade used to make domestic products more
| competitive. VAT is a tax applied to all products equally, so
| it isn't a trade barrier. You might be able to construe a
| convoluted argument that it is easier for domestic companies to
| work through domestic regulation, but that's pretty weak.
|
| The US seems to have simply taken the value of the trade
| deficit with a country, divided it by total imports from that
| country, and used that as the tariff percentage. So in their
| logic, wherever there is a trade imbalance, this must be
| explained by barriers to trade. So in a sense this is also a
| repudiation of the core hypothesis of global free trade as an
| ideology: That, if countries trade freely with one another,
| they can specialise on certain production and a virtuous cycle
| makes everyone richer. In Trump's ideology, trade is a zero sum
| game, and having a trade deficit means that you are losing.
| arlort wrote:
| Others pointed out that the tariff rate they are pointing to is
| actually just calculated based on trade imbalance. So the logic
| is that they have a number they want to get to and are throwing
| around terms that their constituents don't understand to make
| it sound reasonable
|
| VAT is not a tariff, no one reasonable thinks it's a tariff but
| the US doesn't use the term VAT so enough people won't second
| guess it if trump says it's an tax on american goods
| csmpltn wrote:
| VAT is effectively a tariff though, because it
| disincentivizes import/trade with the US (and other foreign
| countries). Since the US has no VAT, it's leading to unfair
| competition.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| US has sales taxes.
|
| If anything, VAT incentivizes sustainable economy by making
| production more expensive than reuse.
| arlort wrote:
| VAT applies equally to domestic and foreign companies. It's
| a tax.
|
| Tariffs and barriers to trade are measures meant to
| incentivize production in the country imposing them. That's
| what free trade is meant to get rid of, that's why Trump is
| so keen on tariffs and likes them
|
| If a company moved a production line to within the EU from
| outside because of VAT they'd still have to pay the same
| exact amount of VAT as they did before. It's just not an
| incentive in that sense
| olejorgenb wrote:
| Repeating this does not lead to understanding. Give a
| concrete example of how the rules applies which show your
| point...
| davejohnclark wrote:
| Good write up here https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/stop-
| saying-a-value-added-t... about how VAT doesn't alter the
| levelness of the playing field re imports and exports
| csmpltn wrote:
| VAT complicates the business environment for US companies
| operating in the EU, and it takes a major chunk of their
| margins. US doesn't have VAT and has a significantly
| easier business environment for EU businesses to operate
| in - leading to an unbalanced playing field.
|
| VAT is just one component though. Remember that US
| largely subsidizes and sponsors the defense of EU,
| Ukraine, Taiwan, Japan, etc - but those countries have
| been giving less and less back, over the past years.
| jbeam wrote:
| 1) EU businesses have to deal with complicated sales tax
| arrangements that vary by state and municipality.
|
| 2) EU businesses have to operate in their own environment
| and also face the VAT. There is no protectionism here.
| The playing field with respect to VAT is balanced,
| regardless of which side of the pond is (...was) an
| easier business environment to operate in.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| VAT complicates the business environment for EU companies
| operating in the EU too. You're demanding that American
| companies in the EU should be able to operate the same
| way they do in the US instead of complying with local
| laws, ie you're just demanding the right to bring your
| legal environment with you. Do you believe that foreign
| companies who open branches in the US should be exempt
| from US laws and be able to run themselves according to
| the law in their country of origin, at their US branches?
| I doubt it.
| klelatti wrote:
| > it takes a major chunk of their margins
|
| Completely false. Cost of VAT is passed on to consumers
| not met by companies and as EU companies pay VAT too it
| doesn't force US companies to lower prices and so harm
| their margins.
| grodriguez100 wrote:
| No, VAT is not a tariff. It applies to all goods sold, not
| only imported ones.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Bullshit. VAT is levied on domestic and imported goods,
| from the consumer's point of view there is absolutely no
| difference.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Well, they are saying, EU market is harder to operate in
| (because everyone pays VAT) than the US market (no VAT, also
| lower regulatory barriers it seems), and also EU firms have a
| "home advantage" benefit, for example the regulation is written
| for their benefit.
|
| So US is easy to sell in for everyone, EU is "hard" to sell in
| for everyone, but maybe less so for EU car makers. So there is
| something to this argument, it's not entirely without merit.
|
| Additionally, US car tariff used to be 2.5%, whereas EUs is
| 10%. The imbalance is short in justification, though across the
| board, EU and US charge each other similar tariff amounts
| altogether, so there are other areas where the US charges more.
|
| Whether that justifies broad brush enormous tariffs in
| everything, and whether US does the same in other industries
| (defence for example) is an exercise I leave for the trader.
| klelatti wrote:
| > So US is easy to sell in for everyone, EU is "hard" to sell
| in for everyone, but maybe less so for EU car makers. So
| there is something to this argument, it's not entirely
| without merit.
|
| It's completely without merit. Do you really think US
| regulation isn't written for the benefit of US companies? It
| is!
| rich_sasha wrote:
| From my post:
|
| > [...] US does the same in other industries
|
| As it happens, automotive regulation in Europe is far
| stricter than the US ones (emissions and pedestrian safety
| come to mind).
| klelatti wrote:
| Not the point I was making.
|
| In any event US cars don't sell in Europe for a range of
| reasons including size and fuel consumption. Those
| stricter rules apply to everyone and I don't think it's
| beyond US manufacturers to meet those rules for cars sold
| in European markets.
|
| If you're saying that Europe should loosen its safety
| rules just so the US can export more cars then the answer
| will certainly be no.
| mfost wrote:
| We'll also need to raze our cities to make bigger roads
| for their cars. Unlikely to say the least.
|
| Or the US companies could do a minimum amount of effort
| to tailor their product line for the target market.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| > EU market is harder to operate in (because everyone pays
| VAT)
|
| Surely it's not exactly rocket-science to handle VAT...
|
| Explain how it's an disadvantage for an US exporter compared
| to a domestic company... Give an example instead of
| handwaving. I'm willing to admit I don't understand all the
| details, but you wont convince me using this vague statement:
| "harder to operate in (because everyone pays VAT)" ...
|
| If the US adjusted selected tariffs to protect selected
| industries the outcry wouldn't be the same, so I'm not very
| interested in specific examples where the US have a lower
| tariff than the "counterpart".
| csmpltn wrote:
| European VAT makes it difficult for American companies to
| compete in Europe. US has no VAT, making it easier for European
| companies to compete in America...
|
| Combined with the fact that the US is the de-facto largest
| benefactor of NATO, Ukraine, UN, etc... then the US is getting
| shafted by the EU and Trump is correct in seeking ways to
| mitigate that.
|
| Applying this economical pressure on the EU is a valid
| strategy, IMHO.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| Can you explain how it make it difficult?
|
| Ie. Give an example of how the system is an disadvantage for
| en American exporter or an advantage to an European exporter
| czzr wrote:
| No, you are simply incorrect, a VAT system does not make it
| harder for US companies to compete. It's explained well here:
| https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/stop-saying-a-value-
| added-t...
|
| For those who don't follow the link, here's an extract from
| the article explaining the core situation:
|
| Imagine a car that costs $30,000 to produce before tax. Now
| compare four scenarios:
|
| 1) BMW sells the car in Germany (domestic sale): Germany's
| VAT (let's say 20% for simplicity) is added on the final
| sale. The German consumer pays 20% VAT, i.e., an extra
| $6,000, for a total price of $36,000. BMW forwards that
| $6,000 to the German government as VAT.
|
| 2) BMW exports the car to the U.S.: Since the car is
| exported, BMW does not charge German VAT. Any VAT BMW paid on
| parts or inputs is refunded by the German tax authority. The
| U.S. buyer pays the $30,000 price, and since the U.S. has no
| federal VAT, there's no equivalent federal tax on that sale.
| (A state sales tax might apply at the point of sale, but
| we'll come back to that.) The key point: the German
| government collects no VAT on an item consumed in the U.S..
| This makes complete sense because that car's being enjoyed by
| an American buyer, not a German resident.
|
| 3) GM sells the car in the U.S. (domestic sale): The U.S. has
| no VAT, so the American consumer pays $30,000 (ignoring any
| state sales tax). No federal consumption tax is collected.
| (In states with a sales tax, the consumer might pay, say, 7%
| extra to the state government, but again, the federal
| treatment is no tax.)
|
| 4) GM exports the car to Germany: When the car arrives in
| Germany, it faces the same 20% VAT as any car sold in
| Germany. So a German customer buying the American-made car
| pays $30,000 + $6,000 VAT = $36,000. That $6,000 goes to the
| German government. From GM's perspective, it doesn't owe U.S.
| tax on that export sale (since the U.S. doesn't tax exports
| of goods), but its product will bear German VAT when consumed
| in Germany.
|
| What outcome do we have here? In Germany, both the BMW and
| the GM car cost the same $36,000 after tax, and the German
| government collects VAT on both. In the U.S., both cars cost
| $30,000 before any state sales taxes, and the U.S. government
| collects no federal consumption tax on either. Each country
| taxes consumption within its borders--no matter where the
| product came from--and does not tax consumption outside its
| borders. This is precisely the goal of destination-based
| taxation: neutrality. Consumers in each country face the same
| tax on a given product, whether it's domestically produced or
| imported. And neither country's producers carry their home
| consumption tax as a "ball and chain" when they go compete in
| foreign markets.
| hartator wrote:
| You forget that the US company would be taxed more in its
| profit to make up for the absence of an US VAT.
|
| Whereas EU companies don't pay other US taxes.
| ncruces wrote:
| So you'll just tax imports, fund the entire federal govt
| on just imports, and call it a fair trade policy?
|
| Well, good on you. Just don't be surprised if that leads
| to retaliatory, and targeted, tariffs.
| nachomg wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense.
|
| European companies pay VAT in Europe. American companies pay
| VAT in Europe. European companies do not pay VAT in US.
| American companies do not pay VAT in US.
|
| Where is the unfair competition?
| csmpltn wrote:
| I'm literally quoting you:
|
| > "American companies pay VAT in Europe. European companies
| do not pay VAT in US."
|
| VAT is a significant income stream for the EU. They take
| that money and re-invest it into their economy in an
| uncompetitive manner, whilst constantly propping up more
| anti-competitive regulation (which harms American
| businesses).
| ncruces wrote:
| Have you looked at EU countries budgets? We "invest" in
| social security and public health systems. Our defense
| budgets go in large part to buy arms from the US, and
| Musk complains if we decide to prop up Arianespace for
| _some_ defense satellites while threatening to cutoff
| Starlink for Ukraine paid by Poland. Have you looked at
| how much money your DoD sends abroad (and how much of it
| is pork)? You 're literally telling us to be _more_
| protectionist, and then expect something different.
| csmpltn wrote:
| I don't really care what you invest the money into, the
| point is that the VAT is a mechanism which messes with
| the concept of a free global market and it leads to
| unfair competition and an unleveled playing field. If you
| combine it with other factors (such as the fact that the
| US is the sole guarantor of Europe's defense) - the US is
| in the right for challenging the European economy.
| ncruces wrote:
| We tax consumers, actual people, where they actually
| live, on what they consume, to fund the public services
| they benefit from.
|
| Why would that be a market distortion!?
|
| You're welcome to stop funding our defense. Just don't
| expect us to continue to fund your arms industry when you
| tell us to buy additional weapons.
| jbeam wrote:
| American companies pay VAT in Europe. European companies
| pay VAT in Europe.
|
| American companies do not pay VAT in in the US. European
| companies do not pay VAT in the US.
|
| American companies pay sales tax in the US. European
| companies pay sales tax in the US.
| csmpltn wrote:
| US sales tax is *significantly* lower than VAT, varies by
| state (allowing for all kinds of loopholes), and applies
| to fewer categories of products and services sold. No
| point arguing this, VAT is a protectionist and anti-
| competitive tax and the US has a right to challenge it.
|
| Why are you arguing this point? It's de-facto cheaper and
| easier for European companies to compete in the American
| markets, than the other way around.
| jbeam wrote:
| How is it protectionist if the European companies also
| pay it?
|
| You are arguing about rules that apply to _all companies
| competing in Europe_ and then extrapolating that to say
| that "American companies competing in Europe" are
| mistreated.
| csmpltn wrote:
| Are you saying the VAT doesn't benefit Europe and
| European economies (both directly and indirectly)?
| jbeam wrote:
| I'm saying the VAT is not protectionist.
| csmpltn wrote:
| We started this conversation with you seemingly not
| understanding how VAT messes with free trade, and it
| sounds to me like you're in a different place now. Feel
| free to keep arguing over semantics all day long, I'll
| leave it at that.
| jbeam wrote:
| My place hasn't changed at all. Everything I've said is
| internally consistent. You are welcome to view any form
| of taxation as an impediment to "free trade" but that's
| not how competition works. Feel free to continue
| believing that taxation is inherently protectionist, I'll
| leave it at that.
| csmpltn wrote:
| There's "taxation", and then there is "taxation". VAT is
| an incredibly aggressive and overreaching version of
| "taxation", and it has severe implications on free trade
| with Europe. I'm not sure why you won't acknowledge this.
|
| And by the way - plenty of economists view taxation as
| impediment to free trade.
| jbeam wrote:
| I'm not sure why you won't acknowledge that a tax that
| affects domestic and foreign companies equally is not
| protectionist. But here we are.
|
| I'm not saying that taxes don't have an impact on the
| economy, or the business environment, or growth, or
| profits...of course they do! Maybe the tax will lower
| demand which makes investment less appealing, and so less
| investment from Americans happens as a result. But
| there's also less investment from the Europeans in that
| case! And most of all, it has nothing to do with the
| competitiveness of American products in the European
| market, because the European products face the same tax.
| VAT does not distort the relative price between European
| and foreign products.
|
| If you want to say that tax revenue is used for subsidies
| that are anticompetitive -- well money is fungible, you
| can't blame that specifically on VAT revenue, and you
| should be making an argument against subsidies, not the
| VAT. But then you will need to address the many ways in
| which the US subsidizes its own industries.
|
| Have a good day!
| olejorgenb wrote:
| If I read you correctly you're saying that a tax imposed
| on the consumers in a country benefits the country as a
| whole and thus aslo the companies operating in that
| country, which make it unfair to foreign companies? Is
| that really what you're arguing?
| olejorgenb wrote:
| How is it easier for the European companies to compete
| when the US companies have the same conditions?
|
| Not everyone is an _expert_ in this field. If you are, I
| 'm sure you can provide a more understandable
| explanation.
|
| It's not obvious to me that the different rates of sales
| tax/vat matter for competitio either. An example is worth
| thousand words here...
| olejorgenb wrote:
| For context - here is one of Trump's posts which mention VAT:
| https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1140091752662...
|
| No details provided.
| iteratethis wrote:
| This won't bring home manufacturing but let's say that it will...
|
| The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. I
| saw a video recently explaining how sectors like the military,
| construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+
| positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing
| adds to that shortage.
|
| Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that
| are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.
|
| In construction, for every 5 people that retire, only 2 enter.
| And it's been like that for over 10 years. The people aren't
| there nor is the motivation.
|
| I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where 50
| educated people push some buttons though.
| codedokode wrote:
| > The US doesn't have the people to do the actual
| manufacturing.
|
| A usual lack of high qualified low paid workers?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If that's really the case, then these tariffs are the cure.
|
| If outsourcing labor overseas is cost prohibitive, wages will
| have to rise.
| danny_codes wrote:
| Or standard of living can fall. Which is quite likely
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Perhaps, but equality would rise in labor starved economy
| with low standard of living and high costs.
| jquery wrote:
| I don't see how that follows. It's not a step up to be
| forced to work in a factory, compared to before when not
| working was an option because costs were lower.
| trinix912 wrote:
| No it wouldn't, it would end up in even more inequality
| as the middle and lower classes would be able to afford
| even less while the rich would just see their assets rack
| up in price. We had that problem in my small European
| country.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Why? Who is looking at the societies of countries where
| manufacturing is happening and saying "we want that"?
|
| Manufacturing used to be great for the US because other
| places couldn't do it, either because they hadn't
| developed enough or they'd been ravaged by war. It wasn't
| "manufacturing physical goods" that was great for the US,
| it was "having industry that others don't". Now, other
| countries have manufacturing capability. America's
| uniquely exceptional industry is now tech - mostly
| software, but also hardware design, and design of tech
| for other industries. That is what we should be focused
| on - supporting the industries that set us apart from
| other countries.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Nevermind the improbability that a decrease in living
| standards would actually compress the distribution of
| living standards - Are you seriously arguing that's
| desirable? That it's better to reduce everyone's lots so
| that we can be more equal?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If you asked me a couple years ago, I would absolutely
| oppose it, but now I am seriously entertaining the idea
| that it may be better to live in a poorer but more equal
| society.
|
| It seems that the majority cares far more about
| comparative wealth than absolute wellbeing, and is
| willing to destroy the system if they don't get what they
| want.
| lodovic wrote:
| This essentially amounts to subsidizing industries that
| aren't competitive. It's like choosing to bake bread at
| home for $5 when you could buy it for just $2.
| palmotea wrote:
| > This essentially amounts to subsidizing industries that
| aren't competitive.
|
| That's not a bad thing, especially if they are "not
| competitive" because foreign workers can be exploited
| more (and not some real competitive advantage).
|
| There are more desirable things than the few
| neoliberalism optimizes for.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Or it could be interpreted as putting a higher value on
| self-sufficiency and domestic production capacity than
| standard free trade economic theories value those things
| at ($0).
|
| Standard comparative advantage narratives don't really
| account for production "webs" being ecosystems that get
| big synergies from colocation. They do not account for
| geopolitical risks either.
| lodovic wrote:
| True, it keeps wealth circulating domestically, fostering
| local economic activity. However, drawbacks of this
| system are higher costs for consumers and inefficiencies
| in production, so it needs to be balanced.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| No, this is the effect for the last 50 years' usual "I will
| have my high paid cushy job while some other country
| somewhere manufactures products for me, taking on all the
| negative effects. Only positive effects for me. Yes, you
| should use our currency and take part in our inflation. Or
| we'll invade you. We will print 6T USD[1] in 2 years and you
| need to absorb that along with us."
|
| Thankfully, this is coming to an end soon. No tears anywhere.
|
| I know a version of this is what happens in every human age,
| not singling anything out, but don't get onto the moral high
| ground of "I am just trying to ensure everyone is well paid".
|
| [1] additionally, 80% of all US dollars added to the supply
| were added in the last 5 years.
| yibg wrote:
| This is the part that confuses me too. The US is in an
| enviable position where a lot of the "shit" jobs are
| outsourced and in return we get cheap stuff. Why is this a
| bad thing?
| Qworg wrote:
| It isn't a bad thing - unless you don't have a job/have
| been stuffed with the idea that meaning and good pay
| could be yours if not for those foreigners.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| My interpretation is that today other countries are less
| willing to take on the role the US would like them to.
| So, the chosen solution in the US now is to wind down
| this approach, and try to bring back production to the
| country. I don't know enough to comment on the
| effectiveness of the method they are using to do this,
| but that they are doing it is clear to me.
|
| China is not going to play this role anymore as has been
| made clear over the last 2 years. Them being the largest
| country playing this role for the last decade has fueled
| this recent revamp in the US.
|
| Russia has not really played that role for a long long
| time.
|
| India(me being an Indian, I might be biased) is way way
| too slow to be depended on to sustain the sheer scale of
| US' requirements. Also, compared to china, it's actually
| getting more and more difficult to get "shit jobs" done
| here, which might be surprising. It is for all the wrong
| reasons though, so not much to celebrate as an indian.
| However, india has enough domestic potential to be self
| sufficient, so nothing to worry about either.
|
| A few years ago, I thought the next "dump yard country"
| for the US would be africa. But their progress to the
| required level is clearly multiple decades away, so
| that's out of the window in the short- and medium- term.
| Europe is already finding it difficult to get much out of
| Africa, despite still basically controlling multiple
| countries there. Thus, they are having to resort to
| immigration from the middle east (some 10 years back, it
| was all from africa)
|
| Needless to say, "freewheelers" (for lack of a better
| word) such as western europe and australia&oceania were
| never under consideration, and will never accept this
| role.
|
| Eastern Europe/SEA are "up for grabs", but the former is
| already saturated playing this role for western
| europe/russia (and the two fight for control of the same)
| and the latter is thoroughly saturated playing this role
| for china. You saw this play out recently with the
| attempt to get ukraine's rare earth industry serving the
| US. Russia invaded them for similar reasons.
|
| The upper middle east clearly will not play this role,
| preferring to live in substandard conditions and submit
| to terrorist organisations instead (and who can blame
| them?) China seems to love supporting these lot too.
|
| Saudi Arabia/UAE are options, and the new US government
| has made good use of them (atleast on paper) with the new
| investments. However, they can only do so much given
| their size, geography and demographics.
|
| I never thought they would allow it to happen, but even
| LatAm is slowly being "lost" to china.
|
| And suddenly, you've run out of countries! Maybe we'll
| find some martians though, they can do the welding for
| the starship.
|
| Strangely, the US is also seemingly losing its ability to
| maintain an edge through intellectual property. The whole
| hype in non-technical circles when Deepseek came out was
| a reaction to this. 20 years ago, it would have been
| protected better. The IP from 20 years ago is protected
| well... even today! See: semiconductor manufacturing.
| Some people say this is because you're now needing to
| import people too (and so, the knowledge leaks). Some
| people probe further and say that this happened in the
| first place because of worsening education in the US. I
| am inclined to agree with this, since over
| financialization/trade/empire-building and increasingly
| poorer education was also what killed medieval india,
| which I have more knowledge of. However, I might be
| making more of the symmetry than there is.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| US is good at bits and bytes but not in actual atoms i.e.
| manufacturing. That role has been outsourced to China.
| Without real manufacturing in control of US, it is
| beholden to what China says which is bad for American
| empire and its power projection.
| Gud wrote:
| This is wrong. The US still has an excellent
| manufacturing industry. Just because you don't make
| sneakers over there anymore, doesn't mean you're not good
| at manufacturing.
|
| Frankly the US makes some amazing things.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| Supply chains still originate outside US.
| runako wrote:
| This is such an important point. Lumping all
| "manufacturing" together obscures that some production is
| low-cost goods like matches and socks. Other production
| is 787s and F-150s.
|
| What the administration is suggesting is that we resume
| manufacturing low-cost goods. I'm not sure where they
| would plan to get the labor for that.
| jillyboel wrote:
| Slaves. Also known as prisoners in the United States of
| America.
| blitzar wrote:
| People in the US dont want to work 14 hour shifts for 50c a
| day for some reason.
| tootie wrote:
| The best option would be to close the gap with immigration but
| alas...
| jquery wrote:
| Or just free trade. Like we had...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Why is that the best option instead of raising wages until
| those jobs are attractive to domestic workers? There's this
| weird back and forth where people bemoan stagnating wages for
| the working class but at the same time cheer on importing
| labor that is willing to work for those stagnant wages.
|
| In any other market, the balance of supply and demand is
| reflected in the price. But for the labor market the
| perpetual solution put forward seems to be juicing the supply
| side so that the price does not move up to a new equilibrium.
| tootie wrote:
| Both would have to happen. There's very little slack in the
| labor market to absorb anything. Even if legal permanent
| residents take up manufacturing jobs, they'd have to give
| up whatever jobs they have now creating a shortage. And
| given then even most undocumented people are working,
| someone needs to fill those jobs.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Who is pushing to raise the wages and power of labor? It
| sure isn't the party that is pushing tariffs and the return
| of factories.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| This is precisely the problem.
|
| Plus, even assuming there existed lots of people to fill the
| gap, why would they sign up for manufacturing jobs? They pay
| like crap. Unions and worker rights have been gradually chipped
| away at for years and now they're straight up chainsawing them.
| Why work a monotonous job that pays at or just slightly above
| minimum wage, has skills that aren't really transferable should
| you decide to change careers, is rough on the body and doesn't
| even provide proper health care or sick days to rest, and
| employers will call you in during natural disasters with the
| threat of firing you otherwise and then leave you to literally
| die while pretending it's not their fault when you do die? [1]
|
| It's companies and the government saying, "We want everything,
| and in exchange, we'll give you nothing. And you will be
| happy." No American sees their kid growing up and thinks, "I
| hope my child will one day work long hours at a factory."
| People in some countries do, and it's because those jobs are a
| step up from the current standard. Factory jobs in the US are,
| in many cases, a step down and that step keeps lowering. High
| tech/high skilled manufacturing can be an exception, but the
| bulk of the jobs they're hoping to bring back aren't that.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/02/g-s1-28731/hurricane-
| helene-t...
| palmotea wrote:
| > Plus, even assuming there existed lots of people to fill
| the gap, why would they sign up for manufacturing jobs? They
| pay like crap.
|
| Maybe that's just you talking from a position of relative
| privilege (e.g. as someone who's likely an extremely well-
| paid software engineer or some adjacent profession), and not
| really understanding other people's situation. Not everyone
| has a pick of the perfect career that ticks every box.
|
| It's very well document that there are lots people bitter
| those manufacturing jobs got off-shored, and lots of
| communities that wish they'd reopen "the plant."
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| I'm from a very poor Appalachian town. My only option to
| better my life was to get up and leave.
|
| People from my hometown do talk about the good old days.
| People worked at union factories and my grandfather worked
| a well paying railroad job. My no-name town of 1000 people
| had a train station that made it possible to go to NYC. My
| grandpa got paid a handsome retirement from the railroad
| company. When he died, my grandmother was able to receive
| his benefits.
|
| My hometown votes against building railways. The station
| has long crumbled. They vote against unions. The factories
| are long gone. They've voted against any sort of retirement
| benefits. The elderly are struggling and depending on
| churches handing out food.
|
| Even if those factories come back, they'll be paid less
| than my ancestors did. They'll never have an affordable
| link to cities hours away. They'll never get the retirement
| benefits my ancestors had. And if you mention giving them
| these benefits, they yell and say they don't want them. The
| youth in my hometown who worked hard in school (we somehow
| had a decent school, all things considered) used their
| education as a ticket out. Now the people there are pissed
| and they're coming for education next.
|
| These people don't want "the plant." They want to be young
| again, without understanding that their youth was great
| because my ancestors busted their asses to give us great
| opportunities. They squandered everything that was given to
| us.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Since you grew up there, what was their rationale for
| repudiating pro-labor policies at the ballot box?
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| The guys on TV told them the people who supported it were
| communist and unions are for lazy people and welfare
| queens. They were told by the people on TV that if they
| vote against this, then those people will have worse and
| they'll have it better.
|
| 45 minutes down the road was a town with a large black
| population. When people talked about "those people in
| (town name)" being lazy or "those people" getting jobs or
| "those welfare queens" somehow benefiting from anything,
| everybody knew what they were talking about. It was
| better to be racist instead of caring about the future of
| their children
|
| Now, decades later, it's still the same. "Welfare queen"
| isn't the word that's used much anymore--everyone knows
| it's used as a substitute for various racial slurs and
| it's hard to deny it. Instead, they complain about DEI
| and woke. They replaced the word, but the meaning is the
| same. They still deny that it's meant to refer to "those
| people", but they always mention "that" town name when
| talking about it.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better
| than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking
| his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and
| he'll empty his pockets for you."
|
| - Lyndon B. Johnson
| nthingtohide wrote:
| This is very telling. The American Empire didn't even
| work for Americans. Who really benefitted? Just the
| Elites? Why should common people care about propping up
| an empire if the people in power don't bother about them.
| For context, read this thread.
|
| https://x.com/yishan/status/1906592890845028405
| e40 wrote:
| Many if us can't read threads because we don't have
| accounts there anymore.
| 42772827 wrote:
| https://nitter.net/yishan/status/1906592890845028405
| palmotea wrote:
| > The original architects of American global power did
| something very clever that no other empire had ever done
| before: they deliberately hid the instruments of their
| power.
|
| > Specifically, they institutionalized the hard power of
| the post-WW2 American military into a "rules-based
| international order" and the organizations needed to run
| it.
|
| > ...
|
| > The reason they did this is because repeated use of
| hard military power is fragile and self-defeating: it
| engenders resentment and breeds defiance.
|
| I think a similar thing happened to the people with the
| ideology of markets: they're presented as some neutral,
| optimal thing, but they aren't. They encode biases and
| preferences that suit powerful interests, which can take
| _a lot_ of effort for a common person to discern. But
| since there 's no leader or decision-maker to point to
| and defy, so it's hard to organize people about the
| problems, and then it's hard to point them at the right
| root cause/solution.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > Why should common people care
|
| because, like Yishan is saying, they don't even realize
| the 'empire' _is_ working for them. We sit around in
| absolute physical security, awash in cheap goods, able to
| travel anywhere, finding our cultural and technological
| products in demand across most of the world, ...
|
| We only feel want in areas like medicine and education
| where protectionism and prejudice have prevented us from
| fully enjoying the benefits of that position.
| lynx97 wrote:
| 32 years after my father died, I still only get 1.9x the
| pay he used to get for manual labour. Given that
| inflation goes roughly double every 20 years, its clear I
| am getting less pay then he did. I also had to leave my
| village, because there were simply zero good
| opportunities to work in IT. The young leaving rural
| villages are pretty much common, and has almost nothing
| to do with how people vote. Neither in which country they
| actually reside. Its a downward trend, everywhere.
| areoform wrote:
| I'm sorry to hear that. That's genuinely painful to read,
| but it's a reality that I've seen reflected elsewhere.
|
| I tend to think about Feynman's Challenger commission
| report whenever I come across stories like yours, "For a
| successful technology, reality must take precedence over
| public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
|
| For a successful society, reality must take precedence
| over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. And
| yes, nature will come for us all be it pestilence or
| disease, or a storm that washes it all away. Nature never
| stops.
|
| We created civilization and society as a way to escape
| nature's wrath. To become something more, to rise above
| the muck, and when we degrade that we will _inevitably_
| go back to the muck.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Reminds me on 'the town' in the book Damon Copperhead.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| My background is very similar. Grew up in a small, poor
| mountain town that once boomed with industry but today is
| crumbling to dust as the population becomes increasingly
| elderly and young people either leave for greener
| pastures or abuse substances in order to escape their
| reality and succumb to addiction.
|
| The industry that once fueled the town is long gone and
| isn't ever coming back, and as you say even if a new
| industry moved in the jobs it'd open up would be so
| grueling and abusive that it wouldn't be a net
| improvement to anybody's lives, thanks to all the worker
| protections stripped away over the years.
|
| It's not enough to "just" make jobs available. They need
| to be _good_ jobs with proper protections and support
| that allow people to thrive.
| kristjansson wrote:
| They squandered the sacrifice of their parents, and now
| they're asking their children to sacrifice for their
| benefit.
| Qworg wrote:
| It isn't just "reopen the plant" - it is "reopen the plant
| and match economic conditions in the time period from the
| 1950s-1990s".
|
| Just reopening won't bring back the comparably high wages
| from that time period.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Just reopening won't bring back the comparably high
| wages from that time period.
|
| It's a start though. If the plant stays closed, those
| "comparably high wages" _certainly_ aren 't coming back.
| If the plant opens, there's a chance.
|
| There's a lot of "letting the perfect be the enemy of the
| good" protecting a shitty status quo: "don't do _that_
| because it doesn 't fix X," implicitly requires that one
| solution fix _everything perfectly all at once_.
| sn9 wrote:
| That's a helluva defense of nuking our trade
| relationships and sparking a trade war.
|
| Like it wasn't perfect but it sure was preferable to
| what's about to come.
|
| We could have kept that and implemented policies that
| were far less painful and far more likely to increase
| wages.
| palmotea wrote:
| > We could have kept that and implemented policies that
| were far less painful and far more likely to increase
| wages.
|
| Yeah, but we didn't, so this is what we get.
|
| That's why, ultimately, I blame Democrats for Trump. They
| had _many_ opportunities to improve things, but they
| chose to ignore the trouble and prioritize other stuff
| more amiable to their increasingly upper-class base. The
| root cause was their neglect of the building pressure,
| Trump is just the explosion. They keep claiming they 're
| the competent and responsible ones, but they are just
| irresponsible in a different, more subtle way.
| Qworg wrote:
| I'm not saying it has to be perfect.
|
| I'm saying that this outcome will never exist because
| more has changed than just the plant closing. If we
| coupled "reopen the plant" with "the plant makes entirely
| new things" and "the plant trains local workers to take
| these jobs" and "the plant pays above local
| service/construction wages" and "the plant will be
| successful in geopolitical competition" and "the plant
| can do 10x the amount of business due to advances in
| automation to get to the same level of employment" and on
| and on.
|
| We could solve _each_ of these problems, absolutely - but
| they are all interlocking parts of a wicked problem.
| Blowing up the economy and threatening a global recession
| won't actually solve any of these.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Blowing up the economy and threatening a global
| recession won't actually solve any of these.
|
| _But neither will the status quo._
| gizzlon wrote:
| Do you assume it can't get worse? Or that 10 other things
| could not get worse?
|
| Like, much much worse?
| palmotea wrote:
| > Do you assume it can't get worse? Or that 10 other
| things could not get worse?
|
| > Like, much much worse?
|
| It will at least afflict the comfortable, otherwise they
| wouldn't be so opposed.
|
| And that's fine. We've been running on a twisted "win-
| win" logic in this country for a long time: no policy can
| be pursued where the working class "wins" unless the
| well-off also "win" (because if they don't, there will be
| _much_ whining), but if the working class loses it 's
| "Who cares! They've got to suck it up and adapt. Be more
| grateful and go fill the holes in your life with cheap
| shit from Walmart."
|
| Enough of that, and a lot of people rightly stop caring
| if things can get worse. Trump is the chickens coming
| home to roost. If people didn't want this outcome, they
| should've gotten together to fix the problems with
| neoliberalism.
| gizzlon wrote:
| Are there problems? Sure! But "fixes" that just makes
| everyone* worse of helps.. nobody.
|
| > Enough of that, and a lot of people rightly stop caring
| if things can get worse
|
| I get the _feeling_ , but it's still dumb: "My neighbor
| is playing loud music, so I'm going to burn down the
| block. Ok, so I don't have an apartment anymore, but at
| least hes not plying loud music anymore!! Win!!"
|
| * well, not the rich. They will be fine, at least in the
| short to medium term
| hackable_sand wrote:
| I worked in a factory. I agree with gp. Don't you dare
| speak for me.
| charlie90 wrote:
| >They pay like crap.
|
| Then raise the wages. Yes that means products get more
| expensive, but so be it. The economy will find a new
| equilibrium. White collar workers will see their purchasing
| power decrease, but factory workers will see it increase.
|
| >No American sees their kid growing up and thinks, "I hope my
| child will one day work long hours at a factory."
|
| Maybe its just me, but I think theres something seriously
| wrong with society if people have existential _dread_ over
| the thought of having to produce the things they consume. If
| the production of it is so unethical, it shouldn 't be
| consumed at all.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| > Then raise the wages.
|
| The same people proposing bringing back all these factories
| also want to lower wages.
|
| The dread isn't over production. It's about the conditions
| they face while producing them. Americans dream about
| having a small farm and doing their own woodworking and
| blacksmithing or doing so with a small community. They
| don't dream about working on a factory line and being fired
| if they miss a day due to being sick. But at the same time,
| if someone else says they don't want this, they call them
| lazy and say the kids don't want to work these days.
|
| It's an odd paradox.
|
| And high skilled manufacturing still exists in America.
| That work is often paid decently and people are fine with
| working those jobs. The problem is tariffs being made to
| bring back low skilled manufacturing, and the desire to
| make the standards of employment lower in the US so that
| it's feasible.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| > Americans dream about having a small farm and doing
| their own woodworking and blacksmithing or doing so with
| a small community. They don't dream about working on a
| factory line and being fired if they miss a day due to
| being sick.
|
| They dream about being treated better than that, but this
| is a big cultural gap. There are a lot of Americans who
| do, genuinely, dream about working somewhat hard factory
| jobs. They feel proud and fulfilled that they work in the
| steel mill just like their dad and grandpa and great-
| grandpappy, and they want to make sure their son will
| have the same opportunity.
| mjevans wrote:
| F-Them... I want a future of Star Trek replicators that
| can molecular print most of the stuff I want. Heavy
| engineering seems to still need at least some high energy
| refinement though. (Or at the very least, replicators
| with different composition.)
| vv_ wrote:
| > Then raise the wages.
|
| Then no one will be able to afford the products the plant
| is going to build.
| skywal_l wrote:
| They were able to in the 50s/60s/70s. So why not now?
| Draiken wrote:
| The line must go up.
| vv_ wrote:
| Everyone in the United States was much more well off in
| the 50s/60s/70s as they had just won a huge war that left
| most of their competitors factories completely destroyed.
| There's no economic boom today.
| hagbarth wrote:
| Because there was a shift to shareholder capitalism.
| Everything is done to increase shareholder value.
| runako wrote:
| The triumph of conservative ideology has broken the
| unions. No individual factory worker has the leverage to
| negotiate a better compensation package against the
| professional management team at Gap or Deere.
|
| The 80s was a period of explicitly designing for this
| condition; it's just taken a while for the ramifications
| to be acute. Although it's been obvious for decades that
| we were headed here.
| e40 wrote:
| You mean back when rich people paid serious taxes?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _They were able to in the 50s /60s/70s. So why not
| now?_"
|
| Because the 50s/60s/70s was the post-World War II
| economic boom for the US. Unless you're volunteering to
| endure World War III so that the next generation can
| enjoy that kind of boom, that is not going to happen
| again.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| It's a vicious cycle. But at the end of the day it's the
| _company_ that has to entice workers.
| vv_ wrote:
| The _company_ also has to stay competitive to make money.
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| Won't even have a product if you can't convince people to
| work for you. Believe it or not, its actually the workers
| who do most of the work.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The tariffs are high, but not 1,000% or whatever. If the
| alternative is "build new factories in the US,
| substantially raise wages and benefits for employees to
| encourage them to leave service positions for these roles,
| and then spend time training them" then the furniture from
| Vietnam with a 50% tariff is still going to be cheaper.
| stefs wrote:
| the good production worker's wages came from the unions.
| the GOP is fervently anti-union (with the exception of the
| police union maybe). they also oppose minium wages. there
| is no reason to think they'd support wage raises.
| arkh wrote:
| > rough on the body and doesn't even provide proper health
| care or sick days to rest
|
| That's why I'm bullish on human shaped drones controlled with
| full-body trackers. If you could do most physical jobs
| without being physically near the area you'd open them to
| more women (so widening the potential workforce) and improve
| on-the-job accidents statistics.
| mdda wrote:
| and (of course) the company will record the data so that
| the robots will be able to learn via imitation learning
| ASAP
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Wow I guess that WEF quote was true but just within
| boundaries of USA.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| > Why work a monotonous job that pays at or just slightly
| above minimum wage,
|
| If you torpedo the economy so people have no other sources of
| income, raise the price of all goods, and cut of all social
| supports and programs, people will have no choice but to take
| jobs they would have turned their noises up at before.
|
| Draining the swamp is winning!
| e40 wrote:
| This. It's the primary feature of the long term plan.
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| The US has recently loosened laws regarding child labor. It's
| how other countries produce items cheaply, why not the US?
|
| That El Salvador prison could also come in useful.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That was Florida. Child labor laws are mostly set by the
| states.
| chgs wrote:
| Is Flordia not in the US?
| clarionbell wrote:
| In the same way that Berlin is entire Germany.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Florida is the US of the US.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Do you think if children were going to be harmed in The USA
| then maybe the federal government should introduce a ban of
| that kind of shit federally?
|
| I've heard it all now...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Do you think if children were going to be harmed in The
| USA then maybe the federal government should introduce a
| ban of that kind of shit federally?
|
| I'm not sure the federal government can. There are powers
| reserved for states that the federal government can't
| circumvent. They have supremacy, but the jurisdiction of
| that supremacy is restricted.
| JimBlackwood wrote:
| Fair point, but does it change anything? You don't need
| factories in all states.
|
| Florida has 19% of children living in poverty, which to me
| sounds very high. That's a large and vulnerable group of
| people.
| themagician wrote:
| No people, no supply chain, and no total lack of environmental
| regulations mean most manufacturing jobs are not coming back no
| matter what the tariffs are. It's not just one reason that the
| manufacturing jobs have left, but a conflation of reasons.
|
| Unless... well, unless you eliminate the EPA, invade Canada and
| Greenland and take their raw materials, and make people so poor
| that they take up factory jobs again.
| seydor wrote:
| Suppose you even find those workers. How are american products
| going to compete with cheaper chinese / european ones. People
| over there are used to much lower wages / purchasing power. You
| can look at Tesla vs BYD prices as an example
| coderenegade wrote:
| More likely the goal is for foreign companies to set up
| factories in the US for the domestic market. The US market is
| too big for most industries to ignore, and as they move
| manufacturing there, they skill up the US population.
|
| Industries don't exist in isolation, and you need to be able
| to make simpler things in order to cultivate the know-how to
| make complex things. If China makes better phones, it won't
| be long until they make better drones. This is as much a
| strategic initiative as it is an economic one.
|
| And BYD should be a wake up call that the US cannot compete
| in high value goods anymore.
| anonfordays wrote:
| >If China makes better phones, it won't be long until they
| make better drones.
|
| They already do. China makes the best drones. Most of the
| drones in the world, most of the drones use in wars, etc.
| are manufactured in China, or are comprised of mostly
| Chinese parts.
| coderenegade wrote:
| I'm referring to the ones that carry a Q designation, not
| the DJI kind. China hasn't yet caught up in that domain.
| Electric drones are seeing a lot of use in Ukraine and
| other conflicts, but they aren't helping to establish air
| superiority.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| China has direct copies of our Reaper drones, they aren't
| some advanced technology, they are very simple craft
| actually, and descend from essentially target drones and
| some toys the navy put together in the 80s.
|
| >but they aren't helping to establish air superiority.
|
| A reaper style drone does nothing for air superiority.
| It's not meant to. It's a surveillance and ground attack
| platform. It has no means of equipping or targeting
| actual air to air munitions meant for Air Superiority.
|
| Why did you believe the MQ9 was relevant to air
| superiority? Or some special machine that China couldn't
| make?
| coderenegade wrote:
| Reapers aren't the only military drones, and yes, there
| are drones that do help establish air superiority, either
| on the reconnaissance and logistics side, or (more
| recently) directly on the combat side.
|
| China doesn't have the same level of sophistication in
| stealth tech, and they still struggle to make decent jet
| engines, because they don't have the required materials
| technology for certain components. There's also decades
| of work in signals processing, which is at least as
| important as the platform. Not to mention sensor
| packages, but they almost certainly have a lot of that
| down. A drone is simple until it needs to fly close to
| the coffin corner, do air-to-air refueling, land on a
| carrier, be invisible to radar, be hardened to jamming,
| act as a wingman to a human pilot... You get the idea.
|
| And since it apparently wasn't obvious, I'm not really
| talking drones specifically, I'm talking about all
| defense hardware. China doesn't have anything close to an
| F-22, and as far as we know, their tanks aren't as good.
| They can't build carriers that can compete with US ones.
| But they're already outcompeting the US when it comes to
| building civilian vessels, and they're taking over the
| electric car market. How long until they can build a
| decent carrier or tank?
| trallnag wrote:
| What's up with the corresponding 7 million young women of
| working age?
| danpalmer wrote:
| I heard a great story from a colleague that worked in fashion
| development in the UK. There's a big push for "Made in the UK"
| clothing and consumers associate it with quality, but the items
| are _lower quality_ , because the UK lost its garment
| manufacturing skills 50+ years ago. Meanwhile Asia has gained
| those skills, so if you buy clothes from China they are likely
| higher quality than you'd get here _and cheaper_.
|
| This is not always the case, Italy still makes high quality
| leather goods, Portugal is still making good shirts and
| trousers etc, but for the most part as economies have moved
| away from manufacturing into services they have lost the skills
| and to force manufacturing to happen there means accepting
| higher priced, lower quality products.
| smokel wrote:
| This has probably little to do with skill being lost, and
| more with how little one gets paid to do this kind of work.
| Skilled people can get jobs in other fields that earn a lot
| more.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Skilled people don't just appear out of thin air. Skilled
| people need years of practice, and advice from a network of
| adjacent skilled people to become skilled in a particular
| craft.
|
| You can be skilled at Excel and be 10 years away from
| knowing how to make even mass produced low quality
| clothing.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Skilled people are still mortal and after a couple
| generations, they do pass away. They won't be replaced by
| new skilled apprentices if the industry hasn't been hiring.
| danpalmer wrote:
| No no, it's the skills. My colleague worked for a very high
| priced fashion brand who were able to pay high rates (and
| indeed did for this and other parts), but they couldn't get
| the quality they needed.
|
| At the low end, sure, it's obvious you'll get more for your
| money abroad. The point here is that the skills are lost
| and you can't pay any amount anymore, at least not at scale
| (there will always be artisans who can produce extremely
| low volumes but these don't affect the market much).
| coderenegade wrote:
| I don't know that I agree with this. The US is too large a
| market to ignore, and this is effectively raising the profit
| margin for local production. Foreign companies will either move
| some portion of manufacturing to the US (for the domestic
| market), or cede the market completely, and I don't know that
| they're prepared to do that (well, maybe Chinese ones are).
| Factories have a long lead time, so even if this is abolished
| at the end of his term, they'll be locked in with sunk capital
| costs. The main reasons not to do this are a) abandoning the
| market, as mentioned, or b) you think you can hold out long
| enough until the political landscape changes.
|
| If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show up.
| Most labor shortages aren't an actual shortage of labor, unless
| you genuinely can't produce that skillset domestically, or your
| labor market is so tight that no one is unemployed; rather,
| they're a shortage of wages. Pay enough, and someone will do
| the job. This is especially true for low-skilled work. There is
| not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example,
| because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed
| people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.
|
| And even if these jobs aren't in running these factories,
| they've still got to be built. Money is a powerful motivator,
| so I have no doubt they will. Companies will bleed because of
| this, but there are clear benefits for the US working class
| even if they're paying more. The gamble is obviously that the
| benefits outweigh the negatives of higher prices overall.
| Modern economics says no, but modern economics also believes in
| service-based economies, and that countries should only produce
| what they're good at, which, eventually, becomes a repudiation
| of the nation state. No country wants to buy bullets from an
| enemy, even if they're cheaper, and the web of infrastructure
| and industry necessary to maintain a defense industry mandates
| that at some point, you abandon the theory. Which is to say: I
| don't know, but I'm also skeptical that economists do.
| foota wrote:
| > If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show
| up. Most labor shortages aren't an actual shortage of labor,
| unless you genuinely can't produce that skillset
| domestically, or your labor market is so tight that no one is
| unemployed; rather, they're a shortage of wages
|
| I don't know about this in the US. Sure, we're not at full
| employment, but I don't know how factory jobs are going to
| change that. My impression is that there is already a deficit
| in labor willing to work hard for good pay (construction,
| trucking, etc.,) and tightening immigration policies will
| make this even worse.
| coderenegade wrote:
| The definition of good pay is relative. Increase wages
| enough, and people will leave other industries, and new
| workers will join the workforce straight out of high school
| rather than going to university. Those jobs will be filled.
| foota wrote:
| Op is implying that there's excess labor lying around
| that with moderate prices (say, what you make in fields
| like construction, electrical work, etc.,) would be
| picked up. This isn't the case, or they'd already be
| taking the jobs in those fields that are relatively in
| demand.
|
| I agree that if you paid people as much as software
| engineers to work in a factory you would certainly see
| disruptions in the labor market. I don't know what the
| market clearing price would be for factory labor
| sufficient to meet the US demand, but I don't think it'll
| be pretty.
| retrorangular wrote:
| To what benefit though? People in the US currently
| provide advanced services such as software sold to people
| everyplace, and people in developing nations are
| manufacturing cheap goods, sold to people everyplace.
|
| After tariffs, people in the US are (maybe) manufacturing
| cheap goods, sold mostly only here, and developing
| nations continue to manufacture cheap goods for the rest
| of the world, and fewer people are providing advanced
| services such as software.
|
| Overall, the world just becomes poorer and has fewer
| useful services provided. Yes, the US becomes less
| dependent on the rest of the world, but the rest of the
| world also becomes less dependent on the US. Material
| wellbeing of everyone is worse off.
|
| But that's assuming all went to plan. In practice, it's
| hard to see how they would even achieve bringing
| manufacturing here through tariffs. Crashing the stock
| market is a sure-fire way to ensure the next
| administration (3.5 years away) will revoke them. You
| could install a dictatorship, but that makes it even less
| likely for companies to invest in the US. In practice,
| this will likely just make Americans poorer, but not
| bring any meaningful amount of manufacturing jobs back.
| Pretty much the epitome of "cutting off your nose to
| spite your face."
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| No-one will move any manufacturing because people don't
| expect this to last long enough for it to make sense.
|
| The congress can remove Trump's authority to determine
| tariffs at any point by declaring the crisis to be over. The
| Republicans have a knife-edge margin in the house and the
| most consistent two rules in American elections are that the
| party with the president loses some support in the midterms
| and that bad economic times means that the opposition party
| gains.
|
| It would take years to move production, and next congress is
| 20 months away. There is no world in which this ends up good
| for the USA. Even if you believe that this is a situation
| where short-term pain leads to long-term gain, there is no
| way this will continue long enough for that gain to ever
| materialize.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Yep, there will be a lot of promises for factories that
| should break ground in ~2028.
|
| The White House has already demonstrated repeatedly it
| can't stick to its guns.
| mattlondon wrote:
| > effectively raising the profit margin for local production
|
| This is the sad thing for US consumers.
|
| If there is now a tariff on Product X that means instead of
| costing 100 it will now cost 125, I will guarantee you that
| the price for a locally produced competitor item will be
| 124.99 The local producers are not going to leave 25% profit
| on the table.
| franktankbank wrote:
| Why would it have to be that way? Are you imagining a
| monopoly on all locally produced goods? Why wouldn't there
| be competition with a healthyish margin? Seems entirely and
| 100% cynical.
| runako wrote:
| The point of raising a tariff on a $100 imported good to
| make it cost $125 is because the US provider cannot
| profitably sell for less than $125. The tariff doesn't
| magically fix the domestic provider's cost basis.
|
| If the US provider was able to compete close to the $100
| level (as they already have incentive to do!), there
| would be no complaint and no need for the tariff in the
| first place.
| franktankbank wrote:
| Well taking that 34% number as reference. You could have
| been brought from 0% margin to 34% with a penstroke. US
| manufacturers were ground down just to the level of being
| unprofitable for the last 4 decades, of course they are
| close to the break even level.
| runako wrote:
| Let's leave aside for a moment the notion that there are
| any significant number of US manufacturers making stuff
| for 0% margins.
|
| So you suggest that increasing the tariff allows the US
| maker to increase their margin. We're not talking about
| them reducing input costs (in fact, the opposite in many
| cases), so the only way you could mean for them to
| increase their margin is by raising price. And to get the
| full benefit, you suggest they raise their price to match
| the price of the imports. And yes, this is what will
| happen, US makers will increase their prices because
| their low-cost competition is gone.
|
| So you're now kind of agreeing with the poster you
| initially disagreed with.
|
| (Of course, for many goods there are no US factories here
| and no reasonable ability to make the goods here at
| prices that would make sense, even accounting for high
| tariff barriers. So in those cases, consumers will just
| pay more for the same goods.)
| sebastianz wrote:
| > If the people aren't there, wages will rise until they show
| up. [...] There is not, and never will be, a shortage of
| cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long
| as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough,
| someone will do the work.
|
| While this might be in a theoretical and pedantic way true,
| sometimes you do not have the economic context to provide
| those larger wages, so there will technically be no
| "shortage" - but just because the jobs themselves will
| disappear.
|
| If you look at poor countries or regions, there is garbage,
| dirt and dilapidation everywhere. Clearly there is - in a
| practical way - a need for cleaners, but by your definition
| there is no "shortage" - because they cannot afford to pay
| anything for those jobs.
| iteratethis wrote:
| You say foreign companies will move manufacturing to the US
| or cede the market. You leave out the most likely option:
| everything will stay the same yet you pay more for your
| imports.
| Marsymars wrote:
| There probably isn't enough labour to onshore everything like
| you're implying.
|
| The US currently consumes about half of its goods from
| domestic manufacturing. There are about 12 million people
| currently employed in manufacturing, and 7 million unemployed
| people. Matching the historical all-time low for unemployment
| rate would give around 4 million unemployed still.
|
| > There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners,
| for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there
| are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone
| will do the work.
|
| I mean, by that logic there's never a shortage of any
| profession. But in practice, I've _seen_ what happens with a
| shortage of cleaners in a popular tourist town (my wife used
| to run a cleaning business) - it becomes nearly impossible to
| hire cleaners because everyone 's salary in the area is
| inflated and people would rather work at an easier job. You
| run into persistent performance issues with your remaining
| cleaners - they're dishonest, simply stop showing up to work
| without notice, etc. You can't hire anyone from outside the
| area because there's no housing available other than dingy,
| overpriced basements. Holes get blown in the budgets of
| schools, hospitals, etc. because they have to contend with
| cleaning rates that are effectively set by the competitive
| market for cleaning AirBnBs.
| vv_ wrote:
| > The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing
|
| The core issue is that, historically, experienced workers have
| passed down their knowledge to new generations, ensuring a
| steady accumulation of expertise. However, when factories close
| and seasoned workers retire or move to other fields without
| training successors, a vast amount of valuable knowledge is
| lost. Rebuilding this expertise is both difficult and time-
| consuming. Subsidies will be required to support local
| production - initially yielding lower-quality or significantly
| more expensive goods - until the Western world relearns how to
| manufacture at scale.
|
| Furthermore, if you want to build something, you likely won't
| do it by hand. You'll need machines to automate the process or
| enable complex material operations. Rebuilding this capability
| from scratch will take time, as existing manufacturers lack the
| necessary capacity. Additionally, similar equipment is produced
| much more cheaply in China, creating another challenge that
| must be addressed. What's likely to happen is that Chinese
| manufacturers will establish companies in the United States
| that replicate their production facilities elsewhere (e.g.
| mainland China). They'll ship in parts, and final assembly will
| take place in the U.S. This approach allows them to bypass
| trade restrictions while maintaining cost advantages. I already
| know of several cases where this is happening.
| bluGill wrote:
| A lot of that experience isn't needed though - automation
| replaced a large part of the expertise needs. I used to work
| at a factory, it produces as much as it ever did (though with
| a lot of modern innovations), but today only about 200 people
| work in it, compared to over 2000 in 1950. The CNC laser
| cutters replaced 70 people running saws with just 3.
| vv_ wrote:
| This isn't uniformly true in all industries or throughout
| all manufacturing. Not to mention that you need qualified
| people to operate and maintain these machines and the
| machines themselves.
| stefs wrote:
| > They'll ship in parts, and final assembly will take place
| in the U.S.
|
| i thought new the tariffs also applied to parts (with a few
| exceptions)?
| intermerda wrote:
| Well they can always go back to child labor like Florida is
| planning to - https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-
| child-labor-...
| thrance wrote:
| Can you blame the new generations for not wanting to work their
| asses off doing arduous manual labor, payed a minimum wage that
| is barely enough to afford a single room?
|
| Republicans made work awful. I've heard some wanting to get rid
| of minimum wage too. Do you think this will help?
| codedokode wrote:
| Actually there are people who are ok to do physical jobs but
| they are getting deported now.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing
| ... I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where
| 50 educated people push some buttons though.
|
| I feel like this could be used to steel-man the Trump
| administration's plan, though, should you want to. The best-
| case outcome here for America is it forces large capital
| investment in automated manufacturing facilities based in the
| US by making manufacturing that relies on cheap overseas labour
| expensive enough that the investment is worth it.
|
| I'm doubtful, but, in the unlikely event it works like that,
| and this comes online in the next couple of years without
| causing a catastrophic wipeout in the mid-terms, Trump will
| look like a genius.
|
| IMO it would have been much smarter to explicitly incentivize
| this with tax breaks and start with small tariffs that would
| ramp up a little bit each month, if it's the plan, and not just
| incoherent policy making.
| jsemrau wrote:
| >Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age
| that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming,
| addictions.
|
| And you never wondered why that is?
| franktankbank wrote:
| The only question is how to get them employed where our
| economy needs them. Honestly I've worked in Manufacturing and
| it is fucking gnarly. Clean factories don't exist. Many of
| the men I worked with had some sort of mild mental disorder
| tending towards aggression. Constantly short serviced
| machines and price gouging by any contractors involved. There
| is a lot to figure out and before you end up with a
| hospitable work environment. I'm doubtful tubby mcgamesalot
| is going to hold down a job stamping metal parts all day
| getting his lunch eaten or pissed in.
| creata wrote:
| Speaking as such an unemployed Tubby McGamesalot (well,
| minus the gaming) I'm pretty sure we're all aware, and
| would rather starve than work in manufacturing.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Don't vaguepost. If you've got a point, state it.
| creata wrote:
| Well, if I had to guess based on my own personal experience,
| it's easy to simply be... forgotten. Nobody asks you to do
| anything, and you don't have the will to do anything of your
| own accord because everything you want feels hopelessly out
| of reach.
| fnord77 wrote:
| > Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age
| that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming,
| addictions.
|
| perhaps we'll see something akin to "forced conscription",
| except for industrial work
| lanthissa wrote:
| didnt you listen to the 70 year olds planning this? we're just
| going have the robots do it.
|
| you know how people said putin was surrounded by an echo
| chamber and thats how he got stuck in ukraine? Thats the us now
| but with billionare VC's and 2nd tier 1980's NYC real estate
| developers. Look at their numbers and listen to them talk,
| they're genuinely not grounded in reality as whole group and
| theres no fixing that
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I recently listened to an episode of the Search Engine podcast
| where they showed how hard it is to manufacture something
| completely in the USA:
| https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/the-puz...
|
| (Spoilers, the problem they had was that even when they found
| companies to manufacture their bbq scrubber, it was harder to
| find someone in the USA to make the parts that are used to make
| the parts.)
| dharmab wrote:
| Simone Giertz said on her channel her company approached
| multiple factories in the US, EU and China about
| manufacturing a product. None of the US factories even
| replied.
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| No one will want to do lower income jobs while the cost of
| living is high and continues to rise. Wear and tear on the body
| is also not compensated, not to mention healthcare being
| expensive. Meanwhile, I do CRUD apps and work remotely 20/hours
| a week with no bodily harm (on the contrary, I have time to
| work out and make bad posts on HN)
|
| No one in their right mind is going to choose manufacturing
| over what I have if they can do both, and most people could
| honestly learn to do CRUD apps. Even if my salary were to go
| down by 5-10% yoy due to people moving in, I'm still in a
| better position for the other reasons mentioned. I'd have to be
| _below_ manufacturing and blue collar wages to get me to
| switch.
|
| The only sensible explanation is that they're trying to force
| people to have to take these jobs by crashing the globalized
| parts of the economy because they are obviously better than
| starving and dying homeless.
|
| All this assuming that Trump isn't just intentionally trying to
| destroy the country.
| sounds wrote:
| > sectors like the military, construction and the automotive
| industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to
| fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage.
|
| Feel free to offer higher wages than the previous stagnant
| wages.
| 0x5f3759df-i wrote:
| This is basic economics that the administration refuses to
| understand.
|
| Trade allows you to consume beyond your nation's manpower and
| resource constraints.
|
| And it's even stupider when you're putting tariffs on raw
| materials like Canadian lumber. So not only do we need to
| magically find millions of workers to work in these new
| factories we also need to find a bunch of lumberjacks and start
| cutting down our own trees? We're at 4% unemployment, who's
| going to do this work?
|
| We literally don't have the people to make this work.
| dpedu wrote:
| If this is true, why are US wages stagnating?
| sdsd wrote:
| In real life, people are spending years looking for jobs making
| enough to barely survive. I should tell them about your video
| you saw, if only they know.
| summerlight wrote:
| Agreed, the root of the problem is that America has relatively
| zero modern manufacturing infrastructure and manpower,
| especially compared to China. Those MAGA folks just don't know
| this. Offshoring happened not just because of cheaper price;
| China already had a much better environment even 20 years ago
| thanks to billions of people.
| spamlettuce wrote:
| If there was a real labor demand shortage wouldn't there be
| actual wage growth though ?
| seabrookmx wrote:
| But if wages increase so does cost of manufacturing in the
| US, making US goods less competitive not more?
| soerxpso wrote:
| > The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing
|
| I am willing to move anywhere in the US to do any manufacturing
| job if it means that I will be paid enough to afford a house
| with two bedrooms and basic living expenses. I have a
| bachelor's degree and have been unable to find such an
| arrangement. So where exactly are all of these unfilled jobs
| that you speak of? Are they unfilled because we don't have the
| people, or because they're trying to pay in peanuts? Unfilled
| because we don't have the people, or because HR departments are
| filtering away qualified resumes based on voodoo? This
| outlandish claim you're making that we don't want to work is
| offensive to a lot of people who are aware of their own
| existence and know that you're spouting bullshit to trick
| people into more wealth inequality.
|
| Your 7 million young men aren't 'missing', you're just refusing
| to hire them. The jobs don't exist.
| DennisP wrote:
| Good thing we're deporting so many people then.
| codedokode wrote:
| By chance could it be that US is still angry at those British tea
| tariffs?
| r00fus wrote:
| Tariffs are a tax on consumer goods. They will also be
| counterproductive to economic growth.
| ggm wrote:
| I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like
| these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like
| this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to
| happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what
| follows.
|
| They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by
| revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a
| one time economic shock to get their reset in a belief they can
| make it less like the Smoot-Hawley great depression because so
| many other economic levers exist now, including floating
| currency, MMT, and massive fintech.
|
| Personally I think it's a mistake but hot takes "they have no
| idea what's coming" are I believe naive. They know. They just
| don't care. Some amount of foreign trade will absorb the cost.
| Not all, not most. Not all prices in the US will rise and some
| substitution will happen although spinning up cheap labor
| factories again isn't going to happen in 2025. Maybe by 2027?
| Rust belt sewing shops and Walmart grade cheap goods production
| lines?
|
| What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the
| bottom is still chugging along. I would think it unlikely they
| can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the
| plan for that?
| maxerickson wrote:
| If that is the plan, it's terrible. The majority of US debt is
| domestic.
|
| https://usafacts.org/articles/which-countries-own-the-most-u...
| ggm wrote:
| Yes and no. As a headline "I reduced $7t of foreign debt" is
| pretty good. The plan appears to be to invite people to Mar a
| Lago and offer to trade the existing debt for new instruments
| out in the never-never.
|
| Domestic debt might not be such a big deal? Who is coming to
| collect?
| maxerickson wrote:
| So the argument is that we crashed the economy but at least
| we screwed foreigners over and not just social security?
| Jensson wrote:
| Wasn't that the plan all along, people always said
| "Ballooning Government debt is fine since unlike normal
| debt Governments can just print money and never really
| pay back the real value".
|
| Someone has to get screwed over when you do that, who do
| you suggest get screwed over?
| jquery wrote:
| That was a rainy day argument for not caring too much
| about debt. But what's happening now is we're raiding our
| savings account to pay for bath salts. No, it was not
| "the plan all along".
| Jensson wrote:
| > But what's happening now is we're raiding our savings
| account
|
| What savings, USA just takes on more debt it hasn't saved
| anything.
| realusername wrote:
| Other countries got screwed when doing that because the
| US used to have the world currency and could print money
| essentially without repercussions.
|
| Note the past tense as this advantage is now gone with
| Trump.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| I heard the term "bail-ins" used in this context. i.e.
| the elites will have to suffer the devaluation.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| YES. About ~30% of people appear willing to experience a
| loss as long as they believe they're inflicting a greater
| loss upon other people, and this personality type is
| baked in young. In my vier it's not a coincidence that
| polled support for Trump consistently hovers around 30%.
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
|
| Not all policy is rational. Oftentimes it's atavistic.
| Surely you have noticed by now that Trump deals in
| emotional arguments, not reasoned ones.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Domestic debt might not be such a big deal? Who is coming
| to collect?
|
| Old people with retirement needs. A lot of that debt is
| borrowed from SS surpluses in the past, and now the system
| is actually in deficit (so needs what it lent out back and
| then some). I'm all for screwing over boomers,
| psychologically I've convinced myself they are responsible
| for Trump and this mess (not entirely true, but the boomers
| as a generation messed things up for us before Trump was
| president, anyways).
| tpm wrote:
| > As a headline "I reduced $7t of foreign debt" is pretty
| good.
|
| Nobody cares about the big numbers when the wallets are
| empty.
| nl wrote:
| So the full faith and credit of the US Treasury is thrown
| away just like that?
|
| No one collects the debt. It's just redeeming treasury
| bonds. If they are no longer good then the sub prime crisis
| is going to look like a minor economic wrinkle.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Still fits within a populist agenda. Not a lot of sympathy
| for mutual funds and the wealthy holding treasury notes that
| get inflated away.
|
| I'm not excited that 20% of federal revenue goes pay debt
| interest to some investors and stockholders. Especially when
| much of the original debt spending also went into the pockets
| of stockholders, sometimes the same ones.
|
| Of course, the actual problem is lack of control and debt
| spending, not the fact that investors exist.
|
| People say that public debt doesn't matter because it
| domestic, but the recipients and payers are different. It
| doesn't cancel out when I'm responsible for paying taxes and
| Vanguard or JPMorgan get the debt interest.
| mahogany wrote:
| > Still fits within a populist agenda. Not a lot of
| sympathy for mutual funds and the wealthy holding treasury
| notes that get inflated away.
|
| Wouldn't this include average people's pensions, IRAs, etc,
| too?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yeah, national debt is splattered all around the US
| economy, but that doesn't mean it is uniform, or the
| payers and recipients are the same in terms of
| participation, returns, or even time.
|
| Foundationally, national debt is about passing costs into
| the future, which also creates another huge dichotomy in
| payers and beneficiaries. Minimal federal spending is on
| growth, so isn't really about investment as how much
| value can be extracted from one group to another,
| largely, but not entirely overlapping group.
| mahogany wrote:
| > but that doesn't mean it is uniform, or the payers and
| recipients are the same in terms of participation,
| returns, or even time.
|
| I'm not sure if I'm following, but a (let's say) 20% cut
| to the value of an average retiree's pension account will
| hurt much _more_ than the same cut to a diversified
| wealthy person. This is simply because poorer people are
| affected more by fixed costs. I don't see where the
| populist angle comes in. Shouldn't the populist angle be
| about targeting the "elite" specifically?
| belter wrote:
| You have seen nothing yet. Next he will want a mineral deal
| with each country to pay back the money they _stole_ from the
| USA in the past. "Primate Behavior Reference 21":
| https://youtu.be/GhxqIITtTtU
| ggm wrote:
| We even have aspiring leadership in Australia who see this as
| a win win and have proposed offering JV in uranium, lithium
| and rare earths. Murdoch press backs the idea, even when
| criticism of Trump is overt they always go to "we need him
| more than they need us" because of 50+ years of Defense
| posture which assumes we're insured by US forces.
| sitkack wrote:
| They will hang you out to dry.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| What posture? Contracts with either Russia, or the US are
| worthless. E.g. the Budapest Memorandum?
|
| " According to the three memoranda, Russia, the U.S., and
| the U.K. confirmed their recognition of Belarus,
| Kazakhstan, and Ukraine becoming parties to the Treaty on
| the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively
| removing all Soviet nuclear weapons from their soil, and
| that they agreed to the following:
|
| 1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in
| the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of
| the CSCE Final Act).
|
| 2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the
| territorial integrity or political independence of the
| signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of
| their weapons will ever be used against these countries,
| except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance
| with the Charter of the United Nations.
|
| 3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate
| to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic
| of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its
| sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
|
| 4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide
| assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim
| of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of
| aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
|
| 5. Not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-
| weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
| of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on
| themselves, their territories or dependent territories,
| their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in
| association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.
|
| 6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding
| those commitments. "
| tootie wrote:
| I have never caught even the slightest whiff of Trump knowing
| what he's doing on any topic. I'm genuinely not trying to be
| glib either, this is a sincere observation. When has he
| publicly or privately intimated that he understands how tariffs
| or trade work? Or energy or immigration or infrastructure or
| technology? His public persona gives facile and misleading
| explanations that are ostensibly just politicking, but every
| tidbit of leaked insider accounts or hot mics or unguarded
| moments don't show anything more than the same persona.
| ggm wrote:
| This tariff plan isn't Trumps. He co-opted Robert Lighthizer
| last time round, He was a trade negotiator, who believes
| strongly in protectionism.
| threeseed wrote:
| It is Howard Lutnick's plan who is the Secretary of
| Commerce.
|
| Has been widely reported that there was conflict amongst
| the inner circle about the extent of the tariffs and that
| it was Lutnick pushing for the most extreme version which
| is what we ended up with.
| ggm wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. I had trouble remembering the
| name and when I went searching Lighthizer came up first.
| tootie wrote:
| Is there a cite for that? I believe it just haven't seen
| it. Very worrying because Lutnick was Musk's guy and that
| puts him at least adjacent to Thiel and his cult of
| monarchy.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > When has he publicly or privately intimated that he
| understands how tariffs or trade work?
|
| He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics.
| avgd wrote:
| >He has a Bachelor's Degree in Economics.
|
| Must have been worth as much as toilet paper considering
| his history of bankruptcies. I would be highly suspect of
| every person involved in letting him earn a degree in
| anything.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2016/live-
| updates/ge...
|
| Trump's greatest talent is in lying with a straight face,
| then finding explanations for the lies:
|
| >Why the discrepancy? Perhaps this will give us an idea:
| Trump told Washington Post reporters that he counted the
| first three bankruptcies as just one.
|
| His failed businesses include money printing machines aka
| casinos.
| briandear wrote:
| How many successful business founders have never failed?
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Sadly, this doesn't say much. He was a terrible student by
| all accounts.
| lurk2 wrote:
| >by all accounts
|
| Which accounts?
| spacechild1 wrote:
| For example:
|
| https://studyinternational.com/news/trump-student-
| wharton/
|
| https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/09/14/donald-trump-
| at-wh...
| lurk2 wrote:
| https://studyinternational.com/news/trump-student-
| wharton/
|
| > Despite the US president attesting to the fact that he
| finished "top of his class" at Wharton Business School at
| the University of Pennsylvania, his former college
| professor, William T. Kelley, had another view.
|
| > After Kelley's death, Frank DiPrima, a close friend of
| Kelley, revealed that the professor felt the president
| was a fool.
|
| https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/09/14/donald-trump-
| at-wh...
|
| > It was, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, a
| day that will live in infamy. When President Donald Trump
| emerged from his mysterious one-on-one summit with
| Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July of
| 2018, the respective visages and body language of the two
| world leaders could not have been further apart. The
| Russian president looked smug and sated, like a vampire
| with a bellyful of peasant blood; Trump looked like a man
| who'd just received a painful enema.
|
| Any accounts that could be taken seriously?
| fspeech wrote:
| That runs against basic financial reality. The treasuries are
| the basis of all U.S. liquidity. Owning commercial papers or
| stocks doesn't help as companies own treasuries. Putting
| deposits in banks won't help either because banks hold
| treasuries.
| ggm wrote:
| You've read up on the purported "Mar a lago" accord model?
| The idea is to threaten a repudiated debt, or agree to
| convert to long term non interest earning debt alternatives
| which can't be traded.
| fspeech wrote:
| That's supposedly done with the agreement of the creditors.
| There's never paying down of national debt over an extended
| period of time. That's not how modern finances work. Why
| they feel the need of cramming down friendly creditors is
| beyond me.
| DeRock wrote:
| This is, as they say, "sanewashing". Trump is doing this out of
| a mix of spite and a view of trade as a zero sum game. He may
| be advised into a path to try to pivot this into a "win" by
| large scale debt restructuring, but that is not the overarching
| motive.
| saberdancer wrote:
| Fully agreed. Tariffs are one thing that Trump has always
| been clear about. He likes them, he sees them as beneficial
| and now that he has no brakes in this administration he is
| finally going to try and put them in place.
|
| There is no 4D chess.
| XorNot wrote:
| I mean it's also clear he doesn't understand them. The
| poster he posed with today has a column labelled "tarrifs
| charged to the USA".
|
| The main feature of them was he discovered in his first
| term he could do them unilaterally without Congress, and
| his audience would just go along with it anyway.
| r00fus wrote:
| > I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from
| this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?
|
| Clearly they will "secure the vote". Massive voter
| disenfranchisement is already taking place, it will go to the
| next level.
| threeseed wrote:
| Elon proved this with the Wisconsin Supreme Court vote.
|
| He will likely dangle hundreds of millions in front of voters
| across the US to buy their vote without any repercussions.
|
| And then make that money back through the insider dealings
| that prioritise SpaceX et al.
| apparent wrote:
| GOP outspent Dems in WI and lost. Dems outspent GOP in FL
| and lost.
| threeseed wrote:
| Which is a sample size of 2. We have 468 seats which are
| up for election.
|
| Musk's brazen [1] use of money will have an impact.
| Question is how much.
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-
| elon-musk...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Musk's money probably helps, his strange need to be a
| visible face of this seems to possibly be backfiring.
| spookie wrote:
| The one thing I hope Americans think about is to believe in
| democracy, and discuss with others on the other side of the
| aisle. Really, most have voted the way they did for real,
| valid reasons. And recognizing them is the path to heal your
| country. Only through understanding will democracy prevail.
|
| Do not spiral into dividing your own country. That is the
| real goal of authoritarian regimes.
| bagels wrote:
| You can believe in democracy all you want, but
| disenfranchisement really has a way of undermining it.
| concordDance wrote:
| How massive?
| vitorgrs wrote:
| The weighted average of the new U.S. tariffs will be 29% it
| seems.
|
| Maybe they know the consequences, but to give you a idea... it
| was 1.5% before. The new ones will be equivalent to Brazilian
| tariffs in 1989 before opening the economy (31%, data from
| World Bank).
|
| Now, Brazilian tariffs, which have one if the most closed
| economies, by weighted average, is 7%.
|
| China, have 2.2%.
|
| The United States will be an autarchy, similar to how LaTam was
| in the 70's, when tried this exact idea. The tariffs being as
| high instantly, will impact the economy, later, the country
| will probably grow, which is what they expect, but this is not
| a productive grow. Because your new factories now are not
| competing with external products, so your productivity go down,
| this means real income will also go down.
|
| So yeah, some people at best (if is not a robot doing the job)
| will have a job in a factory, but on what he will be able to
| spend with his wage won't make it worth even for this person.
| gscott wrote:
| I was reading an interesting article about tariffs put on
| foreign garlic or mushrooms can't remember which, rather than
| buying American companies just paid more for the foreign
| product and charged higher prices. The American makers of the
| product didn't sell more the company's just didn't care.
| Prices will go up Americans will buy less deflation will
| occur because they have to sell the product.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Likely will result in worse products as well (which is what
| happens when you remove competition).
|
| LaTam is perfect example on how bad this "wide"
| protectionism is. There's a ton of economic papers about
| it.
|
| If you really want protectionism, you could do something
| more similar to how South Korea did, by choosing specific
| sectors of economy you want to "protect", to create a
| "national industry".
|
| Most protectionist industrial policies also exempt imports
| of machines and other supplies used in factories.
|
| e.g. It makes no sense to put tariffs on machines used in a
| factory in the USA. AS that would make it more expensive
| for a factory to operate if they have to import a more
| expensive machine from Germany. "Buy a machine from the
| U.S", that would mean a more expensive machine likely, as
| it only exists because of tariffs.
|
| That basically means you'll have factories on best case
| scenario, but your cars, your computers, phones, won't be
| exported.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It's great if you want to be self-sufficient pending a
| great war. The way things are going, it may be the only
| thing to justify such blatant self-sabotage, and hence
| necessary to start one.
| jajko wrote:
| Well if you do all you can to stirr some 'great war', you
| will eventually get it. Its only US saying there will be
| one though, rest of the world is in WTF mode. China
| doesn't care about anything global but Taiwan and its own
| security. They are probably more capitalist than US at
| this point and prefer having stable trade cash flows
| rather than expanding.
|
| So, if thats the real underlying reason for all these
| steps then US is the warmonger here attacking literally
| everybody preemptively. 5D chess at least.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy : "We have to go to
| war with them because they retaliated with tariffs!"
|
| Trump has literally said that if Canada doesn't like the
| tariffs, they should just let the US annex them!
| pydry wrote:
| Building up strategic industries is another reason.
|
| Or, in America's case, arresting their decline.
| sethammons wrote:
| If you make everyone rely on each other, war hurts
| everyone more and is more likely to be avoided. If going
| to war doesn't cost you a supplier, war is more
| palatable.
|
| Global trade reduces war
| realityking wrote:
| If you think a war is coming, why would you antagonize
| your closest allies?
| bawolff wrote:
| Short term consequences are probably different then long
| term.
|
| In the short term you can't just create a new garlic farm
| in a day.
|
| In the long term it will still be more expensive (if
| american garlic was the cheap option they would have used
| it from the get-go) but there will probably be more
| adjustments then in the short term
|
| That's part of the reason why these tarrifs are so stupid.
| There is no warning on the specifics so there isnt time for
| companies to come up with alternative plans. Given how
| inconsistent trump is, there is also limited incentive to
| seek alternative supply chains, because who knows if he
| will just change his mind again.
| russdill wrote:
| This is also the start, other countries will retaliate and
| the current administration being the current administration
| will probably respond.
| nabla9 wrote:
| It's called _Import Substitution_.
|
| Import Substitution: A Tried and Tested Policy for Failure
| https://www.kspp.edu.in/blog/import-substitution-a-tried-
| and...
|
| >Import substitution is a policy by which the state aims to
| increase the consumption of goods that are made domestically
| by levying high tariffs on foreign goods. This gives an
| advantage to the domestic manufacturers as their goods will
| be cheaper and preferable in the market compared to foreign
| products. India adopted this model post-independence, and it
| continued till the 1991 reforms. Due to import substitution,
| the domestic producers captured the entire Indian market, but
| there was slow progress in technological advancements, and
| the quality of Indian products was inferior to the foreign
| manufactured ones. But after the reforms, the Indian market
| was opened to everyone, and the consumer got the best value
| for the price he paid. The Make in India policy of the
| present government is reminiscent of the pre-1991 inward-
| looking Indian state.
|
| In the US it will be even worse. The US is already high-tech
| economy outsourcing low value-adding manufacturing to foreign
| countries while industries move towards higher value-adding
| products. After the tariffs, US manufacturing sector will
| sift to lower value-added, lower complexity products.
| addicted wrote:
| Yeah, but the U.S. govt funds a lot of important research
| so it may not fall behind technologically unlike India...
|
| Wait, what did you just say? The U.S. government has
| decimated its research funding?
|
| Oh, well, at least the U.S. has a lot of high quality
| colleges churning out highly educated Americans, so that
| still may not be as much of a problem...wait, did you say
| Americans are increasingly turning away from college due to
| the high costs and the resultant loans that cannot be
| terminated even in bankruptcy, because the government has
| been cutting back significantly on funding education for
| years now?
|
| Oh well, at least the U.S. is welcoming to immigrants who
| have founded over 50% of unicorns and usually tend to be
| the most dynamic and brightest slice of their country's
| populations, so it may maintain its technological edge...
|
| Wait what? Oh god.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, this is one of my biggest issues with this. There
| is no coherent plan.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| It does look like a very coherent plan. Just not by an US
| government.
| octacat wrote:
| It's called US companies now could increase their prices by
| 30% and just don't worry much, if sales are pretty good
| already for them.
| nabla9 wrote:
| US short term prices jump +9% according to the KITE model
| for International Trade Analysis when you take tariffs
| and counter-tariffs into account.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Yeah. Specially because the U.S economy is service-focused
| (and consumption as well).
|
| Like, imagine now that all your computers will be more
| expensive/worse. This will affect services from like, a law
| firm - to a tech company. Will make harder for young buy
| good computers and start to code, etc.
|
| I say this as a Brazilian, to us Brazilians watching, this
| is like: Why are the U.S repeating the same mistake?
|
| I don't think Americans know this, but here in Brazil, we
| also have phone, tablet and PC national brands (Positivo1,
| Multi2, Philco3). National TV brands like Semp, AOC,
| Mondial. A ton of home appliances brands like Mondial,
| Philco, Britania.
|
| But why Americans don't know them? Because they only exists
| because of the tariffs. So they only exists in Brazil
| internal market. They are worse than foreign brands, but
| they exists because it's cheaper to buy a Mondial Kitchen
| Stand mixer than a Kitchen Aid!
|
| And worse that most of these products are only white-label
| Chinese products, sold way more expensive than the real
| chinese ones.
|
| This also create a whole gray market. A lot of people start
| smuggling products without import tax.
|
| And this only with a 7% average tariff. Not the U.S 29%
| lol. Brazil with 31%~ prior to the 90's was WAY worse than
| this. A lot of brands just died when we opened a little the
| market (Consul, Brastemp, were Brazilian big fridge,
| Washing machine etc makers, they got bought by Whirlpool in
| the 90's)
|
| American Brands then will now look for the U.S gov to ask
| for exceptions too, and this create a lot of corruption.
| And after you put these tariffs and there's a whole new
| companies made to internal market, it's almost impossible
| to remove because of the lobby from these companies (and
| corruption).
|
| [1] https://loja.meupositivo.com.br/ [2]
| https://www.multilaser.com.br/ [3]
| https://www.philco.com.br/
| silisili wrote:
| Not for nothing, but Philco is/was an American brand. The
| Phil is for Philadelphia.
|
| The fact that Americans don't even recognize it anymore
| may make a better case for the policy than against.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| In Brazil, the Philco operation was bought by Gradiente
| (The company that sued Apple over the use of the iPhone
| trademark) in 2005. Before that, Philco was from Itau (a
| Brazilian bank).
|
| https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradiente_(empresa)
| sethammons wrote:
| Stop. Hold on. You just heard a solid set of examples and
| logic on why the tariffs were bad for Brazil's consumers
| and your takeaway was that one brand that couldn't
| compete in the US moved to the sheltered manufacturing
| environment and that is good?
|
| The policy is good for uncompetitive manufacturing - and
| so you are in support of it? Why is that less-competitive
| manufacturer from Philly who couldn't compete anywhere
| but Brazil more important than the people of that
| country?
| silisili wrote:
| Not at all - I'm not really taking a solid stance one way
| or another because I'm not an economist.
|
| My only point was that Philco was being used as an
| unknown crappy Brazilian brand example. It used to be an
| American company that actually made quality things, and
| through outsourcing and general 'physical and financial
| enshittification' is pretty much an unknown to Americans
| now.
|
| If you're in favor of quality things being made in the
| US, it's an argument for said policy.
| brightball wrote:
| Isn't the US the world's biggest importer?
| pydry wrote:
| >It's called Import Substitution. Import Substitution: A
| Tried and Tested Policy for Failure
|
| Which worked exceptionally well for China, South Korea,
| Japan and pretty well for Russia and India.
| Sol- wrote:
| I think to nurture developing industries, it can be fine,
| but at some point you have to expose them to competition
| if you want to exceed what the domestic market can do.
| pydry wrote:
| Domestic industries DO compete - both with each other AND
| with foreign companies which are levied with tariffs.
|
| One of the reason why China's import substitution was
| almost unreasonably effective was because domestic
| companies were driven to compete fiercely with each
| other.
|
| (In America there is a drive to do the opposition- wall
| street likes consolidation and oligopolies)
|
| And yeah, once your national industrial ecosystem is
| sufficiently powerful most countries suddenly get
| religion about removing all tarriffs everywhere. This is
| what America was like in the 90s - and they were just as
| obnoxious about that as they are about this - the exact
| opposite.
| airstrike wrote:
| The argument that business competition within the Chinese
| market is stronger than within the US market is
| objectively untenable.
| pydry wrote:
| I suppose it's just a coincidence that these days your
| manufactured goods are predominantly stamped with "made
| in China".
| airstrike wrote:
| That has no bearing on my point. US companies
| purposefully outsourced to China
| pydry wrote:
| ...in part because _fierce domestic competition within
| China_ drove quality up and prices down and in part
| because of Chinese protectionism.
|
| These days Chinese protectionism is not necessary to keep
| the offshoring train running and only American
| protectionism will arrest it.
| airstrike wrote:
| The US outsourced to China because of cheap labor, not
| because Chinese products are good--precisely because US
| companies were competing with each other and needed ways
| to reduce prices and improve margins.
|
| That this ultimately had the effect of diminishing the
| manufacturing base in the US doesn't speak to the ability
| of US or Chinese companies to compete.
|
| China is a centrally planned economy. To argue it's more
| competitive than the US is again not tenable.
| pydry wrote:
| >The US outsourced to China because of cheap labor
|
| Yeah, in 2003. The US offshores to Bangladesh or vietnam
| for cheap labor now and has for a long time.
|
| Manufacturing is offshored to China simply because it
| cant be done in the US at anything resembling a
| reasonable cost, not because labor is cheaper. That is
| because the Chinese industrial ecosystem is unparalleled.
|
| >China is a centrally planned economy. To argue it's more
| competitive than the US is again not tenable.
|
| The economic dogma of the late 90s is getting a little
| long in the tooth now. Not least because it was
| completely blindsided by the rise of China.
|
| It turned out that the most effectively run economies
| were a hybrid of distributed and centrally planned (China
| has open internal markets while credit allocation is
| largely centrally planned).
| jabl wrote:
| There was a lot of other stuff than just import
| substitution in the Asian miracle. See
| https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-how-asia-
| works
| jeswin wrote:
| > The Make in India policy of the present government is
| reminiscent of the pre-1991 inward-looking Indian state.
|
| Have you seen the 70s or the 80s? I was a child during the
| 1980s when India was a socialist state. There were very few
| private enterprises, because there was absolutely zero
| government support. Taxation peaked at 90% during the early
| 1970s under Indira Gandhi, who also nationalized many of
| the largest private companies - because private enterprise
| was seen as a bad thing. It was also impossible to bring in
| foreign investment, because that would come with profit
| motives.
|
| Basically, the comparison you're drawing is not really
| accurate. The current Make in India plan is very similar to
| the US bringing in strategic manufacturing back into the
| US; a plan which has had bipartisan support (for example,
| the CHIPS Act). It incentivizes businesses (including
| foreign companies) to set up manufacturing units in India.
| And is quite the opposite of what was happening during
| India's socialist era.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> It incentivizes businesses (including foreign
| companies) to set up manufacturing units in India._
|
| That type of protective policy works for India in
| incentivizing manufacturers to come build locally because
| Indian labor is still dirt cheap and the government will
| work with you to give you what you need without the pesky
| nimbyism, environmentalism, etc getting in the way of
| factories. US is not in the same case.
| nabla9 wrote:
| India can grow at 10% but import substitution policy
| could hurt that, Arvind Panagariya says
| https://theprint.in/theprint-otc/india-can-grow-
| at-10-but-im...
| jeswin wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Even though Make in India is not a classic import
| substitution case, it aimed to reach that end.
|
| So it's not really import substitution. But let's ignore
| that article, it's not a serious piece anyway.
|
| A key idea of Make in India is to make and export - which
| means that unlike socialist-era import substitution (via
| tariffs and permissions), the ones which aren't good
| enough will fail fast and cheap. It won't lead to people
| driving HM Ambassador cars for 40 years.
|
| Whether Make in India will succeed or fail is a very
| different matter, of course.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Quite a coincidence, I was reading this LRB essay [1] this
| morning by British political philosopher and historian
| Perry Anderson, analysing the last decade of political and
| economic (lack of) change in the West. He ended with this
| paragraph, I had to look up "import substitution" and then
| in this thread about the tariffs I see it mentioned again,
| there might be similarities with Trump and Getulio Vargas.
| Any people more knowledgable in Brazilian economics want to
| chime in?
|
| >Does that mean that until a coherent set of economic and
| political ideas, comparable to Keynesian or Hayekian
| paradigms of old, has taken shape as an alternative way of
| running contemporary societies, no serious change in the
| existing mode of production can be expected? Not
| necessarily. Outside the core zones of capitalism, at least
| two alterations of great moment occurred without any
| systematic doctrine imagining or proposing them in advance.
| One was the transformation of Brazil with the revolution
| that brought Getulio Vargas to power in 1930, when the
| coffee exports on which its economy relied collapsed in the
| Slump and recovery was pragmatically stumbled on by import
| substitution, without the benefit of any advocacy in
| advance.
|
| [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n06/perry-
| anderson/regim...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >The United States will be an autarchy, similar to how LaTam
| was in the 70's, when tried this exact idea. The tariffs
| being as high instantly, will impact the economy, later, the
| country will probably grow, which is what they expect, but
| this is not a productive grow. Because your new factories now
| are not competing with external products, so your
| productivity go down, this means real income will also go
| down.
|
| If what you say is true, tarrifs should not exist in any
| country. And yet, most countries are using tarrifs.
|
| What if a particular country is using dumping and sell at
| prices so low, it will kill a particular industry? And after
| they kill it, they start jacking prices at unseen levels and
| you will have to pay because you don't have a choice?
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Most countries do specific tariffs on areas of the economy
| they want to develop/protect them.
|
| If a country is doing price dumping, there's even legal
| ways of protecting these sectors, by applying to WTO (but
| the U.S basically killed the WTO). But even if the U.S
| don't trust the WTO, they could apply antidumping tariffs
| to these specific sectors (like the 100% tariffs Biden
| administration did to EVs).
|
| U.S is not doing this right now, it's protecting "all
| sectors" of the economy. There's no other reasonable
| developed country with a 29% tariff.
|
| You can check here:
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS
|
| You'll also notice that most developed or growing economics
| have low tariffs...
| razakel wrote:
| >And yet, most countries are using tarrifs.
|
| On specific industries they want to protect. Not completely
| across the board.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| VAT on imports are across the board, as far as consumer
| goods go.
| detaro wrote:
| VAT by definition applies to domestic products as well,
| and is thus not putting foreign sellers at a
| disadvantage.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Domestic producers can redeem part of their VAT, which
| foreign producers can't, effectively making it a tariff.
| Also European countries apply their own bona-fide tariffs
| to foreign imports, which anybody who has imported into
| the EU has experienced. It is stated "tariff" on the bill
| you receive from customs and in the law that regulates
| said tariff, and in your accounting for expenses if you
| are a business. But now we have to pretend these tariffs
| do not exist? What kind of game is this? Has everybody
| became psychopaths?
| roflyear wrote:
| VAT is like a sales-tax but along the supply chain (with
| credits) - so it's like a complicated sales-tax.
|
| If you want to use that for argument, you should include
| US sales taxes in the calculation too. Which could be
| fair, I guess.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| China has many tariffs and non-tariffs restrictions. They are
| targeted as tariffs tend to be (well...).
|
| For instance, tariffs on cars vary from 25% to 47%. It is
| quite the status symbol to drive an imported car.
|
| Their policy has always been to develop their own car
| industry, so foreign manufacturers had to set up factories in
| the country but even that could not be fully foreign-owned
| and had to be through a joint-venture with a local
| manufacturer. I believe Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai
| (opened in 2019) was the first fully foreign-owned car
| factory they allowed.
| danmaz74 wrote:
| By the way, what I find most baffling in these discussions is
| that these calculations are always based only on physical
| goods, ignoring services, where the US usually has a positive
| balance - eg, with the EU, the US has a 109B positive
| balance. In our economies, which are more and more service
| based, why are services ignored?
| stakhanov wrote:
| Services are ignored by Trump for precisely the reason you
| mention. The big question is: What will other countries do,
| like Germany, who tend to export goods to the U.S. but
| import services. Right now, those are the countries who
| would rather prevent this thing from escalating, but if
| escalation it must be and they run out of ammunition within
| the scope of tariffs on goods, where will they go next?
| poincaredisk wrote:
| Tariffs on services may also be less popular with the
| citizens. It's not obvious that the locally produced
| fridge is only cheaper because of tariffs. It will be
| more obvious that everyone non-EU based pays more. It
| will also be harder to control (how will EU extract
| tariffs for payments I do to companies with no EU
| presence?)
|
| But I don't how much about it, maybe these are already
| solved problems. After all VAT already exists and faces
| similar challenges.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There are two kinds of "services". You have jobs that are
| in finance and software, which make good money, and you
| have jobs in cosmetology and fast food, which have terrible
| pay. The services that we export are the former.
|
| Your high school grad (or high school dropout) isn't going
| to get one of those finance or software jobs. But they
| could get a factory job, if we can get those back.
|
| So the best spin I could put on this is that the emphasis
| is on physical goods because that's where the people who
| are hurting in the current economy could find real work.
|
| (Of course, if that were the case, the reasonable thing to
| do would be to _explain_ that, instead of just acting like
| services didn 't exist as something that is traded.)
| mapt wrote:
| It's hard to imagine that there's a way they thought this
| through in several redundant dimensions.
|
| I understand rationally that there was an economy before the
| US plunged the world into neoliberalist global free trade in
| order to build its trade empire, and there will probably be
| an economy after... but likely not a US trade empire.
|
| But another thing is investment uncertainty. The mechanism by
| which protectionist tariffs are supposed to work functions
| over a timespan of a decade or two - foreign imported goods
| are made more expensive, and so when investors believe
| they're confident in future tariff conditions, they spend
| money on domestic factories to produce goods, which have a
| large setup cost and gradually pay back the difference
| relative to their good-importer competitors that are paying
| high tariffs.
|
| If investors can't form a confident prediction on future
| tariff conditions, investors can't invest; The sheer
| uncertainty of having a lunatic making up random numbers for
| every country over lunch and then rolling them out at close
| of market is instead going to scare them off. Trump has gone
| back and forth over tariffs with Canada and Mexico over the
| past couple months, and this doesn't just demonstrate that
| tariffs can be set extraordinarily high for arbitrary
| reasons, but that they can be set back to zero for arbitrary
| reasons. Both of these transitions cause economic ruin for
| one investor or other; If it's going to happen every few
| months then nobody is going to build factories or launch
| import supplychains, at least not for competitive prices. The
| risk of going bankrupt tomorrow (or in four years when the
| next administration takes over and abruptly cancels every
| tariff) on what is basically a coinflip then gets priced into
| consumer goods for both producers and importers.
|
| The most frustrating of Trump's projects are not just when he
| shreds your rights or shreds precedent or tries to topple the
| government, but when he looks favorably at a policy you think
| is a good idea (like having a manufacturing sector) and
| chooses to pursue it by running around with a flamethrower
| setting everything ablaze because on some lever somebody's
| taught him about the Broken Windows Fallacy wrong, as a joke,
| and he's upgraded it. During his administration, we circle
| the wagons and declare that the policy is a terrible idea.
| Post-Trump, the absolute ruin that the execution of that
| policy predictably brought will discredit it for the rest of
| your adult life.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| If they hold the midterms...
| briandear wrote:
| Is this a thought held by any serious person? The only major
| country to indefinitely postpone an election recently has
| been Ukraine. This idea that the midterms wouldn't be held is
| tin foil nonsense.
| chimprich wrote:
| Ukraine hasn't postponed elections indefinitely. They have
| postponed them until they are no longer at war.
|
| Other countries have effectively gone from moderately
| democratic elections to sham elections. Turkey is one major
| country that is going through this process at the moment.
| jquery wrote:
| This sounds like typical NYT sane-washing. After the Signal
| fiasco I've lost all confidence this administration is secretly
| super competent but just refuses to let any of us see it. There
| is no big plan here. This is just an old man surrounded by too
| many yes-men.
| api wrote:
| There is also a camp of ideologues that don't care if they
| implode the economy if they get to LARP the TV version of the
| 1950s. Imploding the economy might even make it easier to
| sell traditionalist politics.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Of course they don't know. Should be obvious by now.
|
| They are not experts in the field. But loyalists for a trump
| autocracy
| philistine wrote:
| Trump 2 is as far from Trump 1 as Trump 1 was from W. Bush.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| And now W looks like a respectable statesman by comparison.
| And by comparison, he is.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Even during the first Trump Presidency I would see meme
| images of Bush Jr. captioned "Miss me yet?"
| MandieD wrote:
| Trump makes Clinton look like a gentleman and Bush Jr. look
| like a scholar.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| The 2nd paragraph is 100% accurate.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I think this is what's going on:
|
| https://youtu.be/cmTeg0B9tH8?si=yhIAg45FCBUW40mI
| nthingtohide wrote:
| Japan Joins CHINA To Strike Back On U.S. Trade Punishments!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOz4UgTW5-0
|
| I recommend reading the summary of the video if you don't
| have time.
| aiauthoritydev wrote:
| I have followed writings of the many in this administration,
| seen their interviews etc. Anyone who thinks there is a "5D
| chess", "the plan" etc. is purely drinking cope here.
|
| > cheap labor factories again isn't going to happen in 2025
|
| It is not going to happen ever unless we plan to move people
| from better paying jobs in McDonalds and WellsFargo to China
| styled factories or we allow much higher immigration levels
| from South America.
|
| Trump admin and his advisors genuinely believe that tariffs are
| good, that they will create factories and jobs within USA and
| enable white families to raise families on a single income.
| They think rest of the world's existence is a mistake, they
| hate Europe, China, India and South America. They don't know
| much about Africa and admire Russia.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| They didn't learn from the last time, when U.S. soybean
| farmers got screwed (the first time) and other countries
| established alternate supply chains that of course didn't
| involve the U.S. at all.
|
| As the USA makes itself a trade pariah and other countries
| forge new relationships amongst themselves, we're permanently
| devalued. The world will (continue to) move on without a
| backward-looking, unreliable, sad, and obnoxious USA.
| aiauthoritydev wrote:
| Trump's inner circle like Navarro, Miller etc. do not give
| two hoots about Soybean farmers or anyone else. They think
| poverty is a good thing if helps their view of
| "nationalism".
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >They didn't learn from the last time, when U.S. soybean
| farmers got screwed
|
| They absolutely learned. They learned those soybean farmers
| they screwed through outright incompetence or being too
| stupid to govern would still consume their propaganda and
| happily vote for them again.
| addicted wrote:
| Why don't you look up how they came up with those tariff
| numbers and come back and tell us that this is some
| sophisticated economics at play here.
| ggm wrote:
| I didn't say this is sophisticated.
|
| I said they expect the outcomes people are complaining about.
| They've workshopped this, and are aware how this is playing
| out. I would be very surprised if there is a significant leak
| of "we didn't expect this" anytime soon.
|
| Trump believes in tariffs, I don't.
| briandear wrote:
| Apparently much of the rest of the world believes in them
| as well: almost every country has tariffs and had them long
| before Trump.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Usually targetted tariffs to protect specific industries,
| not across the board like this. This is next level.
| nabla9 wrote:
| >They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by
| revaluation of the USD
|
| Devaluing dollar does not reduce debt measured in dollars. It
| only makes US debt less valuable to forefingers.
|
| Devaluing dollar can work well only if foreign investments into
| US stop or reverse. _" foreign investors at the end of last
| year owned 18% of U.S. stocks, according to Goldman Sachs"_ The
| trend has already reversed
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/foreign-demand-us-assets-...
| Killing foreign demand for US assets more permanently is
| possible but it means financial market crash.
|
| What WILL happen is recession. Atlanta Fed GDPNow dropped from
| -2.8 to -3.7 percent in a week.
| https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow?date=2025-04...
| lwhi wrote:
| I thought the US gov is hoping that debt is relinquished as
| part of negotiations, is that not the case?
| nabla9 wrote:
| That's a crazy showertought. WH might actually consider it.
|
| After hypothetical successful debt relinquish negotiations,
| any new US debt would have similar interest rate to
| Argentinian debt, 30% or so. Wall Street would shrink and
| London (or Frankfurt) would become new global financial
| center.
|
| In reality, countries do just as what they do now. They
| raise counter-tariffs. The US faces coutertariffs from
| everyone. Other countries only from the US. Trade between
| countries other increase and they gradually adjust.
| Europeans start buying less iPhones and buy more Androids
| made in South Korea. Less Fords more Nissan.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Europeans start buying less iPhones
|
| I wonder... they're all made in China anyway. And shipped
| from there directly, not through the US. I'm sure that
| either the US tariffs won't apply to them, or Apple will
| shuffle some subsidiaries so they don't.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Buying goods from American corporations is going to leave
| a sour taste in the mouth for Europeans now.
| nottorp wrote:
| Yeah but for smartphones you have two choices, both
| American.
|
| Don't tell me it matters who makes the hardware, it's the
| OS that sets the experience.
| conceptme wrote:
| Samsung and apple?
| nottorp wrote:
| Apple and google. Read both lines of my post.
| dragandj wrote:
| Most (if not all) Fords bought in Europe are actually
| made in Germany (AFAIR).
| RachelF wrote:
| Foreign countries like Japan and China own around $1.8T in US
| bonds. These are valued in dollars, like stocks.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Yes. That's what I said "Devaluing dollar does not reduce
| debt measured in dollar"
|
| The US would still have to pay the debt in Dollars.
| Devaluation affects currency exchange rates. Debt would be
| less valuable in Yen and Renminbi but just as expensive for
| the US government.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| Doesn't Europe and Japan have dollar swap lines with US? So
| ultimately it is US buying its own bonds through Japan to
| create an illusion that there exists enough external
| demand.
| dsign wrote:
| I certainly don't understand enough of economics, but:
|
| - If everything overnight costs 20% more for the American
| consumer, it equals 20% less disposable income and less
| purchasing power.
|
| - US companies, even the few ones not directly affected by
| tariffs, are going to be hit by less demand, and that in the
| aggregate is going to affect the performance of all American
| companies.
|
| - So, it makes sense to dump as much American stock (and
| perhaps other instruments) as rationally possible.
|
| The rest of the world is also going to feel the shock, though
| at this point is unknowable to what extent, and it also
| depends on the policies governments outside USA enact. In
| Sweden for example, we react to imported USA inflation by
| increasing central bank rates and catapulting the country
| into recession, and I totally see that happening in the next
| few weeks. Even it does not, it is what the public expects,
| and already many may be reigning in on consumption and
| investment. And dumping American stocks like crazy.
| ggm wrote:
| https://www.nordea.com/en/news/mar-a-lago-accord-
| explained-a...
|
| https://think.ing.com/articles/mar-a-lago-
| accord-10-question...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2025/02/23/why-
| trum...
|
| https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/unpacking-
| mar-...
| zzzeek wrote:
| bit of an 11 dimensional chess answer. Senator Chris Murphy has
| a much better explanation, which is simply this is Trump's way
| of holding private industry hostage [1]. The tariffs will be
| incrementally removed as various private industries give him
| loyalty pledges just as he is doing with large law firms and
| universities. that's it! so simple.
|
| [1]
| https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3llu...
| exe34 wrote:
| > . I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from
| this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?
|
| given that they've done most of the things they accuse others
| of, I wouldn't be surprised if they win by 110%.
| aredox wrote:
| Trump wasted his inheritance and has been several times in
| bankruptcies - and not "I took risks" bankrupt, more "I f*cked
| up" and "I lied" bankruptcies.
|
| Why do you think we are naive and you aren't?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| > the midterms will hit while the bottom is still chugging
| along. I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft
| from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?
|
| There won't be any elections. We will stick with Trumpism. We
| will be our own best friends, Morty. The outside world will be
| our enemy. We will do great things Morty, we will do the
| greatest things. A Trump administration for a 100 years. A
| Trump administration forever. Over and over. Running around,
| the Trump administration forever.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Foreign debt is held in US treasuries, surely they know that?
| Trump can decide that treasuries can no longer be redeemed, but
| foreigners only hold 20% of them, so...he would have to somehow
| make them selectively redeemable, and anyways, there would go
| the USA's credit, unless you mean other countries can bribe
| Trump with treasuries to bring down their tariff? They could
| also depreciate the USD reducing its debt in real terms but
| that will most definitely cause hyper inflation along with
| tariffs.
|
| They have no plan, not even a concept of a plan. Trump is just
| hoping that he can get lucky with a good outcome, but that is
| really improbable. This is a huge opportunity for China though
| if they make deals with everyone else to the exclusion of the
| USA.
|
| Even the idea of moving production back the USA is misguided,
| we are already at low unemployment, and haven't made enough
| investments in automation like the Chinese are doing ATM. I
| doubt China will let us import that tech to setup our own
| factories quickly without worrying about who will work them.
| peterlada wrote:
| I hold a more pessimistic view of the cause and I do agree with
| your argument that they do know the consequences. But they
| don't care for another reason.
|
| The plutocracy has fully captured the government and now seeks
| its ultimate goal: complete transfer of all tax burden to the
| 99%. For this end they cut the government spending, wrecking
| the democracy and they impose tariffs to generate fake
| temporary revenues, so they can argue that the huge tax cut
| (dwarfing all that came before) is economically sound and fully
| justified.
|
| This will wreck the global economy and with the coming bad
| times (wars, famine, extreme migration) nobody will have the
| presence or the governmental weight to rein in these few rich
| man.
| refurb wrote:
| This explanation doesn't make sense because dollar denominated
| debt doesn't change with devaluation.
|
| What is the more likely explanation is all the countries with
| trade surpluses will feel the pain long before the US and agree
| to much better terms than before.
|
| The PM of Canada had already indicated progress is being made
| on their trade deal.
| bigfudge wrote:
| The US already had pretty favourable trade deals with most of
| the world. The trade deficit wasn't because of tariff
| barriers to US goods overseas.
| refurb wrote:
| But the countries hit with high tariffs have specifically
| uneven trade arrangements.
|
| When countries put a high tariff on US goods while enjoying
| low or no tariffs when exporting to the US - that's an
| unfair arrangement.
| grey-area wrote:
| No, they do not.
|
| Vietnam for example: US 46% tariff, Vietnam average 15%
| tariffs.
|
| This will hurt the US far more than it hurts other
| countries, as other countries will just start to bypass
| the US and trade with other nations.
|
| Who would trust goods from the US or having them as part
| of your supply chain after this?
| refurb wrote:
| The tariff's aren't entirely based on the trade deficit.
| Vietnam artificially keeps its currency undervalued to
| boost exports.
|
| Trade with other nations?
|
| These are exports to the US, which is 25% of the world's
| GDP.
|
| Who is going to replace that demand?
|
| You think Vietnam, where 30% of GDP are US exports, is
| going to be hurt less than the US where Vietnam makes up
| 3.9% of imports?
| grey-area wrote:
| Does every country in the world maliciously connive to
| keep their currency low vs the dollar? Currency
| valuations are not tariffs and it is absurd to compare
| them to a tariff.
|
| These tariffs are a huge mistake according to almost
| every mainstream economist, I hope instead of parroting
| the party line you'll be able to admit their failure in a
| few years.
| refurb wrote:
| Vietnam does manipulate its currency. It's not something
| that hasn't been widely discussed for the past decade or
| more.
|
| And if you artificially keep your exchange rate 10%
| higher, that's an effective 10% tariff on US imports.
|
| I have no idea if the tariffs will work but I don't fault
| a country for saying "we're matching the tariffs you
| apply to our exports"
| grey-area wrote:
| > Vietnam does manipulate its currency.
|
| So does every country in the world, this is neither
| surprising nor reason to slap tariffs on imports (which
| will hurt US consumers).
|
| > I have no idea if the tariffs will work
|
| We have lots of examples from history of tariffs not
| working, so there is that. They lead to trade wars, and
| then sometimes to real wars, never to prosperity.
|
| The unparalleled prosperity the US enjoyed in the last
| few decades before 2008 was driven by open global trade
| and being the currency of last resort and the centre of
| world markets. I think there is a lot of complacency in
| the US about that position, and we're seeing the
| beginning of the end.
| yibg wrote:
| The bring manufacturing back to the US never made sense to be
| numbers wise.
|
| Thing A is currently manufactured in China | Vietnam | whatever
| lower cost country and sold for $x today. Slap on 50% tariffs
| so now it costs $1.5x. That provides an incentive to produce
| thing A locally sure.
|
| But if you can already produce thing A locally for $x, you
| wouldn't have offshored the production in the first place.
| Maybe producing thing A locally will cost less than $1.5x, but
| it'll still be more than $x. So cost still end up increasing.
|
| Am I missing something?
| christkv wrote:
| Two typical scenarios that we know from the past in
| industries like cars for example.
|
| Corp one has two factories one smaller one in the us one
| bigger one in the eu. They will now shift more of the
| production to the us from eu to avoid tariffs.
|
| Corp two only has a factory in the eu. They will now build
| another factory in the us to be able to avoid tariffs and
| keep selling their goods at competitive prices.
| yibg wrote:
| If corp two could have factories in the US and still sell
| them at competitive prices they would've done that already
| no? The fact that they haven't indicates it didn't make
| economic sense. So then doing so would mean their costs
| would go up, which would either mean they have to eat the
| extra cost and reduce profit or pass the extra cost to
| consumers.
| christkv wrote:
| They can only pass the extra costs if there is no
| competition and they can only eat the costs if their
| margin is big enough to absorb the cost and still remain
| profitable. If their us market share is important they
| will shift their production around to the us or somewhere
| that has a favorable trade agreement with the us.
| yibg wrote:
| The stated goal of tariffs is to force companies to shift
| production back to the US. But US production costs more,
| hence the outsourcing in the first place, so shifting
| production back to the US increases cost.
|
| If costs goes up then either prices go up too or margins
| go down or a mix of both.
| yaris wrote:
| Forgive me my ignorance, but: parts from which cars are
| assembled (or raw materials from which parts are
| manufactured), are also subject to tariffs, aren't they? So
| the only shift that would happen is that of the labour (and
| US labour is not the cheapest, IIRC).
| christkv wrote:
| No those factories will shift too its a domino effect.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The problem with this theory is the tariffs will both
| have to remain in place for a decade _and_ businesses
| will have to believe that they 'll remain in place for a
| decade for that to pan out.
|
| Nobody is building a new factory, based on tariffs that
| they expect to be gone in three years time.
| reverius42 wrote:
| Three years? I'll be surprised if the tariffs last three
| months.
| piva00 wrote:
| They will only shift if it's predictable that the tariff
| policy will stay for long enough to recoup the high
| capital investments of building a whole new factory just
| to serve the internal market.
|
| For many industries it might not make sense unless it's a
| 5-10 years long plan, the risk of investing a lot to
| build a new factory, bringing it online over the next 2-3
| years, to then have tariffs removed and making your new
| shiny factory more expensive to run than one outside of
| the country, will also be factored into the total cost.
|
| The tariffs are so broadly applied that the risk factor
| is much more massive than anything the USA experienced
| before (like during the Japanese cars era of the
| 70s/80s), it's wishful thinking the domino effect will
| happen in the short/medium-term.
| Someone wrote:
| They would in the current scenario, yes, but the OP said
| _"Two typical scenarios that we know from the past in
| industries like cars for example"_
|
| In the past, countries would put tariffs on importing
| cars, but not on importing car parts (with some complex
| definition of what constitutes a car and a car part.
| IIRC, there once was a loophole where one imported a car
| and converted it into a van by removing back seats to
| avoid a tax on importing vans)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| For manufacturing physical goods, labour cost is a small
| percentage of the total cost of the good. Why is this?
| Because modern labourers are extremely productive: they
| are highly skilled at their jobs and use very efficient
| tools and machines to do their jobs.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| No corporation is building a factory based on a policy that
| has a lifetime of four years.
| christkv wrote:
| 3-4 years is a LONG time in business. I do not know how
| long the tariffs will last. Maybe they will come to a
| deal next week maybe not. but if they stick around
| businesses will move stuff to the us. I'm saying this as
| an EU citizen.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 3-4 years is a very short time for developing land in the
| US, anywhere near population centers. You're looking at
| that much time just to get permitting done,
| optimistically.
| ttw44 wrote:
| 3-4 years is not long at all in this context. Most places
| take that long to get permits, and additional years to
| build the factories, and additional years to even become
| profitable and self sustainable in ideal circumstances.
| rainsford wrote:
| It's not a long time if you're talking making massive
| capital investments into things like new factories or
| capacity.
|
| Your second sentence indicates the more significant
| problem though, because that uncertainty on timelines
| makes even the 3-4 year time horizon questionable. Nobody
| is going to invest anything based on tariffs that may go
| away or change next week and the only way you can tell if
| they're sticking around is waiting so long you don't have
| time to make the investment any more.
|
| It _might_ be different if Trump came in with a clear,
| transparent tariff plan on day one. But they 're already
| all over the place and being implemented in extremely
| unpredictable ways. Some people might argue his
| unpredictability is an asset in general, but it's
| absolutely not in this case.
| chimprich wrote:
| > They will now build another factory in the us to be able
| to avoid tariffs and keep selling their goods at
| competitive prices
|
| They won't be competitive prices though; they'll have to
| charge more because of the capital costs in setting up a
| whole new factory and supply chains, increased labour
| costs, and having to pay tariffs on importing parts.
|
| I imagine that not being able to export cars from this
| factory due to reciprocal tarrifs will also drive up
| prices, due to things like lost flexibility, redundancy,
| and economies of scale.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| And it isn't like we have especially high unemployment
| right now. There isn't a labor force available to
| suddenly staff a bunch of factories even if they took
| zero time and capital to set up.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That's the entire point of it all. I think you are the
| only person in this thread who gets it. When there isn't
| a labour force available, you have to increase salaries
| to get workers. This means other industries and
| businesses have to increase salaries to keep their
| workers, giving a domino effect - meaning higher salaries
| for workers across the board. It might even mean that
| shit industries can't find any workers and have to close
| shop. For example the restaurant industry.
|
| This also means higher prices across the board for
| consumer goods, but the worker still net benefits
| greatly.
|
| Who does not benefit: The people who do not work. And
| that's fine. But it's also this class of people who make
| the entire political and media class, and hacker class
| apparently, so that's why we have this enormous
| resistance.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The tariffs aren't set at like 10,000%.
|
| "Domestic production will replace imports" is conditioned
| on the cost of domestic production being lower than the
| cost of imports with the tariffs added. "Just spin up new
| factories with capital investment, raise wages
| substantially to get people to change careers from
| service industries, and train all these new people" isn't
| going to be a cheaper approach to building furniture than
| continuing to import it from Vietnam with a high tariff.
|
| The effect will be minimal new domestic manufacturing and
| higher prices for large numbers of goods.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I think you fail to account for just how little a salary
| needs to be increased for it to be interesting to switch
| jobs for the people who are making the lowest wages. In
| Europe, people compare wages with single digit
| differences per hour when deciding for switches in jobs
| and careers.
|
| And low paid workers in the service sector aren't low
| skilled and costly to get going. They're intelligent and
| honest, and would be fine workers in manufacturing if
| given the opportunity. They're working in the service
| sector because those jobs couldn't be off-shored.
| alkonaut wrote:
| In the first scenario the investment isn't astronomical,
| and if there is surplus capacity you can definitely shift
| around to avoid tariffs. I think Volvo already announced
| this wrt. to their US plants. They can take some production
| from the EU or China and use capacity in the US to build
| cars. The parts are still imported from China and the EU so
| will be more expensive, but they still seem to think this
| can help.
|
| But the second scenario is a massive investment. It not
| only requires the economics of it to work today, it
| requires knowing what the situation is 1 or 2 decades down
| the line. You can't build a car factory in two years.
| Barely in four. And even if you do, it doesn't matter if
| it's likely to operate at a loss in 8 years!
|
| The most important thing for that type of investment is
| stability and predictability, not just "the costs will be
| lower for at least 2 years now! or maybe 2weeks we don't
| know since the tariffs seem to come and go depending on
| which side of bed the local czar wakes up on".
| megaman821 wrote:
| You just made me think of another scenario, Corp three has
| mostly idle factories at important locations around the
| world but designs their factory lines to be packable and
| shippable around the world to hedge against tariffs. The
| carrying-cost of buildings is considered insurance.
| refurb wrote:
| The missing piece is not all costs are passed on to
| consumers.
|
| Company absorb costs all the time. If you think cutting your
| price by 10% will boost sales by 20%, you do it because total
| profit is higher even though per unit profit is lower.
|
| And the reverse is true - companies might increase prices and
| accept lower volume.
|
| Not to mention not all items are interchangeable. Is a car
| made in Mexico worth the same as the same model made in
| Germany?
| XorNot wrote:
| Low cost items, of the type the vast majority of the
| population are quite sensitive to the price of, have almost
| no margin on them to start with. There isn't 10% to cut.
| refurb wrote:
| True, but a $5 trash can with a 10% tariff is $5.50
| XorNot wrote:
| The $5 trash can is made in China, which is receiving
| something on the order of a 50% tarriff.
|
| And now that's 50c extra in taxes to the government for
| every other part of the supply chain consuming $5 trash
| cans as an expense.
| yibg wrote:
| So basically a lose lose from company and consumer
| perspectives. Either company makes less profit or consumers
| pay more or a mix of both.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Congratulations you have just re-discovered an Econ 101
| concept called deadweight loss
| briandear wrote:
| The Q5 is made in Mexico.
| nipponese wrote:
| I think the long game answer is clear: Trump wants an old
| fashioned World War with China before 2027 and needs
| production back in the States.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Whether one umbrella factory moves from China to the US
| within this election cycle doesn't really make a dent. The
| moving of industry from the US happened over decades, and
| was hand-in-hand with the US making fewer umbrellas and
| more computer programs, satellites, and microchips. Moving
| basic manufacturing of low value goods to the US would
| cannibalize the capacity of producing higher value goods.
| And none of it will be noticeable while Trump is still
| alive.
| nipponese wrote:
| Hard to say re: labor cannibalization - if you are
| sociopathic about the labor force like Trump is, all
| these fentanyl deaths are just spare capacity that didn't
| have an input interface and should have been in a
| factory.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Yes, this is the puzzle piece many are missing.
|
| They see a way with china by the end of the decade so they
| are trying to remove dependence on their manufacturing and
| flip Russia to our side.
|
| Except there isn't any guarantee of a war with china, it's
| just an idea they have. For all we can tell they have no
| intention of that. Taiwan is tricky though
| briandear wrote:
| That's may be true. But why does Vietnam have such high
| tariffs? They should be competitive based on their lower
| costs right? So it's simple: Vietnam can eliminate tariffs on
| imports and the U.S. would eliminate tariffs as well.
| mrheosuper wrote:
| the tariff is calculated based on trade deficit, not how
| much tariff the other is applying
| lpapez wrote:
| I had hoped that this kind of "Trump is actually playing 4d
| chess, you just don't understand" argument would be dismissed
| after seeing him through the first term, but apparently not.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they know what 's going to happen, and they expect the
| coming storm because they seek what follows_
|
| If they do they're lying. The mechanism by which tariffs
| restore production is by raising prices. That makes it more
| lucrative to invest in serving that market. If producers have
| to absorb the tariff, they won't boost production and the
| tariff is just a corporate tax increase.
|
| > _to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by
| revaluation of the USD_
|
| That's called inflation!
| trhway wrote:
| >What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the
| bottom is still chugging along. I would think it unlikely they
| can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the
| plan for that?
|
| tax cut financed by the tariffs? Will buy/mislead a lot of
| voters when those checks would get sent mid next year.
|
| Especially those voters who couldn't notice that all those
| countries having tariffs (and VAT) are worse economically than
| US in major part because US didn't until now have much tariffs
| to speak of.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| As a professional armchair economist, I would call it a power
| off rather than a reset.
|
| It took over a hundred years for countries to once again have
| economic trust with France again when they went hard on tariffs
| in the 1600s causing war.
|
| Who in their right mind would negotiate with a man known to rip
| up existing agreements on a whim?!
|
| I have a feeling that this will knock the United States down a
| peg economically to the point where we look back on Liberation
| Day as America's Brexit
| somenameforme wrote:
| Bretton Woods would like to have a chat with you.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Brexit is going to look like a minor bump compared to this.
| Even the stupid deal the UK negotiated didn't try and seal
| the borders to imports.
| bearburger wrote:
| It looks too complex, IMO. As someone living in Trump's beloved
| country (Russia), I'd say you should ask, "Cui prodest?" If
| some oligarchs (currently called billionaires, but we'll see)
| surrounding Trump benefit financially from these tariffs, then
| the plan isn't about state debt--it's about their personal
| wealth.
| bawolff wrote:
| > They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by
| revaluation of the USD
|
| Given how dependent usa is on foreign debt, that sounds crazy
| to me.
|
| If they accomplish that sort of thing, they wont be able to
| borrow at favourable rates anymore. That seems incredibly bad
| for usa. Am i missing something on how severe that would be?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| IIRC they are trying to pay off their debt since they are on
| a brink of default. They don't want to borrow anymore.
| bawolff wrote:
| They are literally borrowing more right now. I believe at
| record levels. Billions per day.
| appointment wrote:
| The massive tax cuts Trump is trying to extend or introduce
| are much larger than the spending cuts proposed so far.
|
| edit: Also the USA is nowhere near a default, unless
| congress chooses to not raise the ridiculous debt ceiling
| policy.
| heisenbit wrote:
| This was a macro argument assuming a benevolent intention.
| However if we look purely at self interests the main thrust is
| to increase revenue on paper to cut taxes. At the same time
| raise debt ceiling. And when the tarifs proof unsustainable
| then well, we are in happy deficit spending land with no fault
| on the drivers side.
| darawk wrote:
| This is a good take, but I think I can answer your question
| about the midterms. This is timed specifically for them. The
| drop we're seeing in markets right now isn't a pricing in of
| the tariffs, per se (at least, not yet), it's a pricing in of
| policy uncertainty that is going to lead to a near-term drop in
| investment.
|
| However, because they are doing it so early, they will have
| time to recalibrate and bake in exemptions until the market /
| inflation is happy. Up to and including backing off of the
| policy entirely, if that ends up being necessary. As a
| political strategy, it is perfectly timed to allow Trump to
| "save the economy" from his own policies. This is true imo
| independently of what you may think about the policy as policy.
|
| When it comes to the policy as such, recipirocal tariffs,
| conceptually, are designed to incentivize the overall global
| reduction in tariffs. So, as a headline, implementing
| "reciprocal tariffs" is actually favorable to free trade.
| However, there are some important details that they have fucked
| up, such as identifying tariffs with trade deficits in general,
| and in particular identifying them with trade deficits in
| _goods only_. That is really the component of the policy that
| doesn 't make sense, and it is important.
|
| Most likely, they will recalibrate and/or provide a lot of
| exemptions, particularly as the midterms approach. As a
| political tactic, I think it will work out fairly well, if they
| respond to the feedback appropriately - that's the big question
| though, and that uncertainty is the most significant reason for
| the market drop.
| ggm wrote:
| So my pessimism they can't "heal" this in time is the weak
| bit, if there are multiple levers they can tweak leading into
| the midterms to say "it's morning in america"
|
| I say pessimism but in case it's not clear I'd prefer a
| democrat victory, both in the immediate past and in the
| coming midterms.
| darawk wrote:
| The reason for my "optimism" is that it's just as easy for
| him to undo this as doing it in the first place. If he
| keeps them in place as constructed for more than say, 3
| months, without shooting them through with loopholes, then
| he might have a real unfixable problem on his hands, as
| businesses start to seriously reorient themselves. However,
| if over the next 3 months or so, he starts tactically
| peeling them back or being very "generous" with exemptions,
| the net economic impact could be relatively small, and
| maybe even moderately positive (depending on the details).
|
| Fwiw I'd prefer the republicans win again, so my optimism
| is actual (not that I don't have substantial criticisms of
| the current admin's policies). However, it is refreshing to
| have a content-focused exchange on the internet about
| politics, so h/t to you :)
| cycomanic wrote:
| What I don't understand with your argument is, how do you
| account for the loss of trust of your trading partners?
| Even if the WH responds and tweaks the tariffs there is
| no hiding the fact that they have damaged trust in the US
| as a trading partner. I mean just look at what is
| happening in most western countries already, there a
| serious reorienting away from partnership with the US.
| Also consider that the US is primarily a service export
| economy and that it's generally much easier to divest
| from services than manufactured goods, I suspect the
| moves will have caused serious and long lasting damage to
| US companies.
| ggm wrote:
| Eh, this worries me less. I mean ideally yes trade
| signatures have value but we all know the reality here is
| that strong nations don't feel bound by international
| law.
|
| I don't think "reputational harm" exists in international
| relations. I do think the terms of future bilateral
| negotiations may be less favourable to the US for a while
| but if they are too iniquitous they won't get ratified in
| Congress.
|
| Maybe some significant 20+ year investment choices
| redirect. Some future 56th president will complain 47
| laid the seed of this disadvantage. In every other
| respect after the noisy bit is over people do what they
| do.
| darawk wrote:
| The loss of trust issue is the one I worry about most.
| However, it's also true that the key players who we've
| implemented tariffs against have had them against us for
| years, and we've simply absorbed that.
|
| I don't like the mechanism he chose to implement them, or
| the sharpness with which they were imposed, but I do
| think implementing actual proper reciprocal tariffs
| phased in over a reasonable period of time was a good
| idea. And I agree with you re: the service/goods issue.
| Them excluding services in their trade deficit
| calculation is by far the dumbest part of this plan.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Why are we talking reciprocal tariffs? It has been widely
| reported that the tariffs have been calculated based on
| trade deficit and not based on existing tariffs. That
| should alreadyy become clear by the fact that nobody in
| the western world has anywhere close to the same average
| tariffs, or that there are different rates for the EU and
| e.g. La Reunion (which is part of the EU and does not
| have the right to set their own tariffs).
| Havoc wrote:
| Given everything recent I'd say competence in the WH is a
| stretch
|
| The prez is literally holding up placards where half the
| numbers on it are mislabelled and they rest of the numbers are
| that mislabelled/misunderstood number divided by half
|
| That sounds like garden variety incompetence to me not 5D chess
| grey-area wrote:
| There is a low cunning at work though - Trump now runs the
| largest military in the world and the largest economy and if
| the only way he can impress other people is to use that power
| he will use it to try to beat them into submission. Chaos at
| this point is his friend as he attempts to stay in power as
| long as possible, so expect trade wars, war, domestic chaos
| and forcing others to show loyalty to him personally and pay
| him off as the biggest bully in the room. He sees this in
| very simple terms. So no there is not a high intelligence at
| work but he is not without agency and cunning. He has
| operated this way all his life due to inherited money and got
| away with it.
|
| And damn the consequences for everyone else, including the
| people who elected him, he doesn't consider that in his
| calculations, which is what makes them so confusing for those
| who think he is playing by normal rules of politics or
| business.
| Liwink wrote:
| > What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the
| bottom is still chugging along.
|
| I think Trump is getting unpopular actions out of the way
| quickly, perhaps planning to announce an income tax reduction
| later to save the midterm elections.
| noobermin wrote:
| I am amazed at how many people are still imputing intelligence
| to Donald Trump. Him winning the presidency again after
| everything is less about him being some deep mastermind and
| more an exposure of the issues with America that have been
| there building for decades now.
|
| The difference between Trump 1 and Trump 2 is that all the
| "establishment" R politicians who were "corrupt" or "deep
| state" but willing to work with him could at least steer the
| ship in the first term. Those people are gone and all who
| remain are ideologues and yes-men. Trying to find logic in the
| madness strikes me as someone going through the stages of grief
| near death, trying to find sense in a senseless, uncaring
| world. Take occam's razor, no one is steering the ship at the
| white house right now.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Probably the plan for that is to do massive gaslighting on
| social media and find someone to blame for the hardship.
| Leveraging emotions (especially the aggressive ones) may be an
| effective way to keep support of the base.
|
| I really wish I was more optimistic and share your position
| that voters are driven by self-interest. I hope you're right
| though.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| They literally took trade deficit %s and represented them as
| tariffs levied by those countries.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| > they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming
| storm because they seek what follows.
|
| I agree that that's their understanding. I'd argue that in
| reality they don't, they can't. International relations are a
| very complex system. And there is no precedent of an empire
| wilfully dismantling its periphery.
|
| I really don't enjoy the whole "may you live in interesting
| times" thingy
| wolframhempel wrote:
| I don't think its about devaluing the currency to pay back debt
| at all. I believe it's about a fundamental vision of an autark
| USA, decoupled from any international obligations, whether its
| NATO, WHO or WTO and focused purely on producing and selling
| domestically whilst having a "beautiful ocean on each side".
|
| I believe that's an unrealistic vision, not least since
| America's debt means it cannot afford significant shrinkage of
| its global market or a loss of its status as reserve currency,
| but I believe autarkie is the goal none the less.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Personally I think that their bet is - it will hurt US, but it
| will devastate EU and hurt China more than US. EU is fragile
| economically and political instability will follow if its
| economy crashes. Especially if US pushes OPEC to jack up the
| prices.
| groestl wrote:
| > What's the plan for that?
|
| The answer to this is pretty simple, although American
| Exceptionalism makes it hard to see for many Americans. For
| every other country, most could see pretty clearly that they'll
| not plan on holding free elections going forward.
| h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
| Always keep in mind that Blackrock manages the
| retirement/social insurance funds of a lot of countries. If the
| USD crashes, they will, too.
|
| The aftermath will probably be complete isolation of the US,
| because no country will want to trade with them. And the
| administration is fine with that, because they're not
| interested in keeping the status quo of democracy alive.
|
| More influence for them, less influence from outside. That's
| how oligarchs think and act.
| risyachka wrote:
| Even the best economists can't predict economy results from
| "small" actions.
|
| With global ones like this - they are absolutely oblivious what
| will happen.
| Isn0gud wrote:
| They might be smart about it like you said, but they might also
| just be stupid. And the theory that they are smart about it is
| based on a whole bunch more assumptions...
| bambax wrote:
| > _the midterms will hit_
|
| The plan may be that there are no more elections, or that the
| only people who are allowed to vote are identified MAGA
| supporters. Does this seem impossible? Everything Trump has
| done would have been considered impossible only a couple of
| months ago.
|
| What Trump reveals is the utter apathy of Americans. They're
| sheep in lions' clothing, not the other way around.
| vkou wrote:
| > Maybe by 2027?
|
| Why on earth would you spend millions and billions of dollars
| on investing into a ROI-10-year factory, when a cheeseburger
| overdose or, heaven forbid, the Dems winning another election
| will take that investment and turn it straight into the toilet?
|
| Not to mention that you'll be locked out of the world's
| markets, thanks to reciprocal tariffs.
| timeon wrote:
| I tend to agree with you that they know. However the signal
| leeks showed me that they are not just playing stupid in public
| - it seems that they are like that for real.
| cantrecallmypwd wrote:
| Rich people are typically insulated from economic downturns,
| especially ones they cause, by their ability to shift
| investments and asset allocations to mitigate and/or profit
| from changing tides.
|
| Furthermore, Trump has never bought his own groceries, pumped
| his own gas, or interviewed for a job so retail prices and
| layoffs are abstractions "for plebs". Plus, he's reaching the
| end of his life so he doesn't have very much proverbial skin in
| the game since his motivations revolve almost exclusively
| around himself.
| bamboozled wrote:
| By the time the midterms come along I doubt there will be many
| people left who want the job of fixing up this mess. So they
| will likely get to keep it.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| "Personally I think it's a mistake but hot takes "they have no
| idea what's coming" are I believe naive."
|
| They slapped 10pct tariffs on the Heard and McDonald islands.
| Literally uninhabited islands in Antarctica.
| dev0p wrote:
| The defending theory for that is that it doesn't allow for
| loopholes by trading through tax exempt countries.
|
| It's certainly an interesting strategy. Let's see how it
| plays out.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Except those islands are Australian territories. And
| they've given Australia higher tariffs, so in theory they
| could reduce these tariffs (which will be paid at least in
| part by US citizens) by exporting through there?
|
| There's nothing strategic about a 4 column excel
| spreadsheet and one formula.
| dev0p wrote:
| By all accounts, it doesn't make sense. Hence why it's
| ... well, interesting, to say the least.
| mpreda wrote:
| > They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by
| revaluation of the USD
|
| I don't understand, who's holding that "foreign held debt"?
| foreign countries I suppose, so which countries do you have in
| mind?
|
| For one, it's not China, which holds a large amount of US
| treasury bonds (so basically, China is a lender of USD). So the
| revaluation of USD would work great for China: one, the value
| of the China-held USD bonds increases, and second, the price of
| Chinese exports decreases in USD terms.
|
| So help me understand, what's the plan with the revaluation of
| USD?
| wslh wrote:
| > ... they know what's going to happen
|
| While we cannot predict the future, it's moving faster. The
| world system is under immense stress. Complexity at this scale
| increases the chance of black swans and unpredictable outcomes.
| Many powerful actors are reacting simultaneously in divergent
| directions, which can reshape the trajectory altogether. We are
| vulnerable to cascading surprises.
| aredox wrote:
| "The king is walking around naked; surely he's got a great
| reason for that. And his advisors wouldn't let him do it if
| there wasn't a deeper purpose!"
| h4ny wrote:
| > and they expect the coming storm because they seek what
| follows.
|
| Well, a lot of economists, including one Nobel Prize winner
| (Paul Krugman) have commented on this being a bad idea for the
| economy...
|
| On the off chance that those people who are supposed to know
| what they are talking about are all wrong and haven't thought
| about it being some genius diversion tactics -- it's generally
| still a pretty bad idea for a government to effectively ask
| everyone to "tough it out" and "just trust me bro".
|
| It's really disappointing that people are actually trying to
| theorize this as some kind of genius plan. It doesn't take a
| genius to figure out the amount of irreparable damage they have
| already done to regular folks is unacceptable (uh... I'm sure
| some nutters out there think that DOGE is keeping track of all
| the damages they have done and will pay everyone once their
| genius plans have worked out).
|
| That kind of logic really amazes me.
| rat87 wrote:
| paul krugman isnt useful example because he is a liberal
| democrat and people will try to say thats why he said its
| stupid. even though hes right and it is stupid. plenty of
| conservative economists are basically saying wtf Bro to these
| tarrifs. Sadly that will also probably not help but it has
| more of a chance to do something
| fedeb95 wrote:
| they understand first order effects, but second or higher
| orders are seldom predictable in this matters. So the risk is
| huge. This massive shock will reveal hidden frailties.
| virgilp wrote:
| Trump told you, I don't know why you still wonder what's the
| plan: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-
| they...
| ptero wrote:
| > hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe
| naive. They know. They just don't care
|
| I think they know, they care and decided that it is a
| reasonable way forward given very limited (trade and budget
| deficit) options. Otherwise I think you are spot on.
|
| To spitball some ideas on your midterm comment (again, agree to
| it). One possibility is they see it as an unavoidable loss,
| plan on using veto to maintain course set during the first 2
| years (which is why they rush) and hope to be in the updraft
| phase by the November 2028 elections. Maybe.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| If they piss off enough people impeachment is back on the
| table. They might not last until the 2028 election.
| speakfreely wrote:
| This seems likely, but I cannot figure out why they are not
| trying to pass more legislation in the first 2 years if
| they're fairly sure they're going to lose the midterms.
|
| The only conclusion that can be drawn from their public
| actions is that they believe they can more or less enforce
| all their policies by executive order and that they're very
| sure they will be keeping the executive in 2028.
| jmull wrote:
| Of course there are people who know. But not the decision
| maker. I notice the use of collective pronouns, but there is
| only one person driving this. Everyone else is riding the
| tiger.
|
| Not sure why, despite long and consistent experience, that
| people keep thinking he's anyone but exactly who he appears to
| be. There's no grand plan, calculated risk, or 4D-chess. The
| clown is just putting on a performance, based on his immediate
| feelings, and the immediate reaction of the crowd. There's
| nothing else there.
| basisword wrote:
| >> hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe
| naive
|
| While I agree they probably have some idea what will happen,
| don't forget that these same people added a journalist to a
| group chat where they planned a military attack. They fired a
| bunch of critical people and then didn't know how to get in
| touch with them to try and rehire them. Assuming they're total
| idiots isn't much of a stretch.
| LastTrain wrote:
| That all sounds fine except that the admin have no intention of
| keeping these tariffs, rendering your point kind of moot. Trump
| will enact/retract these tariffs multiple times over just the
| next month, and few to none of them will still be this high in
| three months. Since we are just speculating here - what is
| probably going on is that Trump has some very bad ideas and no
| one is allowed to contradict him. I'm sure there are people
| around him that know better, but he really is this simple
| minded. To your point about midterms, I'm sure his Project 2025
| handlers are beside themselves that he's doing this, but there
| is little they can do to stop him.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| > What's the plan for that?
|
| Trump ran on a campaign that voting is a pain and you won't
| have to do it again if he wins. Since then he's maintained that
| third term is the plan. Doesn't really matter how upset the
| voting population is if you're going to ignore their votes.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive.
|
| There could be someone who understands this. But this someone
| never shows their face in public, or provides any rationale for
| the policies beyond the nonsense like "reciprocal tariffs" or
| similar nonsense. I mean the literal board with tariff
| percentages that was held up had numbers that made NO sense, to
| anyone! Yet there are no critical questions?
|
| It's beginning to feel like a conspiracy theory. That behind
| the obvious idiots who are the faces of the policies, are some
| other, less inept people who are pulling the strings. But who
| would this be?
|
| > they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows.
|
| If there are elections in 2026 and 2030 then what follows is a
| blue wave in the midterms and millions of disappointed voters
| who had their 401k's gutted, saw prices of most goods increase
| 10%+ in 2 years, saw little to no tax cuts, lost their jobs if
| they worked for the government, and lost their social security.
| roxolotl wrote:
| So I asked this question back when the wiki page for
| exorbitant privilege[0], the term used to refer to the US'
| status, was posted. I was provided with a few links of people
| who do seem to understand[1]. The Hudson Bay capital piece
| was probably the most interesting[2].
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege?wprov=s
| ft... 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43529614 2: htt
| ps://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| > Rust belt sewing shops and Walmart grade cheap goods
| production lines?
|
| Are we really going to see this happening in 2 years? I'm not
| sure about this. The cost of Mexican/South Asian factories are
| still a lot lower than US.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| We absolutely will not, especially given the administration's
| demonstrated lack of willpower.
|
| What you will see is many promises of massive investment,
| conspicuously scheduled to break ground around 2028ish.
| mikesickler wrote:
| Foreign held debt is less than 30% of outstanding, and less
| than that is sovereign-owned, so I don't think devaluing or
| attempting to restructure foreign debt via "century bonds" will
| have much effect on US debt obligations.
|
| I seriously doubt this administration understands any of this.
| I agree that they don't care, but I don't think they know
| what's going to happen. No one does.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| There may have been a hint of strategy at one time. But the
| sheer level of gross incompetence coming from every side of
| this administration does not really lead one to believe that
| "global 4d chess trade war" is within the _actual_ abilities of
| this administration to grasp.
| jcfrei wrote:
| In my opinion you are giving the US government far too much
| credit. Trump has through his usage of social media created a
| weapon that he can strike at anyone that stands in his way.
| With all branches under Republican control there's simply no
| one left who can stand up to him without having his political
| career destroyed. We've seen this story unfold so many times in
| countries around the world - Turkey would be one recent example
| where the misguided policies of Erdogan have left the country
| with record inflation rates for years.
| toyg wrote:
| _> a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these
| have not been understood by the WH_
|
| I think you're making the same mistake a lot of observers are
| making: you're looking at this from an economic perspective,
| and think those decisions were taken on an economic basis. But
| that is likely not the case.
|
| The Trumpist movement is entirely focused on _political_ aims:
| re-establishing old hierarchies of power inside the country,
| and entrenching them for good. The important work is the
| slashing and burning of welfare and safeguards for lower and
| middle classes, putting minorities "back in their place", and
| entrenching the wealthy into positions of absolute dominance.
| Everything else is a distraction, to keep newspeople busy and
| the population focused on recreating an idealized, "Happy Days"
| 1950 society. Enemies will be created to make you hate, this or
| that policy will be picked up or dropped just to keep you
| arguing, and meanwhile the important work is made irreversible.
| Once you destroy what was built over a century, it will take
| decades to rebuild them, and meanwhile the New Normal will take
| root and become impossibly hard to remove.
|
| Fascism and nazism did not move from economic principles - they
| picked up what they needed as they went, opportunistically,
| because their main aims were fundamentally _political_. The
| Trump II administration works in the same way: the priority is
| political dominance to achieve political aims at societal
| level, everything else is tangential and opportunistic.
| shlant wrote:
| > I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from
| this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?
|
| They tried to steal an election already - it's pretty easy to
| understand why they are making decisions as if they don't have
| to worry about elections anymore
| jeffhuys wrote:
| This does not, at all, contribute to the discussion.
| dmix wrote:
| People are also getting way too caught up in the math and
| numbers. They think WH calculated the percentages through
| incompetence but the 25% tariffs weren't based on anything very
| real either. The entire goal is not carefully calculated trade
| equality, it's mafia style intimidation to get some easy
| concessions as quickly as possible from everybody... before the
| economy crashes too hard. Spamming tariffs to see what sticks.
| The math is just a plausible justification for something they
| would have done anyway.
|
| It's bully tactics.
|
| For ex see Canada's fentynal importation issue, which was
| something invented to justify a natsec emergency legally. The
| numbers don't have to be real, just plausibly deniable.
| Def_Os wrote:
| Bingo. Occam's razor suggests that the WH is again simply
| trying to force good short-term deals using mobster tactics.
| dcchambers wrote:
| My personal opinion is less complicated: they're pulling the
| economic levers they have in a way that they can use to enrich
| the top 0.1% even more. The richest of the rich got very
| wealthy during COVID (economic fallout, buying up lots of
| stocks at a discount then the biggest stock market bull run
| we've ever seen) and they want to make it happen again.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > What amazes me is the timing
|
| If it didn't hit midterms it would hit the next presidential
| race. You gotta pick your poison. I guess they decided it's
| better to just get it over with.
| phillipseamore wrote:
| A blanket 10% minimum tariff is a great excuse for any local US
| manufacturing to increase their prices.
|
| I used to live in a country with heavy tariffs, every time
| tariffs were raised the local producers increased prices to be
| just below the imports. Even after the tariffs were abolished the
| prices (on local and imports) never really lowered in any
| significant way.
| brabel wrote:
| That always seems to happen with this sort of protections. It's
| like when the government tries to incentivize people to buy
| electric cars by paying 25% of it (example from the climate
| bonus in Sweden, which was given for years), but what happens
| is that buyers actually end up paying just maybe 5% less as the
| car companies now can increase their prices and still sell the
| cars they produce while making more money.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| That happened in New Zealand, where the govt. paid $5,000 for
| electric cars. When this subsidy expired, prices decreased by
| a few thousand.
|
| If a consumer was willing to pay $20,000 for a car why would
| they sell it to them for less than $25,000 when the final
| bill to the consumer will be $20,000, with the govt. paying
| an extra $5,000.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| That's why the better policy is not to subsidize the
| purchase price of the car, but the various taxes associated
| with owning one, as well as offering certain perks like
| being able to drive in the bus lane. This was a huge
| success in Norway. Though now the percentage of new car
| purchases that are electric is so large that the subsidies
| are being rolled back because they've gotten too
| expensive(and the bus lane thing no longer makes sense
| because if the majority of cars can drive in it, it's not
| really a bus lane anymore). But I think that's fine. You
| can make an argument that when subsidies were introduced,
| electric cars were still struggling to compete with
| combustion cars in numerous ways, like range, capacity,
| access to chargers and repair services, etc.
| Subsidies/perks acted as compensation for those downsides
| for early adopters. The playing field is obviously a lot
| more even now. Chargers(including home chargers) are
| generally widely available, range is improved via better
| battery tech, there's a lot more players in the market,
| meaning more choice, etc. Not really a car guy, but I
| assume the repair situation is also improved, though it may
| not be on par yet.
| cwillu wrote:
| In principle, that still injects cash into those companies
| though; it's just that the popular conception is that these
| subsidies are intended to make the product cheaper for
| consumers, instead of encouraging companies to produce them
| because they're more profitable due to the subsidy.
|
| (This should not be taken as a blanket endorsement, god
| knows that companies follow the incentives, which is rarely
| perfectly aligned with the intent)
| viccis wrote:
| This is basically what everyone said would happen with
| Yang's proposed UBI in 2020.
| mjevans wrote:
| Basic Econ 101 - The only way to lower prices is to
| increase supply (or decrease demand, however I'd really
| rather not have a huge pandemic, war, illogical
| engineered recession, or other situation that decreases
| the number of viable consumers...)
| banqjls wrote:
| That this would happen is evident to everybody with a minimum
| knowledge of economics. It's the same reason UBI won't work
| because it would make prices skyrocket.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| It certainly could. Depends a lot on the specifics of how
| the UBI is implemented, and how UBI affects salary levels.
| If everything remained the same and everyone just got x
| more income each year, then yes, inflation is very likely.
| On the other hand, something more like no questions
| asked/no demands made social security, where the only
| requirement is being unemployed, could improve conditions
| for people who are unable to work while paying for itself
| in eliminating heaps of red tape, and also freeing up a
| lots of manpower towards helping people sort out their
| lives instead of pouring over disability pension
| applications, without paying out a bunch of money to people
| who don't need it because they earn plenty from work
| already.
|
| One could also pay out ubi universally, but have a one time
| down-adjustment of salaries the first year.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Right and wrong. Right if it increases aggregate demand
| more than available economic production thus leading to
| inflation.
|
| But if we overall had capacity to tame in the added UBI,
| then no. Unlike targeted subsidies like EVs, UBI is do much
| better. Each industry is still competing with other
| industries
| inerte wrote:
| This also happens when a certain price range gets different
| benefits.
|
| For example lower mortgage rates if the house costs below $X.
| Now houses that could sell for far lower than $X actually
| list close to $X.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Count on it. Especially after Trump (AKA we the taxpayers) gave
| the oligopolies and monopolies huge corporate tax handouts, for
| which they thanked us with massive price hikes and the current
| "inflation."
|
| Oh, and of course there were Trump's tax hikes on middle-class
| Americans to boot.
|
| What a mind-blowing betrayal and mess.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I also don't think it's enough to justify moving manufacturing
| to the US. The investments are to high, especially for
| something that might only last for four years. The US also
| doesn't have enough workers, so wages would increase.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| > every time tariffs were raised the local producers increased
| prices to be just below the imports.
|
| That's literally how tariffs are supposed to work. I'm confused
| about what you thought should happen?
|
| Local producers are supposed to raise prices so there is more
| money for worker pay or business reinvestment or both.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| No, the foreigners pay the tariffs. Then that foreign money
| gets spent on childcare and other things Americans need and
| want.
|
| How many times does Trump need to explain this to you?
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| No, you as an American consumer are paying the tariffs.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Maybe that's how Trump believes tariffs work, but they are
| actually a tax on imports, that the importer pays. The
| importer passes that along to the American consumer.
|
| Other countries are angry about this because it discourages
| importing from them, and their US exports may go down, or
| they may have to lower their US export prices. Not because
| they have to pay a fee or a tax to the US.
| Draiken wrote:
| Or, you know, profits.
|
| Capitalists only care about profits.
|
| I live in a country where we have many protectionist tariffs
| and the locally produced goods are expensive and lower
| quality compared to imported goods which guarantees profits
| at the expense of consumers.
|
| I don't understand why people still believe in this day and
| age that wages will ever increase despite data showing the
| opposite for literal decades.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| If you frequent an American form as a non-American, you'll
| have noticed by now that for most Americans it's as if the
| rest of the world doesn't really exist. You can talk all
| you want about how the thing they're proposing has been
| done in other countries with terrible results. Or the thing
| they're saying it's inviable exists in many other countries
| and it just works. You'll be ignored either way
| rco8786 wrote:
| Yes that will invariably happen, barring price controls.
| macinjosh wrote:
| This is expected and normal? Demand for locally sourced goods
| will skyrocket which means prices should as well. What you are
| leaving out is that the US is well capitalized and those sky
| high prices will be a strong incentive for more competitors to
| join the market. With competition in place prices will
| eventually fall. Prices will likely never go back as low but at
| least our fellow countrymen will be employed, housed and
| hopeful instead of on the streets doing fentanyl.
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| People will starting fighting against more houses being built
| to protect their wealth even more than now. You'll be earning
| like $25/hr at the factory and all the single-family houses
| are 300k+ with significant interest. Assuming they never have
| a huge healthcare bill which also shows no signs of becoming
| affordable, if the factory jobs even offer decent benefits
| but my guess is they will all be high deductible plans.
| weberer wrote:
| Well yeah, that's the point. Its so factories paying local
| wages can now compete with factories overseas where wages are
| much lower.
| olalonde wrote:
| A laborer in a subsidized, low-productivity industry is one
| less worker available for a high-tech, high-productivity
| sector. With a finite workforce, misallocating labor like
| this inevitably hampers innovation and economic growth. The
| U.S. should focus on being a powerhouse of technology and
| innovation, not divert resources to low-value tasks like
| picking olives from trees.
| sebmellen wrote:
| 1. Not all workers are fungible. Your average 30th
| percentile individual =/= the person progressing your
| biotech industry. Would they be more beneficial to the
| economy working in a customer service job, or in a factory?
|
| 2. It's very hard to be a powerhouse of innovation if you
| don't vertically integrate. China has taught us this. You
| can't split out the gritty part (manufacturing) from the
| fun part (invention) of technological innovation and win in
| the long run.
| mcoliver wrote:
| Here's a csv and google sheet of the data. Turns out they aren't
| tariffs countries charge us. They are trade imbalance
| percentages. Unreal:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xK0OQ5VGl8JHmDSIgbXh...
|
| https://gist.github.com/mcoliver/69fe48d03c12388e29cc0cd87eb...
| danny_codes wrote:
| lol when I saw him hold up his piece of cardboard I thought,
| "yeah that's definitely random numbers he invented 2 hours ago"
| rramadass wrote:
| I see how the tariff numbers may have been calculated. But why
| is it done that way? What is the rationale behind such a
| calculation? Is this a way to balance the existing trade
| deficits? How does it work?
|
| Would appreciate you (or anybody else) shed some light on the
| economics of the thing.
| saberdancer wrote:
| If he used real numbers the tariffs would be so low that it
| wouldn't make any sense.
| n2d4 wrote:
| The label "tariffs charged to the US" is just straight-up
| wrong, either due to incompetence or malice (likely to
| justify the high tariffs).
|
| But basing the tariffs on import/export ratio makes sense if
| your goal is to be a net exporter with every country, as it
| discourages imports until that's the case. It's still
| somewhat arbitrary though; my guess is that the White House
| is pursuing that goal mostly for political, not economical
| reasons.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| It's because he thinks trade deficits are somehow a
| subsidy. He has literally used the terms interchangeably.
| He's just dumb.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| I would love to hear the plan on how the US can be a net
| exporter of coffee with, say, Indonesia (32% tariff).
| Perhaps we can take the funds from the tariffs and build
| mass greenhouses?
| bitcurious wrote:
| Why do you think the plan is to export every single good?
| The calculation is clearly on the total import/export
| balance.
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| We do not have to be net exporters of coffee - Indonesia
| can buy US cars, corn and wheat for example to balance
| trade.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Ah yes, all we have to do is drive US wages so low that
| Indonesian wages can employ Americans just as readily as
| our wages employ Indonesians.
| Qworg wrote:
| You can see the report here: https://ustr.gov/issue-
| areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
|
| Given that both elasticities were set to cancel each other,
| that's why you get a flat trade deficit/imports calculation.
|
| This is, sadly, the way a freshman econ student would
| calculate tariffs.
| cbovis wrote:
| Suggestion that the admin is vibe governing: https://bsky.app
| /profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3lluo7jmsss...
| nullhole wrote:
| The bit I love is that countries with which the US has a trade
| surplus aren't getting the opposite of a tariff (a grant, I
| guess) on their imports to the US, they aren't getting zero
| tariffs on their imports to the US, they're getting 10%
| tariffs.
| femto wrote:
| Heard Island and McDonald Islands, two Australian territories
| inhabited only by penguins, get singled out for a 10% tariff.
|
| Norfolk Island, an Australian community of 3000 with no
| exports to the US, gets its own 29% tariff. They're expecting
| a tourism boost from the publicity.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/donald-
| trump...
| rukuu001 wrote:
| Once again they proceed far beyond the reach of satirists
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| You jest, but I wonder if this is to stop shenanigans like
| claiming your business operates from there just to dodge
| tariffs.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Nah, they just went down the Wikipedia list of places
| that trade with the US. This is how Reunion winds up on
| there, despite being actually part of France.
| sn9 wrote:
| Oh I was assuming they just asked an LLM but this sounds
| plausible too.
| tim333 wrote:
| That might be the case with places like the UK which has
| a trade deficit with the US but still gets taxed at 10%.
| I feel however the penguins put up an obvious non tariff
| barrier by only accepting fish rather than hard currency.
| ponector wrote:
| And zero tariff for his dear friend putin. Insane!
| RaiausderDose wrote:
| Thank you for posting this, the misinformation is clear as day.
| But lying is without consequences if people are dumb or
| lethargic enough, it seems.
|
| This will get very interesting.
| thiht wrote:
| Funny how Russia is absent from the list
| pembrook wrote:
| Current US sanctions on Russia make trade a moot point,
| that's why.
| nicce wrote:
| There is still more trade with Russia than many countries
| in the list. Even Syria and Iran got tariffs.
| tashbarg wrote:
| Total trade with Russia in 2024: $3.5bn
|
| Total trade with Ukraine in 2024: $2.9bn
|
| https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-
| east/russia...
|
| So, Ukraine will get an exemption, too, right? Because
| their trade is even a mooter point, right? Right?!
| pembrook wrote:
| This is down from $23B in 2019, and is basically just
| fertilizer and minerals used to make fertilizer.
|
| Fertilizer is not sanctioned due to the fact it's needed
| for food security in the EU (surprise suprise, the EU is
| not just insecure domestically in terms of military and
| energy and technology, but also in terms of fertilizers
| needed to grow food, fantastic governance they have over
| there...leaving potash mining or nat gas extraction to
| other countries does look good for those domestic net
| zero calculations though!).
| tashbarg wrote:
| This reply makes the mootest point of all the moot
| points.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| EU peace is assured by inter-locking trade within the
| block. Countries within the EU are gently encouraged to
| trade essential goods with one another instead of
| producing them themselves.
|
| This policy dates back to the end of WW2 as an attempt to
| prevent one country getting too aggressive and hence
| starting another war.
|
| Since the fall of the wall, Russia was seen as a
| legitimate trading partner for the block and, in the long
| term (just as Turkiye), as member of the block.
|
| Hence sourcing fertiliser from Russia was taken to be a
| strategic positive since it tired Russia to Europe.
| kolanos wrote:
| > Hence sourcing fertiliser from Russia was taken to be a
| strategic positive since it tired Russia to Europe.
|
| And you still defend this as a strategic positive?
| Towaway69 wrote:
| I think we should be aware of history, that does not
| imply acceptance nor agreement.
|
| Instead had I said this ten years ago, the majority of
| politicians in the EU would have been d'accord. What does
| that imply about our political systems?
|
| There have been a bunch of alliances in Europe over the
| centuries, none have been permanent.
| DanielVZ wrote:
| I don't see Ukraine on the list at least. But I do see
| this as a win for Russia in the destabilization of the
| Western economy.
| StormChaser_5 wrote:
| It's on the list. They have to pay 10%
| DanielVZ wrote:
| I stand corrected
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Didn't seem to be an issue for the penguin islands.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| They tariffed uninhabited land, countries that export
| nothing to the US, and countries for which the US has a
| trade surplus.
|
| All those circumstances also would have made the point
| moot... yet they all still made the list.
| overfeed wrote:
| The administration placed tariffs on uninhabited islands. I
| don't think they gave a rat's patootie about the volume of
| trade.
| taspeotis wrote:
| They're sanctioned up the wazoo
|
| > U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5
| billion in 2024.
|
| Among European Union members:
|
| > The total bilateral trade in goods reached EUR851 billion
| in 2023.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Considering Russia has been disobeying orders and Australia
| and Japan have done almost nothing to the USA, then why not
| give it to them a bit harder?
| thiht wrote:
| So? Let's not give it too hard to poor Russia?
| Extasia785 wrote:
| Ukraine has around $1.2 billion and still got 10% tariffs.
| christianqchung wrote:
| That makes no difference to who should get tariffs by the
| administration's own logic. They're cozying up to Russia.
| No other explanation is feasible.
| macinjosh wrote:
| I can think of at least a dozen reasons but I'll give you
| one: We are in delicate peace negotiations with Russia
| _right_ now. There is good reason to isolate all foreign
| policy decisions with that country to those negotiations.
| It is called doing more than one thing at a time.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Ukraine is party to those same delicate peace
| negotiations. Why weren't they excluded, if this is the
| reason why?
| rat87 wrote:
| If we were in delicate peace negotiations then we should
| put more pressure on them. Tell them extra tarrifs will
| be removed if they agree. The main reason there is still
| war is Putins stubbornness in admitting he started an
| unwinnable war. More pressure is helpful
| thiht wrote:
| You mean delicate play to dismantle Ukraine, sell it bit
| by bit to Russia and steal the remaining resources?
|
| You can't possibly qualify this shitshow as "peace
| negotiations"
| christianqchung wrote:
| We are also in delicate peace negotiations with Ukraine
| right now, but we still put import taxes on them. If you
| think that the administration would put more import taxes
| on Russia after the negotiations are done, then at least
| you're consistent. I need your other 11+ reasons to be
| convinced.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure Krasnov will do anything to offend Russia.
| Zanfa wrote:
| At this point, Trump could hoist the russian flag at the
| white house and republicans would still turn a blind eye.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Besides the sanctions, the G7+EU hold something around 300
| billion $ of funds so far owned by the Ruzzian central bank.
| Not enough to rebuild Ukraine, but it will be a decent start.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confiscation_of_Russian_centra.
| ..
| dumbledoren wrote:
| Stealing the assets of countries like Venezuela and Russia
| caused this to happen by making the rest of the world move
| off of the dollar to secure their asses. Doing more of them
| is the dumbest idea that can be proposed.
| bjackman wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
| spacechild1 wrote:
| There is a dedicated article in an Austrian newspaper about
| that: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000264129/das-
| verrueckt... They essentially call it batshit crazy.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Are we factoring in digital/service trades? For example,
| Netflix is in Vietnam. There are many Netflix subscribers in
| Vietnam. Does that get factored into the trade deficit? Or is
| it only physical goods that get factored in?
|
| Vietnam uses many US services such as Microsoft Office,
| Netflix, ChatGPT, Facebook ads, etc. This is revenue that
| directly go into the pockets of American companies.
| imadethis wrote:
| No services, only goods. This is according to
| @JamesSurowiecki on Twitter, one of the first to reverse
| engineer the equation for how they're coming up with the
| numbers. So Office, Netflix, etc wouldn't count against the
| deficit.
| aurareturn wrote:
| This is where the calculation is extremely unfair to a
| country like Vietnam. They export low value physical goods
| and import high value services like ChatGPT, engineering
| consultations, etc. They're getting screwed by this tariff
| plan.
|
| Any tariff based on trade deficit needs to account for
| services.
| amarshall wrote:
| Well the U.S. gets screwed too, the admin just doesn't
| realize it.
| rtkwe wrote:
| You shouldn't put tariffs based on deficits period
| because it's a brain dead way to think about
| international trade. The whole idea is flawed from the
| jump so there's no way to make it rational, it's
| inherently irrational.
| macinjosh wrote:
| No it doesn't. Trump's whole issue here isn't making more
| money for the federal government. His issue is that the
| American economy no longer works for you if you are a
| blue collar worker.
|
| The services we export are performed largely by white
| collar, college educated people. A good number of whom
| are here on H1-B visas. What service can an unemployed
| factory worker export to Vietnam? We have to end
| globalization of industry or wealth inequality will just
| continue to spiral.
| yojo wrote:
| There are ~600k H1B visa holders in the US. the tech
| sector alone has ~10M workers, and professional workers
| are ~9x that again. That boogeyman represents < 1% of the
| relevant workforce.
|
| "White collar" work is the majority of US employment.
| It's unclear to me if you're proposing sacrificing white
| collar for blue collar jobs, but that's not a trade our
| economy overall wants to make.
|
| Relatedly, the unemployment rate for US factory workers
| is 2.9%. This is a very low unemployment number - 5% is
| generally considered "full employment," and anything
| below that indicates a labor shortage. So your
| hypothetical factory worker should probably just go get
| another job.
| Yeul wrote:
| I don't understand the nostalgia for manufacturing jobs.
| My mom worked in a factory putting pickles into glass
| bottles. It was not her dream job. I can still remember
| how she smelled after a shift. But it was the only
| employment she could find in that village.
|
| Things got better when we moved after a few years and she
| shifted into a healthcare job. White collar if you will.
| jillyboel wrote:
| His issue is actually that Putin told him to jump, and so
| he has to jump. You're utterly delusional if you think
| Trump gives a single diaper filled with shit about the
| "blue collar workers"
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I'm glad I read your comment because I've been wondering
| the whole time whether services are factored in. It's
| absolutely insane that the administration is ignoring the
| exported value of some of the biggest companies in America
| that all these countries are buying services from.
| emptyfile wrote:
| >Are we factoring in digital/service trades?
|
| ???
|
| Of course not. The entire time Trump is railing against the
| deficit, he's talking only about goods. He wants to bring
| back manufacturing to America, didn't you hear?
|
| No one asked him this shit on the campaign trail?
| wormlord wrote:
| Wow, everything's computer!
| jorge-d wrote:
| It's even worse, they literally got their formula from a llm
| model (probably Grok?) =>
| https://bsky.app/profile/dansinker.com/post/3llunnyfeoj2v
|
| "To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from
| the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for e and ph
| were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, e, was
| set at 4.
|
| Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long
| run (Boehm et al., 2023), but estimates of the elasticity vary.
| To be conservative, studies that find higher elasticities near
| 3-4 were drawn on. The elasticity of import prices with respect
| to tariffs, ph, is 0.25."[0]
|
| [0] https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
| cbolton wrote:
| Do I understand this right: The evidence that they took it
| from a LLM is that all LLMs give the same answer and this
| answer describes what they did?
|
| By that logic, it looks like Pythagoras got his theorem from
| an LLM...
| sussmannbaka wrote:
| If ChatGPT was available back then, sure.
| garfield_light wrote:
| It explains why they singled out Reunion from France, it
| has a separate ccTLD. That type of mistake is the kind a
| LLM would do, not a human...
|
| I'm convinced. this is fucking crazy.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >It explains why they singled out Reunion from France, it
| has a separate ccTLD
|
| It also has a separate country abbreviation (RE). You
| know, like you'd see on an address. The thing that tells
| you where something, like a good imported in to the
| United States, is coming from.
|
| This is is why it has a separate ccTLD by the way.
|
| This blue sky thread is just an incredible example of
| motivated reasoning.
| garfield_light wrote:
| > It also has a separate country abbreviation (RE). You
| know, like you'd see on an address. The thing that tells
| you where something, like a good imported in to the
| United States, is coming from.
|
| Yes, obviously, it's ISO 3166-1 but that's a batshit way
| of assigning tariffs. To the point I suspect it's a LLM.
|
| Norfolk Island? The island with 3000 people, which in the
| context of international trade is a speck at the side of
| Australia. Or the _uninhabited_ Heard Island and McDonald
| Islands with zero trade?
|
| If Reunion and Norfolk Island are to be considered
| separately from their mainlands, where are the tariffs
| for Easter Island (Chile)? It has more people than
| Norfolk and probably more trade, it's 3700ish km from the
| administrative region it belongs, so it geographically
| distinct like Reunion.
|
| Anyone (with a pulse) tasked with calculating the tariffs
| would see this and think "I have to remove these
| outliers". So the two options are:
|
| A. Someone took the ISO 3166-1 codes and brainlessly
| calculated their batshit formula without noticing that HM
| doesn't produce anything. They did not instead do the
| more natural thing, go from highest imports to lowest
| which would've eliminated HM and most anomalies. _They
| didn 't even check their work._
|
| B. They asked an LLM, which calculated this in the most
| naive way possible one-shot.
|
| I dunno governor, this looks like vibecoded Excel
| spreadsheets.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Its worse than that. Its like saying you must have used
| chat gpt because you answered that 2+2= 4 and _gasp_ so do
| the LLMs! Nevermind that its just the obvious answer to the
| question.
|
| Lets see the prompt. The prompt further down in the thread
| that reproduces it was asking how to use tariffs to balance
| trade deficits with a 10% minimum. Is there any other
| answer then set the rate such that the deficit goes away or
| 10%, whichever is greater? No. That's just the answer to
| the question and is why ALL LLMs give the same answer.
| 93po wrote:
| It is really silly to say that because an LLM gave a similar
| approach a single time and someone took a screencap of it
| without full context, that Elon and Trump are sitting in the
| whitehouse asking Grok what to. This level of hyperbole is
| why reading about anything to do with the two of them is
| really exhausting.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| People are saying they literally used the trade deficit and
| the formula they published that they claim doesn't do this
| multiplies that value by 4 and then 0.25. Yeah... that is
| what we are dealing with.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| > Elon and Trump are sitting in the whitehouse asking Grok
| what to
|
| Not perhaps Elon or Trump themselves (doubt Trump can
| actually use a computer), but it could very well be one of
| the teens like the so-called "Big Balls" that apparently
| have their hands in everything.
|
| > This level of hyperbole is why reading about anything to
| do with the two of them is really exhausting
|
| Almost as exhausting as their daily actions / tweets /
| rants.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >It is really silly to say that because an LLM gave a
| similar approach a single time and someone took a screencap
| of it without full context, that Elon and Trump are sitting
| in the whitehouse asking Grok what to.
|
| A similar approach to a _close-ended question_.
|
| The original screenshot doesnt show the prompt. The one
| reproducing it asks for a tariff policy to eliminate trade
| deficits with a 10% minimum. Umm... hello? There is only
| one answer to that. The greater value between 10% and a
| rate based on the deficit. Of course the Trump policy and
| all 4 LLM answers agree. The answer is determined by the
| question.
|
| Its like accusing little Timmy of cheating on his math
| homework because he said 2+2=4 and -- _GASP_ -- so do all
| the LLMs!
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| LLMs are basically just good at sourcing ideas from the
| internet. Me thinks this just means that this tariff idea
| exists on the internet, especially since grok, chatgpt, etc
| all come up with the same idea. We used to not have income
| taxes and funded the govt with tariffs so this probably isn't
| a new concept despite media outlets pretending like it is.
| sebazzz wrote:
| > Me thinks this just means that this tariff idea exists on
| the internet
|
| Probably from some random genius on reddit.
| sn9 wrote:
| It's good at _compressing_ information from the internet,
| usually not losslessly.
| grotorea wrote:
| Are you implying there is a very small chance that if
| someone posted in 2018 reddit "We should tariff Algeria at
| 35% because X", the LLM that the administration may have
| used would have agreed with random redditor?
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| Wow. So they came up with zero-effort estimates of the tariff
| rate which would balance the trade deficit. The method is
| like something you'd be asked to criticise in A level
| economics.
|
| Then they incorrectly labelled these numbers as reciprocal
| tarrifs implying this is what other countries charge the US.
|
| The worst of it is that all of this misinformation will be
| happily accepted as truth by so many people. It's now going
| to be almost impossible to have people realise the truth,
| especially those people who support Trump. Ugh.
| lowercased wrote:
| > It's now going to be almost impossible to have people
| realise the truth, especially those people who support
| Trump
|
| _NOW_? It 's been this way for close to 10 years.
| DanielVZ wrote:
| Does this mean that software worldwide gets a boon since:
|
| 1. It's not affected by these tariffs 2. It wasn't used as a
| basis for the calculation
| rbetts wrote:
| It seems more likely that the EU will retaliate by taxing (or
| prohibiting) US services.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| The Eu will take care of that by slapping taxes/tariffs or
| regulations, and the rest of the world will also do the same.
| Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
| hartator wrote:
| What's the actual tariffs other countries are charging the US
| then?
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Interesting. While I think these tariffs are a bad idea, I'm
| not qualified to fully pass judgement. However, knowing Trump,
| when I saw the numbers I instantly suspected they would be
| wrong.
| nurettin wrote:
| "Reduces trillions of foreign debt, also causes double that in
| inflation"
| Larrikin wrote:
| There's a lot of speculation that the Switch 2 would be atleast
| hundred dollars less without this nonsense. The Japan exclusive
| version of the Switch 2 seems to support this, with it's
| restrictions that insulate Japan, support the notion that English
| actually isn't needed in Japan (nor any other languages), by
| releasing a version of the Switch 2 that is far cheaper but only
| allows you to play games in Japanese.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade
| deficit with that country divided by the country's exports. I
| think more and more we see lots of evidence they don't know what
| they're doing.
| Freedom2 wrote:
| So I'm guessing it's not important to tariff the penguins of
| Antarctic Island?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Penguins are a myth. They are all too identical. Clearly cgi.
| xanathar wrote:
| And they run Linux
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Penguins are just mascots.
|
| You're probably thinking of that one dead badger.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Of course, penguins are birds and birds aren't real.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Oh, birds are very real. They just run on batteries.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade
| deficit with that country divided by the country's exports.
|
| Note that the White House has both (1) officially denied this,
| (2) provided the formula they assert was used as support for
| that denial; but the formula is exactly what they are denying
| but with two additional globally-constant elasticity factors in
| the divisor, however, those elasticity factors are 4 and 0.25,
| so...
| jmeyer2k wrote:
| wait seriously? can you provide a source? That is some
| serious denial of reality by the administration
| bcraven wrote:
| https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
| ncallaway wrote:
| https://x.com/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
| stingrae wrote:
| for reference, the Deputy White House Press Secretary's tweet
| (providing evidence of (2):
| https://x.com/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It also proves (1), since it is a response (QRT, rather
| than a comment) to a tweet describing the trade
| deficit/exports approach, and starts with "No we literally
| calculated tariff and non tariff barriers.", and then
| presents the formula proving (2).
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| What's QRT?
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| I assume quote retweet.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| The Onion couldn't even make half of this up without
| looking like bad writers... but here we are
| stavros wrote:
| Reality isn't constrained by quality bars.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Someone quoted this headline elsewhere, so I looked up
| the actual article[0].
|
| It would have been hilarious back in 2001. It's...
| scarily prescient in 2025. Can satire be just too good?
|
| [0]: https://theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-
| nightmare-of-pea...
| rtkwe wrote:
| That formula just simplifies to
| trade_deficit/2*total_imports per country. It doesn't
| disprove anything it just looks fancier but the two extra
| terms are constants that simplify to 2. If you do the
| math it lines up for every country that didn't get the
| default 10% rate.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/jBTiz7T
| wonnage wrote:
| I've seen people use "sanewashing" to refer to the type of
| comment you're replying to, there's no sane explanation but
| people try to come up with one because the world doesn't make
| sense otherwise
| Gud wrote:
| It makes perfect sense. You have a narcissistic asshole in
| the White House who got elected because the Democratic
| Party fumbled the ball.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Some corrupt members of Congress and the judiciary
| deserve some of the blame.
| ikt wrote:
| I wouldn't put 100% of the blame on the Democrats, here
| in Australia we are frequently voting for the least worst
| option not the best, and I'm not sure how the Democrats
| weren't the least worst option when compared to the other
| option
|
| but for some reason a whole heap of people decided to
| stay home this time and this is the result, hope they
| still feel happy with their decision
| tunesmith wrote:
| I've heard that there's polling lately to indicate that's
| not true (unsure on source, it might have been an
| interview at Vox.com), and that higher turnout would have
| advantaged the Republicans further.
| roenxi wrote:
| Probably stemming from David Shor's Blue Rose Research. I
| bumped into that @ https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/new-
| insights-on-why-harris-...
| munksbeer wrote:
| > You have a narcissistic asshole in the White House who
| got elected because the Democratic Party fumbled the
| ball.
|
| It don't want to sound too persnickety, but there is
| always at least one losing side in an election. It
| doesn't have to mean they dropped the ball, it could just
| mean people preferred the other option. Hindsight bias is
| wonderful, but you have no idea what would have happened
| if they'd run with a different agenda, they may have had
| a worse result.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > but you have no idea what would have happened if they'd
| run with a different agenda, they may have had a worse
| result.
|
| The 2024 election had historically-low support from
| normally stalwart Democrat demographics such as Latinos,
| the youth vote, and black males. That, IMO, supports the
| conclusion that the Democrats did _something_ wrong this
| time. Also, not only did those groups abstain but Trump
| also picked up quite a few votes from them (especially
| working-age black males), suggesting that they are swing
| voters who probably could have been swayed to stay on the
| Dem plantation if exposed to more convincing messaging,
| or a more compelling Democrat candidate.
| munksbeer wrote:
| That's fair, thanks.
| 7jjjjjjj wrote:
| I'm not sure how you could look at 2024 and _not_ see a
| historically terrible campaign by the Democrats. They had
| to force the presumptive nominee to drop out because his
| brain was dripping out his ears. That alone would do it!
| bawolff wrote:
| I think often trump's policies are rooted in some sort of
| idea that is perhaps controversial but at least not totally
| insane, and then implemented in the most boneheaded way
| possible.
|
| E.g. one explanation given for these trade policies is that
| trump sees a war with china down the line and is worried
| that china has tons of factories that could be converted to
| make ammunition while usa does not.
|
| If so, there is at least some logic to the base idea, but
| the implementation is crazy, probably not going to work
| that effectively, and going to piss off all amrrica's
| allies which would be bad if WW3 is really on the horizon.
| facile3232 wrote:
| I like this take a lot. I also think that America
| competing on manufacturing is obviously never going to
| happen.
| okr wrote:
| Why is it obvious and why never?
| vkou wrote:
| Unemployment is at 4%, there's no reserve army of labor
| that can be mobilized to make flashlights and sew
| t-shirts for $3/hr.
|
| Anyways, I hope you're looking foward to prices for
| everything going up.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Could be a thing? Perhaps people might start caring about
| product durability and stop buying cheap shit that goes
| in a landfill because the producers only care about shelf
| appeal.
| 42772827 wrote:
| This is my hope, too. But also I fear the transition is
| going to be ugly. Personally I feel lucky that I'm not
| just starting out my life -- I already have high quality
| stuff.
| tnolet wrote:
| But then we can promote immigration from poorer
| neighbouring countries to pick up the work. Oh wait...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The folks who voted because of the price of eggs are not
| going to be happy. And midterm elections are next year.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They didn't really care about egg prices.
| geysersam wrote:
| Because Americans are too rich and manufacturing is too
| cheap. If any of those changes it's a different story,
| but that's unlikely to happen.
| matwood wrote:
| I think there is a bit more nuance. US manufacturing
| _jobs_ are never coming back. If you look at the stats,
| US manufacturing output continues to set records. Yes,
| the US is second to China (has been since ~2010), but
| that was bound to happen on population /demographics
| alone.
| aurareturn wrote:
| E.g. one explanation given for these trade policies is
| that trump sees a war with china down the line and is
| worried that china has tons of factories that could be
| converted to make ammunition while usa does not.
|
| 1. US will never outproduce China in ammunition
|
| 2. Alienating allies won't help the US produce ammunition
| sandworm101 wrote:
| It is the logic of schoolchildren. It is the simplistic
| logic of a teenager discovering Ayn Rand's wikipedia
| entry. (Grover Norquits came up with his tax pledge while
| in highschool.) The world is more complicated than any
| econ 099 exam.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >Trump sees a war with china down the line
|
| So is destroying diplomatic relations with all their
| allies and trying to force ceding of power in central
| Europe to a former enemy who is allied to China?
|
| Go on with ya.
|
| He's a prick saving himself from prison whilst being
| willingly used to establish an oligarchic fascist state
| from the former USA.
| bawolff wrote:
| If you follow the logic of it, at least to the first
| order - fighting a two front war is bad, forcing europe
| to deal with russia frees up USA to focus on china.
| America's withdrawl from europe has made european states
| panic and re-arm, and you could argue that a well-armed
| europe that grudgingly helps america with a common enemy
| would be better than a poorly armed europe that uselessly
| helps willingly.
|
| The second order effects of what he's doing are pretty
| obviously terrible for usa, but quite frankly i dont
| think trump is smart enough to see that.
|
| [To be clear i think trump is stupid, but i don't think
| his actions are entirely random. There is a chain of
| reasoning here, it just misses the forest for the trees]
| matwood wrote:
| The problem with this line of reasoning is that Trump
| just pushed our allies in that part of the world closer
| to China. China stated the other day they are working on
| a joint response to tariffs with Japan and South Korea.
| Additionally, leaving power gaps around the world from
| the pullback of USAID gives China an in to be the 'good
| guy'. This is the exact opposite of planning for a
| conflict with China. In fact, it feels like ceding the
| fight before it even begins (much like what he did with
| Russia).
| rcxdude wrote:
| > America's withdrawl from europe has made european
| states panic and re-arm
|
| Russia's invasion of Ukraine is more immediate concern
| there. Even if Europe still could count on the USA's NATO
| commitments 100% the war was a big wake-up call in terms
| of readiness.
| bawolff wrote:
| If you look at what has happened i'm not sure. The
| ukraine invasion has been happening for a while now, and
| it has caused increase defense spending in europe
| somewhat, but it seems suddenly over the last three month
| the needle has been moving a lot faster than the last few
| years.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| How will they project power into the Asia Pacific now
| they have tariffed their allies and probably forgotten
| about AUKUS?
| intended wrote:
| There is no logic to these things. This is the emperors
| new clothes, over and over again.
|
| The proximate cause for these tariffs is not some future
| event. This is post fact rationalization.
|
| The proximate cause is still the ongoing "information"
| war which determines the perceived reality that is
| litigated in elections.
|
| Earlier politicians played theater, acting as if the red
| meat being fed to voters was real on TV, but dealing with
| reality as need be when it came to decision making.
|
| This was a betrayal of voters, who saw their election
| efforts result in legislators who didnt do what they
| said.
|
| Trump does what he says. He believes WWE is real, and
| acts as if it is. His base believes it is real, and now
| reality is crashing with the fiction.
|
| The fiction will prevail, because his party has also been
| working to build the power to enact their will.
|
| Everyone sees logic here, the same way that everyone saw
| the emperors clothes. The alternative is illogical.
|
| This is the reason potential reasons "we dont know" have
| to be postulated (war / China can make more ammunition)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| You're giving him too much credit.
|
| Trump has always liked tariffs [alas, I can't find the
| source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by
| current events]. He thinks trade is a zero sum game,
| _and_ thinks that someone else set up the petro-dollar
| system.
|
| Trump has consistently and reiliably always cowered away
| from war. Using other means to stop it (see russia, NK,
| China, Iran). Yes I hear the "we're going to invade x, y
| and z" but they never acutally came to anything (is that
| because of his advisors?)
|
| Trump doesn't think about future capacity, only future
| pride. Does this change "make american stronger, and
| other weaker" is pretty much the only calculus that he's
| doing.
|
| Trump's thinking is roughly as following:
|
| "Why do we have taxes when we can use tariffs to raise
| cash and bring power back?"
|
| "Why don't they buy from us?"(china/rest of asia)
|
| "why are we spending money on them, when we don't get any
| money back? They are weak."(NATO)
|
| "Why are we punishing russia, they are offering deals"
| (Putin offering cash deals)
|
| There is no 4d chess. Its just a man who's pretty far
| gone, shitting out edicts to idiots willing to implement
| them.
| vitus wrote:
| > Trump has always liked tariffs [alas, I can't find the
| source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by
| current events].
|
| Here you go, Feb 2011: https://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/n
| ews/economy/donald_trump_c...
|
| "The comment repeated past statements from "The
| Apprentice" star, who has said he wants to put a 25%
| tariff on all Chinese imports, to level trade imbalances
| in the global economy."
| KaiserPro wrote:
| thank you for this link, it is most appreciated.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency,
| its been blown out by current events].
|
| Doesn't help that Google's custom time range search is
| complete garbage. Searched for "trump tariffs" from
| 1/1/1980 to 1/1/2010 and almost every link is about the
| current tariffs _but_ with timestamps between 1980 and
| 2010.
|
| e.g. "20 Nov 1987 -- President Donald Trump issued a slew
| of tariffs on Chinese goods", "30 Jun 1981 -- Ontario
| Premier Doug Ford announced Monday a 25% increase on
| electricity exports to some American states as a result
| of President Donald Trump's tariffs", "31 Dec 1999 -- IMF
| says too early for precise analysis on Trump tariff
| impact", "1 Feb 2001 -- Trump's Global Tariff War Begins"
|
| Did find a couple of links that were chronologically
| correct - a 1999 Guardian story about Trump wanting to
| tax the rich(!) and a 1987 NYT story about Reagan putting
| tariffs on Japan.
|
| (duckduckgo was even worse)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Excellent research, many thanks!
| masfuerte wrote:
| Trump's tariff mania goes back decades. There was an
| article about it in The Times a couple of days ago.
| Sadly, it's paywalled.
|
| https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/why-trump-
| tar...
| giantrobot wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ugF8W
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The US are never going into a direct war with China, and
| China is never going into a direct war with the US. This
| is M.A.D in action.
|
| At most we might see a proxy war over Taiwan (i.e. the US
| supporting and arming Taiwan, with sanctions against the
| PRC). The risk would then be a widespread disruption of
| global trade, at which point the US would not want to be
| dependent on the Chinese economy or factories in any way.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Sometimes something does not make sense because we don't
| see or understand the big picture and what people are
| trying to achieve, and thus it literally does not "make
| sense".
|
| Trump is neither stupid nor insane and he will have access
| to many very smart people, too. Based on that the
| reasonable assumption is that they are trying to achieve a
| well-defined objective and have set a plan in motion to do
| so.
|
| The "game" is thus to figure it out. @ggm's comment above
| is one possibility.
| mkleczek wrote:
| There are two issues with this thinking:
|
| 1. It is authoritarian. Democratically elected leader's
| duty is to present the policies he plans to implement so
| that voters can decide if they want them implemented.
|
| 2. It is based on the "4D chess" myth - that the leader
| is way smarter than the rest and is capable of
| outsmarting other countries. The history shows that it is
| never true. The leaders are normal people. And the
| institutions are as good as the founding principles that
| are honored by them.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| (1) is you not liking it, not that it isn't the case.
| Whether it is authoritarian or not is besides the point.
| (2) I am not claiming that they can "outsmart" anyone,
| just that the objective and plan may not be publicly or
| explicitly stated, or even that what is publicly stated
| is not the real objective (this is not "4D chess" this is
| actually how things tend to be in practice from politics
| to business).
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| (1) Bypassing the judicative branch _is_ authoritarian.
|
| (2) You just claimed trump has access to smart advisors
| and some hidden masterplan but you ignore all counter
| indication. He ousts critical journalists, nominates
| incompetent staff, invasion-mongers, tweets and plays
| golf alot.
|
| If i can see any common factor in his insanity, its the
| need to have an enemy to pose as the strong man against,
| which indicates that trump does not have a constructive
| vision for the US.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Democratically elected leader's duty is to present the
| policies he plans to implement so that voters can decide
| if they want them implemented.
|
| That's 100% not true. A candidate leader might tell you
| what they're going to do, and then you elect the leader,
| and then they do them, but they don't propose plans once
| in power to see if the electorate like them.
|
| As much as I'm not a Trump fan, I really don't like that
| people use a separate yardstick to measure him vs people
| they like.
| mkleczek wrote:
| There is a fine line between democratic leadership and
| authoritarianism.
|
| Public consultations and transparency are two crucial and
| lately very under appreciated parts of democracy.
|
| If a leader cheats the voters it is no longer democracy.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Possibly, but the thing I have repeatedly heard is "Trump
| is doing this because he promised it on the campaign
| trail". The things might be bad (e.g. some pardon didn't
| sound great) but I wouldn't describe him as not
| fulfilling anything. He seems to have made some very
| specific promises, and has kept at least some of them.
|
| Maybe there's a website that keeps track somewhere.
| intended wrote:
| Occam's razor is specifically a counter to this.
|
| The simplest solution is the right one. You are
| projecting intelligence, because you are used to.
|
| This is AFTER the US government has roundly fired
| thousands of their experts and workforce, AND has just
| told everyone of its intelligence and army rank and file
| that there are no repercussions for a massive dereliction
| of duty.
|
| AND IT IS ONLY APRIL.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| On the contrary, in context I believe my comment is
| actually the simplest explanation. Claiming that the US
| government is insane while we, as random members of the
| public know better, is certainly not the simplest
| explanation...
|
| It does not imply that what they are doing is a good idea
| or will work (whatever the objective is), just that there
| is more rational thought in what they are doing than what
| people might assume because the public does not have the
| information and seeing through what is going on requires
| insights that most people don't have, either.
|
| Again, check @ggm comment above. I am not saying that
| this is what is going on but it is a possibility, and an
| average member of the public would never think of that
| scenario and thus wouldn't see the order in the apparent
| chaos.
| matwood wrote:
| > Claiming that the US government is insane while we, as
| random members of the public know better
|
| Not insane, incompetent.
|
| The problem with primarily hiring sycophants from his
| favorite cable news channel is that he's not getting the
| best, even from the GOP. This also makes him even more
| susceptible to people with their own agendas like Musk
| since no one is willing to pushback.
| intended wrote:
| Curious - what would count as a non-average member of
| public?
| rockinghigh wrote:
| You don't need much background in Economics to understand
| that blanket tariffs hurt companies that rely on imports
| and exports and lead to higher prices. They used an LLM
| to come up with a formula that's just the trade deficit
| when you simplify it and called it "tariffs charged to
| the USA".
| aredox wrote:
| "Very smart people"
|
| https://nitter.net/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
| rcxdude wrote:
| 1) heads of state can in fact be incredibly incompetent
| 2) the goal could entirely be 'stay in power' (which can
| also be implemented incompetently!)
|
| The UK for a good few years had a government which had
| both these attributes. They were only interested in
| policies which would appeal to their base, but eventually
| even those soured on them because the policies were
| implemented so badly.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Paper backing ggm's take:
|
| https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/res
| e...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/markets-wrestle-with-
| trum...
|
| > _In a November paper, economist Stephen Miran, whom Trump
| has picked to chair his Council of Economic Advisors,
| raised the possibility that Trump could use the threat of
| tariffs and the lure of U.S. security support to persuade
| foreign governments to swap their Treasury holdings for
| lower-cost century bonds._
|
| Via
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43350553
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43561808
|
| Just so pple get the credit (even if they appear to be not
| so sane)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 'Excuse me, we used _Greek symbols_ to calculate this!
| Checkmate, libs! '
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Just dont tell them about the _arabic_ numerals. I dont
| want to buy a new calculator. Not under these tarrifs.
| mpreda wrote:
| > arabic numerals
|
| Soon to be "Numerals of America"
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| You mean "God Bless The America Freedom Numerals
| Sponsored By Brawndo"?
| chasd00 wrote:
| The math mutilater!
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm afraid they'll be learning about reverse Polish
| notation.
| namaria wrote:
| Wow I really just read a .gov website trying to obscure a
| formula by multiplying 0.25 by 4.
|
| I'm stunned.
|
| https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
|
| "To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from
| the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for e and
| ph were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, e,
| was set at 4.
|
| Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long
| run (Boehm et al., 2023), but estimates of the elasticity
| vary. To be conservative, studies that find higher
| elasticities near 3-4 (e.g., Broda and Weinstein 2006;
| Simonovska and Waugh 2014; Soderbery 2018) were drawn on. The
| elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, ph, is
| 0.25."
| oefrha wrote:
| In practice I believe at least 90% of Americans can't
| figure out what that formula actually means; but if they
| drop the epsilon phi bullshit only 70% can't figure it out.
| So it's pretty effective obfuscation after all.
| stabbles wrote:
| "Assuming that offsetting exchange rate and general
| equilibrium effects are small enough to be ignored"
|
| Yes, let's assume the world is constant and changes are
| made in isolation.
| ta1243 wrote:
| What's the laden velocity of a spherical import with no
| air resistance?
| giantrobot wrote:
| African or European?
| kragen wrote:
| Thank you for finding this. It's extremely valuable for
| those of us who are trying to make sense of the tariffs.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| This is the same president that took a sharpie to a map, to
| show the incorrect path of a storm, because he could not
| admit being wrong or making a mistake.
|
| These people are either malicious or incompetent. That's
| been the case for every single day of the decade-ish that
| Trump has been foisted upon us.
| pesus wrote:
| To give further evidence that they don't know what they're
| doing, it's easy to generate this tariff plan using a fairly
| simple LLM prompt that gives back that same ratio:
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3lluo7jmsss...
| gota wrote:
| Jesus Christ.
| dmos62 wrote:
| This is cosmic-level hilarious.
| pera wrote:
| That might explain this then:
|
| > Trump Tariffs Hit Antarctic Islands Inhabited by Zero
| Humans and Many Penguins
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/trump-tariffs-antarctic-
| islands-...
| seszett wrote:
| If anyone needed any more evidence that they don't know what
| they're doing, what I find interesting is that the various
| French overseas territories that are part of the EU are
| tariffed at different rates than the rest of the EU (treating
| those as separate countries is traditional for any US
| company, which is sometimes a headache when you want to order
| something).
|
| Reunion is at 37%, which isn't a problem because any company
| in Reunion could just use an address on mainland France, but
| there's more: Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana are
| tariffed at 10%.
|
| Does that make an easy loophole for any EU company wishing to
| export things to the US at a 10% tariff?
|
| If these published rates actually going to be enforced this
| way, it seems like the whole EU has a very easy way to use
| the 10% rate.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| Are those part of the EU? The whole membership of EU (or
| more precisely European institutions) is a mess and I
| really only know EEA, Schengen and Eurozone by heart. But
| there definitely are territories which are part of e.g.
| France, but not part of the EU
| orwin wrote:
| Yes, but Martinique is not considered a territory, and is
| considered part of the EU.
| jajko wrote:
| Sure they are, 2 seconds of googling compared to a minute
| writing your post:
|
| > The European Union (EU) has nine 'outermost regions'
| (ORs): Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte,
| Reunion and Saint Martin (France), the Canary Islands
| (Spain) and the Azores and Madeira (Portugal). The ORs
| are an integral part of the EU and must apply its laws
| and obligations.
| foldr wrote:
| French Guiana is in the EU.
| seszett wrote:
| They are part of the EU and are part of the EU customs
| area, there is no practical difference with other EU
| territories regarding trade.
|
| They are not part of Schengen (but EU citizens don't need
| any visa, it's mostly intended to curb illegal
| immigration from South America via Guiana) and have the
| ability to use different VAT rates from mainland France,
| but that's all.
| InsomniacL wrote:
| I found it interesting that when the UK was part of the
| EU, the Isle of Man was not, but because they held
| British Passports, the people of the Isle of Man were EU
| citizens.
| seszett wrote:
| It's the same for all the non-EU French territories. EU
| citizenship is not territorial, it's directly linked to
| the person's nationality so you wouldn't remove EU
| citizenship from a French citizen just because he happens
| to live in New Caledonia. French or British citizens
| living in Canada _also_ are EU citizens after all.
|
| The state of British citizenship is a bit more
| complicated though I think. A bit like US citizenship
| which kinda depends on which US territory one lives, as
| far as I understand.
| ta1243 wrote:
| No, a British citizen is a British Citizen wherever you
| live. There are tax implications based on where you live,
| but that's unrelated.
| seszett wrote:
| Right, but citizens of British overseas territories,
| crown dependencies and whatever other statuses exist are
| not necessarily British citizens. Same as with the
| various US territories.
|
| This is what I meant when I said these citizenships work
| in more complicated ways than the French one.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > the people of the Isle of Man were EU citizens.
|
| Not quite, at least not by default. The pre-Brexit Manx
| passport did confusingly include the text "European
| Union" on its cover, but holders of Manx nationality were
| only citizens of the EU if they had lived for at least 5
| consecutive years in the UK or if they descended from a
| UK parent or grandparent.
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man-
| variant_British_pa...
| cycomanic wrote:
| I think all French territories are part of the EU, but
| some other countries work differently. The prime example
| is St. Martin, where the French part is in the EU, but
| the Dutch isn't (yes that technically puts a EU border
| through the middle of the island, although there were no
| pass controls when I was last there.).
| sveme wrote:
| French Guiana is part of the EU, sounds like mailboxes
| there will soon become good business.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| If exploitation of the "loophole" got to the point where it
| starts affecting trade balance then presumably the rate
| would be revised fairly quiclly.
| fundad wrote:
| Let's not assume they actually want a growing economy, I
| don't think GOP voters want a growing economy.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| LLMs are basically just good at sourcing ideas from the
| internet. Me thinks this just means that this tariff idea
| exists on the internet, especially since grok, chatgpt, etc
| all come up with the same idea. We used to not have income
| taxes and funded the govt with tariffs so this probably isn't
| a new concept despite media outlets pretending like it is.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| I think the Trump Crime family shorted the market last week and
| made millions today and this week
| jmeyer2k wrote:
| Elon Musk directly benefits from this also, so...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I'm not sure about that, he will be importing a lot of
| parts for his cars.
| vkou wrote:
| If you think Trump won't have exemptions for his friends,
| I have some of his memecoins to sell you.
| lawn wrote:
| "These specific parts from these companies from these
| countries receive 0% tariffs".
| aredox wrote:
| He doesn't care about Tesla anymore. He's making some fat
| money out of AI, SpaceX is a money printing machine now
| that he's got the ear of Trump and he's spending almost
| all his daytime (and nightime) hours shitposting and
| boosting racists on twitter.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > he will be importing a lot of parts for his cars.
|
| How doesn't need to make as many of them anymore, so
| that's a saving.
| ohgr wrote:
| I hope you're right as I'm betting on the short as well. Made
| a crap load on TSLQ a while back.
|
| I went from a low risk investor to betting on US doing stupid
| stuff and stated making real money. Cognitive dissonance
| investment I think.
| kubb wrote:
| I wish I had the guts to do that. Instead I stayed in my
| diversified portfolio. :(
| Freedom2 wrote:
| Honestly I thought the billionaires would keep Trump in
| check as they want number to go up, so I bet on that.
| Hindsight is always 20/20 though :(
| aurareturn wrote:
| Now control the SEC so the privileged won't get investigated
| for insider trading.
|
| That's how you devolve into a 3rd world country by the way.
| I've lived in 3rd world countries and seen this over and over
| again. That's why 3rd world country stock markets don't go up
| - because locals and international investors have a distrust
| in them. Locals know insider trading is rampant.
|
| Once this kind of corruption is accepted in society, everyone
| will need corruption in order to stay ahead.
| anon373839 wrote:
| Who needs _more_ evidence?
|
| I watched the man with my own eyes as he seriously floated the
| idea of injecting disinfectants to treat Covid-19. That was
| five years ago. His mental faculties have not improved since
| then.
| gblargg wrote:
| The Drinking Bleach hoax:
| https://americandebunk.com/2024/07/01/the-drinking-bleach-
| ho...
| flohofwoe wrote:
| A bit strange that this surely totally objective and
| unbiased site seems to lean heavily into one direction when
| looking through the other 'debunks'.
| coldtea wrote:
| A bit strange that you sidestep the video and transcript
| (which supports the debunking) because it doesn't fit
| your confirmation bias
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| The strange thing here is that you've chosen to defend
| the indefensible on the grounds of trying to "both sides"
| something that really is only from one side.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The site was of course trash, but from what I remember he
| was asking if people gave themselves sunburn would it
| kill covid.
|
| His words to me felt they were those of a typical 5 year
| old, or an 80 year old with dementia, asking questions
| about subjects he doesn't understand but desperately
| trying to fit in.
|
| But no, he did then ask about injecting a disinfectant.
|
| Now it's quite possible Trump doesn't know the meaning of
| the word "disinfectant".
|
| In the same press conference he also asked if "heat and
| light" will get rid of covid.
|
| (Although of course he says this as "suggestions" and the
| "I'm just asking questions" tactic)
| davedx wrote:
| It's not: in the formula they posted, phi is the "passthrough
| from tariffs to import prices". That's where the country's own
| tariffs are factored in. Or am I reading this wrong?
| agf wrote:
| > Parameter Selection
|
| > ... The price elasticity of import demand, e, was set at 4.
|
| > ... The elasticity of import prices with respect to
| tariffs, ph, is 0.25. ...
| javcasas wrote:
| Those two letters are Greek! Tariff them! Substitute them
| with superior American letters, like... you know what you
| have to do!
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| You're reading it wrong because it's nonsense
|
| None of the values are related to their names in any way
| aredox wrote:
| It is AI-generated slop. They did no work on this at all.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Have you considered the possibility that they know perfectly
| well what they're doing and they're just lying about it?
| Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has been CEO of Cantor
| Fitzgerald for over 2 decades. The treasury secretary has a
| similarly stellar resume. There is no way these people don't
| understand the difference between expressing a trade deficit as
| a ratio and actual tariffs laid by other countries.
|
| Trump personally may or may not understand it (I think he does)
| but his political superpower is his willingness to stand up in
| public and say complete bullshit knowing that it's bullshit,
| knowing that some people are fools who will uncritically
| believe the bullshit, and other people are cynics who who will
| nod along with the bullshit either to make money out of the
| rubes or because they think it serves a strategic purpose.
|
| You can waste years wondering which side of Hanlon's razor
| someone is on, but it's important to remember that obsessing
| over such dilemmas can lead to paralysis. Just like there are a
| lot of street hustles and cons that depend on
| confusing/misleading the mark before tricking or mugging them
| out of their money, there are a lot of political gambits that
| depend on inducing analysis-paralysis in opponents.
| Manufacturing dilemmas is also a key element in military
| strategy.
|
| My advice is to stop worrying about whether these people are
| such fools that you owe them some sort of empathy and an effort
| to save them from themselves, or you will end up like Charlie
| Brown having the football pulled way by Lucy _yet again_. It is
| OK to cut them off and treat them as bad actors, for the same
| reason you should often round off quantitative values instead
| of obsessing over precision.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Let's not forget Congress could assert its authority over
| tariffs at any time. This isn't just the executive branch
| unilaterally creating the biggest, most regressive tax hike
| in our lifetimes, it's a coordinated GOP operation.
| vkou wrote:
| I wonder what kind of phone calls their donors are having
| with them.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Have you considered the possibility that they know
| perfectly well what they 're doing and they're just lying
| about it?_
|
| Politicians are just pretending to be dumb? Why?
|
| > _There is no way these people don 't understand the
| difference between expressing a trade deficit as a ratio and
| actual tariffs laid by other countries._
|
| I don't think most people deny that these are capable
| individuals. The problem is - I think the people in Trump's
| inner circle now are sycophants first. They know what Trump
| is doing is destructive, but they are just choose to be yes
| men. Remember, this isn't Trump's first go-around, and the
| majority of people who stood up to Trump the first time
| (Pence, Barr, Perry, Price, Rex Tillerson) are gone.
|
| Funny enough wikipedia has an article[1] about this that is
| so large that it has many sub articles. Ultimately, I can't
| trust that his appointments are exercising any sort of
| discernment because a large number of his 2016 appointees
| were fired for doing so.
|
| In short, Fitzgerald could be a genius, but all signs point
| to him being a yes-man that would rather sink the ship than
| stand up to Trump.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dismissals_and_resi
| gna...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Politicians are just pretending to be dumb? Why?_
|
| I told you: because it creates a strategic dilemma that
| paralyzes the opposition. The same reason a hustler
| pretends to be dumb to lure the mark, the same reason
| trolls use shitposting to bait people.
|
| His name is Howard Lutnick. He was _CEO_ of a financial
| firm called Cantor Fitzgerald.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Lutnick
| aredox wrote:
| Yeah, and what if Lutnick doesn't care about making
| America better but just making money for himself? And his
| salary is not tied to his performance, but to his
| sycophancy?
|
| It is not as if he is going to die of starvation because
| of tariffs. He has no skin in the game.
| _heimdall wrote:
| In my experience, people who operate that way often
| convince themselves that they can do both. They'll make
| themselves rich, that's the primary goal, but they
| contort reality enough to paint the picture of a win-win.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Politicians are just pretending to be dumb? Why?
|
| To hide their motives, if you think they are just dumb then
| you will not look for the real reason they do it.
|
| Not sure that is what happens here, but that is a very
| common reason to play dumb.
| matwood wrote:
| A great example is Rubio. People may disagree with his
| politics, but he has been a competent government person for
| a long time. Even had a legit shot at POTUS at one point.
| And now, he's trying to shrink away while Trump and Vance
| make a mockery of the Oval Office.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > I think the people in Trump's inner circle now are
| sycophants first
|
| If this is the case, we could at least likely put to rest
| most concerns that Trump will be implementing much of
| Project 2025.
|
| I'd be very surprised if he had too much to do with that
| plan directly. Assuming that's true, and if he's only
| surrounded by yes men, no one is there to convince him to
| do anything other than exactly what he himself wants to do.
| bambax wrote:
| Yes, it's never a good idea to underestimate the intelligence
| or agency of the enemy.
|
| But in this case: what is the game plan? What are they trying
| to achieve? Is it simply chaos, so that they can rule in
| perpetuity?
| throwaway_20357 wrote:
| My interpretation: "No one really knows what will happen
| but it could work to bring some production back to our
| country, let's give it a try, if it doesn't we try
| something else."
| ozmodiar wrote:
| One thing they do is allow him to raise taxes on the middle
| class and poor, who will be paying those tarrifs, while
| lowering the taxes for the rich. Everyone's talking about
| some 3D chess when "more money for the rich" has always
| been the only consistent Republican policy.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > when "more money for the rich" has always been the only
| consistent Republican policy.
|
| You probably want to be more careful with how you phrase
| that. The Republican party passed the Civil Rights Act
| and ended slavery, among other things.
|
| Those may not be the type of Republicans you are thinking
| of today, but they still had that little (R) next to
| their names.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The Republican party passed the Civil Rights Act
|
| Way more Democrats in both houses of Congress voted for
| it than Republicans (to be fair the Democrats held the
| Senate 67-33). A Democratic president signed it. His
| Democratic predecessor asked for it. How do you figure
| "the Republicans did it"?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964#By
| _pa...
| llm_nerd wrote:
| >Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has been CEO of Cantor
| Fitzgerald for over 2 decades.
|
| Lutnick clearly has zero actual influence in this
| administration. He's a barking dog sent to do TV soundbites,
| and his explanations are often full-bore nonsensical or
| completely contradictory to his prior explanations. Foreign
| officials (such as Canada) have repeatedly come out of
| meetings with Lutnick almost...assuaged....as if Lutnick is
| saying "he isn't really going to do this...there's no way",
| because even Lutnick doesn't realize just how stubborn Trump
| is about his outrageously stupid ways. These guys keep trying
| to pretend this is all some masterful negotiating strategy by
| the Art of the Deal master.
|
| And based upon 100% of Trump's history in government, it
| won't be long before Lutnick and Bessent are out of this
| admin, both will be "RINOs" attacked by the MAGA cult, and
| they'll both be telling the tale of how outrageously stupid
| Donald Trump is. Like closing on 100% of Trump's
| administration in the first term.
|
| Just look at the lead up to these tariffs. The day before
| Trump was still "deciding". This is something that a team of
| expert economists should have worked on for months, probably
| to conclude that free and liberal trade is what made the US
| the richest large country on Earth, but instead it was
| something that everyone had to sit around and wait for Trump
| to pull something out of his ass.
|
| Trump has openly and widely talked about tariffs replacing
| income tax for years. This administration is clearly one
| where _no one_ ever can counter any harebrained idea from
| Trump -- and they 're _all_ incredibly stupid ideas from that
| incredibly stupid man -- so whatever nonsensical takes he has
| they have to all try to make talking points around and create
| some post facto rationalizations. It is the most dangerous
| administration in human history, and the American voter
| looked at this traitorous, constitution-shredding, law-
| breaking imbecile and said "more please!"
|
| There is no 4D chess happening here[1]. There isn't even
| checkers happening. No masterful long term negotiating
| strategy. It's just a fumbling moron (rapist, charity-
| stealing imbecile) that is doing the most nonsensical way to
| deal with a deficit rather than, you know, raising taxes. And
| to be clear the US deficit is untenable and needs to be dealt
| with, and the head in the sand approach by successive
| governments is not reasonable, but combining DOGE's ham-
| fisted stupidity with Trump's economic destruction and the
| deficit is likely going to be much, much worse. The US is on
| the fast track to insolvency.
|
| "But China....next war....China!"
|
| Trump _started_ this whole thing by attacking allies. By
| dissolving alliances and trying to economically harm its
| closest friends. Precisely the _opposite_ of expectations if
| the US were seriously trying to counter China.
|
| [1] Aside from corruption. Tariffs are the foundation of
| corruption because everyone has to come, hat in hand, begging
| for exemptions. There is going to be a line to the White
| House of manufacturers and importers, from Apple to military
| contractors, begging for special waivers. Which they'll get
| if they grease the right palms, as this is the most blatantly
| corrupt administration in US history. He's selling pardons in
| the open, and operating a literal protection racket, and this
| is just...an ordinary day now.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Why are you so certain that these tariff plans were still
| being decided by Trump the day before? He sure likes to put
| on that front publicly, but I'm less clear on how we'd know
| whether that's him playing games or an actual
| representation of the reality of how his cabinet is
| operating.
|
| If one does want to impose a large block of tariffs, it
| does seem reasonable that you would want to keep details
| quiet until the entire package is announced. You wouldn't
| want other countries responding early
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Quiet? Trump has been bellowing about his tariffs for
| months. China, South Korea and Japan -- long absolute
| adversaries -- even had a meeting about how to respond.
| The actual tariff plan is 0% based upon reciprocity, and
| instead is based upon "we're a rich country that buys
| lots of stuff, so let's punish the citizens who buy
| stuff" (as the largest tax hike in history). There are
| tariffs for unoccupied island chains.
|
| And these apply immediately. This is an administrative
| impossibility. CBP is going to have a disastrous couple
| of weeks about this rag tag collection of barely defined
| nonsense.
|
| This is 100% disaster, top to bottom.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Details of the tariffs weren't known at all until
| yesterday, they were quiet.
|
| The comment I replied to was claiming that Trump himself
| was still deciding what the tariffs would be until this
| week. My question was how we could be so certain of that.
|
| As far as reciprocity goes, how is this plan not based at
| least in part on reciprocity? They claim other countries
| have taken advantage of the US and we're on the losing
| end of trade deficits. The tariffs they announced seem to
| be based entirely on trade deficits/surpluses with each
| country.
|
| I have no idea if this would work or what the
| administration's real motives are, but the on the surface
| it sure seems like they proposed tariffs that target the
| problem they claim - trade imbalances.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Specific rates weren't known because they were spitballed
| last minute, apparently based upon a ChatGPT
| conversation. That there were going to be significant
| tariffs has been openly gloated about by this admin and
| mouthpieces like Howard Nutlick for months. Do you think
| every other country needed a specific number to start
| their response plans?
|
| And really that is a silly theory regardless. The US
| would achieve maximum effectiveness by doing a normal
| tariff legislative process and then soberly discussing
| with all parties. Instead it's constant on/off
| brinksmanship. Because Donald Trump is a profoundly
| stupid imbecile with a simpleton, child-like
| understanding of the world. There is going to be customs
| and business _chaos_ as this is factored in.
|
| >As far as reciprocity goes, how is this plan not based
| at least in part on reciprocity?
|
| It has zero bearing on reciprocity. Reciprocity is
| matching the other party's tariffs.
|
| If you're richer than the other party, or if they sell
| things that you want but you don't sell things that they
| want, that _isn 't_ reciprocity. It's like if I tariff my
| children when they buy from McDonalds -- I mean,
| McDonalds doesn't buy from me! - and claim it's
| reciprocity. That would be _insanely_ stupid, right?
|
| It's a _massive_ tax hike on Americans -- a regressive
| tax that will hit the working and middle classes the
| hardest -- shrouded under some patriotic America thing.
| No way anyone falls for this...right?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| All that is correct, but I think you missed the point the
| other poster was making. What if, instead of blundering
| about stupidly, the goal is to cause as much chaos as
| possible in order to consolidate political power?
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| What about Australia? We're in surplus. Is 10% just the
| minimum?
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Yup.
| cycomanic wrote:
| It's even worse, into the calculation they only counted goods,
| not services (where the US typically runs a large trade
| surplus).
| generalizations wrote:
| Does the exact percentage of the tariffs matter? I suspect it
| doesn't - these look like approximate numbers to obtain
| concessions, and a complex formula doesn't really help
| anything.
|
| Far as I can tell, the ideal would have been to simply double
| incoming tariffs, but that would be infeasibly large. This was
| a way to generate a plausible smaller number that can be
| increased later on an individual basis depending on how the
| country responds.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Yes. These are College Freshman Essay economics, where you know
| just enough to declare it's time to go bold and are still
| stupid enough to believe it will work.
|
| It's not that there's no strategy, it's that it was designed by
| reckless amateurs who haven't done the reading, haven't
| consulted with anyone that understands all the trade-offs, and
| have an uncapped appetite for risk.
|
| The TV version works out perfectly, since the writers control
| the ending.
| amoss wrote:
| Mistake in headline: tge article says 54% rate on China. 34 looks
| like a typo.
| saberdancer wrote:
| Apparently it is 34% on top of current 20%, bringing it to a
| total of 54%.
|
| But who knows with these guys.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Current tariffs for China are 45% because the original 25%
| tariffs from Trump I never went away and the 20% from Trump
| II are in addition. Source: have two containers en route from
| China at the moment, will be paying 45% on them.
| jenadine wrote:
| I'm a freelance selling software services. Some of my customers
| are in the US. Am I affected? These tariff don't impact software,
| right?
|
| Different countries have different tariff. Is there room for
| arbitration? In which a 3rd party business from a country with
| low tariff would buy a product in one of the countries with high
| tariff and export that to the US, taking a small cut.
| tempestn wrote:
| Tariffs are on goods. Unless you're physically shipping
| software across the border it shouldn't affect you.
|
| You mean arbitrage, and yes, that definitely happens as a
| result of tariffs.
| csomar wrote:
| Upon import you have to declare the country of origin of the
| good. That's what is being tariffed and makes your arbitrage
| idea essentially fraud.
| ccozan wrote:
| Usually this is happening where you import "parts" and the
| final assembly "the product" is "made in" and sold as
| "product xyx". Then the origin country of the parts do not
| matter.
| stakhanov wrote:
| Services aren't traditionally part of tariffs; tariffs apply
| only to physical stuff moving across borders.
|
| That being said: I work in a services-oriented business right
| now "exporting" services to the U.S. and the leadership of that
| company is seemingly getting very worried, trying to diversify
| their customer base out of the U.S.
|
| If, in the cycle of retaliatory action, they run out of
| ammunition with tariffs on stuff, who knows what other crazy
| ideas will come to the surface: Tariffs on services do come to
| mind, maybe restrictions around recognition/enforcement of
| foreign-owned intellectual property,...
| AnAfrican wrote:
| Tariffs on services are much harder to enforce. There's point
| of entry so it's harder to check.
|
| However, some countries have a withholding tax for services
| provided by foreign companies. The client is responsible for
| withholding the amount from any payment and paying the
| government. And banks play a role in the enforcement if
| needed.
|
| So it can be done !
| aredox wrote:
| [flagged]
| rastignack wrote:
| As a EU citizen, I think this voter ID argument is absolutely
| insane.
| aredox wrote:
| As a French I used to think too, "what's the big deal", "it
| has never been an issue here". But that's because we are used
| to it and getting an ID is easy and almost automatic. Whereas
| in a country like the US, it means missing several days of
| work, driving potentially hundreds of kilometers, and their
| geographic segregation means it's easy to make getting an ID
| harder for black people than for whites.
|
| As a European I also find insane elections are held on
| workdays (in France it is always on Sundays), that you may
| have to wait in line for hours to vote, that voting stations
| may be hours from where you live, etc.
| rastignack wrote:
| Do you have a more precise exemple of a state in which it
| is that difficult ? And a source ? I really find it hard to
| believe.
| nl wrote:
| Not the OP but here's an example: https://www.reddit.com/
| r/stupidquestions/comments/1ghrsbq/co...
|
| Basically you need very specific letters where your exact
| name and address must match but those are issued without
| checking. So if one uses your middle initial instead of
| your name then no ID for you until you get it reissued.
|
| In Texas they have a shortage of staff issuing the ids
| too so there is a 3 month delay after you apply to find
| out what you did incorrectly https://www.statesman.com/st
| ory/opinion/columns/2024/08/19/t...
| Jensson wrote:
| You need an ID to do basic tasks in USA as well, everyone
| with a normal life has them.
| Animats wrote:
| It's getting complicated for married women. Every name
| change since birth has to be documented to get a Real ID.
| varsketiz wrote:
| A google search tells me that around half of people in
| the USA do not hold a passport. Domestically most people
| rely on drivers licence as their ID.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Domestically most people rely on drivers licence as
| their ID
|
| So show your drivers license at the voting booth? Why is
| that unacceptable?
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Any form of ID held by the average voter will be
| unacceptable to the GOP, because it won't limit voting
| access from the people they don't want voting.
| Jensson wrote:
| That doesn't explain why democrat run states like
| California can't have a sensible voter ID law that
| accepts such identifications?
|
| If they just said "accept more IDs" instead of "stop
| voter ID requirements" people wouldn't think its a
| problem, but that isn't what democrats are saying.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| What problem are you trying to solve here? Republicans
| say the problem is people voting who are ineligible,
| Democrats accuse them of trying to make it harder for
| democratic voters to vote.
| Jensson wrote:
| > What problem are you trying to solve here
|
| People using others papers to vote, that is much harder
| if you must display a photo ID together with the papers
| you received that says you are allowed to vote.
|
| Voting without an ID is like opening a bank account
| without an ID, its just dumb. Oh wait, I heard you had
| that as well in USA, which is why you have issues with
| identity theft...
| matwood wrote:
| > People using others papers to vote
|
| Except every analysis has shown people are not doing
| this. Oddly, the few times there have been real cases,
| it's often GOP voting more than once or for their dead
| spouse or some such.
|
| Think of it, if someone is truly not eligible to vote,
| why expose themselves to additional scrutiny for a single
| likely inconsequential vote?
|
| Where fraud could happen is at scale, and with DOGE
| getting access to all systems and dismantling the
| agencies that guard against voting fraud, I feel that
| once again we're seeing that every accusation is an
| admission.
| dev_daftly wrote:
| What analysis has shown that people are not doing this?
| All I have seen is that there aren't a significant number
| of convictions, but that doesn't really hold wait if you
| aren't actually trying to catch/prevent people from doing
| it. If it never happened, there wouldn't be a standard
| well known practice of casting a provisional ballot if
| you have already "voted".
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| The crux of the argument is that voting is a _right_ ,
| and voter ID laws create a unnecessary burden to
| exercising that right given the extremely low levels of
| individual voter fraud. Do I need my driver's license to
| practice free speech? Do I need my passport to be allowed
| to be an atheist?
|
| It would be different if we were solving a problem with
| voter ID laws because then you're balancing rights with
| real pragmatism. You can as hypothetical about it as you
| want, you can go down the slippery slope fallacy if you
| want, but the evidence shows us we do not have an issue
| here.
|
| It would also be different if IDs were easier to come by,
| because then the burden is not disproportionate to the
| problem. But neither of these things are true.
|
| Instead we're just enacting barriers to the use of our
| constitutional rights, barriers to participation in
| society, not to solve a problem but to enact a political
| end.
| orwin wrote:
| I don't think a driver license is a valid voting id in
| the US, because you don't have to be a citizen to get
| one.
| Jensson wrote:
| When you show your id they check if you are allowed to
| vote, the id is just to identify you as a person it
| doesn't mean everyone with an id gets to vote.
| orwin wrote:
| I misunderstood what my West Virginian friend wrote me
| then, from my understanding the new ID laws will require
| an ID as 'proof of citizenship' to register to vote,
| which a driver license isn't. Those who vote among his
| group are a bit mad about it.
| ryan_lane wrote:
| Not everyone has drivers licenses, especially poorer
| folks, especially minorities. The requirements for
| drivers IDs are now to get RealIDs and some of these
| folks don't have access to things like birth certificates
| and other requirements of getting a RealID.
|
| There's also additional requirements of your gender
| matching your ID (which eliminates many transgender
| folks), your name matching on all documents (good luck if
| you're a married woman), etc.
|
| Folks are rightly pointing out that these laws are
| engineered to suppress votes, and you seem to not be
| willing to listen to understand why.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Folks are rightly pointing out that these laws are
| engineered to suppress votes, and you seem to not be
| willing to listen to understand why.
|
| Are you saying democrats will engineer these laws to
| suppress votes? Is that why democrats don't have voter id
| laws? The GOP isn't relevant here, we are just wondering
| why democrat states can't seem to do this.
| tzs wrote:
| Around 21 million eligible voters in the US do not have
| an ID that is acceptable under their state's laws.
| Ray20 wrote:
| And exactly what obstacles they are having with getting
| one?
| acdha wrote:
| Usually it comes down to travel and the challenges of
| documenting eligibility which can require additional
| travel and expenses.
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/chal...
|
| > Nearly 500,000 eligible voters do not have access to a
| vehicle and live more than 10 miles from the nearest
| state ID-issuing office open more than two days a week.
| Many of them live in rural areas with dwindling public
| transportation options. > More than 10 million eligible
| voters live more than 10 miles from their nearest state
| ID-issuing office open more than two days a week.
|
| https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/how-id-
| requirements...
|
| > According to the study, between 15 and 18 million
| people in the U.S. lack access to documents proving their
| birth or citizenship, which can be integral to acquiring
| other forms of IDs.
|
| This can force circular dependencies: for example, older
| black or Native American people who were born when they
| weren't welcome at hospitals might never have been issued
| a birth certificate so they first need the travel,
| expense, and difficulty to get one from the clerk where
| they were born. Poor people are far more likely not to
| have bank accounts, so they can't establish their in-
| state residency that way, etc.
|
| None of these are insolvable problems but the people
| pushing restrictions haven't been willing to put effort
| into solving them and often make things worse by cutting
| office locations and hours in ways which
| disproportionately impact poor and minority voters.
| aredox wrote:
| A black woman jumping between three jobs to make ends
| meet in Alabama doesn't have a "normal" life, then. Too
| bad for her! And for millions like her, in a country
| where elections are decided by single-digit majorities.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Hard to imagine that woman could get 3 jobs without an
| ID.
| anonfordays wrote:
| Said Black woman needs an ID to get jobs and collect
| benefits like SNAP, WIC, etc.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Go to the USA and talk to black women, and ask if they
| have ID and if it was difficult to get.
| leflambeur wrote:
| This makes no sense. You can literally register to vote at
| the DMV and I know very few adult Americans, of one
| ethnicity or another, who don't have a driver's license.
| tzs wrote:
| Around 9% of US citizens 18 or older do not have a non-
| expired driver's license. It's even more for various
| minorities [1][2].
|
| [1] https://cdce.umd.edu/sites/cdce.umd.edu/files/pubs/Vo
| ter%20I...
|
| [2] https://papersplease.org/wp/2024/06/07/who-lacks-id-
| in-ameri...
| leflambeur wrote:
| I only mentioned DMVs to point out that even if you
| didn't set out to get a voting document, you can still
| check the box and get it.
|
| In other words, it's not "people need driver's licenses
| to vote".
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Aren't poor and dumb usually republicans tho?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The poor disproportionately votes left. Somebody who is
| poor and lives without a valid ID that meets voting
| requirements is also not necessarily dumb.
| piva00 wrote:
| Almost 10% of eligible voters do not have access to
| citizenship proof at ready[0].
|
| Trump changed voting rules to require proof of
| citizenship[1].
|
| Disenfranchising 21 million voters makes sense now, no?
|
| [0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
| opinion/213-...
|
| [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/25/politics/voting-
| proof-of-...
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| RealID documentation requirements are a PITA. I have a
| birth certificate and passport and valid DL and it still
| was a nuisance the accumulate the required point
| allocation. People without those golden documents can be
| very hard pressed to meet the bar.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > I know very few adult Americans
|
| Do you think there's a chance there's a selection bias to
| your random sampling of the population?
| leflambeur wrote:
| It's easier if you just tell me what the bias is.
|
| Incidentally, there are many less privileged people
| around me and, let me tell you, they're not going to work
| on foot.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Do any of them take the bus to work?
| bawolff wrote:
| Most people are friends with people like themselves?
|
| The selection bias of extrapolating an entire country
| (not to mention one as large and diverse as usa) by using
| your friend group should be very obvious.
| leflambeur wrote:
| Yet I wasn't talking about my friends. I live in a large
| city and get to see many people I don't know every single
| day.
|
| Incidentally, my friends are much more likely to not need
| to drive at all (tech or otherwise who WFH) than the
| average person around me.
| bawolff wrote:
| Do you often ask people you don't know if they have a
| driver's license?
|
| > live in a large city
|
| Ah yes, large cities. Famous for their rural populations.
| leflambeur wrote:
| You're not arguing in good faith.
|
| Wait, are you telling me that rural populations have less
| proclivity to drive?
| aredox wrote:
| Just read all the answers in this thread. Your PoV is far
| from reality, especially at a time where elections are
| decided by single digit margins.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Cities. It's cities.
| Aloha wrote:
| You dont know many poor people, or very young people.
|
| I work a furry convention in the Southern US, about 3% of
| our attendees have some ID related malady - can't get a
| timely appointment at DMV, missing core documentation,
| unable to prove residency, etc - nevermind rural voters
| who may live hours from a DMV.. which they can't get to
| without a license (assuming they can afford a car) or a
| ride. No bus service to speak of either.
|
| Its a huge issue, I'd 100% support voter ID if getting an
| ID was free and easy, without it I'm skeptical.
| leflambeur wrote:
| I'm with you
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah, see the article about "RealID" yesterday. The first
| step is to require an ID, and the next step is to make it
| harder to get. For example, a married woman without a
| perfect paper trail of name changes? No Id.
| Spivak wrote:
| I unironically keep an original copy of those documents
| in my safety deposit box because of this. In theory I
| should be able to go to the courthouse and get another
| copy but if 40 years down the line they've lost them I'm
| screwed.
|
| I feel bad for the people in states that _don 't_ require
| court orders for this because they apparently have the
| worst time trying to update accounts.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > This makes no sense. You can literally register to vote
| at the DMV.
|
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/feb/19/john-
| olive...
|
| > driver's license
|
| Republicans are trying to make it so that the vast
| majority of drivers' licenses do not work either. You may
| have to get a new one, with passport-level paperwork.
| anonfordays wrote:
| That politifact page literally states there are close by
| DMVs that are open every week. Not sure what point is
| trying to be made.
| nemothekid wrote:
| What state do you live in? I think this argument is very
| frustrating when people who live largely in blue states
| (like California) that don't up any hurdles to getting an
| ID, can't imagine the level of dysfunction that is
| intentionally executed in other states in order to
| prevent people from getting IDs.
|
| Yeah, everyone you know has a valid ID because you don't
| live in a battleground state that is currently fighting
| electoral welfare. Republicans don't care to put up
| barriers to getting an ID in California, Texas or New
| York.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I'm from Pakistan, and the solution to 'it's difficult for
| people to get ID' was so simple even 3rd world poor
| illiterate country could do it: just go to them instead.
|
| Our ID department has buses with computers and
| cameras/fingerprint machines on them, they go to remote
| villages and stuff and take everyone's bio data, then
| return a few weeks later and give everyone their cards.
|
| There is literally NO valid excuse for NOT implementing
| voter ID.
|
| NONE.
|
| If we can do it, the richest country in the world can do
| it.
|
| Such a pathetic hill for American Democratic party to die
| on.
| ncallaway wrote:
| The problem is that we _don 't_ have those same systems
| for getting an ID.
|
| There's no "government comes to you" to give you an ID.
| And, many Democrats would _love_ to make it easier to get
| an ID, but the Republicans often deliberately make it
| harder to get an ID.
|
| They shut down offices and reduce hours of locations, so
| people have to travel farther and take more time off
| work. They increase the bureaucratic requirements and
| hurdles, so people are more likely to need to take
| multiple trips.
|
| I personally wouldn't have a problem with making a voter
| ID a requirement to vote, _if_ we could also agree to
| make it as easy as you describe to get an ID. The problem
| is the GOP wants to require getting a voter ID and
| simultaneously make it harder to get an ID.
| gambiting wrote:
| I think the problem there is that in Pakistan where they
| do this they can reasonably assume that everyone in that
| remote village is a Pakistani citizen - they probably
| don't need to see your birth certificate to get you an
| ID, right? In US they want to see proof that you are a
| citizen and you are who you say you are, which is what
| (some) people have an issue with, even if you sent buses
| with all equipment on them to random american towns
| people just might not have the right documentation on
| them to pass the checks.
|
| But yes, I agree, it is a pathetic problem for a 1st
| world country to have - just sort it out.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| > they can reasonably assume that everyone in that remote
| village is a Pakistani citizen
|
| absolutely not! we have had massive migrations both from
| India (after independence) and Afghanistan (after the
| russian occupation). This is NOT a given.
|
| Things have NOT been easy... and in fact dare I say, our
| ID department is rather dumb and stupid. I personally
| have had MULTIPLE issues with them.
|
| But we _have_ been doing SOMETHING, and the fact that the
| US doesn 't... is insane.
| gambiting wrote:
| Alright, how do these mobile offices confirm who they are
| issuing the documents to then?
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| iirc, they use other people as verification.
|
| When a child is born, the parent has to get them
| registered at the local council office. And then when my
| first card was made at 18, my dad went with me as
| verification, he attested that I was child #X as per the
| family tree, they confirmed someone with my name was in
| that family tree in their records, and used that as
| verification for me.
|
| If parents are not available they can use relatives, as
| long as there is a family tree link. Not sure how they do
| it otherwise, but there is some system for refugees etc
| too.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| The problem in the US is they are not doing this if
| anything they are reducing the number of places you can
| get an ID.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| The US is not a monolith, it's a collection of 50
| states....
|
| Democratic states collect taxes and implement policy
| independently, they CAN do this, at least in their own
| areas.
|
| Start there first!
| aredox wrote:
| https://youtu.be/rHFOwlMCdto?si=OjoxCfE1noxvw3Fz
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I have been a John Oliver viewer from the first season,
| and my comment will be the same as what I said 9 years
| ago: This is bullship.
|
| Start small, but START. Start from Democrats accepting
| what every LEFT leaning person the rest of the world
| accepts: Photo ID is necessary, not to reduce voter fraud
| or whatever, but necessary to increase TRUST in the
| system.
|
| It's a cost, just pay it. Yes you will lose 'face' to
| republicans, don't care.
|
| Start small, start with free/cheap photo ID in deep
| democratic cities (I know local govt providing service,
| what an idea!).
|
| Once saturation reaches 80% plus, start enforcing voter
| ID laws to cajole the last 20% to start applying, carrot
| and stick. Start offering door-step service for those
| unable.
|
| Democrats pay taxes, don't they? start using them.
|
| Spread to other cities in democratic states. So what if
| it takes 10-20 year? Times passes like nothing.
|
| And once you have SET the standard of cheap, reliable
| access to Photo ID... and when democrats in power in the
| federal government again, they can use that to help
| implement cheap photo ID elsewhere, but even if Missouri
| doesn't get voter ID, it doesn't excuse democratic states
| NOT having it.
|
| The fact that the DMV is only open three days a month or
| whatever? If it's a democrat led city, FIX it. If it's a
| republican city, you can come to it later.
|
| But NOT starting, as some sort of fake 'rights' issue?
| Bullship.
|
| Start. Start Small, Start NOW. in 25 years you won't even
| remember this.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Would you like to remind them also what NADRA has Ahmedis
| sign (half-nama)? I don't think John Oliver would be very
| happy about that...
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| And? That's bigotry, a totally different issue from
| accessibility.
|
| The population WANTS this piece of bigotry, heck our
| ancestors voted for the damn thing it, it's literally the
| 2nd amendment of our the constitution.
|
| You can't blame NADRA for including it in their forms,
| they do it on government demand. Heck, I had to sign the
| damn thing to get my damn passport, there is no escaping
| it.
|
| But NADRA also has vans that go village by village
| providing photo-ID on the doorstep. And THAT is
| accessibility.
|
| Do I wish this piece of bigotry wasn't in on our forms?
| Yes. Today Ahmedis; tomorrow Shias; day after who knows,
| it might be me.
|
| Does it mean CNIC are BAD? NO, they are perhaps the only
| actually part of cour damn governance, being able to
| provide ID.
|
| We could obviously do better, but NOT having ID is crazy.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| The UK Labour government was opposed to Photo ID it was
| the right wing that introduced it.
|
| It is an Anglo-American thing not to have PhotoID
| probably related to never been invaded in the last two
| hundred years.
|
| The issue is that to get back in power the Democrats need
| votes top overturn Republicans and so the IDs in
| Republican states matter those in Democrat states do not.
| So better top show full disapproval as they won't lose
| any seats over that and can keep some pressure up.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| I feel this same issue was behind Brexit.
|
| Some people in the UK had the same 'oh no we are being
| outnumbers' sort of mentality, and without mandatory ID,
| they had no sane voice in their head to tell them 'don't
| be silly, we track people with cards'.
|
| It's funny how much the existence of the card gives the
| masses a weird sense of peace.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| So democrats should spend all this money, time and
| resources solving a problem they don't have. And for what
| purpose? Nah I will rather my Democrat state focus on
| human welfare and giving people opportunities to progress
| in life
| someuser2345 wrote:
| > Nah I will rather my Democrat state focus on human
| welfare and giving people opportunities to progress in
| life
|
| That sounds like it would be way easier if those people
| had id's...
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| I think it's on purpose to rather limit the voters than
| empower them.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| No, I think that's just a republican boogie-man.
|
| I think democrats started out with good intentions,
| helping enfranchise black voters a part of the civil
| rights act .... but somehow they have made it their
| morality point and refuse to accept that it is no longer
| fit for purpose.
|
| They should made no voter-ID a temporary measure and
| created proper voter-IS systems in the meanwhile.
| theGeatZhopa wrote:
| lets see where this whole thing heads to. May be in the
| end we will see the birth of a true democracy, which is
| social and where the strong ones will take care of weak
| ones. At least it should be .. in a dream :)
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The US doesn't have a national id card, and the people
| who want to force ID for voting are the strongest block
| against having one, for religious reasons. What you
| suggest is impossible in the US.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| That's a government that's interested and motivated in
| getting people an ID.
|
| Now imagine the opposite. A government that's not
| interested but rather is motivated in denying some people
| an ID. Why it increases that's party likelihood of
| staying in power.
| gambiting wrote:
| That would make sense if driver licences were difficult to
| obtain in US in any way shape or form, and they just aren't
| - almost everyone has one and it's not a big deal to get
| one.
| aredox wrote:
| Provably false.
|
| https://youtu.be/rHFOwlMCdto?si=OjoxCfE1noxvw3Fz
|
| And you need to do paperwork, which means you have to pay
| and find time. How do people with 2 or 3 jobs do?
| gambiting wrote:
| 91% of US adults have a driving licence:
|
| https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2024/01/number-of-
| licensed-dr...
|
| So forgive me for being flippant but....how hard can it
| be?
|
| >>How do people with 2 or 3 jobs do?
|
| I assume they drive to those 3 jobs, so they somehow
| found a way.Again, sorry for being dismissive, and I
| appreciate it might be time consuming at costly - but
| still, 91% of all American adults have found a way to do
| this, so my point is that driving licences(along other
| documents) seem like a perfectly acceptable form of ID
| for voting?
| xwolfi wrote:
| I'm French too but I disagree a bit: first, voting if
| important to people, should be a good reason to get an ID,
| voting without an ID does seem insane, so what are they
| doing. Second, why black people ? Are they not human too ?
| They can read, they can work, they can complain, they
| can... get an ID card right ?
|
| Simplest answer is they don't care, wash their hands off of
| the whole thing and then democrats complain that it's the
| requirement to identify voters that block them. But it's
| not a strange requirement, it's as you say, a completely
| normal part of being a citizen to get an ID, and a duty for
| a voting citizen to do what they need to do to get that
| ballot in.
|
| And even if black people were somehow disenfranchised from
| getting IDs, it doesn't prevent the non-black people to
| vote rationally, in the end. So no excuse.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| >Second, why black people ? Are they not human too ? They
| can read, they can work, they can complain, they can...
| get an ID card right ?
|
| As a black American who had _crackheads_ in my family, I
| don 't know anyone who was totally incapable of getting
| an ID card. I only ever see the argument brought up by
| white people on the Internet. Tyranny of low
| expectations. Heaven forbid that black adults be expected
| to shoulder some personal responsibility and figure out
| how to meet the basic requirements to exercise their
| civic duties, same as white people.
|
| "The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the
| worst enemy to the black man." -- Malcom X
| aredox wrote:
| You should look a little bit closer to actual
| circumstances of people over the country.
|
| https://youtu.be/rHFOwlMCdto?si=OjoxCfE1noxvw3Fz
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| What aspect of this video do you think supports your
| position, specifically?
|
| My mother's side of my family is from North Philadelphia,
| same state as the first black woman featured in this
| video.
|
| I spent three weeks in the US in 2021 when my mother had
| a psychotic breakdown and I had to put her life back
| together on short notice. She had lost her wallet and all
| ID. I got her a brand new birth certificate in
| Philadelphia and a NJ State ID to replace her Driver's
| License. This required setting up some appointments
| either online or via phone, and bringing some documents
| along, but it was manageable.
|
| Expecting someone to have original birth certificate, SSN
| proof, and spouse's death certificate is....normal adult
| document management. I deal with a similar "burden of
| proof" every time I go to my local Japanese city office,
| or to immigration to renew our residency.
|
| The next anecdote in the segment blasts Sauk City,
| Wisconsin for the ID center being closed on most days.
| According to Copilot, Sauk City is 96% white, with a
| median household income over $78,000 and a population of
| less than 4000. So a small middle class town of white
| people rarely has the ID office open? How is that
| supposed to support the argument that mandatory ID
| requirements disproportionately affect minorities again?
|
| The second half of the John Oliver clip focuses on the
| voting events not the identification acquisition problem
| so I don't consider that part relevant and won't dissect
| it.
| aredox wrote:
| Just read the dozens of links shared in these threads.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/eli
| gib...
|
| https://youtu.be/rHFOwlMCdto?si=OjoxCfE1noxvw3Fz
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The issue is not that the barrier is insurmountable. The
| issue is that small amounts of friction become meaningful
| at scale in elections. Place the friction in the right
| spots and some people experiencing that friction choose
| not to bother. If the people who choose not to bother
| disproportionately vote for one side then there's a small
| electoral benefit to the other side.
| bawolff wrote:
| In canada, if you don't have an id, you can get someone who
| knows you (and has an id) to swear an oath you are who you
| say you are. You can also register at the same time you are
| voting.
|
| Seems to work fine. I dont think we have ever had any
| issues with that system.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| Even more radical: in Australia you turn up at one of
| many polling stations with no ID whatsoever and vote.
|
| It works because voting in Australia is compulsory. They
| must have your name on their list, they cross if off it
| and hand over the ballot paper. The checks and balances
| you might expect and done after the event, making it
| fairly secure.
|
| Only of those checks is you did vote, and a fine follows
| if you didn't.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > As a European I also find insane elections are held on
| workdays
|
| That's not really an issue, if you have enough polling
| stations. Denmark typically have elections on a Tuesday
| (but can technically be any day of the week). We have 80%+
| turnout, one of the highest in the world, for countries
| without mandatory voting. The day of the week doesn't
| matter, IF you ensure that it sufficiently easy for people
| to vote.
|
| If you actively try to make it inconvenient/impossible for
| people to vote, then it doesn't matter if it's on a Sunday.
| My take is that part of the US political system need as few
| voters as possible to turn up in order to have a chance of
| winning, so they will make it as complicated and
| inconvenient as they need it to be.
| aredox wrote:
| In a country where "some" people work two or three jobs
| to make ends meet, Sundays vs. workdays does matter.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I do enjoy the idea of making election days days off,
| days to celebrate. But yes, it usually takes me about
| five minutes to vote in the Netherlands, so I don't
| really need the day off.
| brightball wrote:
| Most states where voter id is mandatory also have policies
| where you can get a free ID and even a free ride to a
| location to get your ID. They implemented that in South
| Carolina and after the first few years, nobody used it.
|
| Because you have to have an ID to do almost everything else
| in the country so everybody already has an ID and
| opposition to voter ID makes no sense.
| tzs wrote:
| "Free" ID generally means there is no fee paid to the
| issuer of the ID. It can cost hundreds of dollars to get
| the documents that you have to present to the issuer to
| get that "free" ID.
|
| Also many states have accompanied their stricter voter ID
| requirements with reducing the number of offices that
| process applications and with reducing the hours they
| accept applications so that even if you can get a free
| ride to an office you might have to take an unpaid day
| off from work to do so. That can be a significant loss
| for many poor workers.
|
| > Because you have to have an ID to do almost everything
| else in the country so everybody already has an ID and
| opposition to voter ID makes no sense.
|
| Yet many millions get by without an ID [1]. A lot of
| things you probably think cannot be done without an ID
| actually can.
|
| For example how can you cash a paycheck without an ID?
| You need an ID to open a bank account. An answer is you
| can cash checks using a third party endorsement. You
| don't need a bank for that. You just need a trusted
| friend who has a bank account. I'd guess that this is
| what the 6% of Americans without bank accounts do (23%
| among those making less than $25k/year) [2].
|
| How about getting a job without ID? First, there are a
| lot of people who don't need jobs (e.g., the stay at home
| partner in a household where one partner works and the
| other takes care of the house). Second there are a lot of
| job that pay cash and are off the record.
|
| Also there are a fair number of people who once had ID
| but no longer do. It has been a very long time since I've
| actually needed to show my driver's license to anyone.
|
| My banking is all online, as is my check cashing (my bank
| has a great "deposit by photo" function).
|
| When I signed up for Medicare, Medigap, and a Part D plan
| that was all through ssa.gov and medicare.gov, with no
| need to show ID. That was apparently all covered by when
| I showed ID years ago when I set up ID.me as a login
| method for my ssa.gov account. It will likely be the same
| when I apply for Social Security benefits. Afterwards all
| my interaction with SS and Medicare should be through
| ssa.gov and medicare.gov.
|
| If when I'm older I am no longer fit to drive and let my
| driver's license expire and don't remember to get a state
| photo ID then there is a good chance I can live the rest
| of my life comfortably without ever running into anything
| where that causes problems.
|
| The simplest way, though, to see that it is possible to
| get by reasonably well without an ID is to note the large
| number of undocumented workers that the current
| administration is trying to kick out. They are able to
| come here, find places to live, and get paying jobs all
| without a state issued photo ID.
|
| Whatever they are doing citizens can do too.
|
| [1] https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-
| voter-id/
|
| [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/23percent-of-low-
| income-amer...
| weberer wrote:
| >Whereas in a country like the US, it means missing several
| days of work, driving potentially hundreds of kilometers
|
| Where did you hear this? When I lived in Pennsylvania, it
| was really easy to get a state ID. Just go into the DMV,
| show them your documents, pay the fee ($42 now), and you
| have your ID within the hour. They had centers all around
| the city, and they're open on Saturdays. Personally, I
| think this is an extremely weird hill for Democrats to want
| to die on. Most independent and swing voters think its a
| reasonable requirement.
| tpm wrote:
| It's a different culture, one which is not used to have and
| use a national ID, which is completely common in the EU (with
| the exception of Ireland perhaps?)
| christkv wrote:
| That's not true. I lived there for nearly a decade and you
| use driving licenses for id and there are other forms for
| id as well that don't include the passport.
|
| You need ID to do a lot of stuff just like any other
| country.
| tpm wrote:
| What is not true? A driving license may be a defacto ID,
| but it is not a dejure, designated national ID card. It's
| a different system. In the EU countries the ID cards are
| backed by a more-or-less central civil register.
|
| (as an aside, it would be very funny to me if the they
| used the driving license for electronic signing of
| official communication with the authorities like we use
| it in some countries in the EU).
| pton_xd wrote:
| Driver's license is the defacto ID used everywhere. Which
| kind of makes no sense but that's the way it is. Just about
| everyone has one and arguments that requiring an ID to vote
| would disenfranchise citizens don't sound believable to me.
| aredox wrote:
| Just look at actual facts. There are many links in this
| thread.
|
| You also seem to think everyone has a car and thus a
| driving licence.
|
| And that's before talking about voter roll purges,
| gerrymandering and putting ballot boxes and stations away
| from "certain type" of voters.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>You also seem to think everyone has a car and thus a
| driving licence
|
| I don't see how those two are related. In UK driving
| licences are also used as de facto ID everywhere(you can
| even get on domestic flights using your driving licence
| lol), and everyone gets one when they turn 18 because
| just get a provisional driving licence(identical to a
| normal one but with an L on it to indicate learner
| driver), no car necessary. In effect everyone in the
| country has a driving licence even if they don't drive or
| own a car. And you just apply by post, no need to go
| anywhere,
|
| Obviously it would be much better to do it like other
| European countries do it and just issue everyone with an
| actual ID when they turn 18, but what UK is doing is
| close enough equivalent of this. So if the US has the DMV
| and already has an easily accessible way for people to
| get driving licences......what's the problem?
| Symbiote wrote:
| Old people don't necessarily have photographic driving
| licences in the UK.
|
| Some would be caught out if their passport has expired.
| gambiting wrote:
| You can use expired passports and driving licences to
| vote:
|
| https://www.southend.gov.uk/elections-registering-
| vote/chang...
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| This may be true in your demographic (it is in mine) but
| as of 2015 there were 45 million driving licenses issued
| and at least 55 million adults.
| aredox wrote:
| What's the problem?
|
| Just look at the actual facts, as you say.
|
| https://theconversation.com/almost-2-million-people-in-
| the-u...
| aredox wrote:
| The UK also has strong opinions about ID.
| tpm wrote:
| I know, having lived there in the past, but they are not
| in the EU anymore.
| chgs wrote:
| My wife was denied the opportunity to vote last year in
| the local elections due to not having ID in her when we
| popped in on a whim.
|
| The voting booth refused to even register this, yet the
| apologists claim only 1 in 400 were denied.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean....how do you know it's more than 1 in 400? You
| have one example - your wife. Any reason to believe it
| was common?
| aredox wrote:
| https://theconversation.com/almost-2-million-people-in-
| the-u...
| gambiting wrote:
| The article you posted confirms the 1 in 400 number:
|
| "We found that around 0.5% of all voters reported being
| turned away at polling stations as a result of lacking ID
| in the local elections of 2023. We also found that four
| times as many people (around 2%) reported not voting
| because they knew they didn't have the right ID."
|
| 2.5% is 1 in 400
| lynx97 wrote:
| Seems like a sensible decision, since you apparently
| couldn't be bothered to prepare properly. I totally have
| no sympathy for this story.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That sounds fair. No ID means no way to check if she had
| already voted or even has the right to vote.
| leflambeur wrote:
| There is no national id (other than passports; but most
| people don't carry theirs on themselves in their own
| country) because driver's licenses (issued by states) serve
| the same purpose. We don't have a non-DL id (that's popular
| at least).
|
| Anyway, this is sort of by-the-by. Most adults have
| driver's licenses, and no one in Alaska is going to reject
| your Tennessee-issued DL so it is a de-facto national id.
| piva00 wrote:
| 91% of adults have a driver's license, leaving 9% of
| potential voters without a DL.
|
| In a properly functioning democracy barring 9% of your
| voting population from voting because they lack an
| unrelated document (why should a driver's license be
| linked to ability to vote?) would be considered a major
| flaw.
| leflambeur wrote:
| You don't get it.
|
| You may elect to have your DL as a voting document as a
| convenience. It doesn't mean you have to have one in
| order to vote. A state's Board of Elections will issue
| you a voting document.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>why should a driver's license be linked to ability to
| vote?
|
| It's not, it's just one of many acceptable forms of id -
| along with a passport, birth certificate, and probably
| few others.
|
| >>In a properly functioning democracy barring 9% of your
| voting population
|
| Unless they are stopped from obtaining _any_ document
| then they aren 't barred from anything. Most Americans
| don't have a passport either but no one would argue that
| they are barred from travelling internationally, they
| _just_ have to go and get a passport issued.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Unless they are stopped from obtaining any document
| then they aren't barred from anything. Most Americans
| don't have a passport either but no one would argue that
| they are barred from travelling internationally, they
| just have to go and get a passport issued.
|
| Making it difficult (as the article states, this 9% do
| not have ready access to documents proving their
| citizenship) is essentially barring with extra steps.
|
| I hate this semantics/loophole game Americans like to
| play, seems to be quite common in your society to use the
| "akshually, technically" and going completely against the
| spirit of something. The spirit is: this makes it more
| difficult to vote, it will inevitably bar some people
| from voting, it's just salami-slicing...
| gambiting wrote:
| >> seems to be quite common in your society
|
| I'm not American and I don't know why you'd assume I am -
| to me the fact that americans don't have ID requirements
| to vote is insane.
|
| >>as the article states, this 9% do not have ready access
| to documents proving their citizenship
|
| Again, do they simply not have them because they never
| bothered to get them, or are they unable to obtain them?
| That's quite a big difference.
|
| I also hope we're not saying that if someone turned 18
| and just simply never bothered to obtain any kind of
| acceptable ID(and there are usually many) then it's
| somehow _unfair_ to not let them vote - because I really
| struggle to see how that would be true.
| leflambeur wrote:
| A lot of people seem to just assume that other countries
| have less friction (or no friction at all?) for people to
| vote, than the United States. My friends from other
| countries would find that amusing.
|
| I get it that some states try to disenfranchise people
| and obviously that's wrong but the answer to that cannot
| be "voter id requirements are bad".
| dontTREATonme wrote:
| 40% of the eligible voters sit out every election. No one
| who wants to vote is being barred from anything. They
| don't lack an unrelated document, they lack the proof
| that they are allowed to vote. We have freedom of
| expression and yet to purchase alcohol you must be able
| to prove you are allowed to buy it. We have the freedom
| to bear arms and yet in many states you must prove you
| aren't a nut job to own and carry a gun.
| lynx97 wrote:
| In a properly functioning democracy ... nobody without
| proof of citizenship should ever be allowed to cast a
| vote.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| a) Republicans did the math and figured out that a lot of
| people who vote Democrat didn't have IDs. Old black people,
| in particular, were not likely to have IDs. Republicans also
| did stuff like accept fishing and hunting licenses for
| voting, but not university ID. None of this is a secret. A
| think-tank called ALEC came up with it. In-person voter
| fraud, the only kind of election rigging that voter ID laws
| prevent, is next to impossible in the US system and basically
| never occurs on more than a one-off basis.
|
| b) A lot of those people who didn't have IDs have either
| gotten IDs or died off by now, so the Republican advantage of
| voter ID laws has faded.
|
| c) Given (b), Republicans have moved on to other tactics like
| voter purges, shutting down registration offices and polling
| stations to create long lines in urban districts,
| gerrymandering, and limiting early voting and mail in voting.
| One of their favorite tactics is limiting early-voting
| mailboxes to one per precinct, whether that precinct has
| 1,000 voters or 1,000,000. You can guess which way the
| crowded urban precincts tend to vote.
|
| The whole idea is just to put their thumb on the scale enough
| to discourage some small % of voters in the swing states that
| determine our president every four years. If you live in
| California, no one cares how you vote for President.
| chgs wrote:
| Tory party did this in the uk. Old people bus pass is
| allowed. Student id card isn't.
| thorin wrote:
| Bus pass is issued by the government though. Student id
| is issued by the college. I know because I made one at
| the student union to help with getting into nightclubs
| (allegedly).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| And here we created fake state-issued driver's licenses
| when I was in college.
|
| (Wish I could find a photo of a giant, fake driver's
| license on foam core with a rectangle cut out for the
| person to stand behind when a photo was taken.)
| concordDance wrote:
| Can we have some numbers/citations on the proportion of
| democrat and republican voters without ID? Because I've
| heard that it will benefit Democrats and is a Reoublican
| own goal.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Nearly everyone has a driving license, so the percentage
| without ID must be really small.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Elderly do not renew license to avoid eye test that gets
| driving taken away.
| torginus wrote:
| With how many top tech CEOs lining up behind Trump, I
| wonder how much of Californian democratic support backed by
| staunch belief, rather than political expediency.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Stats show that Tech workers mostly vote blue, but as you
| move up the corporate ladder they slowly start to vote
| more red because their increasing wealth gradually makes
| them more and more in touch with the forgotten factory
| workers in the rust belt and angrier about the handful of
| trans athletes ruining women's sports.
| tzs wrote:
| That's because you live someplace where the things described
| in the various links in this comment [1] do not happen or
| happen way less than they do in the US.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42116609
| IshKebab wrote:
| If it makes you feel any better the UK Conservatives tried
| this under the "we have to stop voting fraud" excuse. Turns
| out it backfired because the oldies couldn't figure out the
| new requirements leading to this scandalous quote from
| pantomime villain Jacob Reese-Mogg:
|
| > Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding that their
| clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found
| by insisting on voter ID for elections.
|
| > We found the people who didn't have ID were elderly and
| they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for
| our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly
| well.
| razakel wrote:
| Even Boris Johnson was turned away from a polling station
| because he didn't have his ID with him.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I don't, but we have a functioning citizen registration
| system; every voting eligible citizen gets sent a voting card
| when elections come up. That can only work if you're
| registered and have a known address. "Illegal aliens" don't
| have that, so they can't vote. Foreign nationals that are
| registered / stay here legally also don't get voting rights
| so they simply don't get the voting card mailed to them.
|
| But also because of that registration, getting a kind of ID
| involves making an appointment at the county house, filling
| in a form and handing over a recent portrait photo. It's a
| bit of a hassle but nothing extreme.
| matwood wrote:
| You've fallen victim to GOP propaganda. They use 'Voter ID'
| as a reasonable sounding shorthand for a lot of policies that
| just make it harder to vote. The other responders highlighted
| many of them.
| tptacek wrote:
| Voter ID helps Democrats in 2025, it doesn't hurt them.
| jl6 wrote:
| How do you figure?
| roxolotl wrote:
| The theory here is democrats on average are more educated,
| wealthier, and in more of a position to prove they are
| citizens. Don't have an opinion on that. But it's something
| I know many democrats around me have said.
| lolinder wrote:
| The demographics of the parties have shifted quite a bit
| with Trump's second term. The Republicans lost much of
| their educated elite but made up for it by gaining a lot of
| the poor folks that have hitherto been the Democratic
| backbone and who are most hurt by voter ID.
|
| Trump lost the $30k-$50k democraphic by 9 points in 2016,
| but turned around and won it by 6 points in 2024--a
| 15-point swing! Meanwhile he won the $100k-$200k and $200k+
| demographics by ~2 percentage points in 2016, but lost it
| by 5+ points in 2024 even while winning the popular vote.
|
| It's possible that this was a one-off and not a major
| permanent realignment, but it's definitely not as clear cut
| as it used to be.
| tptacek wrote:
| Because of educational polarization and race
| depolarization, Democrats now overperform Republicans in
| low-turnout elections. It's been true in every cycle
| starting in 2018 (and in the special elections before
| that).
| concordDance wrote:
| On the scale of concern, voter ID is way down there. You've
| already had both "prosecute main political opponent" and "storm
| the legislature".
|
| Voter ID is very common and sensible. The UK introduced it
| recently and while it did disenfranchise people this was not to
| the benefit of the party in power when the law was introduced.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| https://x.com/yishan/status/1906592890845028405
|
| This whole thread is gold. People just casually discussing why
| it is necessary for America to enslave the world AND it is
| beneficial for the world. The color revolutions were successful
| in other countries until the DeepState decided to bring that
| "social engineering technology" to home. Somehow people think
| they can contain such moral corruption just as plasma is
| contained using electromagnetic coils in fusion reactors.
| alkonaut wrote:
| That Democrats have held both the white house and congress
| several times over the last decades, and didn't try to put in
| place some reasonable voter ID laws is really sick.
|
| Basically the law they would need is "states can do whatever
| voter ID they want, if it's free and easy to get ID and 9X% of
| voters not just _can get it, but actually actually have it,
| otherwise they can't". Or they could have made a federal ID and
| ensured everyone gets it.
|
| But Democrats always felt that even going ner voter id laws
| were a bit dangerous. It always rang like "voter suppression"
| to them (and in many ways it probably was). But they missed the
| chance to make it impossible for Republicans to abuse it as
| voter suppression - and here we are now, worrying that there
| will be voter ID laws despite many lacking ID. It's
| infuriating.
|
| Why the idea of "we'll just make sure people have ID" is so
| unimaginable is just completely impossible to understand. It
| doesn't matter that there is no actual in-person voter fraud.
| Voter ID laws are a good thing anyway - if everyone actually
| has ID. It adds trust to the process and god knows the US needs
| a process where people actually believe it's secure, not just
| one that IS secure.
| wesapien wrote:
| Does that matter as much as citizens united?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Assuming citizens united isn't going anywhere (it's not,
| with the current SC), then yes.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take this thread or any HN thread into even more
| of a political flamewar hell. It's not what this site is for,
| and destroys what it is for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily
| for political battle. That's a line at which we ban accounts,
| regardless of what your politics are or aren't. See
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
| for past explanations.
|
| If you'd please revert to using HN as intended, we'd appreciate
| it.
| casey2 wrote:
| The US particularly has an extremely large population of men (10s
| of millions) who don't work. Who knows if they'd be doing "low
| skill" manufacturing if somebody was around to hire them. But if
| you actually wanted this to work you would have started by
| subsidizing american raw materials.
| ianpurton wrote:
| Tesla in Berlin employs 12,000 workers and can produce 5000
| cars a week.
|
| The US will need a lot of factories to employ 10s of millions
| of workers.I also imagine new factories will employ less
| workers due to increased automation.
|
| I'm interested to see how this plays out.
| lm28469 wrote:
| This isn't the 1950s, factories are mostly automated:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blW-Fa4a10g
|
| That's the whole reason we went all in with tech and
| automation
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There are around 200m working age americans. So 100m working
| age american men. You are claiming that 20% of working age
| american men (at least) are playing video games all day (I
| assume that being in school or raising children or whatever is
| acceptable activity)? Where are you getting these numbers?
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Why is there a focus on men not working? I have seen it in at
| least 3 comments in this thread.
|
| Latest bls stats show men unemployment at 4.2% and women
| unemployment at 4.1%
|
| https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm
| ttw44 wrote:
| Civilization has always operated on the idea that men must
| work for it to function properly. When less people willingly
| work it can be detrimental for future welfare. The way that
| unemployment is interpreted by the public now is not very
| accurate. The gig economy has grown massively since 2020,
| which counts towards labor statistics, but its arguable to
| say if they should. The number of small or local owned
| businesses have grown substantially since 2020 - but is that
| because of a surplus of opportunity or people looking for
| ways to make additional money? The quality of the labor
| matters.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| I believe the miscommunication here is that "total people not
| working" and "total unemployment" represent different subsets
| of the population. That is to say, there are people who are
| not working who aren't looking to work and aren't categorized
| as part of unemployment.
| otoburb wrote:
| You have to go back more years to see the trendline. BLS has
| a different chart showing the male participation rate
| dropping while female participation rate has remained fairly
| constant over the past decade.[1]
|
| By my rough estimation that's ~7M men unaccounted for by
| simply not participating in the 'traditional' labour force.
| Keep in mind that it could also 'simply' be that a lot of
| those unaccounted men are working but in ways that the
| government(s) at different levels are unable to reliably
| track.
|
| There have been some articles and attention picking up on
| this trend over the past few years.[2]
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-
| lab...
|
| [2] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/educa
| tio...
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| [2] is an interesting article, but it doesn't go into why
| male participation rates are going down more than female
| rates, outside of the fact that men are much more likely to
| be convicted of felonies which makes work prospects worse.
|
| Anecdotally what I have seen most in men are the shut in
| NEETs who live with their parents and/or collect disability
| and play video games all day. Why this is uniquely a
| phenomenon for men is unclear to me, but on the other side
| I know of lots of trophy wives who just go to yoga class
| and salons all day and do not produce economic value, and
| they are not put under the same microscope as NEETs.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| I believe this from the White House contains the only semi
| official numbers:
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr....
|
| That has 10% across the board starting April 5th, then
| unspecified rates for the "worst offenders" starting April 9th.
|
| I say "semi official" because it's not official until US Customs
| and Border Patrol publishes the rates. So far I don't think
| they've done that. Their announcements page here doesn't have
| anything:
|
| https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/announcements
| willvarfar wrote:
| Yes Trump has a history of announcing shocks and then quietly
| back-peddling etc. But the numbers come from the big placard he
| holds up. There are pics of his announcement holding his rate
| card in article if you scroll down.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| Yeah, I've seen the boards he was holding up, but the fact
| that those numbers are not on the whitehouse.gov page and
| that they'll be implemented a few days later makes me think
| they're not final yet. Plus we don't know if they're in
| addition to or replace the existing China tariffs, for
| example.
| Qworg wrote:
| The admin has stated they are in addition to (totaling
| 54%).
| Loughla wrote:
| They're absolutely in addition to.
|
| We run a very small business (luckily just for side
| income). One of our suppliers expects prices to go up
| 45-55% by the time this is done. It sucks out loud because
| there are literally no suppliers from the US for the parts
| we need.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Looking forward to the retaliatory tariffs, which seems to be
| only language this administration understands.
|
| I guess it will eventually be the year of FOSS software, I am
| only waiting for the administration going back to export
| restrictions in software as well.
| seydor wrote:
| for starters, countries will sell to the UK , which will resell
| to the US at the lowest tarriff rate. Great for the UK, but
| stupid.
|
| I try to sympathize with trump's deglobalization agenda but it is
| probably exactly what it seems to be : a colossal stupidity.
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| Just shipping goods through the UK does not make them UK-
| origin. They have to have a "substantial transformation".
| seydor wrote:
| "Johnnie Walker Champagne"
| louthy wrote:
| That's good, but if you want the really good stuff: Rolls
| Royce Champagne
| ddouglascarr wrote:
| Do you have a reference for this? If they're requiring
| substantial transformation, how is this assessed and
| enforced?
| patrickmcnamara wrote:
| It's pretty complicated and case-by-case, and I'm no
| expert.
|
| https://www.trade.gov/rules-origin-substantial-
| transformatio...
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| In that example, the UK would soon run a trade surplus, and
| presumably the US would increase their tariff.
| tmellon2 wrote:
| The De Minimis loophole is highly significant with 4 Million
| packages per day (What ?). The clause to address this loophole
| needs to be stated more accurately - It should clearly define it
| to be _higher / lower_ of 30 % of value of shipment under $800 or
| $25 per shipment and not _either_
|
| Source :https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-
| sheet-pr....
| misja111 wrote:
| The attempts to force a mineral deal on to Ukraine, and also the
| attempts to get hold of Greenland, start to make sense if you
| assume that the Trump administration is preparing for a permanent
| global trade war. Higher costs for mineral imports would hurt the
| US economy the most.
| Animats wrote:
| Did the "de minimus" exemption on small packages from China go
| away, and are all those now going to have to go through customs
| clearance?
| teruakohatu wrote:
| What will happen is the same as when my govt. added GST (sales
| tax) on all imports with no de minimus exception [1], the
| overseas retailers will agree to add it on at checkout so their
| packages will sail through customs.
|
| From a practical perspective I can't see any other way.
|
| Closing the "GST loophole" as they called it didn't help New
| Zealand retailers, but did increase tax revenue and raise
| prices for consumers.
|
| [1] There is an exception if the retailer does less than a
| certain dollar figure of exports in total to New Zealand.
| kriro wrote:
| Time for the EU to float the idea of the PetroEuro.
| whatshisface wrote:
| There has been a lot of speculation about why this is being done,
| given that even a young child could understand that a grocery
| store is not taking advantage of you when you exchange your money
| for goods. Some say that it doesn't need an explanation, because
| the President has so much power that caprice and a little bad
| advice from a cabinet member is all it takes. That is not a
| complete picture, though, because power in the US is spread out
| enough that while only the President needs a reason to do
| something, many others must have a reason to allow it.
|
| Here's one idea for a "why are his supporters allowing this,"
| sort of explanation. In the US, educated professionals hold way
| more importance than the global average, due to the US's status
| as an exporter of services. They tend to vote for liberal (in the
| European sense) policies, whether Republican or Democrat.
|
| If you wanted to destroy liberalism in the United States, you
| would have to drastically reduce the importance of higher
| education and professional labor. This can be done by placing
| very high taxes on the import of goods and base resources, so
| that young people who would have become engineers have to become
| miners, loggers and machinists instead. While I do not think this
| is true (blue-collar workers do not live up to the ultraright's
| "noble savage" sort of fantasy about their preferences and are
| actually just like anyone else... but if you're an elite you
| don't know that firsthand), it sounds plausible that enough of
| the people who are important for a season might believe it, and
| support it as a plan to remake American culture, not in their
| image, but in the image of a fantasy they share.
|
| This works together with the strategic need to decouple from
| trade with a country before invading them, dramatically
| increasing the number of opportunities for self-aggrandizement
| through the threatening of war, high-stakes diplomacy,
| negotiations over individual prices... which also offer some
| respite for elected officials who would otherwise take an
| unending beating in the news over consumer data.
| mailund wrote:
| So now that the impacted countries will respond with tariffs, are
| there any chance they might include tariffs on digital services
| like AWS and Azure, or will they only target physical goods that
| cross the border?
|
| I don't know how these things usually work in the best cases, and
| it seems like we're living in exceptionally stupid ones right
| now.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| Foreign countries will probably start taxing Google/Facebook
| ads if not outright banning US tech companies from operating.
| When that happens, watch the whitehouse roll back everything
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Or escalate? Roll back defense guarantees.
| atoav wrote:
| I guess we Europeans have to get our stuff from elsewhere than a
| nation hostile to the world with an insane unpredictable leader.
| China may also be authoritarian, but at least they are stable.
|
| The coolest thing to read are american takes that are like "hey
| this might be benefiting us for that obscure reason", totally
| ignoring the fact that you _betrayed_ your allies. Land of fhe
| free my ass. The only ideology the US has is nihilistic greed
| paired with hyperindividualsm and transactionalism to the point
| where Americans think if someone else is getting a thing you are
| hurting.
|
| If the US was a kid it wouldn't invite others over because it
| wants to eat the birthday cake alone. And then it shits on all
| the cakes at the bakery because it wants to be the only kid
| eating cakes. If that is the American idea of how to lead a great
| life the rest of the world is better of without it.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| You might enjoy your Chinese overlords more then. Time will
| tell.
| atoav wrote:
| As if the things the US produces aren't predominantly made in
| China already. Cutting out the middleman can't hurt,
| especially if the middleman behaves like a mob boss.
| enaaem wrote:
| I actually stopped buying from Amazon and went to either
| the producer's site or Aliexpress. Literally the same
| products but without the middleman.
|
| I once needed to claim warrantee on a broken charger and
| after navigating all the dark patters Amazon just referred
| me to the producer's website. It's not even convenient.
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| oh the irony
| atoav wrote:
| He who is free of sin..
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| > totally ignoring the fact that you betrayed your allies
|
| The US is following the example of its mentor, the UK.
| Perfidious Albion allied with the Germans and Russians to fight
| the French (Napoleonic Wars), then allied with the French and
| Russians to fight the Germans (WW1 & WW2), then allied with the
| French and Germans to counter the Russians (Cold War). Great
| powers don't have permanent friends, nor do they have permanent
| enemies, they only have permanent interests. Europeans were
| simply naive[0], thinking they were the equals of the world's
| hyperpower for some reason, just because our post-WW2 dealings
| were executed with substantially more carrot than stick. It's
| just normalcy bias. Somehow Europe didn't think they would ever
| end up like the South Vietnamese, the Hmong, the Kurds (against
| Saddam, in 1991[1]), the Afghans, the Kurds again (against the
| Turks[2]), and now the Ukrainians. Some argue there is more
| than a bit of latent racism involved, not expecting the White
| People Countries to be abused by the Empire the same way Brown
| People Countries are.[3]
|
| > If the US was a kid it wouldn't invite others over because it
| wants to eat the birthday cake alone.
|
| This is why I often state that Woodrow Wilson is the worst
| President in American history. Besides shackling us with both
| the Federal Reserve Banking System _and_ Federal Income Tax, he
| dragged us into Europe 's internecine bloodshed and normalized
| that interventionism despite Americans largely being
| comfortable with sticking to our own hemisphere. In 1913, the
| US already had the world's largest GDP, with a GDP per capita
| roughly equal to Imperial Germany and about 75% of the UK's
| (assuming Copilot isn't lying to me on this data). Imports were
| only 4% of GDP compared to 15% in 2023. I think the wealthy
| elite who are siding with Trump are charting a plan to return
| the US to the same kind of domestically-focused economy, but we
| don't have the sort of natural resources nor human capital to
| ensure a decent quality of life on a short timeframe (or
| perhaps even a longer one) given the "shock treatment" that
| they are implementing.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh1zmDi0qN0
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Iraqi_uprisings#U.S._radi...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Claw_(2019%E2%80%932...
|
| [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/1/covering-
| ukraine...
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > I think the wealthy elite who are siding with Trump are
| charting a plan to return the US to the same kind of
| domestically-focused economy
|
| You're delusional, if you think there is any kind of plan
| going on here. Nobody knew any plan beyond "tariffs" and
| ideas about invasions coming out of thin air. The tariff
| numbers are a complete joke.
|
| No, there is no grand scheme, hidden behind an act of
| absolute incompetence. It's just a short-term money/power
| grab for the already rich. An attempt to turn the world's
| "hyperpower" as you put it, into a second-world oligarchy.
| This may end up in total disaster, that is, a thirld-world
| oligarchy, if you look at China. But it's hard to actually
| look at China from the West.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| Half the people complaining about Trump's actions say that
| it's all according to Project 2025, and half the people say
| what you're saying, that's it all chaotic incompetence with
| no plan.
|
| I suppose the worst-case scenario is elements of both are
| true. They've got a fucked up playbook but can't even
| execute it correctly?
|
| For the record I also don't think they are likely to
| succeed, I'm just trying to assess what/how they might be
| planning, or what direction they _think_ they can take the
| country in. We can agree that they probably won 't get the
| results they want and that America is in for a very rough
| ride.
| ookdatnog wrote:
| > Half the people complaining about Trump's actions say
| that it's all according to Project 2025, and half the
| people say what you're saying, that's it all chaotic
| incompetence with no plan.
|
| I think this is a misunderstanding (not sure if it's on
| your part of on the part of some of the complaining
| people): the Trump admin's agenda and strategy are
| clearly following Project 2025, for the most part. But
| Trump's tariff obsession does not originate there. I'm
| quite certain that even the most pro-tariff of the
| conservative think tanks are uncomfortable with how far
| he's pushing it.
|
| I get the impression that the zeal behind Project 2025 is
| not motivated by their economic ideas but mostly by their
| perception of being in a culture war that they are now on
| the cusp of winning (they aren't). They deeply hate and
| resent the "liberal elites" (academics, journalists, etc)
| who they feel have too much influence on American
| culture, and the dream that keeps them going is not
| merely defeating these liberal elites electorally, but
| utterly _destroying_ them. To "put them in their place",
| as it were.
|
| One thing that would derail their plans is if Trump lays
| waste to the economy early in his term, so that he's
| likely to lose the midterms and a Democrat becomes the
| next president, and perhaps even making their political
| movement unviable for years or decades. So even his pro-
| tariff supporters are uneasy now: the tariff policy is so
| extreme that it is likely to interfere with their
| overarching goal.
| ringeryless wrote:
| No tariffs on Russia, interestingly enough.
|
| All actions by this administration point to Trump working in
| cahoots with Putin, which we were told was "a hoax".
|
| The White House dressing down of Zelensky, and this week Russias
| investment chief in the US, and just scads of obvious daily
| reminders that Trump has no bad words for his pal. Odd.
|
| Tariffs on our friends and allies while he speaks of dropping
| sanctions on Russia and meanwhile levies no tariffs upon goods
| from Russia, zero. Odd.
| trallnag wrote:
| Countries like North Korea and Russia are already covered by
| sanctions
| nthingtohide wrote:
| There are secondary tariffs on those countries who buy from
| Russia and Venezuela or Iran. i.e. if you buy oil from
| Venezuela, then your export of clothing will invite 25%
| tarrifs.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Are the two mutually exclusive? Because using the same
| formula they apply to other countries, Russia would have
| tariffs as high as 84%. (I confess to using an LLM to get me
| the data.)
| new_user_final wrote:
| My understandings reading some comments. 1. Prices will increase
| 2. US will need to manufacture things and they will need a lots
| of workers. There will be shortage of workers because factory
| pays minimal wages. 3. Factories will have to offer higher amount
| of salary that will increase price
|
| Ultimately prices increases for everything and working class will
| suffer more.
| pishpash wrote:
| It's a scheme for the top-top to once again, not pay for
| anything because they pass the cost along. The W2 class gets to
| redistribute amongst themselves.
| altacc wrote:
| More likely that prices will go up and wages will stay the
| same.
|
| Factories take a long time to build and businesses know that
| Trump is erratic and therefore have no idea how long these
| tariffs will be in place for. So opening a totally new and
| otherwise unneeded factory is a big risk. (Some companies have
| made recent announcements about opening factories in the US but
| largely these factories were planned to meet existing marker
| needs, just not yet decided where they would be.)
|
| The price of a product will only go down when the majority of
| demand can be met by tariff free means. Until then a US company
| will sell a product at the same price as the imported, tariffed
| product because that's what they do. Same happened during the
| recent inflationary spike. Businesses put prices up more than
| their costs went up as they had an excuse.
|
| Large businesses hate putting up wages and the level of
| desperation in the US is such that there is a large pool of
| people to fill low paying factory jobs. The post-pandemic wage
| increases were noticeable for the opposition to them and that
| was a very short 12-18 month spike, with wage growth now back
| to normal.
|
| Yes, either way, the working class, indeed the median American,
| suffer.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Don't forget that you first have to build the factories and
| somehow resuscitate the knowledge that died a few generations
| ago. A factory isn't just a big warehouse full of low skilled
| people, you need machines we don't have anymore, processes we
| lost, &c.
| Havoc wrote:
| All of which sounds ok until you factor in timelines. In takes
| years to spin up new factories and supply chains.
|
| Choking the existing options when replacements are years away
| is a guaranteed way to ensure economic carnage
| DeathArrow wrote:
| US says there was an imbalance in trade, and that is true only if
| we look at goods. If we look at services, I think the picture
| changes.
|
| What if the EU and rest of the world starts adding taxes to
| financial and IT services provided by the US? What if Amazon
| cloud and Netflix start costing 20% more?
|
| And let's not forget US is printing dollars which are being used
| for worldwide trade and the rest of the world subsidies their
| inflation and their economy through that.
|
| Let's not forget US exported the 2008 crysis and most of the
| world payed for that.
|
| I don't think US will like if the rest of the world stops using
| US dollars, stops using US financial services and stops investing
| in US economy by buying shares, bonds, securities.
| enaaem wrote:
| Interesting what happens to tech valuation. A large part
| depends on global reach, 'infinite' scaling and a winner takes
| all probability.
| yapyap wrote:
| Wild
| jbverschoor wrote:
| The whole table doesn't make sense. We (NL/EU) don't charge the
| US 39% to import . Apparently orange guy (not the Dutch) doesn't
| understand VAT rates.
|
| Car? max 4.5 + 21% VAT = 25%. But it simply doesn't matter bc we
| don't want their cars.. Except for thee Dodge RAM, which can be
| converted to a tax efficient company car (crazy)..
|
| What amazes me even more is that Elon doesn't seems to understand
| it either.
| 0xy wrote:
| It doesn't make sense because you didn't read the original
| board. It clearly states 'including trade barriers'. You're
| attacking a strawman.
|
| Countries, including the EU, like to have 'low tariffs' and
| then have sneaky backdoor taxes or outright bans on US goods
| through things like milk quotas (Canada), 'biosecurity'
| (Australia) or EU courts issuing spurious fines on US companies
| (based on vague laws that only get enforced against US
| companies, like DMA).
| reaperman wrote:
| I think you might be granting the administration too much
| benefit of the doubt. They aren't based on "tariffs + trade
| barriers", they're just based on trade deficit alone.
|
| https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907559189234196942
|
| https://archive.ph/kRkRh
| energy123 wrote:
| VAT isn't a trade barrier.
| 0xy wrote:
| DMA is. GDPR is. Both are applied principally against
| competitors using arbitrary fines invented by the EU. No
| compliance guidance is given, because the laws are
| inherently vague.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It's not. It is not anything specific against for example
| the US. We have many consumer protection laws. Has
| nothing to do with the US.
| 0xy wrote:
| Link me to a single example of an EU company getting
| fined under DMA. After all, you said it was applied
| equally so it should be easy :)
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| None of the gatekeepers are EU companies.
|
| You might say that's proof of it being unfair, but can
| you name a EU company which should be one? I can't really
| think of one, US companies are just so much bigger on the
| internet, even in the EU.
|
| Looking at the other law you mentioned, GDPR, there are
| many EU companies receiving GDPR fines.
| 0xy wrote:
| Absolute nonsense, of course. Your case disintegrates
| completely given Spotify was given a specific and
| targeted carve-out in DMA.
|
| The law is written to arbitrarily tax US "gatekeepers"
| while explicitly excluding EU gatekeepers. Booking.com is
| another, also carved out.
| Ragnarork wrote:
| If a city enforces a new speed limit somewhere and only
| people living outside of the city break that speed limit,
| you argue that the law isn't applied equally because no
| resident of the city has been fined so far?
|
| That's the most backward way of trying to prove a point
| (without even addressing whether DMA and GDPR are a good
| thing or not, just based on that...)
| yard2010 wrote:
| That's not just some bs - the other side of the coin is
| crooked billionaires and other reptilians taking
| advantage of anything in their way blinded by their
| massive greed and psycopathic traits.
|
| Excuse me, this is not how a society should roll. Not a
| sustainable one at least.
| patapong wrote:
| In that case, VW being fined 17bn for dieselgate should
| also count as a trade barrier?
| Epa095 wrote:
| It doesn't make sense because it is not a table of tariffs
| (including or excluding trade barriers) at all.
|
| It is a table of the current trade deficit against each
| country as a ratio.
| cwillu wrote:
| > milk quotas (Canada)
|
| You mean the milk quota on imports that (a) trump negotiated
| and (b) the us has never hit?
| 0xy wrote:
| No, I mean the trade dispute that the Biden admin began.
| [1]
|
| [1] https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-
| office/press-...
| cwillu wrote:
| Ah, so a practice that ruled on years ago, and which it
| turns out still didn't have any significant impact on
| imports anyway?
|
| Also, remind me, when was the last time that the US
| actually complied with an unfavourable ruling from the
| trade panel?
| marceldegraaf wrote:
| VAT is not a "sneaky backdoor tax", it's imposed on all
| goods, regardless of where they're produced or imported from.
|
| DMA (and similarly, GDPR) are enforced in EU countries just
| as much. It's just that the US tends to have more gigantic
| tech companies that do shady things with user data.
| Apparently the US doesn't care, but the EU actually does, and
| so it enforces its laws.
| pembrook wrote:
| We're talking many 10s of billions in "fines" specifically
| levied against US tech firms where there is no EU
| competitor.
|
| I don't necessarily disagree with all of the laws
| themselves (some are incompetent EU risk aversion, some are
| good protections) but given the massive never ending fines
| being applied in bad faith and constantly moving goalposts
| it is indeed a defacto tariff on US tech firms.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| The fines are not imposed in bad faith, they're imposed
| for actual, provable violations of the law. Companies who
| do not violate the law are not fined. Complaining about
| fines is another way of saying "We'd like to trade in the
| EU while violating EU laws that every EU company also has
| to adhere to."
| pembrook wrote:
| The laws are specifically designed to target US firms
| without affecting EU ones and enforcement of fines and
| the size of them is highly selective -- the most
| attractive targets with the highest willingness to pay
| without getting to the point where they would pull out of
| the market.
|
| If you do not see the moral hazard in this, I don't know
| what else I can tell you. If the EU had a seriously
| competitive tech industry, many of these laws would have
| never been created, as the EU is not some moral believer
| in privacy (they fight against encryption domestically),
| they are just run-of-the-mill protectionists like all
| governments.
| detaro wrote:
| If you claim GDPR is "not affecting" EU companies your
| position has nothing to do with reality.
| 0xy wrote:
| There hasn't been a single DMA fine against an EU
| company, ever. Nor have any been investigated.
|
| The DMA is a tax on the United States. Look no further
| than its enforcement and its text (highly targeted).
| marceldegraaf wrote:
| DMA is not the same as GDPR.
| 0xy wrote:
| The thread is specifically about DMA. My parent comment
| mentions DMA specifically. This 'EU enforces the law
| equally' position is nonsense, considering Spotify, an EU
| company, was carved out from the DMA.
|
| Sounds legit!
| cwillu wrote:
| Could it be because EU companies based on doing shitty
| and illegal things just never get started in the first
| place?
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| This is nonsense, I'm about to launch a company in the EU
| and these laws are a major consideration and potential
| pain point for us, too. They are very relevant for EU
| companies.
|
| This makes me wonder if US companies complaining about
| the GDPR and DMA have any idea how many _more_ laws EU
| companies have to comply with in addition to this. It 's
| not easy.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| > provable violations of the law
|
| If you ever tried reading GDPR or DMA... you will realize
| pretty quickly that there is little meaning in them.
|
| I am totally unsure someone can prove a DMA violation.
| It's simpler with GDPR because a lot of concepts from it
| have been already somehow interpreted and agreed upon.
| But we do not have case law in EU, so I guess even known
| GDPR violations are often dubious.
| 0xy wrote:
| You're trying to claim a law that is exclusively used to
| fleece U.S. companies and never EU competitors is 'not
| bad faith'?
|
| When has the DMA been used against EU tech companies?
| Never.
|
| Your comment also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of
| the DMA and GDPR laws. Neither of them are objective
| laws, and they are applied subjectively without guidance.
|
| Let me be very clear: the EU does not tell you how to
| comply with either the DMA or the GDPR, period. The law
| is extremely vague and does not prescribe how to comply
| in any way, shape or form.
| marceldegraaf wrote:
| DMA has not been used against EU tech companies because
| US tech companies are clearly the market leaders in the
| area the DMA is concerned with. The DMA exists to make
| sure that companies (from the EU, US, or elsewhere)
| comply with EU regulations regarding privacy, tracking,
| and consumer rights.
|
| It's not a "tax" on US companies, it's just that US
| companies don't bother to comply with the regulations
| that apply in the EU, and thus get fined.
| f33d5173 wrote:
| >US tech companies are clearly the market leaders in the
| area the DMA is concerned with.
|
| There's a good argument that this is targeted. Why didn't
| this regulation affect SAP? Their market position gives
| them leverage over a massive number of companies.
|
| >it's just that US companies don't bother to comply with
| the regulations that apply in the EU, and thus get fined.
|
| It's not that they "don't bother", it's that they
| understand complying with the regulation to cost them
| more than the fine. In other words, the regulation itself
| is a sort of fine, or tax imposed by the EU, with a
| magnitude of roughly equal proportion to the fines it
| imposes.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| No offense, but this is a silly argument. Companies in
| country X tend to develop their products in conformance
| with country X. Of course, products developed in the EU
| will conform with EU law. By the same token, I would be
| surprised if US companies habitually developed products
| that don't conform with US law.
|
| > _It 's not that they "don't bother", it's that they
| understand complying with the regulation to cost them
| more than the fine._
|
| This means that the fines are not high enough and don't
| fulfill their purpose. That's an argument for the thesis
| that the EU is handling fines of violators in a too lax
| fashion, not the opposite. This has also been the
| impression of many EU citizens, and it seems to be the
| reason why so many huge US corporations keep violating EU
| customer protection rules again and again.
|
| But the reality is also that US companies that violated
| those rules basically have no EU competition because the
| EU has an abysmal market in certain tech domains. There
| simply are no viable EU equivalents to Apple, Google,
| Facebook, and Microsoft.
| f33d5173 wrote:
| >Companies in country X tend to develop their products in
| conformance with country X
|
| You have the order wrong. The companies came first, then
| came the laws. So we might reverse this statement to:
| "countries with company X in them tend to develop their
| laws so that company X is in conformance with those
| laws". This latter statement seems likely enough to be
| true, and is exactly the point of order in this
| discussion.
|
| >By the same token, I would be surprised if US companies
| habitually developed products that don't conform with US
| law.
|
| It's called "growth hacking". Uber was quite famous for
| it. The only time you'd benefit from breaking the law in
| a foreign country vs. your own country is if you intend
| to exit the market of that country; you don't have to
| worry about paying fines if the country can't reach you.
| If the intention is to continue doing business there,
| then any punishment will have to be borne just as if you
| were headquartered there.
|
| >This means that the fines are not high enough and don't
| fulfill their purpose.
|
| You're missing the point. The laws scale so that
| eventually they will be high enough that the company has
| to conform. The point I'm making is that a company's
| willingness to break a law shows that the law is costing
| them money, and we can even estimate how much money it
| costs them by the size of the fine. If we assume that all
| laws are fair and just then this just means that the
| company is evil. However, as we showed above, some laws
| are unjust, hence them costing a company money can be a
| way of unfairly extracting money from those companies.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| At least as far as I'm concerned, there is no need to
| further discuss your "laws are made for companies"
| conjecture. I don't find it plausible for various
| reasons. Anyway, good luck in your future endeavors!
| 0xy wrote:
| Explain why Spotify got a carve-out from the DMA despite
| being an effective monopoly gatekeeper.
|
| Is it because it's an EU company and the DMA is a tax on
| the United States?
|
| 'The law that applies only to US companies is applied
| equally and fair!'
| cwillu wrote:
| This argument would be just as valid if the US was the
| world leader in assassination markets: shitty and illegal
| practices are shitty and illegal, regardless of whether
| they were firmly established with significant markets in
| other countries first.
| 0xy wrote:
| Unless you're EU company Spotify, who got a carve-out
| from the DMA despite being a monopoly gatekeeper :)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| If anything is sneaky, it's the way how the in US you never
| see salestax until you're about to pay :D
| 0xy wrote:
| DMA is applied equally, you say. How interesting! Can you
| link me to the examples of the EU going after EU companies
| for DMA violations? I couldn't find a single one. Not a
| single case, ever.
|
| The EU wanted to fine Google $35,000,000,000 under DMA.
| That's a backdoor tax. No European tech company faces this
| scrutiny. Never have, never will -- because the DMA is a
| tax on the United States.
|
| It's also interesting that the Google and Meta DMA fines
| are expected to land in the next week. What a timing
| coincidence, almost like it's retaliatory (as many articles
| have suggested).
| echoangle wrote:
| Maybe the companies from the EU just didn't violate the
| law? How does enforcement prove that it's a tax?
| mopsi wrote:
| > Can you link me to the examples of the EU going after
| EU companies for DMA violations?
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_
| 24_...
| 0xy wrote:
| So they haven't gone after a single EU company and the
| ONLY court cases or investigations on DMA were
| specifically US companies?
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Comments like this make me wonder why some Americans think
| they should be able to move on every other country "like a
| bitch".
|
| In some places, dollar is not god. Important, but not god.
| photonios wrote:
| > Except for thee Dodge RAM, which can be converted to a tax
| efficient company car (crazy)
|
| You can no longer do that since 1st of Jan 2025. The BPM
| discount for company cars was removed.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Thank god, I'm so tired of seeing those things parked around
| Amsterdam when the original loophole was for farmers :eye
| roll:
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| As found elsewhere on this thread, the rate is based on trade
| deficit. Trump believes that having a negative trade balance
| with a country means that they're cheating somehow, as opposed
| to meaning that you just buy a lot of manufactured or raw goods
| for them.
|
| And no, that does not make any sense, and you're not missing
| anything. He believes this because he's a fucking idiot. He's
| aggressively racist, comically petty and thin-skinned, and
| overtly authoritarian, and as far as I can tell actively wants
| to permanently destroy American science and civil society out
| of spite, but he's _also_ really, really, really dumb. In this
| case, he 's managed to combine his powers to take a goal that's
| born out of racism and xenophobia and then implement it in the
| most idiotic way possible, and somehow the result is even worse
| than the sum of its components.
| blatantly wrote:
| But then by the same logic isn't income tax a tariff.
| blux wrote:
| Seems he is using trade deficit percentages in his chart
| instead of tariff percentages ... :/
| tossandthrow wrote:
| The thing is that Europeans wanted the Tesla cars. They fit
| perfectly into the Europeans identity - had Tesla kept on and
| kept the Tesla cars competitive without any political
| interference, then that could have been great car exports from
| the US to the EU.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Tesla built a factory in Germany to produce their cars.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Yes, but only later and only for the Model Y. The irony is
| that the most popular model, the Model 3, is manufactured
| in China, across the red sea (houti's!) to West Europe.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| They wanted it because at the launch until 2018 it was
| basically free because of all the tax incentives. You got the
| following benefits (Netherlands): Model-S was
| about 85K excluding VAT (21%) for the plain version
| Added tax incentives of 36% MIA Added tax incentives of
| 28% KIA Accelerated depreciation of 75% in the first
| year VAMIL Free parking in the cities (normal hourly
| rate 5 - 7.50/hr) More/better parking options A
| free charger in front of your house regardless where
| (basically your private parking spot until maybe 4 years
| ago). 0 BPM tax (can be up to 40% of the price) 0
| road tax (could be anywhere from 80-150 per month for type of
| car) 0 personal fiscal penalties of 25% of the new
| value of the car, including VAT (which would be a virtual
| 26K/year extra salary. At 51% tax that's about 1000 per month
| AFTER taxes)
|
| The 85K car resulted in 90K deductibles in the first year.
|
| The 85K car, including everything was cheaper to drive / own
| than a FREE car.
|
| Almost all of that stopped in 2022, and what do you know?
| People stopped buying. THIS is politics. Setting _policies_
| which drive _behavior_.
|
| The government "decides" what you will want to buy / drive /
| etc.
| croes wrote:
| They calculate (export-import)/import also they try to hide it
| behind complicated formulas
|
| https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114272487006550281
|
| On top of that they excluded services and only recognize goods
| for the calculation.
| axegon_ wrote:
| Brave of you to assume that comrade muskov understands
| anything.
| vagab0nd wrote:
| > But it simply doesn't matter bc we don't want their cars..
|
| But is that cause or effect?
| doener wrote:
| "This guy cracked the tariff formula: @orthonormalist
|
| It's simply the nation's trade deficit with us divided by the
| nation's exports to us.
|
| Yes. Really.
|
| Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1 Deficit = 123.5
|
| 123.5/136.6 = 90%"
|
| https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1907568233239949431
| mrb wrote:
| Holy cow! I had to check for myself: there are even more data
| points on trade balance for all countries at
| https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html
| (whereas @orthonormalist used a partial list from wikipedia)
| and the percentages I calculate line up exactly with the
| Trump's full list of "Tariffs Charged to the USA" percentages
| (https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1907541343250878752) !!
|
| Specifically they used 2024 trade balance figures. Example:
| take a random country, like Botswana, and the country's page at
| https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7930.html shows a
| 2024 trade balance of 104.3 (exports) and 405.1 (imports) so
| 1-104.3/405.1 = 0.74 which matches the "74%" "tariffs charged
| to the USA" claimed by Trump...
|
| Rarely you get handed such blatant evidence that someone
| produced bullshit numbers and/or doesn't understand where the
| numbers come from !
| mrb wrote:
| Edit: someone said it doesn't work for Japan but it does.
| Every country I checked by hand matches the figures
| exactly... For Japan the figures are from
| https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5880.html and
| their 2024 trade balance is: 79,740.8 (exports) and 148,208.6
| (imports) so 1-79740/148208 = 0.46 which matches the 46%
| "Tariffs charged to the USA " from the table shown by
| Trump...
| croes wrote:
| Some think AI helped with the formula
|
| https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114271484597938775
| mateus1 wrote:
| The takeaway from the X-poster being "it's good that they're
| using LLMs" is hilarious. Why praise the method if the end
| result is so bad?
| gruez wrote:
| The tariffs might be a bad idea, but this accusation is
| ridiculous. For a simple methodology like this, it's trivial
| to prompt engineer a LLM to produce the same response. It
| doesn't mean that that's how the administration came up with
| the policy, any more than a LLM getting the same (correct)
| solution as a student on an assignment means the student used
| a LLM on that assignment.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think the accusation carries more weight than you're
| implying because while correct answers are all similar
| having two students give eerily similar wrong answers is
| often used as evidence for cheating.
|
| The fact that this announcement is, to put it generously,
| _weird_ , and not how anyone in the real world actually
| implements tariffs points to this administration going with
| the formula from some undergrad econ textbook or econ blog
| they found and applying it to a spreadsheet. Maybe they got
| it from an LLM, maybe they didn't, but what matters is the
| college sophomore level of consideration of the individual
| tariffs.
| gruez wrote:
| >Maybe they got it from an LLM, maybe they didn't, but
| what matters is the college sophomore level of
| consideration of the individual tariffs.
|
| Sounds like we're in agreement? The tariffs are badly
| thought out, but the "lol they got their policy from
| LLMs" accusation is entirely spurious.
| jmeyer2k wrote:
| I really don't think this is _entirely_ spurious
| considering Elon has been using LLMs to fire government
| employees. It seems like a very plausible explanation for
| how they came up with this policy.
| gruez wrote:
| >Elon has been using LLMs to fire government employees
|
| Source?
| jmeyer2k wrote:
| from Mike Johnson, about DOGE's use of algorithms: ""Elon
| has cracked the code. He is now inside the agencies. He's
| created these algorithms that are constantly crawling
| through the data. And as he told me in his office, the
| data doesn't lie. We're going to be able to get the
| information."
|
| My speculation, but it's very likely that one of those
| pieces of analyzed information was the 5 bullet points
| from each federal employee justifying their job.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/live-
| blog/trum...
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/federal-workers-
| agenci...
| Spivak wrote:
| I think so, but I'm not actually sure that any of the
| realities that would have lead to this outcome is any
| less embarrassing for the administration. Because there
| is real information contained in the fact that pretty
| much every LLM gives roughly the same answer-- it doesn't
| help that the wording is similar either. Does it mean
| that they used an LLM? No not really, but it does
| strongly imply that their formula and the source for it
| are the "StackOverflow answer" for lack of a better term.
|
| And while it's not wrong I guess it's also the kind of
| thing that you would expect to use for your econ homework
| than a real application of policy. I don't think it's
| unreasonable to assume that the person who made this
| spreadsheet really did do something to the effect of type
| "how to calculate reciprocal tariffs" into Google. And
| that's not a bad thing necessarily if you're a rando
| who's just been tasked with figuring that out but you
| couldn't have found someone with more experience with
| _actually_ doing this and modeling the economic effects?
|
| I think that it's a testament to the genuinely breakneck
| speeds they been trying to get policy out there that it's
| been so slapdash.
| aurareturn wrote:
| Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1 Deficit = 123.5
|
| Taking Vietnam as an example, keep in mind that the trade
| deficit calculation only uses physical goods.
|
| Vietnam exports low value physical goods to the US. The US
| sells high value non-physical services such as Microsoft
| office, ChatGPT, Netflix, Facebook ads, iOS Appstore fees,
| iCloud subscriptions, etc to Vietnam. Other services include
| engineering consultants, US tax auditors, US consulting
| companies, etc. None of these are factored into the formula.
|
| So a country like Vietnam gets royally screwed by this formula.
| They are actually buying way more from the US than just the
| physical goods.
|
| If you're Vietnam, it's very hard to "just take it" as
| suggested by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The formula is
| flawed in the first place.
|
| If we truly want fair, the formula should be based on total
| profit of the goods and services sold. Services have much
| higher margins than physical goods typically.
| DarkNova6 wrote:
| This is such an obvious fact and the fact that not more
| people see through this is insane to me.
|
| The "trade deficit" is an arbitrary number unrepresentative
| for what the US makes the most money with.
| t_tsonev wrote:
| That's true for most other places, including the EU. With
| services included, the trade imbalance is negligible. Source:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_.
| ..
| snappieT wrote:
| I am quite certain that none of that software revenue is
| recognized in the US.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_EU_tax_dispute
| TrackerFF wrote:
| ...and every country USA has a positive trade with, will get
| slapped with the 10% tariff. Every country on the table Trump
| posted, that have received the 10% tariff, the US have a
| positive trade with.
|
| No winners in this one.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Plenty of countries got excluded from this--Canada, Mexico,
| Belarus, Russia...
| lcc wrote:
| Canada and Mexico were already hit with 25% tariffs (on
| non-USMCA-compliant goods) last month...
|
| Source for original tariffs:
| https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-tariffs-canada-
| mexic...
|
| Source for continued original, but no new tariffs:
| https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-tariffs-trade-war-
| sto...
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| Not saying I agree with it, but Trump has communicated that
| ideally these international companies would build factories
| in the US. There would be no point in doing that if not for
| some floor tariff.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| thanks for the information. In light of this, it seems pretty
| silly: economy on a world scale isn't a line, it's more like a
| ring (country A has a deficit with country B, which has a
| deficit with country ... N which has a deficit with country A)
| at best. Isn't it like saying everyone should trade everything
| at the same price with everyone?
| joshdavham wrote:
| Can anyone else confirm this is true? I'm feeling a bit
| sceptical here.
| imadethis wrote:
| Confirmed by the White House here: https://ustr.gov/issue-
| areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Thanks! This is an interesting read.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I honestly didn't expect that Americans would simply... choose to
| be poor.
| mikewarot wrote:
| As a preview of our future, it's now a good time to review the
| decline of standard of living that occurred when Great Britain
| lost the privilege of having the World's reserve currency, the
| Pound Sterling.
|
| My estimate is we're in for a 75% haircut to our personal
| standard of living as the US Dollar loses it's place, and we
| actually have to pay for everything we want in hard currency or
| real goods. Trump killed the golden Goose, and threw it into a
| wood chipper.
| lysecret wrote:
| Yep what many people overlook is that this deficient just means
| the rest of the world is financing the US overconsumption. And
| the only reason they are happy to do it is because they are
| happy to hold USD and are happy to invest in the US economy.
| jameslk wrote:
| White collar jobs will be destroyed by AI/AGI. But the US
| workforce consists of a large portion of white collar workers.
|
| To replace the coming destruction of white collar jobs,
| manufacturing and industry jobs must be brought back, along with
| new resource collection initiatives (e.g. mining). They will be
| needed anyhow to build robots, drones, and other machines to
| compete with China and India, technologically and militarily.
|
| Globalization will be effectively dead, remaining trust in the
| petrodollar will be destroyed, therefore so will Pax Americana.
| Expect more wars.
| ianpurton wrote:
| In your scenario white collar jobs will be destroyed globally.
|
| So effectively you would be paying people to work in
| manufacturing even though it's no longer necessary.
|
| You may as well pay a basic income instead.
| falcor84 wrote:
| There have been rapid recent advances in robotics, both
| classical industrial robotics (advanced by rapid iteration with
| digital twins and simulation environments like Omniverse), and
| humanoid robotics (pushed forwards by Boston Dynamics, Figure
| and a lot of other recent entrants). So if we really do achieve
| AGI that would take over white collar jobs, manufacturing jobs
| will likely too be taken over very soon thereafter.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Maybe if the US would clean up their production to what people
| actually want to buy it would help.
|
| EU does not just randomly target US products. No EU company would
| be allowed to sell food with the same processes (GMO, prohibited
| additives, medication traces, ...)
|
| The US is just running into these restrictions more than others
| because of their (lack of) health and safety standards being at
| odds with other markets.
|
| So, if the tarrifs lead to the world actually being able to buy
| something produced in the US with the dollars they were forced to
| accept, something real besides war equipment and (stale) IP bits,
| the problem would sort itself.
|
| At least the EU has discovered 'sovereignty', after ignoring it
| to the hilt for the last 55 years. Ringing up the concept even a
| year ago was at best met with a shrug and more often with a
| 'conspiracy theory' label. Sadly I don't even think they mean it,
| but I would be pleasantly surprised.
| glimshe wrote:
| If we could manage the country using HN experts, we'd be
| incredibly prosperous. People here know so much more than the
| actual professionals in the government.
|
| Only a few people pointed out the obvious. Trump aims to bring
| everyone to table to renegotiate global commerce. Every country's
| economic strategy today is to have positive trade with the US and
| that is unsustainable.
|
| A risky tactic, but refreshing after decades of the old tired
| policies that brought us the collapse of parts of US
| manufacturing and so much pain during COVID due to a complete
| dependence on foreign suppliers for... Well, everything.
|
| I don't know if this will work. But I know what we had before
| wasn't working. We'll see.
| akmarinov wrote:
| The pot calling the kettle black...
| omnimus wrote:
| Why exactly wasn't it working for US? The country with most
| wealth by like every measure? It's not enough?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This is the most mind-blowing thing to me: a bunch of multi-
| hundred-billionaries all standing beside a billionaire that
| shits in a gold toilet and is in charge of the richest
| country on Earth angrily proclaiming that _" Everyone is
| taking advantage of us!"_
| scns wrote:
| Seeing yourself as a victim makes it easy to justify your
| actions.
| paxys wrote:
| Well they were only getting one golden egg a day. If they cut
| the goose open they could get _all_ the eggs in one go.
| cbg0 wrote:
| > Trump aims to bring everyone to table to renegotiate global
| commerce.
|
| Throwing the gauntlet in the dirt isn't how you achieve this
| type of diplomacy, as the world will just form new economical
| alliances with more predictable trade partners instead of
| wasting time trying to appease Donald Trump.
|
| > A risky tactic, but refreshing after decades of the old tired
| policies that brought us the collapse of parts of US
| manufacturing and so much pain during COVID due to a complete
| dependence on foreign suppliers for... Well, everything.
|
| By "policies" do you mean US corporations trying to make as
| much profit as possible by moving manufacturing to cheaper
| countries?
|
| The result of tariffs, even if manufacturing for some products
| moves back to the US, will be higher prices for consumers even
| in the long run as you cannot produce things as cheaply as
| other countries. In a country where wages have not kept up with
| inflation the economic pain will keep mounting.
|
| > I don't know if this will work. But I know what we had before
| wasn't working. We'll see.
|
| Coupled with:
|
| > People here know so much more than the actual professionals
| in the government.
|
| Is funny to read; If you had those actual professionals in the
| government, they would be able to show you some serious
| predictions about how these moves will improve the economy and
| when you can expect the "golden age" to show up.
| Taniwha wrote:
| So what's going to happen is:
|
| - each country will impose equivalent taxes on the import of US
| goods - this is not only expected, but the norm under
| international trade law. - with the rest of the world, still
| having free trade agreements between them, will start trading
| around the US, the US won't be able to compete
|
| The value of the US$ will likely drop by the value of the
| tariffs. If everyone starts trading around the US we'll probably
| lose the US$ as a standard currency to trade in, maybe switching
| to yuan or euros, the US$ is buoyed by it being the currency
| everyone uses, that's going to drive it even lower.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| That's precisely the point right? Devalue the dollar when so
| you can pay off your debt with a higher value asset.
|
| If the US$ drop 30%, the deficit magically dropped 30% when
| calculated in something else....
| blatantly wrote:
| Which is like burning all the houses (including your own) so
| you can use your houses to buy other people's houses cheap.
|
| This only works if you have superior manufacturing infra. To
| some extent the FAANGs export tech. But if FAANG is a tiny
| thing compared to say Toyota.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| "Pay with digital dollar, and you don't have to pay
| tarifs". Problem solved. Demand for digital dollar will
| grow, but can also be used for normal dollar transactions.
| Therefore the USD will devalue, and gone is the national
| debt.
|
| /s/digital dollar/bitcoin or trump coins or doge coins
| blatantly wrote:
| This make no sense. Tariffs are paid by the supplier who
| is receiving money from the US customer. Are you saying
| if they pay the tariff in doge coins the tariff is zero
| doge coins?
|
| As for other polices that "punish USD" "reward
| MagicCoins" ... well the market would hopefully see both
| currencies as crap and use Euros or Yuan. Or maybe new
| currency baskets will emerge to decentralise power.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| No.. the tariffs are paid by the US importer/distributor
| (Target, Walmart) who is buying from the foreign supplier
| (Fererro from Nutella). The importer/distributor will
| charge the extra + margin to the US consumer. The
| supplier in the EU or China will pay exactly 0
| buckazoids.
|
| So basically in the US, Nutella will become only a luxury
| food!
|
| My point about creating a new currency is that I wouldn't
| be surprised if they would allow certain transactions to
| bypass some regulations.
|
| You know the US already pulled a trick on the dollar
| about 50 years ago, right?
| praptak wrote:
| > To some extent the FAANGs export tech.
|
| Speaking of FAANG - EU has been considering proper taxes on
| the digital economy for some time already[0]. I guess this
| will speed up the works on this.
|
| [0]https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-
| taxation...
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| That's like burning your house down to cook a steak.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Perhaps.. mr Oompa Loompa might as well go out with a bang.
| failuser wrote:
| Not just goods, US tech sector will be taxed and tariffed into
| non-existence.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| >each country will impose equivalent taxes on the import of US
| goods
|
| Many of these countries already have tariffs on U.S. goods. The
| EU has a 25% tariff on US agricultural, chemical, and some
| manufactured products.
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| When americans are angry, they tend to spread that frustration
| with a shovel on everyone.
|
| My country as been hot by 29% tariffs.. I can't say what we did
| to upset americans, given that we do not compete with any
| american industry in any substantial way, bu we are bearing the
| wrath of the wounded american blue collar worker regardless.
|
| I wonder what the net effect of tariffs will be in an year,
| americans are so used to cheap imports, especially all those
| shien/aliexpress/temu stuff.
| ookdatnog wrote:
| In the culture of the contemporary American right, cruelty is a
| sign of strength and mercy (or even just empathy) is seen as
| weakness.
| sirbutters wrote:
| bingo.
| 93po wrote:
| That's a human trait and not really an American one, though I
| am definitely not an apologist for American-specific problems
| rcstank wrote:
| Pakistan has 58% tariffs on the US.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| That's using the bizarre trade deficit/total imports formula
| put forward by the administration.
|
| I'm curious what Pakistan actually imposes on US imports as a
| policy.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| No, they don't.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Your country didn't do anything. America is being run by a
| madman, quite simply. This isn't reflective of Americans
| broadly. The people who voted for Trump wanted cheaper prices,
| now Trump is making everything more expensive.
|
| The next month is going to be very interesting. The business
| community is going to put huge pressure on Republican
| representatives to undo this, and Trump's own supporters will
| revolt once they see the new prices reflected at Wal-Mart.
|
| I don't know how it's going to play out, but this isn't the
| end. It's just the beginning.
| stirlo wrote:
| I wouldn't count out Trump sending out "tariff profit" checks
| (with his face of course) to all Americans. If he gives
| everyone a $2000-5000 check (undoubably paid for by
| borrowings not real tariff income) then he'll get a pass for
| at least a few months.
| daco wrote:
| how long before we start seing this reflecting in prices?
| ezoe wrote:
| Most goods in US directly or indirectly relies on importing. So
| practically, I think it just mean US introduced VAT.
| blatantly wrote:
| Not quite the same.
|
| An item sold for $1000 say would pay $100 at 10% VAT. The items
| in the supply chain all charge VAT and reclaim VAT they spent.
| I think usually this terminates at the import (maybe?)
| Mengkudulangsat wrote:
| Well, when you put it that way... it doesn't seem that bad at
| all.
|
| Maybe the real innovation here is the political manouvering of
| coming up with a new, desperately-needed government revenue
| stream.
| Palmik wrote:
| Except VAT and Sales Tax is typically applied regardless of
| where the item / service originated from.
|
| It also doesn't apply potentially several layers down.
|
| That's not to mention things like reverse charge for B2B etc.
|
| In other words, not similar at all!
| dguest wrote:
| Except it seems like the president has more control over
| tariffs.
|
| Taxes are approved by congress, so this was surprising to me.
| Does the president essentially has full reign to tariff whoever
| they want (for whatever reason) until the end of their term?
|
| Maybe this is less about economic independence and more about
| grabbing whatever power is within reach. If domestic taxes were
| up to the president and tariffs were up to congress, would we
| see exactly the same situation with domestic taxes?
| 55555 wrote:
| Factories are not coming back to the USA in large number, for a
| lot of reasons, at least not until full automation + tariffs
| makes them economical. But the biggest reason is that what's
| going to happen is that the average joe is going to suffer a bit,
| then will vote against these policies in the next election, and
| that's only 3.5 years away. If it takes a year to build a factory
| -- and frankly these tariffs could be adjusted again or removed
| in a few months -- and then they're likely to be fully removed in
| 3.5 years, I'm just not sure it makes sense to invest in a
| factory.
| aetimmes wrote:
| Optimistic to assume that the US will have voting in 3.5 years.
| c-linkage wrote:
| My suspicion is that Trump will declare a national emergency
| and suspend elections at the mid-term if it looks like the
| Republicans will lose seats in the House.
| bluGill wrote:
| I doubt enough people would stand for that. He might try,
| similar to how South Korea tried a similar trick last year
| - it didn't stick.
| Bhilai wrote:
| The government is already actively ignoring federal
| courts. Who is going to stop them?
| bluGill wrote:
| The army isn't likely to stand for this
| Loughla wrote:
| Want to bet that Trump's argument for a third term hinges on
| the US being in a recession/depression and needing him to see
| the economy through the struggles?
| kybernetyk wrote:
| So has anyone an idea how those tariffs would affect software
| sales? Say I'm a German guy selling a license for my software to
| someone in the US. Will this fall under tariffs, too. Or are
| software licenses somehow exempt? Asking for a friend(me).
| comrade1234 wrote:
| It won't unless you're shipping an item to the USA.
|
| I think the eu should look into taxes on u.s. services, instead
| of tariffs on products. Taxing AWS/Azure/etc +25% would do a
| lot in getting similar services in the eu expanded.
| lysecret wrote:
| My opinion. (Also as a German guy doing a similar thing).
|
| On the first order no. The tariffs just announced are only on
| goods and are collected at the ports when you physically import
| them.
|
| On the second and third order. What I think will happen is that
| the EU will mostly retaliate against US services. And then
| trump might counter retaliate against EU services. So I would
| start looking for customers outside the US.
| wtcactus wrote:
| I have a doubt for some years about the US, but never really got
| good info on it (maybe because it's a silly doubt).
|
| So, when I sell something to the USA (on eBay) for instance. It
| doesn't pay VAT automatically. Do Americans pay VAT when it's
| delivered?
|
| But, when an American buys something locally, they do pay VAT,
| correctly?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| We used to not pay anything for stuff, for instance I bought
| items that were dropped shipped from China under a certain
| value but that has ended.
| https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-tariffs-trade-war-sto...
| Sales taxes are on a state by state basis and online companies
| are required to collect it from the buyer and forward/report it
| to the state. Local purchases all have sales tax paid to state
| governments, some to city in urban areas. Some food items are
| exempt. A state can choose to not have a sales tax but most do
| IIRC. There is no federal sales tax. Until these tariffs which
| are essentially taxes.
| wg0 wrote:
| Real problem is budget deficit not trade deficit. Trade deficit
| matters to countries who can't control the supply of dollar.
|
| The country that prints dollars doesn't have this to worry about.
|
| Main problem is budget deficit and the huge pile of debt.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US dollar
| as a global reserve currency.
|
| Since trade is conducted largely in USD, that means other
| governments must purchase USD to trade. This is the core of trade
| deficits. Foreign countries buy US dollars so they can trade with
| other people. That guarantees the deficit since they give us
| something in exchange for USD, which they do not then spend on
| goods we make.
|
| If you no longer want the trade deficit that means payments of
| fealty by those who trade in dollars, which countries aren't
| likely to tolerate, or abandoning the USD as a global reserve
| currency, which would be _disastrous_ , truly disastrous. Our
| debts would suddenly become existential because inflating our
| currency to pay for them could result in functionally not being
| able to import goods required to run our economy. I don't think
| many truly understand just how disastrous it will be.
|
| This isn't America's liberation day. This is Russia's and China's
| liberation day. While America was once able to check their power,
| America is no longer in a position to do so, we will barely be in
| a position to satisfy our own military's logistics requirements.
|
| This is a decapitation strike (Timothy Snyder: Decapitation
| Strike -- https://archive.is/1xkxK) on America by our enemies. It
| is not only a de facto soft blockade of American trade, but it is
| an attack on the mechanics of American hegemony. Politicians
| already ask for money instead of votes or actions. That means if
| foreign governments spend money, they can elect their preferred
| candidates. America's own government was a result of french
| support. We institute regime change in other counties, and I see
| no reason to believe we are immune.
|
| If trade stops occurring in US Dollar, which is a consequence of
| the stated goal of our current ruling regime, that would be the
| coup de grace on this country's hegemony. It is the definitive
| end to it, and the birth of Chinese hegemony.
|
| Ray Dalio's _Principles for Dealing with the Changing World
| Order_ feels prescient:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8
| cromka wrote:
| A big, resounding AMEN.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| Something tells me that both China and Russia know all this
| and yet, the US administration is completely blind to it or
| are naively playing into their hands.
| elliotec wrote:
| Some say it's quite deliberate.
| rschiavone wrote:
| Naively? They are actively acting in bad faith to destroy
| the US from within
| ookdatnog wrote:
| I'm convinced Trump is 100% sincere in his belief that
| his economic ideas are brilliant and will lead the US to
| a golden age.
|
| I think his (and much of the far right's) mind is
| characterized by:
|
| - a deep incuriosity and unwillingness to learn about the
| world
|
| - extreme overconfidence in his own judgment
|
| - an understanding of the world as being pervasively
| zero-sum (shared with Putin); your loss = his win
|
| - obsessive preoccupation with the dynamics of
| humiliation: he feels an extreme need to be perceived as
| strong and to humiliate his enemies, and he greatly fears
| being humiliated
|
| I feel like these characteristics explain most of his
| policy. The idea of tariffs arises from his zero-sum
| mindset: the only way to gain is by making someone else
| lose. This is of course factually wrong, but he's too
| incurious to learn from history or economics. And, of
| course, he's massively overconfident, so the thought that
| someone else could know better does not occur to him. And
| once the ball is rolling, his fear of humiliation will
| ensure that he has to stay the course. His perceived
| enemies (which is everyone) have to come crawling to his
| throne, begging to have their tariffs reduced while
| praising his brilliant policies, and then he might
| consider it. So if that doesn't happen, his only options
| are (a) perpetually retaliating with ever-increasing
| tariffs, disregarding the consequences entirely; or (b)
| capitulating in the trade war (lowering or abolishing
| tariffs) while not admitting that it's a capitulation
| ("don't worry, my brilliant policy fixed the mass influx
| of fentanyl and illegal immigrants from Canada, so now we
| can drop the tariffs on Sri Lanka" or something similarly
| incoherent).
| tim333 wrote:
| I agree. Also a lot of Trump's eccentricities would seem
| to come from Peale and Positive Thinking
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/how-self-help-author-
| norman-...
|
| That basically pushed the belief that if you believe
| something enough the universe will make it so, such as 'I
| won in 2020'.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| What this analysis is missing is Project 2025. The
| Heritage Foundation and a hundred other conservative
| thinktanks, as well as half of Congress are all in on a
| singular plan to transform America into a backwater shit
| hole. Trump might earnestly believe these things, but he
| is not the source of most of his ideas. They are spoonfed
| to him.
| ookdatnog wrote:
| I agree that Project 2025 broadly sets the agenda, but
| when it comes to tariffs specifically, I'm under the
| impression that Trump is singularly obsessed with them
| and the conservative think tanks are, even if they're
| pro-tariff, uneasy with how far he's going with it.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Ha. Good point. It's analogous to summoning a demon,
| isn't it. They thought they could control it.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Don't forget Curtis Yarvin and his band of billionaire
| Silicon Valley VC adherents.
|
| People are arguing about the economic rationale here and
| forgetting the philosophical.
|
| They've broadcast a desire to send as much of the world
| to a new "dark age" as possible so they can sweep in and
| "save it", reforming it as they desire. Vis a vis
| Prospero
| cedws wrote:
| He's a spoilt brat who's never been told no. That's all
| it is. He grew up rich. He's never had to develop himself
| or face adversity. He's even been able to fail, over and
| over again, and still come out on top.
| ookdatnog wrote:
| That only explains part of his behavior. Something
| peculiar to Trump's mindset is the pervasiveness of zero-
| sum thinking. There is nothing about growing up spoiled
| that necessarily creates this mindset; in fact I'd expect
| the opposite (by which I mean, I wouldn't expect people
| who are never forcibly confronted with scarcity and zero-
| sum competition, to be obsessed by scarcity and zero-sum
| competition).
| cedws wrote:
| That may be true, but I'd argue that's just plain
| stupidity. Animals and toddlers exhibit similar behaviour
| - not understanding that collaboration and sharing can
| lead to overall better outcomes.
|
| Due to lack of adversity, his theories have never been
| tested, only reinforced. He thinks he's been flying the
| plane his whole life when really it's been on autopilot.
| ookdatnog wrote:
| Stupidity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition
| for believing in Trump's particular delusions. You can be
| stupid and not delude yourself into thinking that others
| must lose for you to win.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| You're describing a similar real life version of Kendall
| Roy but, remarkably, with even less adversity.
| prisenco wrote:
| There are those in the States who want to devalue the
| dollar as a pathway to greater industrialization and
| domestic productive capacity. The idea is to make the US
| labor force competitive with the rest of the world.
|
| Problem is, reigning in wages for labor after decades of
| encouraging rampant consumerism _and_ being in the middle
| of a cost-of-living crisis especially for housing seems
| like a political earthquake in the making.
|
| Like many of Trump's ideas, _maybe_ they could work if
| carefully managed over a long period of time so as to give
| the economy time to readjust but these are not careful
| managers and patience is not their virtue.
| oblio wrote:
| > There are those in the States who want to devalue the
| dollar as a pathway to greater industrialization and
| domestic productive capacity. The idea is to make the US
| labor force competitive with the rest of the world.
|
| > Problem is, reigning in wages for labor after decades
| of encouraging rampant consumerism and being in the
| middle of a cost-of-living crisis especially for housing
| seems like a political earthquake in the making.
|
| My guess those people are fine with basically converting
| most of the American labor force into indentured servants
| but normally politicians wouldn't go for it. Trump
| probably assumes he is immune to any reaction, let's see.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| I've mentioned this on HN before and I agree. Going
| backwards will not result in the US going upwards, doing
| the things that made the US successful until are not the
| same things that will make the US successful in the
| future.
|
| Many factory blue collar jobs left the US two decades ago
| and most of those aren't coming back yet somehow Trump is
| infatuated with this idea too.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| He. Was. Literally. Spewing. Russian. Propaganda. From.
| The. Whitehouse. When. Zelenskyy. Visited.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Also there's no tariffs on the billions of $ imports from
| Russia. Funny that.
| atoav wrote:
| I have a hard time telling this alleged incompetence apart
| from actual malice.
| switch007 wrote:
| Hehe silly stupid Trump and all his cronies being so naive
| and silly ! Do we already forgive him?
| cjrp wrote:
| > This is Russia's and China's liberation day
|
| With the tariffs in Asia (Vietnam: 46%, Thailand: 36%,
| Cambodia: 49%) it feels like a good opportunity for China to
| increase their trade/influence in the region as well.
| hliyan wrote:
| Sri Lankan here. They just slapped 44% on us (higher than on
| China). The country is just trying to recover from the
| economic crisis and the sovereign debt default of 2022, so we
| have very high import duties on certain items (e.g. vehicles)
| to discourage dollar outflow. Looks like the US just saw that
| as hostile and decided to strike back.
| re-thc wrote:
| > They just slapped 44% on us (higher than on China).
|
| Not true, China's is on top of its existing tariffs.
| lom wrote:
| So 53% on China in total, because the previous rate was
| 20%
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The strange thing I find is that Trump is not going after
| the companies who were the ones that decided to move
| production to China in the first place.
| Danmctree wrote:
| The numbers appear to be based on the trade deficit alone,
| not on any differences in import duties etc.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| That is correct. It was empircally proven here: https://w
| ww.ft.com/content/c4f9c7f6-0753-4458-840e-bcde1b74a...
|
| To quote Alex Scaggs of FT: Take the
| US's goods trade deficit with any particular country, and
| divide it by the total amount of goods imported from that
| country. Cut that percentage in half, and there's the
| US's "reciprocal" tariff rate.
|
| All countries tested against this theory are correct
| within 1-2 percent.
| credit_guy wrote:
| This is interesting. I don't know the details of Trump's
| tariff policy, but if this is correct, it would follow
| that the policy should have some mechanism to reduce the
| tariffs as the trade imbalance is reduced.
| brookst wrote:
| Not sure why? It's an irrational policy not based on any
| kind of sense. I don't think I'd expect it to be
| logically consistent. Besides, what do you do with a
| country where US is a net exporter? Provide subsidies for
| imports?
|
| It's all drunk monkeys driving a train... there is no
| economic theory to expect consistency from.
| libertine wrote:
| Unless they think that because it came out of an Excel
| formula, there's a logic behind it - and honestly, I
| wouldn't be shocked if these folks have that insight.
|
| > Besides, what do you do with a country where US is a
| net exporter? Provide subsidies for imports?
|
| In this instance, I believe the thought pattern is:
| "we're being smart here".
| jkestner wrote:
| They're even adding Greek letters, very intelligent.
| https://x.com/Brendan_Duke/status/1907741651172311353
| libertine wrote:
| I'll be damned, I had no idea and I still got it right.
|
| Once people accept that this administration is very much
| like the Russian regime, where everyone is the type of
| person playing to an aesthetic, you see this stuff coming
| miles away.
|
| This is what these sorts of people would do.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not "irrational." It's crude, but it's based on a
| logic that, on average, trade deficits should generally
| reduce to zero. And I strongly suspect this is about our
| large, diversified trade partners (EU, China) and is
| simply being imposed across the board for appearances.
| brookst wrote:
| There is no "logic" that any two country pairs should
| have an equal trade balance.
|
| "Belief" or "dogma" or even "idea" would work, but
| there's no logic in that claim.
|
| There's not even a policy goal. If the intent is to
| convert the US from a net importer to neutral or even a
| net exporter, it means our cost of production needs to be
| about average. Which means our populace's quality of life
| needs to be about average; wealthy countries are more
| expensive to produce in. Mix in the supposed interest in
| economic and social liberty, and you've got a country
| trying to destroy its own wealth in the name of
| controlling what its freedom-loving citizens buy
|
| There is no logic here. It's drunk monkeys all the way
| down.
| amluto wrote:
| Imagine the classical triangular trade. Three countries
| can have entirely balanced trade, yet each country has a
| 100% trade deficit with another country. Everyone
| benefits, and no one runs a trade deficit. Throw a huge
| tariff in and a country's trade, imports and exports,
| will collapse.
| oa335 wrote:
| > a logic that, on average, trade deficits should
| generally reduce to zero.
|
| 1. Why do you believe this is true?
|
| 2. Why do you believe that 0 trade deficits are a good
| thing?
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Now somebody factor in Services and rerun the numbers.
| floydnoel wrote:
| you can just read the methodology where they published it
| here: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-
| calculations
| matt-p wrote:
| You're right I think it's MAX(10%,(imports-
| exports)/imports) as a general tariff plus targeted
| reciprocal (in some cases, not all)
| blacklion wrote:
| It does nothing with "hostile". For China, yes, but for
| most other countries tariff is simply ($USA-import - $USA-
| export)/$USA-import. That simply, numbers are check for
| many many countries. I'm sure, USA imports a lot of tea
| from Sri Lanka and some fruits and wood/furniture.
|
| (Freshly made Sri Lankian tea is the best, IMHO! I mean,
| proper tea, not all these grasses, berries and synthetic
| aromas which are named "tea" in modern western world).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I would have assumed it was Sri Lankan textiles that were
| a major cause of the tariffs.
| mycatisblack wrote:
| Any recommendations for tea brands/products?
| blacklion wrote:
| Unfortunately, no, as I've changed country of living year
| ago and still can not find way to good tea in new place.
| Also, I'm not sure, that recommendations from Europe is
| actual for you even if I have one.
|
| But really best "black" tea of my life (and I spent most
| of my life in country with strong tea culture, where
| loose tea and teapots are still very popular, and not, it
| is not UK!) was bough at random tea factory in the middle
| of nowhere in Sri Lanka, packed in simple 1kg vacuum
| bags. No brand, no name, only date of picking (two days
| ago) and packing (today at the day of bought) :-)
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Ahmad Ceylon Tea is a good strong black tea. They mainly
| trade in Middle Eastern markets I think so check
| Arab/Indian grocery shops
| hliyan wrote:
| As a local, the brand called Dilmah is just a regular
| supermarket brand for us, but I hear it's quite popular
| in places like Australia and New Zealand.
| bandrami wrote:
| (waves from across Lake Beira)
|
| It's mind-boggling because the US has been trying very
| _very_ hard to pull Sri Lanka away from China for a decade
| now
| testplzignore wrote:
| I would be surprised if the current US administration
| even knows where Sri Lanka is, let alone our pre-Trump
| foreign policy with them.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Not to mention 29% tariffs on Norfolk Island. Who hasn't
| exported anything to the U.S. in years.
|
| And a 10% tariff on the Macdonald Islands, which has a
| population of zero (not including the penguins).
|
| Perhaps Trump thought he was taxing a fast food competitor?
|
| Fun fact: these are all internal territories of Australia.
| Why they get separate tariffs is weird.
| re-thc wrote:
| > Not to mention 29% tariffs on Norfolk Island. Who hasn't
| exported anything to the U.S. in years.
|
| Should have set that to 99% then eh?
| vincnetas wrote:
| Well, you know, you can go even higher, you don't have to
| stop at 100% :) Infinity is the limit here ;D
| wvh wrote:
| Tax the 99% seems pretty accurate.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It's a tariff, it could be infinity percent
| himinlomax wrote:
| 10% on British Indian Ocean Territories, whose sole
| inhabitants are US soldiers at the Diego Garcia base.
| dathinab wrote:
| It's what you get if you let people which don't know what
| they are doing make decision about things they don't
| really understand without being open for consulting
| because they know better using only oversimplified
| statistics which often don't tell even half the story.
|
| Or at lest it looks a lot like this, honestly from its
| patterns it looks a lot like the decision making done at
| a previous employee where someone who was expert in one
| field got a lot of decision power and decided they now
| know better in every field and dear anyone says
| otherwise.
| Ray20 wrote:
| Isn't this just common sense? I mean, if there are no
| people/production/imports in a certain territory, it
| doesn't mean that all of this won't appear there
| literally tomorrow, especially when tariffs on goods from
| these territories are zero.
| brookst wrote:
| If that's the thinking, they forgot Antarctica, the
| Marianas trench, and the Moon. Someone could,
| theoretically, take advantage of the lack of tariffs.
|
| I'm all for being charitable but at some point Occam's
| razor says it's just ChatGPT mistakenly including these
| places.
| seszett wrote:
| That doesn't seem likely, because they separately listed
| parts of France that are wholly in the EU (Martinique,
| Guadeloupe, Reunion and French Guiana, separate tariffs
| there are as meaningless as having separate tariffs for
| Berlin and Munich) but they also did not list those that
| are NOT part of the EU ( _EDIT_ one list I found does
| list French Polynesia, but not New Caledonia[0]) even
| though they are the ones where a separate rate would make
| the "most" sense (if any of this makes sense anyway).
|
| There _is_ trade today between New Caledonia, or French
| Polynesia, and the US. They are probably going to be
| tariffed at the rate for France, which is probably going
| to be the one for the EU, but who knows, neither New
| Caledonia nor France itself are listed.
|
| It is really apparent that there is no understanding
| behind this half-assed list.
|
| [0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2025/04/02/
| heres-...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| If there are no people there is no government to trade
| with, no customs, no regulations.
|
| It takes a lot longer to set all of that up than it takes
| for Trump to just raise another tariff if that happens.
| So nobody would invest in that. It would only be a
| loophole for a week or so.
|
| So why bother doing this pre-emptively (even if that was
| the reason)?
| kragen wrote:
| Where is this list posted by the US Government? These
| countries aren't in Annex I of the Executive Order.
| ourmandave wrote:
| It's like they pulled a list "All Countries the US Trades
| With" off wikipedia and used that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading
| _pa...
|
| Same clowns who made blanket cuts to every Federal dept
| and then had to walk a bunch of them back. There's no
| nuance or forethought, or realization of the long term
| damage they're doing.
| jeltz wrote:
| Very likely that is literally what they did.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Strictly speaking it also includes some British military
| and contract staff from other countries (cleaning,
| landscaping etc, whatever they need).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It has British in the name of course. Gotta tariff those
| leeches. /s
| benterix wrote:
| Seems like a business opportunity to set up an import
| company on the Macdonald Islands and sell the goods to the
| poor folks in Norfolk Island.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _these are all internal territories of Australia. Why
| they get separate tariffs is weird._
|
| Probably because they had separate entries in a "list of
| countries" which they picked as a base for their list? I
| don't really think there was more thought put into that,
| especially not for the countries who "only" got the
| "baseline" tariff of 10%. Interestingly though, Russia
| seems to have been completely left out, while Ukraine gets
| 10%.
| ourmandave wrote:
| _, while Ukraine gets 10%._
|
| The Orange Emperor has a huge hard on to make Ukraine
| suffer ever since it led to his first impeachment.
| Zelenski didn't kiss the ring so down they go.
| matt-p wrote:
| 10% is the hard minimum, nobody has less than 10%, so
| ergo 10% is actually the _most favourable rate_.
|
| Even the UK gets 10% which is truly mad given we have
| balanced trade and tarrifs (if anything the US tariffed
| the UK more than they did them).
|
| ^So essentially MAX(10%,(imports-exports)/imports)
| rob74 wrote:
| If you look at the full list (available e.g. here
| https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reciprocal-tariff-
| chart-20545...), some countries (most prominently Russia)
| are not on it. Whether that means anything is debatable,
| but Mexico and Canada, who were explicitly "spared" from
| these tariffs (but have other tariffs "tailor-made"
| especially for them), are also not on the list.
| matt-p wrote:
| Russia is a interesting catch, but you can easily imagine
| why now is an inoptune time to piss them off.
|
| The others make sense since they have worse tarrifs
| (though different, yes)
| graemep wrote:
| Russia is already subject to sanctions and high tariffs.
| What is the balance of trade like?
|
| Also imposing high tariffs now would reduce the power of
| the threat to raise tarrifs: https://www.ft.com/content/e
| c99b3c2-9f4d-4f34-9a01-f97d98131...
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| > Russia is already subject to sanctions
|
| So is Iran, and yet Iran is still on the list.
| Brybry wrote:
| Is it possible the Newsweek list is wrong?
|
| The EO and Annexes are not on the Federal Register
| website yet but on the Whitehouse website it has EO[1]
| and Annex I[2] and Annex II[3].
|
| I do not see Russia or Ukraine mentioned in any of those
| so I would assume both get the base "10 percent" under
| section 2/3.
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/regu...
|
| [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/04/Annex-...
|
| [3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/04/Annex-...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, the reasonable explanation would be that Russia is
| sanctioned and thus already has an infinity effective
| tariff.
|
| But then, I have no idea if the reasonable explanation
| applies. Are the other countries not in the list Iran and
| Cuba?
| chris_wot wrote:
| Then that list is wildly inaccurate. Norfolk Island
| hasn't been an external territory of Australia for some
| time (about a decade) - it is literally part of the
| Australian Capital Territory and they vote in the
| electorate of Bean.
|
| The Trump admin couldn't arrange a pissup in a brewery.
| kruador wrote:
| I've seen a suggestion that they're using ccTLDs.
|
| Which might explain why the British Indian Ocean
| Territory - population, one US military base - has such a
| high tariff. The BIOT, aka Diego Garcia, has the ccTLD
| .io.
| lostmsu wrote:
| In that case, where is the tariff rate for USSR (.su)?
| rob74 wrote:
| According to the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/apr/03/donald-trump...):
|
| > _Despite this, according to export data from the World
| Bank, the US imported US$1.4m (A$2.23m) of products from
| Heard Island and McDonald Islands in 2022, nearly all of
| which was "machinery and electrical" imports. It was not
| immediately clear what those goods were.
|
| In the five years prior, imports from Heard Island and
| McDonald Islands ranged from US$15,000 (A$24,000) to
| US$325,000 (A$518,000) per year._
|
| Maybe someone has accidentally uncovered some kind of tax
| evasion scheme here?
| matt-p wrote:
| Bizarre, tax/tariff evasion or "Mistake" does seem like
| the most likely explanation - yet US$1.4m is too little
| to bother evading tax on really. I mean that could be a
| refit on a boat or something -- $1.4Mn is literally
| nothing.
| piokoch wrote:
| Now it is 1.4 mln, in future this could be 1000 more, if
| this will help with overcoming tariffs. Check what
| happened with Germany export to Kazakhstan in 2022.
| matt-p wrote:
| Of course, several of these islands with 10% tarrifs are
| ex-colonies of various EU countries. Of course any french
| manufacturer will send goods to the islands (0%) then
| from there to the US (10%) rather than pay 20%. It's
| obvious, then the US will notice and the island will go
| to 20% and so on. It's all completely hateful.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > Check what happened with Germany export to Kazakhstan
| in 2022
|
| Can you elaborate? Tried searching for it, all i found is
| that Kazakhstan reported 500M exports to Germany, when it
| was actually 7B. But you were talking about Exports from
| Germany to Kazakhstan, which I wasn't able to find.
| gostsamo wrote:
| gp implies that those are goods which ended up in Russia
| after the EU war sanctions.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| oh, that would make sense, yes. AFAIK Turkey was also
| used a lot to _accidentally_ ship goods to Russia.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Pity the Faulkland Islands, population 3,200 and about a
| million penguins. They have a 42% tariff.
|
| Are you feeling great again, Americans?
| matt-p wrote:
| Yet they also are a British territory and the UK has a
| 10% tariff. What bonehead came up with that.
| codedokode wrote:
| This is to protect domestic penguin manufacturers. Well
| thought!
| Symbiote wrote:
| It could be a clerical error -- intending to choose Haiti
| or Honduras, or maybe Hong Kong, and clicking or typing
| HM by mistake.
|
| Or maybe OCR is used somewhere and has made the error.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That may be the stupidest explanation I have heard yet.
|
| It must be the correct one then. :-)
| michaelhoney wrote:
| Probably because the tariff table was put together by an
| ignorant acolyte. They are not serious people.
| xrd wrote:
| I saw a post on X which said it was "vibe tariffing" and I
| think the person was speculating that the tariffs were
| probably generated using an LLM and saying "make me a
| tariff chart with ALL the countries and each one about 25%
| but randomize them."
|
| That's the only plausible explanation I can see. A human
| with any brains wouldn't put tariffs on islands only
| populated by penguins.
|
| Doge should look into this inefficiency.
| lostlogin wrote:
| But some of those places aren't even countries. As
| already stated - weird.
|
| It's almost like it wasn't well thought out.
| blacklion wrote:
| > It's almost like it wasn't well thought out.
|
| Joke of the month.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Thankfully this is the only thing which this
| administration hasn't thought out as well as it should
| have.
|
| Only barely four years left, yaaaay!
| matt-p wrote:
| I think it's basically reciprocal adjusted for trade
| deficit, with a floor of 10%.
|
| So obviously you'll end up with 10% on all sorts of
| places where you actually have a trade surplus and no
| tarrifs on your goods, or, yes, islands inhabited only by
| penguins.
| blacklion wrote:
| For many countries patter look like ($USA-import - $USA-
| export)/$USA-import.
| jonasced wrote:
| I'm not saying they make sense but according to the US
| Trade Representative this is the equation used to
| calculate the tariffs:
|
| https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-
| calculations
| asah wrote:
| This is to stop the practice of shipping things to a place,
| making a small change, then re-exporting from there to
| avoid tariffs.
| brookst wrote:
| Is that commonly done on uninhabited islands? Wouldn't
| the shipping cost offset any gains? Where do you even
| make these small changes if there's nobody there? And
| what does the export paperwork look like?
| addicted wrote:
| The problem is that the truth, that this was some
| haphazard nonsense thrown together at the last second
| using some ChatGPT prompts, is hard to believe, so people
| try to insert rationality where it doesn't exist.
| brookst wrote:
| It probably already exists and I just can't find it, but
| there's some kind of law here about how some actions are
| so insane that they compel people to invent elaborate
| explanations to avoid the discomfort of recognizing
| insanity.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Funny thing is the assumption that having ChatGPT run a
| country is worse than elected politician is not as
| obvious as you might think.
| mateus1 wrote:
| That doesn't hold water if you're talking about
| uninhabited Antarctica territories.
| viraptor wrote:
| If this made any sense to begin with, then not excluding
| any region at all would make sense. Why leave some area
| which would become a theoretical middleman in trade just
| for purpose of tariff evasion? At least they'd be covered
| from the simple workarounds.
| rvba wrote:
| They knew what they were doing. They created a meme, a dead
| cat.
|
| Then you waste time discussing the unimportant, "funny"
| topic, while the big picture is ignored.
| riffraff wrote:
| > it feels like a good opportunity for China to increase
| their trade/influence in the region as well
|
| influence for sure. But trade? Vietnam/Thailand/Cambodia
| already have ~40% of their imports from China and 5% or so
| from the US, I don't think this tariff can realistically
| increase trade between China and SEA countries much.
| cjrp wrote:
| What about the inverse though; Vietnam/Thailand/Cambodia
| increasing their exports to China?
| thebigjewbowski wrote:
| China has been trying to build up domestic markets for
| the past several years. With the US imposing high tariffs
| on Chinese goods it stands to reason that they're not in
| a position to import from Vietnam, etc. because there
| will be domestic overproduction.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "because there will be domestic overproduction."
|
| Is that from a decrease in demand, or an increase in
| supply from other countries? I'm curious what the price
| elasticity of demand looks like for Chinese imports.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| My interpretation is: it's domestic overproduction
| because China isn't exporting as much to US so it will
| consume domestically and then not have need for imports
| from the other SE Asia countries.
| giantg2 wrote:
| My question is more about where the US is then importing
| from. I assume some goods are more elastic than others.
| So will the US simply stop buying, or will it shift to
| buying elsewhere with lower tarrifs?
| riffraff wrote:
| Could be, but China's imports from the US where not much
| (6% of their total) and cannot be easily substituted from
| SEA countries, as they were mostly importing a ton of
| agricultural stuff (soybeans, corn) plus fossils.
|
| I understand 6% of china may be a much higher percentage
| of, say, Vietnam's export, but I just don't think Vietnam
| can produce that much more of that, quickly.
|
| https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/explore/treemap?exporter=co
| unt...
| accurrent wrote:
| Would it reduce the share of exports that US sells? If they
| decide to buy directly from China over the US given the
| higher price of everything in the US (keep in mind the raw
| components dont all appear out of nowhere).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I checked these numbers for Thailand: China: 24%, US: 6.73%
|
| For Vietnam: China: 32.79%, US: 4.04%
| riffraff wrote:
| I did too, from the Atlas of Economic Complexity (2023
| data).
|
| Cambodia's top 3 is China 42%, Thailand 20%, Vietnam 12%
|
| Thailand's is China 28.7%, Japan 10.2%, US 6.3%
|
| Vietnam's is China 40.8%, South Korea 15.9%, Japan 5%
|
| https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/116/export-basket
|
| https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/764/export-basket
|
| https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/704/export-basket
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Non-monetary tariffs: - Regulatory hurdles that prevent
| import (eg. CE requirements) - Currency manipulation (eg.
| RMB) - Domestic industrial subsidies (eg. export tax
| credits). ... you have a lot to learn about international
| trade.
| Beijinger wrote:
| The Chinese don't want to buy anything, except raw materials.
| Their idea of trade is to sell products to you, not buy
| anything from you.
| inatreecrown2 wrote:
| What about fashionable Brand stuff?
| jimmydoe wrote:
| That will continue to exist but less popular than they
| use to, as local fashion brand is catching up fast.
| Jensson wrote:
| The CCP maybe, but the Chinese people for sure want to buy
| products from other countries.
| jimmydoe wrote:
| No, they used to, but less and less now, bc Chinese goods
| are getting better, plus economic is tighter in recent
| years.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| For most things, they already produce better and cheaper
| products. And they can buy from obter countries, It is
| just in US that Trump tarifs are applied.
| vachina wrote:
| And what's wrong with that?
| Beijinger wrote:
| Did not turn out too well the last time they sold tea,
| silk and porcelain and accumulated the vast majority of
| the world silver reserves.
|
| You don't want to buy anything? You don't need anything?
| The British had one thing the Chinese "needed".
| 15155 wrote:
| Eventually, you are no longer producing goods
| domestically and they can raise prices or deny your
| ability to purchase.
| vkou wrote:
| > This is Russia's and China's liberation day.
|
| There's no reason to believe that Russia will not continue to
| be a declining, stumbling, brain-drained backwater hawking a
| nuclear arsenal over its current borders, Belarus, and The
| People's Freest and Greatestmost Republic of Donetsk-Luhansk.
| oblio wrote:
| There is a somewhat small chance Donetsk-Luhanks escape in
| the next 5-10 years. Let's see.
| zaik wrote:
| > Foreign countries buy US dollars so they can trade with other
| people
|
| Who are those other people and why do they want to be paid in
| USD so badly instead of their own currency in which they
| presumably pay their employees and taxes? I never understood
| that.
| oblio wrote:
| Look up the petrodollar.
|
| If I'm Romanian and my currency is leu (RON) and you're
| Mexican and your currency is pesos (MXN), you don't want my
| RON since you can't use it for anything except for imports
| from Romania and I don't want your MXN since I can only use
| it for imports from Mexico.
|
| If we both agree on USD, I can go to any other country which
| wants USD (all of them) and buy whatever I want.
| cabirum wrote:
| Trading in USD means that all your transactions become
| known by a third party (US). That is why everyone should be
| interested in cutting out the middle man.
| 8note wrote:
| they dont have to be its just more convenient.
| oblio wrote:
| That's the case for everything except for bartering or
| using commodities (gold, etc) as intermediate trading
| mediums.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| This is called the euro dollar (look it up, it had nothing to
| do with Europe).
|
| In short: when two non us countries trade, eg., oil they
| settle on USD.
|
| So for south Africa to buy oil from Kuwait, they need USD.
| inexcf wrote:
| Eurodollar is cyberpunk. Don't you mean the petro
| dollar?(nevermind found Eurodollar instead of "euro dollar"
| now :) )
| tossandthrow wrote:
| I don't mean petro dollar.
|
| And you are more than welcome to use the internet if
| there are terms you don't understand:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurodollar (Edit: I see you
| found d the article, will leave the link for other who
| are in doubt :) )
|
| They are different concepts.
| noduerme wrote:
| In simple terms, if you're the Philippines and you're selling
| fish to Russia, would you rather have Rubles or US dollars?
| Way back in time, US Dollars were one to one based on gold in
| fort knox. Right? But no country has a gold reserve now. Most
| countries have a dollar reserve to back the paper money they
| print themselves. This is the main reason the dollar hasn't
| collapsed already.
|
| [edit] someone who graduated college with an economics degree
| please come and correct the following vague and possibly
| totally wrong perceptions I have as a subject of the American
| empire /edit
|
| The value of a country's money is backed by a combination of
| how much they produce and how much foreign currency and
| assets from other countries they hold (euros, dollars, gold)
| they have on reserve. Only the US gets away with having no
| actual reserve ...because a combination of military might and
| cultural strategic dominance has allowed it to BE the reserve
| for everyone else. This is why it somehow makes sense for
| America's economy to be based entirely on consumption rather
| than production.
|
| OP is right. Whichever superpower controls the levers of
| global trade is the one that can sell debt and enforce the
| currency regime.
|
| Some of us think that it's a lucky thing that it's been
| America, rather than a more authoritarian power, who had held
| that control for the past 80 years. Europe would not have
| recovered from WWII otherwise, and be living behind an iron
| curtain. Anyone who controls global trade after America is
| likely to be worse from a human rights perspective.
| zaik wrote:
| > if you're the Philippines and you're selling fish to
| Russia, would you rather have Rubles or US dollars?
|
| I would have assumed the fisherman in the Philippines would
| like to be paid in Philippine peso.
| riffraff wrote:
| but it's not easy to come by large amounts of Philippine
| pesos in Russia, cause no-one wants to hold significant
| amount of foreign currency they can't use for anything
| else. In some cases it may even be legally problematic.
|
| That's why international trade uses "strong" currencies,
| which are very liquid: you can generally get USD/EUR and
| then trade them for anything else with a limited spread.
| Good luck converting Hungarian forints to Lao kips.
|
| Being cut off from USD is why news of Russia resorting to
| barter[0][1] have occurred in the news since they got cut
| off from the US trading system
|
| [0] https://www.newsweek.com/russia-oranges-trade-barter-
| pakista... [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/first-
| russia-china-barter-tr...
| cutemonster wrote:
| I think that is (used to be) higher risk: Internal events
| could make the peso lose its value, but the dollar was
| pretty stable?
|
| (Probably it'd be a pretty big fishing company, exporting
| to a far away nation like that. Not a single person in a
| small boat)
|
| Edit: I suppose riffraff's sibling answer is better
| noduerme wrote:
| The fishermen will get paid in pesos but the company will
| be paid in dollars. And the company will probably put
| their dollars in a bank outside the Philippines, which
| only accepts dollars, euros or swiss francs.
|
| If the fishermen could be paid in dollars, they would
| probably prefer that.
|
| And the fact that they'd prefer that to being paid in
| Rubles or Renminbi is the underlying guarantor of
| American economic power... which, if it goes away and was
| replaced by Chinese power in the south china sea, would
| be catastrophic for the fishermen as well.
| quonn wrote:
| For this the Russian buyer would have to previously sell
| something to the Philippines and accept pesos. Why would
| they accept those pesos if they are not generally
| accepted elsewhere?
| addicted wrote:
| Where does the Russian company get its Philippine Peso
| from?
|
| Russia overall may have exported some stuff to
| Philippines but it's a huge country. The specific company
| would now need to find a way to acquire a highly illiquid
| currency available in tiny numbers which would be
| expensive.
|
| Instead, they simply buy dollars which are highly liquid,
| available in huge numbers, until now absolutely reliable,
| and accepted by everyone.
|
| Trading in dollars was at the end of the day cheap.
| rubzah wrote:
| So how about a decentralized currency that no one controls?
| Preferably digital. If only we had the technology ;-)
| noduerme wrote:
| Power abhors a vacuum. No such thing can exist without
| some state eventually dominating 51% of it. We've just
| tested this out since 2009 and it's already obvious that
| no crypto can escape state control, because the ingress
| and egress points are already under state control. Short
| of establishing your own colony on the moon or Mars, this
| ain't gonna happen.
|
| Luckily, it's still possible to change governments.
| Sometimes, in some places. Maybe not for much longer. But
| the idea that crypto will free us is a fantasy that at
| this point is mostly being peddled by secret police
| agencies in name-your-country.
| addicted wrote:
| This is a gross misunderstanding of what a currency
| actually is.
|
| A currency is a social construct. It has no inherent
| value beyond what people who trade in it place on the
| currency.
|
| As a result people don't want a currency whose rules of
| trade are defined once and it's unable to respond to
| actual world events.
|
| If you have a currency that is indeed responsive to
| changes in the world then there needs to be someone who
| you entrust with making those changes.
|
| At that point it doesn't matter whether that currency is
| digital or cash based. I mean, in actuality even the USD
| digital trade is order of magnitudes greater than its
| physical trade.
|
| The U.S.'s monetary institutions and its role as a trade
| promoting superpower is what makes the dollar stronger.
| Now that those institutions are not as reliable anymore
| and the U.S. is clearly not a trade promoter anymore, the
| dollar is definitely at risk.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| A currency is a social construct but it doesn't just come
| down to people who trade in the currency in a
| decentralized sense: the US govt imposes taxes on
| economic activity, and demands those taxes be paid in
| dollars (as other states do in their respective
| currencies), and this is enforced by the coercive power
| of the state, which is ultimately based on its military
| strength, since that's the ultimate guarantor of the
| continued existence of all the other institutions of the
| state.
|
| Of course, there's more to it in the complex system of
| the global economy, but the power of the state is still
| an important central factor in a currencies' strength -
| it's not just about collective perceptions of value.
| specproc wrote:
| I'm sorry, but the US has an abysmal human rights record.
|
| It has a per capita incarceration rate lower only than
| Rwanda, Turkmenistan, Cuba and El Salvador (which is a
| prison subcontractor _for_ the US).
|
| It has started more wars than any other country since the
| second World War.
|
| It is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon in
| anger.
|
| It has a death penalty.
|
| It supports numerous regimes with abysmal human rights
| records, Israel, Egypt and Saudi spring to mind, but that's
| just `head(3)`.
|
| It has bombed it's own population, shot its own students,
| had racial segregation in living memory.
|
| Given its scale and reach, I'd suggest that the US is, in
| fact, the world's greatest human rights abuser.
|
| I'm struggling to think of a country with a worse record.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Definitely the worst human rights abuser in history
| followed by the British, French, Germans, etc.
| noduerme wrote:
| uh... are you being ironic?
|
| Do you know what's going on to average citizens in North
| Korea?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aquariums_of_Pyongyan
| g
|
| Do you know that showing ANY anti-war symbol in Russia
| against the invasion of Ukraine will get you arrested?
|
| Do you know how many Tibetans put their lives on the line
| to organize resistance in Tibet, now, against the
| genocidal CCP?
|
| Do you know anything about the civil war in Sudan?
|
| So
|
| if the worst human rights abusers in your mind are
| America, the UK, France and Germany, is that because
| those are the only countries you can name? Or because you
| don't understand what the rest of the world is?
| specproc wrote:
| It's scale. North Korea is mainly abusing North Korean
| human rights, the US has brutalised many more countries,
| not incidentally including Korea.
|
| Yes, I'm very familiar with the Russia situation, but are
| you trying to say all arrests in the US are completely
| justifiable? Despite their apparent arrest-happiness,
| they've a much smaller prison population than the US.
|
| China, I know less about, but let's call the Uighurs and
| Tibet equivalent to say, Iraq and Libya, the US has done
| far more besides.
|
| Having worked in the aid business, I'd say I'm sadly a
| little familiar with Sudan. For example I know they've
| been victims of US sanctions which have created and
| exacerbated the famines and economic misery paved the way
| for this war. The US even lobbed a cruise missile them
| once.
| noduerme wrote:
| This sounds obvious: No country extends civil rights
| abroad that they don't extend to their own citizens. If
| Russia or China can't even give their own citizens a fair
| hearing for exercising their opinions against the
| government, what hope have their colonial subjects?
|
| The US has dominated the western world for 80 years, much
| of that in battle against adversaries who were much more
| brutal to their own citizens. Which by extension means
| more brutal toward innocent bystanders who fell under
| those adversaries power.
|
| It's a form of confirmation bias to assert now that all
| the world's maladies and wars stem from American
| interventionism. One can easily imagine a counter-history
| in which any of the forces America fought against had run
| over neutral countries without opposition.
|
| The very fact that South Korea and Taiwan, Germany,
| Japan, France, the UK, Norway, et al, are democracies
| with relatively decent human rights records and not,
| like, slave states subjugated to totalitarian regimes...
| does that fact not put hundreds of millions of human
| lives lived in dignity and freedom on _our_ side of the
| ledger? Unless you think those lives would have just as
| well have been spent in a concentration camp or a gulag.
| specproc wrote:
| South Korea was torn apart by a brutal US-led war; Japan
| nuked, twice, by the US. For every country where US
| barbarism has led to stable, peaceful societies, there
| are countless ruined shells: see Iraq, Afghanistan,
| Syria, Libya for recent examples.
|
| As far as the outcome of WWII is concerned, I'm presuming
| this is what you're referring to, Europe owes just as
| much to the Soviet union in the fight against the Nazis,
| they gave many more lives. Does that go on the Russian
| ledger?
|
| > It's a form of confirmation bias to assert now that all
| the world's maladies and wars stem from American
| interventionism.
|
| At no point have I claimed this. My claim is that I
| struggle to think of a country that has a worse human
| rights record than the US, which I'd lightly tweak for
| living memory.
|
| Still struggling.
| graemep wrote:
| > One can easily imagine a counter-history in which any
| of the forces America fought against had run over neutral
| countries without opposition
|
| There are examples of that. Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam,
| Afghanistan, Warsaw pact countries.
|
| On average the US side was MUCH better. There are
| examples that go the other way (e.g. Afghanistan) and
| that were bad enough it might have been better with the
| other side (many South American dictatorships)
| thiagoharry wrote:
| > Do you know that showing ANY anti-war symbol in Russia
| against the invasion of Ukraine will get you arrested?
|
| Like students protesting against Palestinian genocide?
|
| > Do you know how many Tibetans put their lives on the
| line to organize resistance in Tibet, now, against the
| genocidal CCP?
|
| Like the Hawaiian sovereignty movement?
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Why do you believe everything the western media tells you
| as they lie about everything relating to Israel and
| Palestine?
|
| Your North Korea info. America is the one that didn't
| allow free elections and invaded (yes I know you will say
| North Korea invaded. I know what people who repeat every
| western talking point say).
|
| --
|
| How do you think Africa turned out the way it did? Which
| people in the late 1800s decided to carve up Africa?
| Which people continue doing [neo]colonialism?
|
| Why is Sudan a country with its borders? It's the west
| that did that. A country can't be free when colonizers
| draw the borders. Even if you try to bring in the Arab
| states screwing Sudan up, those states are also a cause
| of western colonialism.
|
| --
|
| Tibet was a slave society and part of China for many many
| years.
|
| Most Tibetan people speak their native language. How
| about native Hawaiian or indigenous people in continental
| US?
|
| --
|
| Like I said in another comment. If Xinjiang had been in
| Europe or America. The Muslims would've been genocided.
| Thank god my people were in Xinjiang China and not
| elsewhere.
|
| I'd advise you to read Manufacturing Consent and learn
| more about the world before saying the most typical
| western talking points.
| noduerme wrote:
| This is easy. We're sitting here texting on an American
| platform and both willing to say that the imprisonment
| rate in America is abysmal, that in its history America
| has supported awful dictatorships and racist regimes.
|
| You can't do that in China or Cuba or Russia. You can't
| even mention it or you would be black holed and your
| family would be taken away in the night.
|
| I'm in America and I have no fear of telling the
| authorities what I think.
|
| As awful as some of the things America has done in the
| past 249 years are, you really can't compare them to the
| actions of non-democracies and authoritarian regimes. To
| do so is an insult to the people who struggle every day
| as prisoners under those regimes. You can hate America
| with all your heart, but you can't reasonably compare its
| foreign policy to that of Napoleon or Hitler or Stalin.
| You can't say that America ever attempted a Great Leap
| Forward leading to the starvation of 40 million people,
| or the Holodomor, or the Holocaust, or the Rwandan
| genocide or even the current genocide against Uighurs by
| China. Even the British empire looks incredibly cruel by
| modern American standards.
|
| Is it still a big world power dominating other smaller
| countries? Definitely.
|
| America has acted as if it were a global empire in its
| own self interest. But it's probably been the lesser of
| most evils, certainly throughout the 20th Century. What
| it is or may be now, it's harder to say, and we'll find
| out. But comparatively speaking, only a person who hadn't
| been to the countries you listed would make the claim
| that it was worse to have America running the world.
|
| Someone's going to run the world, you know.
| cousin_it wrote:
| In the past 249 years? The genocide of Native Americans
| was on the same scale as any of the atrocities you
| listed. Slavery too.
|
| In recent years? I'd say the War on Terror was one of the
| deadliest things in 21st century so far.
| noduerme wrote:
| Ok. Name a country 249 years ago that wasn't a conquering
| power, that didn't commit atrocities and that didn't have
| slavery.
|
| You can't. They didn't exist.
|
| Name one that opened its doors to immigrants, has the
| most diverse population in the world, progressively
| enhanced civil rights and enshrined freedom of speech,
| built a rule of law into its practices, and most
| importantly, name a single country that has had a
| peaceful democratic transition of power for more than
| half that time.
| labster wrote:
| San Marino, obviously.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The US's atrocities and slavery happened much more
| recently. And kept happening while other countries moved
| on to modern social democracy.
|
| And are still happening today, under the thin disguise of
| for-profit prisons and no-work = no-healthcare.
|
| The US has a long history of murdering people who are too
| politically progressive and/or get in the way of
| corporate profits.
|
| Racial segregation was still considered normal in the
| 1950s. There's still a huge swathe of the population who
| can't cope with the idea of anyone who isn't rich and
| white, ideally a man, with political power.
|
| As for immigrants - there are some people in El Salvador
| who won't agree with you.
| specproc wrote:
| Well, given that countries are a relatively new thing,
| that's a question that's complex to answer.
|
| I think what you mean to say is name a European country
| that wasn't doing all that stuff, because most of the
| world wasn't. I can name a European one actually,
| Ireland.
|
| That last bit doesn't sound so great to the non-US ear.
| Immigration, seriously? Ask MLK or Mahmoud Khalil about
| free speech. Democracy in America is a whole long
| conversation, but let's say it's at best of debatable
| quality.
| noduerme wrote:
| whew. Well, I and almost everyone I know are the sons and
| daughters of legal (and some illegal) immigrants to the
| US. Among us, a small group: Irish, Austrian, Persian,
| Jewish, Russian, Mexican, Filipina and Haitian. I've
| actually only met a few people in my life who claimed
| their family had been here more than 3 generations. My
| grandparents were illegal aliens who were granted
| amnesty. As such, almost everyone I know is very pro-
| immigration. We're all aware that there are nativist
| forces out there who think America is just a white
| christian nation, but I don't run into them much.
|
| As far as deporting visa seekers who lied on their forms
| and are shilling agitprop for terrorist organizations?
| sure.
|
| Ireland wasn't a country until what, 1916 or something.
| That's like saying the Czech Republic never invaded
| anyone. It's not quite clear it was due to any moral high
| standing, obviously when you're not in any position to do
| so it's easy to say you never did. What Ireland did
| excell at was terrorism, (er, anti colonialism) similar
| to the early anti-British forces in Jewish Palestine,
| although you wouldn't know it since the IRA went off to
| train in Iran.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Name one that opened its doors to immigrants, has the
| most diverse population in the world, progressively
| enhanced civil rights and enshrined freedom of speech,
| built a rule of law into its practices
|
| I'm pretty sure that Brazillians would raise their hand
| here. > most importantly, name a single
| country that has had a peaceful democratic transition of
| power for more than half that time.
|
| Does Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and UK count?
| Probably we can include France, Netherlands, Iceland,
| Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. I'm sure other people here
| can name others.
| graemep wrote:
| Comparing that last list of countries, I do not think any
| has as strong protection of free speech as the US has. On
| the other hand the UK seems to be a LOT less racist - I
| think the other countries are some where in between the
| US and the UK.
| danieldk wrote:
| Most of the listed countries do much better than the US
| in the free speech index:
|
| https://rsf.org/en/index
| graemep wrote:
| How is the index calculated?
|
| I definitely disagree about the UK. We have nothing like
| the constitutional protections the US has.
|
| The other country I know well, Sri Lanka, is fairly bad,
| but has got a lot better in recent years and that does
| not seem to be reflected in the change (I cannot see a
| history so maybe it got better and fell in the last year)
| and I find it hard to believe it is really just a few
| places away from the likes of Yemen or Belarus.
| graemep wrote:
| Looked at it. It is really an index of press/journalistic
| freedom, not free speech in general with is far broader
| (private individuals, right to protest, etc.)
|
| The quantitative part will have issues with data quality,
| and it focuses entirely repression of journalists and the
| media. It will be heavily distorted anywhere there is
| prevalent self-censorship.
| Urahandystar wrote:
| If you change the parameter to a more accurate <%50 of
| time the country has existed> you can include plenty of
| post colonial nations to that too.
|
| Plenty of African ones none the less, Botswana, Ghana,
| Cameroon, Senegal.
| soupbowl wrote:
| Canada does not have freedom of speech.
| specproc wrote:
| > Someone's going to run the world, you know.
|
| The entitlement in that statement is jaw-dropping. No, no
| one needs to run the world.
|
| And I definitely, definitely can compare US actions to
| Hitler and Stalin. Vietnam alone, over fifty years ago,
| ignoring everything that's gone on since was 1.4 million
| deaths, more than Auschwitz, about a third of the
| Holodomor.
|
| In the 20th century, leaving aside WWI and WWII, America
| fought its native population, and in Mexico, Cuba,
| Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Korea, Puerto
| Rico, Vietnam, Lao, Indonesia, Lebanon, the Congo,
| Bolivia, Cambodia, Granada, Libya, Panama, Iran, Iraq,
| Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia.
|
| These are troops on the ground wars, in the twentieth
| century alone, which are a matter of public record. We're
| not even at the War on Terror, small scale secret stuff,
| or counting the viscous regimes the US has propped up. Or
| sanctions, or internal repression, lynching,
| assassinations and the like.
|
| We don't have a body count as the US stopped counting in
| Vietnam, but I'd wager if we took all the deaths for
| which the US is directly responsible, it outstrip would
| outstrip Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union combined by an
| order of magnitude.
|
| [Breathes] To the initial point, and speaking from
| somewhere where one's political views can definitely get
| one locked up. The (debatable) free speech of Americans
| means nothing to those not protected by US law, which is
| most of the world.
|
| The American human rights record may look passable from
| the inside, but from the outside it's just another
| monstrous empire.
| noduerme wrote:
| Ok. Breathe.
|
| What would have happened if the US hadn't entered WWII or
| hadn't remained in western Europe to stop the Soviets, or
| hadn't responded to the invasion of South Korea?
|
| Presumably, someone or something besides what we politely
| call liberal democracy would be running those places,
| mmm? Probably in the manner in which either Germany or
| the USSR was run at the time, or in which North Korea is
| run today?
|
| Perhaps after murdering all the intellectuals and
| landowners and shop owners, they would have come to some
| phase of neo-communist authoritarian capitalism like
| Vietnam or China now, (or if the Nazis had won, maybe
| their kids would have agitated for free speech and
| minority rights!) although it's debatable whether a
| Stalinist or Maoist country could get there without an
| evil capitalist villain to push it toward perestroika.
|
| I'm not defending America sending troops hither and yon
| to defend banana companies.
|
| But you say it's breathtakingly entitled to simply state
| that _someone is going to run the world_ , and I think
| it's just a plainly obvious fact. By _someone_ ,
| hopefully you understand that I mean a polity and not a
| person, and ideally a group of nations with a commitment
| to the rule of law and civil rights. That would be as
| good as it has ever gotten in the long dark history of
| the world.
| specproc wrote:
| FYI I'm writing from a former Soviet state and need no
| lectures and whatifs on matters of the USSR.
|
| A US-led unipolar world existed between 1989 and 2025.
| Multipolarity is the norm, even the British empire was
| truly top dog for like 50-100 years at best.
|
| Attempts to control the world are what lead to the sort
| of acts of barbarism, exemplified by the US, that are the
| subject of this conversation.
|
| The US is, once more, the greatest human rights abuser in
| living memory, in large part because it believed it
| should run the world.
|
| The main learning from WWII, which America has
| consistently eroded over its period at the helm is that
| on a global scale, multi-state governance based on
| mechanisms like the UN, the international criminal court
| etc should be the mechanism for global governance. Not
| some state with a manifest destiny complex's self
| interest.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > on a global scale, multi-state governance based on
| mechanisms like the UN, the international criminal court
| etc should be the mechanism for global governance.
|
| The UN is not for "global governance", it is to prevent
| the nuclear holocaust that would be WWIII by giving super
| powers a place to resolve conflicts. The international
| court at the Hague is only able to try war criminals, for
| example from the Yugoslav Wars, because the countries
| were not powerful enough to just ignore it. Just because
| we were able to try and convict Slobodan Milosevic,
| doesn't mean that China or Russia would ever extradite a
| former head of state for trial.
| specproc wrote:
| They did Bibi, which was good. Growing a pair in its old
| age.
| noduerme wrote:
| Unfortunately the world bodies like the UN are
| overwhelmingly stocked with dictatorships ranging from
| Angola to Russia which have no interest in civil
| liberties or human rights. While they frequently claim
| the US to be the world's greatest human rights abuser, as
| you have, they perpetrate mass murder on their own
| citizens. The living memory of my family from Odesa, who
| survived the holocaust, who survived the famine, to see
| the invasion of Ukraine and the butchery of Hamas, while
| the culprits and murderers themselves run the United
| Nations and ICJ, and while people trying to survive are
| told they are the worst war criminals in history _by the
| people whose history is one of ceaseless murder_ tells me
| that it 's better to be American and, if necessary, spit
| out all those organizations for their lies.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >No, no one needs to run the world.
|
| Previous to the current unipolar hegemony of the US, it
| was the bipolar days of the US and USSR, otherwise known
| as the Cold War. That gave us Vietnam, Afghanistan part
| 1, Korea, and the Greek, Lebanese, Nicaraguan, Angolan
| civil wars. Before that it was a multipolar system of
| competing empires, fighting and carving up sections of
| the globe, which gave us both world wars, and countless
| wars before that. Unipolar hegemony provides stability
| and reduces interstate violence. The idea that Russia,
| China, and the EU competing for power and influence is a
| better situation does not ring true for me. The war in
| Ukraine is the first major interstate territorial grab
| since the end of the Cold War, and that is only the
| beginning in a multipolar world.
| noduerme wrote:
| Right. Next question being, of the current contenders for
| crown in a unipolar world, which one would you want to
| live in - and which would you think your children and
| their children had a chance of improving and being free
| in, rather than being slaves? Because if there's a better
| option than America, I'll move there.
| bluGill wrote:
| Everything changes. The America of 20 years ago is
| different from the America of today, and will be
| different in 20 years again (I have no idea how).
| Likewise for Europe (either individual countries or the
| EU). Will Argentina finally get of the constant ruin from
| decades of unchecked leftism and become a world power in
| 20 years - who knows. Some of the changes will be good
| and some bad. There are things to like and dislike about
| every option. So far I'm holding out hope that the US and
| Europe both overall remain good choices. 20 years ago I
| was expecting China to become a good choice, but now they
| are not. I didn't even think of Vietnam 20 years ago, but
| they have some good signs (I'm not sure if there are
| enough). There are a few countries in Africa that are
| doing good things even though the continent as a whole is
| a string of one bad thing after another.
| specproc wrote:
| Well argued.
|
| Unipolarity has however also seen considerable brutality,
| in the places the empire cares about (Iraq, Afghanistan,
| Libya) and the places it doesn't, like Rwanda.
|
| My point was made in frustration at the flippancy of the
| parent comment. The attitude that "someone has to run the
| world so it might as well be us" is precisely the source
| of the misery that the US, and every other empire, has
| inflicted on the world. It's a justification for untold
| evil and had to be challenged.
|
| I'd further argue that the war in Ukraine isn't the first
| interstate territorial land grab, far from it. What else
| was the War on Terror?
|
| The main characteristic of the (pre-Trump) US empire is
| that it doesn't incorporate territories, it plants bases
| and friendly governments. With varying degrees of
| success.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >Unipolarity has however also seen considerable
| brutality, in the places the empire cares about (Iraq,
| Afghanistan, Libya) and the places it doesn't, like
| Rwanda.
|
| We should probably view these _in context_ to
| alternatives. Just looking at Afghanistan, the 20 year
| "War on Terror" is estimated to have killed approximately
| 200,000 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In contrast
| to the Soviet Afghan War, which was half a long, but
| resulted in between 1.2 and 2 million people killed, an
| order of magnitude more bloody.
|
| Your comparison of the US and "every other empire" and
| equating Ukraine to the War on Terror is the same lack of
| context argument. The US "soft empire" of economic
| pressure, military protection, and clandestine regime
| change is not comparable to empires that literally would
| invade, conquer, and rule over other countries. The US
| does not own land in Afghanistan, did not annex and take
| control of oil or other natural resources in Iraq. Just
| because something is bad, doesn't mean it is equivalent
| to other bad things and I think it is very clear that the
| US has been much "less bad" than the previous
| alternatives.
| specproc wrote:
| I'm sorry, but going back to my very first post on here,
| staying in living memory, the US has a vast litany of
| egregious human rights offences to its name. This is an
| objective fact of record.
|
| The notion that it's any better than a hypothetical does
| not address the core point that the US government, has in
| actuality caused more suffering, to more people, in more
| countries, over a longer period of time than any other
| since the end of WW2.
|
| I don't want to see another empire, but the world won't
| be sorry to see the back of the US.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| > going back to my very first post on here...address the
| core point that the US government, has in actuality
| caused more suffering, to more people, in more countries,
| over a longer period of time than any other since the end
| of WW2.
|
| Lets look at that.
|
| >Vietnam alone, over fifty years ago, ignoring everything
| that's gone on since was 1.4 million deaths
|
| This ignores that the USSR was on the other side of this
| war, so those deaths are shared equally.
|
| >Cuba, Nicaragua, Korea, the Congo, Cambodia, Lao
|
| These are all Cold War proxy wars with the Soviet Union,
| a direct result of duopolistic fighting.
|
| > the former Yugoslavia
|
| The Yugoslavian wars were internal/civil wars over
| nationalism and involved extensive ethnic cleansing. The
| US stepped in and ended the wars after a fairly short
| bombing campaign.
|
| >We don't have a body count as the US stopped counting in
| Vietnam, but I'd wager if we took all the deaths for
| which the US is directly responsible, it outstrip would
| outstrip Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union combined by an
| order of magnitude.
|
| Mao's Great Leap Forward is estimated to have caused 30
| to 45 million deaths. Stalin's Great Purge murdered
| between 700,000-1.2 million. Stalin also forcibly
| deported 15 million people as part of his Dekulakization,
| and cause 20 million deaths total. This claim that the US
| has killed orders of magnitude more people has no basis
| in fact.
|
| A majority of the wars were proxy wars, and as horrible
| as they were, they were less destructive than wars of
| conquest they replaced. The Napoleonic wars killed 6.5
| million with muskets and cannons. Meanwhile, the Iraq
| war, the worst US war since the fall of the Soviet Union,
| resulted in less than a third of the deaths in Korean or
| Vietnam wars.
|
| Listing the United States Superpower misdeeds only sound
| horrible when you ignore the context of what the other
| Superpowers were doing. At it ignores the amount of
| violence in a unipolar US world compared to duopolistic
| and multipolar worlds.
| codedokode wrote:
| Can we summarize international politics like this: once a
| nice person gets a gun, he realizes that there is no need
| to be nice anymore?
| weatherlite wrote:
| > The value of a country's money is backed by a combination
| of how much they produce and how much foreign currency and
| assets from other countries they hold (euros, dollars,
| gold) they have on reserve.
|
| I think the simplest way to think about it is simply supply
| and demand. Currently there is constant high demand for USD
| due to its reserve status as you said (supply is also
| growing btw , deficits, printing of money etc). If demand
| goes down, there will be too much supply so the Dollar will
| naturally weaken against other currencies. As far as I know
| the fact that one USD equals 0.95 Euros (or whatever) is
| simple market forces of supply and demand.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Absolutely crazy when we see countries like China not be
| close to as bad as the most evil empire ever, the US. And
| yet somehow the thought is the US isn't the worst with
| human rights.
| noduerme wrote:
| When I was in my early 20s in Thailand I hated America
| under George W Bush. I had a conversation with a Tibetan
| guy who was on his way to sneak into China to help his
| village in Tibet which had been invaded back in the 50s,
| then colonized. He was going to help dig wells.
|
| I said to him: "America is just as bad as China! We're
| becoming the same thing!" This was during the Iraq war.
|
| He stopped me short. He said, "no you cannot compare
| them, at all, ever. You don't understand. I went to
| school at [ivy league college]. America is still a
| democracy. You have no idea how dangerous it is in
| China."
|
| He was right. I didn't...I was a spoiled kid with good
| intentions, and no understanding of how much evil there
| was in the world. You don't have the reference point of
| experiencing pure evil either to say what you're saying.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Tibet was a slave society. What are you talking about?
| Tibet was also a part of China for many many years.
|
| America is a liberal western democracy. Just because you
| disagree with the democracy of China does not make it
| true.
|
| You know in Tibet, 90%+ of people still speak their
| native language. Do you know how many indigenous people
| in Hawaii or the continental US speak their native
| language? Not close to the same.
|
| I am Muslim. I see what the west does to Muslims. I have
| looked into Xinjiang. If Xinjiang was near Europe or in
| America, the Muslims would've been genocided.
| codedokode wrote:
| It seems that other currencies have their own
| peculiarities; for example, when Russia sold oil to India
| for Indian rupees (to show that they don't want dirty
| American currency), they found out that you cannot transfer
| them outside of India or convert; you need to spend them
| locally.
|
| I wonder can China use this to make Yuan a new world
| currency (we all buy Chinese things anyway) or they cannot
| do it or doing this is not beneficial to them?
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| China has 2 currencies - Yuan for foreign trade and RMB
| for internal exchange
|
| I can definitely imagine Yuan being used more
| kaiwen1 wrote:
| RMB and Yuan are two names for the same thing. Maybe
| you're thinking of FEC? That ended in 1994.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| China maintains a soft peg on the yuan in order to keep
| their industrial output cheap.
|
| Part of the way they do this is with heavy currency
| controls. Those currency controls make it difficult to do
| international trade with the yuan.
|
| But worse from Chinas perspective you can't maintain a
| peg if your currency is used to trade goods, particularly
| fungible commodities because the commodity itself becomes
| the medium of exchange and derails the currency peg.
|
| That would be disastrous for their exporters and their
| economy is not in a position to sustain that currently.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's likely not beneficial to them, for a couple reasons.
|
| First of all, they can print Yuan. They want people to
| buy those pieces of paper for something of value. It
| doesn't do much good to have people send all that paper
| back in exchange for phones and tablets and stuff. Then
| they would've just got back some paper they printed in
| exchange for something that took time and resources to
| make.
|
| No, they need something physical or at least valuable for
| that paper. Such as local labor. Then their own
| population can spend the paper internally, because it's
| in theory exchangeable for something external. When China
| buys stuff from the US, it spends dollars. Which it buys
| from the US not with Yuan, but with computer parts. It
| pays its own people Yuan to make the computer parts...
| but the Yuan is only valuable because the government
| holds dollars and euros to buy stuff that their citizens
| can then buy for Yuan.
|
| This is why Trump's overall foreign policy and
| particulatly his tariffs scheme risks destroying America.
| If at some point enough countries decide that the USD is
| too unreliable, they may look for the next best paper to
| trade. That would be catastrophic for the US which may
| deserve it in any case, but it would be truly terrible if
| the alternative were a currency privately owned and
| manipulated by the leaders of a dictatorship. Perhaps the
| world isn't stupid enough to do that, but the size of
| China's economy compared to anything else would make it
| tempting.
|
| I'll stipulate right now that if China were a democracy
| with civil rights and a fair legal system, I would have
| no problem with it taking over world trade from the US.
| But currently it's a repressive authoritarian state.
| foobarian wrote:
| > I wonder can China use this to make Yuan a new world
| currency
|
| I suspect a strong precondition for this is to switch
| world oil trade away from the dollar, and that is
| currently enforced by a combination of military power and
| "winner takes all" network effect mechanics of the trade.
| exe34 wrote:
| > Anyone who controls global trade after America is likely
| to be worse from a human rights perspective.
|
| Next thing you know they might start sending innocents to
| megaprisons in El Salvador and lose track of them.
| noduerme wrote:
| don't get me wrong. I'm writing everything I'm saying
| because I desperately do not want America to go on a
| trajectory where it loses all credibility and becomes as
| bad as all the other human rights abusers.
|
| I think most Americans have no idea how much power their
| country wields. And it's horrific that they're
| susceptible to the kind of small thinking jingoist
| nationalism that doesn't befit a country so large built
| on an idea of cohesion.
| csomar wrote:
| > Only the US gets away with having no actual reserve
|
| Money is a credit. The US didn't get away with anything.
| Being a reserve currency has its advantages but the US is
| holding these liabilities with assets inside the country
| itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_
| net_inter...
| tzs wrote:
| > In simple terms, if you're the Philippines and you're
| selling fish to Russia, would you rather have Rubles or US
| dollars?
|
| I can easily see why Rubles would have been unacceptable
| several decades ago, but nowadays with the speed of
| financial markets why not set the price in the seller's
| currency and at payment time the buyer can trade enough of
| their currency for the seller's currency on the currency
| markets to get the payment?
| lackstein wrote:
| The challenge is that for a lot of countries, the forex
| markets for their own currency aren't deep enough to
| settle all of their international trade.
|
| Consider a country that has a large trade imbalance--they
| import a lot of goods and have very few exports. When a
| business in that country tries to import goods, say from
| the Philippines in Pesos or from Germany in Euros, the
| business will have to go to a forex markets and sell
| their local currency to buy the foreign currency.
|
| Who's going to take the other side of that trade?
| Normally, if a country exports a lot of goods, then
| foreign businesses will need to buy the country's local
| currency to pay for them, and that provides a market for
| exchanging Pesos and Euros for the local currency. But
| the country doesn't export very much, so other businesses
| in the Philippines or the Eurozone don't have much use
| for the business' local currency, and that means that
| there isn't a large market of people selling Pesos or
| Euros to buy the local currency.
|
| This example is a bit of an edge case where this
| fictional country runs a trade deficit with all of its
| trading partners. In reality, you'll likely have a trade
| deficit with some partners and a surplus with others. If
| you decide to denominate some of your international trade
| in US Dollars, then you're able to use the excess dollars
| coming in to your country from your exports to finance
| your imports. It's a lot easier than hoping that you can
| sell enough of your local currency or the currencies of
| the countries you're exporting to to buy enough of the
| currencies of the countries you're importing from.
|
| In some ways it's similar to the hub-and-spoke model of
| airlines. If you want to get from small town A to small
| town B, there might not be enough traffic in both
| directions to warrant a direct flight. But if there's a
| hub X, then there might be enough traffic between A and
| all the other flights into X to make it worthwhile to fly
| from X to B and vice versa. There might not be enough
| balanced trade between two small countries for there to
| be a deep market in their currency pair, but if you have
| both imports and exports denominated in US Dollars then
| you can generate an internal market in your country for
| exchanging your local currency for USD.
| ImJamal wrote:
| > But no country has a gold reserve now.
|
| Supposedly Zimbabwe's new currency ZiG is gold based. Not
| sure how many people would trust them though. They don't
| have the best experience with currency...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68736155
| graemep wrote:
| Because you can easily and cheaply convert USD to any other
| currency, and because it is the usual currency for
| international trade you can use it to pay someone else.
|
| Suppose a British company imports tea from Sri Lanka and
| Kenya, blends and packages it, and exports it to retail
| chains in multiple countries. If all the buyers pay in the
| same currency used to pay the suppliers the British company
| does not have to convert more to GBP than required to meet
| its costs (and profits!) so loses less on converting currency
| at all. The usual currency used for this is USD.
|
| So rather than:
|
| customers currencies -> GBP -> suppliers currencies
|
| we have customers currencies -> USD -> suppliers currencies.
|
| Edit: I have not explained very well in the bit immediately
| above. The point is that the British company will not need to
| convert the currency at all as they will be paid in USD and
| will pay in USD. In most countries you get better rates
| converting to USD, and its easier to hedge this way. Even
| more so if there is a longer supply chain as then you get
|
| A's currency -> B's currency -> C's currency to D's currency
|
| vs
|
| A's currency -> USD -> D's currency.
|
| There are a few wrinkles on this in that customers may
| already have USD accounts, and suppliers might keep some
| money in USD, but obviously customers will be paid by their
| customers in their own currency, and will pay their staff and
| most other costs in their own currency.
| codedokode wrote:
| Other currencies are not always great: for example, being
| under sanctions Russia sold oil to India for Indian rupees;
| then it found out that you cannot simply take rupees abroad
| or exchange and you need to invest them locally [1].
|
| But I also wonder what's wrong with other currencies and why
| they are not used more often.
|
| But of course, current US move will greatly help recent
| Russian efforts in persuading other countries to switch the
| trade from US-controlled dollars.
|
| [1] https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Delhi-pays-for-Russian-
| oil-i...
| Ray20 wrote:
| >But I also wonder what's wrong with other currencies and
| why they are not used more often.
|
| I think that they are less stable and more controlled by
| their countries of origin. The US has, relative to the rest
| of the world, an exceptionally stable political system,
| little control over the dollar, and a huge economy.
| addicted wrote:
| There are both hard and soft reasons for this.
|
| Hard reason: Oil was traded in U.S. dollars. This was
| basically built off America's status as the only open
| superpower and its military strength.
|
| Soft reasons: U.S. political stability (yeah, it's hard to
| understand that now after the past decade, but generally the
| U.S. has been extremely politically stable with Presidents
| largely maintaining their predecessors foreign policy even if
| they didn't agree with them), US company culture which is
| much cleaner than the rest of the world (American companies
| are far less likely to bribe, for example), and strong
| financial institutions like the independent Fed and the
| publishing of reliable and open data.
| kkarpkkarp wrote:
| That was the part of Bretton Woods agreement, 1944.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference
| kortilla wrote:
| > Since trade is conducted largely in USD, that means other
| governments must purchase USD to trade.
|
| But then they sell it back. What you're describing is not a
| trade deficit. To produce trade deficits they need to actually
| trade with the US. Buying forex does not do that.
|
| > If trade stops occurring in US Dollar, which is a consequence
| of the stated goal of our current ruling regime, that would be
| the coup de grace on this country's hegemony. It is the
| definitive end to it, and the birth of Chinese hegemony.
|
| Nobody will use Chinese currency because it doesn't float and
| it's subject to tight capital controls. Nobody in their right
| mind would switch to that from outside of China.
|
| You can argue that China could become a hegemony anyway, but
| that is because everyone wants to trade with them, not because
| they want to use their currency in 3rd party transactions.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Should be understood as buying dollars for goods.
|
| Also us trade is not bilateral.
|
| The usd that are exported from the US, is not used to buy
| gods from the US. They are used to buy gods from other
| countries.
| yladiz wrote:
| I think you're somewhat missing the point, which is that the
| collapse of the dollar as the reserve currency around the
| world will eventually lead to default of US debt, which has
| cascading consequences domestically and internationally. This
| is the direction the US is heading if it really continues to
| alienate its allies and try to "fix" its trade deficit.
|
| However, the OP was wrong about the fact that China will
| become a hegemony, for reasons like you mention, and so
| what's likely happening isn't the change of hegemony, it's
| the beginning of the end of the era of the American Empire
| and to a likely a multi polar world. It's going to take
| another world war, in some form, to create enough of a vacuum
| to give us another superpower/hegemony like we have with the
| US currently.
| owisd wrote:
| Foreign countries buy USD through trade. Japan needs dollars
| for international trade so the US Treasury prints dollars and
| gives them to Japan and in return Japan gives the US Nintendo
| Switches or whatever. Those dollars go into the international
| trade system and some of those dollars will just circulate
| internationally indefinitely and won't ever make their way
| back to the US, hence the perpetual trade deficit. This is a
| great deal for the US because at the national level they
| effectively got those Nintendo Switches for free.
| DrFalkyn wrote:
| It's not for free. It's in return for being under the US
| security umbrella, which costs the US about $800 billion a
| year
|
| Of course that umbrella could soon be gone, so it would be
| a moot point
| roenxi wrote:
| The umbrella could already be gone. There are big
| question marks over how much the in-practice umbrella
| looks like the Ukraine war where the US State Department
| provokes something then Japan gets flattened in the
| crossfire. How much should they be paying for that?
|
| People are coming out of the 90s mindset where the US was
| substantially more important than its competitors. It was
| easily worth paying for US protection then because it was
| obvious the US could back it up with muscle. Now the
| calculation is a lot less clear.
| thoutsnark wrote:
| Of that 800 billion, where is the money spent? If it goes
| to US military/industrial complex, it is basically a
| creator of US jobs.
|
| So it doesn't cost the US anything.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is "broken window fallacy"[1] territory. In economic
| terms defense spending is mostly waste because a lot of
| it doesn't get used (hopefully) or gets used to blow
| other stuff up causing net damage. The fact that it
| creates jobs is better than nothing, but spending the
| same money on infrastructure would increase the future
| productivity of the country.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken
| _window
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The defense budget is a social support program that
| conservatives will agree to. Rather than just providing
| people a basic income and healthcare directly, they add
| the hoop of holding down a job to access it.
|
| It also is meant to keep American industry active (to
| some degree) in case it is needed.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| No one else can project conventional military force
| anywhere on the global like the US. China is getting
| there but not quite yet. India and Russia are still
| regional.
|
| The Europeans couldn't deal with a few land pirates
| practically in their backyard.
| noduerme wrote:
| People trade in USD because the US is the largest of large
| economies. Everyone trading in USD understands already that
| the US can manipulate its own currency. But they take a low-
| risk bet that it probably would have far less incentive or
| inclination to do so than an authoritarian state like China
| or a small economy like Argentina. Capital flows to the US
| because the dollar has been "safe"... it inflates, but
| predictably slower. The Chinese regime is more than capable
| of opening the illusion of free markets and making 50-year
| promises not to interfere with free trade and capital,
| tempting foreign investment, only to break those promises
| with an iron fist.
|
| Regardless of the response from China, America is showing
| that it is irrationally willing to cede its incredible
| advantage for no decipherable reason beyond that some
| logarithmic curve of population idiocy has crossed the
| already absurd hockey stick of its own national wealth. It's
| a realtime lesson in the ancient rule dating back to the
| fertile crescent, that civilizations destroy themselves from
| within before they're conquered from without.
| testrun wrote:
| _This is a decapitation strike (Timothy Snyder: Decapitation
| Strike --https://archive.is/1xkxK) on America by our enemies._
|
| This was done by Trump, nobody else.
| choult wrote:
| Like GP said - America's enemies.
| testrun wrote:
| Ah, light bulb slowly going on. I was thinking Russia,
| North Korea or China. The traditional enemies.
| switch007 wrote:
| Is Trump not their US representative in chief?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I agree on Russia, but wouldn't be so sure Trump isn't a
| Russian asset.
| cantrecallmypwd wrote:
| That's an over-simplified answer. There are many people who
| share in the blame. Him for doing it as a visible catalyst,
| everyone who voted for him, presidential advisers who
| recommended these disastrous policies, and those who sat idly
| by and let the country be destroyed without acting to prevent
| it, especially those with greater-than-ordinary power who
| failed to act.
| testrun wrote:
| The buck stops here - Harry S Truman. He had this sign on
| his desk when he was president.
|
| Here is an explanation of what it means:
|
| https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/trivia/buck-stops-
| he...
| csantini wrote:
| It's typical Empire Hubris: thinking you can get away with
| anything because you are special.
|
| Trump doesn't really know what he's doing. He surrounded
| himself with yes-men that know perfectly not to contradict him.
|
| The global Dollar order was built to American advantage. Trump
| is dismantling it for no reason. If the dollar order crumbles,
| the US will discover it has much lower productivity.
|
| There is no American exceptionalism: it's just Dollar
| exceptionalism. No Dollar, no exceptionalism.
| piokoch wrote:
| Do you know how many taxes on many goods European Union has
| introduced? Was that "empire hubris" as well?
| csantini wrote:
| Everyone puts taxes on some sectors. It's economic policy.
| Trump is not doing economic policy. He's using a simple
| formula to ideologically reduce trade deficit. No matter
| the consequences!
|
| Trust the experts: America will be poorer because of these
| tariffs.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Why don't you enlighten us?
| csantini wrote:
| Not only America will be poorer. Everyone will be poorer
| cue_the_strings wrote:
| That's the point, people need to be poor and desperate
| enough to fight a (world) war.
| anonfordays wrote:
| And they're backing down on just enough woke stuff due to
| the concern about the lack of participation of checked-
| out-of-society White men in said (world) war.
| acdha wrote:
| Why don't you show some data supporting a more clearly-
| stated theory? All countries use economic policy, but
| there's usually some kind of strategy involved - for
| example, the EU has a tariff on American steel and aluminum
| because that was retaliation from Trump's earlier tariffs.
| Similarly, a lot of the EU agricultural duties are both
| protecting local industries but also enforcing quality or
| safety standards (this is also the reason for the
| Australian beef imbalance the President mentioned: they
| have a strict mad cow containment plan American producers
| dont follow).
|
| The American action doesn't follow a discernible strategy
| other than the fantasy that we can somehow "win" every
| trade relationship. That's why you see massive taxes on
| poor countries we buy a lot of raw materials from -
| Madagascar can't afford to buy the kind of expensive goods
| we primarily make, but we love to buy vanilla, so that
| trade "deficit" is both voluntary and to our mutual
| benefit.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| Looks like he learned that from Putin, who also surrounded
| himself with yes-men which lead to him thinking he could take
| Ukraine in 3 days.
| gns24 wrote:
| Although it now seems as if that was massively inaccurate,
| things were very near to turning out completely differently
| in the first days of the war:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlttS0N7uVA
| weatherlite wrote:
| I agree, losing reserve currency status would make American
| gdp / living standards to come way closer to Europe for the
| simple fact it won't be able to permanently increase its debt
| deficits. However its far from clear losing reserve status is
| going to happen, sure some countries will try to diversify
| but others are probably too tight inside the American
| umbrella (for defense for example).
|
| But yeah, surprises can happen so interesting times.
| sph wrote:
| > would make American gdp / living standards to come way
| closer to Europe
|
| Why are you making it sound like EU is a third world
| country? Are you aware that living standards are higher in
| many European countries than the US, right?
| weatherlite wrote:
| > Are you aware that living standards are higher in many
| European countries than the US, right?
|
| If we measure the total pie then its much smaller in
| Europe than in the U.S (I mean total wealth/gdp per
| capita). Only small countries like Norway or Switzerland
| have high gdp, in France or Germany its almost 50% lower
| than in the U.S.
|
| Now the pie does not distribute equally in the U.S that's
| true, but still, there are tons of millionaires in the
| U.S and I mean pretty regular people (doctors, finance,
| software devs etc) that had they lived in Europe they
| would have been comfortable and nothing more. think
| something like 100k Euro a year (at best) instead of 3-5
| times as much which is what they make in the U.S. If the
| U.S loses reserve status there just won't be enough money
| to go around for those salaries, or if there will there
| will be a horrible inflation, either way it just wont be
| sustainable.
|
| P.S - lots of middle class people in the so called rich
| European countries like Germany or the Netherlands cannot
| afford heating anymore. So no, it is definitely not third
| world but its also not particulalrly rich. The main
| advantage though is Europe has mostly free healthcare and
| the U.S is an absolute mismanaged mess in that regard.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| No. They're not, anywhere in Europe. This is a mystifying
| talking point based on wishful thinking and vastly
| overestimating the non-monetary value of a larger social
| safety net. The median US citizen is much, much richer.
| The first quintile US citizen is fairly comparable to
| first quintile Europeans in income and in-kind transfers.
|
| But it is certainly the case Trump is trying to bring US
| income down to something closer to EU levels, which will
| hopefully cause Congress to get its spine back.
| kergonath wrote:
| > others are probably too tight inside the American
| umbrella (for defense for example).
|
| The UK is reconsidering. If the bloody UK is not confident,
| who else would be? They might be too tight inside for now,
| but that is a strategic weakness and it will only go one
| way. Short of the US making it a satellite, it will only
| loosen.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| > I agree, losing reserve currency status would make
| American gdp / living standards to come way closer to
| Europe
|
| Why do you think that the standard of living would become
| better after losing reserve?
| re-thc wrote:
| > thinking you can get away with anything because you are
| special
|
| Might have been the case some many years ago. Not anymore
| with many nations not all that far behind.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >Not anymore with many nations not all that far behind.
|
| Nothing has changed. The dollar simply has no alternatives.
| The EU? After the freezing of Russian assets?
| Uncompetitive. BRICS? Even worse, you have one dictator
| literally controlling all monetary policy. Gold and bitcoin
| are too volatile.
| codedokode wrote:
| What about Chinese Yuan? China seems like an economically
| strong country with reasonable trade policy. Also, BRICS
| has at least two dictators.
| Ray20 wrote:
| By BRICS I've mean China and the Yuan. And in China there
| is exactly one person, who is deciding how reasonable or
| unreasonable any policy will be tomorrow.
| codedokode wrote:
| Well, China's international policy seems to be more
| consistent than that of a certain democratic country.
| tim333 wrote:
| Have to say I disagree there. It was American exceptionalism
| first which then led to the dollar being popular.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| But a large degree of the exception was being excepted from
| being blown to smithereens during WW2, which is the kind of
| opportunity that doesn't usually come around twice.
| sebastianz wrote:
| > doesn't usually come around twice.
|
| There is a _2_ in WW2 :)
|
| Sadly looking at history these "opportunities" come
| around quite regularly.
| lolinder wrote:
| > which is the kind of opportunity that doesn't usually
| come around twice.
|
| On the contrary, it most definitely did come around twice
| (hence the 2), and those same geographic advantages are
| still at play, barring thermonuclear war. It wasn't pure
| chance that Europe combusted in WW2, Europe had been on
| fire off and on for hundreds of years. Its geography just
| lends itself to large scale conflict.
|
| The recent period of peace is an exception, but it's not
| the first exception and there's good reason to suppose
| this one won't last forever either.
| vladms wrote:
| I could say the same about the period of peace in the USA
| which is only from 1865 (Edit: 1865 is the civil war, but
| thought hey let's look, and it seems there were conflicts
| with Indians up to 1924!) . It is an exception, because
| before that it was "the wild west", with various
| conflicts around.
|
| And not sure how this will play out long term, I don't
| get an impression that USA states are so aligned on
| everything.
| lolinder wrote:
| > I could say the same about the period of peace in the
| USA which is only from 1865
|
| You can't really compare a period of 160 years to a
| period of 80, especially given that there's war in Europe
| once again so the streak is already broken.
|
| 80 years is actually shorter than the gap between the
| Napoleonic wars and WW1 (~100 years), and only represents
| one generation that lived and died without a local war.
| On the other hand, 160 years out of 249 is 64% of the
| existence of the US spent in one continuous period of no
| widespread local conflict, and represents 5 generations
| that were born and died without any war on their
| doorstep. How is that an exception?
| vladms wrote:
| > Europe had been on fire off and on for hundreds of
| years.
|
| The point was that armed conflicts also happened on North
| American soil (even if consider only USA soil) for long
| time, so not so different for what happened in Europe.
| The last period of peace is as much an exception for one
| as it is for the other given a significant part of the
| history of the continents.
|
| Also, if we think of countries, there were various
| European countries that did not participate in or had
| fights on their territory, during neither WWI or WWII
| (Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain) and some
| of those did not have a war on their soil for similar as
| USA ...
| lolinder wrote:
| > The last period of peace is as much an exception for
| one as it is for the other given a significant part of
| the history of the continents.
|
| But... it's not. 160 years of straight uninterrupted time
| without total war out of 250 makes no-total-war the norm,
| not the exception. >50% of the last 250 years have been
| spent in one continuous period of people not having to
| wonder if bombs would be falling on their heads today.
|
| That's totally different than Europe, whose longest gap
| between total war was the 100-year gap between Napoleon
| and WW1.
|
| > Also, if we think of countries, ... some of those did
| not have a war on their soil for similar as USA
|
| Yes, but those are each the size of a US state, so
| unsurprisingly didn't lead to them taking the place of
| world superpower.
|
| If you're going to be criticizing my argument it would be
| helpful to keep in mind that I was replying to this:
|
| > But a large degree of the exception was being excepted
| from being blown to smithereens during WW2, which is the
| kind of opportunity that doesn't usually come around
| twice.
|
| You're taking things in totally different directions that
| aren't relevant to the question of how often the US will
| continue to be the largest Western country with no threat
| of total war on domestic soil.
| lolinder wrote:
| Since you edited to reply to my comment I'm stuck leaving
| a second reply: the conflicts with Indians were not at
| all the same as the kind of total war we're talking about
| with the wars of religion, Napoleonic Wars, and the World
| Wars. The subject of this thread is wars that lead to
| mass destruction of national power and lead to other
| countries taking the lead.
|
| For future reference, it makes for much easier reading if
| you just reply to me instead of editing your comment to
| respond. This isn't a Notion doc, it's a forum, and I'm
| not leaving feedback on an artifact, I'm engaging you in
| a discussion.
| cpursley wrote:
| Big beautiful oceans
| asmor wrote:
| > He surrounded himself with yes-men that know perfectly not
| to contradict him.
|
| Stephen Miran is believed by some to be the "mastermind"
| behind this. I'm not sure Trump has ever had a singular
| original idea.
| anoncow wrote:
| Time to learn Mandarin
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Ran Hou Ni ?
| piokoch wrote:
| Yes... and no. Having own currency as a global reserve currency
| has its disadvantages too. For instance it keeps value of the
| currency high, what makes whole USA production noncompetitive.
| USA exports two things: internet services (all those Googles,
| Facebooks, etc.) and military equipment.
|
| The problem is that internet services are making rich small
| group of people (owners, software engineers), military
| production is a niche, so there is a big group of people who
| lose jobs, are on low paying positions, as being, say, a car
| factory worker, does not bring enough money. Those people voted
| Trump, so Trump is trying to solve their issue by bringing back
| production back to USA, and the way to do this is twofold: make
| USD weaker and make foreign goods more expensive.
|
| All this was not a problem till early '00, when USA didn't have
| much competition (basically Western Europe and Japan), but the
| times has changed and USA is seeing that. BTW this is not a
| Trump thing, Obama, Biden administrations were also noticing
| that and taking actions, like (in)famous Obama reset with
| Russia to be able to expand trade over there. "Pivot" to Asia -
| failed Biden project of Indo-Pacific, that was supposed to
| convince Vietnam and others to follow USA job regulations, what
| would make their products more expensive. Surprisingly, they
| told Biden to go away...
|
| Another thing is that for years USA was in a sense donating
| European industry, for instance taxes on European cars in USA
| were 2%, while taxes on American cars in Europe (that is
| European Union) were 10%. Trump puts this to an end.
| munjak wrote:
| >Another thing is that for years USA was in a sense donating
| European industry,
|
| Sure and Europe is not at all donating to US arms industry or
| to US tech sector? Europe is pretty liberal about letting US
| dominate those domains inside the EU, without opposing that.
| Plus in geopolitics it simply follows the US, that's sort of
| been the deal.
|
| Seems like this US leadership thinks it can both have its
| cake and eat it.
| ilikerashers wrote:
| Tech giants have no competition in Europe and no capital to
| do so. In some ways, what Trump is doing is a call to arms
| for the EU to kick their economies into shape. We've been
| stuck in 0 growth for years, the UK is in a 0 growth trap
| since the GFC.
| codedokode wrote:
| > For instance it keeps value of the currency high, what
| makes whole USA production noncompetitive.
|
| But devaluation of the currency will hurt people who have
| savings in this currency, and cause higher inflation, right?
| On the other hand, paying back loans and mortgages becomes
| much easier.
| HPsquared wrote:
| More people are in debt than have savings, the government
| itself included. Populism (of both left and right
| varieties) is surely associated with inflation.
| rini17 wrote:
| You conveniently omitted the 25% tax on European light trucks
| and SUVs in the US. Which is the biggest car market segment.
| mdemare wrote:
| The US has levied a 25% tax on imported light trucks since
| 1964, and 2.5% on passenger cars. The EU levies a 10%
| import tax on all cars from the US.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| The Pax Americana died during the first week of the Trump
| administration when he proceeded to turn on practically every
| single one of US' long standing allies and dissolve NATO for
| all intents and purposes. All the soft power disappeared right
| there.
|
| Perhaps the world will be better for it in the end, but it's
| definitely a turning point. A new world order will emerge and
| America won't be at the helm.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| I'd feel a lot better about it if more countries held values
| of free speech and democracy. If mainland China were like
| Taiwan, great. Unfortunately I fear those might just end up
| being viewed as instruments of America's decline.
| red_admiral wrote:
| So much for making America great again. It looks like they're
| doing the exact opposite.
| tobr wrote:
| Looking forward to "great" as in "great recession".
| saulpw wrote:
| Make Another Great Depression
| raverbashing wrote:
| Not surprising from someone who could bankrupt a casino
| stockerta wrote:
| A casino? Didn't he bankrupt like 3 casinos?
| azan_ wrote:
| It was four.
| op00to wrote:
| Look at Atlantic City. Trump (among others) did that to
| that city. That is what the US will become. It is heart
| breaking.
| tim333 wrote:
| Make America a great mess.
| latentcall wrote:
| Good. Time for this idea to die finally.
| lapcat wrote:
| > This is a decapitation strike on America by our enemies.
|
| > if foreign governments spend money, they can elect their
| preferred candidates.
|
| > We institute regime change in other counties, and I see no
| reason to believe we are immune.
|
| Do we really need such conspiracy theories? There's a much more
| mundane explanation, which is well-documented:
|
| "Trump's Love for Tariffs Began in Japan's '80s Boom"
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/politics/china-trade-d...
|
| "Allies and historians say that his admiration of tariffs is
| one of his longest and most deeply held policy positions."
|
| In the 1980s, Russia still had a state-run socialist economy,
| and China was just beginning to grow (albeit quickly) after its
| 1978 economic reforms. These countries did not purchase Donald
| Trump's policies.
|
| If you're concerned about foreign influence and foreign money
| in American elections, you should be much more worried about
| Australian Rupert Murdoch, for example, who founded Fox News,
| or South African Elon Musk, who just spent a whopping $250
| million to elect Donald Trump and is now personally dismantling
| the US government (although Musk's money didn't help in the
| local Wisconsin election), or Israel, which has had one of the
| most powerful and well-financed lobbies in Washington for
| decades.
| Juliate wrote:
| > This is a decapitation strike [...] on America by our
| enemies.
|
| From within. Make no mistake: whatever influence has been or is
| behind, this is entirely driven by USA citizens.
| sph wrote:
| My long term wish is in 40 years, after civil wars/world war
| and rebuilding efforts, that we discover a better alternative
| to democracy; we have gone all in on it the past 200+ years
| and is utterly exploitable in the information age, as the
| populace gets less informed and more malleable to any
| malicious actor. It is a pretty fatal problem if the success
| of your government model depends on citizens not being total
| idiots.
|
| My anarchist wish is that we figure out that large states
| have large benefits but also very large downsides. A country
| as big as many Western countries have simply no business
| existing, as they are unworkable. How is it realistic to have
| a functional government for 300 something millions souls and
| an area the size of the United States?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > A country as big as many Western countries have simply no
| business existing, as they are unworkable.
|
| I don't know why you would single out western countries
| when China and India make most of them look like tiny.
| musha68k wrote:
| I wonder which nations are truly "antifragile" to similar
| takeovers?
|
| The U.S. seems especially vulnerable with its limiting two-
| party bias, among other factors.
|
| I'd argue that the level of education of the general populace
| in (still) functioning democratic countries might be the prime
| mitigation factor.
|
| Based on this, if I were placing bets on prediction markets,
| I'd wager that e.g. Finland would be among the last to succumb.
| ljm wrote:
| It would also help to have a population without a deep-seated
| beef going back to the civil war. You arguably have two
| separate 'America's split down that historical line that
| might not ever see eye-to-eye and, just like the US itself
| has installed dictators or favourable governments by funding
| disruption abroad, it is open to be exploited the same way.
| p3rls wrote:
| Albion's rotten seed was never unified as one. Seeing the
| civil war as some unique historical genesis of the split--
| instead of a national shotgun-wedding of sorts is
| completely backwards.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It wasn't much of a shotgun wedding. Yes, it was a common
| enemy/cause during the revolution, but then took years of
| debate for the constitution and years more for the bill
| of rights. Over time, we've forced more and more
| homogeneous (federal) laws. The more laws you pass, the
| more likely people are affected in the outgroups under
| the splits you mentioned and it compounds. All the
| concerns about states rights and small states being less
| powerful are still concerns for some groups of people
| today. We've essentially been eroding the initial status
| quo that had been agreed upon.
| p3rls wrote:
| Personally I think calling it a shotgun wedding is one of
| my best metaphors of the week and perfectly evokes what I
| was going for. Contemporaries from like Lincoln's 2nd
| inaugural of course would call it finer things, like a
| national baptism etc. but shotgun wedding captures the
| borderer element, too. I like it and stand by it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Oh, you mean re-unification after the civil war. Sure, I
| can see that. I though you meant the initial creation of
| the country.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's not really split down the historical line of north and
| south. What you are actually seeing are urbanization rates,
| with more urbanization in the north east (this was true and
| a factor during the civil war too). You can look at the
| county level voting maps to see this exists in the north
| too. If you look at only state level maps, then you lose
| that precision. It's not a north vs south thing, it's and
| urban vs rural thing.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| I think there might be something to it: if you look at
| the correlation between commitment to maga beliefs and
| affection for the confederate flag, my guess is it would
| be fairly high
| giantg2 wrote:
| You might be surprised how many confederate flags are
| flown in rural Union states. You'd probably have an even
| higher correlation with the Gadsen. Weak correlations are
| everywhere, we're looking for the strongest, which
| appears to be urban vs rural.
| tim333 wrote:
| You can look at countries that have remained democratically
| stable for a long time. The UK and Switzerland come to mind.
| I live in the UK and we have an odd system that I used to
| consider a bit of a gimmick for the tourists to take photos
| of but appreciate more these days. Basically the fact that we
| have a king but with severely curtailed powers delegated to
| the elected folk makes it very hard for one of them to
| appoint themselves effectively king, especially as the
| military all swear allegiance to the actual king (or queen).
|
| It's partly effective because they system wasn't really
| designed but evolved out of a lot of bloody power battles,
| going back to at least 1215
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
|
| I used to think it was silly but if you look at rival
| European powers they had Russia with Stalin, Hitler in
| Germany, Napoleon in France, Franco in Spain, Mussolini in
| Italy etc. The UK is one of the very few which avoided having
| a dictator.
|
| [Edit - I was kind of talking about the wrong thing -
| avoiding dictators rather than Trump types]
| barrkel wrote:
| The UK already had a populist takeover - Brexit.
| tim333 wrote:
| I guess. I was thinking more of dictatorship rather than
| populists getting voted in. We may well get Farage voted
| in some time.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| With Brexit and now this I've been thinking that if
| someone out there is intentionally trying to dismantle
| the 5 Eyes they're doing a bang up job of it. Step 1
| appeal to their nationalistic or even imperial senses to
| make sure they piss everyone else off, step 2 stoke some
| internal grievance politics, step 3 get them to unload an
| entire AR15 magazine into their leg (to paraphrase Dril).
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Brexit and Trump are both proxy wars of subversion, with
| traitorous support from a cadre of extreme reactionaries
| in both countries spending huge sums on social and trad
| media to manipulate public opinion in a self-harming
| direction.
|
| It's very impressive in its way.
|
| Although the winners won't get to enjoy their victory for
| long, because climate change is going to roll right over
| everything over the next few decades.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Yes, extreme reactionaries like the United Auto Workers
| union who showed up in some quantity at the tariff show
| last night.
|
| The reality is "left wing" parties have completely
| abandoned their traditional working class demographic -
| both through encouraging manufacturing to be offshored
| and allowing in mass unskilled labor to compete with
| them. During the Bush era I thought working class folks
| were voting against their self interest when they voted
| Republican. That's not the case anymore.
|
| It's convenient to try to play this off as some kind of
| foreign influence thing, but the Democrats did this to
| themselves.
| Flozzin wrote:
| While there is a lot of good thoughts about what the
| democrat party did wrong to lose the last election. I
| feel your comment places all the blame on them. They did
| not force republicans to go down this road. This is not
| the inevitable outcome of a broken democrat party. The
| republicans went down this road, and so did their voters.
| They chose this, many times. There were many
| opportunities for the republican party to rid itself of
| this ideology but they chose power.
|
| So yes, the democrat party has had many failings over the
| past decade if not more, but that doesn't make this a
| binary choice between Trumpian policies and democrat
| failings.
| sph wrote:
| It's been known since the 2000s that it is in Russia's
| best interests to weaken the UK-EU link. Russia was a
| major contributor to the Brexit cause, but it seems this
| topic quickly gets swept under the rug by British
| parties, red or blue.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| That is because both were manipulated and ashamed of it.
| Russia is too sophisticated to play just one side. They
| have centuries of experience playing various ethnicities
| within russia against each other to maintain control. In
| the 2016 US election, Russia would have had a strong plan
| either way, what the alternative would have been and if
| would have succeeded, who knows, but it is note worthy
| how many members of the US administration, including its
| head, were formerly democrats.
| Maken wrote:
| Oliver Cromwell doesn't count?
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| And all the kings? Henry VIII for a start.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The UK has a monarchy with severely curtailed _official_
| powers. But it 's a front. The UK is effectively run by the
| Crown, and the aristocrats have huge land, property, and
| investment/financial empires, own all the main media
| outlets, and set policy through their clients in the
| political system.
|
| The aristocrats are narcissistic, shockingly racist, and
| often rather stupid - good at tactics like manipulating
| elections and news cycles, but contemptuous of most of the
| population, and clueless about how to build an economy
| based on growth and invention instead of rent-seeking and
| extraction.
| amunozo wrote:
| Switzerland. Power is extremelly distributed between
| municipalities, cantons and, in the Federal Government, there
| are 7 equal ministers. The system is not only robust by
| definition, but encourage dialogue and citizens participation
| in politics at every level through popular vote, educating
| people during centuries.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's more likely to be related to culture and political
| structure than education is my guess. Unless, maybe, we want
| to use a different definition for education than just degree
| attainment. For example, Finland has lower attainment rates
| for bachelor degree equivalents than the US. This would seem
| to disprove your point.
|
| The real issue is the two party split and urbanized
| distribution. The way the voting works and the structure of
| the houses means that once you reach about 85% urbanization
| the rural areas won't matter. We can see this at many state
| levels that mimic national political structure. We have
| multiple nations within our county, with the biggest divide
| probably being between urban and rural. So all you have you
| have to do is promise the rural group who feels they are
| increasingly marginalized a candidate who will look out for
| their interest. The specifics of those promises don't really
| matter because in the 2 party system it's us vs them more
| than actual policy positions. You will find a much bigger
| difference looking at the urbanization based metrics than you
| will at the roughly 10pt difference in who people with
| bachelor degrees voted for.
|
| Edit: why disagree?
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Don't know why the disagree, but this is a real problem and
| plagues the House of Representatives which then allows
| actually incompetent but loud candidates like Greene and
| Boebert to vote on important and serious legislation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If these individuals are exceptions and the rest are
| competent, then there should be minimal impact beyond
| creating a side show. As a tiny minority, they wouldn't
| have any real sway in the bill construction within their
| party, especially if it has any chance of passing. The
| split between the parties is usually narrow, so the
| representatives with the most potential to influence
| passing legislation are the ones near the center margins
| as they may vote against party lines and provide a bigger
| base of support. The reps near the outside margins tend
| to have less influence. Even if they sway some stuff
| during the creation of the bill, it's stuff that likely
| has to get ripped out to find enough support to pass into
| a law.
|
| But if things are passing by only 1 or 2 votes anyways,
| where anyone 1 persons vote is a major deciding factor,
| that's an indication of a bigger issue. Such a divide
| means that half the country feels they are getting
| screwed and there was little compromise to include their
| concerns.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > If these individuals are exceptions and the rest are
| competent
|
| I've got news for you, then!
| giantg2 wrote:
| If they're the average, then why call them out as
| specific examples?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Not exactly. The house of representatives should be much
| much larger than it is.
|
| The same thing with the senate too. Current senate setup
| gives a lot of power to empty land.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Current senate setup gives a lot of power to empty
| land."
|
| That's the entire premise that got the smaller colonies
| to sign on. It's a feature, not a bug.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, owning slaves was a feature at one time. Features
| change with time.
| jabl wrote:
| > For example, Finland has lower attainment rates for
| bachelor degree equivalents than the US. This would seem to
| disprove your point.
|
| In Finland, most university students go for a master's
| degree. A bachelor's degree is often seen as sort-of a
| safety valve, if it turns out you didn't have what it takes
| to complete the full master's degree. So you get at least
| some sort of degree from having been to university rather
| than just having your high school diploma as your highest
| official educational achievement.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Even if we look at just masters, Finland is only slightly
| ahead a 16% vs the US 12%. But using this sort or logic,
| then why not compare doctorate degrees, for which the US
| has 2% attainment vs Finland's 1%? To me it seems like
| drawing random line to fit the narrative when I don't see
| anything in the degree metrics that points to Finland
| being more educated. We could use different metrics, such
| as some sort of test, or test scores at the secondary
| level to say Finland has a better education or education
| system (we'd have to see the numbers to verify, but I
| wouldn't be surprised).
| jabl wrote:
| I have no interest in a one country vs. another country
| pissing match, just pointing out that (arbitrarily)
| selecting the bachelor degree as some kind of metric
| might be highly misleading, at least in the case of
| Finland.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Except we just looked at the numbers and showed it
| doesn't appear to be misleading. I was merely responding
| to the person stating they would bet that Finland would
| be the last democracy to decay due to education. But it
| seems the educational attainment is roughly equal. I also
| called out that other metrics might be better indicators,
| both if we were using education and if we were looking at
| other factors like culture.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My only issue with your comment is it seems to blame a two-
| party system. It is my understanding/belief though that a
| two-party system is just inevitable in the U.S. When a 3rd
| party has risen it acts only as a spoiler to the party it
| is most aligned with.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| With increased granularity of representation, you can
| have more parties. Breaking The Two Party Doom Loop
| discussed details.
|
| Our country has not increased the number of
| representatives sufficiently to allow local issues to
| reach national stage, so instead we all worry about
| national issues over local ones, for one example.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Most local issues shouldn't be handled nationally due to
| the diverse perspectives. That's pretty much the whole
| point of the (largely ignored) 10th amendment.
| lolinder wrote:
| Why does that make it inaccurate to blame the two party
| system? The two party system causes the problem, but that
| doesn't mean something else can't cause the two party
| system.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, not inaccurate ... maybe _loaded_? I wasn 't really
| refuting the point, merely responding to why OP may have
| been getting downvotes. Sometimes words can suggest a
| bias and people may respond to that.
| viraptor wrote:
| It's only as inevitable as the current voting system. If
| it changed to some kind of ranked choice, new parties
| would quickly gain representation.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| To be sure. But here we are.
| giantg2 wrote:
| A third party has never had enough support to really be
| viable. Nor have we had multiple alternative parties with
| viable support. Right now it's all or nothing. If you had
| multiple new options with nuanced positions (even just
| filling the quadrants of social/fiscal
| conservative/liberal), then people could have real
| options. I admit this is unlikely under the current
| structure. However, it could take shape with structural
| changes to the voting process. Yes, even with some of its
| negatives, ranked choice might be one possible road to
| multiple mainstream parties.
| bluGill wrote:
| > A third party has never had enough support to really be
| viable
|
| The republicans were a third party. Granted the old Whig
| party was seeing significant troubles, but they still
| were a third party and thus prove you wrong. 3 parties
| are not viable, but third parties are.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sure, I should have qualified in the past 100 years, or
| modern times, or whatever. The political environment, the
| modes of information, types of issues, and even the
| culture has drastically changed since the Republicans
| surpassed the Whigs. It's not really an applicable
| example to the modern scenarios.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > It's more likely to be related to culture and political
| structure than education is my guess. Unless, maybe, we
| want to use a different definition for education than just
| degree attainment. For example, Finland has lower
| attainment rates for bachelor degree equivalents than the
| US. This would seem to disprove your point.
|
| The university educated are the top. Politics is not about
| the top few percent, it's about the masses. At this the US
| education system is really bad, especially in poorer areas.
| adrianN wrote:
| The allies tried to make Germany robust against this.
| pembrook wrote:
| Doesn't matter how intelligent or educated or homogenous
| culturally the Finns are...if Russia were to decide to
| invade.
|
| Domestic political antifragility means nothing if you're not
| anti-fragile in terms of the outside world.
|
| It's called the anarchic global system for a reason. The only
| thing enforcing norms is power and the fear of it.
|
| Antifragility would be the EU finally forming a real union.
| As someone living in Finland, I'm not holding my breath that
| happens in our lifetimes. If you take a sample of average,
| non-cosmopolitan Europeans, they can barely even communicate
| with each other in the same language. Let alone come to
| agreements on who's going to pay for each others bloated
| social welfare expectations.
|
| The EU is the very definition of Fragility. While Finland has
| made far more rational decisions than its EU neighbors
| (having correctly prioritized energy security, military, and
| technology), it doesn't matter because size is more
| important.
| tcfhgj wrote:
| > made far more rational decisions than its EU neighbors
| (having correctly prioritized energy security, military,
| and technology
|
| Because there is one objectively correct way to prioritize
| /s
| pembrook wrote:
| I would argue everything else sits downstream from those
| things. It would be quite an understatement to say they
| are...somewhat important...in the continued existence of
| a country.
|
| So objectively, there is a correct way to prioritize
| those items if we're talking about being antifragile.
| People like to forget the Russian invasion of Ukraine
| actually started in 2014.
|
| But again, the inability of the EU to agree on even a
| common set of values is why we never have to worry EU
| countries will start seriously integrating with each
| other. We will remain disjointed sitting ducks as we are
| in love with our early 1900s romantic ethno-nationalist
| movement stories of who we are.
| graemep wrote:
| You are right, but the problem with turning the EU into a
| real union is that it is very difficult and risky. The
| creation of new nations and new identities more often than
| not leads to violence - and they are often formed by war.
|
| Yes, the EU is fragile, but I think trying to fix it that
| way would be worse.
|
| I think 1) the rich democracies in Europe are unlikely to
| go to war with each other and 2) have good reason to unite
| against common threats so I think a military alliance is
| military alliance makes sense.
|
| Yes, we already have NATO but the US is going to be ever
| more focused on China, and Russia is not the threat the
| Soviet union was so a new military alliance focused on
| Russia and securing the Atlantic (the latter in cooperation
| with the US) makes a lot of sense. Obviously different
| countries have different interests (the Atlantic is a lot
| more important to the UK than it is to most others) but
| also enough in common.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Our diversity is not fragility. It makes things harder to
| arrange but it also keeps them fair. There is no chance of
| some president/party getting voted into office and making
| unilateral decisions that screw everybody. Like you know,
| the US. Or the UK with Brexit. In Europe the diversity
| keeps that from happening.
|
| It also combats exceptionalism, that "Our nation is the
| greatest ever!" kinda stuff. Because in Europe we know
| we're not a nation but an alliance. That we need others to
| survive.
|
| And remember that Finland didn't even bother joining NATO
| until Russia invaded Ukraine, if they thought it was so
| important to be together as a big bloc, this would have
| been the first step.
|
| Ps: if the other countries in Europe didn't agree with
| Finland's smart decisions, how do you think these decisions
| would come to pass if Europe was one big country? Because
| the people wanting those would be in the minority. You
| would have very little input to the whole. And no chance to
| decide them yourself as you currently do.
| pembrook wrote:
| "Diversity" is a nice positive spin on what is an
| extremely fragmented/disjointed/nonexistent energy
| policy, military strategy, technological cooperation,
| consumer markets, etc. Like I said, the average European
| cannot converse with his/her neighbor even at a 1st grade
| level in a common language. These are obviously not
| strengths in the context of the current international
| order, and to try to brush that away with platitudes is
| to live outside of reality.
|
| If the EU had a cohesive strategy on these things, you
| can 100% guarantee Russia wouldn't be starting wars along
| its borders. Russia is a small, weak economy compared to
| a theoretical unified EU (the irony of that phrase!)
|
| Also, the reason Finland didn't join NATO before is not
| because Finland felt they were so strong on their own.
| It's because Finland didn't want to piss off Russia in
| the slightest way and end up like Ukraine. An inability
| to make formal alignments comes from a position of
| weakness, not strength.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > "Diversity" is a nice positive spin on what is an
| extremely fragmented/disjointed/nonexistent energy
| policy, military strategy, technological cooperation,
| consumer markets, etc. Like I said, the average European
| cannot converse with his/her neighbor even at a 1st grade
| level in a common language. These are obviously not
| strengths in the context of the current international
| order, and to try to brush that away with platitudes is
| to live outside of reality.
|
| I don't think we should be a geopolitical strongman like
| America though. The world has seen enough of America oil
| police. Blowing up half the middle east under the guise
| of 'freedom' and leaving power vacuums that caused
| nasties to bubble up like ISIS. Which hurt Europe a lot
| more than it did the US (think mass refugee exodus,
| attacks etc). They caused these problems.
|
| I think it's great that Europe has more ideals than just
| money. We still care about all our citizens, not the top
| 0,01% that has all the money.
|
| > If the EU had a cohesive strategy on these things, you
| can 100% guarantee Russia wouldn't be starting wars along
| its borders. Russia is a small, weak economy compared to
| a theoretical unified EU (the irony of that phrase!)
|
| Well especially because we don't have a good nuclear
| deterrent. And this is nothing new. Putin has been
| massacring ex-soviet states during all of his career.
| Checznia, Georgia etc. But nobody gave a crap in Europe.
| Part of this is that the EU had their designs on Ukraine
| also and this is why we suddenly care. I don't like this
| expansionist EU. Yes, I do think the Ukrainians should be
| helped and they should be free to choose who to align
| with. But it's a bit hypocritical that we didn't help the
| others before them.
|
| For the nuclear deterrent we should have worked on that
| more but America was always against that and they assured
| they would protect us. Clearly now we can stop trusting
| them. Even after Trump I don't think relations will ever
| be the same because we know there can always be another
| Trump.
|
| But with a deterrent we will be fine. Putin is not going
| to invade Poland if he knows Moscow will be nuked the
| same day.
|
| > Also, the reason Finland didn't join NATO before is not
| because Finland felt they were so strong on their own.
| It's because Finland didn't want to piss off Russia in
| the slightest way and end up like Ukraine. An inability
| to make formal alignments comes from a position of
| weakness, not strength.
|
| So, in other words appeasement. Which is something that
| you are accusing the EU of now.
|
| I just don't think you can expect the strongman EU to
| emerge and there are many people like myself that don't
| want that to happen.
|
| Also, military blocs (NATO) and economic (EU) are very
| different things. After NATO we should just form a new
| military one.
| musha68k wrote:
| Expanding on this, Vlad Vexler offers a broader framework
| here:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/live/hgPGPZRQdaU?si=4W0z1vkk2bfnueJZ
|
| His analysis complements the crucial discussions elsewhere in
| this thread about the economic details (reserve currency
| risks, the tariff math) and specific geopolitical impacts, by
| focusing on the political drivers; the nature of post-truth
| populism, underlying societal weaknesses, the challenge of
| maintaining civic coherence in the midst of it all, etc.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Germany. The country was designed to be incredibly hard to
| takeover from the inside.
|
| Central government is weak, even if AFD would takeover the
| chancellorship there are few measures that would immediately
| allow them to intervene in the federal states or ,,Lander",
| much much less than in the US e.g. unless there is war there
| is no way to use the military to force compliance.
|
| You would have to take over the country 17 times, and since
| the elections are not synchronised you would have to convince
| everybody all the time that this is good idea.
|
| Individual German federal states could be taken over much
| easier, Thuringia probably will be the first in 2028.
|
| The biggest weakness than is that the legal prosecution on
| German federal state level is under control of the executive
| and could be used to prosecute political adversaries. But if
| this goes to far the remaining parts of the country could
| vote to takeover the executive if there was a breach of the
| constitution.
| karmasimida wrote:
| There is no American hegemony in this current day and age.
| Probably dead like 15 years ago.
|
| Say what you well regarding Trump, he understands this.
|
| Trump is a smart man to spot problems, but he surely didn't
| know how to do it in a way that doesn't lead to self harm. He
| crazes for a bombastic firework that demands for all and any
| attention.
|
| The US version of capitalistic economy has driven its internal
| inequality to the point the political system can no longer
| sustain it, while in the meantime, doesn't have an established
| social safe net, as major European countries have. So the
| populace elected Trump to root it up.
|
| It is absurd, it is ridiculous, but deep down it is logical.
| Weird and dangerous time ahead.
| rokkamokka wrote:
| I can't imagine any person having listened to Trump even once
| would in good faith claim he is a smart man
| karmasimida wrote:
| If he isn't a smart man, he can't be US president TWICE. Or
| being book smart is irrelevant. He didn't talk the way the
| political class prefers for sure, but it doesn't matter.
|
| I judge things by outcomes, even Trump doesn't lack any
| credentials.
| stockerta wrote:
| Trump isn't smart, he is an idiot, but an useful tool to
| others so they made sure he gets elected a second time.
| hjgjhyuhy wrote:
| Yep, people behind Trump are the ones we should pay
| attention to. They are the ones with long term plans.
| lonelyasacloud wrote:
| Rats and cockroaches are great survivors; neither are
| particularly smart.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| The analogy is good but you picked up the wrong example.
| Rats are quite intelligent
| https://www.burgesspetcare.com/blog/rats/how-intelligent-
| are...
| ttw44 wrote:
| "You don't need to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate."
| mandeepj wrote:
| > If he isn't a smart man, he can't be US president
| TWICE.
|
| or, maybe those who voted for him are dumber than him!!
|
| Getting a job, aka campaigning in elections, is very
| different from knowing how to do the job! During the 2024
| campaign, he told everyone whatever they wanted to hear--
| cheap prices on day 1, a reduction in inflation, home
| loans, and the end of wars. He fooled and lied to
| everyone. Burnt by high prices, people trusted him. Sure,
| he could be called "smart" to con the voters, but still
| too DUMB to understand how the government works
| especially in the US. Every day, he picks a new fight
| with someone :-)
| theropost wrote:
| My take on all this is that everyone seems focused on the U.S.
| dollar's dominance, the empire, trade deficits, and exchange
| rates. And sure, there's some validity to that, but the real
| issue, or really the real goal, is getting people back to work.
|
| You might not see it, and maybe I don't fully see it either,
| but as office workers, bureaucrats, and technologists staring
| at screens all day, we've lost sight of the fact that America
| no longer produces like it used to. Yes, there are still people
| out there working with their hands, feeding the country, and
| running small industries. But broadly speaking, the U.S. relies
| heavily on other countries for complex manufacturing -- for
| actual building. Shipbuilding is just one obvious example. A
| lot of critical industries have withered to the point where
| they can't even meet domestic demand, let alone compete
| globally. Meanwhile, other countries are pushing forward in
| tech, producing better, more efficient, more productive
| products -- and pulling ahead.
|
| It's not happening all at once. It's a slow decay. Generational
| knowledge industrial skills, trades, machinists are all fading.
| And when those go, the backbone of resilience and self-
| sufficiency starts to collapse. A nation that can't produce
| can't stand. Export power becomes a dream.
|
| And I think part of the issue is that we've become lazy. People
| don't want to work anymore -- they want things handed to them.
| Entitlements, bonuses, luxury homes, multiple cars, the works.
| But someone has to build all that. Someone has to maintain the
| food supply. Someone has to assemble the vehicles. Someone has
| to keep production alive. Yes, technology can help fill gaps,
| and we've done amazing things -- and still do -- but America's
| edge in tech? That's slipping away. China has surpassed the
| U.S. in key areas of advanced technologies, auto manufacturing,
| aerospace, and absolutely obliterating in shipbuilding. U.S.
| industry? Ashes in many places.
|
| So what's the answer? Unfortunately, hardship. Nobody likes to
| say it, but raising prices and tightening the belt forces
| people to make hard choices. And when that happens, the jobs
| that matter won't be office jobs or desk jobs -- they'll be
| builders, machinists, welders, factory workers. Producers. And
| those jobs will start commanding the wages. People who've been
| unemployed or living on subsidies will be pushed -- or pulled
| -- back into that kind of work. Slowly, painfully, maybe, but
| steadily. And maybe, just maybe, we'll rebuild that base. Maybe
| industry will return. Maybe factories and production will grow
| again.
|
| That's the end goal here; even if we don't like how it's being
| done. Even if it's painful. Even if it doesn't work the way
| it's intended. Because maybe we're not as strong as we think we
| are. Maybe we fail. It's happened before -- look at the USSR
| collapse. It was a fake economy built on fake production and
| apathy. They endured 20 years of hardship, and they're still
| trying to catch up.
|
| So yeah, that's where I think we're headed. Is Trump the guy to
| do it? He's doing it. Someone had to. Is it the right way? I
| don't know. Is it going to work? No clue. Will we succeed? Who
| knows. Or maybe we just keep punting the problem further down
| the road; business as usual -- until it breaks completely.
|
| But either way, the path forward is either a slow crumble
| followed by a rebuild, or a brutal reset with the hope of
| rebuilding something stronger on the other side.
|
| That's just my two cents.
| bregma wrote:
| Not one single job was moved offshore by a foreign country.
| Every single one was moved offshore by an American business
| looking to reduce costs and increase the quarterly bottom
| line.
|
| Now they're run out of jobs to move offshore and they're
| looking to the government for the next handout. This time,
| it's by adding a new tax on Americans on what they buy from
| overseas.
|
| The people to blame for the economic problems are rich
| Americans, and the solution is to increase taxes on poor
| Americans, but the story is that the problem is foreign
| devils and the solution is to make them pay. The misdirection
| is working and the magic trick is successful.
| 0x00cl wrote:
| > Every single one was moved offshore by an American
| business looking to reduce costs and increase the quarterly
| bottom line.
|
| > This time, it's by adding a new tax on Americans on what
| they buy from overseas.
|
| If adding/increasing tax on product oversees increases the
| costs of said products, wouldn't American business look to
| reduce cost by moving back to America?
|
| If I understand correctly that's what Trump is trying to
| do.
| Clubber wrote:
| Yes, this is the theory. Also to return manufacturing to
| the US, for jobs but also for national security. If a
| major war breaks out, which is more likely than in the
| past 2 decades, we can't effectively fight without a
| strong manufacturing base.
|
| US businesses who offshored all the US manufacturing jobs
| now have their day of reckoning. The government can't
| really say, "move your jobs back," without some sort of
| constitutional change, they can only incentivize
| businesses do so, ergo tariffs on offshore labor / goods.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Right but American wages and worker conditions will also
| need to fall drastically to make it competitive with Asia
| post tariffs.
|
| Millions of Americans returning to shit tier factory
| conditions is not a victory.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > Not one single job was moved offshore by a foreign
| country. Every single one was moved offshore by an American
| business looking to reduce costs and increase the quarterly
| bottom line.
|
| That's something I haven't thought about. Is there a 25%
| tariff on importing knowledge work? In the consulting world
| that would make onshore teams more competitive. Well you'd
| need about a 500% tariff to make it close.
| omnee wrote:
| The US can use internal policies to support the industries
| and skills you mentioned. Tariffs as implemented, and greatly
| damaging longstanding relationships with allies, will have
| the opposite effect. The existing lead in services will be
| lost, consumption will drop, and the increase in production
| of goods due to tariffs won't offset it. I would recommend
| you read the outcome of the Smoot Hawley tariffs.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| I hate this mindset that Americans are lazy, they are usually
| some of the hardest working people in the globe. The wealthy
| are greedy, and wealth and power continue to concentrate at
| the top while infrastructure, working conditions and public
| services crumble. I don't fault anyone for not wanting to
| contribute to that, quite the opposite. I don't see how the
| jobs you mentioned are going to start commanding better wages
| when everyone has to rush to do them because there are no
| more options.
| rainsford wrote:
| That all seems built on some romantic notion that a job
| making physical objects ("working with their hands") is
| fundamentally better than a job providing a service ("staring
| at screens"). But it's not obvious there is a lot of factual
| support for the idea, either on the level of individual jobs
| or the economy as a whole. You could certainly use
| protectionist barriers or subsidies to try to force
| industries like ship building back to the US, but would the
| US really be economically better off overall if you did so?
|
| That said, it's really irrelevant since Trump's current
| approach isn't looking to support specific industries or
| outcomes, it's just across the board tariffs on _everything_.
| We 're not just going to have to build our own ships or cars,
| but grow our own coffee and bananas. Targeted, strategic
| tariffs and subsidies on the industries we want to support
| could be arguable, but this is not that.
| pavl- wrote:
| "A nation that can't produce [physical goods] can't stand."
|
| Based on what evidence?
|
| "And I think part of the issue is that we've become lazy.
| People don't want to work anymore"
|
| Americans work more hours per week than a majority of
| countries. Low-paying factory jobs are off-shored because
| they're low-paying.
|
| "So what's the answer? Unfortunately, hardship."
|
| You probably should do more research on the subject, and
| successful onshoring regimes that have been implemented by
| other countries. If you, for e.g., determine that America
| needs to produce a certain quantity of semi-conductors to
| insulate from various natsec risks, there are ways to tackle
| that problem and usually they don't involve hoping an onshore
| industry magically appears because you've haphazardly shivved
| trade across the board.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| > And I think part of the issue is that we've become lazy.
| People don't want to work anymore -- they want things handed
| to them. Entitlements, bonuses, luxury homes, multiple cars,
| the works. But someone has to build all that. Someone has to
| maintain the food supply. Someone has to assemble the
| vehicles. Someone has to keep production alive. Yes,
| technology can help fill gaps, and we've done amazing things
| -- and still do -- but America's edge in tech? That's
| slipping away. China has surpassed the U.S. in key areas of
| advanced technologies, auto manufacturing, aerospace, and
| absolutely obliterating in shipbuilding. U.S. industry? Ashes
| in many places.
|
| It has nothing to do with "people being lazy" and everything
| to do with poorly-run companies combined with globalization.
|
| This started in the 70s/80s with American auto manufacturers.
| The Japanese cars were much more fuel efficient and a much
| more robust build. The line worker wasn't responsible for
| that, management is.
|
| Then the global free trade / NAFTA in the 90s. Ross Perot was
| as popular as he was, because a big segment of the US
| population saw this coming.
| weatherlite wrote:
| > If trade stops occurring in US Dollar
|
| If I understand Trump correctly he wants a weaker U.S dollar to
| make American exports more attractive. I'm not sure though he
| wants it to become THAT weak that its on longer the reserve
| currency. However, simply abandoning the Dollar will prove
| quite difficult for many countries because there is no clear
| alternative (the Euro perhaps but it has a tiny market share
| currently) and also I'm certain Trump will threaten to remove
| American military support from anyone who dumps the Dollar - so
| Europe will probably stay, Australia, Canada, Saudi and quite a
| few more.
| jsiepkes wrote:
| > and also I'm certain Trump will threaten to remove American
| military support from anyone who dumps the Dollar - so Europe
| will probably stay, Australia, Canada, Saudi and quite a few
| more.
|
| Europe already has the mindset US military support is no
| longer a given. Europe is already re-arming. I wonder if
| additional threats by the Trump administration are going to
| make much of a difference. Even though it will take atleast
| half a decade to re-arm the main adversary, Russia, is
| currently in no shape to launch any kind of new offensive
| against a European country.
|
| > I'm not sure though he wants it to become THAT weak that
| its on longer the reserve currency.
|
| Intentions aside, with big moves like these the question will
| be how much control he has over what happens next.
| weatherlite wrote:
| > Europe already has the mindset US military support is no
| longer a given. Europe is already re-arming.
|
| As you said it will take at least half a decade (which
| sounds quite optimistic to me actually to go from barely
| any forces at all to independence) and then there are many
| more unsolved questions like where does Europe get all its
| energy from - Russia again? It will have to be a mix of U.S
| LNG and the rest I suppose from Arab/African countries. Or
| you could be right , and everyone will dump the USD - I
| think not though. Europe isn't in good shape as it is, I'm
| expecting more carefulness going forward.
|
| BTW - I'm not advocating for anything here, I have no
| personal skin in the game and I think Trump is a horrible
| bully. I'm just not certain he's a complete idiot yet.
| torginus wrote:
| That's just economist flowery language for - If you're
| willing to work for less, more people would hire you.
| bregma wrote:
| It's not "dumping the dollar" that would be a concern. It's
| bumping US federal treasury bills (the US debt) which are
| mostly held by China, the UK, Luxembourg, and Canada. If the
| latter three just dump their T-bills in retaliation (and do
| nothing else) the dollar will bottom out. Also, the likely
| buyer is China. End result: China owns the US and the RMB
| becomes the new reserve currency.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| China would need to remove capital controls to make this
| work, and that seems unlikely.
|
| The EU would need to issue eurobonds, and that also seems
| unlikely.
|
| But then this whole decade has been one unlikely thing
| after another, so who knows?
| matt-p wrote:
| Major question is then, what currency should be reserve?
|
| Euro? - Nowhere near as stable as the dollar, and some quite
| shaky fundamentals and history? Yen? Pound? Swiss Franc?
|
| I suspect Yuan will be unpalatable.
| kragen wrote:
| BRICS has been proposing a sort of basket mechanism. Bitcoin
| is not yet thickly enough capitalized. The historical
| standard was gold for 3000 years, and that's what backed the
| dollar until that was "temporarily suspended" in 01971.
| That's the default.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| IMF does have Speecial Drawing Rights that kind of, but not
| really, acts as a global currency
| gizmo wrote:
| The new reserve currency won't be a single country's currency
| but a basket of currencies, where the ratio contribution of
| component currencies gets adjusted every once in a while.
| matt-p wrote:
| Ok and who will administer the basket? I'm not saying it's
| impossible just a bit impractical perhaps.
| rongrobert wrote:
| It is just economically clueless people talking nonsense.
|
| Whatever basket we come up with has all the same
| properties that cause the Euro to not displace USD but
| worse. Much worse.
| matt-p wrote:
| Indeed.
| popol12 wrote:
| Bitcoin would be the most fair choice for a new reserve
| currency. It has equivalent properties as gold but is more
| practical to use, and there's no geographic inequality to
| mining it.
|
| No government could benefit from manipulating it. How cool is
| that ?
| api wrote:
| It's more deflationary than gold due to hard fixed supply
| plus breakage.
| rongrobert wrote:
| Of course a middle school level view of currency is "cool".
| viraptor wrote:
| > there's no geographic inequality to mining it.
|
| Apart from having access to cheap energy which is
| collocated with... specific geographic features like
| geothermal / hydro energy which not all countries have
| access to.
| tootie wrote:
| Is Bitcoin even a currency? Who spends it? And who keeps it
| stable?
| mkoubaa wrote:
| It's a reserve. The coupling of reserve and currency is a
| historical accident, not a fundamental reality
| jmyeet wrote:
| The Chinese yuan is not a viable reserve currency. Why?
| Because it's pegged to a basket of other currencies. It
| should really inflate in value but Chinese government policy
| is to undervalue it to aid exports. Exports are ~20% of
| China's economy. It would devastate the economy if the yuan
| was allowed to freely float, or at least float with the level
| of central bank management that other developed nations' fiat
| currencies have.
|
| China has repeatedly tried to activate a consumption economy
| (like the US) but the Chinese just save and buy real estate,
| in part because there is no retirement benefits so they have
| to self-fund that.
|
| So what currency? Currently, there is no viable alternative
| to the US dollar. It is backed by the largest economy in the
| world AND the US military.
|
| You might find people who talk about BRICS like it's a real
| thing. It is not. It's just a group of randomly selected
| countries meant to sound nice (literally, South Africa is
| only there for the S sound) with no unified policy or
| currency.
|
| It's not the euro either. Europe ultimately is still
| dependent on US defence and beholden to US foreign policy.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| pretty much every source in the world disagrees with the
| idea that China doesn't have a retirement system
|
| https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-chinese-pension-system-and-
| why...
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| >It's just a group of randomly selected countries meant to
| sound nice
|
| Source? Pretty sure BRICS is comprised of the largest
| regional economies that specifically aren't in the first
| world, that make for useful alliances for Russia & China
| specifically.
|
| Africa for a long time didn't have any serious economic
| contenders for something like BRICS other than South
| Africa. Nowadays Nigeria is a closer contender on the
| continent. And of course you have long histories of South
| African politicians having spent their time in exile during
| Apartheid in places where they learned to call each other
| "comrade" even to this day in their political parties. It's
| not an out of the blue arrangement.
|
| Brazil as far as I'm aware seems to be by far the most
| economically active in South America too?
|
| India seems like third fiddle to Russia & China in this
| arrangement as a large economy in Asia.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| The Euro is already a reserve currency and makes up about 20%
| of worldwide reserves. Which is of course not as much as the
| dollar which is about 60%, but these numbers could of course
| shift.
| matt-p wrote:
| So is the Yen, Pound and swiss Franc - many currencies are.
| What's your point?
|
| Pound is about 5% if I remember correctly, which is a
| higher weighting than the Euro for trade:reserve holding
| ratio.
| jabl wrote:
| Perhaps we should dust off Keynes' Bancor proposal? :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor
| iszomer wrote:
| Wasn't an implementation of Bancor attempted on Ethereum?
| amunozo wrote:
| It is a self inflicted damage. Do not blame anybody else that
| Trump and the people that chose him. Good luck Americans.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "because inflating our currency to pay for them could result in
| functionally not being able to import goods required to run our
| economy."
|
| You can't inflate your currency to payoff a debt that's due in
| in a different currency. As soon as you inflate your currency,
| the exchange rate changes.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| The US issues debt in dollars and repays those debts in
| dollars. The purchasing power of dollars can change due to
| inflation. If you suddenly increase the global supply of
| dollars by 2x, dollars that existed prior to the increased
| supply will be able to purchase less.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's true for domestic public debt. But in the scenario
| given by the parent where the dollar falls out of favor, it
| is assumed that we could be issuing public foreign debt in
| foreign currency. Even if it was still domestic currency,
| the FX rate would matter to the foreign investors. Interest
| rates matter. So does inflation. Money supply is less
| relevant than the actual inflation it generates. Most debt
| instruments rely on the interest rates that fluctuate based
| on monetary policy to combat inflation. Eg your interest on
| debt will increase as your inflation rate does. Even the
| world bank will jack up your interest if your currency has
| issues, such as rampant inflation.
| munksbeer wrote:
| > it is assumed that we could be issuing public foreign
| debt in foreign currency.
|
| That isn't how it works. You issue bonds, denominated in
| your own currency, and promise to pay the bearer of the
| bonds a coupon (interest) and repay the full amount (in
| USD) at the end of the bonds life.
|
| Unless I misunderstood what you're saying.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There are multiple structures for foreign debt
| instruments, of which your definition is one. Even using
| your example, the "(in USD)" is the part that might
| change if USD falls out of favor as the context of this
| chain is discussing.
| blagie wrote:
| > If you suddenly increase the global supply of dollars by
| 2x, dollars that existed prior to the increased supply will
| be able to purchase less.
|
| I don't think this is true. The US issues currency in two
| forms:
|
| 1) Deflating dollars
|
| 2) Treasury notes
|
| At the time you've issued a T-bill worth $1B, the effect is
| pretty similar to printing $1B. If interest rates are in-
| line with inflation, it's a safe way to maintain foreign
| reserves. If interest rates are higher -- long-term, the US
| has a problem, and if they're lower, the foreign government
| has a problem.
|
| But issuing treasury notes is not too dissimilar from
| printing physical dollar bills.
| omnee wrote:
| The Trump admin wants to devalue the dollar substantially,
| enact protectionism _and_ maintain its reserve status. I can
| see them succeed with the latter two, but with these actions,
| the world has no choice but to move away from the USD as the
| reserve currency. It will take many years, but whatever
| replaces it certainly won 't be to the US's advantage.
| aa-jv wrote:
| >The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US
| dollar as a global reserve currency.
|
| Its also the golden prize for America's _victims_ , it has to
| be said.
|
| We can't keep propping up the USA as a moral position to aspire
| to, when that state continually gets away with mass murder and
| human rights violations beyond the scale of any other peer.
|
| The USA is the worlds #1 funder of terrorism, and violator of
| international law on the subject of war.
|
| So its not just about 'enemies'. Its really about _victims_.
| hjgjhyuhy wrote:
| Russia is the number one war criminal in the world. Of course
| now that Russia owns American leadership, we can partially
| blame them for American human rights abuses.
| logicchains wrote:
| The number of civilian deaths in Ukraine doesn't come close
| to the number of civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and
| Palestine caused by the US.
| aa-jv wrote:
| That is correct, and this is a terrifying fact to any
| American nationalist who believes their country can do no
| wrong, as evidenced by the downvotes of an absolute
| truth.
| aa-jv wrote:
| >Russia is the number one war criminal in the world.
|
| This is absolutely incorrect by sheer statistics, alone.
| Anyone making this claim is simply utterly ignorant of the
| actual statistics, and I challenge you to overcome that
| personal limitation.
|
| Russia has a long, long way to go to catch up to the
| +million murders done in Iraq, alone - where the USA has
| murdered 5% of Iraqs population with its wars (including
| the continuing deformed baby deaths as a result of the
| widespread distribution of depleted uranium all over Iraq).
|
| The USA is a major funder and supporter of the mass murder
| of Gaza - Gaza is just another Mosul, just another Raqqa ..
| Israel would not be getting away with mass murder if the
| USA hadn't set the precedent for war crimes and mass murder
| in multiple other theatres. Russia, too, _follows the USA
| 's lead and uses the USA's own prior inculpability for
| multiple illegal wars to justify its actions_.
|
| This is why it is just _so dangerous_ for citizens to allow
| their nations to commit war crimes and crimes against
| humanity, and allow those politicians responsible for such
| acts to go unpunished. This is why it is so irresponsible
| for the American people to allow their nation to degrade
| the capabilities of the International Criminal Court, and
| to fail to prosecute their own war criminals.
|
| Because, if you let your nation do it, you are giving carte
| blanche to any other nation in the world to do it too. And
| that is precisely why states such as Russia and Israel are
| wilfully committing mass murder - _under the cover of the
| prior unprosecuted crimes of extraordinary magnitude
| committed by the American people and their
| representatives_.
|
| If you want to do something effective about Russia and
| Israel, Americans, you must first prosecute your own war
| criminals and establish the international precedent for
| those prosecutions which can be used against Russian and
| Israeli war criminals, also. Leaving your own war criminals
| unpunished gives a free ride to all other nations, who will
| gleefully follow you into the madness - and have done so
| now, for 25 years of the utterly atrocious "war on terror",
| in which the American people gave themselves the ultimate
| right to destroy any state their callous rulling class -
| factually fundamentalist racists - decides is inferior to
| their own.
| krapht wrote:
| I agree that the US bears significant responsibility for
| the ~5% civilian deaths in Iraq. These were through:
|
| 1) Direct combat fatalities (~15% of casualties)
|
| 2) Failing to stabilize Iraq post-invasion
|
| 3) Enabling conditions for prolonged conflict
|
| However, attributing all excess deaths solely to the US
| oversimplifies the role of insurgent groups, regional
| actors, and preexisting sectarian tensions. The
| invasion's destabilizing effects created a chain reaction
| with shared accountability.
|
| Furthermore, calling it murder is disingenuous. Murder
| requires both premeditation and deliberate intent.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| I certainly wont disagree with the US not representing any
| moral heights especially now, however do you have sources for
| the US being particularly egregious in relation to its peers
| in its actions?
| aa-jv wrote:
| Anyone who has been paying attention to the body count
| since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 can tell you
| that the rest of the world has a long, long way to go to
| catch up with the atrocities committed by the American
| people across the globe, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria
| and Libya, Pakistan and Somalia and Yemen (which the USA
| and its partners were mass-murdering for 15 years already
| _before the current conflict_ ), and now .. Gaza .. for
| which the American people are very definitely responsible
| as major funders and supporters of that particularly vile
| act of mass murder.
|
| But if you want to inform yourself, follow
| https://airwars.org/ and look for reports on the matter by
| trusted sources, such as the Physicians for Social
| Responsibility, which has produced casualty reports for all
| of America's illegal, heinously irresponsible wars.
|
| This report for example, from 2015, demonstrated the
| magnitude and extent of the crimes committed by the
| American people in Iraq alone - and things have gotten a
| lot, lot worse since then:
|
| https://psr.org/resources/body-count/
| theuppermiddle wrote:
| Is not the US export higher if they take into account all the
| Software and software as service they sell?
| inatreecrown2 wrote:
| was thinking the same thing. US is a giant in software.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Software is easily pirated. It is official policy in Russia
| now to pirate the software used by enterprises (like SAP,
| Autocad etc), to own the western libs.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| Not if its SaaS, which is where the world has been going
| for a decade now at least
| rafaelmn wrote:
| This is why I don't get why my EU people are attacking Trump -
| he singlehandedly gave Europe political capital to rebuild
| itself as an independent player on the international stage. He
| created an environment where tighter EU integration might take
| precedence over petty interest squabbles. For example in what
| other scenario would Germany making massive investments in
| military be politically acceptable ? Even talking about
| military on EU level ?
|
| Framing this as purely a win for China and Russia is very
| partisan, this has potential for all non-US countries to get
| away from under US thumb long term and at least for that we
| should be grateful to mr. Trump, from his foreign policy it
| seems like he is not interested in those games as he views them
| a net loss for US.
|
| And the Greenland situation is showing us exactly what happens
| when you position yourself as leech on US military/NATO.
| fxwin wrote:
| I don't think anyone has a problem with europe being a more
| independent player, it becoming a necessity is what people
| are upset about. I'd rather have germany make massive
| investments in infrastructure and health reform than its
| military.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| This line of thinking is exactly what got us into this
| situation. If you want to outsource your defense how can
| you be surprised when you get ignored in the Ukraine
| discussions and when the US feels free to just annex parts
| of your territory. What's your recourse ?
| fxwin wrote:
| The same arguments can be made for free trade, and i
| think most would agree that the world is better off with
| international trade than without.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| There is no free trade, EU was tariff heavy and
| protectionist since forever, in fact that's probably the
| primary motivator for creating it - a single European
| market where they get to control the imports. Trump is
| brash and escalating it suddenly but this game is not
| new.
|
| I'm all in favor of Europe merging more tightly, scale
| brings a lot of benefits - moves Trump is making are
| forcing EU members in this direction where they otherwise
| wouldn't go so easily for petty interests.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| > There is no free trade, EU was tariff heavy and
| protectionist since forever
|
| To add to this as an EU citizen, try and buy any good
| from the US as a private EU citizen: not only will you be
| visited with a bill for 25 percent of what you paid, you
| will _also_ pay a truly staggering "handling fee" to
| essentially state-sponsored grifters (here in Denmark
| called "Told") that will ensure you never buy anything
| from the US again.
|
| The US had de minimis allowing US citizens to buy most
| anything they could imagine from abroad without
| additional fees on import, which Trump has now thrown out
| the window, but I can't help but feel we're getting our
| just desserts here.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The 'outsourcing' has always been for the benefit of US
| defence corporations.
|
| There were a number of occasions in the 50s to 70s when
| the US stepped in directly to neuter world-leading
| aerospace projects in the UK, forcing the UK to buy from
| the US instead.
|
| Virtually all of the cost of the UK's Trident deterrent
| goes to the US.
|
| And it would be unwise to write off the EU, especially
| now there's a mass exodus of researchers from the US.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| >There were a number of occasions in the 50s to 70s when
| the US stepped in directly to neuter world-leading
| aerospace projects in the UK, forcing the UK to buy from
| the US instead.
|
| Exactly, and with the recent moves Trump administration
| is directly calling out EU to arm - so a good development
| in my book.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's weirder than this though. Why would Europe need to
| rearm? If it's to defend against potential enemies, why
| is the US cosying up with those same countries?
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > _This line of thinking is exactly what got us into this
| situation._
|
| This is exactly right and it is insane that people don't
| see this. The dysfunction that Pax Americana has
| inflicted upon Europe must go away. A continent that
| cannot defend itself is not a sovereign continent.
| mrighele wrote:
| > If you want to outsource your defense
|
| It's not only that
|
| Outsource defense to USA
|
| Outsource production to China
|
| Make yourself critically dependent on raw materials from
| Russia.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| Exactly Europe is on a downward spiral into irrelevancy -
| Trump moves actually give the idea of a relevant EU
| space.
| ddalex wrote:
| Because the EU does NOT want Germany to arm, remember what
| happened the last couple of times ?
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| I'm not a history buff, are you alluding to anything?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Last century there was the big two, World War One and
| World War Two. If you go back further it's more
| complicated, but the short answer is that Germanic states
| got into wars with their neighbours a lot. The Wikipedia
| article has categories.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Ge
| rma...
|
| https://historyguy.com/How_Many_Wars_Were_Fought_Between_
| Fra...
| switch007 wrote:
| To be fair, everyone was warring. War was normal
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_
| Uni...
| lostlogin wrote:
| It was normal and Germany/Prussia was good at it.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Oh wow, I had no idea! I recommend googling "Adolf
| Hitler" also.
| kergonath wrote:
| Both the French and the Poles are urging Germany to rearm.
| As well as the EU, actually, through both the commission
| and the parliament. The whole "European countries are
| afraid of Germany invading" argument is not really a thing.
| kergonath wrote:
| For context: the French and the German have been
| alternatively at war and allies since the times of Clovis
| and Charlemagne, a millenium before Bismark made modern
| Germany a thing (in occupied Versailles, in what was
| perfectly calibrated to be a complete French
| humiliation). And the Poles were on the wrong side of
| brutal occupation and a genocide during WWII. So both
| countries would have good reasons to be very skeptical of
| a powerful Germany.
| cbg0 wrote:
| > the EU does NOT want Germany to arm
|
| The EU is not worried about Germany re-arming, as the world
| has changed dramatically since WW2 and we have much
| stronger bonds in Europe than we did when Nazi Germany was
| around.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This is so stupid.
|
| The US _rearmed Germany immediately after WW2_ to be a
| buffer against an invading USSR.
|
| We literally put Nazis back into command as long as they
| were willing to fight the Russians again.
|
| Nobody in NATO was ever afraid of a militarized Germany,
| except maybe Germans.
| watwut wrote:
| Because they would prefer functional pro democratic world
| rather then constant struggle for domination with fascists
| from Russia and USA at the same time. EU people don't want to
| become poorer or suffer, not even to "own the USA".
|
| Europeans you talk about see Russia as a threat. They are not
| fascists themselves, so Germany having to arm itself more
| because Russia just got new ally is not a good news.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| > EU people don't want to become poorer or suffer
|
| So when you get other people paying your defense bill,
| don't be surprised when your territory gets annexed and you
| get left out of the conversation on the Ukraine issue ?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Do you think that's the motivation, or the new
| relationship with Russia? Why are new tariffs not
| applicable to Russia, Belarus and North Korea?
| rafaelmn wrote:
| Probably to give Russia concessions in the Ukraine
| negotiations.
|
| In my opinion Trump is trying to do everything he said he
| would in his campaign, he is trying to get the war in
| Ukraine over ASAP and be the peace bringer.
|
| Even in the leaked Vance messages you saw his view on
| Europe, which I have to agree with in that case. They
| feel like they are getting screwed in the EU-US relations
| and they are looking to pull support, ignoring what the
| OP said about them being the reserve currency/global
| police. I guess they see that as a bad deal.
|
| I think big picture Trump sees Russia as a regional
| player and China as US main rival so he doesn't really
| care about pushing Russia or "winning" in Ukraine. The
| minerals deal looks like he wants to show he got
| something for the money spent compared to Biden.
| watwut wrote:
| Well, EU did paid and supported Ukraine. EU are not the
| ones who allied themselves with Russia and tried to bully
| Ukraine into giving them minerals for nothing in return.
| America is the only country that took others in NATO into
| war under article 5. Ukraine was also left out of that
| conversation, this was just Trump being openly pro-
| Russia.
|
| None of that has anything to do with tariffs.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| >EU are not the ones who allied themselves with Russia
|
| Need I remind you that Angela Merkel set the stage for
| all these Russia moves by building german "green
| transition" on Russian "green gas" ?
|
| From what I'm seeing in Trump moves he doesn't care about
| Ukraine or Russia much other than showing his supporters
| how he ended the war that "Biden let happen" according to
| him. And the minerals deal to show he got their money
| back that Biden was giving away for free. Not really
| seeing any Russia alliance other than not buying into the
| Ukraines vision for the outcome of the war.
| watwut wrote:
| I did not said they are perfect and prescient and saint.
| They are not like Trump.
|
| Trump who openly admires Putin. His latest moves were
| literally trying to steal from Ukraine with nothing in
| return. Who even declared America free from Russian
| meddling.
|
| They are just not like the guy who tried to extort the
| Ukraine to hurt his political ennemies, they are not
| openly praising Putin, they are not giving concessions to
| Putin ... while lying on TV in front of Ukrainian
| president ... and then having complete meltdown when he
| factually corrects you
|
| Like common ... Merkel and Trump are here completely
| uncomparable.
| glenstein wrote:
| >This is why I don't get why my EU people are attacking Trump
| - he singlehandedly gave Europe political capital to rebuild
| itself as an independent player on the international stage.
|
| What a completely baffling statement. It's like saying the
| left arm should be grateful that the right arm cut itself off
| of the body because now the left arm has to strengthen
| itself. Sabotaging the alliance system that has prevailed
| since World War II leaving both Europe and the United States
| more dangerously exposed and compromising the safety of our
| shared democratic values that were once the bedrock of our
| alliance.
|
| It's so obviously catastrophic that I can't fathom how
| someone would try to portray this as a win other than out of
| an appetite for a JV debate team sophistry. Europe is banding
| together not out of positive diplomatic achievements, but in
| the same sense that they would band together if a meteor is
| headed toward Earth and you're asking us to thank the meteor.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| Having a lapdog status since WW2 is an alliance ?
|
| EU and US are not two hands of one body.
| switch007 wrote:
| Some say many EU politicians are compromised by Russia and
| China...
|
| I know squabbling is the norm for European countries but I
| feel there are some recent big own goals. Crazy how we can't
| get our crap together in such times. (Crazy opinion: UK needs
| to be in the EU again to be the grown up in the trio of UK,
| France and Germany)
| eagleislandsong wrote:
| > I feel there are some recent big own goals
|
| I'm not sure I know what you mean. Do you mind elaborating?
| lores wrote:
| The UK will need a lot of time to be seen again as a grown-
| up, after electing a string of buffoons and cutting off its
| nose to spite its face. Even though Starmer looks more
| stable, a large part of that look is due to his opposition
| being in complete chaos and functionally useless.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Because it's a bit like someone telling you that they're
| going to burn your house down so you can claim on the
| insurance and you'll be better off.
|
| It might be technically true in some circumstances, but I
| still don't want some jackass burning my house down thanks, I
| _like_ my house. That 's why I live there.
| ta20240528 wrote:
| "The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US
| dollar as a global reserve currency."
|
| I would argue that for this to become even remotely possible,
| America's list of enemies must not automatically become
| everyone else's enemies too.
|
| that is to say: the USA's secondary statutes have to become
| ineffective.
|
| To do this, the EU's blocking statutes (to ignore secondary
| sanctions) have to be effective. Right now Europe's own
| companies just ignore the statutes to keep their US trade.
|
| To make the blocking statues effective, the EU's own research
| recommended fines/sanctions/bans/... on licences for foreign
| (read US) banks, and companies that ignore the statue and don't
| serve EU companies trading with sanctioned countries.
|
| But to do that, the EU would need alternatives to American
| services.
|
| Power and influence follow sovereignty.
|
| EUR0,02
| chvid wrote:
| The Chinese have alternatives to American services. Europeans
| could have too if we wanted.
| sph wrote:
| Unless you have a magic lamp, "wanting" is not enough to
| achieve effective change.
|
| What Europeans need is pragmatic governments and
| politicians. In fact it might be easier to find a magic
| lamp than an honest politician.
| mtrovo wrote:
| The TikTok case in US might be a good playbook for the
| future. Require markets that US based companies have a
| near monopoly and require them to divest on EU and
| onshore operations. You solve tech hegemony and tax
| evasion in no time.
| chvid wrote:
| US big tech companies are dominant because they are
| monopolies not because they are technological marvels.
|
| If we were to ban US social media, European alternatives
| would emerge very fast.
| ben_w wrote:
| China has goods and services, but don't underestimate the
| language barrier for services. Language is a barrier
| between EU member nations providing each other services,
| even though machine translation is OK between those
| languages and most of us learned one of the other nation's
| languages in school; The gap between Chinese and Latin-
| Germanic languages is much larger.
|
| I'd give an example, but every time I have previously shown
| an example of machine translated Chinese to demonstrate
| that AI is bad at translating English into Chinese, the
| responses miss the point of the example -- criticising the
| translation whose very errors are meant to demonstrate how
| bad current AI is.
| addicted wrote:
| Europeans have a lot of alternatives to American services,
| including building out their own.
|
| What Europeans truly lack is the ability to defend itself
| without the U.S. They have the technical know how and can
| build the manufacturing capacity but that will take a decade
| at least.
|
| Also, European financing is just not as strong.
|
| However, with the U.S. voluntarily walking away from its role
| as the center of the world, this may not be a problem for too
| long.
|
| Tech is the easiest service to replace considering American
| tech workers by insisting on WFH have already largely
| eliminated the geographical advantages American tech used to
| have.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Between three and five members of the EU could become
| nuclear powers complete with delivery systems within a year
| if there was political will. A couple of them in
| significantly less than a year. If the EU is truly
| responsible for its own defense, then it gets to choose how
| to go about that. There is only one way to do that in the
| time frame in which it will become necessary.
| bluGill wrote:
| Nuclear is a bragging tool, but only useful in real war
| if things are going bad enough that you decide to end the
| world.
|
| What will take Europe most of a decade is the combination
| of all the things you really want during war so you are
| not forced to end the world. Air defense - they have some
| but not near enough without the US. 5th generation
| fighter jets. Bombers. A navy - they have some great
| things but are missing many useful ships. They seem to
| have enough tanks, but are missing many other parts a
| modern army needs. And all of the above needs ammunition
| - they cannot provide Ukraine what is needed 3 years into
| that war - means they can't scale up to their owns needs
| if a war were to break out.
|
| Fortunately war with Europe seems unlikely right now, but
| that can change fast and you need to be ready. Never has
| a battleship started during a war seen battle in that
| same war. (I don't know how to verify that claim, but it
| seems reasonable anyway)
| greedo wrote:
| Most of the Iowa class battleships took less than four
| years from launch to commissioning, so in WW2 your last
| statement would have been challengeable had the USN not
| realized the folly of building more BBs.
| bluGill wrote:
| They were all started before WW2. The Montana class was
| abandoned - maybe it could have seen service if it was
| continued but it wasn't. In WW2 battle ships were still
| king of the ocean - airplanes were showing promise but
| not yet good enough to replace them (though if the war
| had gone one just a couple more years they would have)
| greedo wrote:
| You mean started before the US involvement in WW2.
|
| And the battleship was definitely NOT the king of the
| ocean. Carriers quickly took over that role, and aircraft
| quickly made mincemeat of the best battleships ever
| built, starting with the destruction of Force Z near
| Singapore and culminating with the destruction of Yamato
| and Musashi.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Nuclear is a bragging tool, but only useful in real war
| if things are going bad enough that you decide to end the
| world.
|
| No, it's a deterrent. This is why it's so important that
| the systems are in place and functional. So they can
| actually be used, to make sure they never have to.
|
| A deterrent is not like a bragging tool at all.
| fifilura wrote:
| You don't need a huge navy to battle Russia. It's navy is
| pretty small (they don't even have a functioning aircraft
| carrier) and there is anyway a land connection between
| Europe and Russia.
|
| For fighters I don't think 5th gen is the magic number,
| you can do well against Russia with more 4th gen, and the
| generation counter is pretty imprecise anyway, rafale and
| Gripen are continuously modernized with new software and
| electronic warfare
|
| Europe has Aster which is a replacement for patriot with
| similar characteristics. Since the technology exists it
| should be a small thing to scale up production.
|
| And ammunition has been scaled up since 2022 and every
| shell used in Ukraina is a shell that does not need to be
| used in the rest of the countries.
| fifilura wrote:
| > What Europeans truly lack is the ability to defend itself
| without the U.S.
|
| Pushing this message is disinformation that has been
| particularly successful part of the OrangeMan
| administration.
|
| Europe can defend itself. Combined they have huge military
| resources and technological replacements for most of what
| the US can provide.
|
| So - Europe can defend itself. But it prefers to use money,
| allies and Ukrainian soldiers lives to avoid having to.
| addicted wrote:
| > Right now Europe's own companies just ignore the statutes
| to keep their US trade.
|
| If it's the trade keeping EU companies in line, isn't the
| destruction of trade that these tariffs are intended to
| achieve precisely the kind of thing that will then prevent
| them from staying in line in the future?
| ta20240528 wrote:
| If its like last time, European strategy (ex France maybe)
| will rise no higher than "let's just try ride out the next
| four years, then things will go back to normal".
| virgilp wrote:
| Does it follow that Yuan would replace USD? Could it be the EUR
| instead?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The RMB does not float. It would be virtually impossible.
| More likely: EUR will share the title (more than ever) with
| USD.
| huijzer wrote:
| > Ray Dalio's Principles for Dealing with the Changing World
| Order feels prescient
|
| Maybe Dalio is right, but a lot of his data was sketchy [1].
|
| My personal theory is that Dalio somehow benefits from saying
| nice things about the Chinese regime.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/s1iv0q_SW3E
| rayiner wrote:
| > The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US
| dollar as a global reserve currency.
|
| Why is the reserve dollar good for Americans? Arguments in
| favor of reserve currency status make the U.S. economy seem
| utterly fake. It's as if the world is paying us to maintain
| borders frozen in 1945.
| Urahandystar wrote:
| It stops them from having to address their national debt, has
| allowed for incredible spending and the arguably pushed
| humanity forward with the wonderful inventions. Without it,
| it will be interesting to see how the future unfolds.
| jmyeet wrote:
| A lot of people fundamentally misunderstand why trade happens
| in USD and what creates demand for USD.
|
| For example, you hear people say that the US invaded Iraq
| because Iraq was threatening to denominate oil sales in the
| euro. This particular conspiracy theory used to be more popular
| ~20 years ago for obvious reasons. Even if true, it's
| absolutely no threat to the petrodollar. You could sell oil in
| euros and what would most sellers then do? Immediately convert
| those euros into USD.
|
| Trade occurs in USD because there's demand for USD not the
| other way around.
|
| What really underpins the USD is the US military and the US
| still being the largest economy. So the USD will remain the
| global reserve currency up until the US collapses and/or
| another power rises to displace it, which really means the same
| thing at this point. That might ultimately be China but it's
| not yet and the Chinese yuan is wholly unsuitable to be a
| global reserve currency currently.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > until the US collapses and/or another power rises to
| displace it, which really means the same thing at this point.
| That might ultimately be China but it's not yet
|
| I imagine the Euro is a contender also even though the EU
| it's not one homogenous power.
|
| > and the Chinese yuan is wholly unsuitable to be a global
| reserve currency currently.
|
| Curious why you say this? I was considering holding some EUR
| and CNY in the event that one of those becomes a replacement
| for USD
| jmyeet wrote:
| The euro isn't a contender for two main reasons:
|
| 1. Europe is still dependent upon the US military and, as a
| consequence, is beholden to US foreign policy; and
|
| 2. No unified fiscal policy.
|
| As for the unsuitability of the yuan, there are several
| reasons:
|
| 1. The yuan was once pegged to the US dollar. It's now
| pegged to a basket of currencies instead. This, by
| definition, makes China a currency manipulator because you
| wouldn't need to peg the currency otherwise;
|
| 2. The yuan is undervalued by this manipulation. It should
| really be more expensive, making China's exports more
| expensive. China does this to maintain their export
| competitiveness. If anything, increased demand for the yuan
| would be unwelcome as it would increase the pressure to
| appreciate the yuan;
|
| 3. China runs a trade surplus. It's basically inevitable
| that the country with the reserve currency will run a
| deficit;
|
| 4. The US running a government deficit is actually kind of
| a good thing for maintaining a reserve currency. China, for
| example, holds trillions in US government bonds. Do you
| really think they want to upset that apple cart?
| darthrupert wrote:
| >The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US
| dollar as a global reserve currency.
|
| At this point, who is *not* America's enemy?
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| Maybe Russia, that's the only country which has not been
| slapped with tariffs. Apart from Russia, there are nuances.
| There are peaceful enemies like the EU, Canada, Australia
| etc. and there are threatening enemies like the Houthis or
| Iran.
| atmosx wrote:
| To add to the comment: If you want to be the capital of an
| empire, you have to act like it--like Troy, Rome, or
| Constantinople--meaning you run deficits and play buyer of last
| resort. When you are no longer that, the empire has indeed
| collapsed.
|
| Relate:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1998/08/18/t...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Our debts would suddenly become existential because inflating
| our currency to pay for them could result in functionally not
| being able to import goods required to run our economy.
|
| Can you elaborate on this? Every other country does not have
| the luxury of having its currency be the reserve currency but
| still manages to both inflate that currency when needed and
| import good just fine.
| op00to wrote:
| If America's reserve status goes, they will face the same
| constraints, except with way more debt and far less
| experience managing currency risk.
| vonzepp wrote:
| If India buys a widget off Brazil it will probably be paid in
| dollars. Therefore, people need to own dollars. Thus a demand
| for US debt. This lowers the potential interest rate. Other
| countries who's currency is not a need for people to buy,
| their debt is purchased by the attractiveness of its offering
| (i.e interest rate). If US dollar is no longer required than
| government bonds have to be attractive. Also, not all
| sovereign debt is issued in the home countries currency,
| which means that the printing press doesn't help. US debt is
| very large, interest repayment are close to military
| spending. Without the reserve currency that would get worse.
| Something like 68% of world holding is dollar 17% Euro,
| nothing else of note.
|
| The other side is that as there is a demand for dollars. The
| value of the currency is higher than if it wasn't which
| increases the price of exports and reduce price of imports.
| Trump might want to weaken the dollar.
| api wrote:
| When the history is written I think the _Citizens United_
| decision might be pegged as the end of the American republic.
| It allowed endless amounts of dark money including foreign
| money to pour into US elections.
|
| In any case, I think we're seeing the beginning of the Chinese
| century.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| 1) Chicago-school interest groups successfully putting people
| on courts and in the legislature to all but completely
| eliminate anti-trust enforcement, starting in the '70s. TL;DR
| policy used to be that a company holding too much market
| share was _per se_ bad for the country and that the
| government could act on it, the shift added more tests making
| it slower (so, also more expensive) and harder to
| successfully enforce anti-trust, so much so that we all but
| stopped doing it.
|
| 2) Failure to send Nixon to prison.
|
| 3) Loss of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan.
|
| 4) Failure to send a whole list of Reagan's folks (and maybe
| Reagan) to prison over Iran-Contra and other misdeeds. And
| those same names keep popping up, making things worse for the
| '90s and '00s. This was a huge mistake.
|
| 5) The Democrats totally surrendering economics policy to a
| newly farther-right [edit: more accurately, a set of policies
| championed by a certain set of pro-capital right wing
| interests--we recently saw this totally overthrown by right-
| populist policy, when Trump took over the party in 2016,
| which was the most remarkable development in US party
| politics since the '80s] Republican view, in the '80s, and
| adopting basically the same policy. This set the stage for
| the current backlash, because this all-in neoliberal shit was
| _never_ popular, but persisted because both parties supported
| it.
|
| 6) Loosened media reach ownership rules in the early '00s.
|
| 7) CU
|
| 8) Nobody at any point finding a way to dismantle the
| Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society (if you're
| wondering "how", it seems the NRA had been doing all sorts of
| illegal shenanigans for a loooong time--I'd be absolutely
| floored if these two don't have some big ol' skeletons
| hanging around)
|
| 9) We all watch a coup attempt live on TV (re-watch some of
| the news footage if your memory is fading, it remains
| shocking) and then the Biden administration dicked around
| during the six months or so when it might have been possible
| to go after the leaders of it.
|
| 10) The Internet putting intense pressure on the news media,
| leading to even more profit-focus than before (and see also
| the loss of various controls above) with nothing done to try
| to mitigate that.
|
| 11) Extreme centralization of control of the narrative online
| under a handful of platforms (and the narrative is "whatever
| gets us more eyeballs", see again #11) and nothing done to
| fix that.
| melenaboija wrote:
| What still baffles me is how people act like this was some kind
| of thoughtful decision.
|
| When you put someone incompetent in charge of a country, a
| company, or a sports team, collapse is inevitable, no
| exceptions. We've seen it play out over and over again because
| of stupid choices only driven by ego.
|
| Now it's the US's turn
| varispeed wrote:
| I wonder how much more evidence American people need to see
| Trump for being a Russian asset and working against US
| interests.
|
| We are in treason territory.
| random42_ wrote:
| People that support him don't care about evidence. It's a
| cult following.
| varispeed wrote:
| Authorities focused on "classic" terrorism when
| monitoring online content and propaganda and got
| completely blindsided by the take over of the media.
|
| I find it particularly interesting how many popular US
| media people disseminate provably false Kremlin
| propaganda, as if someone flipped a switch.
|
| Fascinating times.
| energy123 wrote:
| They knew about it back in 2014 but Obama didn't do
| enough about it.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| Propaganda and lead poisoning did a number here.
|
| It's the perfect storm.
|
| I don't see an end to this
| pc86 wrote:
| The best thing about your comment is you could be
| referring to Trump, or the GP. 9 out of 10 people who
| read your comment will say "hell yeah" and think you
| agree with them whether you do or not.
|
| Brilliant.
| Bombthecat wrote:
| The people who know what the effects of lead poisoning
| are, know :D
| pc86 wrote:
| I can fully understand how people on both the left and the
| right could have ideological differences with Trump, how
| they can hate the way he interacts with people, think he's
| picking unqualified cronies for high level jobs, etc. I
| disagree with the last one but I can at least see how a
| reasonable person would get to that conclusion.
|
| "Trump is committing treason because he is instituting
| tariffs" or "Trump is a Russian asset" is not a position
| any reasonably intelligent person can come to without being
| blinded by partisanship. It's simply not a serious position
| to have.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| If Trump were a Russian asset, what could he possibly do
| to advance their interests more than what he is already
| doing? Hell, he is running Putin's playbook on Canada and
| Greenland. Did you vote for that?
|
| NATO is already over because none of our allies can
| expect Trump to honor our treaty obligations.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > If Trump were a Russian asset, what could he possibly
| do to advance their interests more than what he is
| already doing?
|
| Rhetoric is a poor substitute for actual evidence.
|
| Many moons ago, the fringe right used a similar argument
| to imply that Barack Obama was pro-ISIS. After his hasty
| withdrawal from Iraq, ISIS filled the power vacuum. Their
| "caliphate" grew for years and years, with no significant
| intervention from the US! At the time there wasn't a
| great answer to the question "If Obama were pro-ISIS,
| what could he possibly do to advance their interests more
| than he already has?". Yet (hopefully) we all know that
| this was simply bad faith, conspiratorial rhetoric. He
| was obviously not pro-ISIS, and there was no evidence
| whatsoever that he was. So how could people possibly have
| entertained such an idea? Easy--they already hated Barack
| Obama, so they were willing to give the conspiracy theory
| the benefit of the doubt.
|
| Do yourself a favor and apply the old tried and true
| standard: extraordinary claims require extraordinary
| evidence. It'll save you a good deal of embarrassment.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Obama could have invited ISIS to talks with his security
| advisor. He could have made any sanctions on them
| toothless. I'm sure there's more.
| varispeed wrote:
| Have you seen Obama disseminating ISIS propaganda?
| marcusverus wrote:
| Your conspiracy theory isn't coherent enough to be
| implied. Make the argument.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Trump and his administration do spread Kremlin falsehoods
| and talking points. This was a major sticking point in
| Gabbard's confirmation. For instance, she spread the
| false claim that Ukraine was developing bioweapons that
| are a threat to Russia. Trump himself repeated the false
| claim that Zelensky has a poor approval numbers and is
| preventing elections because he's a dictator. Trump also
| said Ukraine started the conflict. In his last admin he
| said that "Crimeans want to be Russian".
| throwaway17422 wrote:
| Regardless of what his intentions might be which are all
| speculations as far as I'm concerned, he managed to
| convince Europe to rearm in 1 month, which is a net
| positive for Europe and America (assuming America still
| sees that as a positive) and a massive blow for Russia.
| lostmsu wrote:
| How about stopping to supply Ukraine with weapons?
| vel0city wrote:
| He's been trying to do that as well.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/world/europe/trump-
| ukrain...
| lostmsu wrote:
| Considering there's nothing stopping him really, what
| does "trying" mean exactly?
| vel0city wrote:
| By that I mean he did it, briefly, then probably got a
| lot of push back internally and rolled it back. The whole
| event seemed like a chance to drum up an excuse to drop
| support for Ukraine, but ultimately wasn't enough of a
| reason to present.
|
| I don't really see another way to take that. Have you
| watched the full exchange on it?
|
| And I mean his first impeachment was because of his
| impounding of aid to Ukraine.
|
| Acting like he hasn't been working towards killing
| support for Ukraine is ignoring his actions and his own
| statements.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Well, enough of some Americans elected a convicted felon to
| the Oval Office, so...
| gruez wrote:
| >and working against US interests.
|
| >We are in treason territory.
|
| Are we just going to start throwing "treason" accusations
| whenever a political opponent does the wrong thing? Being
| anti-free trade? Hurts US hegemony and makes US consumers
| pay more. Treason. Being pro-free trade? Sells out hard
| working americans while enriching corporations. Treason.
| dddrh wrote:
| You could not have designed a more effective version of a
| "Manchurian Candidate" in my opinion.
|
| In fact, this administration has been so effective and
| brazen that if you were to try and write this as fiction,
| the scope and scale of what is occurring would be deemed
| unbelievable and would require toning down for the
| audience.
| dmschulman wrote:
| Russia noticeably absent from the global and per-country
| tariffs
| ImJamal wrote:
| Trump is allegedly planning on sanctions against Russia
| if they do not agree to his peace plan.
|
| Trump just added some additional sanctions on Russia for
| helping the Houthis.
|
| Sanctions seem worse than tariffs to me, but I'm not an
| expert.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sanctions-russia-
| based-n...
| varispeed wrote:
| He didn't add sanctions on Russia, but on people dealing
| with Russia - that's a different thing.
|
| But notice how people talk now - Trump might say he is
| "planning" something against Russia and people take it as
| a proof that he is not an asset. They forget about
| concept of sacrificing something to gain advantage. If
| heat turns to much on Trump, they might let him disrupt
| something and then run propaganda that Trump isn't bent.
| Until he makes next move massively benefitting Putin.
|
| Seems like they can be doing this over and over and
| general public will see it as Trump just navigating
| difficult geopolitical landscape and that we should
| "trust the process". etc.
| ImJamal wrote:
| I am not sure why you are calling this out seeing how
| many people are hypothesising what is going to happen in
| this thread (economy destroyed, USD no longer reserve
| currency, etc). At least we have actual words to base
| what I wrote unlike all the other theories being thrown
| out in this thread.
| tgv wrote:
| > What still baffles me is how people act like this was some
| kind of thoughtful decision.
|
| I'm afraid it is. An unholy coalition of capitalist-
| anarchists and ultra-conservatives is the driving force
| behind it. They both want to reduce the influence of the
| government to a level as small as possible. That can only be
| done by dismantling the current federal government.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| That's what really blows my mind. Growing up as Reagan
| Republican. When did Republicans go from law-and-order, to
| anarchists?
|
| Traditionally anarchism is a left-liberal idea. Now the
| far-right is same as far-left. Left-Right is now a circle.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This is a very strange view of it. Anarchism is extremely
| far from liberalism. "Anarcho-capitalists" are more or
| less just extreme libertarians, they share no history or
| ideology with any other anarchist movements, no other
| anarchist movements recognize them as anarchists.
|
| The far left and the far right are not the same either
| where do you even get that! A far left party in the
| american context is something like democratic socialism,
| or sure why not actual marxist-leninism. While the far
| right is proud boys, groypers, literal neonazis,
| christian integrationists. You may have equal distaste
| for both but that doesn't mean they share anything else.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "no other anarchist movements recognize them as
| anarchists."
|
| Once you go down the rabbit whole of trying to define
| 'anarchist' , there are actually dozens of definitions,
| and they all argue about who is really anarchist. So,
| that they don't agree that some other group isn't 'really
| anarchist', I take it with grain of salt .
|
| These extreme Republicans want to get rid of government.
| I'm using the highest level gloss over, that No-
| Government is Anarchism.
|
| I'm sure in reality, humans would re-coalesce up in
| communes/tribes/feudal groupings, and thus re-form local
| groups, and is that still Anarchism? At what point of
| organization do we stop saying something is 'anarchism'.
| I'm just saying, when the US breaks up because there is
| no government, it will be anarchy, and that seems to be
| what Republicans are shooting for..
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > Once you go down the rabbit whole of trying to define
| 'anarchist' , there are actually dozens of definitions
|
| Which is why I avoided providing or using any definition
| of anarchism, instead describing the actions of people
| who consider themselves anarchists.
|
| > and they all argue about who is really anarchist.
|
| Yes, but there is only one group who consistently
| considers themselves anarchists but who _exactly zero
| other anarchist groups recognize as anarchists_. All
| other anarchist movements have at least one mutually-
| recognized peer movement. I 'm not saying this is an
| absolute or the only definition, but it's very useful in
| this context. There _is_ something different about
| ancaps.
|
| > These extreme Republicans want to get rid of
| government.
|
| They do not! They are not proposing an elimination of the
| military or police departments or prisons, for example.
| They are using the DoJ to pursue political enemies, the
| executive branch to enact and enforce tariffs. In fact
| exactly the parts of the state that are used to create
| and enforce hierarchy. I do not know any anarchist
| movements, other than anarcho-capitalism, that has this
| goal.
|
| I understand why your view of it is alluring, I find it
| to be so as well. But I have found that it simply has
| very little explanatory power for this situation.
|
| The only thing the far left and right truly share I
| think, is radicalism. By which I mean an intention or
| acceptance of rapid and comprehensive change to the
| dynamics of daily life for the whole population. But the
| actual changes they want have virtually no overlap.
| razakel wrote:
| Anarcho-capitalists are not anarchists. They share no
| history or ideology with any of the other variants of
| anarchism.
|
| They're extreme libertarians/neo-feudalists.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| How are you not seeing how "extreme libertarians/neo-
| feudalists" is similar to anarchism?
| razakel wrote:
| Anarchists don't want a king. Neo-feudalists want to be
| the king.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| extreme libertarian's don't.
|
| Maybe don't put libertarians and feudalist together.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| Peter Thiel most definitely wants a form of kingship
| though he professes to be a libertarian
|
| I believe it means libertarian in the context of present
| systems. In their new system, they no longer need to be
| libertarian. Just absolute ruler. King is even the wrong
| term.
|
| Dictator
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I didn't realize. I guess libertarians have morphed into
| something new.
|
| Can't believe they would be publicly calling for a
| monarchy, and still call themselves libertarian.
| sharemywin wrote:
| technically they would be closer war lords in my opinion.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| Anarchism is not just "no government", but rather "no
| rulers".
|
| Leftist anarchists are acutely aware that power and
| capital accumulation go hand-in-hand.
|
| Extreme libertarians are perfectly fine with the
| unfettered accumulation of capital and seemingly ignore
| that that results in unchecked power. Or they have faith
| that a "truly" free economy would somehow check itself
| before becoming effectively neo-feudalistic or
| dictatorial. As if the lion would fear the zebra.
|
| Leftist-anarchists want to keep power to an absolute
| minimum. Usually relying on a combination of culture and
| group action to wield just enough power to prevent the
| growth of unchecked power in the hands of a few.
|
| In my mind, culture is the key element. The capital-
| worshipping, me-versus-all culture we live in would fit
| quite well into extreme-libertarianism and then it would
| devolve into defacto rule by a few. (As seems to be
| happening anyways. Because, again, capital accumulates,
| protects itself and takes power where it can when no one
| is willing to or allowed to work together to stop it.)
|
| Leftist-anarchism requires a more mature, selfless,
| introspective, cooperative culture. Anathema to the
| "United" States of America.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Leftist-anarchists want to keep power to an absolute
| minimum. Usually relying on a combination of culture and
| group action to wield just enough power to prevent the
| growth of unchecked power in the hands of a few.
|
| Most anarchists, just like hard-line communists, seem
| totally opposed to the idea of private capital at all. To
| me this seems just as bad and unworkable as allowing
| unchecked use of capital accumulation for political gain.
| chimpanzee wrote:
| They are opposed to private capital such as the private
| ownership of the means of production, eg land and
| infrastructure.
|
| They are generally not opposed to personal property,
| especially if the property is actively used.
|
| Extreme libertarians, "anarcho-capitalists", do not
| distinguish between productive and nonproductive
| property. And so they ignore the end result of private
| ownership and accumulation of the means of production:
| new rulers in some form.
|
| Opinions on money and currency vary.
|
| Similarly, opinions on wage labor vary, but generally
| they expect a laborer to receive their full worth, ie
| wage labor would not see profit extracted from it.
| n3storm wrote:
| Yes please, more people spreading this information.
| rocmcd wrote:
| How do you get libertarians mixed in there? Libertarians
| want freedom from government, not the consolidation of
| power nor levy of new taxes (which tariffs are). Apart
| from downsizing select government organizations, what the
| current administration is doing is the exact opposite of
| what libertarians would want.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Tariffs are only part 1 of the plan. The next step is
| cutting income tax entirely for most people. Trump has
| said this, and even yesterday called on congress to pass
| his "Big Beautiful Bill".
|
| This would severely hamstring the government, and make it
| incredibly difficult to reverse (you would need to re-
| implement income taxes, while removing tariffs, and hope
| to god that trading partners have mercy and forgiveness
| (unlikely))
| mr_toad wrote:
| > They're extreme libertarians/neo-feudalists.
|
| The ancient Greeks would have called it Tyranny. All of
| this has happened before.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not "anarchism" it's simply rolling back the bad
| parts of Reagan's legacy: free trade,
| immigration/amnesty, and foreign empire.
|
| When Democrats embraced free trade and globalism with
| Clinton, most of the liberal Reagan republicans and
| neocons became Democrats. What MAGA is today is what the
| bulk of the GOP has always been: a coalition of social
| conservatives and business owners.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Business owners don't like the tariffs either. Even
| American car companies are being hurt by tariffs on steel
| and car parts.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "Democrats embraced free trade and globalism with
| Clinton"
|
| History would disagree with this. Republicans and Big
| Business were always for free trade and globalism.
|
| Because in 80's-90's, big-corp was salivating over that
| sweet cheap-cheap foreign labor. To put this on Democrats
| is a retcon.
| rayiner wrote:
| No, I agree with you. My point is that Democrats embraced
| it in the 1990s as well. So the Republicans who were
| otherwise liberals but just in the GOP for the cheap
| foreign labor switched sides.
| mochomocha wrote:
| What is so bad about free trade?
|
| Isn't competition in free markets something Republicans
| believe in anymore? Because forcing Americans to buy
| inferior locally-made products at a premium through
| artificial restrictions surely isn't that.
|
| Free trade and globalization are also a pacifying force,
| by creating mutual dependencies between countries.
|
| Protectionism doesn't work.
| lapcat wrote:
| > What MAGA is today is what the bulk of the GOP has
| always been: a coalition of social conservatives and
| business owners.
|
| I'm skeptical of this historical analysis.
|
| The two major political parties fundamentally realigned
| during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Before then,
| Democrats controlled the south. Strom Thurmond switched
| from Democrat to Republican in 1964. George Wallace ran
| for President as a Democrat 3 times before he became an
| independent. Robert Byrd was a Democrat until the end.
| Who were the "social conservatives"? Both Ronald Reagan
| and Richard Nixon (Californians, by the way) made their
| names as staunch Cold Warrior anti-Communists during the
| McCarthy era.
|
| I don't think there's any such thing as what "the GOP has
| always been", or what the Democrats have always been, for
| that matter. I'm old enough to have seen the parties
| change several times, and the definitions of
| "conservative", "liberal", "left", "right" morph into
| something unrecognizable to former adherents.
|
| The only constant is change.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The two major political parties fundamentally realigned
| during the civil rights era of the 1960s.
|
| This is an incorrect analysis looking at the wrong causal
| factor (civil rights rather than economics). Even in
| 1976, Carter did great in the deep south. The realignment
| happened in the 1980s, due to economic growth in the
| south. The south went from being poor and agrarian in the
| 1930s to being newly industrialized in the 1980s.
|
| > Who were the "social conservatives"?
|
| The 19th century GOP was a coalition of religious
| conservatives and protectionist industrialists. MAGA is a
| coalition of religious/cultural conservatives and
| protectionist industrialists.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Even in 1976, Carter did great in the deep south.
|
| Carter was a southern conservative, deeply, overtly
| Christian, whereas Ford, the accidental President, was a
| northerner and social moderate.
|
| In any case, Presidential elections are not necessarily
| the best indicator of political alignment. After all,
| some were blowouts, such as 1972, 1980, and 1984. On
| other other hand, note that Lyndon Johnson lost much of
| the south, except his home state of Texas, despite
| winning big elsewhere in the country. But for political
| alignment, you also have to look at local elections, such
| as state houses.
|
| > The realignment happened in the 1980s, due to economic
| growth in the south. The south went from being poor and
| agrarian in the 1930s to being newly industrialized in
| the 1980s.
|
| This makes no sense, because first, the south is still
| poorer, and second, the political correlation you're
| implying simply doesn't exist. Why would wealth and
| industrialization turn a state Republican when that
| doesn't appear to be the case anywhere else in the
| country? To the contrary, at present the rural areas are
| solidly Republican and the urban areas solidly
| Democratic.
|
| > The 19th century GOP was a coalition of religious
| conservatives and protectionist industrialists.
|
| I can't say I'm very familiar with the 19th century GOP,
| and neither of us was alive in the 19th century, but I
| don't think you've correctly characterized the 20th
| century GOP. Moreover, I don't think you can characterize
| "the party of Lincoln" as socially conservative either.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Carter was from Georgia. Think that might've helped how
| he did in the south?
|
| Don't think that data point is as good as you imply it
| is.
| gruez wrote:
| > Now the far-right is same as far-left. Left-Right is
| now a circle.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
| api wrote:
| It's because the far left and the far right are both made
| of up of people deeply disaffected by the status quo, and
| when those people talk they often find that at the very
| least many of their grievances overlap.
|
| In terms of today's landscape there is a list of things
| like LGBTQ issues, race, gender equality, abortion,
| religion, etc., and if you avoid things on that list
| you'll find a huge overlap between the views of the far
| left and the far right. Both are broadly opposed to
| what's popularly called neoliberalism, the post-
| Reagan/Clinton post-cold-war order, and the reasons for
| this opposition overlap quite a bit if you again avoid
| the topics that I listed. From that perspective, blowing
| up the system is the goal. When they see trade policies
| like these crash the present system, they view that as a
| success because they think the current system is such a
| mistake that it must be smashed.
|
| (I am not making a judgment in this post, just explaining
| the landscape.)
| rayiner wrote:
| Correct. The left and right seem like a circle because
| Pat Buchanan and Bernie Sanders long had a large overlap
| on issues that have become highly salient today:
| immigration and free trade.
| CalChris wrote:
| Reagan's administration was very corrupt. So that law and
| order evidently didn't apply to them. It was also very
| profligate. So that fiscal conservatism didn't apply to
| them. I don't see a lot of difference between the actor
| Ronald Reagan and the actor Donald Trump. Maybe in degree
| but not in kind.
|
| I've been a left liberal my whole life. We haven't gone
| anywhere.
| kaashif wrote:
| Dismantling the federal government by massively increasing
| the role of government in trade and imposing the biggest
| tax increase in a century?
|
| That doesn't sound right...
| giantrobot wrote:
| The GP didn't say the people pushing this were smart or
| intellectually honest.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The next step is to cut income tax for under $150k/yr
| earners. Tariffs raise prices by 20%, tax cuts let you
| keep 20% more earnings.
|
| This would make the federal government dependent on
| tariff income, and, as the theory goes, diminish the
| funds the government has as American industry grows to
| avoid tariffs.
|
| Probably not going to work out as it is only a first
| order effect view, but that is the idea they are chasing.
| thefreeman wrote:
| Except they aren't cutting taxes by 20% for people under
| 150k. They are pushing a tax cut which disproportionately
| affects the top 1%.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Trump has explicitly stated he wants to eliminate income
| taxes for people earning under $150k.
|
| Ironically (but not really if you can clearly understand
| his platform, any why so many bernie bros became
| trumpets), Trump is doing a lot of ostensibly good things
| for the uneducated working class at the expense of
| American "elite" class. The autoworkers union president
| literally spoke yesterday at Trumps event cheering the
| tariffs. A union, cheering Trump.
|
| The stock market is off a cliff, but how many factory
| workers actually have an appreciable amount of stocks?
| Poor middle America doesn't give a fuck about that. They
| give a fuck about having a place to go to work and make a
| good living.
|
| Trump is doing what he was elected to do. Whether or not
| it is possible without making things _much worse_ seems
| like a long shot, but his core base has a "I don't care
| if we destroy the system, the system sucks!" attitude,
| awfully similar to Bernie bros.
| XorNot wrote:
| Think of it like when you take a car apart and now it's
| taking up more of the garage then when it was together.
| belter wrote:
| > An unholy coalition of capitalist-anarchists and ultra-
| conservatives is the driving force behind it.
|
| It's called Oligarchy.
| olalonde wrote:
| Capitalist-anarchists are certainly opposed to tariffs -
| after all, tariffs are just taxes that expand government
| influence. Protectionism is a left-wing, big-government
| policy.
| rayiner wrote:
| There's been many people opposed to free trade for decades,
| on both sides like Pat Buchanan and Bernie Sanders. You can
| think those guys are incorrect in their analysis, but calling
| it "mindless" is just ridiculous.
|
| This tariff regime is simply a "minimal viable product" aimed
| at the idea of reducing structural trade deficits.
| tiahura wrote:
| In economic terms, its a transfer from consumers of cheap
| goods to producers.
| dashundchen wrote:
| Just posting something doesn't make it true. Don't be
| disingenuous by making it seems like Sanders supports this
| idiotic "plan" just because he spoke out in favor of
| certain tariffs or against parts of free trade in the past.
|
| In fact he called these tariffs along with Trump's plan to
| cut taxes on he wealthy an absurd transfer of wealth:
|
| > Trump's absurd idea to replace the income tax with a
| sales tax on imported goods would be the largest transfer
| of wealth in U.S. history. If enacted, taxes would go up by
| over $5,000 a year for a middle class family, while those
| in the top 0.1% would get a $1.5 million tax break.
|
| https://xcancel.com/BernieSanders/status/185093380938413710
| 6
|
| And Trump's economic plan "insane"
|
| > https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/bernie-
| sanders-...
|
| Many agree, most polls have Trump far underwater in his
| handling of the economy.
|
| > Respondents gave Trump poor marks for his handling of the
| economy, which 37% approved of, with 30% approving of his
| work to address the high cost of living, an issue that also
| dogged Biden.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/default/trump-approval-
| falls-43-lowe...
| rayiner wrote:
| Sanders was a protectionist until it became seen as
| treasonous in Democrat circles:
| https://sandersinstitute.org/event/rep-bernie-sanders-
| oppose...
| dashundchen wrote:
| Again, just because Sanders would support some
| protectionist policies doesn't mean he supports the
| tariffs going on now. He's on the record saying they're a
| regressive sales tax benefiting the wealthy.
|
| Which is why I was pointing out your comment is
| disingenuous by insinuating Sanders would support the
| tariffs because it's anti-free trade.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| You're really driving home this "Hey everyone, Trump is
| just doing exactly what Pat Buchanan and Bernie Sanders
| agreed to do".
|
| This is the equivalent of saying that any anti-war
| protester is instantly a complete ideological pacifist.
| It's illogical.
|
| I challenge you to find a policy paper endorsed by
| Sanders that said "let's do universal tariffs on the
| entire planet by taking the inverse of our trade balance
| - and leave Russia out of it".
|
| Everyone knows tariffs are a tool, often meant to
| encourage domestic production (when applicable and
| feasible) or to protect against unfair foreign trade
| practices.
|
| They do not work as a permanent source of revenue in the
| modern era, and they can never operate as both a strong
| source of revenue AND a tool for repatriation of
| production. If they work as revenue, that means
| production stays foreign. If they work as incentive, they
| will diminish in revenue.
|
| Nothing about this makes sense unless your goal is to
| tear down the US and the USD as a global economic power
| and global reserve currency. This is not about making
| America strong.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Protectionism is usually about protecting existing jobs
| and industries.
|
| This idea of blanket tariffs to try and kickstart
| industries is unique.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and: IIRC, their _intent_ is to bolster the US dollar
| as the reserve currency.
|
| Not that I understand it, cuz am noob:
|
| Admin thinks US dollar is too strong. So they want to
| devalue it. Which will then trigger a sell off of US
| Treasuries, further devaluing the US dollar.
|
| I have no idea if this is the Admin's actual plan, the
| merit of such a plan, or if there's any realistic hope for
| achieving the intended outcome.
|
| If any one can make any of this make sense, please chime
| in. TIA.
| rayiner wrote:
| Devaluing the currency is a standard approach to
| encouraging an export-oriented economy. See China and
| Japan.
| toddmorey wrote:
| My theory is that it actually has nothing to do with trade
| at all--why else would the story changes so much when they
| are asked to describe the methodology or rationale?
|
| This is how they cut taxes without cutting taxes. They've
| even said as much: "We'll do this huge tax cut and revenue
| from tariffs will pay for it." But tariff revenue IS tax.
| It's just a tax on spending versus income. It's quite
| clever because a tax on spending disproportionately impacts
| the poor and the middle class (who spend a much higher
| percentage of their income).
| rtkwe wrote:
| For extra sauce on the "they're barely even thinking about
| this" cake someone figured out where those crazy "Tariff
| Charged" numbers were coming from, they're taking the trade
| deficit and dividing by the total imports from that country.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/jBTiz7T
|
| edit: The White House deputy press secretary posted their
| formula and it is just trade_deficit/2*total_imports per
| country just dressed up with a lot of fancy language to make
| it seem smarter but the two extra terms are constants.
|
| https://x.com/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
| dsco wrote:
| I've seen this comment a couple of times. What would be a
| better way of doing it? Also consider that if they would've
| had a more complex formula, what would be the cost of
| needing to explain it publicly? Would they then need to
| start defending the fairness of each tariff vs doing it the
| simple way and having a single formula across the board?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Consider actual tariffs? A trade deficit isn't a tariff
| or trade barrier it's just the natural flow of commerce
| from them selling more stuff than they buy. They're
| dressing it up like these countries are charging US
| imports these crazy tariffs but they're not at all,
| especially not across the board.
|
| That's imminently doable but would require more work than
| plugging in 2 numbers from the US trade delegation
| website so we get this complete lie instead. Trump has
| had it in his head for ages that trade deficit == tariff
| (or is lying about that to make his supporters swallow
| this as the US just fighting back) and it's a completely
| broken understanding of trade.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Consider actual tariffs? A trade deficit isn't a tariff
| or trade barrier it's just the natural flow of commerce
| from them selling more stuff than they buy
|
| That's just defining what a trade deficit is, it doesn't
| explain why trade deficits arise. For example, other
| countries have cheaper labor and laxer environmental
| regulations. Simply looking at the country's tariff rates
| on U.S. goods doesn't account for the whole picture.
| nkmnz wrote:
| Yeah sure, Europe is absolutely known for their lax
| environmental regulations...
| scrollaway wrote:
| GP said other countries, not "Europe". And Europe does
| have cheaper labor. Even in western europe you can find a
| 5x-10x difference in certain salaries especially in white
| collar industries.
|
| Assume good faith.
| tremon wrote:
| Other countries also have different population numbers.
| To take a random example, why would e.g. Uruguay
| (population 3.5M) buy as much from the US (population
| 100x) as the US is able to buy from them?
|
| Besides, if the trade volume is what determines the
| tariff, why would any country want to have a trade
| surplus with the US? The best solution for other
| countries is to artificially limit their exports, or find
| more reliable trading partners.
| zuminator wrote:
| On the face of it that sounds reasonable, but then you
| look at say China with a 35x population over Canada yet
| Canadians don't just buy _as much_ from China as vice-
| versa, they buy CAD$65 billion more. So I don 't think
| the argument that larger countries necessarily have a
| deficit against their smaller trading partners holds
| water.
|
| I do agree that this madness will only encourage other
| countries to conduct their trade elsewhere.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Other countries also have different population numbers.
| To take a random example, why would e.g. Uruguay
| (population 3.5M) buy as much from the US (population
| 100x) as the US is able to buy from them
|
| Because the U.S. can buy from Uruguay only as much as 3.5
| million people in that country can produce.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| So, we aren't factoring in natural resources and the
| different values they have either then?
| rtkwe wrote:
| First we don't import any where near all of Uruguay's
| exports, in fact we're only about 8% of their actual
| exports which should tell you this isn't the reason we
| buy more from them than they do from us.
|
| Next that's always going to be imbalanced because they
| produce goods cheaper and can't afford as much as the
| equivalent chunk of people in the US.
| rtkwe wrote:
| > cheaper labor and laxer environmental regulations
|
| So we've exported our worst paying, most environmentally
| damaging industries? I mean the rivers catching fire was
| probably exciting but I'm not exactly pining to bring
| that back...
|
| Tariffs can only set those industries up for internal
| markets, other countries will just continue to buy from
| the cheaper source so the protected industry has to
| continue to be protected.
|
| Additionally who's going to work these labor intensive
| industries? We're already at 4.1% unemployment, there's
| not vast masses of people waiting for low paying work as
| seamstresses and one of the other major prongs of the
| Trump ideology is reducing immigration drastically so
| we're going to squeezed on that end too.
|
| Finally we've done mass tariffs before and it always ends
| badly. Remember Smoot-Hawley? it deepened the Great
| Depression because people thought they could turn to
| protectionism to prop up and bring industry to the US. It
| just doesn't work when broadly applied.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| How about "not doing it at all"?
| rayiner wrote:
| How do you propose to fix deindustrialization?
| bandrami wrote:
| US industrial output is the highest it has ever been.
| Where did you get the idea that we "deindustrialized"?
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| By looking at where things are made rather than by using
| hedonic adjustments to multiply up INTC revenue until it
| hides the problem (or whatever the strategy is today now
| that INTC is flagging).
| bandrami wrote:
| Right, doing that shows US industrial output to be at its
| highest level ever.
| uoaei wrote:
| Made or assembled?
| bandrami wrote:
| I mean, both? We actually track this stuff, you know? Or
| at least we did until DOGE fired everybody who does that
| uoaei wrote:
| Then what is the breakdown between products
| _manufactured_ here and those merely _assembled_?
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Oh, you're one of the people who believes the "Made in
| America" stickers. That explains a lot.
| kelipso wrote:
| Do people actually believe this? Maybe industrial output
| according to some cooked up numbers or specific
| industries.
| bandrami wrote:
| What made-up numbers are you using to pretend it's not
| true?
| kelipso wrote:
| I'm not the one making unbelievable statements. Were you
| one of those people who said there was no inflation at
| all until the last possible moment?
| bandrami wrote:
| So provide _any_ measure by which US manufacturing output
| has declined. Good luck!
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You're both making claims. How about _either one of you_
| provides some actual numbers? (Or rayiner, for that
| matter...)
| bandrami wrote:
| Google is free (for now), but if you need a link:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/global-
| metrics/countries/USA/uni...
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It is. But it's really a lousy conversation to have you
| two going back and forth several times, with each of you
| asking the other to substantiate their position, and
| neither of you actually doing so.
| atwrk wrote:
| Here, US manufacturing output is _up_ 50% since 2010:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/global-
| metrics/countries/USA/uni...
|
| That it's relative share in GDP is down during that time
| means that other sectors were growing even faster (think
| Google, Netflix and so on, so services instead of
| things). That the service sector gains in relative
| importance is actually a sign of an advanced economy,
| every modern economy looks like that, not just the US.
| kelipso wrote:
| In the end, the problem is that China manufacturing
| output is $4.6 trillion according to those numbers while
| the US is $2.5 trillion, while it was around the same
| back in 2010. This, along with its decline in percentage
| of GDP is causing the perception, and it also is causing
| decline in employment in manufacturing. The perception
| matters ideologically and the employment issues matters
| materially, and so we have these tariffs as an effort to
| bring manufacturing back to the US.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Yes. People are very good at rationalizing self-serving
| beliefs. Here's how the numbers were cooked:
|
| https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-
| manufacturing-...
| kelipso wrote:
| Interesting, so basically no growth since 2007 if you
| exclude computers, even with increased productivity. And
| the drop in employment is insane and it's no wonder that
| there is a huge political movement with fixing that as a
| pillar. Not even to mention regional problems that have
| been going on longer in the Rust Belt. Yeah I find it
| pretty disgusting when workers in service based
| industries like here have no sympathy for the workers in
| these industries.
| jopython wrote:
| We lost 6 million manufacturing jobs over the past
| decade.
| bandrami wrote:
| So? Manufacturing is not a jobs program. The output is
| what matters.
|
| You might as well say we "de-agriculturized" because we
| automated farming.
| bumby wrote:
| Jobs is not the same as production. Many of the jobs are
| lost due to automation. If you bring manufacturing back
| to the US you'll be "hiring" a lot more robuts than
| humans.
| rayiner wrote:
| US industrial output is much lower than it has been
| relative to our consumption. We should mostly make in the
| country the industrial products we consume.
| CalChris wrote:
| So you agree that we are not deindustrialized. Have a
| nice day.
| nkozyra wrote:
| We are a consumer nation because we are more prosperous
| than our peers. It's the same reason you buy your food at
| a grocery store.
|
| Generally, the clamoring for domestic production comes
| down to: 1. Employment. But because we are more
| prosperous, our employment is aimed elsewhere. We have
| jobs for people that are less dangerous, less manual, and
| better paid.
|
| 2. A fear that without domestic production, we're at a
| strategic or military disadvantage. But it's not that we
| _can't_ produce in an emergency, we can and have
| historically (see: oil in the 1970s). What protects us
| most is hegemony, which is threatened by things like
| across-the-board trade wars.
|
| 3. Nostalgia for the good ol days. Look, if you want to
| work in a factory, we have lots of them here, still.
| Nobody will stop you from putting on the hard hat. But in
| all likelihood you have a less stressful, less dangerous,
| and better-paying job today.
|
| There really isn't an argument for this. Our trade was -
| as all trade is - mutually beneficial. Right now we're
| pushing the glass to the edge of the table when it was
| perfectly fine where it was.
|
| One other important note: there are things we literally
| cannot produce domestically due to lack of natural
| availability (food products, certain textiles)
| rayiner wrote:
| How can a "prosperous" nation sustainably consume more
| than it produces?
| bandrami wrote:
| Growth. Same reason we never need the national debt to be
| smaller than it is.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I think people look at "national debt" as though we're
| buying trillions of dollars of stuff and not,
| fundamentally, two things:
|
| 1) mandatory saving for future, like a Social Security
| for the country (which is ironically also comprised of
| Social Security)
|
| 2) investments made into the future of the country.
| People buy T-bonds because they're reliable returns. Low
| risk, relatively low reward. If suddenly our future looks
| less bright, our debt will slow, but it will be a pretty
| telling canary in the coal mine.
|
| It's baffling to me that people generally don't grasp
| this. They treat it as though we're just ... buying stuff
| on a credit card.
| bandrami wrote:
| Like this goes back to Adam Smith; these questions have
| been answered for a long time now
| nkozyra wrote:
| As long as there's someone to produce it ... forever?
|
| I somehow keep eating 6-10 eggs a week despite not having
| a chicken.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Manufacturing as a share of GDP is bound to fall. It is
| inevitably going the way of agriculture.
|
| The US is in the envyable position of having developed a
| globally dominant service sector. Putting that at risk of
| retaliation by imposing tariffs on all imports, including
| the lowest margin stuff like screws and bolts is utter
| insanity.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/aee57e7f-62f1-4a57-a780-341475
| cd8...
| bandrami wrote:
| We really shouldn't though.
|
| Cargo culting "manufacturing jobs" isn't actually a plan.
|
| (I also notice nobody is talking about bringing back
| switchboard jobs or typing pool jobs)
| Henchman21 wrote:
| > We should mostly make in the country the industrial
| products we consume.
|
| You state this as fact that we should all agree on. Why
| should we do this? Why not rely on our allies and friends
| to do what they do well, while we continue to do what we
| do well? Is trade not the basis of peace? If we stand
| alone, we must ask why we must.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I'm curious, are you personally volunteering to work in
| the factories? Or is it a situation where we need
| industrialization to come back but you personally are not
| willing to see it through?
| bandrami wrote:
| I mean, is the poster in question a senior robotics
| engineer? Because that's whose going to be working in any
| factories that open. Maybe they'll have some security
| guards and janitors, I guess
| rat87 wrote:
| Why? That's what trade is for
| Balgair wrote:
| Um, by picking and choosing what goods need protection in
| the long term?
|
| Like, we can't make more fish. Avocados take a few years
| to grow new trees. Steel mills don't just appear in Ohio.
|
| The worst part is that, even if you believe Donny, he's
| so mercurial with these tariffs that no one is going to
| give you a loan to do anything about any of this. This
| Katy Perry doctrine [0] he's established is just poison
| to any sort of capital investment. You've got no idea if
| any of these tariffs will make it to Monday, let alone to
| the time it takes the mortgage on your t-shirt factory to
| be paid off. And then you've got a new administration in
| four years and no idea if they will keep that protection
| for you either. How are you going to plant a whole
| vineyard and get it profitable in 4 years when grape
| vines take 7 years to mature to fruit bearing?
|
| There's no point to any of this, _even if_ you believe
| him.
|
| [0] 'Cause you're hot, then you're cold You're yes, then
| you're no You're in, then you're out You're up, then
| you're down You're wrong when it's right It's black, and
| it's white We fight, we break up We kiss, we make up
| griffzhowl wrote:
| Overall I agree, but I'm not sure there's literally no
| point. American primary producers will likely benefit -
| people who own mines, oil wells, farms, etc., and some
| American manufacturers too as long as they source enough
| of their raw materials from within the US that the price
| hikes on resources from overseas don't bite them too
| much. Still an overall loss that will be borne by
| American consumers, but a small section of the population
| who are already wealthy will greatly benefit...
| davidw wrote:
| The point is, as this Senator explains, not economic, but
| to gain leverage over companies and countries:
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3
| llu...
|
| "Do _____ and maybe we can cut you some slack on the
| tariffs"
|
| If there is a point and it's not just absolute stupidity.
| Balgair wrote:
| I think he's on to something, but then I come back to
| Hanlon's Razor: Never assume conspiracy when stupidity
| will do.
|
| Sure, they might be trying to do this. But I'd give that
| a ~3% chance.
|
| There is no 'there' there.
|
| They are 'burning down your house to cook a steak.'
|
| The emperor has no clothes.
|
| There are many more ways to say it, but as truly
| unbelievable as my mind keeps insisting it is, these
| people are just plain-jane morons.
| davidw wrote:
| Fair points. I go back and forth.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I genuinely thought his cabinet was at least competent,
| they have credentials like they are at least, but then
| fucking Signal happened and made it obvious what they
| actually are:
|
| The exact same kind of fail-upwards, born on third
| thinking they hit a triple, grindset grifter, _loser mid-
| level management_ nepobabies.
| Balgair wrote:
| > The exact same kind of fail-upwards, born on third
| thinking they hit a triple, grindset grifter, loser mid-
| level management nepobabies.
|
| Could not have put it better myself.
|
| Welcome back.
| bodiekane wrote:
| > people who own mines, oil wells, farms, etc.
|
| Huge swaths of midwestern farmers will go bankrupt if
| tariffs are imposed. Subsidies and exemptions are being
| specifically added to prevent the complete collapse of
| multiple red state economies due to the harm from the
| tariffs.
|
| Even things like oil and mines aren't guaranteed safe,
| because of complexities around where refineries are, loss
| of export market, or weakness of dollar offsetting any
| nominal gains when looking at actual purchasing power.
| coliveira wrote:
| Exactly, tariffs may be a wise way to protect parts of
| your industry that need protection and investment. The
| Chinese for example have been using this tactic for
| decades. But you need to choose which sectors to invest
| in. The way Trump is doing is nothing more than an
| instant devaluation of the dollar purchasing power.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| The problem is it's economically illiterate. Trade
| deficits aren't bad in themselves - they can be a sign
| that you're getting a good deal. Consider the case where
| a country with low wages exports raw materials to the US,
| and doesn't buy back as much from the US. This is the
| situation for lots of poorer countries who are exporting
| cheap raw materials to the US, and the US gains from
| these situations. Trump's policy simply makes all these
| raw materials more expensive.
|
| Another way of reducing trade deficits would be to make
| Americans so poor that they can't afford to buy things
| from overseas. Eliminating trade deficits in itself isn't
| a rational economic goal.
|
| Having said that, American manufacurers on average will
| likely benefit (though maybe not if their raw materials
| are too much more expensive), but this benefit will only
| come at the cost of American consumers, who are denied
| cheaper options from overseas by the tariffs
| rayiner wrote:
| You're calling Trump "economically illiterate," but what
| you're saying will happen is exactly the motivation of
| Trump's policy. He just thinks it's a good thing rather
| than a bad thing.
|
| Trump's bet is that the upsides will be borne
| disproportionately by his base, while the downsides will
| be borne disproportionately by Democrats' laptop-class
| base. It's not irrational to think that will be the
| result.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Trump also thinks imports subtract from GDP.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I was just talking last night about how ironically the
| things Trump is doing fall not to far from what Bernie
| bros have dreamed of. Heavy tariffs and no income tax is
| pretty much the conservative version of liberal hand
| outs.
| tzs wrote:
| What do they expect to happen if the heavy tariffs either
| move the manufacturing of those products to the US or
| make the imports expensive enough that consumers switch
| to domestic manufacturers?
|
| That tanks the revenue from the tariffs, which would make
| them an ineffective replacement for income tax.
| apawloski wrote:
| How will adding a tax to every single consumer good
| benefit his base?
| rayiner wrote:
| Because the taxes will encourage shifting production to
| the U.S.
| apawloski wrote:
| How much do production workers get paid in China? How
| will our production goods be affordable at American labor
| rates? This strategy just makes everything more expensive
| - nothing cheaper.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Exactly and even if it does work to reshore factories
| (which will take years and we'll just ignore the question
| of where all the workers for these factories will come
| from, and that the goods needed for making those
| factories are also being tariffed) they'll only be
| competitive in a protected market so they're only really
| producing for the US market which will be stunted because
| costs would have inflated through the roof!
| apawloski wrote:
| Not to mention these are blanket tariffs, not protecting
| specific American industries. So anything that's not
| feasibly produced here will be more expensive anyway.
|
| Yes everybody, we are taxing all of your groceries - but
| all of those American coffee and banana farms (!) will be
| protected.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Sorry, who is saying that this will make things cheaper?
| I haven't seen Trump or Vance argue this.
| apawloski wrote:
| I mean, a large point of their campaign was that price
| increases were a major national concern, right? Can we
| agree that they repeatedly made that point? I recall many
| lawn signs to that effect.
|
| So given that, I would have assumed that this
| administration would focus on making things more
| affordable. Instead, I'm seeing people try to explain to
| me that, actually, raising the prices across the board is
| a good thing!
|
| To put it plainly, it seems like the administration
| raising prices is, in fact, not a good thing for
| Americans. And I don't see how American labor can produce
| things that are more affordable than what we can buy now.
| So it seems like a net negative, because ultimately they
| are choosing to make everything more expensive for
| consumers.
| rayiner wrote:
| J.p. morgan is predicting 1.5% higher price index due to
| these tariffs. Even if that continues all four years,
| it'll be much less than Biden.
| apawloski wrote:
| Lots of time to make up for causing the largest market
| drop since COVID as well. Hopefully you're right and
| everything will be fine.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Trump did decent in the rust belt. Many of them have lost
| their good paying manufacturing jobs. If, and this is a
| big if, we can bring back manufacturing in the US they
| can get their jobs back.
| apawloski wrote:
| What is the time scale we are talking about when we talk
| about this change?
| ImJamal wrote:
| GM announced they are going to hire some temporary
| workers and expand overtime for existing workers before
| the end of this month.
|
| I'm sure there are more companies, but that is all I've
| seen so far.
| RankingMember wrote:
| If I'm company leadership, I'm not doing anything but
| trying to limit damage while this guy's in office. His
| tariffs can turn on a dime- his petulance is business
| poison.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| I don't think it's his base that will benefit. More the
| owners of factories, mines, oil wells, etc.
| rtkwe wrote:
| > You're calling Trump "economically illiterate,"
|
| I mean he's gone bankrupt 6 times including managing to
| bankrupt a casino a business where on average people give
| you money to get less money in return... He also confuses
| simple economic terms like equating trade deficits with
| tariffs.
| rayiner wrote:
| No. They're designed to scale with trade deficit expressed
| as a percentage. Its not random.
| https://www.understandingamerica.co/p/the-one-word-that-
| expl...
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| I don't understand what you're trying to say. What rtkwe
| described is literally what they are? They didn't say the
| tariffs are random (unless the comment changed, which
| would explain why yours makes no sense to me), they said
| they aren't what the White House is claiming they are.
|
| If you think trying to balance out the trade deficit with
| every single country without any other nuanced
| consideration whatsoever is a good approach, that's one
| thing (a lot of people would disagree), but there's no
| getting around that the information around this is either
| misinformed or deliberately misleading.
| ttw44 wrote:
| rayiner does this pretty consistently - strawmanning the
| argument and acting confused, on most political threads
| on hn.
| oa335 wrote:
| I notice he seems to have a GPT-level understanding of
| issues, offering a thin justifications of his viewpoints,
| and then just completely ignoring any substantive
| discussions and instead only engaging in threads where he
| is "winning".
|
| IIRC he is a lawyer, a field where strategically
| deploying intellectual dishonesty is particularly
| advantageous.
| throw16180339 wrote:
| That's why I've stopped feeding the troll -- I just
| downvote or flag when necessary. It's a shame because,
| years ago, he was one of the better commenters on HN.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| He's done this since at least 2016 so you can rest
| assured he's not a bot.
|
| This is a real human being making these apologetics and
| using classic distraction and whataboutism techniques
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm objecting to his characterization that "they're
| barely even thinking about this." He makes it seem like
| they picked this formula out of a hat. But there is an
| ideological rationale to scaling tariffs up with the size
| of the trade deficit, as described in the article I
| linked.
| oa335 wrote:
| The "idealogical rationale" is not coherent or even
| consistent with the papers that the administration cited:
|
| From one economist who was cited in the rationale:
|
| > It is not clear what the government note is referencing
| or not from our work ... But I believe our work suggests
| a much higher value should be used for the elasticity of
| import prices to tariffs than what the government note
| uses. ... The government note uses a value of 0.25 for
| 'the elasticity of import prices with respect to
| tariffs', denoted with the Greek letter phi. But our
| estimates found a value of 0.943 -- very close to 1 --
| for this elasticity.
|
| From another:
|
| > this is where the discrepancies between our work and
| the table that President Trump showed arises ... our
| results suggest that the EU should not be tariffed, and
| yet they set high tariffs against them. Finally, our
| range of optimal tariffs is substantially lower than the
| ones the Administration just announced.
|
| But it does provide a convenient fig-leaf rationalization
| for the class of over-confident economically illiterate
| folks to cling to, so it seems to have succeeded.
|
| see: https://www.ft.com/content/bbaa8daf-b7b0-4dca-
| bc23-c2e8eee68...
|
| non-paywall: https://archive.ph/wip/JMgcP
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| Why do you think the White House aren't simply saying
| that, then, rather than claiming it's about reciprocal
| tariffs and trade barriers?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Nope my edit was to add the bit I helpfully marked edit
| to show where the White House had confirmed this was
| their method while attempting to deny it.
| jannyfer wrote:
| I just asked ChatGPT with a lazy prompt: "Come up with a
| formula to impose reciprocal tariffs that will reduce
| America's trade deficit to zero" and it came up with
| basically the same formula.
|
| Oh man if people in the White House are just using
| ChatGPT...
|
| https://chatgpt.com/share/67ee890e-b400-800b-ac83-90a6147d3
| 2...
|
| (edit: fixed link)
| api wrote:
| The Terminator franchise had it that the AI has to nuke
| humanity and fight a giant war including _time travel_ to
| take over.
|
| Nah, all it has to do is offer to be "helpful" and do
| stuff for us and we'd be like "sure, go ahead, take over,
| here let me cut and paste your advice right into a policy
| document."
| ben_w wrote:
| People keep asking me how AI will "take over", they don't
| like my answer "humans are lazy and delegate everything
| to the AI".
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| They don't like it because they know it's true.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _chatgpt.com
| /share/67ee890e-b400-800b-ac83-90a61463212_
|
| 404.
|
| > _White House are just using ChatGPT_
|
| Likely, Grok? https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_e8b
| 4c405-3bb8-4f01-9...
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| I can't believe that could be real at all, but then
| remembered we're still on the "Biff has the Grey Sports
| Almanac 1985" timeline
| rtkwe wrote:
| I never know for sure if that's the source or if the bots
| are just reading the same "Tariffs for Dummies" source
| the administration is working from.
| stirlo wrote:
| Good to see that Trump will be providing subsidies on goods
| imported from Australia to balance out the -107% trade
| relationship they have with them.
|
| Oh wait its a 10% tariff on Australia too. Better make a
| new version of this chart with a -117% benefit to the US
| then...
| vixen99 wrote:
| I'm really do appreciate all those on HN who comment either
| for or against these tariff measures by including cogent
| arguments and relevant facts. As against ...
| nopakos wrote:
| > What still baffles me is how people act like this was some
| kind of thoughtful decision
|
| Maybe it's the "Why not inject disinfectant to beat covid"
| [1] for the economy. But this time nobody around him said no.
| (note: added around him)
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Loads of people are actually actively saying no. Those in
| power have goals that don't comport with listening.
| wyldfire wrote:
| The clearest evidence of incompetence for all to see is
| Trump's cabinet from his first term. If they're actively
| speaking out against him, something is seriously wrong.
|
| > Rex Tillerson on Trump: 'Undisciplined,' 'doesn't like to
| read' and tries to do illegal things
|
| Sadly, people didn't vote for Trump so much as they voted for
| "anti-woke." Or: I am tired of being looked down on and this
| is my revenge.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| > What still baffles me is how people act like this was some
| kind of thoughtful decision.
|
| It is. This is being done as part of a plan, with full
| intent.
| RankingMember wrote:
| This is what forced me vastly curtail my news consumption for
| the most part. I can only take so much breathless reporting
| about the "strategy" of the Trump administration, when it's
| plainly sheer incompetence with the winds of malice in the
| background. There is no actual plan to "make America great
| again", it's non-stop incompetent pandering to a base that
| just wants others to suffer.
| dboreham wrote:
| This has been termed "sane washing" and is extremely
| irritating: smart media people reverse engineering a
| vaguely plausible logic from the regime's actions when on
| closer inspection they never gave said logic as their
| reasoning.
| aswanson wrote:
| Plenty of us knew the outcome would be catastrophic. We were
| outvoted by the idiots.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Also you were outvoted because the Dems didn't have a
| reasonable alternative. Mrs Harris was incompetent. She was
| a poor public speaker, which further made her look
| incompetent given her previous role as a prosecutor.
| Further, the Dems didn't offer her as part of an open
| primary. They forced her on everyone.
|
| The US presently suffers from future shock and stilted
| political process. We need more parties and better voting
| options both in the HR department and the mechanical
| process like ranked voting.
|
| Since both parties benefit from the status quo, we shall
| see no change.
| aswanson wrote:
| My cat is a reasonable alternative to the current potus.
| Sometimes, the people get what they deserve.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Agree with paragraph 2.
|
| Paragraph 3 is a cynicism I don't yet fully buy: There
| are enough liberals and so-called Democrats that care
| about this country that perhaps they will be open to
| ranked-preference voting and the opening of our
| "political markets" to save the country.
|
| Partial on paragraph 1. Biden should have left a lot
| sooner, and Harris, loyal to the president and
| unable/unwilling to break with him on anything of value,
| should not have been the "pick".
|
| But she was and is infinitely better for this country
| than Trump in every manner, unless we're into
| accelerationism. I don't think she is incompetent. She
| was unwilling.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Further, the Dems didn't offer her as part of an open
| primary.
|
| The only people promulgating this red herring would never
| have voted for her anyway.
|
| > She was a poor public speaker,
|
| Compared to Trump? A man known for his incoherent
| ramblings?
| stego-tech wrote:
| It's been our turn for a _hot minute_. Republicans have been
| blowing up the status quo since Reagan, and the Democrats
| enforcing austerity since Clinton. American corporate
| leadership is excellent at hitting quarter-after-quarter KPIs
| for bonuses and share price growth, but there's ample data it
| has all come at the expense of workers - increased precarity,
| decreased wages, increased costs of _everything_ , as the
| country is plundered down to its core and sold off piecemeal.
|
| Post-Carter United States (and South Korea, and Japan, and
| the UK, and much of the developed world in general) is a
| prime example of the follies of prioritizing numbers-on-a-
| spreadsheet growth in the short term, over a balanced and
| robust domestic economic engine that ensures a healthy,
| happy, stable populace that wants to have kids (since they
| have the money and time to be good parents).
| energy123 wrote:
| Clinton was the last fiscally responsible President, using
| a strong real economy to pay down some of the debt which
| had service costs equal to the costs of US federal debt
| today. You can't criticize that given how high the debt was
| in the 1990s.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I can when he did so not through raising revenue, but by
| gutting social safety net programs.
|
| If you have a debt problem, you need to both raise income
| _and_ cut unnecessary spending. Clinton - and every
| Democrat since Carter, really - only ever did the latter,
| and always targeting the working class for spending cuts
| as opposed to the corporate or wealthy classes. God
| forbid we curtail subsidies to fossil fuel companies or
| sugar producers or big box stores with a disproportionate
| amount of workers on government assistance programs, god
| forbid we stop bailing out failed banks or bankrupt
| private enterprise, let's instead make sure poor people
| can't have housing and children can't have three meals a
| day.
|
| Throwing large numbers around without examining _how_
| those numbers were achieved is what politicians and
| despots bank on the populace trusting, because once you
| know _how_ those figures are reached, you're confronted
| with how the system _really_ works and suddenly have a
| distaste for it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Clinton was the last fiscally responsible President,
| using a strong real economy to pay down some of the debt
|
| The Clinton social program cuts combined with the Bush II
| tax cuts is what gave us the poor distributional effects
| of the 2001-2008 expansion, which both set the stage for
| and magnified the impact on all but the narrow slice at
| the top of the Great Recession; while they seemed
| harmless in the unusually strong boom economy they were
| implemented in, monentary nominal budget balance acheived
| that way has had massive adverse long term effects.
|
| It also, contrary to your claim, didn't pay down any of
| the national debt, which increased by at least $100
| billion every year of the Clinton presidency.
| dboreham wrote:
| In this case it's much much worse than just incompetent.
| You're looking at someone who takes an evil delight it doing
| the opposite of what smart people say to do, and destroying
| stuff.
| threetonesun wrote:
| It seems thoughtful if you or your children or your friends
| are heavily invested in crypto and think removing the USD as
| the primary currency of trade is a good idea.
|
| I know it's a Republican joke to blame evil meddling
| globalists for the US's problems but it sure seems like a
| bunch of people looking to ruin the US for their own global
| ambitions are running the show right now.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Every accusation is an admission when it comes to
| Republicans.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| > What still baffles me is how people act like this was some
| kind of thoughtful decision.
|
| I'm no economist, but I can see that there are second order
| effects that this addresses that other systems would lack.
|
| 1) Tit for tat on tariffs doesn't work because of other
| barriers to trade such as currency manipulation, subsidies,
| regulations, etc.
|
| 2) We've learned from games such as iterated prisoner's
| dilemma that strategies that succeed are ones that clearly
| communicate how they'll act and respond. A clear formula such
| as deficit/imports accomplished this. Countries know exactly
| what they must address in order to access US markets.
|
| 3) You can end up playing whack a mole with countries in that
| they can set up shop in other countries to bypass tariffs in
| their own country. By applying a consistent formula to all
| countries, you no longer have to play whack a mole.
| telllikeitisguy wrote:
| Then why not just set a flat 10%? Why gut the industrial
| subsidies? Why gut state capacity?
| sebazzz wrote:
| Luckily the US has quite some momentum so it can be hoped the
| damage is limited before the next election so it can then be
| reverted.
| tw04 wrote:
| I'm past the point of thinking people are just being crazy or
| paranoid. Any baffling move this administration makes, I just
| ask myself: what would Russia want?
|
| And without fail, it explains the unexplainable. This move is a
| prime example. This doesn't help the billionaires in America,
| it doesn't help ANYONE in America, but is sure is a massive
| bailout to a Russian economy that was on the verge of collapse.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| > Since trade is conducted largely in USD, that means other
| governments must purchase USD to trade.
|
| This is just one facet of a broader point. When people talk
| about a "trade deficit" what they are really talking about is
| what's known in Economics as a "Current Account deficit". When
| discussing international trade and Balance of Payments, there
| are two accounts - Current Account (goods and services flow)
| and Capital Account (asset and liability flow). By definition,
| the two must net to zero. That's not an equation, it's an
| identity. If you have a Current Account deficit then you have
| an equivalent Capital Account surplus. It works in both
| directions. For example, foreign direct investment into another
| country in the form of a loan leads to a flow of funds into the
| country (Capital Account surplus) and then those funds are used
| to buy things (import) from the first country or other
| countries, leading to a Current Account deficit.
| tootie wrote:
| I was just thinking about this and I'll bet you anything that
| Trump is 100% hung up on the word "deficit" and that's about
| it. If we said "net importer" or "goods taker" or something
| like that we would not be in this situation.
| hollerith wrote:
| Good one. Trump doesn't want anyone to be able to point to
| any _deficit_ in anything Trump is in charge of :)
| sethammons wrote:
| How does this impact consumables? The capital doesn't
| balance, it disappears but the money used for it still exists
| data_marsupial wrote:
| They don't need to hold USD long term to complete transactions.
| Transaction demand does not explain why the dollar is the
| global reserve currency.
| bko wrote:
| I agree tariffs are harmful and counterproductive, even if
| they're applied by the other side. My only hope is that this is
| part of some grand bargain where other countries reduce theirs
| on US goods and things reach a more balanced equilibrium.
|
| It is interesting to note that none of this panic applied when
| US trading partners imposed tariffs on US.
|
| But if this is part of a larger shift in terms of funding the
| government, I would be somewhat open minded. For instance, if
| instead of taxing income, we had tariffs that play a role of
| basically a sales tax, I think that has some benefits. For one,
| I think tax policy should encourage productive work (income) as
| opposed to consumption (sales). So a shift from income to
| consumption taxes would be a positive development. You can make
| adjustments so that its progressive (i.e. tax credits to cover
| the first N dollars in consumption tax). The big problem is the
| geo-political effect less trade might have and the effect on
| the markets.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > My only hope is that this is part of some grand bargain
| where other countries reduce theirs on US goods and things
| reach a more balanced equilibrium.
|
| The thing is that we don't. That 39% Trump claims Europe is
| levying on US goods? It doesn't exist. I've heard they
| include VAT in this which makes no sense because it applies
| to all goods including those made locally. That is not a
| trade tariff. It's just internal taxation.
|
| However I've also heard they calculated it with the trade
| deficit (which in itself makes no sense, it's not a tariff)
| but in the case of the EU that makes even less sense as Trump
| always quotes the deficit on goods, but ignores the deficit
| on services (eg IT) which is highly in favour of the US.
|
| Also when I hear people say "they don't buy American cars in
| Europe", we do have American brands like Ford and Tesla. Ford
| just sell smaller models designed for our market here. Those
| big SUVs and pickups are not suitable for our traffic or
| environment.
| bko wrote:
| I agree that if it was part of a grand bargain it wouldn't
| be so large, which makes me think its either just an insane
| opening play or it's being used to change how the US funds
| itself (the second part of my response)
| layer8 wrote:
| The average effective tariffs on US imports to the EU are
| 2.7%, whereas for EU imports to the US they are 2.2% (i.e.
| weighting the various tariff rates by their respective
| trade volume). So there is a minor imbalance, but imposing
| 20% (and claiming 39%) is ridiculous.
| ericmay wrote:
| > It is the definitive end to it, and the birth of Chinese
| hegemony.
|
| I think you're spot on about the risks of the tariffs (I'm not
| really sure where I stand on them today), but your arguments
| don't produce this conclusion. China is far more protective of
| its markets, nobody has or will have any interest in trading in
| any Chinese currency, and tariffs from not just the US but
| other nations will continue to exacerbate existing problems at
| home for China.
|
| Companies like Temu came into existence because global pullback
| on purchasing Chinese manufactured goods is resulting in job
| losses, and instead of having factories go under the Chinese
| government would prefer to sell products that very quickly fall
| apart or are built extremely cheaply or with very poor
| environmental practices to at least get _some_ money.
|
| Further, while these tariffs seem questionable and everyone is
| piling on Trump (which is deserved, with prejudice, in my
| mind), let's not pretend that the EU, Japan, and others are
| saints here. They do enact trade barriers to protect their own
| domestic industries as well. On the tech side for example
| there's simply no argument that the EU is fining US tech
| companies just because they happened to enact policies and
| rules that the US companies break all the time. Some portion of
| that is a shakedown or a form of a trade restriction.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The narrative with the president is about us vs them. The
| problem here is the enemy is within.
|
| The EU may be awful, Japan may be an unfair partner. But when
| you play with a handgun and shoot yourself in the foot,
| that's on you.
| layer8 wrote:
| One thing I don't understand here, genuine question: If,
| hypothetically, US manufacturing was to become so competitive
| that the trade deficit would go away, would that have the same
| disastrous effects for the US dollar as a trade/reserve
| currency? Or how would that work?
| bluGill wrote:
| US manufacturing is better than it ever has been by all
| measures except number of people working in them. This means
| that there isn't much need for someone to get good at putting
| a nut on a bolt and other such mindless work that is skilled
| only in that with a lot of practice you can get really fast
| as doing it. People who don't want to spend a lot of years in
| school are thus not doing very well because there isn't much
| need for people who don't want to use their brain.
| buu700 wrote:
| Not all measures: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-
| chart-shows-the-drama.... It may not have declined in
| absolute terms, but it still hasn't kept pace with the rest
| of the economy.
| treis wrote:
| It's impossible for both things to be true. For the dollar to
| be the reserve currency countries need to accumulate dollars.
| They can't do that unless more dollars leave the US than come
| back.
|
| The problem is that countries don't just take the dollars and
| sit on them. We're on the third iteration of solving this
| intractable problem:
|
| Try 1 was gold. The US was running out of gold and Nixon had
| to end redemption of dollars for gold.
|
| Try 2 was assets (think the Japanese buying everything in the
| 80s). That was unpopular and the Plaza Accords put an end to
| it with significant damage to the Japanese economy
|
| Try 3 is government debt. But it's the same fundamental
| problem. The US isn't ever willingly going to give back
| assets for this debt. Everyone agrees with the polite fiction
| that the US will and so things are fine. But if they ever
| expect actual stuff for that debt it will all break down
| again.
| layer8 wrote:
| Thanks. These hints led me to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma.
| belter wrote:
| > The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US
| dollar as a global reserve currency.
|
| There you go... "Deutsche Bank says risk of a dollar confidence
| crisis" - https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/deutsche-
| bank-say...
| nilkn wrote:
| This comment is good, yet it also reflects a lot of what I
| dislike about political discourse online.
|
| You've identified a potential severe negative consequence of a
| change or new policy, but you write as if this is a guaranteed
| logical corollary and there is no scenario where this
| consequence does not materialize. This creates an alarmist
| rather than genuine and analytical tone.
|
| Describing tariffs as a "decapitation strike" feels hyperbolic
| and even perhaps conspiratorial. Saying this guarantees Chinese
| hegemony is exaggerated and ignores all the other equally (if
| not more) significant factors influencing both American and
| Chinese trajectories. Applying Dalio's broad thesis to tariffs
| specifically is a stretch -- tariffs may exacerbate tensions
| Dalio describes, but they aren't necessarily the coup de grace
| to hegemony.
|
| Basically, you're highlighting real risks and issues, but
| packaging them in language that overstates their likelihood and
| doesn't take into account any other factors at play
| simultaneously. If your goal is to paint a doomsday picture of
| the future, this works well. If your goal is to understand the
| impact of tariffs on the world, there's too much emotion and
| speculation and not enough hard analytical work here.
| mberning wrote:
| Yeah, the whole "decapitation strike" talking point betrays a
| serious bias. It also implies something which no evidence is
| provided for. The idea that foreign actors got someone
| elected, then managed to get that person to implement a
| specific strategy that rapidly destroys the dollar as a
| reserve currency, all for the benefit of the foreign actor,
| is quite the stretch.
| netbioserror wrote:
| The entirety of this scheme, in its soft and hard power forms,
| was financed by the parasitic impoverishment of the US
| populace. Everything the commenters on this site complain
| about: Runaway inflation, unaffordable housing, extreme
| financialization, excessive military budget, enrichment of the
| top, unaffordable healthcare, unjustifiable wars, all of it has
| partial or total roots in the money printing, artificially low
| interest rates, colossal trade deficits, and military
| adventurism that underpin the global US dollar reserve scheme.
|
| I think it apt to boil it down to a binary choice: Either we
| give up our global empire and allow the multipolar paradigm to
| emerge for the chance at domestic prosperity, or we grip the
| iron to the bitter end and force the entire country to become
| the dystopic open-air homeless cities of the west coast.
| fullshark wrote:
| Why is it a binary choice? This is just reductive. The idea
| that we couldn't maintain American hegemony and return more
| of the benefits of it to the middle/lower classes seems
| silly.
|
| This is about tearing down a system / world order that a lot
| of people are angry about, with little thought to how to
| replace it and make it work for the citizens. The global
| economy has changed, manufacturing capabilities in the west
| will never be competitive again for a wide variety of
| products, and those jobs are not ones that regular Americans
| want anyway. Just like they don't want the farming jobs that
| illegal immigrants are doing.
|
| This vision to essentially return America to a idealized view
| of 1900 is in for a rude awakening.
| netbioserror wrote:
| A wild claim, and then zero explanation as to how it would
| work, plus the same old tired talking points. If you're
| trying to convince the populace NOT to democratically give
| up the global empire, this is a poor attempt.
| tinyplanets wrote:
| "The dystopic open-air homeless cities of the west coast"?
| Hyperbolic much?
| tiahura wrote:
| The world disagrees with your assessment that this is going to
| be bad for the dollar. See recent movement of 10Y.
| fosk wrote:
| To be fair this strategy will work if other countries cannot
| tolerate tariffs for long enough to come up with non-USD trade
| that is accepted by everyone. Which to be fair may take them a
| very long time.
|
| If they fold and remove tariffs on the US (so the US can drop
| the tariffs on them) before coming to an agreement because the
| economical pressure of tariffs is too high, then this will
| result in the largest market expansion the United States has
| ever seen.
|
| My point is: yes lots of negatives can happen, but let's also
| look at what happens if it works out so we are intellectually
| honest about what's going on here.
| tremon wrote:
| _(so the US can drop the tariffs on them)_
|
| That would require other countries trusting the promises of
| the current administration, yes? How much credibility does
| the Orange One have on the world stage?
| runako wrote:
| > If they fold and remove tariffs on the US
|
| The issue with this is the "reciprocal" tariffs that were
| announced are not related in any way to tariffs imposed by
| other nations. According to the administration, they set the
| tariff rate for each country as (trade deficit / (imports *
| 2)). Obviously the country in question cannot undo this even
| by zeroing all tariffs with the US, because none of this is
| based on tariff rates.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| It's not really only about tariffs. It's about the net
| effect on all barriers of trade, such as currency
| manipulation, subsidies, regulations, etc. The formula
| (trade deficit / (imports * 2)) means that countries
| actually have to address the root of the problem and prove
| it before the US reduces their tariffs.
| yojo wrote:
| Having a trade surplus doesn't mean you're cheating.
|
| If I make products better/cheaper than you, I'm going to
| sell more to you than you are to me.
|
| Ditto if I have some valuable resource you need that
| represents a large share of my economy. The fact that you
| need my germanium more than I do doesn't mean I'm ripping
| you off.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| I agree that a deficit could be healthy and fine and
| doesn't mean that the other country is cheating. The
| problem is how some countries have ruined it for everyone
| else by exploiting the current system. For example, after
| the first round of Trump tariffs, Chinese companies began
| moving factories to Mexico in order to take advantage of
| USMCA.
| runako wrote:
| A thought experiment. Imagine a small poor country far
| from the US, of 1 million people, where the average
| income is $3000 annually ($3 billion total household
| income). Imagine a factory in that country that produces
| shoes beloved in America.
|
| Those shoes are so popular in America that Americans buy
| $1 billion of those shoes every year. In order to address
| the problem as stated, this hypothetical country would
| have to spend a third of its household income purchasing
| products produced in some of the highest-cost conditions
| in the world. To do so, they would have to shut out their
| local trading partners from whom they currently buy goods
| at prices they can afford. This would have the effect of
| making them even poorer.
|
| Does this make any sense?
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| If you make an exception for this hypothetical country,
| then countries such as China would come in and build
| factories there and bypass their own tariffs. You're back
| to playing whack-a-mole.
| runako wrote:
| I'm not talking about making an exception. I'm suggesting
| that a trade deficit can arise for reasons that have
| nothing to do with manipulation.
|
| Also, the administration created the loophole about which
| you worry by creating a 24% tariff gap between China and
| the new 10% baseline for most countries.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| Except that because the rule is clear, China will
| anticipate that doing this in another country will result
| in eventual increased tariffs. They will be able to see
| ahead that it's not worth making a big investment for
| that purpose. The optimal strategy changes to do more
| business with the US and/or build factories in the US.
| jesusthatsgreat wrote:
| > If they fold and remove tariffs on the US
|
| Part of the problem is that Trumps's definition of tariffs
| doesn't make any sense. VAT isn't a tariff but according to
| Trump it is.
|
| Does he seriously expect other nations to just get rid of
| VAT? Or somehow replace it overnight with some other system
| all just to appease the US? Because that's the only way you
| can lower 'tariffs' to zero.
|
| It just won't happen and we'll be in a continual standoff
| until Trump concedes that trade barriers are not in fact a
| good thing for anyone. He'll never admit it, but it wouldn't
| surprise me at all if the illusion of a 'deal' is struck in
| order to save face and reverse this mess once it becomes
| clear it's not sustainable unless you _want_ to shrink your
| economy and destroy others at the same time.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| British tariffs come to a weighted value of 1.02%. That's
| what the US is worried about, 1.02%. Seriously.
| ratedgene wrote:
| It makes sense why Trump's family is investing opportunity into
| crypto like "American Bitcoin" -- they want to separate
| themselves from the dollar.
| roflyear wrote:
| It is not correct that an Asian business doing business with a
| Italian company first exchanges their currency to USD by
| selling the US goods then using that USD to complete the
| transaction.
|
| I agree with you that the current situation in the world
| _really_ benefits the US and the current policies seem to
| undermine that.
| csomar wrote:
| > It is not correct that an Asian business doing business
| with a Italian company first exchanges their currency to USD
| by selling the US goods then using that USD to complete the
| transaction.
|
| The only way around that is the EUR. Otherwise, most
| countries have very little connections to one another. Even
| neighbors will trade with USD and settle in New York.
| roflyear wrote:
| I think the dollar is around 50% of foreign trade - but
| anyway I am not arguing against that, I'm saying that it
| isn't related to trade deficits.
| csomar wrote:
| The real traitor is Biden who handed the presidency to Trump
| and only cared about covering himself and his family asses. I
| think that was the point where you realize the democrats have
| just given up and did their part of selling the country. Some
| people must be now moving Bitcoin, Gold and other valuables out
| of the country before the big unveiling kinda like what
| happened with the soviet union.
|
| I have made a post about this after the election that got
| flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42755700
|
| If you are still unconvinced that big fundamental changes are
| happening: https://goldprice.org/
| badpun wrote:
| > Since trade is conducted largely in USD, that means other
| governments must purchase USD to trade. This is the core of
| trade deficits. Foreign countries buy US dollars so they can
| trade with other people. That guarantees the deficit since they
| give us something in exchange for USD
|
| I'm not convinced it works like that. When a foreign country
| buys something from another foreign country using USD, the
| seller country then receives that USD. The seller country then
| use those dollars do buy something else from a third country -
| unless they have imbalanced trade and keep accumulating the
| dollars, like China does. But, in general case, there's only a
| need for a limited number of USD in circulation to serve as
| "working capital" for all foreign exchange. There's no need to
| keep getting new dollars, as the old ones get recirculated.
| stef25 wrote:
| The only other currency that comes to mind for global trade is
| the Euro but even that seems impossible?
| mkoubaa wrote:
| BTC
| coliveira wrote:
| I said before that Trump would be the Gorbachev of the USA, if
| he knows it or not. He is dismantling the system under the
| disguise of reforming it.
| IX-103 wrote:
| Yes, but it's even worse than you think.
|
| As these countries move away from the dollar, there becomes a
| glut of US dollars in the world, triggering inflation like we
| have never seen before. Ignoring the barriers to trade that the
| tariffs represent and what that will do with our productivity.
| Ignoring the additional cost of an uncertain market future
| (because all decisions are made from the gut and could change
| tomorrow). The massive stagflationary impact of foreign
| countries unloading the 75% of US dollars they hold would
| effectively kill them US economy. The tariffs wouldn't even
| matter because you effectively couldn't give US dollars away --
| they'd be worthless internationally. No one that is not rich
| could afford to import anything.
| wesapien wrote:
| God damn you nailed it. All the stupid wars for nothing. Rarely
| do I see anyone talk about these shenanigans as the mechanism
| to end the reserve status of the $ and the end for influence
| and affluence. It will breed a lot of resentment from some
| Americans thinking the world is against them. They could be
| used for war.
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| You should read the book lol
| glitchc wrote:
| I believe that's Trump's plan. According to the Triffin
| Dilemma, the source of US budgetary deficits are due to the USD
| being the world's reserve currency. Once that's not the case,
| trade should rebalance to a healthy surplus.
| dcow wrote:
| I quite like the idea of our debts becoming real. Then we can't
| live in the dishonest fantasy where we just print money and
| ignore debt anymore.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I assure you that the fantasy of this being a band-aid rip-
| off moment will turn sour when the sore becomes infected and
| you're living through a depression.
| kamaal wrote:
| >> Foreign countries buy US dollars so they can trade with
| other people. That guarantees the deficit since they give us
| something in exchange for USD, which they do not then spend on
| goods we make.
|
| This is called Triffin Dilemma- And in many lies at the core of
| the most basic question every power in history has faced.
|
| That is- You can either be a Geo Economic Super power or a Geo
| political Super power, You can't be both at the same. You have
| to chose to be one. China seems to be chosing the former. USA
| chose to be the latter, but can't seem to be sure about its
| choices so far.
| mock-possum wrote:
| I don't get why it matters what currency people use - all
| currency is exchangeable, isn't it? What does it matter if you
| buy something for dollars or pounds or euros or yen?
|
| If I'm buying 1 barrel of oil for $100, does it matter whether
| I convert my USD into 150 of this currency or 50 of that
| currency, according to the current exchange rate, before I pay?
| I still get 1 barrel of oil, and the seller still received an
| equivalent to $100 in exchange?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > This is a decapitation strike (Timothy Snyder: Decapitation
| Strike -- https://archive.is/1xkxK) on America by our enemies
|
| Decapitation Strike seems to be not a general principle that is
| applying here, but the title of a specific polemic against the
| Trump administration. Just mentioning for clarity, as it
| sounded like a general thing warned about in past times that's
| applicable here.
| remoquete wrote:
| I'm wondering how this protectionist trend will impact overseas
| hires. Will US companies continue to hire talent remotely outside
| of their borders? Will they be incentivized to only hire in the
| US?
| logicchains wrote:
| More businesses will be incentivised to locate in the US, to
| avoid tariffs, but they'll still be incentivised to hire from
| outside the US due to cheaper labour (there's no tariff on
| wages).
| tossandthrow wrote:
| > there's no tariff on wages
|
| It is _really_ difficult to pay wages to internationals (As
| most people involved in remote work know).
|
| Usually you need to setup a subsidiary in the country you
| want to hire in - or convince the "employee" to be a
| contractor.
|
| In the end this is not "wages" that move over borders - but
| services. And these can indeed be tarrifed.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Here we go.
|
| My dumb ass invested money in usa stocks when trump got elected
| because trump is pro business, right ? Should have invested in
| Asia, today china is the usa from 40 year ago.
| louthy wrote:
| It doesn't matter where you invested. Everyone's taking a
| haircut.
| s_dev wrote:
| Not EU weapons manufacturing and defence industry.
| bluGill wrote:
| China would be very risky. Trump in his previous term declared
| a trade war with china, and there is every reason to think he
| would again. China is also make geopolitical moves that give a
| significant chance of war in SE asia. I wouldn't invest there.
|
| Now investing in Brazil or something might make sense.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| what would happen to US??? I mean you cant ignore US market right
| now
|
| so is this enough that factory gonna comeback on US soil??
| mirzap wrote:
| Let's imagine they do come back. Let's say you have a toaster
| factory in Vietnam, which allows the US company to produce low-
| cost toasters for about $100. The factory workers earn $1 per
| hour. Now, due to the tariffs, a toaster will cost $146. And
| you say, "Okay, they just need to move their factory to the US
| and then the problem will be solved - no more tariffs. " Fine.
| Do you really think a US worker will work for $1 per hour? Even
| if you automate 80% of the factory, you still won't offset the
| 46% tariff. You will never get a toaster priced at $100. More
| likely, it will be $300.
| kwar13 wrote:
| Liberation day indeed... when Canada/Australia/Europe/South
| Korea/Japan are now the enemy I'm not sure there are any more
| friends left.
| ajb wrote:
| This is basically the Kim Jong-Un approach to foreign policy:
|
| Kim: threaten a nuclear war, see if people will pay you to stop
|
| Trump: threaten to crash the world economy, see if other
| countries will pay to stop you
|
| He doesn't care that this will shrink the global economy, or
| even, at least in the short term, the US economy. If other
| countries submit in order to negotiate tariffs down then he has
| his "win" politically, if not then he has someone to blame.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| A possible retaliation by the EU could be to not enforce US
| intellectual property rights in the EU anymore. Or we could start
| taxing cloud companies, who, until now, have not paid taxes in
| the EU for profits that they generate in the EU.
| theuppermiddle wrote:
| This is exactly what I was thinking. Is not the US export far
| higher than import if they take into account the software and
| other IT services they sell? I would expect other countires to
| tarrif that.
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| That would work of we had viable alternatives (on par with
| the US offers or as an easy migration). But we don't really,
| so if the EU also adds tariffs than we'll have the same
| issues the US is going to have. Meaning higher prices for the
| same offer since we'll have no other choice but to stick with
| the US IT offer.
|
| Like other comments said, this could work only if this was
| long term and everybody bites the bullet until they have a
| good local alternative to foreign offers with high tariffs.
| And the chances of having a lower offer as the one you were
| importing are really high. So, everybody is betting on short
| term.
| planb wrote:
| Higher Prices? What is the "Price" of Instagram and Google
| Maps? But on the other hand, how would you put tariffs on
| these?
|
| The good thing is: If the EU finds a way to tax the money
| flowing from advertisers to big tech, consumers would not
| be affected (at least not financially), because they are
| not the ones paying the price.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| The price is not for using it, but for serving ads on it.
| They'd increase the price for ads that target European
| customers.
| planb wrote:
| Yes. So advertising gets more expensive when targeting EU
| users. The users don't care, so there wouldn't be much
| public backlash. And the advertisers will either cut back
| / relocate their ad spendings or raise their marketing
| budget.
| owebmaster wrote:
| > Higher Prices? What is the "Price" of Instagram and
| Google Maps?
|
| You gonna tax their real customers, the advertisers. And
| a 100% tax on advertisement is actually healthy for the
| economy and society.
| Ragnarork wrote:
| > What is the "Price" of Instagram and Google Maps?
|
| Those are free for consumers, but Google Suite (Mail,
| Calendar, etc.) for enterprises definitely has a price.
| 0xy wrote:
| The DMA is already a tax on US tech companies specifically,
| given it is enforced exclusively against US tech.
|
| Hence the retaliatory tariffs. The backdoor taxes through
| 'laws' (that are NEVER enforced against EU companies -- Spotify
| got a DMA carve-out).
| mrweasel wrote:
| I don't think the current US administration understand the EU.
|
| There are some things where I have my doubts about the current
| actions of the European countries, like rearmament. Will that
| be dropped the minute a new US administration enters? What the
| EU does well, like really well, is trade and bureaucracy. It
| is, in my mind one of the few areas where the EU can absolutely
| run circles around the US, while managing to protect and
| isolate itself from the worst fallout. We've already seen this
| with the current EU tariffs, they are extremely precise and
| targets Republican votes at almost no cost to EU consumers. I
| think that will continue, rather than imposing broad tariffs,
| the EU will target things Trump care about specifically.
| jgilias wrote:
| I have a pet theory on why that is. In EU to become a
| Brussels career bureaucrat you need to be able to speak a
| couple of languages fluently. This serves as a kind of a
| filter. Whatever they are, dumb they most certainly are not.
| To a lesser extent this applies to European politicians too.
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| Bureaucrat yes, politicians no. Every eu law is translated
| in to every language of the union and EU employees an army
| of interpreters that translate in real time sessions of EU
| parliament- you can be an EU politician only knowing your
| mother tongue. Expense spent on these translation services
| has a side benef though- you have a large volume of
| publicly accessible multilingual text which came in handy
| for training machine translation (eg deepl) even on smaller
| languages.
| jgilias wrote:
| That's why I said "to a lesser extent". It's _possible_
| to survive as a high level EU country politician without
| being fluent in a second language, but it's definitely
| suboptimal. So it still serves as a forcing function.
| fransje26 wrote:
| The thing is, you need to take into account the fact that
| a lot of the political "deals" are not done during
| official EU sittings, when these translation services are
| available.
|
| A lot of the discussions happen during the informal
| after-hours in cafes and restaurants.
|
| This is one of the reasons why, for many years, the Dutch
| delegation was very unsuccessful at pushing their own
| interests and placing their representatives in
| "important" positions, as they were all keen on taking
| the first train home from Brussels, and were skipping
| these informal gatherings.
|
| It's not a stretch to imagine that a poor mastering of
| the "important" EU languages will put a politician at a
| disadvantage in such settings, due to an inability to
| communicate with his/her peers.
| shin_lao wrote:
| The EU has already been doing that with "fines".
| louthy wrote:
| The fines were for breaking EU laws. Don't break EU law,
| don't get fined. It's quite straightforward
| xaldir wrote:
| 0% chance of this happening, but I like the idea.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| Why not? Multiple politicians have already mentioned IP as a
| possible method of retaliation. Also, the goal is to hurt
| Trump, his voters and his allies. Tech Bro's are Trumps
| allies nowadays.
| stirlo wrote:
| Denmarks largest export is Ozempic. Ignoring IP rules will
| hurt EU producers too.
|
| How do you plan to ignore IP to hurt American tech
| companies. I guess if you allow piracy of all of netflixs
| content that would work (but same thing would hurt
| spotify).
|
| Most tech companies are not protected by IP but by network
| effects and vendor lock in. It would be far simpler to
| simply implement a minimum tax on revenue or advertising
| spend in country to extract value.
| kubb wrote:
| Phase out Facebook, Instagram and Xitter, 200% tax on
| Google ads, subsidize local cloud providers, phase out
| Amazon.
|
| Make piracy legal for downloaders, and stop enforcing the
| criminal law for seeders.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Also pirate Microsoft, like in good old times.
| cess11 wrote:
| I think it is a mistake to approach this policy as if it is about
| other states. One sign that it is not is that it seems to be
| based on a crude, almost simplistic calculation, something like
| trade deficit divided by exports, with a ten percent blanket
| tariff on states with trade surplus or no trade.
|
| Applying the same policy against everyone indicates it's not
| about them, it's about the usian 'us'. Another way to look at it
| might be as sanctions, but instead of applying them on another
| state, applying them at home. And sanctions are usually a means
| to influence oligarchs and industrialists in a state, which
| probably means this is a policy directed at those groups in the
| US.
|
| Why would you want to hurt US industrialists and oligarchs?
| Because then you can ease their pain in exchange for their
| loyalty. This is the logic behind castles in Europe. It's a place
| where the king decides the taxes, taxing illoyal barons or
| whatever more than loyal ones, and if they militantly disagree,
| shut the door and have them expend their resources on a hopefully
| futile siege and then be weakened anyway. Similar policy was
| common in colonial settings too, if the colony was uppity, tax
| them harshly.
|
| The world is changing fast anyway, the liberalist hegemony wasn't
| going to extend far into the future for many reasons, like
| climate change and the general rise of autocracy worldwide.
| Having guarantees of loyalty and stability from the state
| apparatus at home when the world order inevitably crumbles while
| burning some bridges that would likely fall apart anyway, instead
| of wasting resources keeping up a charade defending some 'status
| quo', has a kind of logic too it.
| pontiacbandit8 wrote:
| Trump must be a Russian asset. There can be no other explanation.
| To weaken NATO, remove U.S. dominance by withdrawing forces from
| bases worldwide, abandon maritime security, weaken the dollar,
| and implement hostile economic policies that maintain the dollar
| as the world's currency, it seems that the final step of "America
| First" is to make the dollar the sole currency used only in the
| United States.
| cmurf wrote:
| He's a psychopath. But I'm willing to compromise.
|
| He's a mentally ill Russian agent.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| I understand the "and 10% on everyone else" part of the tariffs.
|
| Do you think the media is too dumb to understand that, or are
| they just playing games when they point out a 10% tariff in
| someone who does not export to the US?
| macawfish wrote:
| Are we gone flag this one too? Or just all the articles
| chronicling certain crypto invested tech billionaires pushing in
| this direction?
| Havoc wrote:
| And here I thought brexit would keep the top spot as act of self
| harm
| DanielVZ wrote:
| Yep. This is like brexit but ten times worse.
| dash2 wrote:
| Actually this is one time when Brexit is paying off. We get 10%
| tariffs, the EU gets 20%.
| louthy wrote:
| Not really, if the whole world sinks into an economic
| depression then the percentages won't matter much. What will
| matter is the starting position and whether the country's
| economy has enough headroom to ride it out.
|
| It doesn't. Because of Brexit.
| dash2 wrote:
| Jonathan Portes, who is very, very much not a Brexit fan,
| agrees with me.
| ncruces wrote:
| You get a 10% tariff when you run a deficit with the US. EU
| gets a 20% tariff on a 40% surplus. You win!
| s_dev wrote:
| EU has signed up to lucrative trade deals with Canada and
| Mexico since Brexit and has many more similar ones with other
| Asian countries. International trade is complicated and it is
| very much something the EU specialises in.
| fransje26 wrote:
| Everything is bigger in America.
| Beijinger wrote:
| The EU probably does not have a trade surplus with the US, but
| rather a trade deficit.
|
| https://www-gmexconsulting-com.translate.goog/cms/de/dunkle-...
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I was thinking the same. IT is a huge business, the best kind
| of business right now, the pinnacle of human technology at this
| point in time. America is the world leader in development, and
| "exports" of IT. You can't really tariff software, as it's some
| kind of IP.
|
| On the other hand, much of the "digital infrastructure" is free
| and open. Perhaps if rival powers put enough effort into
| sanctioning US effective sales in IT, however that may work,
| America could lose it all.
| cbg0 wrote:
| > You can't really tariff software, as it's some kind of IP.
|
| The bureaucrats in Brussels will easily find a way to do it.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Yupp, no one says tariffs must only be matched with
| tariffs. This is a big trade war.
| cbg0 wrote:
| With regards to goods, the EU exports more than it imports from
| the US, but we do import more services from the US, which can
| likely be taxed in retaliation.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Yes, but only because iPhones, Dell computers, HP printers
| are shipped from China and not the US. Yet the majority of
| profits from these trades are accrued in US companies or
| offshore tax shelters owned by them.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| EU has a surplus on physical goods, and a deficit on services.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| I would bet that most of these tarrifs won't exist in <6 months.
| This reeks negotiation tactics from Trump.
|
| He's been playing this game for 2 months now with Canada and
| Mexico, and so far he's loosing. US & business are loosing even
| more.
|
| Keeping this kind of tarrifs, would be absolutely moronic even by
| Trump standards. That would be economic and financial suicide for
| the US.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Doesn't matter if they're gone in 6 months. The damage is done,
| businesses will see the United States as too unstable and
| unreliable to plan long term goals in. We will pay the penalty
| for decades. Even if you get a new administration, that
| administration can be gone in another 4 years.
| TheAlchemist wrote:
| Oh on that we agree - the damage to US reputation and
| reliability is already done and it will take decades or a
| world war to repair it.
| deadbabe wrote:
| We will not be alive to see it restored to its former glory
| ever again.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| At least I lived long enough to see the liberals who
| spent the first 55 years of my life bashing the US (often
| correctly) for imperialistically stomping all over the
| rest of the world, using its massive military to force
| its currency and culture on other nations, and meddling
| in the elections of sovereign nations to create puppet
| governments (just to name a few of our favorite
| activities), turn to pining for the former glory of the
| US empire.
|
| That wasn't on my bingo card.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Oh yes, it's over for them. If they make it out of this
| administration, they will never be that liberal again.
| zero_k wrote:
| This is not a game. Others will not take it as a game, and will
| retaliate. You can only play the bully for so long before
| others start treating you as a bully, and stop backing down,
| even after you have backed down -- as they never know when you
| are bluffing.
| gadders wrote:
| If anyone is interested, you can find the US's assessment of the
| tariffs imposed on the US by other countries here:
| https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Reports/202...
|
| EG:
|
| "The UK has duties on approximately 5,000 tariff lines, including
| on certain agricultural products, ceramics, chemicals,
| bioethanol, and vehicles. Tariffs on some products such as
| bananas, raw cane sugar, and apparel, which tend not to be import
| sensitive for the UK, are maintained to provide for preferential
| access for imports from certain developing countries into the UK
| compared to the MFN rate. The UK has some high tariffs that
| affect U.S. exports, such as rates of up to 25.0 percent for some
| fish and seafood products, 10.0 percent for trucks, 10.0 percent
| for passenger vehicles, and up to 6.5 percent for certain mineral
| or chemical fertilizers"
| cbeach wrote:
| Why haven't we questioned the asymmetric high tariffs imposed by
| the EU on America for decades?
|
| The EU imposed a 10% tariff on US cars for decades while the US
| only imposed 2.5% on the EU. And this happened while the EU
| exerted a significant trade surplus against the US on
| automobiles.
|
| I don't advocate trade wars, but I can understand the case for
| some rebalancing, given the historic context. Hopefully Trump
| will only use tariffs as a negotiating tool, and they will soon
| be lifted. He's a dealmaker.
| detaro wrote:
| Of course a lot of the vehicles that would be interesting to
| the US market are not classified as cars, but as (light)
| trucks, and have a 25% tariff applied (originally due to a
| minor tariff "war" in the 1960s around chicken exports). It's
| just wrong that the US until now has not questioned and acted
| upon foreign tariffs.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >The EU imposed a 10% tariff on US cars for decades while the
| US only imposed 2.5% on the EU.
|
| Whose faults? Someone signed the deal, someone let the deal
| stand 'for decades'. Trump could have 'rebalanced' any
| disparities...er, 'nicely', and been annoyingly victorious. As
| it is, nah. Lost trust. Not visiting, either.
| kindkang2024 wrote:
| The Hawk-Dove game is a wise framework to consider. When both are
| Hawks, both get harmed. When one is a Hawk and the other a Dove,
| the Dove gets hurt, and the Hawk laughs. I hope both can be
| Doves, bringing tariffs to zero and making all great again.
| tlogan wrote:
| The next phase is likely geopolitical. Countries will begin
| negotiating directly with the U.S. administration to secure
| exemptions or reductions in tariffs. In effect, it's the
| formation of a new American sphere of influence / empire.
| jgilias wrote:
| To me it seems like Americans are currently actively
| dismantling their sphere of influence.
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| Yup, who wants to get deeper in business with a party you
| cannot - in any case - trust?
| tlogan wrote:
| Exactly. The old is based on Cold War. The new sphere of
| influence will be probably quite different.
| jgilias wrote:
| I don't feel like there will be one worth talking about
| though if the current direction persists. If you don't care
| about things like freedom, democracy, free press, the rule
| of law, free markets, then China seems like a much better
| overlord to take.
| tmellon2 wrote:
| The De Minimis loophole is highly significant with FOUR Million
| packages per day (What ???). The clause to address this loophole
| needs to be stated more accurately - It should be clearly defined
| to be _higher or lower_ of 30 % of the value of shipment under
| $800 OR $25 per shipment and not _either_. If _either_ then the
| De Minimis loophole will be continue to be used at $25 per
| shipment. Source : https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-
| sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
| nbzso wrote:
| It is not a conspiracy anymore. Problem - Reaction - Solution.
| Start a war in the middle of Europe and Gaza. Tariffs. Recession
| - Panic - Digital ID, Social scoring, CDBC, Digital dollar, AI
| governance, tech feudalism. That's all folks. :)
| dandanua wrote:
| The US Administration is dead. America is occupied by creatures
| that simply want to destroy the current world order, sow chaos,
| and profit from that by means of power and utter hate and
| disrespect for ordinary people, who live from paycheck to
| paycheck. Keep advancing AI, so they wouldn't need to employ
| humans to kill other humans.
| jongjong wrote:
| I like the idea of tariffs but only if followed with income tax
| cuts.
| mherrmann wrote:
| Can this be an arbitrage opportunity?
| sneak wrote:
| Meanwhile the options level upgrade I asked e*trade for at 8am
| (before the 4pm announcement) so I can buy puts is still pending
| at 8am the following day.
|
| TIL one should configure brokerage accounts well in advance of
| events.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Vietnam and Israel already agreed to remove tariffs on USA
| imports. Thailand is opening negotiations today.
|
| It's simple - remove import duty from USA goods and the USA will
| remove tariffs. Reciprocal trade.
| dexcs wrote:
| And as tech guys we always wonder if the world is a better place
| with AI Agents taking over. My guess is that even gpt-3 would
| have come up with a better solution than this.
| polski-g wrote:
| I encourage everyone to contact their reps and demand a bill be
| advanced to return tariff authority to the Congress.
|
| There are enough GOP reps opposed to tariffs to get a discharge
| petition.
| Loughla wrote:
| Are they more opposed to tariffs than they are in support of
| their king Trump?
|
| I'm betting the number of Republicans in Congress who will
| oppose Trump is in the single digits at this point.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| This doesn't come as a surprise as we all know it's going to
| come.
|
| My question is, how does the US prepare to re-industrialize
| itself? Is the tariff good enough to provide incentives so that
| factories start to appear domestically? I fear this might not be
| the case.
| bluGill wrote:
| The US never lost manufacturing. It just automated it. Those
| people who know how to run a factory still exist.
|
| However there is no getting around it taking years to setup a
| factory (less if you can import the assembly line back from
| China). So nobody sane will start a new one in the next year
| based on these tariffs - odds are too high that in 2 years the
| democrats take over congress (the house not flipping would be a
| shock: typically the out of power party gains a few seats in
| non-presidential elections and only a few seats need to flip.
| The senate is somewhat unlikely, but the loss of the house
| would have ripple effects there).
|
| Even ignoring the above, any few factory would be highly
| automated. There won't be thousands of new no college required
| jobs created in any new factory. It will be maybe 100 (probably
| less), with a bunch more engineering degree required.
| jjice wrote:
| From the people in my life who talked about their preference for
| this administration, the economy was the core reason I heard.
| Specifically interest rates, but ignoring that that's the federal
| reserve and the president has no impact on that.
|
| Whatever - all that said, I can't imagine this leads to an
| economic boom or anything near it by the midterms. Are the
| republicans going to lose midterms if the economy is shit? I'm
| not sure, but I can't imagine this works out well. I'm no
| economist though, so what do I know.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| It's insane, because all those people have now backpedaled and
| no longer bring up the economy as their primary concern.
|
| Also insane because all of this was so predictable. Trump
| couldn't stop talking about tariffs throughout all of 2024. It
| was obvious that he was going to do this, and obvious that it
| would tank the economy.
| jgilias wrote:
| A lot of people rather change their beliefs than ever admit
| they've been wrong.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > It's insane, because all those people have now backpedaled
| and no longer bring up the economy as their primary concern.
|
| Give it time. They will.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| As soon as they have the narrative to blame the incoming
| recession on Democrats, they definitely will
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| People don't like saying that they were wrong. Otherwise, we
| would have a world peace and prosperity.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Hey, at least they were not alone. "Economy/cost of living"
| consistently polled as the number one issue for Trump voters.
| neogodless wrote:
| If we have something _closely enough_ representing a "free and
| fair election", there's zero chance Republicans hold the House
| of Representatives in the mid-terms. But they'll still have the
| Executive branch, the Senate, and a frighteningly strong hold
| on the Judicial branch.
|
| Though it seems clear and likely that any means of voter
| suppression that can be used against areas and demographics
| that traditionally lean strongly Democrat will be utilized,
| with a lot less checks and balances than have existed in the
| past.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > If we have something closely enough representing a "free
| and fair election"
|
| Make you wonder, doesn't it..
| jorblumesea wrote:
| It's fascism, reasoning with people won't work. The economy was
| the problem because Biden was in power. Now it's fine because
| trump is "doing what is needed and we all need to pay higher
| prices".
|
| > "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and
| ears. It was their final, most essential command."
| heywoods wrote:
| Edit: poor formatting on mobile.
|
| The "Liberation Day" tariffs aren't random--they're step one in
| a broader strategy called the Mar-a-Lago Accord (yes, named
| after Trump's resort). Here's the playbook from Stephen Miran's
| framework and what's likely next:
|
| The Mar-a-Lago Accord Framework
|
| 1. Tariffs as Leverage * Impose tariffs to
| force trading partners to revalue their currencies downward
| (making U.S. exports cheaper globally).
|
| * Example: The "reciprocal" tariffs target countries with trade
| surpluses (China, EU) to pressure concessions.
|
| 2. Currency Realignment * Weaken the dollar to
| boost U.S. manufacturing (counteracting its "overvaluation").
| * Miran argues a weaker dollar would make imports pricier and
| exports more competitive. 3. Debt Restructuring
| * Swap existing U.S. Treasury debt into 100-year "century
| bonds" to reduce interest payments. * Foreign
| holders (like China/Japan) would "voluntarily" accept this to
| maintain U.S. security ties.
|
| 4. Sovereign Wealth Fund * Use tariff revenue
| to create a fund buying foreign currencies, artificially
| depressing the dollar. * (Not implemented yet--
| still theoretical.)
|
| Where "Liberation Day" Fits?
|
| --> You are here | Step 1 <--
|
| The 10% baseline tariff + "reciprocal" rates (up to 50%)
| kickstart Miran's plan by: - * Generating
| revenue ($300B+/year) to fund future steps. - *
| Forcing allies/adversaries to negotiate (or face higher costs).
| - * Goal: Create chaos to pressure partners into accepting
| dollar devaluation and debt swaps.
|
| What's Next (If the Playbook Holds)?
|
| 1. The Clone Currency Wars
|
| Expect Trump to accuse China/EU of "currency manipulation" to
| justify further dollar interventions.
|
| 2. Debt Shakeup
|
| Pressure foreign Treasury holders (like Japan) to swap debt for
| century bonds. If they refuse? More tariffs.
|
| 3. Sector-Specific Tariffs
|
| Pharma, lumber, and tech tariffs are likely next to "protect"
| U.S. industries.
|
| 4. Retaliation Escalation
|
| Allies like Canada/EU will counter with tariffs, risking global
| recession.
|
| The Perils Lying Ahead (Miran's paper admits risks)
|
| Miran's paper admits risks: * Tariffs might
| strengthen the dollar short-term (investors flock to USD
| safety), undermining manufacturing goals. * Debt
| restructuring could trigger a Treasury sell-off, spiking
| interest rates.
|
| Bottom line: "Liberation Day" is phase one of a high-risk plan.
| Success depends on whether trading partners blink first.
|
| "The Road goes ever on and on, Down from the door where it
| began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I
| can." - Tolkien
|
| https://smithcapitalinvestors.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Am I wrong to intuit that tariffs against everyone is less bad
| than tariffs against a few, because now the rest of the world has
| even more potentially willing replacement trade partners?
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| So the US has been, more or less, the best place in the world to
| do business. Stocks historically soaring, yadda yadda yadda ...
| and somehow this guy sells the story that the US has been taking
| advantage of by all the other evil countries in the world. It
| does not, in any way, make sense. What a clown. A totalitorian
| clown unfortunately.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| Would love to know what your country's tariffs are on the US.
| teekert wrote:
| You are downvoted but this never mentioned indeed. I have a
| hard time finding how much us Europeans pay in tariffs on
| stuff from China and the US.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| It's downvoted because it's a transparent and weak attempt
| to "both sides" something that's not both-sidesable.
| colordrops wrote:
| Why is it not "both-sidesable"?
| asacrowflies wrote:
| Middle ground fallacy
| colordrops wrote:
| No, I'm asking for details in this specific case. I don't
| have deep knowledge and understanding of the subject, so
| why is it no applicable in this case?
| verteu wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff
| _ra...
|
| > The European Commission says it charges an average
| tariff of just 1% on US products entering the EU market,
| "considering the actual trade in goods". It adds that the
| US administration collected approximately EUR7 billion of
| tariffs on EU products in 2023 compared to the EU's EUR3
| billion on US goods.
|
| > A World Trade Organisation (WTO) estimate puts the
| average tariff rate on US products entering the EU
| slightly higher at 4.8%.
|
| > In both cases, this is far off the 39% figure quoted by
| the Trump administration.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/03/fact-check-
| are...
| kolanos wrote:
| Imagine calling trade "not both-sidesable". You can't
| make this stuff up.
| 332451b wrote:
| For the EU and US: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscor
| ner/detail/en/qanda_...
|
| > For technical reasons, there is not one "absolute" figure
| for the average tariffs on EU-US trade, as this calculation
| can be done in a variety of ways which produce quite varied
| results. Nevertheless, considering the actual trade in
| goods between the EU and US, in practice the average tariff
| rate on both sides is approximately 1%. In 2023, the US
| collected approximately EUR7 billion of tariffs on EU
| exports, and the EU collected approximately EUR3 billion on
| US exports.
| consp wrote:
| > https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/nl/interne
| taa...
|
| Is suspect you can translate yourself. Every country has a
| site I am sure (looked up uk tarifs yesterday for instance)
| teekert wrote:
| So depending on the goods, between 0 and 17%.
| roflyear wrote:
| Yeah, I think best way is to look at the total tariffs
| collected by the EU on US goods - about $3.3b USD in 2023
| - compared to imports ~$370b USD in 2023. So like, 1%.
| c2k wrote:
| cui bono? It is clear that the american taxpayer is not profiting
| from this but neither seem the billionaires. So who does?
| max_ wrote:
| Those that are long Gold
| roxolotl wrote:
| Aside from everything else one thing what strikes me as
| particularly insane is how it's not even defensible as a
| protective measure. My favorite everyday olive oil comes from
| Tunisia. They now have a 38% tariff on them. There are no out of
| work olive farmers in the US.
|
| The orange man wanted tariffs, the orange man is going to get
| tariffs. Now we have to hope the American people aren't so dumb
| as to still be convinced only he can solve their issues. I don't
| hold out hope for that.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.
|
| Is that because we can't grow olives here, or because we don't
| have federal subsidies propping up a domestic olive industry
| that can compete with corn and soy?
|
| I ready don't know the details well enough there, but it feels
| like this could just be selection bias at play.
| yifanl wrote:
| Surely the null hypothesis isn't "The USA would have a
| domestic industry for every crop known to man if not for
| external factors"
| apexalpha wrote:
| Oh that's 100% what Potus thinks.
|
| There's no other rationale for this other than thinking
| this.
| jredwards wrote:
| You're assuming he has any rationale at all
| overfeed wrote:
| Leverage over importers, i.e. all of industry. If you're
| a captain of industry and want an exemption or a lowered
| rate, they you approach the deal table, cap in hand, with
| tears in your eyes and beg like a dog. "Please, sir..."
|
| In return for a minor reprieve, you ensure your factory
| bathrooms and hiring policies are aligned with the
| president's agenda, among many other things. This can be
| a cudgel over the heads of the Apples and Costcos of this
| country who dare to defy the edicts of POTUS on social
| policy.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Other popular options are very publicly taking your card
| of the Party, writing odes and poems to the Great Leader,
| and give your firstborn daughter's virginity as a token
| of vassality.
|
| The problem is not so much that people don't like doing
| such things - they get by - it's that, at some point,
| enough people will start getting more favours than you
| do, and you'll start feeling the need to stage a coup,
| which is a lot of work.
|
| I wonder how it will work out in a world where tiktok is
| always there as a much less exhausting form of
| entertainment than revolutions.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Let's ignore whether we'll actually get there, that's a
| very deep question and entirely theoretical for now.
|
| If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce most
| or all of our own products, would you not prefer that?
| coldpie wrote:
| > If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce
| most or all of our own products, would you not prefer
| that?
|
| I'm not the person you asked, but I would definitely not
| prefer that. Trade & economic dependencies prevent wars.
| Wars are really, really bad things.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Economic dependencies also start wars. Even if trade
| exists, sometimes they don't like the terms.
| _heimdall wrote:
| We've had plenty of wars since globalization came in
| post-WWII though. Its impossible to know what wars would
| have happened without it, and how much war may have been
| prevented due to trade rather than the threat of nuclear
| war, for example.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| Those were good wars, though, apparently, since they
| bolstered US dominance and the spread of a certain flavor
| of "liberal democracy" based on progressive politics and
| consumerism.
|
| I could have sworn they were bad wars when they were
| happening ("No blood for oil"?), but opinions on that
| seem to have shifted all of a sudden for some reason.
| p_j_w wrote:
| I don't think very many people have flip flopped to
| "actually the war in Iraq was good." How many examples of
| this can you point to?
| scratchyone wrote:
| No, because it is _far_ more expensive to domestically
| produce our own products. I would rather not have a huge
| increase in the cost of living.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't want a cost of living increase either. However,
| this raise the question of what the real cost is. The
| prices might be cheaper, but is that only because we're
| exploiting poorer people in markets with fewer worker
| protections and fewer environmental protections? Is it
| just because I'm greedy and I'm not willing to pay
| someone a liveable wage here or go without whatever it
| is? I'm not sure, but it makes for an interesting thought
| experiment.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| I worry about this, but I started worrying about it less
| when I read about Purchasing Power Parity. The same stuff
| costs less in poorer countries.
| giantg2 wrote:
| For some things that's true. For others it is not, or at
| least not enough to make up for the difference. For
| example, "housing" might cost less, but the definition of
| housing might be different. Even if we adjust the
| standards and built the exact same thing, it would be
| cheaper, but likely still out of reach for the average
| person in the poorer market.
| anonfordays wrote:
| Shhhh, you're not supposed to ask those questions!
| pests wrote:
| Better not pay them anything and they can go work in an
| even worse sweatshop, right?
|
| Or can hire some child labor in Florida since they
| already changed the laws there.
| mahogany wrote:
| > but is that only because we're exploiting poorer people
| in markets with fewer worker protections and fewer
| environmental protections
|
| That's definitely happening, but there are other possible
| reasons. For example a good could be more efficiently
| grown or produced in a country because of geographical
| reasons.
|
| Also, from a pragmatic standpoint, it is simply not the
| case that all wages and wealth across the countries of
| the world are equal. Maybe that could be a goal but is
| anyone talking about that? Either way, it does not follow
| that the workers in that country are necessarily
| exploited when paid lower wages compared to the importing
| country, unless we are using different definitions.
|
| This is not to mention that untargeted tariffs can
| increase the cost of living _for no gain at all_. If
| Germany manufacturers some specialty tool (not with slave
| labor, I would hope!), and no US manufacturer wants to
| make it, then I suddenly have to pay X% more for no
| reason at all.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sure, not every country needs the same pay. Things like
| cost of living can vary. It seems hypocritical to say
| that people in one country deserve better protections
| than in another though. If we aren't creating the same
| protections as the workers here, it would seem that we
| are exploiting the less protected group. Workers here
| deserve real unions, but not in China. Workers here
| deserve OSHA, but not in China. We've decided as a
| society that people deserve certain protections,
| benefits, and even environmental protections. These costs
| factor into the cost of the goods. To not extend these
| protections (or the remuneration to pay for them) to the
| poorer group is exploitation by definition.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "because we're exploiting poorer people in markets with
| fewer worker protections and fewer environmental
| protections"
|
| This can easily be overdone. If you stop doing business
| with poorer people, you all but guarantee that they stay
| poor. Counter-productive to say the least.
|
| In my lifetime, I saw a lot of countries grow at least
| somewhat wealthy from extensive commercial contact with
| the West, including mine (Czechia).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, you don't want to stop business, but if the price
| gap is massive, it might be good to ask why. Sometimes
| it's because something is more efficient in that country.
| Others it's just people getting taken advantage of.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Right, and there's a good case to be made for tariffs
| that are explicitly tied to another country's worker and
| environmental protections, where the country has
| actionable steps to improve their worker/environmental
| protections in order to avoid the tariff.
|
| But the current administration is itself actively opposed
| to worker or environmental protections, and the result of
| the current tariffs will just be that the poor people
| overseas end up even more impoverished and still lacking
| in protections.
| Spivak wrote:
| No, because economic interdependence keeps everyone
| (mostly) civil on the world stage.
| oblio wrote:
| Would the things you produce be as good? As cheap? As
| available?.
|
| Autarky is very bad.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Certainly the answer to those questions is always "it
| depends."
|
| If someone only cares about price, quantity, or some
| specific measure of quality certainly domestic production
| is limiting.
|
| You'd want domestic production for other goals like self
| reliance, sustainability, or resilience.
| oblio wrote:
| Or, hear me out, you could build relations with friends
| and allies and not pretend you're Qing China and it's the
| 1800s.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Are relations and allies impossible to have with trade
| tariffs? Historically we have had both, I'm not sure why
| they would be considered mutually exclusive.
| oblio wrote:
| 1. Why would you make trade with allies harder?
|
| 2. Have you seen what the current US administrations is
| doing to allies at the moment? (the million threats to
| Greenland/Denmark, Canada, etc).
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > If we could snap our fingers and domestically produce
| most or all of our own products, would you not prefer
| that?
|
| That's like saying "If we could snap our fingers and
| every state would have mild weather, abundant capital,
| and a highly talented workforce, would you not prefer
| that?"
|
| Yeah, then every city could be like SF or LA or NYC.
|
| But it's not even worth it as a thought exercise because
| it completely ignores reality. The reason I live in NJ
| and pay high taxes is because this is where the high
| paying jobs and good schools are. Cottontown, Alabama
| _theoretically_ could be a financial capitol of the world
| and if you want to base your position on that, then you
| should probably re-examine your position.
| grayhatter wrote:
| This is called rejecting the hypothetical. Just because
| it's not worth it for the arguments you care about
| doesn't mean it doesn't have value as a thought
| experiment to explore the consequences.
| techpineapple wrote:
| I think my answer to this question would be no? The food
| example is specific, all food can't be grown here, but
| for other products that aren't commodities, I want
| different cultures competing to build the best products
| i.e. cars, and I want other cultures innovating things
| that maybe their culture is optimized for (video games,
| electronics in Japan, in the 1980's?). There are some
| interesting questions recently about how maybe
| globalization have turned luxuries into commodities (i.e.
| all cars look the same) but I think my point still
| stands.
| mattnewton wrote:
| No, research comparative advantage. We actually had it
| pretty great in the US.
|
| Also a world trading with each other is a world
| disincentivized from war with each other.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I have, and that depends on whether you are concerned at
| all with where we externalize our costs to. We had it
| good while messing up a lot of other places.
|
| Maybe that's fine, maybe its not, but its not as simple
| as trade makes everyone better off.
| grayhatter wrote:
| Good question.
|
| No, I would not prefer that. A robust distributed system
| is less likely to crumble under local pressures. A blight
| could more easily sweep through a single nation and take
| out a staple crop or two, where it'd be impossible for
| that to happen globally. You can't spin up additional
| global trade quickly after you've shut it down, which
| could lead to people starving in America. I like systems
| that can't fail. That's especially true when that system
| is how I'm able to eat food.
|
| Global trade isn't a security issue, national or
| otherwise. We don't increase safety or stability by
| reducing sources of consumables.
|
| Edit; super timely example because this isn't an unlikely
| hypothetical: egg availability due to bird flu.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Not at all. We'd be much poorer in that world.
| Comparative advantage is a thing.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| No, for the same reason I don't try to manufacture my own
| car in my backyard or build my own house, or grow all of
| my own food, or ...
|
| This is basic fucking common sense: I'm good at some
| things and other people are good at other things. We each
| specialize in the things we're best at, and everyone ends
| up better off.
| _heimdall wrote:
| You went to the extreme though. I didn't ask if one wants
| to do everything themselves. In the US, for example,
| there are still hundreds of millions of people to
| specialize in various roles.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| You aren't clever for re-inventing autarky.
|
| It's a bad idea for the same reason.
| alwa wrote:
| I'm not familiar with any arguments that would lead
| somebody to prefer that. Maybe to avoid giving
| adversaries leverage over you, but isn't that better
| solved by diversifying your supply chain? Maybe to salve
| the domestic effects of the trade adjustment, but isn't
| that better solved by reallocating the surplus wealth
| rather than eliminating it?
| _heimdall wrote:
| Self reliance and resilience, at least to certain
| pressures, would fit. I don't think many people would be
| willing to give up cheap electronics and only buy stuff
| we produce here, but those are reasonable goals even if
| uncommon.
|
| Environmental concerns would actually fit the bill too,
| if one is willing to consider externalized costs. Its
| easy to ignore mining damage in other countries and all
| the oil burned shipping over the oceans. When that all
| happens at home people would more acutely feel the costs
| and may be more likely to fix it.
| grayhatter wrote:
| > Self reliance and resilience,
|
| describe how a entirely domestic food chain would be
| _more_ resilient than one that is global?
|
| Self reliance is a defective meme that breaks down once
| you want anything other than individual survival.
| Dependence on a community allows humans to specialize.
| Humans being able to specialize is the only reason this
| comment, or this thread exists. More simply, not just the
| Internet, but modern life couldn't exist without it.
|
| Once you acknowledge that interdependency is a reasonable
| trade-off for the other nice things about life. A simple
| infection no longer being a death sentence is a nice
| thing we've commoditized reasonably well. The only
| question is, how do you build a robust and resilient
| system?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, I wouldn't; Ricardian comparative advantage is a
| thing, and the kind of extreme autarky you suggest means
| sacrificing domestic prosperity available from maximizing
| the benefits of trade for the aole purpose of also
| harming prosperity in foreign countries (but usually less
| sonthan you are denying yourself, because they have other
| potential trading partners) by denying them the benefits
| of trade.
|
| Its a lose-lose proposition.
| blitzar wrote:
| Or (more likely) they would not have access to many crops
| at all.
|
| Personally I don't mind not having strawberries in the
| middle of winter, but for some they care about that.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Sure, but that's the rationalizing of someone who can't
| get strawberries in winter. Getting food that's not grown
| locally much less in the current local season is one of
| the most QoL-improving parts of the modern world.
|
| Kinda sad to go from that back to "well I guess I don't
| really need these nice things we took for granted. I
| suppose I can live off jellied eels again."
| me_again wrote:
| Donald Trump, champion of the locavore community. Now
| I've heard everything.
| roxolotl wrote:
| You can grow olives in the US and there are some farms in CA.
| The quantities produced are orders of magnitude off though
| and given the time it takes to grow olive orchards we cannot
| replace our imports of olives in a reasonable time period.
|
| There's a lot of examples like this. Coffee, and bananas come
| to mind. You can only grow those in Hawaii, or maybe Flordia,
| and there's absolutely not enough land to sate our imports.
| The whole theory behind international trade is that some
| countries do things well and others don't. In the case of
| food the reality is more that others can't.
| jm4 wrote:
| Hawaii is the only U.S. state where you can grow coffee and
| their coffee costs a fortune. You need tropical weather and
| high altitude. Florida won't cut it. Besides, we already
| have fruit rotting in the fields in Florida because there's
| no one to pick it.
|
| Want to put tariffs on Chinese electric cars or batteries?
| Ok, fine. But tariffs on all imports? It's the most brain
| dead policy in my lifetime. I can't think of any products
| that are produced 100% domestically without any foreign
| inputs. These tariffs will drive up the price of just about
| everything.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| Puerto Rico (yes not a state) has active coffee farms.
| lupusreal wrote:
| There are olive farms as far north as Oregon. I visited one
| a few years ago and bought some olive oil; it was very
| good.
| kochb wrote:
| The exact growing conditions for olive production aren't
| common in the US, so most of the production comes from
| California - west of Sacramento and south along the San
| Joaquin river. There are a lot of barriers in bringing
| specialty crops to market related to know-how and contracting
| sale of product, so even in other areas where growth may be
| possible it may be infeasible.
|
| https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/olives
|
| https://croplandcros.scinet.usda.gov/
| Yeul wrote:
| I mean if you could make olive oil cheaper in America
| wouldn't someone have done that by now?
|
| The US never lacked for smart entrepreneurs looking for a
| business opportunity. See wine.
| newyankee wrote:
| Most likely the answer in many such examples is it needs
| cheap human labor. US seldom lacks anything in terms of
| natural resources and always comes down to this.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Almost all the olive oil in my local Costco comes from
| California
| bavarianbob wrote:
| Hard for me to believe that even with a surplus of domestic
| production that comparative advantage of importing still
| wouldn't be better.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| An olive tree reaches the peak of its productivity after 15
| years and can live for several centuries.
|
| An adult tree can be so expensive that there are cases of
| theft. It takes a heavy truck and a tree puller to steal an
| olive tree.
| e40 wrote:
| California produces very high quality olive oil. I buy it at
| Costco. The Kirkland brand likely comes from outside the
| country.
| rtkwe wrote:
| California produced 1.94 million gallons of olive oil in
| 2023. That same year the US used ~98.5 million gallons of
| olive oil. There just isn't enough space to produce that much
| olive oil in CA much less produce it profitably or in ways
| that wouldn't devastate the environment. And all that is
| ignoring that it takes around 10 years for an olive tree to
| get to consistent production.
| e40 wrote:
| Oh, I agree. I was just pointing out we have some, and it's
| going to get a lot more expensive now.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| > it's going to get a lot more expensive now
|
| why? local producers don't pay the tariffs.
| e40 wrote:
| Because they will price their product to be just a little
| cheaper than the imported alternatives. This has been
| discussed to death, with citations, and I believe it to
| be true. We will see, I guess.
| andruby wrote:
| And even if they don't raise their prices to below the
| imported alternatives immediately, the increase in demand
| means they'll sell out so quickly, they'll raise their
| prices anyway
| rtkwe wrote:
| Companies tend to just take the extra profit instead of
| keeping their prices lower than their competition for no
| reason.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean, if their main competitor just got price jacked by
| taxes, that will push the demand to them. Since they
| cannot scale up to satisfy the demand, a correct choice
| is to raise prices. You can argue that this is price
| gouging, but the easy counter is that this is the market
| reacting to the taxes and adjusting the going price.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Fair.
| dontlikeyoueith wrote:
| Oh look, a Trump advisor who understands nothing.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| So, we can and do grow olives here in California, but it is a
| very small industry compared Spain, Italy, etc.
|
| However, one thing we absolutely cannot grow here in any sort
| of money-making way, is coffee. So 32% tariffs on imports of
| coffee from Indonesia.... when we do not even export coffee.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I would happily pay 38% extra for high quality Tunisian olive
| oil, it is already super undervalued because it's reputation is
| lower than it should be.
|
| It's gotten so bad that Tunisian olives are shipped to Italy,
| pressed into oil, and labelled as Italian Olive oil.
| xxX6hacke9rXxx wrote:
| Except none of that 38% extra in price is going to the
| farmers. It's a tax not extra profit for the producer. Crazy
| how many people still do not know how tariffs work.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| You may want to re-read GP's comment because they did not
| indicate whether they cared if the 38% went to the
| government or the farmer. Reading their comment as written,
| they simply said they would happily pay the tariff to
| continue enjoying Tunisian olive oil. It's "crazy" of you
| to imply they don't understand how a tariff works when
| you're the one mis-reading what they wrote.
| xxX6hacke9rXxx wrote:
| I did not misread. He used `undervalued` which implies
| that there is a difference between quality of the product
| and its price. Slapping on 38% tax to Tunisian olive will
| undermine this value proposition without improving the
| producer or the consumers product experience. If anything
| the relative price (due to the repetitively high tariffs
| on Tunisia vs Italy) will ruin the value to price ratio
| that attracts GP to the Tunisian olive oil.
|
| Moreover, his use of the word 'happily' suggests he is
| not aware of the negative consequences for both the
| Tunisian exporter, who may have to lower prices or even
| reduce product quality standards to compete with the now
| relatively similar-priced Italian olive oil, and the
| American consumer, who ends up paying more without any
| improvement in value.
|
| Why would someone be happy with a price increase if it is
| not helping the producers of the good (which his comment
| implies he is sympathetic to) or adding any value?
| mkoubaa wrote:
| You misread.
|
| 15 dollars for a liter of my favorite Olive Oil is a
| trade I would happily make. I didn't say I was happy that
| the price increased, nor did I say that I am happy about
| the tariff, nor did I say that I happy relative to how I
| felt about the trade last week.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| What did I write that gave you the impression that I don't
| know this?
| xxs wrote:
| If anything those Tunisian folks would have to reduce the
| price to compete. The tariffs go straight to the US coffers
| at the customs, nothing to do with the farmers.
| flawn wrote:
| https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/resource/tariffs-101-what-
| ar...
| xnx wrote:
| > There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.
|
| You should be using America corn oil. /s
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Well, no you see vegetable oils are actually bad and we
| should cook everything in beef fat or butter.
|
| Surely that's not stupidly expensive, right?
| jollyllama wrote:
| Producing tallow is cheaper than producing olive oil in
| most of the USA.
| belter wrote:
| The US has a trade surplus with the UK, and the UK got a 10%
| tariff :-) Who's ripping off who?
| srj wrote:
| >> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.
|
| I'm not sure this is true. I buy olive oil specifically from
| California. It's niche but could be larger if they weren't
| competing with lower overseas labor costs.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| It takes time to ramp up olive oil production, so it's way
| more cost effective to just import olive oil from countries
| with established crop.
| woah wrote:
| Don't olive trees take decades to reach maturity?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Not 50 times larger which is what it would need to be to
| supply the current domestic consumption. California only
| produced 1.94 million gallons of olive oil in 2023, that same
| year the US used ~98.5 million gallons of olive oil.
|
| Even if we could snap our fingers and create the orchards out
| of thin air there's not enough land and water to grow 50x our
| current production. Then where's the worker population coming
| from? They're also trying to drive overall immigration to
| essentially zero.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Tunisian here. Tunisians on social media are baffled/amused
| because olive oil is basically the only product imported by the
| US.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| And apparently the US bought 33% of it
|
| >Onagri data show that Spain is the leading destination for
| Tunisian olive oil, with 47.4 percent flowing to Spanish
| ports, followed closely by Italy at 42.2 percent and the
| United States in third at 33.8 percent.
|
| https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/business/africa-middle-
| east/as...
| dcrazy wrote:
| This is interesting to me, because Spain and Italy are also
| exporters of olive oil. And there have been famous
| discoveries of fraud in the EVOO market as it has boomed. I
| wonder what percentage of Spanish and Italian EVOO exports
| are actually blended with (or wholly!) Tunisian imports?
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Many Spanish and Italian oil blends do indeed use
| (unprocessed) olive oil from Tunisia. This is a problem
| for Tunisia because we're missing out on the meat of the
| profit margin generated by the final bottled product.
|
| We have had recent successes with developing & selling
| our own bottled products directly - Terra Delyssa is one
| good example that has gained traction in the US market.
| distances wrote:
| Those numbers don't add up.
| andruby wrote:
| Tunisia is so productive it exports 123.4% of olive oil.
|
| Or perhaps I don't understand what they're trying to say in
| that sentence
| kolanos wrote:
| What is Tunisia buying from the United States?
| gtech1 wrote:
| http://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports/tunisia
|
| and imports:
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/tunisia
| andreygrehov wrote:
| Work with your government to drop the tariffs on the US.
| Problem solved.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Or just wait for Tunisia to gradually replace tariffed
| goods with EU and Chinese equivalents. Problem also solved?
| andreygrehov wrote:
| They could've done that before.
| grey-area wrote:
| They'll do that now.
| gtech1 wrote:
| From what I've understood from that chart, the "percentage"
| is just a difference between imports/exports with the USA.
| It's not actual tariffs in place by Tunisia ON USA goods.
| Am I right/wrong ?
|
| Or is Tunisia tariffing the hell out of US Olive Oil in
| order to protect their local production base
| curiousgal wrote:
| Are you trolling?
| andreygrehov wrote:
| No, Tunisia imposes tariffs on U.S. imports. If they want
| to avoid our tariffs, they can remove theirs, and we'll
| do the same.
| wayeq wrote:
| If Jan 6th didn't dissuade people, I don't think anything will.
|
| Additionally, his base will not blame him, they will swallow
| whichever of the many narratives the propagandists are
| currently cooking up that suites their fancy.
| boringg wrote:
| One thing worth noting is that congress isn't pleased about
| the executive branch high jacking the powers of
| appropriations from them (i.e. imposing a tax on the people
| in the form of a tariff).
| dcrazy wrote:
| I see no evidence of your claim. A total of 4 senators of
| the President's party voted symbolically on a non-binding
| resolution against his Canada tariffs. The Speaker of the
| House, who also belongs to the President's party, won't
| even bring it up for a vote. There has been no motion from
| the legislative branch to undo the President's _direct_
| subversion of the power of the purse by effectively
| eliminating the staff required to disburse Congressionally-
| approved funds.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > There has been no motion from the legislative branch
| ...
|
| Surely you mean there is no motion from those in power in
| the legislative branch, namely the Republicans. The
| Democrats and Democrat-aligned independents make motions
| which are blocked by the Republicans.
|
| People's inability to recognize who is responsible for
| bad acts leads to throw-the-bums out elections. People
| are disgruntled, whether based on facts or false beliefs
| fostered by propaganda. They throw the bums out. They
| hope for better things.
|
| If we want the government to function better, we need to
| assign responsibility, not let Senator X and his pals, or
| Representative Y and her pals, screw everything thing up
| and then hide in the crowd. "Oh, look what the
| legislative branch has done! Throw them all out!"
| betaporter wrote:
| I'm sure they are working on a very strongly worded letter
| about this right this very moment.
| fransje26 wrote:
| You recon they've emerged from their slumber yet? /s
|
| But maybe their share portfolio being hurt will bring
| them to action...
| leptons wrote:
| What exactly do you expect them to do when voters took
| away their power and gave it to Republicans?
| DennisP wrote:
| Since the GOP had its own dissenters on the budget,
| Democrats could have started by not voting for the budget
| without extracting concessions.
|
| When Democrats were in power, the Republicans found all
| sorts of ways to gum up the works.
| leptons wrote:
| trump would love a government shutdown, as he has proven.
| I really doubt shutting down the govt would change any
| situation when trump is legislating by executive order,
| and mostly a shutdown would hurt Americans. You're trying
| to simplify something that isn't simple at all, and blame
| the Democrats for not doing what an armchair expert
| wants.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Are they going to actually do anything about it? If not,
| their displeasure isn't worth a fart in the wind.
| anon6362 wrote:
| The root cause is the IEEPA (1977) which was vaguely worded
| to supposedly shrink executive authority under TWEA (1917)
| which allowed essentially unlimited executive authority
| "emergencies" to be declared for an unspecified amount of
| time. IEEPA was used to block TikTok, which still may get
| blocked, and used to set these arbitrary tariffs. IEEPA
| needs to be fully abolished. (And we also need to bring
| back the Tillman Act (1907) and get an amendment to
| overturn CU.)
| brokencode wrote:
| I disagree with this. Jan 6th didn't affect 99% of peoples
| lives directly. It was clearly bad, but few people saw
| impacts in their own lives.
|
| Higher prices and a possible recession will affect every
| person in the country and even globally.
|
| His MAGA base might not blame him, but that's only like
| 30-40% of the electorate. The other 60-70% won't be happy if
| their lives are negatively impacted.
| superconduct123 wrote:
| That's the thing, there is an almost impenetrable media
| wall that no amount of "this is bad" news articles can get
| through
|
| IMO the only thing that can get through is actual personal
| consequences for the voter themself
| NickM wrote:
| _IMO the only thing that can get through is actual
| personal consequences for the voter themself_
|
| Well, yes. And his approval rating has been steadily
| declining in tandem with the stock market declines he's
| caused. If/when prices suddenly skyrocket because of
| tariffs, you can bet his approval ratings will decline
| further.
| watwut wrote:
| They will blame left, democrats, immigrants, women and
| Canada for that.
|
| They will not blame Trump, republicans, conservatives nor
| anyone who work foe them.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| That won't work. WaPo, LAT, etc. have run numerous
| articles where MAGA voters talk about the consequences of
| his actions to them or immediate family members (getting
| laid off, losing medical coverage, deportation, etc.) and
| they say it's worth the sacrifice because they just know
| that Trump is actually looking out for them and won't let
| them suffer for too long.
| brokencode wrote:
| There are millions of voters who voted for Biden in 2020
| and either sat out or voted for Trump in 2024.
|
| Not everybody is part of the cult. Many people simply
| thought Trump would take the economy and prices back to
| 2019. If he doesn't, he'll be punished.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| That must be why some people are keying Teslas and even
| resorting to arson.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > It was clearly bad, but few people saw impacts in their
| own lives.
|
| It did though, they just didn't know how to measure it, and
| it wasn't felt immediately. It was like the flash of light
| that dazzles before the pressure wave of the nuclear bomb
| blasts everything (which in the analogy is this moment,
| now).
|
| What happened on Jan 6, and in the leadup and response to
| it, was the erosion of democratic norms. Before Nov 2020
| they were stronger, and after Jan 6 they were significantly
| weakened. Our institutions are essentially built on trust,
| and Trump in his campaign to overturn the 2020 election
| spent every waking moment for months attacking those
| foundations. He purposefully eroded people's trust in
| Democracy for no reason, because there ultimately the fraud
| he alleged in that election was not found.
|
| That impacts everyone. They just don't feel it in the
| supermarket; they just have no "democracy meter" that they
| can use to gauge how healthy their representation is in
| government. But the reason he's able to do what he's doing
| now is he because he laid the foundation in 2020.
| recoup-papyrus wrote:
| Yeah, Jan. 6 mattered A LOT because the response to it
| just totally invalidated the legitimacy of the American
| elite.
|
| "Your concerns don't matter, and we hate you. Shut up and
| take it."
|
| That and covid.
|
| After these events, it's just a matter of time before
| they are deposed. A hostile elite can't go mask-off like
| that and expect to stay in power for long.
| brokencode wrote:
| What in your mind should have happened differently in
| response to Jan 6?
|
| No widespread fraud was ever proven that could have
| swayed the election.
|
| Should we have pretended there were major flaws with our
| voting system just to help you with your feelings?
|
| Or maybe we should have let Trump be president again for
| no reason just because you were really upset about it.
|
| And did you ever wonder why, if Democrats were able to
| magically steal the election in even red states like
| Georgia and Arizona in 2020, they didn't bother to try it
| again in 2024?
| recoup-papyrus wrote:
| The elite reaction to January 6th was just raw hostility
| towards the American nation.
|
| I don't claim to have access to secret knowledge about
| the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the elections. My view
| on the actual election fraud claims is agnosticism. I
| have no access to information that would allow me to
| independently come to any conclusion on the matter.
|
| However, a large volume of very plausible evidence was
| put forward. And, instead of honest engagement with those
| concerns, we got extreme censorship, gas lighting, and a
| violent crack-down on everyone involved.
|
| We cannot allow people that have this attitude towards us
| to continue to rule over us.
| brokencode wrote:
| A violent crackdown against who? The people who stormed
| the capital and assaulted police officers?
|
| Even AG Barr said there was no evidence of widespread
| fraud. The "plausible evidence" you speak of was a
| firestorm of unsubstantiated claims on social media that
| incited a violent attack on the capital.
| recoup-papyrus wrote:
| > unsubstantiated claims on social media
|
| Yes. Put your actual decision makers on social media, and
| have them engage openly with the people making
| unsubstantiated claims.
|
| > Even AG Barr said
|
| Almost all of the information that was put forward that
| seemed plausible was _deleted from the internet, and
| never addressed_.
|
| We can figure out what happened after we get rid of
| everyone that played a role in that; once we have a
| truth-finding apparatus that is made up of friendlies.
|
| The only thing that matters from all of this is that
| unfriendly people are in power, and the only solution to
| that is to get rid of them and replace them with friendly
| people.
|
| Trump, for all of his many flaws, at least pretends to be
| friendly.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Spoke to a friend who is a big Trump supporter just yesterday
| - his view is that we shouldn't react to short term impact,
| these policies and tariffs should be viewed and judged in the
| long term. These tariffs will remake american manufacturing.
| I dont know if thats the current faux news talking point.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| Yep, that's the talking point. Howard Lutnick has been out
| there saying this.
|
| For better or worse, though, voters don't judge politicians
| based on the impact their policies have in 10-20 years.
| They're going to judge these tariffs in 18 months when they
| vote in the midterms and again in 2028, long before a
| widespread shift in manufacturing can occur.
| recoup-papyrus wrote:
| > we shouldn't react to short term impact
|
| Yes, but it's deeper than that.
|
| We want our territory back, and we don't care about the
| health of the economy.
|
| In fact, if the economy tanks, that's even better, because
| it will destroy the incentive for all of these other people
| to be come here and set up shop.
|
| If there is no opportunity here, there will be no reason
| for them to be here. Also, if people are less comfortable,
| people will fight over resources more, which will lead to
| an antagonistic environment, which will cause even more
| people to leave.
|
| Furthermore, the imports industry, and international
| corporations generally, are the power-base of our domestic
| enemies, and local industry is the power-base of our
| domestic allies.
|
| I couldn't be more excited about all of this.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| The thing is that Jan 6th was done by part of the "people",
| so it's now America versus America.
| gizzlon wrote:
| Everything done is done by "by part of the "people""
| timewizard wrote:
| "If propaganda doesn't dissuade people I don't think anything
| will."
|
| You accidentally answered your own question.
| mlsu wrote:
| _"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and
| ears. It was their final, most essential command."_
| tim333 wrote:
| Maybe we can make British olive oil by getting Tunisian olive
| oil and putting it in a British bottle? Then it's only 10%.
|
| The whole thing is kind of nuts.
| IMTDb wrote:
| The orange man is saying: "Looks like you are sending a lot of
| $$$ to those olive oil farmers in Tunisia. With my tariffs you
| now have two choices at your disposal: either you keep buying
| their Olive oil but then you are going to have to give me $$$
| as well to pay for our national debt. You are going to buy less
| of it; and help your country in the process. Alternatively, you
| can decide that maybe you don't need olive oil all that much.
| We have this amazing product called 'corn oil' which is
| produced locally and is now comparatively less expensive, buy
| that instead and support your local farmer. Choice is yours".
|
| Maybe you don't like either of these choices; but at the same
| time; saying "I believe that having cheap access to product
| produced halfway across the globe is a god given right to
| American people; how dare you imposing me to make such a
| choice" is part of the reason why we need 13 earth to sustain
| the modern US lifestyle.
|
| I am really not a Trump supporter at all. But at the same time
| the gradual reduction of tariffs has been a key factor of
| increasing global trade; which in turn is a key component of
| the increase of CO2 emissions. Finding a way to dampen a bit
| the international component and making sure that locally
| sourced products and services are not affected seems not that
| bad.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The whole "decide that maybe you don't need olive oil that
| much" thing is what's going to crush the economy in the US.
| The problem is that demand does not shift to alternative
| supplies elastically. It takes years and sometimes decades to
| build an alternate supply chain for some industries. So what
| you're saying is that an entire generation of children in the
| US are going to have to grow up materially worse off than
| their parents and grandparents. And that's assuming that a
| bunch of businesses magically start overnight to fill the
| enormous gaps caused by a lack of access to international
| supply chains. If you look at other countries such as in
| South America or for example Italy where there are huge
| protective tariffs, the industries you expected to magically
| appear didn't. Instead people just have less and work less.
|
| So your dichotomy applies, but it's not some magical ratchet
| out of globalization unless there's a corresponding push on
| the federal or state level to build competitive domestic
| industries to replace the international supply chains we've
| been cut off from.
| ben_w wrote:
| > I am really not a Trump supporter at all. But at the same
| time the gradual reduction of tariffs has been a key factor
| of increasing global trade; which in turn is a key component
| of the increase of CO2 emissions. Finding a way to dampen a
| bit the international component and making sure that locally
| sourced products and services are not affected seems not that
| bad.
|
| I'm not sure about that part.
|
| International shipping in particular isn't a huge part of the
| energy cost of the goods that get shipped, so making the same
| things locally doesn't save much. This is from 2016 so things
| will have changed since then, but back then it was 1.6% of
| emissions from shipping, vs. 11.9% from road transport:
| https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
|
| What trade does increase directly is the global economy, and
| that in turn means more money is available to be spent on
| energy; historically the energy has been carbon intensive,
| but everyone is now producing as much green energy as they
| have factories to work with, and are making factories for
| those green energy systems as fast as they have bureaucracy
| to cope with.
| IMTDb wrote:
| I am from Western Europe and the story that "the majority
| of the meat we eat is imported from Argentina at great
| environmental costs while we have farmers unable to make
| ends meet; this is what's wrong with globalization" is a
| key story that gets repeated _constantly_ by environmental
| activists and NGOs. Similarly, there 's a big push by the
| same green parties to "stop consuming pineapple in
| November, buy locally sources seasonal veggies instead".
|
| I almost never see anyone disagreeing with that, and anyone
| that does is immediately qualified as "climate change
| denier". To me it looks like tariffs similar to those
| introduced by Trump would constitute a step in the right
| direction (make stuff more expensive = less consumption +
| if you buy it anyway you have disposable income so you give
| more to the state) . It feels weird to me that now it
| suddenly doesn't seem to be so much of an issue anymore; if
| it's only 1.6% why is it such a key argument.
|
| Similarly; almost everyone agrees that "it's not normal
| that we depend so much on foreign countries for things that
| are essential for our future". That idea really came up
| during the COVID crisis and never left. The EU is launching
| "big plans" to address this issue (as usual; with barely
| any impact at all). Again; the reason why we have FFP2
| masks made in china is purely because it's cheaper. Make
| them more expensive; and local options can pop up,
| naturally. It will take decades; but the ideal moment to
| begin working on your goals was yesterday. The next best
| opportunity is today.
|
| There are many many things wrong with the way Trump
| computes the tariffs rates; the way they are announced,
| handled etc. But at its core: "less trade, less global &
| more local" is a key pillar of virtually every Green
| Parties over here; it's so weird to me to see Trump (!!!)
| actually do something that looks like it aligns with those
| goals.
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| > But at its core: "less trade, less global & more local"
| is a key pillar of virtually every Green Parties over
| here; it's so weird to me to see Trump (!!!) actually do
| something that looks like it aligns with those goals.
|
| But it's not for the same reasons. Also, the Green
| parties explicitly want to reduce everyone's consumption.
| Do you think American Trump supporters have intentionally
| voted for being able to afford less stuff, have less
| variety at the grocery store, etc?
| StackRanker3000 wrote:
| > but then you are going to have to give me $$$ as well to
| pay for our national debt
|
| You realize this money will not be used to pay down the
| national debt, but rather fund commensurate tax cuts for the
| very rich?
|
| Their plan for the budget deficit is instead to slash
| expenditures (see DOGE and what they're up to).
| Marsymars wrote:
| Sounds like a good argument for a carbon tax!
| electriclove wrote:
| There are small olive oil producers in the US. Do they see this
| as a good thing?
| scotty79 wrote:
| Why wouldn't they? They can immediately raise prices by
| however many percent the tariff is. Probably a bit less
| because higher price causes lower demand. So let's say raise
| by half of the tariff.
|
| Maybe it will partially offset the increased cost of
| everything they need to buy and sell olives.
|
| Now when I think of it it might be a wash.
| jm4 wrote:
| They still probably use equipment, packaging and other
| materials that come from overseas. Or they work with
| suppliers impacted by tariffs. Their costs are going up.
| Everyone's costs are going up, although some more than
| others.
| faizan-ali wrote:
| I've put together a directory of olive oil producers from
| California:) https://www.californiaoliveoil.info/
| mrtksn wrote:
| IMHO the idea is that they are ready to accept the suffering of
| Tunisian oil lovers for the greater good, which is the
| empowerment of certain type of people like them.
|
| It's basically Europe but hundred or more years ago.
| jancsika wrote:
| > My favorite everyday olive oil comes from Tunisia. They now
| have a 38% tariff on them.
|
| "Silver lining:" there's a good chance that oil was either
| rancid or doesn't pass basic quality tests for the "extra-
| virgin" part:
|
| https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/imported-olive-oil-quality-unre...
|
| The COOC web site lists California olive oils that they've
| certified. Last time I checked California Gold Olive Oil was
| certified, and they even sell it in half and full gallons.
| That's just one I've tried and liked-- there are a bunch of
| others listed on the COOC web site. (Edit: there are probably
| certification trade associations for other countries/regions,
| COOC is just the one I'm familiar with.)
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| You are right about olive oil. So why did he do it? The trade
| imbalance with Tunisia. Why is there are trade imbalance with
| Tunisia? US consumers have money to buy products from Tunisia,
| Tunisian consumers don't have the ability to afford products
| from the US. Why can't Tunisian's afford US products? This is
| the central question for every country in the trade war and it
| has myriad factors, but two of the biggest are: A higher cost
| US dollar, suppression of wages in countries like Tunisia (and
| Germany, and China, etc).
| pyrale wrote:
| > Tunisian consumers don't have the ability to afford
| products from the US.
|
| They do use products from the US, just not physical ones.
| It's weird to read such takes on HN of all sites.
| tverbeure wrote:
| It's not a weird take if you reasonably assumed that OP
| meant: "they don't have the ability to afford the same
| value of products from the US." Which makes total sense
| because their income per capita is only a fraction of that
| of the US.
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| There is this group-think on HN today that services are
| intentionally left out as part of the US trade balance.
| That confusion likely comes from tax and corporate
| structures. Ie all those profits are locked into sub-corps,
| so Apple-Cayman Islands or Google-Ireland (corporate tax
| havens) which is why they don't show up on the balance
| sheet as "trade" into the US (typically those sub-corps buy
| financial assets with those profits). Read the first
| chapters of Trade Wars are Class Wars for more depth.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| US does produce olive oil, particularly in states like
| California, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Oregon, and
| Hawaii. So you do have a few options: 1.
| Support local producers. There are high-quality olive oils made
| right here in the US that might surprise you. 2. Work
| with Tunisia manufacturers to move their production to the US
| 3. If you don't want to support local producers, pay extra and
| enjoy your Tunisia olive oil as much as you want 4. If
| politics is the real issue for you, move to Tunisia, there is
| no "orange man" there
|
| That said, refusing to support local production out of
| principle isn't really a solution.
| dreghgh wrote:
| Difficult to move the production of olive oil.
|
| I don't know how much you know about olive oil, but it comes
| from olives, which grow on olive trees. Olive trees are
| famously long-lived and, together with the very specific
| types of land that they grow on, they represent extremely
| persistent and valuable investments for the people who
| produce olive oil.
| Jun8 wrote:
| This is not true. Next time you grab an olive oil bottle
| read the fine print: unless it's very expensive it will be
| a blend of oils from 4-8 countries, ie production doesn't
| have to be in the same country where olives grow on olive
| trees, as you eloquently put.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| There are a few olive trees in my neighborhood. I should
| plant some too. It would be fun to watch them grow.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > There are a few olive trees in my neighborhood. I
| should plant some too.
|
| They are nice trees, but beware you won't be eating the
| olives unless you put a lot of work in. They have to be
| de-bittered or "cured", which is done by soaking them in
| things like caustic soda.
| https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8267.pdf
|
| So if you are after a nice compact tree that doesn't need
| a lot of water, then an olive tree is a good choice. But
| if you want a garden of Eden fruit tree, there are much
| better choices.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| US consumption of olive oil is more than 10x domestic
| production of olive oil. It is not possible to spin up olive
| orchards in even a medium timespan as the trees take many
| years to grow. It's not about wanting to support domestic
| producers, it legitimately is not possible.
| recoup-papyrus wrote:
| You forgot about
|
| _5. Switch to another source of fat, like lard or butter._
|
| Even if there isn't a local industry that produces something,
| tariffs increase the competitiveness of domestic substitute
| goods.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| > what strikes me as particularly insane is how it's not even
| defensible as a protective measure
|
| You must not have read many of the comments here. Way too many
| people are trying to defend this just because they don't want
| to have to admit that they were wrong on Trump being better for
| the economy.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| I think you started to form a persuasive argument, but you
| discredit yourself by saying "orange man".
| Aschebescher wrote:
| According to Trump Tunisia has to buy olive oil from you for
| the same amount of money that you spent on Tunisias olive oil.
| Otherwise one side has a trade deficit and that's unfair!
| carabiner wrote:
| We get a lot of titanium from China. That's because the largest
| natural Ti deposits are in Eurasia. That is due to geology, not
| politics, and now US companies who need it (read: high
| performance transport, medical products) will pay substantially
| more for it.
| burgerzzz wrote:
| No offense, but the benefits may outweigh problems like getting
| your favorite Tunisian olive oil.
| tootie wrote:
| Olive oil, coffee, chocolate, vanilla, tea, lots of fruits,
| sugar. These will all be massively stressed.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Here's something I want to understand: In 1930 the Smoot-Hawley
| Tariff Act was passed by congress - an act of legislation. Nearly
| 100 years later we have the president unilaterally picking any
| tariff numbers he wants. What happened?
| timmg wrote:
| As I understand: Congress gave the president the power to add
| tariffs in some "exceptional" cases. Trump claims this is an
| exceptional case.
|
| We'll see if Congress or the courts do something about it.
| munchler wrote:
| He invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act
| (IEEPA), which gives him the ability to levy tariffs in an
| "emergency". There is no actual emergency, of course, but
| Congress does not have the political will to stop him.
| xnx wrote:
| Congress could stop this tomorrow if they wanted. They ceded
| all control to the executive. [Republican] Congress is hoping
| to claim credit for anything good that happens, but scapegoat
| Trump when things crash.
| torginus wrote:
| This is just a stray thought of mine - but I feel like the US
| might go down a very dangerous path - I think to avoid
| retaliatory tariffs, US companies, such as NVIDIA might decide to
| create foreign subsidiaries, and license the technology to them -
| after all the tariffs don't apply if Europe does business with a
| Taiwanese subsidiary.
|
| But this will expose them to a technology exfiltration scheme
| and/or hostile takeover in the vein of what happened to ARM
| China.
|
| Am I reading too much into this?
| rtkwe wrote:
| They already wouldn't be subject to this tariff if they bought
| directly from Taiwan. Tariffs only happen when goods cross the
| border so unless Nvidia's logistics required them to ship into
| the US to get goods to Europe they shouldn't be affected by the
| tariffs directly.
| Andrex wrote:
| Thank you, nonvoters.
| s_dev wrote:
| The only people who matter in an election are the voters so I'm
| always perplexed so many feel comfortable blaming non voters
| for the problems voters made.
|
| This non voter shaming is quickly eroded as soon as you ask
| voters if non voting is an issue. They will report it that is
| is a huge problem. Then ask what candidates or parties support
| mandatory voting and you'll get crickets.
|
| That's because it has nothing do with tackling the perceived
| problem of non voters and all to do with virtue signalling that
| you vote.
| munchler wrote:
| Trump is very popular among low-information citizens. If you
| corralled more of them into voting, he would have won by more.
| Call me an elitist, but at this point we'd be much better off
| if ignorant people stopped voting.
| delijati wrote:
| So no soft landing anymore
| wolfcola wrote:
| and it's all thanks to a16z and co
| yyyk wrote:
| The admin's think is that any negative trade balance is
| 'exploiting' the US. Logically, the opposite would mean US is
| exploiting others. So the only 'proper' balance is zero, which
| requires managed trade. An obvious impossibility in this age.
| There are ways to rebalance, they require time and patience and
| thought (the latter seems most lacking).
| dostick wrote:
| This historical period will be remembered by being a cause for
| legislation to introduce strict testing for mental illness in
| government positions. Ask any psychologist and it's clear what it
| is, but they won't say it publicly because of Goldwater "rule".
| fact is they have the most dangerous and destructive mental
| illness known, and they captured the power exactly because of
| their disorderly mindset. Yet for months and years everyone is
| observing and discussing what people with a serious mental
| illness are doing when they are given highest post in power and
| unlimited money.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| So which illness it is?
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Greed? I dunno
| louthy wrote:
| Presumably psychopathy combined with narcissism
| jgilias wrote:
| Malignant Narcissism
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/trump-nyt-
| ad...
| kahrl wrote:
| Nah.
| baxtr wrote:
| I don't support tariffs at all, but calling these people
| mentally ill is the wrong approach.
|
| They're not mentally ill, they're obsessed with power. It's
| dangerous to conflate the two.
| ldbooth wrote:
| Dementia
| jgilias wrote:
| Malignant Narcissism
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/trump-nyt-
| ad...
| baxtr wrote:
| That's called "overpathologizing".
| jgilias wrote:
| This is very different from "lay-diagnosing" every
| introvert kid as autistic and every jittery kid as having
| ADHD.
|
| There's _a lot_ of reliable material from his direct
| actions over the years to accounts from people who've
| worked or dealed otherwise with him closely.
|
| There's more than enough of it to make it possible to
| fill in a DSM-5 questionnaire and see what the outcome
| is.
| teeray wrote:
| > will be remembered by being a cause for legislation to
| introduce strict testing for mental illness
|
| You're making some bold statements about the ability of
| congress to pass legislation at all.
| blast wrote:
| A medicalized psychiatric state is not the solution to the
| current lunacy. Just imagine the abuses it would lead to.
| rchaud wrote:
| This is the equivalent of the "mentally ill lone wolf"
| rationales given for American mass shootings.
|
| What possible difference would a psychological test make when
| an pre-existing felony conviction is not enough to keep him
| from voting, but also to actually sit as head of state?
|
| What is happening in America simply doesn't happen without
| broad-based, implicit, systemic support at all the important
| decision-making junctures. In 2017, several of the highest-
| profile executive orders were slapped down in court within
| days. In 2025, the government is not even pretending to abide
| by court rulings on their EOs, and are detaining people without
| charge and revoking their visas without due process.
| IMTDb wrote:
| I am not a specialist; but isn't that the most "green" policy
| ever ? I mean:
|
| - Tariffs will increase the price of virtually everything -> By
| law of supply and demand; global trade and production will
| decrease, leading to less CO2 production
|
| - This effect will be stronger for stuff coming from far away
| (little for Canda / Mexico; more for EU; huge for China). So
| companies will have a tendency to rely on local producer (even at
| a higher price). This again will lower transoceanic shipping.
| Other countries will probably retaliate so this effect will go
| both for inbound and outbound shipping. Again; less CO2
| production
|
| - More money for the government. There more stuff you buy, the
| more tariffs you pay, so rich pay more than poors. Which again is
| what green parties are looking for.
|
| I might be very wrong about this; I am not a Trump supporter in
| any way - and to be honest I ma not a fan of green parties either
| - but my initial reaction is that if we look at the conclusion of
| the policies; the _results_ are looking to align quite well. Of
| course the surrounding storytelling is extremely different; which
| puzzles me a bit.
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| If you're into green policies, then tariffs are aligned with
| what you'd probably want, at least on some level. Though it's
| more complicated and by no means a slam dunk. One could say
| that producing things locally in more places is less efficient
| (lower economies of scale, etc.) which might result in more
| overhead per item, which might outweigh the extra
| transportation, etc. General assumption is that an
| unconstrained free market arrangement encourages system
| optimizing itself. But then there's a question what is it
| optimizing itself for, and that's definitely not ecological
| impact.
|
| A change like that in a global economy has tons of non-linear
| effects, many of which it need to play over time, etc. Some
| changes are more easy to predict confidently, many not so much.
| But barely anyone argues from first principles, and its
| typically just tribal screeching on both sides.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I'm surprised by how many concerns there are here related to how
| the tariff amounts were calculated.
|
| It seems like they used a pretty simple algorithm to do it. Isn't
| that a good thing? Countries were treated the same and the tariff
| was decided primarily by the trade imbalance (with a minimum of
| 10%). Would we rather them use a combination of completely
| incomprehensible calculations and backroom deals?
|
| Its open season for debating whether tariffs will work, or even
| what the underlying motivations are. Attacking the use of a
| simple algorithm across the board just feels lazy and either
| emotionally or politically charged.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| It's both simple and stupid algorithm, though.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Why is it stupid? They claim to be concerned with trade
| imbalances, and that those imbalances are a problem. Using
| those trade imbalances to calculate a tariff seems
| reasonable, assuming the concerns are right.
|
| _If_ tariffs are to be imposed, I 'd at least rather be able
| to see how they were calculated and know it was done the same
| for every country.
| dralley wrote:
| The "numbers" appear to:
|
| * Punish Ecuador, who uses the US dollar, for being a
| "currency manipulator", which obviously makes zero sense
|
| * Punish Lesotho, whose population is too poor to ever
| afford US goods, because they export a lot of resources
| that we use
|
| * Punish countries like Columbia for being big coffee
| exporters where there is no hope of building up a domestic
| coffee industry because that's not how agriculture works
|
| * Tariff an island inhabited only by Penguins
|
| It's just dumb.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Aren't you cherry picking to make a point though?
| Certainly there are impacts on other countries though,
| and they're likely aligned (in theory) with their stated
| concern that countries are leveraging trade deficits to
| take advantage of the US.
|
| > Tariff an island inhabited only by Penguins
|
| This would be a great sound bite, but its also entirely
| useless. If the only inhabitants are penguins then a
| tariff on paper means nothing, they just avoided having
| to write one-off exceptions.
| dralley wrote:
| >they just avoided having to write one-off exceptions.
|
| They did do one-off exceptions though. They excluded
| Iran, North Korea, and Russia from the list.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Do we have any appreciable trade with them? I would have
| thought existing sanctions packages approved by congress
| would supersede this.
| detaro wrote:
| 3 billion USD apparently. lots smaller than in the past,
| but still bigger than quite a few countries that did get
| listed.
| energy123 wrote:
| It's stupid because trade imbalances aren't necessarily a
| problem, and are sometimes a good thing that you need.
| _heimdall wrote:
| That doesn't make the policy stupid, it means you
| disagree with the opinion that led to the policy.
| nilkn wrote:
| I don't know how I feel about this overall. But I do want to
| recount something from my childhood.
|
| I'm American. I grew up in the rural Midwest. The truth is that
| much of this country is a depressing shell of its former self.
| The town I grew up in is all but dead -- about 12,000 people
| still live there, though. The nearest big city, previously a hub
| of manufacturing innovation, has been on a steady decline for
| decades. Since the 70s, more and more powerful drugs have been
| flooding into the broad geographic region, decimating entire
| communities and creating generational cycles of poverty and
| addiction. It's an absolutely brutal combination that has totally
| killed almost all innovation and output in huge swathes of this
| country. Candidly, even if you brought back manufacturing to the
| area, the local population is so dependent on drugs that you'd
| struggle to even find workers today.
|
| Today's drugs are so powerful that addicts would rather live in
| total poverty with drugs daily than have a high-paying job
| without drugs. Every small business owner in these regions knows
| this, but the true scope and severity of the problem can
| otherwise be hard to fully notice and appreciate. It's not
| possible to operate a small business in these regions without
| encountering the drug problem on a regular basis.
|
| Do I think tariffs are going to fix this? Honestly, probably not,
| for the simple reason that Trump is old and won't be here much
| longer even if he tries to install himself as a dictator. The
| winning strategy for much of the world is to likely wait this out
| to some degree -- best case scenario for others is that this will
| just get reversed or significantly mitigated in 3.5 years, which
| is the blink of an eye on global timescales.
|
| Nonetheless, my heart goes out to the incredible loss this
| country has experienced over the last few decades. It's truly
| heartbreaking and devastating that we've sold out so much of the
| country for short-term profits to such a degree that we can
| probably never break out of the cycle without severe pain and
| sacrifice.
| trgn wrote:
| I see the drug problem in my midwest city too, it's literally
| on my doorstep on occasion.
|
| The country is also not struggling with high unemployment or
| stagnant wage growth.
|
| Multiple things can be true at once. Tariffs are a solution to
| an imagined problem.
|
| And fwiw - reshoring has been happening already, through
| congressional action (CHIPS, IRA), rather than presidential
| decree, and was doning so without wrecking the economy.
| nilkn wrote:
| The reshoring efforts you're talking about will not come
| remotely close to restoring what was lost and what could have
| been. We're so far behind outside of software and finance
| it's almost unfathomable. To grasp the full cost that has
| been paid, you need to imagine a scenario like all of NYC,
| Seattle, Austin, Denver, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, etc.,
| just don't exist at all. That kind of scale is what we've
| lost out on -- not in software, of course, but in most other
| industries.
|
| Fly-over country should have been the site of the greatest
| industrial and manufacturing innovation the world has ever
| seen. We threw away one of the greatest opportunities in
| history to juice stocks for a couple decades.
| e40 wrote:
| That sounds nice, but "bring manufacturing back" isn't a
| plan. Details matter.
| acdha wrote:
| I think that's part of what I find so frustrating about this.
| There's an alternate history where we'd have a national effort
| to invest in domestic industry, especially outside of a few
| areas which are doing well, but that just wouldn't look
| anything like this.
|
| A good example I saw was living in New Haven years back, where
| they were struggling to build businesses around the Yale
| community. There's a ton of unused industrial area, especially
| as you go east, but they didn't have the right combination of
| funding environment, local workforce, and infrastructure so in
| practice everyone went to NYC or Boston, or SF, and the state
| of Connecticut kept losing out.
|
| Fixing that would be huge, but tariffs won't do it unless you
| also invest in those other things and also something like
| antitrust protection so the key decisions aren't made by a
| handful of gigantic companies.
| energy123 wrote:
| The lack of longevity to these tariffs is part of the problem
| with them. Why would anyone invest in a factory when everyone
| knows these tariffs are likely going to be short lived, making
| any capex wasted. Capital is going to try to wait this out.
| It's short term pain and long term pain.
| ttw44 wrote:
| This theme of "small town USA" is dying everywhere, even here
| in Upstate New York. Drugs and lack of opportunity has a
| chokehold on everywhere in America.
| e40 wrote:
| I understand the emotion, but emotion alone will not get us out
| of this. Here is a very similar post from someone much like
| you:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43565630
|
| It makes a lot of good counterpoints.
| rbetts wrote:
| The problem isn't not enough money. It's not enough
| distribution of money. Income inequality in the US is at 1929
| levels.
| hnarn wrote:
| I'm European. While it's pretty childish to paint the US and the
| EU as two human being with a "relationship" it's of course pretty
| jarring to see a country that has for my entire life been the
| undisputed cultural hegemony simply check out of the world stage
| and suddenly treat everyone on "their" side (culturally,
| politically and economically) like an enemy, or at the very least
| an abuser.
|
| I'm not an economist, but I don't think you have to be one to
| realize that kicking the entire global economy right between the
| legs will lead to a recession -- just look at the supply chain
| issues that echoed for years after Covid, and the massive
| "quantitative easing" that had to be done to avoid a recession.
|
| The abandonment of trade partnerships I could live with, I'll
| make it through a recession and every country is free to elect
| their own politicians and make their own fiscal policies, dumb as
| they may be; I don't get my "feelings hurt" by Americans wanting
| to bring back manufacturing jobs -- although I have issues
| understanding the reasoning.
|
| What worries, and actually saddens me, is the complete doing away
| with of _values_ , that I do think have existed in the past. The
| US has never been a beacon of exemplary behavior, and I
| understand that "nations have no friends, only interests" -- one
| needs to look no further than the US treatment of the Kurds for
| an example of this -- but it's _unbelievable_ to me how so many
| Americans can not see the American self-interest in making Russia
| pay for what they 've done in Ukraine.
|
| Russia has been the main antagonist of the US for the entire
| post-ww2 era. It's a totalitarian state and an obvious enemy to
| the US. Invading Ukraine was a massive mistake, and all the
| richest country in the world had to do to basically risk-free
| damage their biggest antagonist, was to keep pressing a dollar-
| button together with the EU. No boots on the ground, no Iraq- or
| Afghanistan scale disaster, just military and economic support
| for a country that could end up being an extremely close ally.
| There is literally zero chance Russia could win a war of
| attrition with this dynamic. Instead, it's like the Soviet union
| in the 70s would have given away Cuba for free and instead
| threatened to invade North Korea.
|
| In the end, I think what makes me uncomfortable is that I truly
| do not understand what it is that the average American (or voter)
| wants, because the actions of the US on the international stage
| makes no sense to me, yet so many Americans seem to cheer it on.
| jgilias wrote:
| Most Americans just don't care that much about international
| affairs.
| fnord77 wrote:
| > I truly do not understand what it is that the average
| American (or voter) wants,
|
| there's no such thing as an average American voter
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| I was told the average voter wanted cheaper goods (especially
| eggs). One candidate lied and said you'd get that day 1 (like
| someone running for class president who promises free ice cream
| at recess every day), the other was realistic and used coherent
| words to describe their policy.
|
| Our loss.
| specialist wrote:
| #1 Per our Constitution, USA has minoritarian rule baked in.
|
| There's many anti-democratic choke points: Electoral College
| for POTUS, Supreme Court, US Senate, gerrymandering effect on
| US House, long history of systemic disenfranchisement, etc. aka
| Vetocracy per Francis Fukuyama.
|
| #2 ~6m Biden voters stayed home in 2024.
|
| There's a sizeable cohort of infrequent voters and a huge
| cohort of non-voters who self disenfranchise. Due to nihilism
| (voting doesn't matter), both parties are the same, low
| motivation, whatever.
|
| #3 Like most everywhere else, our information ecology is
| broken, fragmented.
|
| The audience for "traditional" media's news is tiny, compared
| to social media. The Dems focus on "traditional" whereas GOP
| have successfully embraced "social". So for all the billions
| spent every presidential election (political advertising), most
| voters don't ever hear from Democrats.
|
| Therefore, US voters are mostly unable to correlate policy
| positions with politic parties. So mass politics really comes
| down to marketing and vibes.
|
| #4 Addressing these "legitamacy" issues (government by consent
| of the governed) is wicked hard when one of our two political
| parties has been utterly opposed to democracy and effective
| governance for decades.
| jmathai wrote:
| Quality of life has been going down for most Americans over the
| past few decades. It's harder to buy a house, raise a family,
| etc. on a modest income. Increasing cost of goods has outpaced
| wage increases but there are probably other factors at play
| too.
|
| Americans lived in a world where all you needed was a decent
| job and you could have a good life - defined by what I said
| above. That's not the case anymore and they're upset about it -
| they're looking for someone or something to blame.
|
| The republican party chose to blame immigrants and the
| democrats chose to blame lack of DEI. This fractured the
| citizens into two camps who can seemingly find no middle ground
| anymore.
|
| Meanwhile, the wealth gap continues to increase and the middle
| class is shrinking. But neither political party can run on a
| platform of reducing spending AND higher taxes on wealth.
| They'd lose their funding sources - so they're stuck with
| immigrants and DEI.
|
| Meanwhile, Trump sees an opportunity to extract wealth from the
| working class by reducing government spending and diverting
| those savings to corporations and the wealthy. Moderate
| Americans feel a bit powerless given how quickly our long
| standing legal and government structures seem to be
| deteriorating.
| sirbutters wrote:
| My take on this is the right wing media re-defined the word
| "woke" to create an enemy, and take the propaganda to full
| blast to convince the average idiot that "woke" is the ultimate
| threat to society, and nothing else matters. Add to that the
| vicious religious practices and the false prophets who
| financially benefits from the brainwashed, to make it harder to
| question the new paradigm. That's what the average
| american/voter was told to "want": destroying woke by all
| means. What "woke" actually means, and the fact the definition
| is so vague (meaningless?) is the true weapon.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I can't say it any better than Randy Newman:
|
| The end of an empire // Is messy at best
|
| And this empire's ending // Like all the rest
|
| Like the Spanish Armada // Adrift on the sea
|
| We're adrift in the land of the brave // And the home of the free
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0EAwSpTcM4
| andrewclunn wrote:
| The blue collar workers are fine with enduring a bit more pain
| for a few months or even years as this pans out. Specifically if
| the investment classes (who will be most harmed) suffer more.
| Long term goals are other countries lower their tariffs with the
| US, more US manufacturing, a temporarily devalued US dollar to
| more easily pay down the national debt, and a renegotiation of
| the terms by which the US provides military protection to other
| nations. People who already had little if anything to lose not
| being able to buy cheap foreign goods they weren't going to
| purchase anyways for a chance to see if this works out, while
| seeing the tech bros, academics, and investment bankers squirm,
| rage, and seethe? Though I'll get down voted into oblivion, the
| unmitigated despair and outrage on display in these comments just
| make my smile that much wider.
| Havoc wrote:
| Notably none of Russia, Belorussia or North Korea.
|
| Really starting to look like the US senior leadership is
| compromised
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| All of those already have heavy sanctions. Additional tariffs
| do nothing since it's already effectively illegal to do
| business with them.
| jononor wrote:
| There are several billions in trade with Russia. Higher than
| Ukraine currently, and Ukraine got a 10% tarrif.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| Yeah cause those are already sanctioned...
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| So many people around the world have been hurt by the terrorist
| US government. This lessening legitimacy will hopefully provide
| them some sort of justice.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Since the Nixon admin ended the dollar standard the world has
| basically been pumping the US economy in so many ways, enabling
| US imperialism.
|
| 1)Dollar standard guarantees countries will absorb US budget
| costs, since they all have to have dollars they have to accept
| their money devaluing as the US creates artificial inflation.
|
| 2)People buying the US stock market due to no fears of free
| trade, now why would a Chinese or citizens of certain other
| countries EVER risk buying US stocks? the trade has become so
| flimsy if even possible anymore, this is a cold war 2.0 at full
| scale, 54% tariffs on China are not a joke, that almost kills
| trade entirely, it wouldn't surprise me if China cut relations at
| some point now or if it keeps getting worse.
|
| The real reason for this tariffs is a very Thucydides trap
| moment, ALL these tariffs were primarily targeted to China and
| countries that could potentially be a "threat" again if China
| were to "fall" economically, example: Japan, SK, India.
|
| Oligarchs are for it because they want to eventually privatize
| the stock market and go back into a weird pseudo aristocracy,
| where they control the most powerful corporations in the world,
| just like back in the 1800s. (notice how Elon keeps SpaceX,
| Neuralink and others private?) Since the 90s unlike the rest of
| the world the stock market has halved in size in the US and the
| trend will keep going until only a couple individuals control the
| US economy.
|
| This whole plan however has a flaw, it assume China won't
| eventually pass the US technology wise, but in the event that it
| happens, what then? will you not trade with China then? if that
| happens then you become basically North Korea where you are
| isolated from the latest technology, as the gap grows you get
| further and further behind in your standard of living. If that
| scenario happens it would be catastrophic for the US.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| One thing I don't understand. US is much bigger than most
| countries. Why would a country the size of Belgium (~12M people)
| needs to import as much as it export from the US in order not to
| have tariffs > 10%?
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| You could flip this around. Why would a country the size of
| Belgium need to export as much as it imports from the US?
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Not sure I'm following. Isn't that supply and demand?
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| What I'm saying is that if total exports to the US is a
| function of the difference between the US and Belgium
| population size, then why wouldn't imports be a function as
| well? Belgium has less people buy things to import, but
| also less people to sell things to export. It's not clear
| to me what the mechanism is that these two functions should
| be so different.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Canada has only 41 million people, 1/8.5th of the US
| population, but it's a big country so it has lots of
| resources to export.
| acyou wrote:
| Americans would want to have high value-added activities done in
| the USA, and low value-added activities done abroad. Tariffs are
| being marketed as trying to achieve that goal.
|
| The five strategic areas/sectors identified as a priority for
| repatriating activity into the USA are pharmaceuticals, forestry,
| steel/aluminum, automobiles, and semiconductors.
|
| How is forestry a high value added activity? Are we including
| furniture manufacturing, or maybe residential housing
| construction in that sector?
|
| Are we including all of the byproducts of steel and aluminum in
| the steel/aluminum strategic area? I assume it's not just the raw
| materials?
|
| Is software included as part of the semiconductor sector?
|
| The bull case for the USA is 1. Reshoring actually happens 2.
| Other countries actually drop their tariffs/trade barriers 3. A
| new golden age of Pax Americana/free trade ensues, with Americans
| exporting their high value manufactured goods worldwide
|
| The bear case for the USA is 1. Republicans get hammered in the
| midterms 2. Entire world raises tariffs against the USA 3.
| American factories close en masse 4. USA dollar is devalued and
| reserve currency status is threatened
|
| Historically, the pattern seems to be: 1. Acquire global empire
| 2. Promote free trade inside that empire, benefiting high-value
| added domestic activities and limiting high-value added
| activities in areas outside the core of the empire 3. Run out of
| money due to the costs of fighting wars to maintain the empire 4.
| Military power declines 5. Through one or more wars, another
| power takes over
|
| Proponents of tariffs argue that Trump is trying to take us back
| from Step 3 - run out of money to Step 2 - promote free trade. In
| order to understand this thinking, it's important to understand
| that your empire's colonies aren't supposed to be allowed to
| promote their own industries and limit free trade by enacting
| duties on your own high value exports. To enforce free trade, you
| then fight wars, you can send gunboats (Opium Wars) or invade
| (Gulf War). But you can't invade and fight everyone, and rising
| powers protect their own industries through various measures as
| they build up.
|
| But power is most powerful when it's not used. The threat of
| action is much more powerful than the actual action. That's why
| I'm more than surprised and not too happy that tariffs on a large
| scale have actually gone forward. Ideally, the threat of tariffs
| would be used to actually cause other countries to drop their
| tariffs, and free trade ensues. I'm not sure about historical
| examples of this working for getting other countries to drop
| their tariffs. You could certainly try suppress the growth of
| other countries, I'm not sure how well that works in a global
| marketplace scenario.
|
| The flip side of that is that if you threaten for too long and
| never actually do anything you may lose some credibility. But I
| don't think anyone is arguing that the Americans are gaining
| credibility by enacting tariffs. It's a big world, and unless
| Americans have the power to influence their trading partners not
| to trade with others, then everyone can just trade with each
| other instead of trading with the Americans.
| nailer wrote:
| The media has been perpetuating that that tariffs are borne by
| consumers. This is partially the case, but not entirely: US dairy
| in Canada is not 3 x the price of Canadian dairy despite the 200%
| + tariff.
| dagw wrote:
| It really also depends on how a product is imported. Is dairy
| imported into Canada as a ready to sell retail product, or as
| bulk 'raw material' for local companies to turn into consumer
| products. In the latter case the tariff is less significant to
| the final price since most of the price the end user sees are
| local markups rather than the cost of the raw ingredient.
| KeithBrink wrote:
| Bad example. Most dairy imports from US -> Canada are not
| subject to the tariffs.
|
| This video goes over the details of the thresholds and how
| those dairy tariffs work:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lURdVBCBo8
|
| In short, nobody is paying 200% tariffs.
| peeters wrote:
| Admittedly without knowing much about our dairy industry and
| supply management, isn't this flawed logic? If a 200% import
| tariff means Canadian dairy can _also_ be sold at a higher
| cost, then it 's still the consumers bearing the cost--they are
| being denied access to cheaper dairy altogether.
| sebazzz wrote:
| > The media has been perpetuating that that tariffs are borne
| by consumers
|
| They've _not_ done that enough. The title is literally "34%
| tarriffs _on_ China". Heh, _not_ __on__ China but 34% import
| tax on products which come indirectly or directly from China,
| imported by $country residents or companies.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Russia defeated the UK with Brexit.
|
| Russia defeated the US with Trump's policies.
|
| Where's the internal opposition?
| oxqbldpxo wrote:
| The lion is not killed by other beasts but by the worms inside.
| cshores wrote:
| Trump is going at this with a big ask. I anticipate that these
| percentage numbers will settle much lower in the end.
| kaonashi wrote:
| we've spent the last 50 years basing our currency in foreign
| manufacturing, seems like a good way to tank the dollar to me
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Can't we sue the President or something? What if he made it like
| 200% to really try to fuck the country over?
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| can't wait to read all the bad HN takes on this one
| macinjosh wrote:
| All the gigabrains trying to be economists ITT don't understand
| this is a political move for Trump's base. It is not about what
| is technically best or the most logical according to the
| academics. It is an emotional decision more than anything. It
| stems from the working class in America being given cheap crap
| from Asia that barely works in exchange for shipping the good
| jobs overseas to the lowest bidder.
|
| The working class has enough TVs, iPhones, and toys. We want
| secure housing, good education, healthy food, and an opportunity
| for promotion in life. Those things can only come with good jobs
| that are accessible to the whole working class, not just the well
| educated who make up most of the service economy.
| mahogany wrote:
| > We want secure housing, good education, healthy food, and an
| opportunity for promotion in life. Those things can only come
| with good jobs that are accessible to the whole working class,
| not just the well educated who make up most of the service
| economy.
|
| What level of confidence do you have that the tariffs are a
| path to this outcome?
| cs702 wrote:
| Three things:
|
| 1. On the face of it, this looks horrible. I won't rehash the
| many arguments against it here, though. This page is already
| chock-full of those arguments.
|
| 2. Robot labor could make ultra-low-cost manufacturing possible
| in the US, to the point that many things become cheaper to make
| locally than to ship from abroad, tariffs or or no tariffs.
|
| 3. If any major country/region negotiates lower tariffs by fully
| opening its market to US products, every other country/region
| will be forced to do the same, expanding free trade everywhere.
| xnx wrote:
| > If any major country/region reacts by negotiating lower
| tariffs in exchange for a full opening of its market to US
| products
|
| Would any country trust the US in a negotiation?
| cs702 wrote:
| Probably only to the extent the US actually does what it has
| agreed to do.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Robot labor could make ultra-low-cost manufacturing possible
| in the US, to the point that many things become cheaper to make
| locally than to ship from abroad, tariffs or or no tariffs.
|
| That's not a solution to anything though. All it does is ensure
| your money goes to Mr. I-own-the-robots instead of to Foxcon's
| Mr I-own-the-people
|
| That doesn't bring back any _jobs_
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to
| manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions, by
| issuing Treasury securities. These securities mature at varying
| intervals and require continuous "rolling" or refinancing to pay
| off old debt with new borrowing.
|
| Significant rollovers are expected from April through September
| 2025, with additional short-term maturities due by June.
|
| Higher interest rates significantly complicate US' ability to
| refinance. The cost of servicing this debt -- paying interest
| rather than reducing principal -- is already a major budget item,
| surpassing Medicare, approaching Defense and Social Security
| levels.
|
| If rates don't come down soon it locks in higher costs for years.
| The country is at risk of a debt spiral.
|
| How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around tariffs
| and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure
| interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature,
| by influencing Federal Reserve policy.
|
| Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis. Increased
| demand for Treasuries pushes their prices up and yields down,
| effectively lowering interest rates.
|
| What are the flaws in this thinking?
| sathackr wrote:
| "If the fed won't lower the interest rate I'll tank the economy
| until they do!"
| zerreh50 wrote:
| An economic crisis will reduce tax income though, reducing the
| ability of government to pay even if the interest is lower
| thworp wrote:
| In the long term, yes. In the medium term, companies and
| people liquidating their assets and paying capital gains tax
| actually gives the state a windfall.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| If the goal of Putin is to destroy the US through illogical
| fiscal policies by means of using his Puppet, it all makes
| sense.
| papercrane wrote:
| A plan like that could backfire, as one of the primary things
| that the Fed looks at when setting interest rates is inflation.
| Increasing the costs of imports across the board will likely
| increase inflation, which would make a rate cut less likely.
|
| But in general, I think this is too complicated. The simpler
| explanation for all this is the Executive branch is currently
| held by isolationist.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| The flaw I see is centered around this paragraph.
|
| > How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around
| tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that
| pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury
| securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy.
|
| Rising prices due to tariffs won't pressure the Fed to lower
| interest rates. It will increase inflation and worries of
| inflation, which will actually pressure the Fed to RAISE
| interest rates. A slowing economy won't stop inflation... We
| are likely entering into a period of "stagflation". The way out
| last time was very high interest rates and short term economic
| hardship.
| timr wrote:
| Prices rising due to tariffs isn't "inflation" in any
| traditional sense. It's not driven by consumer demand, and
| therefore the logic for raising rates (i.e. slowing economic
| growth by reducing money in the market) doesn't apply.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> rising due to tariffs isn't "inflation" in any
| traditional sense.
|
| Perhaps not in an academic sense, but the vast majority of
| people understand inflation as a rise in the cost of
| living, no matter the root cause.
| rayiner wrote:
| Yes, but the point being made above is about the reaction
| of the bond market vis a vis refinancing the debt, not
| consumers.
| mattnewton wrote:
| You can't isolate these things, the Fed's charter is to
| try and reduce inflation for consumers not regulate the
| bond market for the US debt, but their interest rates and
| repo actions move the bond market.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Coupled with tax cuts?
| tananaev wrote:
| It doesn't matter what the root cause of increasing prices
| is. Fed doesn't have any other levers but to adjust rates
| up to reduce demand. It will work either way because even
| if demand is not the source, it will reduce whatever demand
| that was there.
| scottiebarnes wrote:
| If the consumer price index, which is a metric the Fed
| uses, goes up, then inflation has gone up. Every dollar
| buys you less (less purchasing power), and the nominal
| price has increased. To me this indicates inflation. Of
| course, you need to calculate how this balances out in
| terms of jobs/wages and the flow of investment, but that's
| really hard to figure out at this point in time.
|
| I'd expect the CPI to go up in the event of global tariffs
| at a baseline of 10% assuming all things go ahead as
| described.
| timr wrote:
| Yes, that's fine. But if the acute cause is not consumer
| demand, raising interest rates won't do anything.
|
| (Note: a sibling comment suggests that it "doesn't
| matter", because if you slow the economy _enough_ ,
| you'll offset the artificial "inflation" due to tariffs.
| Maybe so. But that would be cutting off your arm to treat
| a paper cut.)
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| calling 50% tarrifs on all of easy Asia is hardly a paper
| cut. it's more breaking someone's ribs while giving them
| CPR
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| It's more like breaking your own ribs while breaking
| someone else's ribs, no CPR involved.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It gets extra confusing when considering import/export of
| ribs.
| resters wrote:
| Inflation is just a description of price movement,
| nothing more.
| patates wrote:
| Doesn't expectation of inflation increase consumer
| demand? If I like apples and expect that tomorrow they'll
| cost more, I may buy more apples today?
|
| Disclaimer: I don't know anything about economics
| croemer wrote:
| It does but only if there's an increase in the expected
| rate of inflation as opposed to a one-off shock like
| we're seeing here.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > But if the acute cause is not consumer demand
|
| But the acute cause _is_ consumer demand. If the consumer
| reacted by not buying the tariffed stuff there would be
| no cause for alarm. But no, they continue to buy the
| higher priced goods. I 'm not sure what happens next, but
| it seems if that is allowed to continue some sort of
| feedback loops develops leading to inflation getting out
| of control. We've seen that happen often enough, and the
| effects are devastating. So devastating governments use
| the interest rate hammer despite knowing it will likely
| get them thrown out of office, which is what happened to
| Biden.
|
| The interest rates hikes (again for reasons I don't
| understand) effectively suppress demand. But it isn't
| necessarily demand for the tariffed goods, it's overall
| demand. Typically what you see drop is advertising,
| restaurants and similar discretionary spending. Notice
| they are services - not tariffed goods. This brings down
| spending to match income, and which somehow keeps
| inflation dragon in it's box.
|
| In other words, the point of raising interest rates isn't
| to cure the tariffs. The only thing that can do that is
| to remove them. Instead it's to counter the effects of
| the tariffs - which is that they have made the economy
| less efficient, in the sense in the consumers can
| purchase less stuff with the money they have in their
| pocket. The consumers are in a very real sense poorer.
| The interest rates are just a hammer to ensure they act
| like they are poorer, and buy less stuff, and bring the
| economy back into balance. They react to being beaten
| with that hammer by voting out the party that chose to
| hit them with it. But it was for the own good, and so the
| political party deploying it has effectively decided to
| take one for the team. For all the cynicism our political
| systems and the politicians cop, I sometimes think they
| are undervalued. (But only sometimes, and only some of
| them.)
|
| I suspect Trump is thinking "but the money hasn't been
| destroyed - I've now got it". And that's true. The effect
| of the tariffs is to divert trillions of dollars (by
| Trump's calculations) to the USA federal government.
| Before the citizens of the USA were free to spend that
| money as they see fit. Now they have handed over to
| Trump, and so have have effectively lost a freedom they
| once had.
|
| If you look at other economies around the wold that have
| dragged themselves up by the bootstraps by imposing
| tariffs, like say China of Singapore, they poured that
| money into infrastructure, education and R&D. Maybe
| spending it in that way is perhaps more productive than
| letting Joe Sixpack using it to pay for takeout. I dunno.
|
| Admittedly it's still an open question, but to me it
| seems the odds of Trump spending the money in that way is
| remote given he is currently cutting back on those very
| things. Perhaps even more telling is the USA go to be the
| most powerful economy on the planet by explicitly not
| letting government decide on where surplus money should
| be invested, but rather leaving that decision to it's
| capitalist economy. As it is, Trump is moving the USA
| from a capitalist economy to a command economy, with him
| in command.
|
| Amazing stuff to see. I'm glad I'm watching from afar.
| alwa wrote:
| One way around this might be a twist on Goodhart's Law:
| if you come after the people at BLS who produce the CPI
| [0], and replace them with political appointees, then
| maybe you can arrive at an "improved" CPI that hews more
| closely to your political desires. Assuming you're the
| kind of leader who privileges optics over high-fidelity
| data.
|
| [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/12/elon-musk-
| doge-labo...
| Marsymars wrote:
| > I'd expect the CPI to go up in the event of global
| tariffs at a baseline of 10% assuming all things go ahead
| as described.
|
| A lot of dollars are spent on US goods/services, so the
| baseline is more like 10% * proportion of dollars spent
| on non-US goods.
| greybox wrote:
| If a pair of shoes today costs $30, and a pair of shoes
| tomorrow costs $60 (not saying this will happen, just
| positing a scenario), from a consumer perspective, there
| has been 100% inflation in the price of shoes. It doesn't
| matter that the price increase is due to tarrifs on imports
| from Vietnam.
| FredPret wrote:
| Yes and there will be the usual political consequences
| associated with inflation; but this type of inflation is
| caused by a tax and cannot be combated by raising
| interest rates.
| sroussey wrote:
| It most certainly can, though you would have to push
| interest rates much higher than normal to kill demand
| enough to have an effect.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| This is blatantly false. You just have to look at Jerome
| Powell's reasoning in 2018-2019 and just last month!
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Why wouldn't a rate hike make a difference? It will lower
| demand and therefore prices, no? I mean, this isn't
| really something that we should celebrate or want, since
| it essentially just means discouraging people from buying
| shoes because they can't afford it, but it does bring the
| prices down (or at least slow the rate of shoe price
| increase).
| FredPret wrote:
| True but that mechanism is indirect at best. Usually high
| interest rates discourages more borrowing and lowers
| spending that way.
|
| But in this case the price increase is already due to the
| government putting its thumb on the scale. The best way
| to reduce the price is not via the Rube Goldberg interest
| rate mechanism to shrink spending and thus demand for the
| $60 shoe, but by removing the tariff and make it a $30
| shoe immediately.
| roflyear wrote:
| It is how it works in all scenarios, though. Higher rates
| usually cause people to spend a little less which is a
| reduction in demand.
| atq2119 wrote:
| A couple of things. In practice, most goods are actually
| priced as cost-plus, with very thin margins, and any
| response in prices is highly asymmetric.
|
| If the purchase costs for a good suddenly increase,
| retailers will increase prices very quickly because they
| would otherwise start losing money very quickly.
|
| If demand for goods decreases, that doesn't affect the
| retailer's cost of goods at all, and if they were to
| reduce their prices, they'd eliminate their thin margins.
| From their perspective, it's better to sit on inventory
| for a while.
|
| So any downward pressure on prices would happen much more
| slowly.
|
| BTW, this kind of asymmetry is why a bit of inflation is
| good, actually. Inflation acts as a universal and
| permanent downward pressure on (real) prices, in the
| sense that if retailers and others are unable to justify
| an increase in nominal prices to their customers, their
| real prices will drop.
| culopatin wrote:
| But the Fed is not the consumer
| greybox wrote:
| But (as I understand it) how the Fed tracks inflation is
| the consumer price index, which does take things like
| "the price of shoes" into account.
| bobjordan wrote:
| I'm an American that owns/operates a design and
| manufacturing company -- we build customer products in
| China and export to USA buyers. Let's say we build the
| customer product and sell it to them for $20 ex-works
| China. That means USA customer must pick it up at our
| dock and pay the shipping fee. Lets ignore the shipping
| fee to keep it simple. Assume USA customer currently
| sells the product for $80 in USA. If USA customer now
| needs to pay 35% import tariffs on $20/unit, then their
| cost goes up $7 USD. If USA customer passes 100% of that
| cost to their own final end customer, then they need to
| start selling it for $87 USD. So 35% tariff ultimately
| turns into a price increase of 8.75% for consumers.
|
| But actually, tariffs have been 10-25% anyway for a
| number of years. So for existing products, some tariff
| cost was already included in that $7 total tariff cost.
| So, for existing products, the cost may go up ~$3.50 and
| our customer would sell it for ~$83.50 and the actual
| increase consumers would see is ~ 4.5% increase.
|
| Now, this is a typical pricing scenario for our USA
| customers, they are selling individual products that cost
| $20 in China at volume, in USA at retail for ~3x-5x the
| per unit purchase cost from China, this is quite common.
| Now, the USA customer must buy ~5000pcs to get that $20
| USD unit cost, while consumers get to buy only 1pcs and
| pay $87 USD, whether or not that is fair pricing given
| the risks and R&D costs, that's just the reality. Anyway,
| I'm not sure of the ex-works cost of shoes, but I'm
| highly confident big brands like Nike sell them for at
| least 5X the ex-works cost. So the math would be similar.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| From what I've seen (briefly worked at a logistics
| company and would see companies POs), apparels seem to be
| more in the 5x to 10 range.
| scottyah wrote:
| It's only inflation if you also double your earnings
| (tongue in cheek, this takes obviously place on a macro
| scale). This is about balancing costs. Globalization
| created environmental externalities that are not
| sustainable. While you enjoy the $30 pair of shoes, the
| people by the factories suffer. Almost nobody importing
| goods is really checking the supply chains properly
| enough. We have pretty strict EPA laws here that are a
| tariff in their own way.
| scotty79 wrote:
| It doesn't matter what causes inflation. It's always a sign
| that there's more money than is needed for current and
| anticipated levels of economic activity. And the correct
| course of action is always to raise the rates to reduce the
| pace that the money is printed at.
|
| At least if you care about avoiding hyperinflation.
| pragmatic wrote:
| That's a distinction without a difference.
|
| Oil price shocks in the 70s caused stagflation, a very real
| threat now.
|
| The solution then was massive pain (Volker) that seemed to
| slay the beast.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Inflation is inflation.
|
| The fact that we decided allow a massive tax increase by
| executive fiat is irrelevant. The fact that we're risking a
| death spiral from decreased consumer demand via government
| imposed inflation is irrelevant.
|
| You're right in that the usual formula of turning the knobs
| on interest rates to ease economic challenges is unlikely
| to work. We may have to turn the knobs to prevent a total
| death spiral, however. Get ready for 16% mortgages.
| cco wrote:
| Didn't stop the Fed last time, when inflation was due to
| market control letting companies pick their own price (also
| not "real" inflation).
| croemer wrote:
| Actually, price increases caused by tariffs are a type of
| inflation--specifically, cost-push inflation. This is
| consistent with standard definitions found in
| macroeconomics and international economics textbooks.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Prices rising due to tariffs isn't "inflation" in any
| traditional sense.
|
| Yes, consumer prices rising is inflation in the traditional
| sense (since, unqualified, "inflation" refers to increases
| in consumer prices.)
|
| > It's not driven by consumer demand,
|
| Inflation is not restricted to demand-pull inflation, which
| is why the term "demand-pull inflation" has a reason to
| exist.
|
| Tariff-driven price increases are a form of cost-push
| inflation.
|
| > and therefore the logic for raising rates (i.e. slowing
| economic growth by reducing money in the market) doesn't
| apply.
|
| The existence of cost-push inflation doesn't change the
| short-term marginal effects of monetary policy on prices,
| so of you care _just_ about near-term price levels, the
| same monetary interventions make sense as for demand-pull
| inflation.
|
| OTOH, beyond short-term price effects things are very
| different: demand-pull inflation frequently is a symptom of
| strong economic growth and cooling the economy can still be
| consistent with acceptable growth.
|
| Cost-push inflation tends to be an effect of forces outside
| of monetary policy which tend to slow the economy, so
| throwing tight money policy on top of it accelerates the
| slowdown. This is particularly bad if you are already in a
| recession with cost-push inflation (stagflation).
|
| The good thing, such as it is, about cost-push inflation
| where the cost driver is a clear policy like tariffs, is
| that while _monetary_ policy has no good option to fix it,
| there is a very clear policy solution--stop the policy that
| is driving the problem.
|
| The problem is when there is irrational attachment to that
| policy in the current government.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| There's nothing in the definition of inflation that says it
| needs to be driven by consumer demand.
| jiocrag wrote:
| This is flat out wrong. The Fed raises and lowers interest
| rates to stimulate or tamp down demand. Raising interest
| rates because prices rise while demand drops due to a trade
| war would accomplish nothing.
| frontfor wrote:
| The Fed has two mandates: maximum employment & stable
| prices. If prices go up, the Fed is mandated to raise
| interest rate.
| projektfu wrote:
| The Fed has a mandate to keep inflation under control but
| a lot of leeway to decide if they should increase
| interest rates or not. If they see a price increase as
| temporary or structural, and not based on an interest-
| rate-responsive process, they will not increase rates.
| Some prices are "sticky", some are definitely not.
| Marsymars wrote:
| They're mandated to raise interest rates in the event of
| structural inflation, not in the event of a one-time
| increase in prices. It would be silly if the government
| increasing the VAT required the fed to increase interest
| rates.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| That's an odd, fundamentally disconnected mechanism that,
| I think, would have devastating impacts for Main St.
| no_wizard wrote:
| and it does, and has for many decades. This dual mandate
| makes little sense in practice
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The dual mandate makes plenty of sense when you realize
| that the Fed and monetary policy aren't intended to be
| the whole of economic policy, and that the actual main
| piece of economic policy is with Congress and fiscal
| policy.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Even if the tariffs work as desired, they result in
| persistently higher prices. Unless you're expecting
| American laborers to work for less than literal Chinese
| robots, I guess.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Right, I'm just saying that raising interest rates in
| response to that doesn't make any sense. It would be
| functionally equivalent to raising interest rates as a
| response to an increase in the income tax rate in order
| to restore the buying power of your pre-tax-increase
| income.
| jiocrag wrote:
| The first sentence is right. The second is wrong, as
| implied by the first. If raising interest rates would
| exacerbate a recession and thereby unemployment, the fed
| will not do it just because prices are rising. You are
| ignoring half of their mandate.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The Fed has two mandates: maximum employment & stable
| prices.
|
| It actually has three listed in the Federal Reserve Act:
|
| * Maximum employment
|
| * Stable prices
|
| * Moderate long-term interest rates
|
| It's popularly called a "dual mandate" because it is
| perceived that properly balancing the first two will
| naturally also achieve the third.
|
| > If prices go up, the Fed is mandated to raise interest
| rate.
|
| No, it isn't, especially if employment is already below
| the "full employment" level and expected to drop even
| without the rate hike. Demand-pull inflation in periods
| of strong employment and economic growth or looming
| deflation in periods of weak enoloyment and economic
| growth are easy-mode monetary policy choices (at least as
| to direction, magnitude may be tricky).
|
| But tariff-induced cost-push inflation in weak growth
| slowing employment conditions, where Congress and the
| President decline to remove the non-monetary policy root
| cause, that's hard-mode monetary policy, because the
| usual tools to address either the employment or price
| problem will make the other worse.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| So you don't think employers will raise wages as the cost
| of food increases?
| sailfast wrote:
| No - because generally there will be a lot more folks in
| the labor market with less leverage so they will not need
| to pay more in order to attract the talent they need.
| This is also why inflation is typically solved by
| recessions. They reduce labor demand which reduces wages
| which (generally) reduces the price of producing things
| overall.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| Perhaps, we are mixing 2 things:
|
| 1) Economic/Monetary Inflation, which is an increase in the
| money supply in an economy driven by government or central
| bank ("print money").
|
| 2) Price Inflation, which is an increase in the general price
| level of goods and services that people typically notice at
| the groceries or gas and usually derives from monetary
| inflation, but can also be due to the new tariffs.
|
| Is the Fed going to do the same confusion and use 2 to
| justify higher rates for longer?
|
| I think they shouldn't unless they're being disingenuous and
| politically motivated (push just enough to make the entire
| Trump mandate an unending crisis until Democrats get back in
| power).
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > I think they shouldn't unless they're being disingenuous
| and politically motivated (push just enough to make the
| entire Trump mandate an unending crisis until Democrats get
| back in power).
|
| They've been saying since the Biden administration they are
| going to keep raising rates. If the Trump regime's choices
| drive us into an unending crisis, bailing him out with rate
| cuts would be the politically motivated choice. Continuing
| to raise rates is just sticking to principles.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| Not true. The Fed did lower rates leading up to the
| election, seemingly to postpone a crisis until Democrats
| got elected (which didn't happen).
|
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/federal-reserve-
| expected-...
| arrosenberg wrote:
| That's a speculative article that was wrong. I was also
| somewhat misremembering JPow saying he wouldn't cut rates
| after the inauguration as him saying he was going to
| raise them. Rates changed a small amount in September,
| then they did two big cuts after the election. Not really
| evidence of political bias in any case.
| seadan83 wrote:
| The article does not say that....
|
| The gist is that Republicans are going to blame the Fed
| of playing politics when I terest rates are lowered, and
| blame Biden for when interest rates rose. Rates go up,
| Bidens fault, rates go down - politics. That is the
| republican talking point. The article ascribes no direct
| motive but says the reduction in rates is due to the fed
| claiming victory on inflation. Which, was wel down and
| approaching target when the fed started cutting rates.
|
| It is ironic that an article that says (paraphrasing)
| "here is what the political talking point would be", be
| used as __evidence__ for that talking point.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| According to monetarist theory these two things are one and
| the same.
|
| The main source of "money printing" is banks making loans.
| And this is what the Fed targets when it raises interest
| rates.
|
| I'm not quite sure whether tariffs really do lead to
| inflation. It depends on how consumers and companies
| respond to higher prices of imported goods and to the
| general sense of uncertainty.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >I'm not quite sure whether tariffs really do lead to
| inflation. It depends on how consumers and companies
| respond to higher prices of imported goods and to the
| general sense of uncertainty.
|
| They won't absorb the new costs. That has not happened in
| the history of capitalism as far as I am aware. Higher
| costs will inevitably equate to higher prices without an
| offset somewhere.
|
| Investors don't like unpredictability, which Trump has
| already shown to be very unpredictable in regards to
| tariffs (the whole on again off again stance changes for
| example).
|
| Higher prices also lead to less buying activity. History
| has proven this out too.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> They won't absorb the new costs._
|
| If you mean that importers will not absorb costs then I
| agree. They will pass on most of the costs, if not
| immediately (to avoid sticker shock) then over a period
| of time.
|
| But the question is what happens to demand for imported
| goods and demand for everything else. At constant money
| supply, prices of some goods going up could put pressure
| on the price of other goods and services, although this
| seems less likely as the tariffs are so extremely broad.
|
| A lot depends on how people respond. Will they reduce
| saving to pay higher prices? Will they take out loans to
| maintain living standards (creating new money in the
| process)? Or will they cut back on spending causing a
| recession?
|
| And what will companies do? Will projects be put on hold
| because the return on investment is too unpredictable?
| What happens to the dollar? Will Trump cut other taxes to
| offset his tax hikes on imports? What about the massive
| budget deficit?
|
| I think this is all highly uncertain.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Consumers will pull back, if not right away it will show
| up with 18 months, though early indications suggest they
| already are to brace for the price increases as most were
| already trying to simply get ahead of the last few years
| of inflation to begin with.
|
| Businesses are already cutting back. My employer has
| already talked about the impact, I know other people who
| are saying the same thing. Lots of things going into
| freeze or slowing down. It will take a minute for this to
| get through the economy but it absolutely will.
|
| I don't think this is highly uncertain territory, history
| has clear examples of what will happen if in doubt.
| Generally, it's not good for most, especially consumers
| or those who have any reliance on foreign material or
| goods, which nowadays is most businesses and consumers,
| and the US won't be able to magically fill that in.
|
| This will result in a recession
| davejohnclark wrote:
| > The main source of "money printing" is banks making
| loan
|
| Sounds like a similar mechanism as the UK. I'm not aware
| if the system is exactly the same or not.
|
| It was apparently so poorly understood in the UK that the
| bank of England wrote a paper (Money creation the Modern
| Economy https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files
| /quarterly-...) in 2014 to clarify where new money comes
| from. There's a good summary here
| https://positivemoney.org/uk-global/archive/proof-that-
| banks....
|
| It's not something I was aware of until recently, but I
| was surprised that it was not more under the control of
| the government and central bank (in the UK, anyway, if it
| turns out it's different in the US).
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> Sounds like a similar mechanism as the UK. I'm not
| aware if the system is exactly the same or not._
|
| Yes, this mechanism is called fractional reserve banking.
| It's in use basically everywhere.
| davejohnclark wrote:
| Interestingly that paper from the Bank of England makes
| no mention of "fractional reserve" anywhere, but they do
| say:
|
| >Another common misconception is that the central bank
| determines the quantity of loans and deposits in the
| economy by controlling the quantity of central bank money
| -- the so-called 'money multiplier' approach
|
| >While the money multiplier theory can be a useful way of
| introducing money and banking in economic textbooks, it
| is not an accurate description of how money is created in
| reality. Rather than controlling the quantity of
| reserves, central banks today typically implement
| monetary policy by setting the price of reserves -- that
| is, interest rates.
|
| >In reality, neither are reserves a binding constraint on
| lending, nor does the central bank fix the amount of
| reserves that are available
|
| Anyway, I think I'm digressing from the topic a bit here
| - but I _think_ what I've learned recently is that in the
| UK it isn't actually fractional reserve banking, which I
| was surprised by.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> but I _think_ what I've learned recently is that in
| the UK it isn't actually fractional reserve banking,
| which I was surprised by._
|
| The BoE doesn't currently impose a mandatory reserve
| requirement. They do have more general liquidity
| requirements though (central bank reserves being one
| possible source of liquidity). I would still see it as a
| fractional reserve banking system, especially as these
| minor differences don't matter for the question of how
| money is created.
| davejohnclark wrote:
| Yeah I think that's a fair shout, the main element being
| that private banks create the money via loans. Thanks for
| engaging, I appreciate the discussion. One day I might
| grok how modern economies hang together, but I've a way
| to go yet.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Since people won't actually have more money to spend, you
| would expect it to lower the prices of other things like
| housing or travel. So there should be a negligible impact on
| inflation depending on the weighting.
| rdsubhas wrote:
| The logic is very reductive. It's like: "the Fed's job is to
| cut a snake, so if they see a snake around their head they'll
| just close their eyes and cut both".
|
| Raising rates does Absolutely Nothing to undo the tariffs or
| bringing the price down. Fed is not a blind machine.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| > What are the flaws in this thinking?
|
| -> Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis.
|
| Is that truly still the case? Does the world consider the US
| stable right now?
|
| I am astonished at how effectively the administration has blown
| up every pillar upholding the US economy, short, medium, and
| long term. The damage done here is incalculable. In all of
| human history never has so much wealth been destroyed so
| quickly.
| belter wrote:
| > I am astonished at how effectively the administration has
| blown up every pillar upholding the US economy, short,
| medium, and long term.
|
| They are only 73 days In....
|
| "France's Macron Urges EU Companies to Pause US Investments"
| - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/france-s
| -...
| Propelloni wrote:
| Doesn't anybody remember Liz Truss? She took only 45 days to
| almost sink the UK.
| abvdasker wrote:
| If the Trump admin's goal were to reduce the national debt it
| would make way more sense to use fiscal policy (increase taxes)
| rather than some roundabout way to force the Fed's hand on
| monetary policy. The tariffs do basically function as a massive
| regressive tax increase in the form of a sales tax, but that
| comes with truly immense risks on the demand side of the
| economy. Guess what happens to tax revenue during a recession.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| There likely won't be any tax revenue.
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-wants-eliminate-
| income-...
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see a bill pass the House. But this
| adminstration loves to make bold claims about what it's
| going to accomplish without gathering the necessary votes
| in the House, where it could most certainly push a bill
| through. News articles don't count.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| Actually very unlikely unless Congress passes a bill.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| Trump is already increasing taxes (tariff is a tax on
| consumption of imported goods). A recession is inevitable if
| you need interest rates to go down.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| ... while simultaneously adding trillions to the deficit to
| finance tax cuts for the rich.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Tariffs increase prices. This tends to cause a wage-price
| spiral, and indeed that's one of the stated objectives
| (increase US wages by onshoring manufacturing). The increase in
| prices and wages is inflation. This will cause the Treasury to
| raise rates to force contraction.
|
| Now, so far rates have indeed spiked downwards, but not a huge
| amount: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-
| bond-y...
|
| The next consideration is: what is the budget actually going to
| look like? Is it going to cut spending and leave taxes where
| they are, resulting in debt paid down, or is it going to be a
| huge tax giveaway to the top few % while increasing the
| deficit? (personally I'd bet on the latter)
|
| Then the consideration: other players also get a move. What do
| the retaliatory tariffs look like? Does cutting off the ability
| of other countries to earn dollars negatively impact US
| _exports_?
|
| Devaluing the dollar against other currencies will also force
| up rates by the arbitrage principle.
|
| S&P down 4% so far today. Do we think that indicates the
| measures are good or bad for US industries?
| motorest wrote:
| > I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to
| manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions,
| by issuing Treasury securities.
|
| It's very hard to even assume that's a concern of the current
| US administration, based on not only the fundamentalist goal of
| radically cutting taxes and regulations, coupled with the fact
| that it's purposely pushing a recessive economic policy that
| defies any logic or reason.
|
| The very least that you'd expect is a progressive tax policy
| that didn't excluded corporations and mega-rich. You're not
| seeing any of that.
| Yeul wrote:
| The whining about how social security payouts was going to
| sink America while at the same time handing out tax cuts for
| corporations hints at a ideologically driven agenda.
| kurthr wrote:
| Put clowns in charge and you'll get a circus.
|
| Okuz saraya cikinca kral olmaz. Ama saray ahir olur.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Okuz saraya cikinca kral olmaz. Ama saray ahir olur.
|
| I like the saying, but why Turkish? It's known in English
| also.
| kurthr wrote:
| I'm sure it has a lot of sources, but it was popularized
| more recently as a mistranslated Circassian proverb,
| which caused a Turkish journalist to go to jail and then
| was picked up by various English news outlets.
| oersted wrote:
| Translation: When the ox goes to the palace, he does not
| become a king. But the palace becomes a barn.
| leptoniscool wrote:
| A crown on a fool's head does not make him a king.
| kogus wrote:
| I agree with you. To just offer a counterpoint, I sometimes see
| quotes like this one: But plenty of economists
| looked at the economic hole left by the 2008 financial crisis,
| and concluded the stimulus policies on the table weren't nearly
| big enough to fill it. The size of the hole is all that
| matters. Whatever level of deficit spending is required
| to fill it is the right level of deficit spending.[1]
|
| or this one: We need the government to be out
| there borrowing money because of the long-term investments it's
| making in our economy[2]
|
| The line of reasoning seems to be
|
| 1) The government is special because it can go to extreme
| measures to repay loans if necessary (i.e., print more money or
| raise taxes)
|
| 2) The reliability of the government means that it can borrow
| at a low rate (say, 3%) and make investments that are worth far
| more than that (say, 10%).
|
| Put those together, and the government's borrowing amounts to a
| net benefit to society.
|
| This argument reminds me of the 'then a miracle occurs' comic
| [3]. It doesn't hold water because
|
| 1) The extreme measures are very harmful - they cause high
| inflation and hardship amongst taxpayers.
|
| 2) Even if we accept that government investment makes a good
| return (a highly questionable assertion), that return does not
| go to the government. If the government borrows money to build
| a new road, then there is no doubt some economic benefit, but
| the government does not receive that benefit, and they are on
| the hook for the repayment anyway. So government spending
| _does_ represent a pure cost - not an "investment". And in any
| case, interest payments represent investment that can no longer
| happen.
|
| I would also point out that back when we ran briefly ran a
| surplus in the late 1990s, economists were not exclaiming about
| how terrible this was, or how paying off the debt represented a
| missed opportunity or a catastophe in the making. Everyone
| agreed at that time that surpluses were good, and that paying
| down the debt was good. The current "this is fine" thinking
| smacks of economists who have a predisposition to accept and
| justify the status quo, whether it is objectively good or not.
|
| So all of that is to say that I'm with you - government debt is
| bad. We are in danger of some combination of insolvency,
| default, or very high inflation. And once we enter that spiral
| it will be impossible to get out of it without permanent damage
| to the economy and the global standing of the US (such as it
| is).
|
| [1] https://theweek.com/articles/618419/why-americas-gigantic-
| na...
|
| [2] https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/us-debt-
| econo...
|
| [3]
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sidney+Harris+comic+miracle+occurs...
| cryptonector wrote:
| > I would also point out that back when we ran briefly ran a
| surplus in the late 1990s, economists were not exclaiming
| about how terrible this was, or how paying off the debt
| represented a missed opportunity or a catastophe in the
| making. Everyone agreed at that time that surpluses were
| good, and that paying down the debt was good. The current
| "this is fine" thinking smacks of economists who have a
| predisposition to accept and justify the status quo, whether
| it is objectively good or not.
|
| Oh? I remember all the teeth mashing about all those funds
| who have to buy treasuries and now what are they gonna doooo!
| And how this is unprecedented and how are the markets going
| to reacccct! Numerous articles about that sort of thing in
| The Economist and various other outlets.
| AshleyGrant wrote:
| > but the government does not receive that benefit
|
| Yes it does, through increased tax revenues due to the
| increased economic activity brought about by the road
| existing earlier than it would have if the government had to
| wait several years to save up the money to build that road.
|
| Also, at least in the US, the government is nominally "We the
| People," so if the general population experiences increased
| economic activity, then the government is benefiting, as it
| exists (nominally) for the benefit of the people.
| TomK32 wrote:
| How about a higher income tax or 1% wealth tax?
| sroussey wrote:
| Wealth tax is a nice idea but non-starter in implementation.
|
| It works in real estate (property taxes are wealth taxes)
| because the land can't move.
|
| One way to tax the super rich is to tax loans against assets.
| They don't sell assets to buy a yacht, but borrow against
| them to avoid paying taxes and keep future gains. Tax those
| loans as if they sold assets.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| We're clearly throwing all pre-Trump orthodoxy out the
| window at this point, so maybe we'll see PRC-style capital
| controls, though with essentially no white collar crime
| being prosecuted for the foreseeable future, enforcement
| might be tough. OTOH the threat of being "deported" to El
| Salvador can be a powerful motivator to stay in line.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I know there is a crowd that talks about debt alot and these
| are all legitimate concerns
|
| However they could also raise taxes on capital gains and top
| end income brackets - which are at ludicrously low levels for
| folks of significant wealth - which would go a very long way
| here. Some estimates suggest it could put the US back in a
| surplus quite quickly
|
| edit: I'm saying there is an argument for raising taxes. I
| don't think its off the table like some people suggest. I know
| it may not be popular with some but we could discuss the
| merits.
|
| Cutting fundamental government services feels wrong too
| generalpf wrote:
| It's been argued a lot that such a move would cause a good
| portion of American billionaires to just pack up and move to
| another country. Rich people are mobile in a way that poor
| people are not.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The US is unique in levying taxes on its nationals wherever
| they are in the world.
|
| Although you've just made an argument for capital controls.
| We could call them "dollar export tariffs".
| Yeul wrote:
| Believe it or not but there are Americans who relinquish
| their passport precisely because of this reason.
| Patriotism is automatically assumed but we live in a
| globalised world.
| axus wrote:
| That seems very likely, but I'd like the names of a few
| billionaires to verify.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The US is fairly unique in imposing an "expatriation" tax
| precisely to avoid this situation. The IRS taxes all of
| their assets as if sold on the day before expatriation.
|
| Of course collecting taxes internationally is difficult,
| but anyone wealthy enough to meet the criteria will
| probably need to visit the US at some point.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Did you know that US has tools to claim part of your
| wealth even if you relinquishment the citizenship. Google
| "exit tax" for us citizens.
|
| The US exit tax is a tax on your worldwide assets. The
| tax applies to all property that you own on the date of
| renunciation
| rcxdude wrote:
| Most of the times I've heard of it happening it's someone
| who's net worth is well below the threshold for this
| (indeed well below the threshold where they actually need
| to pay any income tax to the US government), but because
| of the headache of needing to file the paperwork and the
| fact that a lot of banks don't want to deal with US
| citizens due to extra requirements imposed on them by the
| US government (via its financial system).
| amrocha wrote:
| Maybe the reason you haven't heard about it is that you
| don't know any billionaires?
|
| That, and that the US is a tax haven for the super rich,
| so they have no reason to leave.
| Propelloni wrote:
| The USA is not unique but member of a very exclusive
| club. The other member is the enlightened dictatorship of
| Eritrea. And, IIRC, Trump promised to abolish this
| taxation during his campaign. I'm not holding my breath.
| mk89 wrote:
| Plus, if you do that you're a frigging communist. On the
| other hand, it's so much better to call neighbors, allies
| and everyone else people pillaging/raping the country.
| People like drama :)
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't think its that simple and is overly simplistic. If
| it was all about getting a better deal why wouldn't they
| have all left for Switzerland by now? Objectively, its a
| better deal than what the US offers - even on tax rates.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Everyone has their own tipping point. Just as salary
| isn't the only reason to move job, taxes aren't the only
| reason to stay. But at some point, people move. And the
| US makes you pay tax overseas anyway, so you can't just
| move and re-domicile. You have to emigrate and gain
| citizenship elsewhere.
| amrocha wrote:
| You still have to pay an exit tax if you give up
| citizenship. The tax man gets his cut.
| shagmin wrote:
| Just within the US you could ask why wealthy people
| aren't all moving to states without any income taxes more
| frequently. Plenty do move to certain low tax states but
| network effects, infrastructure, stability, well-
| understood regulations, etc., seem to often play a bigger
| role.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Rich people are mobile in a way that poor people are not.
|
| Yet it's poor people that you see migrating most.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Poor people migrate. Rich people... just travel a lot.
| neogodless wrote:
| So where is the wealth of the rich stored?
|
| Where does their income come from? (e.g. investment growth,
| etc.)
|
| Can't you basically tax their income, and quadruple that
| tax if they move abroad and want to move their money out of
| the U.S.?
|
| (I'm guessing it's not easy, but I also guess the reason
| it's not done is because the ultra rich have so much
| influence on the politicians and tax code... not for
| whatever other logistical reasons might exist.)
| goatlover wrote:
| Good riddance. They can go interfere with someone else's
| government.
| amrocha wrote:
| Sure, they can leave, but if their companies want access to
| the US market they have to pay taxes. Capital flight is a
| red herring.
| timacles wrote:
| this argument is along the lines of "if theres global
| warming why is it cold outside today"
|
| The rich prosper precisely because they are in the US.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| If the billionaires pack up and move to another country,
| then those who are willing to pay their due taxes and
| operate with a lesser profit margin would take the place
| they left in the market. There is no need to oblige
| sociopathic profiteers because they threaten to leave.
|
| And, where will they go, really? There are considerable
| taxes in every country that billionaires would consider.
| And if they choose to cram into some small island tax haven
| in the Caribbean, the US can easily pressure that tax haven
| to do anything it wants.
| schnable wrote:
| The problem is that raising top end rates don't go far
| enough. It's a start, but we also need to raise the lower
| rates to solve the problem. That, or dramatically cut
| benefits.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I don't think broader tax increases are off the table
| either, but we haven't even attempted to simply close up
| the loopholes used by corporations and the ultra wealthy
| and raise taxes in kind. Once that happens, I think its
| fair to reassess what to do with any lingering problems of
| raising revenue.
| schnable wrote:
| That isn't necessary, we know how much revenue that will
| raise.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The flaw is that it's like setting your house on fire because
| it's cold outside. It may well achieve your goal in the short
| term, but it won't last, and it's just going to make things
| much worse in the longer term.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't think it's helpful to reply to a specific, well-
| phrased question with a general analogy. _Why_ is it like
| that?
|
| It's like when the media would interview Robert de Niro on
| Trump, and all he would say is variants of "Well, he's an
| asshole!"
| wat10000 wrote:
| It is like that indeed. It should be apparent to anyone who
| has listened to Trump that he is indeed a conplete asshole.
| There shouldn't be any need to go into details.
|
| Likewise, it should be apparent to anyone with a cursory
| understanding of economics that tariffs are bad for the
| economy, and imposing mindless tariffs on the entire world
| is really bad for the economy. "Crash the economy to
| address the national debt" is a bad plan.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Likewise, it should be apparent to anyone with a
| cursory understanding of economics
|
| Can you explain why countries have tariffs if tariffs are
| bad for their economies as a general principle? I'm
| assuming you're not the standard sort who thinks Trump
| invented tariffs.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Because people largely believe what they want to believe,
| and people are flawed, especially politicians. Is that
| sufficient or do I need to go into detail?
|
| Trump didn't invent tariffs nor did he invent being an
| idiotic leader enacting policies that hurt his country.
| ipaddr wrote:
| To protect local industries which create higher prices.
| Smaller countries do this to protect jobs from economies
| of scale but pay a price and have a lower standard of
| living.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Can you explain why countries have tariffs if tariffs
| are bad for their economies as a general principle?
|
| Primarily special interest groups. e.g. You have a
| hundred people, everyone loses 1% of their salary due to
| tariffs, but one person retains 90% of the tariffs and
| the remaining 10% is lost. The net result is negative,
| most people don't care much about the 1%, but the one
| winner is vociferously against losing his entire income.
| boringg wrote:
| Many critical flaws. Your getting lost confusing the forest for
| the trees.
|
| For starters you are focusing on the % on the interest payments
| which is a line item. However when all of your allies stop
| buying your goods and services you run into bigger problems.
|
| Bonus problem: If one of your internal metrics is that you want
| to have a trade deficit but nobody to sell to because you have
| created a hostile environment for trade.
| locallost wrote:
| Not all of your allies, EVERYBODY.
| misja111 wrote:
| The flaw is that the USD is massively dropping because of the
| tarifs. This will push up interest rates on US bonds, because
| bond holders want compensation for the value loss of their
| bond.
| lxgr wrote:
| > The flaw is that the USD is massively dropping because of
| the tarifs.
|
| That's all but certain. Currently it's dropping, but long-
| term it might as well rise, as the demand for foreign
| currencies from US importers (and by extension consumers)
| will go down.
|
| > This will push up interest rates on US bonds, because bond
| holders want compensation for the value loss of their bond.
|
| How do existing bondholders get to demand anything? They may
| want compensation for a reduced market value, but nobody owes
| them that. Fluctuating market values are part of the deal of
| buying bonds.
| misja111 wrote:
| Existing bondholders can't demand anything of course. But
| the bond price is determined by buyers and sellers. With
| dropping USD, buyers will pay a lower price for the bonds,
| i.e. the yield will go up.
| lxgr wrote:
| Your model is missing the Fed, which can buy an almost
| infinite number of bonds to bring the effective interest
| rate down to whatever it wants.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I don't see any way the actions we've _already seen_ haven 't
| moved up drastic action on the US debt by at least a decade.
| And it's only been a very-few months.
|
| We were probably screwed when we cut taxes going into two
| crushingly-expensive wars, and certainly were when we cut taxes
| _again_ , but now we're rushing toward crisis instead of trying
| to at least delay it.
| tim333 wrote:
| >The country is at risk of a debt spiral.
|
| The US owes US dollars and can also issue US dollars. There are
| complications but it's not like you run up a credit card and
| can't pay.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Exactly. The Zimbabwe model
| ben_w wrote:
| Can totally happen when the people in charge are
| economically illiterate and surrounded by sycophants or
| crooks (I'm not sure which Mugabe was), demanding a wealth
| transfer that can't be funded by the actual economy.
|
| Inflation can also happen when production goes down, not
| just when money supply goes up.
|
| Now I don't claim to be an expert at economics, I'm just a
| software nerd like most here and may be wrong so take with
| a pinch of salt, but the things I've heard that are
| associated with stagflation include de-globalisation and
| supply chain shocks (e.g. a trade war with major partners),
| tariffs, and shrinking labor force (aging population not
| helped by a combination of low immigration and aggressive
| deportation).
| greenavocado wrote:
| To even begin to understand Mugabe you have to understand
| his very long and strong relationship with the Chinese
| military and the reasons why they invested so heavily in
| his posse.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| Yes, but if they let get into a debt spiral, the only
| solution becomes devaluation of the dollar to the point of
| hyperinflation. Only then debt is reduced, but it would be
| terrible for everybody except a few.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Devaluing the dollar would do wonders for post-tariff
| prices, and prop up exports.
|
| I say it in jest, but I can't spot the problem with it
| because I'm not an economist.
| iTokio wrote:
| Several issues:
|
| - imports will become prohibitively expensive
|
| - doing everything locally is less efficient
|
| - the dollar will lose its world currency status
|
| - then debt will become unsustainable
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Well the good news is that there are multiple plausible paths
| forward.
|
| The bad news is that they're all terrible.
| tim333 wrote:
| The usual not terrible, not great solution is to keep the
| debt kind of constant and eventually it gets inflated away.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| We mostly abandoned the long-term viability of that in
| the Bush years with the tax cuts plus expensive wars, and
| doubled down in Trump's first term (more tax cuts). That
| exhausted our margin for responsible emergency debt
| spending, and we had two crises on top of it (as always
| happens from time to time) so we were down to just
| playing for time and hoping for a way to spread out the
| pain rather than let it hit all at once.
|
| We now do not appear to even be playing for time and are
| rushing toward the "all at once" thing.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis.
|
| No. Not during such crisis. It's already visible in prices of
| traditional safe havens (those based on US credibility) that
| this crisis isn't like the others. They are dropping like
| flies. Only gold remains.
| nzealand wrote:
| > the United States needs to manage its massive national debt,
|
| > The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis
| could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward
| before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal
| Reserve policy.
|
| > What are the flaws in this thinking?
|
| Flaw #1:
|
| Massive treasury rollovers isn't new.
|
| 22% of all Treasuries have a duration of 1 year or less.
|
| The only new thing is that rates have gone up.
|
| Uncertainty is a short term solution to a long term problem.
|
| Flaw #2:
|
| Economic uncertainty and supply side shocks risks a recession.
|
| Recessions usually increase national debt.
|
| Flaw #3:
|
| The right answer to reducing national debt is to ensure incomes
| exceed outgoings.
|
| The current administration is so focused on extending trillion
| dollar tax cuts, no amount of tariffs or government efficiency
| is going to lower the national debt.
|
| Flaw #4:
|
| Treasuries only really go down during a recession.
|
| Recessions are bad, not good.
|
| If you think finding a tech job is hard now, or that your RSUs
| are hurting, wait until you see a serious recession.
| leptoniscool wrote:
| it's true.. the S&P 500 declined ~57% from Oct 2007 to Mar
| 2009
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to
| manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions,
| by issuing Treasury securities. These securities mature at
| varying intervals and require continuous "rolling" or
| refinancing to pay off old debt with new borrowing.
|
| No one is mentioning this because no one cares, least of all
| the guy who just signed massive tariffs.
|
| What you're describing is the end result of 30-ish years of
| Republicans implementing "Read my lips: no new taxes" and this
| country refusing to have to a mature conversation about
| revenues. Also, over that period, wages remained stagnant,
| meaning more people look to the government for assistance,
| which then costs money in the form of deficit spending. The
| numerous expensive wars didn't help, either.
|
| There's no good fix to this other than some serious revenue
| raising through taxes on people who can afford it. Of course,
| those people are of the opinion that they're entitled to net
| worths that measure as a significant portion of a trillion
| dollars, and will simply push the costs onto consumers in order
| to maintain share prices since that's what most of the net
| worth sits in.
|
| You have to break those people of that idea. Talk of interest
| rates, Treasury securities, Federal Reserve policy, it's all
| just noise. The money going in must be a larger portion of the
| money going out, and significantly burdening the average
| American with more tax debt isn't going to solve the problem
| before causing social upheaval.
| svara wrote:
| The trade deficit is balanced by USD flows, which are
| ultimately reinvested with leverage into American capital
| markets.
|
| In many ways the US trade deficit combined with the USD reserve
| currency status is thus what enables the high budget deficit in
| the first place.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| this SHOULD be really obvious to those in charge, but I think
| is too subtle for them, or they're willfully ignoring it for
| the "trade deficit" narrative. I don't see how the end result
| is not a decline in the global role of the US and a whole
| bunch of pain for everybody as this all unwinds. All for the
| hubris of an old man...
| ck2 wrote:
| The F-35 jet will cost over $1.5 Trillion, doesn't work and
| won't be used
|
| Cancel it and stop making everyone's daily life absolute hell
| by doubling the prices of groceries, car payments, etc. every
| month
|
| National Debt is not a problem for a country that will be
| around for 1000+ years unless you know of something that is
| going to greatly shorten that.
|
| There are nearly 1,000 BILLIONAIRES in the US, the debt is
| their problem, they can pay more taxes until it's down to a
| number you like.
| kacesensitive wrote:
| A progressive wealth tax starting at 2% on net worth from $50
| million to $250 million and increasing to 8% for wealth over
| $10 billion is projected to raise $4.35 trillion over 10
| years.
|
| Seems like a great start to me.
|
| Alas, I'll never understand people who make average wages
| defending billionaire wealth hoarding.
| ge96 wrote:
| > doesn't work
|
| I don't understand, they're being flown all over
| dingaling wrote:
| > The F-35 jet will cost over $1.5 Trillion, doesn't work and
| won't be used
|
| Over 1,100 of them have been built so far and they seem to be
| working quite well.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >The F-35 jet will cost over $1.5 Trillion, doesn't work and
| won't be used
|
| You've bought literal Russian propaganda hook, line, and
| sinker.
|
| The F35 is an incredible piece of technology.
|
| Do you remember infamous articles saying it couldn't
| dogfight? Not only were those stupid propaganda (you can't
| dogfight at 100km engagement ranges), all the people
| repeating them seemed to miss the comment by the older
| aircraft pilot that the radar assisted gunsight on their gen
| 4 fighter _could not track the F35!_ , not even at knife
| fighting range. Go lookup how good gunnery was in WW2 if you
| want to understand how hilariously bad that is for gen 4
| fighters.
|
| The F35 is pricey to run, $40k an hour, but _so was the F14_
| , which is correctly understood to be a high tech
| masterpiece, a _tech_ platform, and one of the best aircraft
| ever made.
|
| We've already built 1000s of them, and they are already being
| used _today_. Israel 's attack on Iran that showed just how
| impotent soviet era air defenses are was conducted with f35s.
|
| "Israel used more than 100 aircraft, carrying fewer than 100
| munitions, and with no aircraft getting within 100 miles of
| the target in the first wave, and that took down nearly the
| entirety of Iran's air-defense system,"
|
| It's a very impressive machine, that everyone wants, and
| China is really rushing to build something competitive.
|
| >There are nearly 1,000 BILLIONAIRES in the US, the debt is
| their problem, they can pay more taxes until it's down to a
| number you like.
|
| 150% correct. The USA is stupidly wealthy on the world stage.
| We don't have to play pretend poverty, if we would tax the
| people who have hoarded all that wealth.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Also, the now $2 trillion is the total program cost. It is
| development, cost to buy 2500 aircraft at $80-120 million
| each. Mostly, it is the maintenance cost for aircraft for
| decades of future service. The program cost is spread out
| over decades.
|
| The important thing is that if the US wants to have air
| forces, it needs fighters and needs to replace the current
| ones. The F-35 is better and similar price to older
| fighters so it is the best option to replace them.
| aibot923 wrote:
| The F-35 does work, and is deployed around the world right
| now including the middle east for the recent houthi
| operations.
|
| National debt is absolutely a problem when interest payments
| crowd out the rest of your budget. Interest payments
| currently comprise about 17% of the budget, and this is set
| to grow. Those can only be paid with taxes or inflation, both
| of which hit joe taxpayer.
| pyrale wrote:
| > Increased demand for Treasuries pushes their prices up and
| yields down, effectively lowering interest rates.
|
| > What are the flaws in this thinking?
|
| Not sure why international investors would want to buy more
| t-bonds when the country issuing them is starting a trade war
| and their money could effectively be locked abroad.
| comte7092 wrote:
| >Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis.
|
| This isn't a law of nature. The behavior the admin is
| displaying is exactly the type of thing that leads to your
| statement not being true anymore.
| jagjit wrote:
| One thing I am not sure about is how much reluctance foreign
| holders of US treasuries will have to buy more treasuries. My
| guess is both foreign government and commercial holdings will
| edge down quite a bit, even without any reciprocal activity.
| Just because they will have reduced US reserves, and in effect
| need for treasuries.
|
| God knows what happens if reciprocal activity starts towards
| using another currency also for global trade.
| bhouston wrote:
| Trump is a wildcard, but I could see the US defaulting on its
| debt, probably in some way that focuses the default burden on
| foreign countries holding US debt with some relief for domestic
| holders. I would definitely not be holding it over the coming
| few years.
| niklasbuschmann wrote:
| This is just delusional. Everybody is looking for some reason
| that makes this less stupid than it looks, but there is none.
|
| Intentionally causing a recession to lower the debt burden
| makes no sense, neither politically nor economically. Besides
| that the US is not some third world country that issues debt in
| a currency they have no sovereignty over.
| regularization wrote:
| > The cost of servicing this debt -- paying interest rather
| than reducing principal -- is already a major budget item,
| surpassing Medicare, approaching Defense and Social Security
| levels.
|
| Military ("defense") expenditures are always understated. Over
| $180 billion in veteran's benefits were paid last year. This is
| not counted as military expenditures. Also the debt you talk
| about is to not only pay for the money sent to Israel and the
| Ukraine last year, but still for the adventures in Afghanistan,
| Iraq etc. That just becomes generic debt in the skewed
| analysis, alienated from its past military adventures. The
| military budget is higher than stated.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Tax receipts drop during recessions, generally governments have
| to issue even -more- debt during them.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| The key, IMHO, is to maintain the status quo of the USD as the
| safe haven which also has the ability to destroy other safe
| havens. As long as the USD is the primary safe have the amount
| of debt is irrelevant.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| >> The country is at risk of a debt spiral.
|
| This is impossible by definition:
|
| The U.S. dollar is the world's dominant reserve currency.
| svachalek wrote:
| And as history shows, printing money is a super fantastic way
| to get out of debt spirals. [Narrator voice: No, it's not.]
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| The "printing money" quip misunderstands how modern
| monetary systems operate. The Fed doesn't just "print
| money" - it has only two real tools: buying and selling
| assets, and raising/lowering interest rates.
| tootie wrote:
| Fed rate influences treasury rates, but it's not a direct
| impact. If creditors lose faith in our fiscal situation, rates
| will rise no matter what the Fed does.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > What are the flaws in this thinking?
|
| That the national debt matters.
|
| A) The Fed & Treasury have the ability to buy back the
| securities at any time if they wanted, since they can basically
| poof the currency into existence. And t-bonds are as good as
| cash anyways, so that money is basically already in the
| economy.
|
| B) The country's national debt is also our citizens' savings
| accounts. Every major company in the country (and the gov't
| itself) holds an absurd amount of t-bonds because its the best
| place to store billions of dollars for safe keeping. Paying off
| the debt means this capital needs to go somewhere. Should it go
| to China? The EU? Canada? American real estate?
|
| The national debt is probably the most misunderstood concept in
| the country. It's denominated in USD, unlike other countries,
| whose debt is borrowed in currencies they don't control. And
| "paying off" the national debt risks capital flight and/or
| asset bubbles - both of which are detrimental to the economy.
|
| The system we have in place is a good one.
|
| Thought experiment: consider what would happen if the US
| Treasury decided interest rates are negative. That is, you pay
| $10,000 for a bond and receive back $9,900 after 10 years. What
| do you think this would do to the economy?
|
| Now ratchet up that negative rate to 100%, that is, you pay
| $10k for a t-bond and eventually it's worth $0 after 10 years.
| That's pretty much what paying off the national debt would do
| (in fact, that's probably how the national debt would be paid
| off, if ordered to do so, the fed would purchase these bonds
| and the treasury would use the proceeds to buy existing bonds
| off the open market). It's two sides to the same coin, but
| instead of prohibiting the purchase of t-bonds, you just
| disincentivize it.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| All I know about this issue is what you wrote above, but it
| sounds to me like the US taxpayer is paying interest on bonds
| so that bond holders can earn interest.
|
| I think its perfectly reasonable for the taxpayer to say they
| would rather not pay interest on those loans. The bond holder
| could lend the money somebody else instead.
|
| In fact, I think its really unfair that one generation of
| people can leave debt behind for future generations to pay
| with higher taxes.
| dughnut wrote:
| I think what's happening backstage in this magic show are
| desperate moves to recapitalize the country. Foreign and
| domestic investors are pledging to spend trillions, probably
| under duress. Stocks are being crashed to create a flight to
| treasuries. Dollars are partially anchored to crypto by so-
| called stable coins. Federal assets are getting dumped and
| operating costs cut.
|
| Maybe we will get out of this without having to survive on cat
| food, but I'm not holding my breath.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don't disagree
| that there are downsides to the approach, but there _is_ a set of
| very real national problems that this might address.
|
| For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made
| goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic
| producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or
| capital to find a new job which pays as well? Increased foreign
| competition pulls down domestic wages; telling people that they
| should shut up and be okay with that because they can get cheaper
| goods isn't palatable to a lot of people facing the negatives of
| globalization. Globalization has played a big role in creating
| the massive income inequality in our country; it seems like we
| should fix that.
|
| There really are structural challenges to onshoring production
| due to strength of the dollar due to its reserve currency status;
| our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods
| rather than exporting goods. This is a real challenge that needs
| to be addressed as well.
|
| Our national debt is not sustainable either. Either we pay it
| down some, or we inflate it away; these are the two ways it goes
| away, ignoring the option of a world-shattering default on the
| debt. Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same
| time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.
|
| So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees that
| these are issues we ought to solve, what would you propose?
| Ragnarork wrote:
| According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, there are 7
| million unemployed in the U.S. currently.
|
| I don't know how you expect these to cover for all the
| manufacturing you imply might come back to the U.S. with these
| tariffs, and that's assuming the space and the production means
| (factories, etc.) are here already. They aren't, and not for a
| couple years.
|
| Combined to the fact that the U.S. is clearly sending a signal
| that coming there is dangerous now, especially for any other
| category than white males, and I don't see how you can even
| imagine that this situation is going to be working out.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Progressive taxation, better public services, universal
| healthcare, free education for all
| megaman821 wrote:
| Doesn't the US already have the most progressive tax system
| in the world? If you want more public services the tax rate
| would need to increase at all levels but dramatically so at
| the middle to low end.
| kacesensitive wrote:
| No.
|
| The U.S. tax system is less progressive than those in many
| other industrialized nations. European countries like
| Denmark and France have higher top marginal tax rates
| (above 50%), while the U.S. top federal rate is
| significantly lower. Additionally, U.S. taxes and transfers
| do less to reduce income inequality compared to peer
| countries.
| megaman821 wrote:
| That is not what progressive means. The US doesn't have
| the highest marginal tax rate but a greater share of
| taxes are paid by high-income earners than others on a
| per dollar basis.
|
| Raising rates on soley the rich will make the tax system
| even more progressive but will probably not make public
| service much more generous. Raising the tax rates on
| everyone would probably make the tax system less
| progressive but might actually fund a large increase in
| public spending.
| kacesensitive wrote:
| You're right that "progressive" technically refers to how
| tax burdens increase with income, and by that measure,
| the U.S. looks progressive because high earners pay a
| large share. But that doesn't mean the system is actually
| effective at reducing inequality.
|
| What matters is outcomes, and the U.S. system--compared
| to other developed nations--does far less to redistribute
| wealth or fund robust public services. Other countries
| raise more revenue overall (often through broader-based
| taxes like VAT), and they spend it more equitably. So
| yes, technically progressive--but practically
| insufficient.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Doesn't the US already have the most progressive tax
| system in the world?
|
| It's arguable, but it's safe to say that it's one of the
| most progressive among development countries, but that's in
| large part a function of the comparative inequality and low
| tax rates to start.
|
| > If you want more public services the tax rate would need
| to increase at all levels but dramatically so at the middle
| to low end.
|
| Yeah, but the net effect can be an improvement in terms of
| inequality. See e.g. https://www.cbpp.org/research/what-do-
| oecd-data-really-show-...
|
| "As a result, the latest OECD data show that while the
| United States has the tenth-highest level of income
| inequality of the 31 OECD countries examined before
| considering taxes and transfers, it has the fourth-highest
| level of inequality after considering them."
|
| "As the OECD report notes, if two countries have identical
| tax schedules that include graduated marginal rates, the
| tax system will have a more progressive impact in the
| country with higher pre-tax inequality, because a larger
| share of that country's income will be taxed at the top
| rates."
|
| "Because of their comparatively small size and below-
| average progressivity, U.S. cash transfers do less to
| reduce inequality in household cash incomes than those in
| any other OECD country except Korea"
| rawgabbit wrote:
| I agree with the goal. I disagree with the execution.
|
| First, from the outside looking in, it appears these tariffs
| were implemented in an adhoc basis which disrupt supply chains
| potentially bankrupting companies and result in more layoffs in
| the short term.
|
| Second, there should be a carve-out on tariff policy to respond
| to national security interests. e.g., if and when the US wants
| Ukraine to rebuild its fledgling export economy, the US should
| set the tariff on Ukraine's products to zero as it is in the
| US' interests that Ukraine is financially strong. Similarly,
| the US should use tariffs to protect industries it deems
| strategic such as manufacturing advanced computer chips.
|
| In other words, instead of using a purely political process to
| set tariff policy, I would argue tariffs should be managed by
| an impartial semi-independent agency such as the Federal
| Reserve. The governors of such a tariff agency should be tasked
| with the goals of advancing long term US interests,
| economically, employment-wise, and national security interests.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The Trump administration set the Russia tariff to zero, and
| we do still import stuff from Russia in spite of all the
| sanctions and set the blanket ten percent rate on Ukraine as
| you write. Maybe this is simply the current administration's
| national security interest.
| kristjansson wrote:
| There's only one nation's security interest that are
| advanced by an emboldened Russia.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Most of Tulsi Gabbard's professed foreign policy beliefs
| prior to being added to this administration echoed
| Russian state policy, she called it being independent.
| Tim Pool was just added to White House press pool, he
| claims he was _fooled_ into repeating information
| provided by Russia state media, after it was revealed
| they paid millions to him to do so. There is an awful lot
| of smoke here.
| cloverich wrote:
| > Globalization has played a big role in creating the massive
| income inequality in our country; it seems like we should fix
| that.
|
| Wouldn't restoring the prior taxes to those with highest
| incomes, and adding a proper capital gains tax, address this
| directly? As I've started to accumulate small amounts of wealth
| I've realized, my capital gains are taxed lower than my income;
| when I sell my house, I get up to 500k of gains tax free. If I
| backdoor a Roth IRA, I get tax free gains there too. etc. Add
| additional taxes to investment properties, in the form of
| property taxes could be one approach as well - I personally
| know of one investor that owns at least 20 (SFH) properties for
| example. So I'd propose starting there, as it targets both the
| wealth gap as well as hits those who can most afford it
| directly.
|
| > Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same
| time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.
|
| If tariffs significantly reduce demand, or worse cause a
| recession, they will have the opposite effect. It would take
| time to sort out the full impact. But AFAIK, the tax cuts are
| proposed to be pushed through immediately, without firm
| corresponding spending reductions nor time to sort out the
| impact of the tariffs; similarly the tariffs are being
| implemented in what seems like a haphazard way, with everyone
| unsure of what they would / will be, how much, etc.
|
| In general, I think if the plan were modest tax increases, esp.
| around capital gains policy and targeting SFH as investments,
| (very) modest tariffs, and well executed spending cuts, nobody
| would be in uproar. I will be pleasantly surprised if the
| current plan ends well, but it certainly feels as though only
| those steeped deeply in ideology are supportive of them at the
| present moment, and I think that is probably telling.
| bluedino wrote:
| You can tax whoever you want as much as you want but the
| problem is the industries from the past are no longer in this
| country.
| greenavocado wrote:
| This was actually the real cause of the collapse of
| Zimbabwe. The tax base disappeared. People think it's just
| because they printed into oblivion but that's not the full
| picture.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| No, but we have new ones.
| flakespancakes wrote:
| Sure, but the industries of the future arguably are. At
| least for now.
|
| It's not like money isn't being made in the US today.
| vuln wrote:
| Regulations kill any and all profit on physical goods
| made in the US. It was more important to lift China out
| of poverty (Communism), kill a whole class worth of jobs
| and enact regulations to stifle any innovation because
| it's okay if China pollutes, just not the US. It's okay
| to buy goods from mega polluter China shipped on boats
| running on crude oil, instead of supporting Americans and
| American companies.
| fransje26 wrote:
| As you are about to find out with a president who is busy
| removing as many regulations as possible,
| consumer/worker/health/environment-protecting regulations
| are _not_ the reason why physical goods are not made in
| the US anymore.
| tim333 wrote:
| Manufacturing in the US had been shooting up
|
| >Manufacturing output in the United States is at an all-
| time high as of 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufa
| cturing_in_the_United_St...
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| The vast majority of industries from the past are now
| highly automated and would be made even more so if the
| alternative were paying US-scale living wages to the
| employees.
|
| So you bring the factories back to the US, but 95% of the
| created jobs are for robots.
|
| Problem solved...?
| tianreyma wrote:
| 100% this, in 2010 I briefly worked for a company that
| built assembly lines in the US and number one requirement
| for every client was reducing the number of workers
| needed. Almost every project going at the time reduced
| the number of workers by 80%+ and I imagine it's only
| become more automated since then.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| in 1800, 95% of American were farmers in 1900, some 65% of
| Americans were farmers in 2020, it's down to like 5%.
|
| My point is some industries just die. And its okay. The
| solution is not to go backwards, but tax the winners of the
| change to subsidize and retrain the people who lost.
|
| But in America, the extreme winners have convinced the rest
| of us that we shouldn't tax them, and Trump is now asking
| us to instead tax everyone more
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| Caveat
|
| > and Trump is now asking us to instead tax everyone more
|
| Trump is now demanding to instead tax US residents more
| indirectly
| palmotea wrote:
| > in 1800, 95% of American were farmers in 1900, some 65%
| of Americans were farmers in 2020, it's down to like 5%.
|
| > My point is some industries just die. And its okay.
|
| You've got your example dead wrong. American farming
| didn't "just die," _it got insanely more productive._
|
| And a lot of the industries people _want back_ didn 't
| "just die," they just _got moved_ so the "extreme
| winners" could profit off them even more. And then those
| same winners and their defenders always go "herp derp,
| industries gone, nothing we can do! Don't fight it, just
| repeat: gone foreverrrr."
| kortilla wrote:
| No, tax increases will not create better jobs to backfill the
| ones moved overseas by globalization.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| What _better_ jobs do you anticipate will be created?
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| None, as they said.
| cloverich wrote:
| The tax increase wouldnt be used to create better jobs,
| they would be used bolster social welfare and reduce the
| national debt, at the expense of wealth generation in the
| upper class.
|
| The primary benefit of the approach is that the pre-tarrif
| economy is strong, health care, high prices, and very high
| SFH prices are the primary ways people are hurting. Modest
| taxes as noted above address 2/3 without upending the
| economy in the process.
|
| Prices wont come down, but unlike the tarrif plan they also
| wont go up so... seems like a better option at least to my
| relatively uninformed brain.
| mjevans wrote:
| Increased taxes (on the wealthy) could also be used, not
| just to pay down debts, but to start new programs like
| expanding domestic production, back loans for small
| businesses and house construction. Heck even just 'new
| new deal' style jobs that build infrastructure.
|
| Though I am partial to using new revenue to increase
| competition (new startups) in weakly competitive markets.
| That's the most effective way of increasing supply, and
| choice, and letting a market function.
| ccorcos wrote:
| Thomas Sowell makes a good argument that the government does
| a terrible job at redistributing wealth to lift the poor,
| based on their track record. And so taxing the rich more
| doesnt actually solve that problem -- it just makes
| politicians and their friends richer.
|
| Also when talking about tariffs reducing demand and inflating
| prices, I think it's important to note that's partly true. It
| doesn't raise prices of domestic goods and actually increases
| demand for domestic goods.
| no_wizard wrote:
| He's one economist from a very conservative line of
| thinking.
|
| As a counter example, Thomas Piketty argues at length that
| taxation and wealth redistribution remain an effective way
| to bolster a societies resilience and lessen wealth
| inequality - which is still a very real issue in the world,
| and arguably one that the US shows can have very real
| negative consequences for letting it go unaddressed.
|
| As for demand and inflating prices, yeah, domestic products
| may be more attractive, but the economy is huge, and much
| of it does not have a domestic allegory. The other issue
| here is the tax is on _all_ imports, not only manufactured
| goods, which means raw materials - which often have to be
| sourced elsewhere - make manufacturing more expensive even
| domestically
| ericmay wrote:
| Maybe we should raise tariffs _and_ raise taxes on the
| wealthy? Does it have to be framed as an either-or?
|
| > and much of it does not have a domestic allegory
|
| Well some would argue that's the problem. Maybe now we
| will? Idk.
| no_wizard wrote:
| The way its being framed in the public - and often in
| discussions even in this Hacker News comments section -
| is its an alternative to raising other taxes. Trump is
| selling it that way, along with simultaneous tax cuts he
| wants to either extend or implement, which goes to show
| the tariffs are not some way of addressing the national
| debt concerns either.
|
| While nothing does, the actual discussion around it isn't
| allowing any room for non-tariff tax increases
| regardless.
| ericmay wrote:
| I agree with your point about how the discussion is
| framed. To add to where it should be framed, in my mind,
| you can toss in cost cutting at the federal government in
| there as well.
|
| Neither tariffs nor cost cutting, unless it targets major
| programs such as Social Security or Medicaid, will have
| an effect on the national debt or the deficit.
|
| It's all marketing.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Cost cutting always enters the equation, because somehow
| its better to eliminate benefits. Why not reform the
| programs? There is actually ample room for this,
| particularly with Social Security. Why not raise revenue
| via land value taxes, closing tax loopholes and other
| less and/or non regressive means?
|
| The social safety net in this country is already
| terrible, making it more terrible by cutting the programs
| won't be better for anyone except a slice of the wealthy
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _taxation and wealth redistribution remain an effective
| way to bolster a societies resilience_
|
| Tangentially:
|
| It's wild how inconsistent the public and political
| reactions are to different ways of getting revenue. Take
| this common pattern:
|
| When DOGE identifies billions of dollars in waste, fraud,
| or unnecessary spending, the reaction is often: "That's
| only 0.01% of the federal budget. It's nothing!"
|
| But when someone proposes a tax on billionaires that
| would over time raise a similar amount suddenly the
| reaction flips: "We'll solve inequality! Fund
| healthcare!"
|
| This contradiction is everywhere. How can $20 billion in
| government savings be "nothing," while $20 billion in new
| tax revenue is "transformational"? It's the same money.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| I don't know who these people are that you're talking
| about, who only propose taxes on billionaires and not the
| rest of the upper class, or who have compared those two
| numbers and seen they are different. I would imagine
| you're talking about two different groups with different
| figures.
|
| Regardless, "taxing the rich" is not one mediocre policy,
| but several interdependent policies. It's not just
| picking the 5 richest people in the world and taking
| their money. The transformation doesn't come from
| redistributing $20 billion (wherever that figure is from)
| but encouraging executives to reinvest into their company
| instead of trying to suck as much cash out as possible.
|
| Bobby Kotick making $155 million a year while Activison
| lays off hundreds of employees is insane. What on God's
| earth could you possibly need more than $20 million a
| year for? That is not right no matter you slice it. That
| money needs to be aggressively taxed so it is instead
| used to keep people employed at a much lower tax rate,
| not in the hopes that the government can use it for
| spending.
| freejazz wrote:
| No one is suggesting only taxing billionaires to the tune
| of netting solely an additional $1B, that seems farcical.
| plasmatix wrote:
| I don't think anyone would scoff and the discovery and
| elimination of waste or fraud. I think the vibe you're
| describing is doubt that these supposed billions in
| waste/fraud/abuse live up to the hype.
|
| Surely there's plenty of waste in federal spending but I
| suspect the vast majority is not going to be blatant and
| easy to identify
| Domenic_S wrote:
| NPR did in their February article about DOGE; their story
| is ostensibly that out of everything claimed, NPR could
| verify "only" $2B in cuts which they present as
| meaningless:
|
| > NPR's analysis found that, of its verifiable work
| completed so far, DOGE has cut just $2 billion in
| spending -- less than three hundredths of a percent of
| last fiscal year's federal spending.
|
| > "Think of Congress and its budget as the debt-ridden
| dad on the way to buy a $250,000 Ferrari on the credit
| card, and DOGE is the $2 off gas card he used along the
| way," Riedl said. "It's great that he saved $2 on gas,
| but I think his wife may be more concerned about the
| $250,000 car."
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-
| overstates...
| no_wizard wrote:
| >When DOGE identifies billions of dollars in waste,
| fraud, or unnecessary spending, the reaction is often
|
| Did DOGE actually identify significant levels of any of
| this or is it simply labeled that for the expedited
| purpose of shrinking the federal government's
| effectiveness by any means possible?
|
| They've been far less than transparent with the data that
| supports their findings and have been called out numerous
| times for misrepresentation[0][1][2][3] and lack of
| transparency which took a lawsuit to at least partially
| recitify[4]
|
| [0]: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-
| overstates...
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/01/nx-s1-5313853/doge-
| savings-re...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/02/19/here-
| are...
|
| [3]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/doge-days-
| musk-trump-t...
|
| [4]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/mar/11/judge-orders...
| ccorcos wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT to explain the arguments of Sowell and
| Piketty.
|
| https://chatgpt.com/share/67eebae2-df3c-800b-aba9-6e36c04
| 810...
|
| I liked Sowell's book, "Wealth, Poverty and Politics".
| Can you recommend one of Piketty's books?
|
| > raw materials - which often have to be sourced
| elsewhere
|
| Is that necessarily true? The US has abundant natural
| resources. Tesla could be mining lithium a few hundred
| miles away from their factory instead of importing it...
| no_wizard wrote:
| >I liked Sowell's book, "Wealth, Poverty and Politics".
| Can you recommend one of Piketty's books?
|
| I'd say start with _Capital in the Twenty-First Century_
| by Thomas Piketty. Its a great read, if a bit thick (its
| a very large tome indeed and very information dense)
|
| >Is that necessarily true? The US has abundant natural
| resources. Tesla could be mining lithium a few hundred
| miles away from their factory instead of importing it...
|
| Its about access, cost, amount, etc. One company getting
| lithium is a rounding error. The entire market for
| lithium is bigger than Tesla and even electric cars. Then
| there is the entire question of how fast you can get the
| lithium online. Its not like most (if any) of the
| businesses reliant on lithium - which again, more than
| just auto makers certainly - take in raw lithium and
| produce something with it. It is typically pre-processed
| depending on its use. So that needs to come online too.
| Also, is there enough of the US workforce that can get
| this material online quickly? We're talking _years_
| before something comes online in sufficient quantity to
| be meaningful, let alone replace other sources.
|
| Then you have to ask how much of the given resource do we
| even have? Whats the quality? Not all lithium deposits
| are the same, after all.
|
| And many more questions I am not likely thinking about,
| and this is only in regard to lithium. Think about the
| raw materials for everything in our lives - gold, silver,
| uranium, iron etc. and you'll find in more cases than not
| its simply unfeasible to start mining & processing it in
| the US, you _will_ have to import it.
|
| Your idea of what this takes is, frankly, a bit too
| simplistic to be realistic or useful until it answers all
| of these kinds of questions.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Remember when Piketty advised the government of Francois
| Hollande? They enacted the wealth tax and there was
| simply a ton of capital flight and nothing was fixed?
| Leading to Macron winning the elections and enacting a
| ton of conservative policies and leading to pretty decent
| economic growth...
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| That's not quite what happened, was it?
|
| First off, capital flight is not a good argument against
| high wealth taxes, it's an argument for more controls to
| prevent people from doing this, so they are forced to
| reinvest in business.
|
| The wealth tax was in for a meager 2 years, and the
| richest in the country started calling it "anti-business"
| even though they were transparently refusing to reinvest
| that money in their company. Anti-business is shorthand
| for "We can't hire the 1 high-earner executive we want to
| play golf with instead of the 100 lower level employees
| that would actually help the economy."
|
| Instead, they kept THEIR salaries and ate that tax cost,
| and told their employees they would suffer during these
| times. It was a coordinated effort to discredit something
| that was meant to create more jobs. Much like when Saudi
| Arabia artificially restricted oil until after the 2020
| election. And the administration had no controls on this.
|
| So yes, high taxes on the rich by themselves are
| worthless, but that doesn't mean those policies coupled
| with tighter controls aren't essential for wealth
| inequality.
|
| Of course, conservative news is going to talk about this
| in the context of debt, and claim because the amount
| raised did not match the debt (moronic) that it was
| clearly a bad idea to tax the rich, when the real
| takeaway is there needs to be more controls and a bigger
| spotlight on how these scumbags jerk the system around.
| At the end of the day, they are trying to keep their
| yachts and their massive, unnecessary mortgages, and will
| fight tooth and nail to do so, and anyone falling for
| news stories about "oh it didn't work in 2 years, my boss
| said I was going to take a salary cut" is helping that
| agenda and nothing else.
| no_wizard wrote:
| As I recall, Hollande decided to ignore all the advice
| around him[0]
|
| >Mr Piketty's second criticism touches on Mr Hollande's
| tax policy. For years the French economist has argued for
| a more progressive tax system, which would merge both
| income tax, currently paid by only half of French
| households, and the "contribution sociale generalisee", a
| non-progressive social charge paid by all. This too was
| one of Mr Hollande's campaign promises. Yet the president
| has shelved any plans to overhaul the tax structure,
| preferring instead simply to increase taxes on the
| middle-classes and the rich.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.economist.com/europe/2015/01/02/pikettys-snub
| skyyler wrote:
| >It doesn't raise prices of domestic goods and actually
| increases demand for domestic goods.
|
| Have you ever tried to purchase electronics in Brazil? I
| don't know if that increased demand for domestic goods is
| necessarily a good thing...
| ccorcos wrote:
| Yeah, I think all of the arguments made for and against
| tariffs are only partly true depending on the context.
|
| Interestingly, Lua came out of Brazil for these
| reasons...
| vmilner wrote:
| It's hard to see tariffs on steel (say) not raising wider
| domestic prices. Any domestic industry using steel (car
| making, house building etc) presumably now has to pay more
| for its steel which feeds through to consumer prices. You
| might increase the number of steel worker jobs but at a
| hidden wider cost to the wider US economy.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| US homes tend to be built with lumber, not steel.
| skyyler wrote:
| What do you think holds the lumber together?
|
| US homes tend not to be built with Japanese techniques.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| We already have Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum
| imports, and have since March 2018. These new tariffs
| exclude steel (since we tariff it already).
| vmilner wrote:
| However, the widely used tariff exemptions available to
| US steel consumers who could claim difficulties sourcing
| cheap steel are now being closed.
| thuanao wrote:
| Sowell would be against tariffs, he's a free market
| fundamentalist.
|
| As usual, libertarianism is used as a justification for
| corporate fascism, mercantilism, taxes on the poor...
| basically the Republican agenda. Funny how that works.
| cpeterso wrote:
| > It doesn't raise prices of domestic goods and actually
| increases demand for domestic goods.
|
| But domestic producers will surely increase their prices to
| match their foreign competitors' tariffed prices.
| ccorcos wrote:
| Not necessarily, if there's adequate competition and no
| collusion. I think of Costco's Kirkland products which
| have a capped profit margin, for example.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| Protectionism stifles competition.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Thomas Sowell makes a good argument that the government
| does a terrible job at redistributing wealth to lift the
| poor, based on their track record. And so taxing the rich
| more doesnt actually solve that problem -- it just makes
| politicians and their friends richer.
|
| That is the most harebrained argument I've ever heard. If
| politicians are "bad at taxing rich people", maybe the
| solution could be electing people that actually share the
| average citizens perspective and attempt to do this more
| effectively (like Sanders or Tim Walz), instead of
| billionaire nepo babies that spend half their career on a
| golf course?
|
| I mean if I was a billionaire, making policy for
| billionairs, got paid by other billionairs and had working
| class people still elect me, I most certainly would not try
| to tax rich people harder, either...
|
| > I think it's important to note that's partly true. It
| doesn't raise prices of domestic goods and actually
| increases demand for domestic goods.
|
| Increased demand for domestic goods means increased price
| for those. And actually increasing domestic supply affects
| other sectors, too, driving up costs all over the board (=>
| see baumol effect)-- there is no large unemployed workforce
| to throw at manufacturing without driving up costs in the
| places that worked in, before.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > And so taxing the rich more doesnt actually solve that
| problem -- it just makes politicians and their friends
| richer
|
| How are those things related? Are poor people bribing
| politicians to increase taxes?
| Domenic_S wrote:
| The argument is that increasing government revenue
| doesn't automatically mean We the People benefit; it
| usually means more pork and other ways of funneling money
| to benefit the people with the power to funnel it.
| ccorcos wrote:
| Exactly. Sowell lists many examples too in his book
| "Visions of the Annointed".
| sn9 wrote:
| And? Ask Sowell if he prefers progressive taxation and
| welfare or rapid spikes in tariffs sparking a global trade
| war.
|
| (He actually was interviewed yesterday and he was very much
| not a fan of the tariffs.)
| colordrops wrote:
| It is absolutely wild to me that money gained from letting it
| sit is taxed less than money gained from working your ass
| off. A crime against the working class.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The system wasn't named "capitalism" because it
| systematically favors the _working_ class, I mean, what do
| you expect?
| colordrops wrote:
| Where in the US constitution is capitalism mentioned?
| thfuran wrote:
| What's your point? The tax code isn't in the constitution
| either.
| tim333 wrote:
| The working class have property and stocks too and don't
| want them taxed stupidly.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| That's the entire reason why income tax is progressive,
| and there's no reason that couldn't be applied to any
| other implemented tax including capital gains.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Yes, but far less. We can have tax free thresholds, you
| know. Like the capital gains exemption for sale if a
| house.
|
| Any working class person against higher and broader
| capital gains taxes is not thinking very deeply, in my
| opinion.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| Hard disagree. Compared to the OECD average, we collect
| _almost double_ in personal tax revenue as a proportion
| of total tax revenue. What 's more, historically personal
| tax revenue as a % of GDP stays roughly the same -
| _regardless of active tax rates_.
|
| Where we fall dreadfully short compared to other
| countries is _corporate tax revenue_. In 2021, corporate
| income tax revenue in the U.S. was 1.6% of GDP, compared
| to the OECD average of 3.2%
| colordrops wrote:
| It's messed up from first principles - hard work should
| be valued as a society over investment gains, and
| reflected at the individual level in take home income.
| Obtuse measures and comparative aggregates are
| irrelevant.
| timewizard wrote:
| You need to enforce monopoly laws, and more important than
| individual tax rates, you need to get the tax base spread out
| correctly again.
|
| 1950: 25% tax revenue came from personal income. 25% from
| social security. 25% from businesses. 25% from excise taxes.
|
| Today: 50% tax revenue from personal income. 35% from social
| security. 7% from business. 7% from excise taxes.
|
| This problem is never understood.
| corry wrote:
| There are two different questions here: (1) is Trump's strategy
| a good one to accomplish his goals? and (2) what are other good
| ideas to do so?
|
| Just because there aren't many ideas in bucket #2 doesn't mean
| you should do #1.
|
| For a trivial example, consider steel and aluminum tariffs
| (Larry Summers gave this example on Bloomberg yesterday):
|
| There are 60x more jobs in industries that rely on
| steel/aluminum inputs than there are in the US steel/aluminium
| producers. 60x!
|
| Steel/aluminum tariffs increase the cost of inputs to the
| companies that employ those 60x more people; their businesses
| suffer; those jobs are more at risk.
|
| Meanwhile, it will take a decade for steel/aluminum production
| to be fully done within the US, and even then it will be a
| higher cost (i.e. the reason the US imports a big share of
| aluminium from Canada is that Canada uses cheap hydro energy to
| produce it - something that the US can't do).
|
| Through that decade, every single item that uses imported
| steel/aluminum as an input will be more expensive for average
| Americans.
|
| So you risk 60x the jobs, for a slow and ultimately non-
| competitive local industry rebuild, and meanwhile average
| Americans pay higher costs.
|
| Now multiply that across every category of good in the economy?
|
| #1 is bad. I don't have a great idea for #2, but #1 is bad.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Look at it from Trump's perspective for a moment. The only
| tool he has is tariffs, and the people he's negotiating with
| are not just foreign governments but also Congress. Because
| he has this authority he can use it to try to bring any of
| those to the table and negotiate alternative approaches. Not
| saying that's what he's doing. Just saying that's a
| possibility.
| kristjansson wrote:
| He's got the entire congress! He's got the entire universe
| of industrial policy to advance whatever domestic
| improvements he wants to pursue. Clearly they even have the
| political capital and appetite to do a massive tax
| increase!
| cryptonector wrote:
| The Republicans in Congress don't all want the same
| things, and they have very narrow majorities, so yes, he
| does have to negotiate with them.
| rat87 wrote:
| Actually doing positive things is hard. Good presidents
| like Biden can pass stuff like IRA.
|
| Wrecking shit when you don't care much about who suffers
| is much easier
| cryptonector wrote:
| The tone of discourse on HN has gotten quite negative
| lately. It can be possible for Trump to believe that what
| he's doing is good even if what he's doing proves bad. He
| seems sincere in thinking that yesterday's tariffs will
| do good for the U.S. Who knows, tariffs might yet do good
| (or not), and Democrats used to advocate roughly the same
| thing: - Bernie, 2008:
| https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1907883583228051964
| - Nancy Pelosi, 1996:
| https://x.com/ThomasSowell/status/1907875133638705646
| - Roger Moore's films
|
| Clearly they changed their minds. It would be interesting
| to see why they changed their minds.
| belter wrote:
| > So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees
| that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you
| propose?
|
| The solution is clear, let the tax cuts expire, and increase
| the taxes on corporations. Make special tax incentives on real
| investment and innovation.
|
| Make a special tax for the four individuals behind Trump at the
| inauguration, who own more health than 60% of the US
| population.
|
| Stop allowing billionaires and corporations cheat the tax code
| to have lower effective rates than the majority of US citizens.
|
| I am sure the 14 billionaires on Trump cabinet will be working
| on this right away... \s
| electriclove wrote:
| Billionaire boys behaving badly! Let's teach them a lesson!
| That will solve all the problems in the world! /s
| belter wrote:
| Yes of course. What is your solution?
|
| "Warren Buffett Wants Higher Taxes For The Ultra-Rich,
| Including Himself -- Says 'My Friends And I Have Been
| Coddled Long Enough" -
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-wants-
| higher-t...
|
| "Reagan's Radio Address on Free and Fair Trade on April 25,
| 1987" - https://youtu.be/5t5QK03KXPc?t=119
| electriclove wrote:
| Free all the trade (no tariffs by anyone) and let the
| chips fall where they may.
| belter wrote:
| Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland.
|
| You don't get world-class infrastructure, universal
| healthcare, and top-tier education without paying for it.
| High taxes are the price of a civilized society. Get over
| it!
|
| Life isn't meant to be a Squid Game.
| electriclove wrote:
| While I agree those are great things, don't fool yourself
| - someone IS paying for it
|
| Those countries have a population that is a fraction of
| the US. I'm sure they make more effective use of their
| taxes too. In the US, taxes continue to rise and health
| care and education costs rise even more. There are many
| things that are broken. Painting all billionaires as the
| problem and thinking that confiscating their wealth via
| taxes will solve the issues... is a popular rallying cry
| but is not an actual solution
| belter wrote:
| Dont pretend capital = productivity and wealth = wisdom.
| That's how you end up with a system where work is taxed
| more than ownership, and basic rights like healthcare
| stay out of reach. U.S. exceptionalism is only notable on
| it's exceptional inability to do what 150 other countries
| already figured out.
| timacles wrote:
| > Painting all billionaires as the problem
|
| Strongly encourage you to learn about their favorite
| money making concepts of passive income and compound
| interest. And other various "financial engineering"
| techniques corporations are engaging in.
|
| These guys make more money taking a dump than 1000 US
| workers doing hard labor. I'm sure they are like 1000x
| more genius that most people but I doubt you could make
| an argument where a system that rewards this sort of
| behavior, while contributing absolutely 0 net value to
| society can also coexist in harmony with the rest of us.
|
| When the most efficient methods of accruing wealth are
| literally predicated on profiting from doing nothing,
| they are not the signs of a healthy society.
| electriclove wrote:
| I'd encourage you to do some research on the history of
| charging interest. It does indeed make for a large wealth
| gap and that is indeed a significant social problem.
|
| However it isn't a problem limited to capitalism or the
| US. And "billionaires" have been around for quite a long
| time - I find it strange that some are placed on a
| pedestal for some reason
| wat10000 wrote:
| Globalization is fine. Wages in this country are quite high
| overall. Inequality isn't caused by trade, it's caused by low
| taxes on rich people, weak unions, and weak labor regulation.
|
| The terrible state of US production is a myth. The US is the
| second largest manufacturer in the world. The #1 spot is
| occupied by a country with over 4x our population.
| Manufacturing _employment_ is down because our manufacturing
| productivity is really high. Yeah, we don 't assemble
| smartphones or make plastic trinkets. We make cars and
| jetliners and computer chips.
|
| If you want to address the national debt and inequality, the
| solution is to correct the power imbalance between employers
| and employees by strengthening labor regulations and unions,
| and to raise taxes, especially on high incomes, and
| _especially_ on the super wealthy. Taxing people like Elon Musk
| down to a more manageable 10 or 11 figures of net worth won 't
| do a lot for the nation's finances directly, but it will do a
| lot to curb their power and get the government to be more
| responsive to our interests instead of theirs.
|
| (And no, tariffs are not a good way to do this, since they're
| regressive.)
| neutronicus wrote:
| Aren't "weak unions" caused by globalization? Unless the
| union is global, employers can always respond to stronger
| unions by pulling the off-shoring lever even more vigorously
| than they already do.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Globalization adds competition for both labor and business,
| which will drive prices down. That will limit what unions
| are able to bargain for, but it also limits what non-union
| workers are able to bargain for, so it's somewhat
| orthogonal. A smart union won't bargain so hard that their
| employer decides to move the facility instead.
| ccorcos wrote:
| I really want to read a good response to this comment. I have
| the same questions, and I'll add one more thought.
|
| Lots of people talk about how the US should be more like
| Europe. People say the average European has a better quality of
| life, etc. Well, Europe has tariffs...
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Europe has tariffs pretty much in line with the US. The
| weighted average tariff for the EU is 2.7% and 2.2% for the
| US.
|
| There's of course the opportunity to get those in line, but
| that requires negotiations.
| bagels wrote:
| Had, past tense.
| ccorcos wrote:
| Weighted average is an interesting metric, but I'm not sure
| of its value in this context. I can imagine that perhaps
| 2-3% is more of an equilibrium and any amount of tariffs
| will still trend towards some market equlibrium.
|
| I believe the EU has 10% tariffs on all US autos and we
| didnt have tariff theirs. That seems relevant in a way that
| this weighted average doesn't account for, right?
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| And the US has a 25% tariff on F150s (light duty
| vehicles).
|
| You can go tit for tat down the line, but all in all the
| numbers I gave you are the sum of everything.
|
| Heavy tariffs won't bring an equilibrium. It will only
| make imported goods expensive and allow the existing
| domestic producers to become laze and uncompetitive, all
| in all zeroing their export value.
| rat87 wrote:
| We tarrif Trucks because they tarrifed our chickens.
| Tarrifs are pretty complicated and often don't make
| sense. But no the idea that EU tarrifs on the US are much
| higher on average is unsupportable
| horsawlarway wrote:
| So does the US??? Ex - we've been placing tariffs on solar/ev
| parts for many years now to drive investment in those
| industries (And this is hardly the only place we've done
| this).
|
| Targeted tariffs to protect and strengthen specific
| industries are fine - especially if done slowly and while
| supporting those industries internally to make sure that they
| aren't disrupted, and that they can actually capitalize on
| the space provided by a tariff.
|
| ---
|
| This policy is not fucking that. It's just a backdoor tax on
| everyone, with zero planning and support internally to bring
| those industries back.
|
| Simple terms for your simple comment:
|
| A morbidly obese guy slowly exercising is great.
|
| A morbidly obese guy getting dropped into a marathon with no
| prep is a recipe for a heart attack.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Europe has tariffs. Everywhere has tariffs. Europe doesn't
| have tariffs like _this_.
|
| Europe has higher taxes. But, somehow, despite the
| inefficiencies of governments, this produces a happier
| populace who work less and vacation more.
| boringg wrote:
| Agreed there are serious restructuring that needs to happen in
| the US.
|
| That said this approach doesn't make a lot of sense. There are
| many ways to do this without antagonizing all of your allies
| which only helps out your enemies and ostracizes the U.S.
|
| Loss of confidence in the greenback is deeply problematic for
| US power.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| Tax corporations and the wealthy since they receive the
| majority of the benefits. They benefit from a trained healthy
| workforce, social safety nets, infrastructure like roads and
| electricity and water. They benefit form the US dollar being
| the reserve currency for most of the world. I literally cannot
| list all the ways these two groups benefit in a real tangible
| outsized way than any other individual.
|
| Trump wants to eliminate all federal taxes. That's NOT going to
| reduce the deficit. The current republican spending bill
| includes a 4.5T tax cut to the wealthy and businesses, while
| cutting only 2T in spending from entitlements WE PAY INTO
| SEPARATE FROM TAXES. I am entitled to the money that me and my
| employer pay into Social Security, it's an investment, not a
| tax.
|
| Let's stop taking from working people who are quickly falling
| further and further into poverty and start taking from the
| people who literally own everything!
| mrtksn wrote:
| JD Vance had a nice speech about globalisation lately, he
| describes how globalisation made the rest of the world advanced
| and rich: https://x.com/OopsGuess/status/1902396228404674853
|
| So if people were trying to make the world a better place
| congratulations they succeeded. JD Vance uses a bit different
| framing(!).
|
| Anyway, back to your question, IMHO the problem in thinking
| here is that it implies that there must be "They" and "Us". You
| can't just get prosperous as a humanity, it needs to be a
| subgroup like "Americans" or "Germans" that do amazing things
| and they are very unsatisfied that Chinese and Indians got
| advanced and no longer do the shitty jobs. When they say
| globalism has failed us, they mean we thought that Vietnamese
| will keep making our shoes but now they are making cars too.
|
| Essentially the core of the problem(or ideal) is nationalism
| and borders associated with it, preventing of people move
| around and pursue happiness.
|
| A group of people like the generations of Americans who
| pioneered many technologies and sciences built a world, then
| other group of people(mostly their offsprings or people who
| caught up thanks to proximity to the ground zero) operated
| within that world and made some choices and transformed the
| world into something else. Now, they are unhappy with the
| current state and propose teaming up around something like
| religion/attitudes around genders etc. If you subscribe to the
| idea that people should team around these things and if you
| think that you won't be suffering that much and you don't care
| that some people might suffer a lot, then yes the current
| actions actually makes sense.
| sjakakznxx wrote:
| > is that it implies that there must be "They" and "Us". You
| can't just get prosperous as a humanity
|
| This idea of humanity transcending our genetic (due to
| geographic proximity) tribal groups is a uniquely European
| one. Pretending we can abandon all tribalism and integrate
| the entire world into a European model is either immensely
| incompetent or intentionally malicious (I tend to think the
| latter). The current billionaire class profits immensely from
| all the diversity (both generic and ideological) in the west.
| It's much easier to parasitically rule a divided people than
| a unified one. Nationalism is a defense against these
| parasites.
|
| > needs to be a subgroup like "Americans" or "Germans" that
| do amazing things and they are very unsatisfied that Chinese
| and Indians got advanced
|
| The issue isn't other countries improving. The issue is the
| average America should not have a degraded quality of life
| (barring major natural disasters etc) so that our
| billionaires can be richer. A nationalist elite class would
| correctly say "no, we keep those jobs here because it
| benefits my countryman even if I'm going to make less money".
| We do not have this and the wealth gap continues to increase.
|
| > If you're subscribe the idea that people should team around
| these things and if you think that you won't be suffering
| that much and you don't care that some people might suffer a
| lot
|
| Do you think parents should prioritize their children? Not
| saying this snidely - there's no black and white lines here,
| but I think universalism can only be accomplished by taking
| care of our own and growing our tent, as opposed to
| diminishing our own to lift up others (who in many cases do
| not share our universalist sentiments).
| mrtksn wrote:
| lots of opinions presented as facts.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Says the person who posted a tweet from JD Vance?
| zelias wrote:
| I fail to understand what is "malicious" about the idea
| that we, as a single species, can someday achieve an
| equitable and global state of cooperation despite
| historical tribal / racial / religious differences.
|
| Just because an idea originated in Europe doesn't make it a
| bad one out of hand.
| Blackcatmaxy wrote:
| > This idea of humanity transcending our genetic (due to
| geographic proximity) tribal groups is a uniquely European
| one. Pretending we can abandon all tribalism and integrate
| the entire world into a European model is either immensely
| incompetent or intentionally malicious (I tend to think the
| latter).
|
| I did not realize Star Trek is uniquely European, that
| explains all the accents they have. It's a good thing Gene
| Roddenberry was European otherwise all this nonsense would
| make us Americans less isolationist.
|
| > The current billionaire class profits immensely from all
| the diversity (both generic and ideological) in the west.
| It's much easier to parasitically rule a divided people
| than a unified one. Nationalism is a defense against these
| parasites.
|
| For as much evidence as you present I'll assert that
| nationalism in fact profits the billionaire class much more
| than anyone else, thinking of most marketing campaigns,
| most nationalist leaders are all backed by the billionaires
| to win over the hearts of the working class. It's almost
| like you say yourself, "It's much easier to parasitically
| rule a divided people than a unified one" and nationalism
| is just as much about dividing a nation's people from
| others than about real unity.
| Centigonal wrote:
| > This idea of humanity transcending our genetic (due to
| geographic proximity) tribal groups is a uniquely European
| one.
|
| Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africanism, and Simon Bolivar would like a
| word.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees
| that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you
| propose?
|
| Good faith negotiations with our allies and trading partners
| that creates a balance of trade and reduces wealth inequality
| in the west. I'm not opposed to the actual ideas being floated,
| but the people doing are are completely unserious and it's
| being implemented in a stupid nonsense way.
| kolanos wrote:
| > Good faith negotiations with our allies and trading
| partners that creates a balance of trade and reduces wealth
| inequality in the west.
|
| We can look at a 50+ year history of every major U.S. trade
| partner increasing their protectionist policies, largely
| targeting the U.S., while the U.S. allowed trade deficits to
| balloon out of control. I don't see evidence that this "good
| faith" approach you speak of has any viability at all. The
| global economy can't say with a straight face that it has
| been a fair trade partner with the United States. For the
| past 50+ years the U.S. market has been open for business for
| all global producers, but the same has been far from true for
| pretty much every major U.S. trade partner. You can't even
| operate a company in China without 50% Chinese ownership, for
| example. The global stance on trade has all but made this an
| inevitable outcome.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| We negotiated those deals, we aren't the victims. Now we
| don't like how a deal turned out so instead of
| renegotiating we are throwing a temper tantrum like we
| weren't the ones who suggested it in the first place. It's
| embarrassing to be represented like that, and it won't
| work! We will wind up weaker than we started, I hope they
| prove me wrong.
| kolanos wrote:
| The u.S. didn't negotiate protectionist policies against
| their own exports. Can you cite a single example of this?
|
| A more charitable explanation is that the U.S. has been
| all in on globalization and free trade since the 1970s
| and the rest of the world took a protectionist stance in
| response. I'm sure the rest of the world had their
| reasons. But the U.S. does now, too. Globalization and
| free trade that only substantially flows in one direction
| simply is not sustainable.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > The u.S. didn't negotiate protectionist policies
| against their own exports. Can you cite a single example
| of this?
|
| Oh yes the hell we did. I was running an ecommerce store
| when this happened, it's been a disaster for US
| entrepreneurs who have any model other than dropship from
| China - https://about.usps.com/news/national-
| releases/2011/pr11_037....
|
| > A more charitable explanation is that the U.S. has been
| all in on globalization and free trade since the 1970s
| and the rest of the world took a protectionist stance in
| response. I'm sure the rest of the world had their
| reasons. But the U.S. does now, too. Globalization and
| free trade that only substantially flows in one direction
| simply is not sustainable.
|
| We negotiated those free trade agreements. Stop acting
| like we were being taken advantage of. Now, if you want
| to argue that American labor has been hosed, then I agree
| with that too, but China didn't do that - Nike did. None
| of these idiotic tariffs are going to help the American
| worker either - what remains of accessible opportunity
| for the masses has already become more like sharecropping
| with huge corporations owning the plantation, and it's
| only going to get worse under these policies.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| How do you feel about the trade deficit, in the other
| direction, in digital goods (Meta platforms, Amazon/AWS,
| Google, Apple, ...)?
| no_wizard wrote:
| >For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has
| made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former
| domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the
| skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well?
|
| We could instead pay for re-education and training for these
| folks to find jobs that do align better with the global economy
| and bolster social safety nets to help with job loss.
|
| Tariffs are no guarantee the jobs will come back either or even
| if some of the manufacturing does come back to the US, that it
| will employ people who need it most or in the same number.
| Manufacturing automation is quite sophisticated nowadays. Even
| if the manufacturing comes back to the US - which I don't think
| is going to happen en masse if at all - the employment
| prospects that you're suggesting in this line of reasoning
| won't come back with them, is what the evidence suggests.
|
| >There really are structural challenges to onshoring production
| due to strength of the dollar due to its reserve currency
| status; our society as such is biased heavily toward importing
| goods rather than exporting goods. This is a real challenge
| that needs to be addressed as well.
|
| Why? Why is onshoring production of non critical goods a
| benefit to the US as a whole over the long term? Why do we want
| to protect manufacturing interests at the expense of other
| interests? These questions haven't been addressed. Not to
| mention the pain tariffs are going to cause isn't being
| addressed either, we're simply told to 'grin and bear it', and
| for what are we doing that exactly? Whats the actual nuts and
| bolts plan here?
|
| Everywhere I look at the argument for tariffs I come up short
| on legitimate answers to these questions
|
| >Our national debt is not sustainable either. Either we pay it
| down some, or we inflate it away; these are the two ways it
| goes away, ignoring the option of a world-shattering default on
| the debt. Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at
| the same time as raising cost of goods and weakening the
| dollar.
|
| There's other ways to handle the national debt than put broad
| tariffs on all our trading partners - including allies who have
| actually been very generous about their trade terms and
| investments in the US, like Japan, the UK (really much of
| western Europe), Canada etc.
|
| If we really want to strength the dollar, we could raise wealth
| taxes (like capital gains or instituting a land value tax for
| example) and moderate spending. Why are tariffs superior to
| this? Tariffs only hurt the poor and middle classes anyway, who
| can't simply fly out of the country for large purchases to
| avoid them.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| > For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has
| made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former
| domestic producers who could not compete
|
| That misses the point on so many levels. First of all consider
| that this is a domestic problem too. What about all the
| businesses abandoning California for Texas because wages are so
| much lower to achieve an equivalent cost of living?
|
| Cheaper goods produced elsewhere is not necessarily a security
| concern for the economy. Silicon produced only in Taiwan is a
| security concern for the US, for example, but rubber production
| isn't even though the US cannot produce natural rubber.
|
| Finally, and most importantly, price depreciation of goods due
| to global options frees up American businesses and employees to
| seek more lucrative ventures as the market demands that would
| other not exist due to opportunity costs.
| ASinclair wrote:
| If you believe in these tariffs then the major problem is how
| he enacted them. Businesses want certainty. It takes years to
| build factories. The next president could just wipe away these
| tariffs instantly. Hell, even the current one could. That does
| not give these companies the certainty they need to commit
| years of effort to building factories. If the goal is to spur
| domestic manufacturing then, at a minimum, he would get the
| tariffs enacted via a new law so they're more likely to stick
| for the long term.
| 0x5f3759df-i wrote:
| This is the key point. Even if tariffs did everything Trump
| claims they will (they will not) no one is investing billions
| to build factories in America for tariffs that will not be
| there in a few years.
|
| Turns out that governing based on the whims of the executive
| has downsides.
| gizzlon wrote:
| > not be there in a few years
|
| Years? Lol, how much would you bet they are all exactly the
| same in a month? A week?
| Lord_Zero wrote:
| Which is why they want to abolish term limits.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Their point has nothing to do with term limits.
|
| > Hell, even the current [president] could [eliminate these
| tariffs].
|
| The point is that the goal of building onshore production
| isn't as likely to be reached with these tariffs due in
| part to the uncertainty surrounding the method of enacting
| the tariffs.
| kristjansson wrote:
| There is still a functioning system of laws in this county.
| Devolving into a monarchy is not a necessary condition for
| stable trade policy (and the particular guy trying to
| install himself has not proven a force for stability in
| trade policies, even his own viz. USMCA).
| scotty79 wrote:
| > what about the former domestic producers who could not
| compete,
|
| Tariffs won't make them any better at their jobs. So the
| American customer can expect higher prices and lower quality of
| products and services.
| greybox wrote:
| One unintended benefit of this move might be reducing
| greenhouse gas emissions from global shipping ... if US
| consumers are consuming more US made products, the supply chain
| for those projects will have gotten significantly shorter in
| nautical miles.
|
| I'm hesitant credit President Trump with this too soon though,
| after all, his motto is "drill drill drill", but It's going to
| be interesting to see what happens.
| fwip wrote:
| Emissions from shipping are about 3-5% of global greenhouse
| gases, and my understanding is that also includes all
| domestic shipping. Emissions from personal vehicles (not
| including freight trucks) is at something like 10%.
|
| I don't have specific numbers for America on hand, but I'd be
| very surprised if Trump's administration broke even, let
| alone cause an overall reduction.
| jayd16 wrote:
| If it's fundamentally a jobs program, you can be a lot smarter
| about it than tariffs.
|
| If companies couldn't compete before, they're now further
| disincentivized to compete, leaving the rest of us worse off
| and uncompetitive with the rest of the world.
|
| Tariffs are just bad policy.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's the part I just don't get about the pro tariff as
| reshoring manufacturing argument. That industry only makes
| sense and will only be profitable in a world where the
| tariffs are permanent. The Vietnamese textile factories
| aren't going to just disappear their exports will shift to
| other parts of the world and if the tariffs ever disappear
| they'll shift right back to the US. So you'll have a tiny
| fragile industry beholden to the government for its continued
| existence that makes an expensive product only for domestic
| consumption... Maybe that's the actual goal create a new raft
| of client industries and workers in that industry who'll
| support the administration because to not do it will destroy
| them simply by lifting or easing the tariffs.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| Tarrifs are a tool that must be applied strategically. You
| typically announce tarrifs years in advance so business can
| shift their logistics and build out manufacturing where you
| want it. However a daily change in tariffs only creates a chaos
| that the economy cannot simply respond to fast enough.
|
| A new steel mill won't magically appear in the middle of the US
| within a month.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > A new steel mill won't magically appear in the middle of
| the US within a month.
|
| And yet, I'm sure Trump will show up at one to take credit
| for its existence within the next month or so.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Do you honestly believe that there are significant numbers of
| US citizens lining up to take up low-margin manufacturing work
| as is currently done in China or elsewhere?
|
| Chinese manufacturing workers live on a $25k/y income ($15k
| without adjusting for purchasing parity!). Do you beliefe that
| raising prices on goods by 30%ish is enough to make those jobs
| attractive to US citizens?
|
| What sectors would you suggest primarily sourcing domestic
| manufacturing workers from, and would you agree that just doing
| that is going to lead to further cost increase for the average
| consumer?
|
| In my view, the current tariff approach is a rather naive
| attempt at improving national self-sufficiency at the cost of
| the average citizen, and the administrations explicit
| statements and goals make this pretty clear-- shifting
| government income from taxes to tariffs is a very obvious
| losing move for the vast majority of people that spend most of
| their income.
|
| US economy right now is heavily biased towards providing
| services and high-tech goods because that is the most valuable
| use of its citizens according to market dynamics. Managing the
| economy in a "I know better than the market way" certainly did
| not work out for the soviets...
|
| Sometimes I feel that people construct elaborate theories of
| how Trumps policies will end up beneficial for the average
| citizen, despite clear, explicit descriptions of how that is
| not the goal and historical precedent of acting directly
| against working-class interests (i.e. raising estate tax
| exemptions above literal 1%er-thresholds).
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| I agree with you. The middle class is going to take all of
| the blunts. The rich people more or less are not impacted.
| arandomusername wrote:
| So you are okay with exploiting people for labour, often in
| inhumane conditions just so you can buy some unnecessary junk
| for cheaper?
|
| > US economy right now is heavily biased towards providing
| services and high-tech goods because that is the most
| valuable use of its citizens according to market dynamics
|
| So basically geared for upper class / banking industry? US
| has some of the highest wealth inequality of the developed
| world.
|
| But by far the most important aspect is military.
| Manufacturing capability is extremely important for military.
| US may be the most advanced, but a $10m rocket will not beat
| 10,000 $1000 drones.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05.
| .. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-
| apples-... https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-
| release/dhs-crac...
| 16bytes wrote:
| > What about the former domestic producers who could not
| compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new
| job which pays as well?
|
| What about all of the domestic producers of finished goods who
| can now can not afford their materials and supplies? What about
| the domestic supplier of that finished goods producer who has
| their orders cut because the finished goods producer needs to
| cut production? What about the domestic consumer who'd like to
| buy those finished goods, but they can't afford it because
| prices over all have increased? What about the barber shop by
| the finished goods plant that has to shut down because the
| finished goods plant cut their workforce by 50%?
|
| 100+ years of studying tariffs have shown that they are
| effective when very narrowly targeted. Otherwise they almost
| never achieve their stated goal of actually increasing domestic
| production.
|
| Should we tax goods from Mississippi to NY to save jobs in NYC?
| After all, wages in NYC are way higher than in MS. Trade with
| MS pulls down wages with NYC.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| It's not the idea, it's how it was rolled out, how poorly it
| was communicated, how little sense the numbers mean.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| This is a bunch of nonsense that is not driven by data and not
| even worth a response.
|
| I am tired of people spitting BS just to defend Trump's inane
| policies and everyone else having to rederive modern economic
| trade theory in comments in order to counter it.
|
| Physicists used to get a bunch of derision for thinking their
| high skills in analytical thinking in physics easily carried
| over to other fields, and now we have CS majors thinking the
| same.
|
| Regardless I will do some of the countering:
|
| > what about the former domestic producers who could not
| compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new
| job which pays as well?
|
| We had a candidates that offered job re-training programs.
| Those candidates weren't selected and those jobs went away even
| as we tried to put up protectionist domestic policy.
|
| > our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods
| rather than exporting goods.
|
| This is fine. Comparative advantages and all. We just need to
| produce the goods necessary for national security. It worked
| out well so far. Do we actually want to have other countries do
| the high value services and us doing the low value
| manufacturing???? Why are you justifying engaging in a trade
| war with Cambodia and Vietnam?
|
| > Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same
| time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.
|
| This is not backed by any data. Every single economic
| thinkthank worth a damn, including conservative ones, have
| detailed how it will raise the national debt.
|
| I am tired of people saying ridiculous arguments just so they
| can stave off cognitive dissonance.
|
| Tearing down our soft power and throwig out every trade deal we
| have carefully crafted since WWII is absolutely ridiculous.
| teovall wrote:
| If you really want to onshore production, you don't increase
| taxes on the import of raw materials, parts, and components,
| you only do so for finished goods. That isn't what this
| administration has done though. They _say_ they want to
| increase domestic manufacturing, but their actions clearly
| prove that that is not their goal.
| dismalaf wrote:
| You can't look at this move as something in isolation. Trump
| has also completely flipped geopolitics on their head.
|
| Here's other things he's done:
|
| - Threatened Canada
|
| - Threatened Greenland/Denmark
|
| - Supported Russia (it's obvious)
|
| - Told NATO allies export F-35s will be nerfed just in case we
| come into conflict
|
| Americans are already very insular, I don't think you all
| realise just how much you've pissed off Europe and Canada (I
| live in both places throughout the year, family in both)...
|
| American multinationals have benefited greatly from trade with
| other countries... Look around the world: iPhones and Apple
| products everywhere, Windows computers, Google dominates
| search, the USA is a top travel destination, American weapons
| are used by most allies, etc...
|
| Right now in Canada and European countries we're talking about
| completely cutting out all US trade and travel. Like all of it.
| It won't be policy but the US has completely destroyed all
| goodwill and cultural influence it has across the "West".
|
| Because of immense hatred of Russia, China is now the "lesser
| evil" and pretty much all developed countries will band
| together. And not only will countries move on from US hegemony,
| they'll accept any pain that comes with it because Russia is
| threatening Europe and the USA is threatening their neighbours.
| Without the geopolitical aspect, the US might have won this
| trade war. But no one is going to bow to the US to then get
| sold out and conquered by Russia...
| losvedir wrote:
| As a software engineer dealing with bits and bytes all day,
| it's easy to lose sight of the hard and sharp parts of reality.
| My wife is a chemical engineer who actually goes into a factory
| and is constantly dealing with production issues in actually
| making soap, ice cream, chemicals flow (different factories
| over her career).
|
| JD Vance had an interview somewhere (I think in the NYTimes?)
| where he claimed that national prosperity is downstream of
| military might which is downstream of industrial base. It made
| me stop and think, because that does line up with what I was
| taught about how the Allies won WW2, and the US beat the
| Soviets in the Cold War: we outproduced them. I'm not sure if
| this is "fighting the last war", though, since I imagine a lot
| of warfare going forward is going to be technological and with
| things like drones, etc.
|
| It's just so easy to deal with our economic abstraction, of
| dollars flying around, and computer work, and services and so
| on, that I sometimes do wonder about your point here about the
| actual physical, production of goods, and how important that
| is. Can you have a long term, stable, healthy, successful
| country that doesn't (and can't) produce anything physical?
|
| We clearly _can_ still make some stuff. I have a great squat
| rack and barbell set from Rogue Fitness, which makes stuff here
| in the USA (captured in this beautiful advertisement video[0]),
| and it 's awesome. But I also have a made-in-the-USA wood
| pellet smoker which is garbage, and which I kind of wish I had
| just bought from China.
|
| All to say, yeah, I think there's the potential for there to be
| something along the lines of what you're saying. That said, the
| implementation is maybe not great. Even taking the Tesla Texas
| Gigafactory, which was built in warp speed (construction to
| first cars in about 1.5 years), that's only leaving 2 years
| before a potential next administration could roll back the
| tariffs if they wanted.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aCMGqA6_XY
| nitwit005 wrote:
| There is a net outflow of US dollars, because we keep issuing
| new debt. The fix there is to stop issuing new debt, by fixing
| the budget. Sadly, no one seems to think this administration
| will do that.
| rat87 wrote:
| > Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don't
| disagree that there are downsides to the approach, but there is
| a set of very real national problems that this might address.
|
| Because it is stupid. It's important to point out that this is
| stupid and not only doesn't help with problems that come with
| the benefits of globalization but makes it worse. How will a
| deep recession fox anything? Including debt(which is high but
| manageable under a sane government)
| greg7gkb wrote:
| > very real national problems that this might address.
|
| This is a dubious claim to begin with. If you believe that
| 'trade deficits are bad,' can you explain why? Post Covid, the
| US economy has emerged in significantly better shape than
| nearly every other country in the world, so I'm failing to see
| how these deficits are meaningful.
|
| > Globalization has played a big role in creating the massive
| income inequality in our country
|
| What is your source for this belief, especially when comparing
| globalization with other factors that cause inequality? From my
| understanding, the biggest recent contributors to a higher cost
| of living in the US are housing, health, and education. Health
| and education purely services-oriented, and housing is one-
| third a labor cost.
|
| > our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods
| rather than exporting goods
|
| I think that's great. America exports services. We innovate to
| create new technology, are a leader in designing the things and
| systems that people want (think of our tech industry), and we
| delegate the work of manufacturing to others. That seems fine
| to me, and a function of having (relatively) open, free trade.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees
| that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you
| propose?
|
| At a high level, the problem is that free trade makes the pie
| bigger, but causes distribution/inequality problems. So
| generally speaking, the best measures are going to be those
| that improve inequality while minimizing the impact to the size
| of the pie. Raise taxes on the wealthy, increase spending on
| social programs to the non-wealthy, fund investments in
| programs that benefit everyone equally. (Public transit,
| libraries, healthcare, education, etc.)
|
| Tariffs shrink the pie, and I'd heavily bet against those hurt
| by globalization being those who are able to grab a bigger
| slice under the current administration.
| mk89 wrote:
| I am not an economist but I see two things 1) usa has a huge
| debt, 2) this feels a lot like VAT applied on a federal level,
| without calling it VAT. Ok "VAT on imports". Why not.
|
| Obviously this is being sold as a trading surplus BS, etc, but if
| you look at EU, the surplus is ridiculously low when you consider
| goods and services (something like 50B).
|
| I don't think it's the worst idea ever, I just dislike the
| useless hatred that this guy is spreading around and all the
| idiots believing him. But hey if he hadn't done it, people would
| have said he is a socialist :)
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Nasdaq composite is down 5.6% at the time of writing this
| comment.
|
| I honestly think Trump is doing this just to enrich himself and
| his friends. Stock market crashes always end up transfering
| wealth from the poor to the rich.
| joshdavham wrote:
| The goal of the world now is to specifically target red swing
| states with counter tariffs so that the democrats will win the
| midterms, pass legislation to prevent the president from being
| able to unilaterally impose tariffs in the future and thus put a
| swift end to the golden age.
| bagels wrote:
| Pass legislation? That will be vetoed or ignored?
| Yeul wrote:
| Man the stock market today was a slaughter house.
|
| Unfortunately in America they choose a dictator for 4 years with
| a parlement made up of puppets so it is what it is.
| uoaei wrote:
| I like to ask, "What would a Russian agent do to try to dethrone
| the USA as a global power?"
|
| * remove support from historic trading partners
|
| * break up NATO and similar military alliances
|
| * convince the world to distrust USD as default reserve currency
|
| * _specifically_ make it harder to trade with China who makes a
| lot of our junk
|
| * remove a lot of the federal government workforce from their
| positions
|
| * convince those involved in Ukraine to back out so that the
| mineral-rich regions in the east can be appropriated
|
| * destroy the image of "democracy" and "free speech" by flaunting
| legal processes and crushing dissent
|
| I could list and think of more, but these are most illustrative
| IMO.
| le-mark wrote:
| One thing we know for sure Trump will never back down or admit
| he's wrong. So how to invest in this 4 year regime to survive or
| even thrive?
| donohoe wrote:
| Are we surprised? If anyone watched the presidential debates VP
| Kamala Harris told us about this.
|
| From September 2024:
|
| "What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump's plan would
| make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy. What
| the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually
| explode the deficit. Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his
| economic plan as something that would increase inflation and by
| the middle of next year would invite a recession."
|
| Emphasis on that last line: would increase
| inflation and by the middle of next year would invite a
| recession.
|
| btw the US Congress can stop this anytime they want.
| boringg wrote:
| Is there going to be a hearing into the stock transactions of any
| the cabinet related to this news? Seems to me like some people
| could make some significant money on information like this.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| https://shwin.co/blog/why-i-dont-discuss-politics-with-frien...
| Mossy9 wrote:
| I wonder how long it takes until this trade war moves to the
| digital stage. It wouldn't be surprising to see that software
| license fees start increasing if this tit-for-tat continues for
| much longer
| olalonde wrote:
| If there's one upside to Trump, it's that he might turn a lot of
| left-wingers into passionate free traders. Who would have
| thought.
| svara wrote:
| It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US economy
| as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve currency.
|
| The flow of goods is balanced by a flow of US dollars to other
| countries, which are ultimately cycled back into the US financial
| system - enabling budget deficits and an abundance of capital to
| invest in high growth industries.
|
| The flip side of this is that it also drives inequality - the
| upside of this system is felt by the entrepreneurs, investors and
| high-skill employees in tech and finance, while the downside is
| concentrated with low-skill workers whose jobs are offshored to
| lower wage countries.
|
| The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but
| rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality
| education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring
| select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.
|
| As such, this administration's policies are foolish, but many on
| this very site would need to give up a little bit of their
| privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow
| citizens.
|
| That is something that in the current American political climate
| seems a nearly impossible sell.
| ajross wrote:
| You're arguing from a steady state. In point of fact the pain
| of the at-this-point-seemingly-inevitable recession is
| _absolutely_ going to be concentrated on the working class.
| Those of us with savings and work flexibility will do just
| fine.
|
| Even someone making a first principles argument for a revision
| of US trade policy should agree that this is insane.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| The real pain will hit the working class harder, but the
| nominal pain will hit the capital class harder. Historically,
| this is how inequality unwinds. See: recessions, World War
| II. Let's hope to god that this is "just" a recession and
| doesn't cook into World War III.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| The current spending bill has a 4.5T giveaway to corps and
| the ultra rich. The goal is to drive prices to the floor
| and then buy everything up.
|
| What's a 50% drop in value to a billionaire? Most of them
| would still be a billionaire and the ones that fall from
| that group still have more money than they could ever
| spend. No wealthy person will truly feel what's going on.
| They'll still vacation and eat their caviar. Caricatures
| aside, it's absurd to compare someone stock sheet numbers
| going down with people not able to find medical care or
| feed themselves.
| timacles wrote:
| Definitely looks like an intentional precursor to WW3.
|
| - Threats of annexations - Existing conflicts in North
| America, Middle East, Europe and Asia. (whats up with South
| America?) - Mass unemployment and poverty in US freeing up
| able bodied people for some soldiering - Right wing
| blowhards everywhere
|
| Just crazy that this is essentially because rich people
| dont want to pay some debts, and some crazy russian guy's
| ego
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| I think the quote below attributed to Caesar is
| applicable here ( not only in the sense that egos play a
| role in most leader's process ). I am not sure I disagree
| with you; I just hope you are wrong.
|
| "Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Caesar and
| his fortune in your boat."
| svara wrote:
| I think my comment is entirely compatible with what you said,
| no?
| mlinhares wrote:
| its also assuming there is any plan here do get somewhere,
| they just asked chatgpt for number, it spewed them out and
| those became the final numbers.
|
| there's no plan for anything here.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Yes! "Trade Wars are Class Wars" by Klein & Pettis is the book
| to read if you want to hear actual economists with actual data
| talk about this.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Stellar book. Can't recommend it enough. Wanted to chime in
| on how good this book is.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I purchased this book after seeing all of these glowing
| reviews for it.
| aj_icracked wrote:
| I just downloaded this and listened to it for the past 2
| hours, this is a fantastic book. Thanks for the rec guys!
| throwaway34903 wrote:
| For what it's worth Pettis thinks tariffs would be beneficial
| for the American economy:
| https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-tariffs-
| can...
| ckemere wrote:
| I read this and I was quite disappointed that he didn't
| talk about labor costs and other comparative advantages for
| labor-heavy manufacturing to be in a different situation
| trade market-wise than it was in the 1930s.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| He does talk about comparative advantage, though.
| Extensively. The bit about Ricardo's precondition is
| absolutely wild and I'm more than a little scandalized by
| the fact that it wasn't discussed when I took econ in
| school. Not to mention the history with Alexander
| Hamilton.
|
| Are you sure you didn't just read the link? If you want a
| book-sized argument, you need to read the book, or at
| least listen to it.
| piokoch wrote:
| Nope. It's true that free trade WAS hugely beneficial to the US
| economy as a whole. Now free trade is hurting USA economy and
| that's why USA play against the rules they were promoting for
| so long.
| klipt wrote:
| > Now free trade is hurting USA economy
|
| Then why is the economy crashing under these new tariffs when
| it was recovering nicely just a few months ago?
| sekai wrote:
| > Now free trade is hurting USA economy and that's why USA
| play against the rules they were promoting for so long.
|
| Explain how is it hurting US economy?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Free trade is not hurting the economy. American domestic
| policy impacting the distribution of the produce of the
| economy is, even in times of strong aggregate economic
| performance, hurting the felt effects of the economy on large
| swathes of the population, but throwing up protectionist
| policies that collapse both the global and local production
| possibilities curves doesn't help that; it just shrinks the
| pie without doing anything to deal with the bad distribution
| which makes people _feel_ like the pie is shrinking even when
| it is growing. The results you can expect from that should be
| obvious without experiencing them, but it looks like we are
| all going to learn about them through painful experience real
| soon now.
| zjp wrote:
| Yes! I've been consistently frustrated at both sides of the
| issue. It became salient for me when I read about how China had
| sanctioned three American drone manufacturers that were
| supplying Ukraine last year, and how it disrupted their supply
| chains and ultimately the war effort.
|
| It is unacceptable for any other country to be able to do this
| to any part of the western-aligned military supply chain.
|
| We needed a targeted policy -- I don't care about American cars
| except to the extent that those factories can be converted to
| aircraft and tank factories.
|
| But the conversation has been frustratingly reduced to 'reshore
| low skill work' vs 'save my infinite trough of cheap plastic
| slop'.
|
| I don't want to hear about tariffs bad, I want to hear about
| how subsidies are better or about how it doesn't matter anyway
| because of the structure of the Chinese economy (I saw it
| claimed without evidence that they depend on imports from
| places aligned with the west which is reassuring if
| substantiated).
|
| There's an underlying issue everyone is dancing around.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I don't know why you are being down-voted, I think you raised
| some interesting points that add to the discussion.
|
| National security / foreign interference hadn't occurred to
| me, and now I'm wondering what would happen to US economy and
| manufacturing if it was at war with China and or the EU over
| Taiwan and or Greenland.
|
| How would US deal with Russian style sanctions? Can China
| simply ban all exports to the US?
|
| In times of war, it probably is super important that a
| country and manufacture all essentials.
| zjp wrote:
| If I were a third party downvoting my comment I would
| probably take issue with the characterization of the anti-
| tariff position as "save my infinite trough of plastic
| slop". Other countries do have highly skilled artisans.
| Tariffs are also considered bad on the merits (looking at
| it from a liberal [economically] world view). It's like
| vaccine skepticism to economists: an extremely low-status
| opinion for kooks and cranks. But I am open to being
| convinced on illiberal economics (this is not the same
| thing as saying I support it) because I consider military
| supply chain erosion a national emergency and I don't think
| "balloon the military budget even more with subsidies" is a
| politically viable position and "just build it in an allied
| country we now have to keep permapoor to make the economics
| work out" is cruel.
| MR4D wrote:
| The deficit is 2 trillion.
|
| Income taxes on individuals are 2.4 trillion.
|
| How much do you expect to raise taxes to cover that gap? You
| double my taxes and I'm in the welfare line.
|
| Further, and this is not referenced enough - the US must
| rollover ~9 trillion in treasuries this year. The lower the
| interest rate to do that, the better. Otherwise it increase the
| deficit even more.
|
| The only way this ends is one of two paths - a path similar to
| what we are on; default.
|
| We may not like this one, but default is world destroying
| because of the broad use of the Dollar around the globe.
| hijodelsol wrote:
| The deficit is not in fact 2 trillion. Source:
| https://www.bea.gov/system/files/trad0225.png (and many other
| official documents)
|
| Also, this is a false dichotomy.
| izend wrote:
| In CBO's projections, the federal budget deficit in fiscal
| year 2025 is $1.9 trillion. Adjusted to exclude the effects
| of shifts in the timing of certain payments, the deficit
| grows to $2.7 trillion by 2035. It amounts to 6.2 percent
| of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2025 and drops to 5.2
| percent by 2027 as revenues increase faster than outlays
|
| https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60870
|
| IMO, 5%+ percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in a
| country with massive trade deficits is not sustainable.
| croemer wrote:
| Nominal GDP growth was 5% in December. As long as share
| of GDP is constant things are sustainable.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| "The budget projections are based on CBO's economic
| forecast, which reflects developments in the economy as
| of December 4, 2024. They also incorporate legislation
| enacted through January 6, 2025."
|
| Out of date!
| croemer wrote:
| I think they meant budget deficit, whereas you refer to
| trade deficit.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I believe the OP was talking about the fiscal deficit, your
| chart shows the trade deficit.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| That graph shows a 130B monthly deficit. So maybe not 2B
| but still 1.5B on a yearly basis.
| grafmax wrote:
| Taxes should be raised on the rich. Elon Musk alone is worth
| $330 billion. There is plenty of money to pay for what we
| need. The question is whether we can muster the political
| will to do it.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| The current administration has no interest in reducing the
| fiscal deficit. Their expressed policies will make it larger.
| keithxm23 wrote:
| > but many on this very site would need to give up a little bit
| of their privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their
| fellow citizens.
|
| Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged
| who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by
| the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier.
|
| If the solution was instead along the lines of changing tax-
| brackets to tax the 'privileged' more, that might have better
| addressed the problem you mention in the beginning.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Nobody has faith in the governments ability to put that money
| to good use. The US gov uses significant amounts of its
| budget to fund weapon development, promote weapon sales,
| change unfriendly foreign governments, support friendly
| foreign governments, and genocide troublesome foreign
| populations. Who will support raising more taxes to maintain
| and expand such efforts?
| mjevans wrote:
| Offhand, I'm unaware of where to even look to get an easy
| to digest version of 'where tax dollars go'. Would the GAO
| make such a report? Something for Congress otherwise? Would
| there be a classified and an public version?
|
| Even better would be a tool that, E.G. with your IRS filing
| number, shows how much 'you' paid in, breaks down where
| that went, and shows how 'you' compare to other areas.
|
| Such tools and reports would cost money, but making them is
| practically an audit anyway which is a good use of
| resources in a bureaucracy (part of the self-calibration
| system).
| LaffertyDev wrote:
| https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-
| guide/feder...
|
| What you seek is available and has been available for a
| very long time. Mathing out how your individual tax
| dollars map to these buckets is a fairly straightforward
| (IMO) exercise.
| blargey wrote:
| https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
| (linked on that page but easy to miss) provides a great
| visualization/interface for the budget that can drill
| down deep into each category's sub-categories and beyond.
|
| OTOH they might be asking more specifically for a view
| that controls for how different tax/income sources might
| be earmarked for specific spending, thus skewing how
| income tax dollars are distributed compared to the
| overall budget distribution - though I'm not sure that's
| going to change one's income tax dollar distribution
| much. AFAIK even social security is only nominally funded
| by social security tax, and the deficit means there's
| debt filling the gaps everywhere anyway.
| mjevans wrote:
| That page is a good start. It at least shows the
| breakdown of % by programs, etc.
|
| However as you point out there are different types and
| methods of tax which go to different bins. The IRS
| filings are the most likely place to have all that
| together.
|
| *value for taxation* is also really difficult to discern.
| The report needs to help break down where someone's tax
| dollars went...
|
| But it also needs to help collectively show how tax
| dollars _benefit_ them. That one not just in the taxes
| they paid but overall based on where they are and what
| they're doing.
| plantain wrote:
| Many civilized countries give you a receipt when you file
| your taxes that show exactly how your contribution was
| spent:
|
| https://www.ato.gov.au/api/public/content/385a815c5194463
| 8a3...
| sirbutters wrote:
| Letting billionaires hoard all the money has gotten us to
| where we are today. It seems worse than government
| mismanaging the budget. Was that concern also there in the
| 50s and 60s when the wealthy was taxed at a substantial
| higher rate? I don't believe so. It all seems to point at
| the failure of trickled down economics of Reagan.
| sabarn01 wrote:
| The us was the only industrialized economy to come out
| ww2 unscathed. We didn't have to compete for 2 decades.
| The end results of these policies was the stagnate 70s
| Reagan was a corrective. However, the policies of Regan
| only made sense in that context. Republicans became too
| found of cutting top end taxes when most of what could be
| gained already was in the 80s. There is no historical
| period to look at on how to deal with the consequences of
| integrating China with the rest of the world.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Your answer is somewhat typical for Americans: because in
| my experience, Americans tend to think that all American
| developments are caused by domestic factors - governance,
| taxes, billionaires, whatever. Insular thinking, as if
| the rest of the world did not matter. Left or right, this
| is a fairly frequent pattern in the US.
|
| But in the meantime, over a billion people elsewhere got
| out of poverty and built relatively developed economies.
| The US is no longer an automatic Nr 1 on the world scene
| by this fact alone. How precisely do you want to keep a
| massive edge over a billion hardworking East Asians who
| now have a lot of capital and know-how at their disposal?
|
| Neither Musk nor Lenin can solve this. The US is simply
| in a relative decline.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| >How precisely do you want to keep a massive edge over a
| billion hardworking East Asians who now have a lot of
| capital and know-how at their disposal?
|
| Promote the lie down movement in the short term and let
| the negative birth rate take care of them in the long
| term. Thats the only way unless the US somehow gets a
| magical AGI and robots before China.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "let the negative birth rate take care of them in the
| long term"
|
| There is a presumption hidden in that sentence: namely,
| that procreation will always be left up to the people and
| their decisions. That is far from certain. If anyone has
| the nerve to actually develop and deploy artificial
| wombs, it is China. And the resulting kids will be simply
| pushed onto young people to raise - an authoritarian
| country won't have to ask anyone.
|
| Having kids is one of the last almost-non-industrialized
| attributes of human lives, most people are still being
| born in the same way as they used to in the Stone Age. I
| wonder how long will that situation last.
| wesapien wrote:
| It's the elite wealth pump. Capital is a non-state entity
| but through corporations was granted person hood by
| states without a social contract. Trickle down economics
| was a complete scam and Richard Cantillon has the
| receipts for it.
| jopsen wrote:
| Yeah, isn't this just regressive taxation?
|
| How much all the imports are realistically going to be made
| in the US?
| ty6853 wrote:
| Somewhat yes. But more precisely it is a reallocation from
| things we have the best comparative advantage to things
| where we have less comparative advantage. The main effect
| is to make almost everyone poorer.
| garciasn wrote:
| If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or
| more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing
| back to the US; however, with the changing of the guard on
| the regular, most companies are just going to ignore it for
| 3.5 more years and hope that someone stops this from
| continuing.
|
| Because, if you think about it, it took decades to get us
| to where we are today and it'll take decades to reverse,
| even logistically. This is a bunch of stupidity and
| meaningless saber rattling that will do nothing but hurt
| everyone except the extremely wealthy who can afford the
| additional taxation on the consumer side because the
| Republicans will further reduce the taxation on the income
| side.
| overfeed wrote:
| > If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or
| more, there may have been incentive to move
|
| In 3 decades, the US won't be the biggest market for most
| products - sooner if the harebrained economic decisions
| somehow persist.
|
| Capital knows no borders, and American companies will "do
| the needful" to maximize profits wherever they may be
| found.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| << Capital knows no borders
|
| Those statements are offered as truism ( and they do
| sound true enough ),but are they anything more than a
| hopeful assertion? I won't go into too many details, but
| I think it is not exactly axiomatic. It may be have been
| 99% accurate in the post-world war new world order, but,
| needless to say, that has shifted.
|
| We can argue over whether it is a temporary pit stop or a
| longer term change that is likely to remain its place,
| but 'capital knows no borders' has its place along other
| otherwise useful phrases such as 'bet you bottom dollar
| that tomorrow there'll be sun'. As in, sure, but it is
| more of an expression of our wants, not an if/then
| scenario.
| overfeed wrote:
| > I won't go into too many details, but I think it is not
| exactly axiomatic.
|
| The Panama papers, the Double Irish sandwich, and the US
| government pressuring the EU not to tax American tech
| companies all say otherwise. More prosaically, the
| average non-resident, non-American has a much easier time
| registering a Delaware LLC than attempting to get an
| American work visa.
|
| > It may be have been 99% accurate in the post-world war
| new world order, but, needless to say, that has shifted.
|
| Trump has proposed a green-card-inspired "Gold Card" for
| rich Russians^w investors to skip the immigration queue.
| Lot's of countries have investor visa with fewer hoops to
| jump than work visa. I don't see this changing any time
| soon. If you have the capital, and hint that you're
| interested in investing $1M+, most countries will roll
| out the red carpet for you.
|
| > As in, sure, but it is more of an expression of our
| wants, not an if/then scenario.
|
| To be clear I don't _want_ labor to be more restricted
| than capital.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| << The Panama papers, the Double Irish sandwich, and the
| US government pressuring the EU not to tax American tech
| companies all say otherwise.
|
| It is an interesting argument to make. Given current
| efforts to reshuffle existing system, those may no longer
| be available. Let me ask you a hypothetical instead: if
| those 'ways' are gone, is it automatically a given that
| new ones will emerge? If yes, why? If no, why?
|
| << Trump has proposed a green-card-inspired
|
| I don't want to write too much of an obvious comment,
| but.. how is it different from existing pre-Trump green
| cards sold to interested parties ( with lower price tag,
| but I am not asking about the price )? Is the existence
| of the card proof that capital has no borders or of
| something else? Is it inherent? I am now genuinely
| curious about your internal world model.
| overfeed wrote:
| > Let me ask you a hypothetical instead: if those 'ways'
| are gone, is it automatically a given that new ones will
| emerge?
|
| It's important to remember those were not the _only_
| ways, they just happened to have be the most effective,
| and became notorious because of it. Tax havens still
| exist, and we are still far from taxing corporate in the
| same stringent ways we tax individuals. The fact that
| governments only chipped at the edges with no systemic
| changes is telling.
|
| > I don't want to write too much of an obvious comment,
| but.. how is it different from existing pre-Trump green
| cards sold to interested parties
|
| You need to be specific about how green cards are
| currently sold before I can attempt to explain the
| difference. Further, if there is no difference IYO, then
| why is Trump proposing something new?
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| << You need to be specific about how green cards are
| currently sold before I can attempt to explain the
| difference.
|
| I was personally referring to EB5[1]
|
| << Further, if there is no difference IYO, then why is
| Trump proposing something new?
|
| Eh, I have a personal theory, but that one will likely
| need some time to confirm. The shortest, handwavy way I
| can offer is politics ( and separation/differentiation
| from existing EB5 ), but I am open to alternative
| explanation.
|
| [1]https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-
| states/permanent... [2]https://legalservicesincorporated.
| com/immigration/minimum-eb...
|
| << It's important to remember those were not the only
| ways, they just happened to have be the most effective,
|
| True, but I am questioning how much some of this stuff
| will be increasingly challenging to evade. The fact that
| beneficial owner version in US was effectively scrapped
| suggests the AML regimes were getting pretty close to the
| issues you were referring to. And, as always,
| conversations within the industry players are discussing
| more monitoring, more data.. not less.
|
| << The fact that governments only chipped at the edges
| with no systemic changes is telling.
|
| That is true, but it does not prove that capital has no
| borders ( original point of contention ).
| lesuorac wrote:
| > Those statements are offered as truism ( and they do
| sound true enough ),but are they anything more than a
| hopeful assertion?
|
| For the US / Euro, yeah you can just digitally wire say $
| 150 million no problem. You just can't physically fly out
| with a suitcase of $100 bills.
|
| This is not true for something like China [1].
|
| The counter-topic is usually Labor. You very much cannot
| just go to the US and work but you could from China
| invest in a US company. So Capital knows no borders while
| Labor does.
|
| [1]: https://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/china-
| chine/control-cont...
| mywittyname wrote:
| > If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or
| more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing
| back to the US;
|
| I don't understand why people take this as a given.
|
| Tariffs are a two-way street. What incentive does a
| company have to move a billion dollar facility to the USA
| when it will face reciprocal tariffs on any exported
| goods from the USA?
|
| The calculus is pretty complicated. Economies of scale
| become a factor - is one large global factory more
| efficient than separate regional facilities? Also income
| disparities; Americans can more afford to pay a 25%
| premium on a good than most of the rest of the world can;
| so maybe you just make Americans pay more. Or, maybe you
| do both, have a world-wide facility and a American
| facility, but still charge Americans the tariff premium,
| and pocket the 25% as profit instead (steel producers
| model; also pickup trucks); this works well in
| conjunction with the USA's low business taxes.
|
| Then there's "hacks" like shipping goods to a country
| that has lower tariffs with the USA, then using cheap
| local labor to do the bare minimum to have the goods
| considered to be produced there. There are some obvious
| good choices here, supposing the country's leadership is
| willing to play ball into the ninth inning.
|
| So it's not a given that that long-term effects are
| increased domestic production. It's just as likely to be
| a siphon of prosperity and a impediment to wealth
| generation since it will be hard to start companies in
| the USA that export products.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| > What incentive does a company have to move a billion
| dollar facility to the USA when it will face reciprocal
| tariffs on any exported goods from the USA?
|
| Access to the richest single market in the world ?
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| But that only works if you compare the US with other
| single countries. The EEA is similar to the US, China
| will be larger than the US, India will be larger than the
| US. Any of those combine and you loose by a factor of 2,
| etc
| rafaelmn wrote:
| EEA, despite decades of EU efforts, is not a single
| market. China and India are nowhere near in terms of
| purchasing power or individual consumption and won't be
| for decades.
| davedx wrote:
| > EEA, despite decades of EU efforts, is not a single
| market.
|
| Huh? It really is. There's free trade and free movement
| of labour. How is it not a single market?
| Jensson wrote:
| Language barriers.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| We have 24 official languages, regulations/legal systems
| vary from county to county and we don't even have a
| common currency.
|
| It's a lot better than having to deal with each county
| individually but still way more overhead than US.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| But we don't have tariff regimes. That what a common
| market means. It doesn't mean that you can sell the same
| product to everyone. It just means that you can move that
| product everywhere. And even the regulatory regime is
| overwhelmingly European (that's why you get manuals in 20
| languages)
| bgnn wrote:
| US is as scattered with ecery state having their own
| legislation.
| jorvi wrote:
| Not currently in Germany.
|
| amazon.de _click_ 28cm lightweight bike wheel _click_
| Order _click_.
|
| Well what do you know, you're a big fat liar :)
| liuliu wrote:
| That's not going to be true after your facilities are
| built.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Tariffs aren't bans. They still have access to the US
| market, US consumers are just forced to pay higher taxes
| for these goods.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| It's government eating into your margins - unless there's
| no domestic substitutes.
| bgirard wrote:
| > Access to the richest single market in the world ?
|
| How long do they stay the richest single market in the
| world if rest of the global world are producing and
| trading at greater efficiency while the US are facing
| large short term supply disruptions, higher costs and
| reciprocal trading tariffs on their exports?
| saturn8601 wrote:
| The majority of countries have a negative birth rate. The
| US is doing "OK" (stopping immigration is why I put it in
| quotes).
|
| This is going to catch up to most countries very soon.
| The US will be in a small group of the ones last
| standing.
| daveguy wrote:
| I don't think quotes are the appropriate modifier to
| adjust for the damage from draconian and short-sighted
| immigration policy. Past tense use of the verb is
| probably more appropriate since countries are issuing do-
| not-travel warnings against the US (for the first time
| ever?). This administration is arrogant fools all the way
| down. I hope the messages sent by the electorate in 2026
| and 2028 are loud enough and the brain drain is still
| reversible.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| How do you think economic turmoil is going to affect the
| birth rate in the US and how do you justify labelling a
| birth rate that's been below replacement for 18 years as
| "OK"?
| lovich wrote:
| If the US is planning on stopping the thing that made
| them OK in the first place, why do you think they would
| be OK after?
|
| That's also before you get into the fact that stopping
| immigration into the US doesn't make those people
| disappear * , they'll immigrate to other countries or
| stay home may very well cause some countries with a
| declining population to stop or reverse that trend
|
| * Not en masse anyways, that's come later as more of a
| final solution
| Breza wrote:
| If these tariffs continue for 30 years, it's hard to know
| if we'd still be the largest single market in the world.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| The answer to your conjecture is simple Darwinist
| capitalism.
|
| By whatever mechanism, imports are now more expensive,
| leading to less demand. Demand for those products
| actually stays constant, but the demand for imports goes
| down.
|
| Now we have a niche. If you can produce a good locally
| for less than the net cost of import, you have an entire
| continent ready to buy from you.
|
| The reason this has historically gone the other way is
| labor costs. Factoring the entire global supply chain
| into your product, it makes _much_ more sense to do the
| work in a country where work costs less. If the
| additional cost to import is less than the delta on
| labor, you 've won capitalism or something.
|
| Or, take another angle. If the US can no longer import
| vital goods, what do you think will happen? Will the
| goods magically stop being vital? Will we sit on our
| hands for several decades and wait for the problem to
| resolve?
|
| Or does the market respond to a need and rearrange itself
| to provide as profitably as possible?
| saturn8601 wrote:
| You are ignoring the 'Optimus' angle. Maybe Elon's stupid
| robot can actually do something and he has been
| whispering this into Trump's ear. That would take care of
| the labor cost issue. Lets see what happens.
| daveguy wrote:
| Hahahaha. Wait. Are you serious? Elon has been promising
| all kinds of things AI that are "just around the corner"
| for at least a decade now. It's always in the next year
| or two. There is no chance they cracked autonomous robots
| with those puppet bots they were showing off not long
| ago.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Leaving only the "there is nobody who can afford to buy
| anything because there are no jobs left" issue.
|
| If you reply with "but surely BASIC INCOME" then I must
| ask, what are you personally doing to help make that
| happen?
| HeyImAlex wrote:
| It seems insanely risky to attempt to fill a niche that
| only opened up because of these tariffs. If they're
| removed, congrats you just spent a bunch of capital to
| make a factory that is suddenly no longer competitive.
| saturn8601 wrote:
| >The calculus is pretty complicated. Economies of scale
| become a factor - is one large global factory more
| efficient than separate regional facilities? Also income
| disparities; Americans can more afford to pay a 25%
| premium on a good than most of the rest of the world can;
| so maybe you just make Americans pay more. Or, maybe you
| do both, have a world-wide facility and a American
| facility, but still charge Americans the tariff premium,
| and pocket the 25% as profit instead (steel producers
| model; also pickup trucks); this works well in
| conjunction with the USA's low business taxes.
|
| 25% margins are huge. Sounds like that margin is someone
| else's opportunity....which is exactly what the
| Administration hopes will happen.
|
| There is an opportunity here: Cozy up to Trump, have him
| give you a ton of government money and spin up a company
| that will take those margins.
| grey-area wrote:
| It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to
| play at a large gathering of one's acquaintances: to
| speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I
| think I know.
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
| lovich wrote:
| That was an interesting read, thank you for the link
| giarc wrote:
| Wait 3.5 years? Look at the situation with Canada, you
| might just need to wait 3.5 days when he changes his mind
| and reverses the tariffs for some reason. The uncertainty
| must drive manufacturers nuts.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| I think this, more than anything else, has been the real
| issue ( and I even think there was a recent Marketwatch
| article that basically said the same thing ): 'erratic
| decision making process'. There is an argument to be made
| about the direction of the policy, but the crazy back and
| forth, where it is not entirely clear 'who/how/why' and
| so on that people who do have to make decisions about
| future moves are left guessing. No one likes uncertainty.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| I think there's going to be a major reallocation of
| corporate contributions over to the other party so they
| can fix this in less than two years via impeachment.
| Animats wrote:
| > If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or
| more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing
| back to the US;
|
| That's the European Union, with no tariffs within the EU,
| moderately high tariffs at the EU border, and few policy
| shocks. The EU plugs along, with somewhat protected
| industries, moderately high prices, good quality, and
| some export business.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > moderately high tariffs at the EU border,
|
| I've this assertion made here multiple times. The LLM's
| tell me the average tariff on goods coming into the EU is
| 2-3%. That's not what I would call "high". The tariffs
| imposed by the current USA administration start at 10%,
| and range up to 54% for nation it imports most from
| (China). Now that's what I would call "high", although if
| you are going to call 2-3% moderately high then you need
| a better superlative - perhaps "extreme".
| wesapien wrote:
| The US has a very high standard of living as a whole. In
| order for it to compete with others, it must become "as
| poor" as others. You simply can't undermine your trading
| partners and not disrupt your privilege as the global
| reserve status.
| rayiner wrote:
| Why is "global reserve status" more important than
| building stuff?
| wesapien wrote:
| It's only one of the key levers of power of the USA. No
| biggie. You give people money represented by paper but
| mostly bits/bytes in exchange for other peoples materials
| and labor. Can you unpack what kind of stuff you're
| talking about? Are we talking about nascent industries?
| This stuff, who are you going to sell it to ?
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Even if tariffs remained for decades reciprocal tariffs
| mean that no matter where you're located you pay a
| penalty when you buy manufacturing inputs and when you
| sell outputs.
| jerkstate wrote:
| Leaders from both parties in US government agree that
| global trade needs to be rebalanced behind closed doors;
| I have videos of Pelosi and Schumer supporting tariffs to
| balance trade deficits with China specifically. For all
| of the talk about "reserve currency" it doesn't really
| seem like sitting back and doing nothing will prevent
| global trade in RMB, euro, or some BRICS currency, which
| is increasing every year. So if we're going to get to
| that state eventually anyways, might as well start
| preparing for it now.
|
| For all of the whining about the previous tariffs from
| the first Trump term, or the TCJA, neither were repealed
| when democrats had the opportunity, although there were
| small adjustments. That should really tell you all that
| you need to know.
|
| It turns out that manufacturing jobs are better for
| supporting a family than service jobs, hollowing out our
| economy so there are far less good paying manufacturing
| jobs turned out to be a huge mistake, originally pushed
| by CFR, Cato, Brookings, etc. so the only people who are
| doing well are the rich, because the benefits of global
| trade accrue almost exclusively to them (although many
| CPI advocates will make the argument that you're better
| off now because you can own a nice cell phone even though
| you can't own a house)
|
| The public BSing goes the other way too of course.
| Imagine getting worked up over classified stuff on a
| private email server and then letting your cabinet use
| signal and Gmail.
| wesapien wrote:
| https://x.com/_PeterRyan/status/1907879785151475801
| Protectionism is like child rearing. You're trying to
| protect the young (industry) so they survive to
| adulthood. The tarrifs are too broad. How the hell are
| you going to sell goods from HCOL area to the rest of the
| less affluent world? Even if some countries could afford
| it, how are you going to get goods across burned bridges?
| lovich wrote:
| > It turns out that manufacturing jobs are better for
| supporting a family than service jobs,
|
| Why? I hear this implied, or outright said in your case,
| frequently with no backing for it. It seems like a
| truism.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Even if we did keep the tariffs long enough to reshore
| there's so many problems:
|
| 1) The resulting industries are only viable under the
| tariff regime so we have to keep it forever or until the
| production costs somehow equalize.
|
| 2) Who's going to work all these new jobs with the plan
| of reducing immigration drastically or practically
| eliminating it? We're only at 4.1% unemployment today.
| Are we supposed to baby boom our way to enough workers?
| While costs are jacked through the roof due to the
| tariffs?
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| "incentive to move manufacturing back to the US"
|
| Only for the internal market. America will never again
| manufacture steel or cars for the rest of the world. The
| days of America being the factory of the world (which
| really only lasted a few decades) are forever gone.
| rayiner wrote:
| Look, this is basic economic theory. The kinds of taxes you
| levy alter primary behavior. You tax the things you don't
| want and don't tax the things you want. So looking at
| incidence of taxation (who pays the tax) isn't enough. You
| need to look at how taxes alter economic incentives.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > How much all the imports are realistically going to be
| made in the US?
|
| For some of the hardest hit locations, very little. The US
| would have to invade and claim other countries to start
| producing, for instance, vanilla or coffee (the US
| essentially doesn't produce vanilla, and for coffee we grow
| less than a percent of what we consume). But Madagascar got
| hit with 47% tariffs.
| lovich wrote:
| That has an easy solution when you take into account the
| land he's also demanding we acquire
| jollyllama wrote:
| > However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who
| are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by
| the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier.
|
| I don't think this is necessarily true. 1 day into tariffs
| and things are probably the same for the low-skill workers.
| So far, the stockholders are the ones taking a beating. Sure,
| that includes some low income retirees, but for the working
| poor, I would bet that proportionally they consume fewer
| foreign made goods. They're not drinking imported booze.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Everything at Walmart is about to be 34% more expensive but
| you think the rich are hurt more than the poor?
| jollyllama wrote:
| Yes, in as much as it can be true for anything, because
| they make their money from poor people spending.
|
| Edit: as a follow up, you can basically think of this as
| the "Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay" experiment as
| implemented by those who are averse to socialism. If
| you're already poor, tanking the economy hurts you less
| than it hurts those who are benefitting.
| Jensson wrote:
| Stock market went down a lot. And no, not everything at
| Walmart goes up 34%, food is not imported from China etc,
| most of the stuff poor people spend money on like home
| and food and used cars and services wont go up that much.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Stock market is down 10%. Unless you're gambling with
| leverage you're fine. Much of our food is imported.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > food is not imported from China
|
| No, but components used everywhere from agriculture to
| transportation to producing food products from raw
| agricultural output _are_ imported from China.
| Jensson wrote:
| But that doesn't make food 35% more expensive.
| nurettin wrote:
| Taxing the rich is wishful thinking. They don't just give up
| wealth. They will simply look at it as an additional cost and
| hike the prices of their products up causing more inflation
| and that means even more trade deficit.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this glib analysis neglects the part where decades of plans and
| budgets have been addressing " build out social systems" while
| simultaneously building crony networks of political appointees,
| guarding the hen house. Short term pain is loudly announced for
| the purpose of defeating the political opponent, not addressing
| the long standing inefficiencies in a swollen and obese wealth
| exchange centered in the USA.
|
| tons of cynical one-liners from partisans drown out efforts to
| really examine the impacts over medium and long term. A
| horrible problem with this move is that it is not entirely
| wrong from a fundamentals point of view? It certainly creates
| winners and losers, no question about it.
| wesapien wrote:
| The political class and plutocrats always wins regardless of
| the election outcome. The two party system guarantees they
| come out unscathed regardless of their jousting.
| api wrote:
| > for the government to lower the cost of high-quality
| education
|
| Devils advocate point, and one nobody wants to talk about: what
| if everyone can't be a high-skill employee?
|
| Imagine if the highest earning jobs required immense physical
| endurance and strength. Nobody would argue that everyone can do
| that. It would be obvious that only a subset of people are
| capable of doing those jobs. For some reason, with intellectual
| labor, we are able to pretend that there is no threshold and
| everyone can do it. It's an idea that makes people feel good
| but what if it's just not true? Can everyone be made above
| average in something with enough education?
|
| If we're creating an economy where decent jobs only exist for
| people in the top ~20% of the ability curve, how do we handle
| that? How do we maintain a democracy? Sometimes people float
| the idea of UBI, but that could turn out extremely dystopian
| with a huge underclass of UBI-collecting people in a state of
| hopelessness and boredom. That doesn't work much better for
| democracy than a huge underclass of under-employed and
| unemployed people.
|
| To make matters worse: the fact that our past strategy works so
| well for increasing GDP means it it tends to inflate assets,
| including things like housing prices. The end result is a
| country that looks, to more than half its inhabitants, like a
| vacation town where outside capital inflates the cost of
| everything way above what local wages can support. It might not
| be a coincidence that San Francisco, New York, and other
| capitals of high margin high skill industries have real estate
| prices that lock ordinary people out of even "starter homes."
|
| I absolutely do not support Trump's _execution_ here -- it 's
| ham-fisted, reckless, and badly thought out. If we are exiting
| this neoliberal model, Trump's exit from it is a little bit
| like Biden's exit from Afghanistan. Still it is obvious to me
| that the current system is _not_ working for more than half of
| Americans. It 's _fantastic_ for the top ~20% or so and leaves
| everyone else behind.
|
| We can't keep doing that if we want a democracy. If we exclude
| 50-80% of the population from anything meaningful or any
| economic stability, we will get one of two things. Either we'll
| get the kind of totalitarian state that is required to maintain
| that kind of inequality in perpetuity, or we will get a string
| of revolutions or a failed state. People will not just sit
| around in hopelessness forever. Eventually they will be
| recruited by demagogues. Ironically Trump has been one of the
| most effective at this. I'm sure more will eventually show up
| though. There's a big market for them.
| ckemere wrote:
| I've reflected that resource extraction jobs often end up in
| the high wage / low educational investment category, and I've
| wondered if that motivates the whole "annex Greenland" bit as
| much as "securing critical resources" does...
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > Devils advocate point, and one nobody wants to talk about:
| what if everyone can't be a high-skill employee?
|
| Agree with this.
|
| Also, what if there's just not a need for it?
|
| Even if "everyone" in some abstract sense is capable of
| "high-skill" jobs, how many are _really_ needed? Look at
| software jobs alone and the onslaught that is the current
| labor market.
|
| I think there's nowhere near enough "work" ("real" or
| otherwise) to go around to maintain the level of employment
| necessary to support the population that we have at the costs
| that we have.
|
| I don't think any sort of "UBI" (assuming you mean direct
| cash payments) is a realistic solution, either. People need
| to "work" in some organized fashion to avoid the common
| negative outcomes associated with "welfare" scenarios.
|
| I legitimately, unironically, support the kinds of "fake"
| jobs that were prevalent in years' past (day in the life
| TikToks come to mind, Gov jobs where people send three emails
| a week, etc).
|
| I guess in another sense I do support "UBI", as long as it's
| paired with the illusion of "work."
|
| I understand this seems nonsensical, but just from practical
| experience it makes total sense to me.
|
| Here's an example.
|
| Years back I worked a software gig at a large non-"tech" F500
| company. Much of the programming work there was extremely
| dull--occasional maintenance of large barely functional
| enterprise Java messes, writing a few SQL queries a week for
| wretched multi-table joins requiring all sorts of nasty
| casting and hacks as "normalization" was an alien concept to
| the original author and the like. Realistically, folks worked
| on this stuff perhaps 10 hours a week?
|
| Anyway, I know a few people hit with a layoff that worked
| there a long time (decade+) and now they're back in the
| Thunderdome looking for work as "developers". The people in
| question are nearing retirement but presumably not there, for
| one reason or another.
|
| Hows this going to work for them? I'm not denigrating them,
| but having worked with these folks, they're not going to be
| tearing into broken pipelines, adding React components,
| configuring Docker builds or whatever--there's a skill
| mismatch and the workload I've seen at roles lately is just
| so far beyond the pace, scope, and "scale" that there's no
| way they'd make it, if they can even get an interview at all.
|
| In this example, would it be best to give them "UBI"
| payments, or some other slow near-sinecure where they have
| dignity?
|
| Maybe I'm just soft.
| intelVISA wrote:
| I'm of a similar mindset, just look how many software
| adjacent roles are basically UBI already.
|
| With DOGE the US seems to moving backwards, cutting down on
| gov busywork for what self-defeating purpose? They just end
| up flooding the market, or worse, sabotaging productive
| teams with their meetings and ceremonies.
| judahmeek wrote:
| Pretty ironic, considering that Elon Musk supports UBI.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I don't think any sort of "UBI" (assuming you mean direct
| cash payments) is a realistic solution, either. People need
| to "work" in some organized fashion to avoid the common
| negative outcomes associated with "welfare" scenarios.
|
| That's actually the point of a UBI.
|
| The problem with existing welfare programs is that they're
| a poverty trap. If you have no job or a very low paying
| job, you get benefits. If you make any more money at all,
| you lose the benefits, and simultaneously you lose the time
| and expenses of taking the job. If that means you e.g. have
| to buy a car to go to work, taking a job causes you to
| _lose_ money. Sometimes you lose money even before your
| working expenses because overlapping benefits phase outs
| can consume more than 100% of marginal income.
|
| With a UBI, the amount you get is only the amount you need
| to avoid starvation and homelessness, but you get that
| amount _unconditionally_. If you can find any work at all,
| you get the UBI _and_ your wages, instead of getting your
| wages _instead of_ welfare programs. Which allows you to
| work, even if you 're only qualified to do low paying jobs,
| without being put in a worse position than you'd have been
| if you just stayed on welfare.
| keybored wrote:
| This is the kind of side debates you get by framing it as
| "low-skill" versus "high-skill". Whether the "~20% of the
| ability" curve should help the poors from their apparent
| attraction to demagogues.
| fifilura wrote:
| > Devils advocate point, and one nobody wants to talk about:
| what if everyone can't be a high-skill employee?
|
| You still need education to become a nurse, caregiver, welder
| or kindergarten teacher. And the right subsidies (free
| education) allows people to make the switch.
| egypturnash wrote:
| > Imagine if the highest earning jobs required immense
| physical endurance and strength. Nobody would argue that
| everyone can do that. It would be obvious that only a subset
| of people are capable of doing those jobs.
|
| "pfff it's easy-peasy, just go attend a (literal) bootcamp,
| you'll be fine, anyone can do it"
|
| ----
|
| > Still it is obvious to me that the current system is not
| working for more than half of Americans. It's fantastic for
| the top ~20% or so and leaves everyone else behind.
|
| god yes
|
| The elephant in the room here: _there is no money for anyone
| not in the top20%_ , it all goes into their pockets and they
| just _sit_ on it, leaving only scraps for everyone else, _tax
| the rich_ , anyone with more than x% of the median amount of
| wealth should have everything above that _taken away and
| redistributed to everyone_ , possibly by means such as
| UBI/welfare/etc!
|
| But we ain't gonna get any of that without revolution. And
| honestly it feels like Trump's getting us closer and closer
| to the brink of that.
| rangestransform wrote:
| Will the US be able to survive as a superpower while severely
| cutting down the top 20%'s standard of living? They could
| simply defect somewhere that offers them a similar position
| in society as the US, similar to what the US has done to the
| rest of the world.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If we're creating an economy where decent jobs only exist
| for people in the top ~20% of the ability curve, how do we
| handle that?
|
| The most important thing here is to do something about the
| cost of living, i.e. the price of necessities.
|
| Housing isn't _inherently_ as expensive as it is in the US,
| it 's made that way on purpose. Healthcare likewise. If you
| only make $25,000/year and housing is $20,000/year and
| healthcare is $12,500/year, you're screwed. If you only make
| $25,000/year and housing is $10,000/year and healthcare is
| $5000/year, you're not.
| ein0p wrote:
| > lower the cost of high-quality education
|
| And how do you propose we do that? By giving schools even more
| money at taxpayer's expense?
|
| > raising taxes at the high end
|
| 40.1% of US taxpayers on the low end of income distribution pay
| no income tax, 16.5% pay neither income nor payroll taxes. Top
| 1% pays 40.4% of all income tax (while holding about 30.8% of
| net worth, 13.8% of the total is held by top 0.1%). Top 1%
| (with the possible exception of a few billionaires) already
| pays through their nose.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Funding public universities and giving them the mission to
| keep tuition costs low. Public universities are capable of
| providing enormous value to students, but over the past two
| decades their funding has been substantially cut. The result
| is that those schools became more reliant on expensive out-
| of-state tuition, which in turn means competing with private
| institutions for students, which in turn means building more
| luxuries (awesome gyms) and not focusing on value for money.
| ein0p wrote:
| So, giving even more taxpayer money to the education
| cartel, then. Got it. Good luck with that. Over the past
| several decades staffing in administrative positions has
| exponentially ballooned all across the education system,
| starting with grade schools, while academic metrics moved
| in the opposite direction. Now the question is, do we
| continue setting even more taxpayer money on fire, or is
| there a better way?
| supplied_demand wrote:
| ==40.1% of US taxpayers on the low end of income distribution
| pay no income tax==
|
| According to 2022 IRS data, average deductions for those who
| itemized totaled $43,686 in tax year 2022 [0]. The 2022
| bottom two quintiles of income were under $44k [1]. That
| means in 2022 rich people AND poor people didn't pay income
| taxes on their first $45k of income. Is that unfair to rich
| people?
|
| Worth noting, the 25 richest Americans paid an average
| effective tax rate of 13%, as of 2018 when IRS data was
| leaked [2].
|
| ==Top 1% (with the possible exception of a few billionaires)
| already pays through their nose.==
|
| "While average effective tax rates barely changed in the US
| from 1945 to 2015, the average tax rates of high-income
| households fell sharply--from about 50 percent to 25 percent
| for the highest income 0.01 percent and from about 40 percent
| to about 25 percent for the top 1 percent." [3]
|
| If the average effective rate hasn't changed, but the
| effective rate paid by the top 1% has fallen by ~40%, how is
| the difference made up? The 99% pay more.
|
| [0] https://www.pgpf.org/article/7-key-charts-on-tax-breaks/
|
| [1] https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2022.B19081?q=income
| +qu...
|
| [2] https://www.propublica.org/article/you-may-be-paying-a-
| highe...
|
| [3] https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/effective-income-tax-
| rate...
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| What people don't discuss about the taxation is that rich
| people will universally pundit, preach, undermine, subvert,
| and squirm out of any law to tax themselves more. If you are
| preaching more taxes thinking it will affect the politically
| well-connected, it will be unwound and castrated by the
| politically well-connected. Or just deflected into somebody
| else's responsibility.
|
| In that case, someone else is going to be holding the bill
| that you might not have intended.
|
| I hate discussion of percentages, because every percentage
| seems reasonable by itself. It's the summation of the
| percentages that politicians have no interest in discussing.
|
| In fact, it should be a requirement of government to sum the
| percentages of federal,state,medicare,social security, sales,
| resort, fuel, local levies, internet sales into one effective
| percentage that a given citizen in a given city has to pay.
|
| Has anyone calculated that number for themselves? I've been
| collecting all my transactions and taxes to figure out what
| percentage of my income actually goes to taxes.
| huevosabio wrote:
| > the upside of this system is felt by the entrepreneurs,
| investors and high-skill employees in tech and finance, while
| the downside is concentrated with low-skill workers whose jobs
| are offshored to lower wage countries.
|
| This is true only if we impose barriers to geographic mobility,
| which we do via artificial scarcity of housing in our major
| cities.
|
| If we produced housing like we did cars, all the "low-skill"
| people would be able to move to the city and find a job in the
| many other services that require human labor.
|
| > the government to lower the cost of high-quality education,
| build out social systems, and invest into onshoring select
| strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.
|
| We don't need more high-quality education nor do we need to
| onshore. We need to deregulate the housing market, we make it
| easier to migrate to the US (funny enough, yes that would help
| with inequality). And I do agree we need better social systems.
|
| There is no way to frame this admin's policies that makes it
| look reasonable. It's a Crony Clown Club show.
| frumplestlatz wrote:
| > If we produced housing like we did cars, all the "low-
| skill" people would be able to move to the city and find a
| job in the many other services that require human labor.
|
| Why would they want to do that? Their priorities are myriad,
| but raising a family, having a degree of autonomy and space
| to themselves, and remaining a part of their community are
| all generally on the list.
|
| What's generally not on the list is living in a tiny rabbit
| hutch, owning nothing, working a dead-end service job, trying
| to raise a family in a city (or just not trying at all), and
| paying a higher price for the privilege.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Thanks for your comment, it explains why there seems to be a
| high degree of support for these measures in some quarters (was
| looking at the youtube comments to the liberation day speech)
| vs the consensus here at HN.
|
| Let's suppose these policies are to the benefit of some
| Americans over other the benefit of other Americans. The open
| question now is: does it matter? does it really have an
| influence on the gross profit numbers? Will an isolationist
| foreign policy destroy the international order and how could
| this effect the US in return?
| bill_joy_fanboy wrote:
| > It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US
| economy as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve
| currency.
|
| It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to large cap
| U.S. companies and their shareholders.
|
| If you are U.S. worker without a lot of equity in the market
| all you notice is that your job gets outsourced.
| elcritch wrote:
| This "free money" also inflates housing prices. It's one
| application of "trickle down economics" that works; except
| it's housing prices.
|
| Even for highly paid Silicon Valley engineers what does it
| matter if much of that money goes right back to landlords?
| jerrygenser wrote:
| This is a regressive tax that hurts low skill and low wage
| workers proportionately more since basic necessities of life
| are going to increase in price - it will be a much larger share
| of wallet than rich. This will not materially change purchasing
| behavior of very rich (save maybe waiting to buy a car due to
| increased pricecs)
|
| It would be beneficial to increase taxes on the massive service
| economy and use the proceeds to subsidize lower wage
| industries.
|
| In trumps first term after tariffs affected farmers, they had
| to subisidize them to keep them afloat. It didn't quite work
| the way it was intended. The trade war relief program in the
| first term spent $30bn keeping farmers afloat.
| honkycat wrote:
| > As such, this administration's policies are foolish, but many
| on this very site would need to give up a little bit of their
| privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow
| citizens.
|
| Very few people who work as full-time devs are so wealthy that
| they are totally insulated from general social decline.
| waffletower wrote:
| As a highly skilled and comparatively highly paid worker, I
| feel it is outrageous to suggest that I am within the class
| that needs to give up any reputed "wealth" when I am nowhere
| near the 1% who hold more than 50% of it. Such a claim just
| contributes to the wealth making of the 1% misers even more.
| Class warfare! I have already had to give up significant
| amounts of college and retirement savings from these tariffs.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole,
| but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality
| education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring
| select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.
|
| You're proposing to tax an international supply chain. To tax
| something it has to be in your jurisdiction to begin with, and
| then you have several problems.
|
| The most obvious of these is, what happens when the stuff just
| isn't there anymore? Suppose the US isn't competitive with
| China for manufacturing certain goods, e.g. because the US has
| a higher cost of living as a result of a purposeful housing
| shortage and then has higher labor costs, or for any other
| reason. So manufacturing moves to China, not just to sell to
| the US but also to sell to the domestic market in China and to
| Europe and India and the rest of the world. No part of those
| other transactions is in the US, so the US can't tax them and
| use the money to help the people in the US who used to be doing
| that manufacturing and selling those products to the rest of
| the world. Whereas if you sustain domestic manufacturing
| through some means then it exists and can make products to sell
| to the rest of the world because the fixed costs of
| establishing a manufacturing base can be covered by the
| domestic market and then it only has to compete in the
| international market on the basis of variable costs.
|
| Next consider the industries where the US still makes stuff.
| You could tax those things because they're still in the US. But
| that makes the US less competitive in the global market for
| investment capital, which is highly mobile. If higher US taxes
| cause returns to be lower in the US than they are in other
| countries then investors go invest in the other countries
| instead, and then the thing stops being in the US. So that
| doesn't really work. You can see this in the case of e.g.
| Europe, which has even worse problems with the loss of
| manufacturing than the US.
|
| Which leaves the activity where it's the other half of the
| transaction happening in the US, i.e. China is manufacturing
| something but the customer is in the US. _That_ you could tax
| without a huge risk of capital flight, because companies can
| rarely change the location of their _customers_ , but that
| still leaves you with two problems.
|
| First, either of the countries participating in the transaction
| could levy the tax. In the case of China, then _they_ can levy
| a tax (or some tax-equivalent) to only such an extent that it
| consumes the surplus in the transaction attributable to the
| competitive advantage of their country. China can do this
| because they have a lower cost of living etc., which doesn 't
| work for the US. But because they do that, the US can't tax
| that portion of the surplus, which was the gain from moving
| manufacturing to China.
|
| And second, a tax on imports is called a tariff. Which the US
| _can_ impose to tax that portion of the transaction surplus
| that isn 't attributable to the foreign country's cost
| advantage, i.e. the preexisting transaction surplus where it
| costs $8 to make something someone is willing to pay $10 for
| regardless of where it was made. But tariffs are the thing you
| don't like.
| ckemere wrote:
| OR use borrowing (e.g. current account deficit). If
| government spending drives productivity growth then it's a
| net positive?
|
| OR tax wealth. If most return on international capital
| investment is being stored in the US, taxing this effectively
| taxes profits on international sales???
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > OR use borrowing (e.g. current account deficit). If
| government spending drives productivity growth then it's a
| net positive?
|
| That's basically what already happens. The US has been
| running a huge deficit for a while now.
|
| It also requires government spending to be the spending
| that drives productivity growth, which most of it isn't.
|
| > OR tax wealth. If most return on international capital
| investment is being stored in the US, taxing this
| effectively taxes profits on international sales???
|
| Why would they store the wealth in the US if the US had a
| wealth tax? One of the biggest problems with a wealth tax
| is that it has such a strong propensity to induce capital
| flight.
|
| It's also not just a question of how you structure the tax.
| Wealth taxes are hard to avoid for things like real estate
| (can't move it), easy to avoid for things like factories or
| intellectual property (can easily move it), but the same is
| true for other taxes that apply to those things. It's easy
| to impose an income tax on rental income, so you don't need
| a wealth tax for that. The hard thing is how to impose
| _any_ tax on all the money the Saudis have without causing
| them to just invest it in something else, possibly in some
| other jurisdiction.
| CMCDragonkai wrote:
| It's possible that the US acquires what it wants by
| simply conquering the producing countries by force. The
| US gets back it's industrial base by force.
| fifilura wrote:
| > The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole,
| but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality
| education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring
| select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.
|
| Like... Scandinavia?
| JensRantil wrote:
| As an example, yes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Scandinavia is using oil and gas reserves as a captive tax
| base. It doesn't really generalize to markets where capital
| is mobile.
| fifilura wrote:
| That is only Norway. Maybe a little bit of Denmark, but
| Denmark is not considered an oil economy.
|
| And I don't know what you mean with "captive tax base" but
| Norway just piles up the wealth they are too afraid to use
| it since it will increase the inflation.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Norway is the one that actually makes it work. Their GDP
| per capita is slightly higher than the US and more than
| $30,000 higher than the other Scandinavian countries.
|
| "Captive tax base" means the industry can't move to
| another country as a result of high taxes. You can move
| factory jobs to China by moving the factory. You can't
| move oil and gas extraction jobs to China by moving the
| oil field.
| redeeman wrote:
| and a basic sandwich costs 3x that of in denmark :)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That's the premise, isn't it? The local sandwich shop
| owner, a small business, makes more money relative to the
| global price of an iPhone or a solar panel so there is
| less wealth inequality.
|
| The only useful increase in equality is the one that
| makes ordinary people better off. Making them poorer just
| to spite the rich by a larger amount is absurd.
| fifilura wrote:
| The idea behind subsidising re-education is that it
| benefits the society in the long run. I guess I have no
| proof that it isn't what makes Scandinavian GDP/capita
| lower.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| That's just Norway.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Scandinavia is the gold standard for liberals.
|
| Unless you are talking about immigration, and then no one
| ever heard of them.
| solfox wrote:
| > The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole,
| but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality
| education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring
| select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.
|
| You are assuming that this administration has the same goals as
| you, just different ("foolish") methods of arriving there. I'd
| posit that they have very different goals that these methods
| are solving for.
| maxnevermind wrote:
| Your problem statement is missing "national security" angle. As
| I understand the current administration sees US de-
| industrialization as a threat to it and tariffs as a soution.
| solatic wrote:
| > The obvious solution is... for the government to lower the
| cost of high-quality education
|
| Not everyone is smart enough to land in the professional class.
| The US does its young population an enormous disservice by
| pushing low academic performers to go to college. There _needs_
| to be, somehow, a way for people to make a living with their
| hands, because for some people, that is genuinely all they are
| capable of.
|
| > ... build out social systems...
|
| The way you build out the social system is by enabling people
| in the working class to find genuine work that produces value,
| not some ditch-digging make-work government program. You don't
| take those jobs away by offshoring them.
|
| I'm not saying I'm against offshoring in general or that I
| support Trump's tariffs - I don't. But it's not exactly
| controversial to point out that, since the end of the Cold War,
| the US prioritized the recommendations of economists over
| social cohesion and socially harmonious policy. A lot of people
| were thrown out of work and were left to fend for themselves.
| Many of them ended up as victims of the opioid epidemic. I'm
| not convinced that the prior system was completely peaches as
| cream.
| rayiner wrote:
| You can't make everyone above average.
| donatj wrote:
| > The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole,
| but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality
| education
|
| I'm always skeptical of the idea that we can just educate
| ourselves out of problems.
|
| As I see it, that would only raise people's wage expectations
| which would make us even less competitive on a global market?
|
| The need for blue collar workers doesn't just evaporate, and
| there's frankly only a finite demand for white collar workers.
| You give everyone expectations of a white collar job, and they
| end up working blue collar because there's no job for them,
| you're just setting society up for mass disappointment and
| resentment.
|
| You give your average blue collar worker today a degree, are
| they actually more valuable to their current position? Probably
| not.
| yndoendo wrote:
| Walton family, owners of Walmart, run the company by exploiting
| the labor force and social safety nets like welfare. Walmart is
| the largest company with the most employees on some sort of
| welfare. Tax payers are propping up their stock. This allows them
| to retain more of the profits versus sharing them and removing
| their employees from the welfare system. None of their listed
| actions have to do anything with globalization to retain their
| wealth.
|
| Taxing the wealth and redistributing helps. Saw this in the
| 1950-1960s with building of new infrastructure to replace the
| aging or expand the supply to offset the demand. Using the money
| to pay for new training so lost jobs can be replaced where jobs
| are needed helps too. Even the simple act of ending starvation in
| children increases their intellect for the next generation and
| helps support the future. This method will never be perfect.
| These are band-aid solutions that have actual results.
|
| Reality is that the inequality is a social problem masquerading
| as an economic problem. Society has moved to from respecting
| empathy and humanity to respecting greed and power. People mind
| set is anchored to, "That person is quite wealthy so they should
| be smart and some god must love them for it." Reality is that
| person exploited a labor force to maximize their wealth. They are
| not more intelligent nor does some god like them better. Look at
| how many rich people fell for Elizabeth Holmes's blood testing
| scam while a person that actually studies blood understands parts
| per millions in looking for test markers. A vial of blood or more
| is needed versus a drop.
|
| Want to fix the system? Start looking at the wealthy with disgust
| and damnation. Demonize them for being the driving force in
| economic inequality. Move back to honoring and respecting empathy
| and humanity. Real intelligent people have empty. It lets them be
| placed in the shoes of others when they will never can experience
| it themselves.
|
| I would also caption the wealth gab in the USA as modern day
| segregation. The world happiness index shows that equalizing the
| rich and poor creates a better sociality. Respecting the wealth
| and demonizing the poor is the complete inverse of a better
| society and maximizes soar.
|
| PS. Why do people think bulling trade partners will be
| beneficial? Say you are store owner or product producer and you
| keep trying to bully me to by your products. I will not and go
| the competition, even with higher costs or deem the product or
| service not worth it. I already started boycotting USA bourbon
| manufacturers with their arrogant and bully statements during the
| Tariff Wars.
|
| Do good, demonize extreme wealth. Irony is so many GOOD
| Christians even ignore Jesus's statement on this matter with
| pretending Matthew 19:24 doesn't exist.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| The idea that a giant regressive tax, which these are, will help
| the lower or middle class or do anything but kill demand and
| destroy jobs is madness.
|
| It also won't help the debt because even though we might collect
| some money in the short term, the long term solution is we need
| to grow our way out and these policies are recessionary.
| ramshanker wrote:
| The way I see it, it is more like a very-high initial negotiation
| position. From here on, each country will be dealt with
| individually. You accept our terms and get 5% discount on tariff
| ! Every country has a set of red lines. Fewer the red lines
| better they will be placed in one-to-one "trade agreements".
|
| EDIT: Someone from white-house explicitly declined tariff to be a
| negotiation. Next few days will be interesting.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| If Paul Graham is calling out conservatives for being driven
| stuff other than data, then you know people are losing it lol.
|
| Usually on here you see a bunch of apologia for when republicans
| do inane economic policy and I am not seeing that bs on here for
| once...
|
| Guess Trump really wasn't the crypto, AI, chips, wtv you wanna
| say president lmao. But nah all the naysayers just had TDS.
|
| Guess Wall St and others are going to have to re-learn that sound
| policy beats vibes.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| What most people don't see is that we are basically under "shadow
| austerity" to correct for the not so hyperinflation we saw post
| COVID.
|
| It is a combination of post WW2 Britain (China is the US in that
| analogy) - this helps to explain the Canada and Greenland issue;
| and Volcker era stagflation economics. It will not get any better
| in the short term, but there is likely to be substantial growth
| in the long term as a result.
|
| What that means is the fed likely won't reduce rates, and it may
| reduce its rate decrease to 1 this year, if even that. It is
| entirely possible the rate doesn't come down at all.
|
| Expect Layoffs to come, as the fed doesn't seem to care about
| unemployment as its target is on inflation. Many zirp era
| businesses and funds will fail. Less cereal and eggs for the same
| dollar.
|
| I am really hoping we don't start to de-anchor from 2% inflation
| as a result of all this. I wonder how various US infrastructure
| projects can and will be financed. Reduction in entitlements.
| Possibly some type of mandate to hold treasuries.
| thuanao wrote:
| Just like Trump said, he could shoot someone on the street and
| the bootlickers here would still justify it.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| This thread is all you need to know that PG types are ok with
| losing 10-50% of their equity's value as long as they can play
| tribal politic games.
|
| PG is on X every day pretty much going "Why is trump doing
| this? There must be a reason!"
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Naive question of a foreigner: I see a lot of approval on the
| youtube comments to Trump's liberation day speech and over at
| twitter. Now the consensus on HN is diametrically opposed. My
| question: why do some people think that this is a good idea? Why
| is there such a huge rift in US society and how do you plan to
| bridge this gap?
| SmellyPotato22 wrote:
| This anecdotal, but I feel like YouTube applies a positive
| sentiment filter to its all of its comments. Somehow on most
| videos I watch never see anything critical at the top of the
| comment section.
| crawsome wrote:
| You'd think that experts before this time would have considered
| this already, and rejected it.
|
| Every single move by Trump towards the world economy has always
| been a bad one. Too bad to be mistakes.
|
| They're not listening to the experts, and it's intentional.
| codesnik wrote:
| So, it already starts affecting stuff. I and 10 other recent
| hires were cut today because our next round is in jeopardy. That
| startup is in sales and hiring area, so it senses recession much
| sooner than other industries, but there's that.
| acd10j wrote:
| Number one rule of combat is that you need a very good homegrown
| industrial base. In order to be great country it needs to be
| combat-ready. If you apply that lens, what Trump is doing will
| start making sense. He is trying to revert globalisation and free
| trade in order to make the USA manufacturing superpower again.
| Not sure whether this will be successful or not, as China already
| has an order of magnitude advantage in manufacturing.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| disastrous
| SteelByte wrote:
| This breakthrough in nuclear fusion energy is a significant
| milestone, but it's important to remember that practical,
| commercial-scale fusion power is still likely decades away.
| Nonetheless, this achievement validates the massive investments
| and brings us one step closer to a potentially transformative
| carbon-free energy source.
| jodacola wrote:
| I'm an American. I've generally benefited from the system here
| (which speaks to my privilege, of which I'm aware). I don't want
| to wade into political battles, but I'm genuinely concerned for
| my future and the future of my children from an economic
| standpoint, based on where things seem to be going.
|
| I am considering options on the spectrum with ends like:
|
| * Staying here, because this is where I was born and raised and
| I've felt like the country has generally taken care of me - and
| hey, it can't stay bad forever, right?
|
| * Leaving to another country, because I am feeling less and less
| like the country's leadership care about building a society or
| economy that tries to take care of its people and creates
| incentives to innovate.
|
| This isn't because of just the last few months; I view the last
| few months as big symptoms of something more systemic that's been
| building up. I am also not looking to jump ship quickly because
| things "temporarily got hard."
|
| On the flip side, I'm also feeling incredibly jaded these days:
| how could it be much better anywhere else?
|
| Are there places out in the world where my wife and I could take
| our experience (mine being a strong career in tech, my wife's
| being a strong nursing career) and put it to use elsewhere where
| I could hope for a good standard of living, more stability in
| government leadership, and incentives similar to the economic
| system I grew up in, where our children could thrive and build a
| life?
|
| I'm not pulling any triggers quickly or easily... I'm just trying
| to gather some data and different perspectives, even those that
| might challenge my own. Maybe an answer is "stop reading news."
|
| edit: formatting
| dumbledoren wrote:
| Yeah, go gentrify the locals in some lower-cost-of-living
| country. You sure 'deserve' it because for some reason you have
| a 'right' to just immigrate there and buy their housing and
| sh*t from under their feet.
| jodacola wrote:
| I appreciate your frustration, dumbledoren. Your comment
| speaks to perspectives I could expect to face in another
| country - thank you.
|
| I can only say my _personal_ intent isn 't that. I live a
| simple life. My family has a small, old home. We garden, grow
| our own food, and are respectful to our environment.
|
| I prioritize supporting small, local businesses.
|
| I wouldn't want to parachute into another country acting as
| though I Know Better(tm) and bringing my "American
| sensibilities" to another country.
|
| If I were to leave the US, I see myself entering another
| country, hat in hand, knowing fully I'm not better or
| special, and it's _my_ job to adapt and to respect the
| culture and country.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| > I can only say my personal intent isn't that. I live a
| simple life.
|
| And yet you will end up doing that when you move to such a
| country. Regardless of your intentions.
|
| > it's my job to adapt and to respect the culture and
| country
|
| Unfortunately respect and cultural adaptation do not
| alleviate the effects of gentrification via housing costs
| and cost of living.
|
| It would be less of a problem only if you went to a country
| and location that has a similar cost of living as where you
| live now, but then again, that's not really on the table,
| is it...
| alpha_squared wrote:
| > It would be less of a problem only if you went to a
| country and location that has a similar cost of living as
| where you live now, but then again, that's not really on
| the table, is it...
|
| This seems to be an assumption you made, but the poster
| did not imply or state.
|
| As someone in a similar mindset to the poster, I'm not
| looking for lower CoL places, I'm looking for comparable
| QoL places which ultimately points to Europe or Oceania.
| We'd be paid dramatically less, which we're okay with,
| but the QoL would be comparable (perhaps even better when
| counting social services).
| whiplash451 wrote:
| What motivates such a rude answer? The parent is genuinely
| exposing a personal question. Nothing in his post suggests
| that he would go gentrify a low COL place.
| testing22321 wrote:
| If it continues on the current trajectory, literally all the
| OECD countries will offer a better life than the US. In every
| meaningful measure they already do
| jodacola wrote:
| Thank you, good information.
|
| I've traveled a bit to some of the other OECD countries and
| haven't felt any disparities in comfort and such while
| traveling, but traveling and building a life and career are
| two very different things.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| If I may: I would sit this out for a little while.
|
| Moving with another partner to another country is a huge
| undertaking.
|
| Now, if this was in the back of your mind before, that's
| another story.
| jodacola wrote:
| Heard. The thought of moving to another country is, honestly,
| scary, like starting over, figuring out how to live and build
| from from 0 again.
|
| It's not just my partner, but also my kids I'm concerned
| about. The idea of moving my whole family to another country
| feels overwhelming, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make
| if it means my children can have a chance at a good life,
| versus what I'm starting to fear they'll experience here.
|
| I appreciate the reminder of patience.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Side concern: how impactful must the tarrifs be to make a
| noticable dent in global trend, and a noticable dent on climate
| change ?
|
| (I mean, it would not be noticed by the USA anymore, since
| they're not into that whole "science" stuff, but I heard that
| Europeans have learned how to make a couple satellites on the
| side.)
| andruby wrote:
| How can companies, importers and ports even implement these
| tariffs so quickly?
|
| Do these tariffs go into effect immediately?
| ofirtwo wrote:
| Damn it was hard looking at my portfolio today... I hope thing's
| change in the long run though
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| This is absolutely shocking. As these tariffs are reflective of
| trade deficits this administration is taxing the cheapest sources
| of goods for the American economy in proportion of volume.
|
| This is economic handbrake territory. It will impact every
| industry that imports goods (as well as many raw materials and
| components) and will devestate many, if not all SMEs who rely on
| importing goods to sell to local customers. Fashion retail in
| particular and drop shippers will have to raise their prices
| considerably.
|
| While I imagine the ideas behind these tariffs have some sense of
| justification, the numbers simply don't add up. Manufacturing
| clothing in the US simply isn't viable at the sorts of scales for
| mass consumption. For example, you can pick up Levis at Walmart
| for around $25 that have been manufactured abroad. The Levi
| Vintage run, which are made within the US, have prices starting
| at $150. So all this will do is force people will less money to
| spend an extra ~50% (or $12.5 in this case) on their jeans, as
| this will still be cheaper than $150. Obviously to entirely
| succeed at the supposed aim would to create a world where all
| jeans cost $150 and this would simply mean that most people would
| not be able to afford jeans.
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