[HN Gopher] The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics
___________________________________________________________________
The many ways tarrifs will hit electronics
Author : elashri
Score : 76 points
Date : 2025-04-22 09:02 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| spencerflem wrote:
| I was trying to buy a laptop yesterday and the ones reviewed
| three months ago as "best laptop under $1000" are all $1500
| amelius wrote:
| How is that for European buyers?
| zorked wrote:
| Same price or down slightly.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| This touches on something I'm curious to see play out: How
| much shopping tourism will we see? If a laptop costs twice as
| much due to tariffs (as indicated by the forecast in the
| article) how many US consumers will wait with buying a new
| laptop or phone till they happen to be in another country?
| I'm also curious if we'll see a huge spike in smuggling which
| might give more justification for more spending on border
| security.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Obviously yes this will happen. Trade restrictions always
| results in more smuggling and black market activity.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Of course it will happen. I'm curious to what degree.
| Will 50% of US iPhone sales move abroad? Will smuggling
| of regular goods become a bigger deal than fentanyl
| smuggling?
| keyringlight wrote:
| I'm interested to see how this affects Microsoft's
| messaging to some win10 users for "you need to buy a new PC
| to continue to be updated" while there's still a
| significant [0] amount of people to switch in 5-6 months.
|
| [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-
| share/desk...
| c-fe wrote:
| entry level macbook air (m4) is same price as it used to be
| (in luxembourg): 1 159,36 EUR
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| I mean VAT here is significantly higher than the equivalent
| sales taxes in the US, so stuff is almost always more
| expensive.
| jorge-d wrote:
| You can get VAT refunded if you're only passing through [0]
|
| [0]https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping
| /vat...
| piva00 wrote:
| In Sweden: have not noticed any big swing in prices, either
| up or down.
| cj wrote:
| I tried using https://camelcamelcamel.com/ to find some
| examples of this, but no luck spotting obvious price increases.
|
| Curious what brand you were looking at?
| square_usual wrote:
| yeah, I don't buy it either. I haven't seen any major price
| rises in the products I frequently check out. I'm assuming
| they're selling stock that's already in the US and don't have
| to pay tariffs on.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I assume this is true as well and am at the same time
| surprised by it. I'd have increased prices or held on to
| inventory as soon as I know the tariff rate and I know when
| it's coming. Even if I bought a laptop for $750 and can now
| sell it for $1000 the prospect of the market price for it
| going up to $1,500 or even $2,000 and turning a much larger
| profit is quite enticing. Maybe prices being fairly stable
| is a sign of low confidence in the tariffs?
| square_usual wrote:
| Well, you'd be betting that people would still be willing
| to buy at $1,500 or $2,000. When prices go up that much,
| demand tends to drop, and for what are essentially toys
| might even go down to 0. So you'd risk holding on to
| inventory, and with the 90 day reprieve and the market
| shocks you might be willing to bet that in a few months
| there might not be tariffs at all.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's more that you have bills to pay now, and it costs
| money to warehouse things. Do you have enough cash around
| to sell nothing for the next two months and keep paying
| employees and bills? Are you absolutely certain you'll
| make more than enough profit in the end to offset that?
| Are consumers going to hate you for it and is that going
| to harm your brand?
| spencerflem wrote:
| Maybe its just the two I was looking at, but the Dell G16 was
| on a best under $1k list and is $1600 on best buy, and my
| almost brand new Zephirus G14 that got killed by a spill
| (rest in peace) went from $1200 when i got it to $1700 on
| best buy as well.
|
| Acer Nitro V kept its price at what the reviews said and
| that's what I ended up getting, but still weird that 2 of 3
| changed
| square_usual wrote:
| Are you sure you are looking at the exact same configs? I
| looked up both G16 and Zephyrous 14 and on Keepa.com their
| price hasn't moved _that_ much. The notable exception is
| that their prices dropped quite a bit for Amazon 's
| President's day sale, but both of those had prices hold
| steady (i.e. within the +-10% range) since then.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Possibly not, I was doing this in a pretty big hurry &
| was frustrated. Apologies if this was all FUD
| bashevis wrote:
| I'm the cofounder of https://PriceLasso.com where we do price
| tracking and price drop alerts on 150+ sites, and so far
| seeing little in the way of price increases.
|
| Some news sites reported Logitech products went up in price,
| but from we can see these are normal seasonal patterns.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Ah, maybe it was just unlucky timing then.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I brought all my toys the moment these policies were announced.
|
| Case in point. I don't *need* a new Surface , but I saw one for
| like 500$ off. I don't imagine being able to find one at a
| reasonable price during the next few years.
|
| Really China is still playing softball here. They could just
| ban exports to the US tomorrow and we'll be the ones cut off
| from any moderately advanced technology.
| polski-g wrote:
| I'm in the market for a new laptop, a new TV, a new car, and
| a bunch of plywood and tools. I will be buying nothing until
| the tariffs are gone. No point in paying 10-250% tariffs when
| I can just wait Trump out.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, my electronics hobbies are probably severely curtailed. I
| am assuming that the cancelling the de minimus exception is the
| real killer. I assume I can no longer afford PCBWay, AliExpress.
|
| Recent purchases I am not likely to be able to afford: NVIDIA
| TESLA M40 cards from China I found on eBay and a "mining rig"
| mother board from AliExpress. (Was putting together a, formerly,
| inexpensive local-Llama rig.)
|
| To be sure, these are things I don't _need_ but they were on the
| cusp of affordability from the point of view of a hobbyist and so
| I indulged -- and I will not now because they will now cross that
| threshold.
|
| And I expect to see the price double on my Zenni glasses going
| forward. I used to like to find old medium-format cameras from
| Asian countries on eBay (probably not now). I already bailed on
| purchasing what would have been my first drone with what has
| happened to the prices on them.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Super bummed out about the glasses thing, too. So nice to have
| glasses that were cheap enough it wasn't _that_ big a deal when
| a pair got destroyed for some reason, but also didn 't look
| like shit.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Shipping is not tariffed, so I expect that hobby PCBs will
| still be affordable. ($2 PCBs becoming $5 is hardly a deal-
| breaker.)
|
| Aliexpress I expect will adapt to end (or at least sharply
| curtail) free shipping promotions and start charging for
| shipping (which will not be tariffed), which better aligns what
| you're actually paying for anyway.
|
| So, getting 100 transistors for $1.02 and free shipping with
| $10 total might not be a thing any more, but $0.25 for those
| transistors and $0.75 for shipping with a $10 minimum might be
| (and is probably closer to the true economics than $1 and free
| shipping via airplane).
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Check out the planned minimum per-item fees for low-value
| (sub-$800) shipments planned when _de minimus_ is rescinded
| for China.
|
| They're.... high.
| fabbari wrote:
| Just to get the numbers right: [0] there is a $25 minimum,
| that becomes $50 June 1st, on all packages below or at $800.
|
| So those $0.25 transistors - after June 1st - come at $50.25
| plus shipping.
|
| [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-
| sheet-pr...
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Just to get the numbers right:
|
| Yes, we should always strive to do that.
|
| I haven't gotten something from Aliexpress "sent through
| the international postal network" in a very long time (15
| months or more and I think probably several years). Most
| everything I get comes from an Aliexpress-run line haul
| (which brokers the export and import customs clearance) and
| then is delivered by a local carrier (usually UniUni or
| another one they started calling themselves recently).
|
| Sometimes they use Cainaio which uses USPS for last mile
| delivery, but based on the timings of tracking events, I
| think are still line-hauled and cleared by Cainaio as the
| broker rather than via the "international postal network".
|
| Both of those case would fall under the first of the sub-
| bullets ("will be subject to all applicable duties") rather
| than the second.
|
| I agree the $50 would kill the current cheap [postal]
| shipping of PCBs, but I'm pretty sure JLCPCB, PCBWay, etc
| will all switch to line hauls as well (which might even end
| up being cheaper than DHL that I usually pick now).
|
| It's annoying, but I don't think it marks the end of cheap
| hobby electronics parts; they just got a little less cheap.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > "I'm pretty sure"
|
| That's an interesting thing to say after tariff-on /
| tariff-off high intensity workouts almost every day. Not
| to mention the great desire to fire everyone standing in
| the way of the glorious inflation... did you take that
| into account while calculating the "little less cheap"
| thing?
|
| Just read the executive order linked in presto8's comment
| (above yours) and tell me you are sure what it means.
| Spaghetti legislation is nothing new but this is worse
| than a noodle trash container in the back yard of a
| Chinese restaurant. In the age of AI... presumably.
| presto8 wrote:
| > Just to get the numbers right: [0] there is a $25
| minimum, that becomes $50 June 1st, on all packages below
| or at $800.
|
| Things are changing very quickly, so it's hard to keep up.
| But I believe this was revised on April 9th to $100 dollars
| a package from HK or PRC on May 2, and $200 a package
| starting June 1.
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/04/modi...
|
| > (b) increase the per postal item containing goods duty in
| section 2(c)(ii) of Executive Order 14256, as modified by
| the Executive Order dated April 8, 2025, that is in effect
| on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on May 2,
| 2025, and before 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on June
| 1, 2025, from 75 dollars to 100 dollars; and
|
| > (c) increase the per postal item containing goods duty in
| section 2(c)(ii) of Executive Order 14256, as modified by
| the Executive Order dated April 8, 2025, that is in effect
| on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on June 1,
| 2025, from 150 dollars to 200 dollars.
| mindslight wrote:
| If clearing customs per-package is too expensive or
| inconvenient, I expect Aliexpress will tweak their managed
| logistics process to import items as bulk shipments in the
| cargo container at wholesale value and add estimated customs
| charges as a checkout fee on top of item prices. I don't
| think big print "free shipping" will be affected as it gets
| people to buy more often and it pads the margins when people
| buy more at one time.
|
| They already had to make a much bigger adjustment when they
| stopped being able to dump packages onto USPS, and from my
| experience it improved the delivery times dramatically.
| That's the thing about this ham-fisted "tough on China"
| authoritarian kayfabe - China isn't just some monolithic
| entity just sitting on their hands, they're now the
| distributed innovators operating in a nimble fashion.
| gramie wrote:
| I checked the article just to see if the IEEE actually spelled
| "tariffs" wrong (they didn't).
| mindslight wrote:
| Let's just call it what it is - a national sales tax. The only
| way significant bottom-up manufacturing ecosystems would come
| back to the US would be through targeted government investment,
| long term stability, and effective anti-trust enforcement - all
| things beyond the current administration. If three decades of
| economic neoliberalism was a steamroller crushing our industrial
| base, the Trumpist solution is to just throw it in reverse and
| destroy what domestic industry _had_ managed to spring up in its
| wake.
|
| I would have thought that despite the general comfort with
| hypocrisy of the larger Republican party, they would at least
| have reacted against _overtly raising taxes_ especially to levels
| of _hundreds of percent_. But nope, use one synonym and whatever
| Dear Leader says goes. It 's truly a cult.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Tariffs are also fertile ground for corruption.
| energy123 wrote:
| Case in point: Apple's exemption
| litoE wrote:
| Tariffs motivate smuggling. Smugglers corrupt the
| government's tax authorities so they will look the other way.
| Consumers who buy the cheaper product know full well it's
| smuggled goods. Conclusion: tariffs corrupt all of society. I
| saw this first hand growing up in South America with tariffs
| on all imported goods.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| How many American houses are built in China? How much American
| rice is grown in China? How much American lumber is chopped in
| China? How much American electricity is produced in China?
| andsoitis wrote:
| Since the tariffs target the whole world, my responses look
| at imports rather than constraining to China.
|
| > How many American houses are built in China?
|
| Roughly 30% of the softwood lumber consumed in the US is
| imported, and Canada accounts for over 80% of those imports.
| Other key suppliers include China, Brazil, and Mexico. And
| that's just lumber.
|
| The US now imports 1.5 million metric tons of rice. See
| trend:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/806643/us-rice-import-
| vo...
|
| > How much American electricity is produced in China?
|
| Generating and distributing electricity requires equipment.
| More expensive (or hard to acquire) equipment means more
| expensive energy, affecting just about everything.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Also: some US electricity _actually is_ produced in Canada.
| One option that seemed to be seriously considered early in
| this whole dust-up was Canada cutting off electricity
| supplied to the US. It would 've caused chaos in the
| Northeast.
|
| I think they only pulled back from doing that because it
| probably would have fairly-directly killed quite a few
| people.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That begs the question why electricity is cheaper in many
| countries which have the highest tariffs in the world?
|
| My original questions were of course rhetorical, shining a
| light on the matter that neither the US nor any country in
| the world lives only on imported goods.
|
| Since the economy, trade, and production is completely
| interconnected in a modern, industrialized world, then any
| changes in policy will have widespread effects. Including
| good effects.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Maybe your MAGA hat's brim is pulled down too low? There's a
| real, beautiful world out there if you're willing to see it.
| Knowledge is a good first step to beauty!
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You added nothing to the discussion. Your mental state is
| that you are a member of a mob who are out to squash
| anybody who thinks differently, and that gives you an
| illusion of having power. But in reality you don't know any
| of the people here, and the only power we have as
| commenters online is to exchange thoughts and ideas.
|
| As for the real world, there is a large variety of tariff
| policies around the world, and most countries implement
| much harsher tariffs than what Mr Trump is suggesting for
| America. There are many very good arguments for tariffs and
| against tariffs, let's talk about them instead?
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > and most countries implement much harsher tariffs than
| what Mr Trump is suggesting for America.
|
| Which ones?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Let's flip it: Name one major world economy with lower
| tariffs than the current US tariffs?
| alabastervlog wrote:
| OK, so you're just a troll. Noted.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _As for the real world, there is a large variety of
| tariff policies around the world, and most countries
| implement much harsher tariffs than what Mr Trump is
| suggesting for America. There are many very good
| arguments for tariffs and against tariffs, let 's talk
| about them instead?_
|
| Sorry, no. This is a common Trumpist talking point that
| has validated the comment you're responding to.
|
| Every aspect of the US economy is currently wholly
| reliant on imports. Untangling would certainly be
| _possible_ , but would require an intelligent fine-
| grained approach with deliberate analysis and
| substitution - not ham-fisted blanket import taxes. There
| is absolutely no sense to any of Trump's actual policies,
| nor the manner in which they're haphazardly announced and
| then constantly churned, unless the goal is simply to
| harm our country.
|
| Debating and critiquing as if these might be good faith
| attempts at helping our country is a waste of energy that
| needs to be used more productively.
| Trumpism/destructionism thrives on our desire for
| rational debate, because while we debate how to build
| they just destroy. At this point, regardless of your
| political persuasion (I'm libertarian), it's time to stop
| drinking the Kool-aid and wake up to the fact we have a
| malevolent attacker in the White House. We can go back to
| debating the finer points of policy after we have an
| administration that actually puts the interests of the
| United States first.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You don't achieve much by name-calling and making
| accusations. They don't bother me, since I know I'm right
| and you are wrong. But if you discuss things in real life
| in this manner, what's going to happen is that sensible
| people want to avoid talking to you or dealing with you.
|
| Tariffs aren't anything new or exclusive to Trump or
| America, so you have to accept that people can have
| knowledge about tariffs and also have their own opinions
| about tariffs, regardless of who is president in America.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >There are many very good arguments for tariffs and
| against tariffs, let's talk about them instead?
|
| You haven't talked about anything. You just keep "asking
| questions" as if the rhetorical questions are actually
| making a point, but when they are answered and show
| negative effects for the US, you just pivot to some other
| random question.
|
| That or you make sweeping, utterly simplistic statements
| like "neither the US nor any country in the world lives
| only on imported goods" (yeah, no one thought they did)
| or "changes in policy will have widespread effects.
| Including good effects." (yeah, if I cut my legs off,
| I'll save a fortune on shoes. Win!). You do nothing to
| actually talk about how "good effects" will outweigh all
| the bad effects or how we will magically make up for
| massive imports with domestic production.
|
| > You added nothing to the discussion.
|
| Pot, meet kettle.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > That or you make sweeping, utterly simplistic
| statements like "neither the US nor any country in the
| world lives only on imported goods" (yeah, no one thought
| they did)
|
| The original post I replied to stated exactly that. Yes,
| I take the liberty to use questions to make examples,
| just like anybody else. Because it makes little sense to
| discard all the production which is inside the nation.
|
| People here are arguing that tariffs are one-sidedly bad
| because of the dampening effect they have on foreign
| imports, without ever mentioning the reasons why nations
| implement tariffs. What does anybody gain from such
| conversations?
|
| > You do nothing to actually talk about how "good
| effects" will outweigh all the bad effects or how we will
| magically make up for massive imports with domestic
| production.
|
| You completely invented this part.
|
| Good effects of tariffs on foreign imports:
|
| - Revenue for the government budget, which is more
| ethical than taxing domestic productivity.
|
| - Stronger domestic economic independence
|
| - Increased revenue for productive people within the
| nation (better salaries)
|
| Bad effects of tariffs on foreign imports:
|
| - Higher consumer prices for imported goods (both for
| consumers and businesses)
|
| - Risk of falling behind in technological development
|
| - Counter-tariffs have a negative impact on the exporting
| industries
|
| Depending on who you are and what you do, tariffs will be
| either good or bad for you.
|
| For example if you do not make your money by being
| productive, then you will only feel the higher prices
| from imported goods, without any chance of increasing
| your salary from the increased demand of domestic
| productivity. Public sector workers, retirees, students
| and welfare dependents mostly fall into this category. Or
| people who make more money from real estate leveraging
| than from working.
|
| Who is going to feel the most positive effects of tariffs
| are labourers, since increased demand for domestic
| production means higher salaries to attract workers,
| which have a draining effect also on low paying service
| jobs when people quit to go work a better paying job. The
| lower the pay in a sector, the more easily people switch
| jobs for something better.
|
| A whole lot of people are probably going to feel equally
| positive and negative effects of tariffs, meaning no net
| difference.
| mindslight wrote:
| The right question is how significantly those things rely on
| equipment and supplies produced in China, and the answer is
| all of them very much do.
| knowitnone wrote:
| Are you going to make a point or just ask questions?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The point is that not everything is imported. You can
| import oil but you can't import an oilfield. You can import
| food but you can't import the ground.
| thunderfork wrote:
| Something important to consider re: comparisons to a "sales
| tax": a sales tax applies to every unit you sell, a tariff
| applies even to the units you don't sell.
|
| This is a small distinction with some fun inflationary effects.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The more ideological parts of the GOP (like the Heritage
| Institute) have been pushing for consumption taxes as a
| replacement for the income tax for more years than I can
| remember. At least since the 2000s. (Just Google the phrase and
| just about any year since 2003.) It's always been a bad and
| regressive idea. With that said, Trump has loved tariffs since
| the 1980s and so any similarity between the two plans is more a
| marriage of convenience than any careful plan.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's worse than a national sales tax; sales taxes generally
| only apply to finished goods. Tariffs also apply to
| manufacturing inputs.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I wonder if this will heat up the used market. In Oct Windows 10
| will go EOL unless you start paying M/S. For windows 11 many
| people will need new hardware.
|
| I wonder if M/S will pull back on their requirements. Of course
| people could move to Linux :)
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs.
|
| 1. They're _massively_ unpopular and likely to cause electoral
| losses in '26 and '28 which will immediately undo them
|
| 2. Consumers know the tariffs will likely cause a recession, and
| will likely be undone in 4y. Pretty much every major spending
| purchase that can be delayed, will.
|
| 3. Companies know 4y is not enough time to invest in new supply
| chains or new manufacturing plants. Given sinking demand they
| will shed jobs and hunker down for the duration.
|
| I can tell you, for myself? Any major purchases are now off the
| table. I will happily keep my 18 year old car running instead of
| buying a new honda civic. I'm perfectly content with the devices
| I currently have. I will root and install a third party rom
| instead of buying a new phone. My 3090 will happily play old / AA
| games for the duration. Travel will likely be reduced thanks to
| the weak dollar and anti us sentiment in general.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Trump wants to get rid of income taxes for those earning under
| $150k.
|
| He most likely intends to pull out the financial pillar of
| income tax, and replace it with tariffs. He is likely waiting
| for the price crunch to blow up so he can step in an give
| everyone the "gift" of no income tax.
| piva00 wrote:
| It would only make sense if consumption of tariff-imposed
| goods would keep steady to make up for the loss of income
| taxes, with consumer confidence cratering there's no way
| consumption keeps steady. On top of that you have inflation
| which will cause the Fed to raise interest rates, further
| lowering credit offering for consumption, bond yields raising
| which costs more of the budget for interest payment,
| requiring more taxes, it's a stupid plan all around...
| andsoitis wrote:
| Income taxes are progressive while tariffs are regressive, so
| those under $150k are likely to be worse off.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| He's not particularly intelligent.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| About 3/4 of households make under $150k/year. Having no
| income tax will be hugely popular with them. It would kill
| the argument that Trump is only interested tax breaks for
| the rich.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It would also make it politically untenable to get rid of
| tariffs and reinstate income tax.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Yea, this is the thing. Can you imagine transitioning
| over to a 0 income tax situation and then adding all of
| that infrastructure back? You know DOGE is going to nuke
| the servers that do it and rm -rf the repositories so if
| it's ever returned to law, everything will need to be
| done from scratch (likely making it untenable).
|
| If you're an IT professional in the US Government, I
| would argue you have an obligation as a concerned citizen
| to make some local backups of the code powering the
| systems you work on every day and keep them somewhere
| safe...
| tzs wrote:
| Or it would make it politically quite tenable to get rid
| of tariffs and greatly raise income taxes on people
| making over $150k.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They already do pay the vast majority of income taxes.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The main takeaway from this fact being astonishment at
| just how much the top 1% really earns!
| tzs wrote:
| True, they pay around 75-80% of income taxes.
|
| I suppose the good news for them then is that if tariffs
| fail to replace the 20-25% of income tax that would be
| lost by eliminating income tax on people making under
| $150k and it has to come from raising taxes on the folks
| making over $150k it would only be a 25-33% tax increase
| on them.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| I don't see the numbers though. Tariffs are a compete
| non-starter as far as government revenue goes, "income
| from tariffs" on the "countries that have been robbing
| us" is mere theatrics (those countries only accepted what
| was given/pushed to them)... Ergo, borrowing remains the
| only option, with lots and lots of inflation. I'm not
| sure how popular that will be.
| ty6853 wrote:
| On first glance that's the case, in practice they clamp
| down hardest on middle and professional classes. The rich
| borrow against gains or pay long term capital gains, or
| just "re-invest" (no profit) into durable assets for their
| business that hold value longer than they'll be alive.
|
| The scam of income tax is that it's progressive on paper
| but not in practice.
| grunder_advice wrote:
| You are not wrong, but that situation won't change if you
| moved to another taxation scheme. The poor are too poor
| to have much to take from them. So they go after those
| who are a rung or two above to tax. The dynamic does not
| change irrespective of taxation system.
| debug-desperado wrote:
| "The scam of income tax is that it's progressive on paper
| but not in practice."
|
| Perfectly put. It's always bothered me that the tax
| brackets don't continue on in a logarithmic fashion, e.g.
| new brackets at 1.5 million, 15 million, 150 million,
| etc.
| mindslight wrote:
| Focusing on brackets for earned income is a distraction.
| Those only apply to relatively rare sports stars, actors,
| etc. The real cheats are things like tax rates being
| _lower_ for capital gains, and that people receiving
| rental /royalty income can subtract all of their expenses
| (whereas wage earners cannot).
| atmavatar wrote:
| Arguably a bigger cheat is that if you have enough wealth
| tied up in stocks, you can realize capital gains for the
| sake of taking out loans to live off of without having to
| realize the gains for the sake of taxes. Then, you can
| pass those investments onto your inheritors with a
| stepped-up cost basis so they don't have to pay tax on
| the gains, either.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Yes even though I'm no fan of taxes, allowing borrowing
| against gains is clearly "realizing" them, it is an
| absolutely absurd fiction that allows this to be untaxed.
| debug-desperado wrote:
| Ah yes: buy, borrow, and die. It definitely works.
|
| I don't think stepped-up basis should go away though,
| otherwise it's just the government getting a second cut
| of the inflation it causes.
|
| The bigger issue for society is that our equity markets
| just don't have any real risk of losing your lunch
| anymore, so these strategies emerge.
| mindslight wrote:
| Sure, that was already mentioned and I skipped mentioning
| it again because focusing too much on that one thing is
| likely to distract from the overall problem. It's not
| bigger, it's just different. It has also been made less
| attractive now that interest rates exist again (at least
| for the time being until Krasnov gets his hands on that
| lever of market manipulation)
|
| (another one in the same vein is that when you donate an
| appreciated asset, you get a tax deduction of the
| _unrealized_ value)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, with Trunp everything is a lever he's using in a
| negotiation to get what he really wants. I'm not claiming
| he's playing "4d Chess" or is some kind of wizard but
| everything is a "deal" to him.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| >Trump wants to get rid of income taxes for those earning
| under $150k.
|
| Trump has openly talked about his plan to replace income tax
| with tariffs for years. Not just for "earnings under $150k"
| -- that was some post-facto inventions by Howard "Used Car
| Salesman" Lutnick on some news program appearance after
| tariffs were proving spectacularly unpopular -- but Trump has
| constantly ruminated on the grand old days of the 1890s, at
| least when he isn't talking about that ol' timey word
| "groceries" or showerheads, light bulbs and coal. And every
| economist save a few nuts like Pete Navarro (or his associate
| Ron Vara) have soundly announced that it's an incredibly
| stupid plan.
|
| Here in reality, thus far the only tax break offered up has
| been an extension on tax reductions for the super rich. No
| tax free tips, overtime, etc. Only the super rich have
| benefitted.
|
| Further, it economically makes _zero_ sense and Trump has
| repeatedly argued completely contrary "wins" from his
| tariffs: both that all of the manufacturing and other
| production will return to the US (ignore that the US has
| effectively full employment, and such would be massively
| inflationary without a dire reduction in US quality of life),
| yet somehow he's going to make trillions from tariffs, which
| would require such an egregious tariff rate that there would
| be no imports at all and thus no tariff income. Federal
| spending would have to drop by almost 80% for tariff funding
| of the government to be remotely rational, and that means
| demolishing the military and social security.
|
| >so he can step in an give everyone the "gift" of no income
| tax
|
| Yeah, that isn't at all how Trump operates. Much like DOGE
| and their hilarious "$5000 cheques for all the savings" that
| will never, ever happen -- and quite the contrary the
| government financial position is more dire than ever -- Trump
| makes all of his promises up front. Like his tips and
| overtime tax claims, both of which are never going to happen.
| Or his amazing healthcare plan that's coming in two weeks. Or
| how about that line of countries offering everything and
| their 90 deals in 90 days. This guy is the _definition_ of
| overpromising and underdelivering.
|
| There is zero scenario where tariffs even cover the current
| _deficit_. And as Trump demolishes the credibility of the USD
| and US TBills (people don 't realize that US banks have been
| increasingly forced to buy these as the global market as
| dissolved), it's going to get drastically worse.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| You stumped most everyone when you used the word "reality".
| (Which is correct.) Most are so scared of where the country
| is heading, reality is pretty foggy. "Criminality", now
| there's a timely word we can all understand, except the big
| orange dummy has manipulated the supreme court so much
| we're not sure if we can trust it to maintain the rule of
| law. (After all, the tariffs seem to be a tool to crash the
| stock market, buy low/sell high, no?) Shamefully, it
| doesn't take much to completely fool the boomers (My
| generation, the stupidest of all time.) by making enemies
| of almost anything or anyone.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| We're well on track to move the debt crisis we were already
| all-but guaranteed to see in a few decades, to... this
| decade.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Take the nugget of truth that is the problem (there are
| inefficiencies in government work, there are arguments that
| tariffs could be adjusted for economic reasons) and act
| like the deliberate system breaking actions being taken
| aren't the part worth discussing. Then blame immigrants,
| China, and "something something woke". Then let
| "centerists" distract/water down the conversation by
| injecting random "both sides" arguments to frame things as
| nothing out of the ordinary and nothing to be done.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >Trump wants to get rid of income taxes for those earning
| under $150k.
|
| Getting rid of income tax will require legislation from
| congress. If we're in the midst of a tariff induced
| recession, what are the chances his party keeps congress in
| '26?
|
| Also, remember when the British government tried to pass a
| massive tax cut funded with debt? Remember how that went
| down? The chances of the US being able to get rid of income
| tax in the next 4 years is basically zero.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > Getting rid of income tax will require legislation from
| congress. If we're in the midst of a tariff induced
| recession, what are the chances his party keeps congress in
| '26?
|
| Their chances will maybe be higher, if they cut income
| taxes.
|
| All it'll cost is moving our already-nigh-inevitable debt
| crisis a few decades closer to today.
|
| > Also, remember when the British government tried to pass
| a massive tax cut funded with debt?
|
| Both Republican administrations this millennium have done
| exactly that. I see no reason to expect they won't do it
| again.
| ivewonyoung wrote:
| > Getting rid of income tax will require legislation from
| congress. If we're in the midst of a tariff induced
| recession, what are the chances his party keeps congress in
| '26?
|
| The optics of Democrats voting against a full tax cut for
| those earning less than $150K would be interesting to say
| the least.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I mean someone's gotta be the responsible adult in the
| room right? Every projection I've seen on tariffs doesn't
| put the revenue generated anywhere _near_ enough to cover
| cutting income tax. You want to rework the tax system, be
| my guest, but _pay for it_ , and don't tank the world
| economy in the process.
| tzs wrote:
| But he also says the tariffs will bring manufacturing back.
| If that works then the tariff money tanks.
| Isamu wrote:
| He wants to get rid of his taxes, reducing other people's
| taxes is part of the deal. Tariffs are moving taxes around,
| everyone pays but he's hoping that he will be the least
| affected.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Actually-rich people pay little or no income tax.
|
| Most of what they pay is capital gains, and usually the
| long-term rate (15% or 20%, depends), which is lower than
| all but the lowest two (0%, 12%) of seven brackets applied
| to people who actually work for a living.
|
| Plus they don't pay FICA on that, which is another ~7.5%
| for W2 and ~15% for contract workers.
|
| Also, they often manage to avoid even paying the long-term
| capital gains rate.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This is entirely contrary to their other supposed goal, which
| is to bring back manufacturing. If we bring back
| manufacturing, tariffs won't pay our bills, because nobody
| will pay them.
|
| It's almost like it's bullshit.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Well, just to play the devil's advocate a bit, this is
| definitely a crazy idea but it might have some logic to it:
|
| 1) taxing consumptions instead of income has the advantage of
| being much harder to evade. It puts an end to tricks like
| living off loans or even simply detracting expenses- you
| cannot detract anything if you're not taxed at all;
|
| 2) only taxing imported goods means that anything that
| benefits the local economy can be purchased tax-free; while
| imports from abroad become, say, twice as expensive as
| before. However, you also have a much higher disposable
| income and, at least at the beginning, no other option.
|
| So the gist of it would be: we levy the same amount of money
| as before by taxing exclusively consumptions, and we exempt
| from taxation all domestically produced goods because it's
| still money reinvested in the economy.
| tempestn wrote:
| The problem is that you massively distort the economy,
| making it less efficient aka poorer. And that's even before
| considering the fact that other countries will retaliate.
| davidw wrote:
| People keep acting like there is some plan or higher thought
| process.
|
| Sometimes, people are just morons.
|
| Look at how Bessent had to sneak in and try and get the tariffs
| paused: https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-
| navar...
|
| There's no coordinated strategy there.
| amelius wrote:
| Apparently the guy is playing 3d chess. But they didn't say
| he's not very good at it.
| davidw wrote:
| We're more at the level of him looking at the chess board
| and trying to snack on the pieces.
| Integrape wrote:
| Yes, but in this case the 'd' stands for dementia.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| He's not playing chess, his only interest in chess in
| getting the game manufactures to stop their DEI policy of
| insisting on equal dark and light squares/pieces.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| You know he's an actual idiot based on his latest
| proclamation that he won't escalate further against China
| because "then people won't buy."
|
| We're already way, way beyond levels that effectively freeze
| all trade between the two countries.
|
| Which, if we're to believe the sycophants, is just the price
| to pay to onshore manufacturing.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| There's no coordinated strategy anywhere.
|
| The people with real power voted him in to lower taxes, and
| in return he is nuking the economy, neutering the Pentagon,
| trashing public health, isolating the US from tourists and
| skilled immigrants, walking public education back at least a
| century, killing the next generation of R&D, murdering
| rational climate policy with a coal-powered chainsaw, and
| handing government software and data to enemy powers.
|
| The entire machinery of governance - official and public, as
| well as off-the-record "do as I say and I'll fund your
| campaign" private - has folded like tissue paper.
|
| The only pushback is from the judiciary, and their orders are
| as likely to be ignored as implemented. And parts of
| academia.
|
| It's astonishing.
| amelius wrote:
| Sounds like a win for the climate, as a nice side effect.
| watwut wrote:
| Unlikely. The other policies is literally designed to remove
| as much environmental protection as possible, I guess to own
| the libs.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Except that solar deployment in the US will be massively
| impacted by this. And that at a time where we are supposed to
| bring back energy-hungry manufacturing and in theory would
| need to expand the electrical grid.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Good thing there's lots of coal-fired power plants that
| Trump just exempted from stronger emissions controls.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Yes well, _covid_ was a nice win for the climate. It was also
| a massive and devastating recession which we basically money
| printed our way out of. It would be nice if we could address
| climate issues with direct legislation instead of suffering
| on the population level (I will be fine)
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| Here come those pesky direct effects:
|
| "US to impose tariffs of up to 3521% on south-east Asia solar
| panels"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/22/us-huge-
| tar...
|
| Edit: added title
| ks2048 wrote:
| Trump now has knobs he alone (unless congress stops him) can
| turn to save or wreck any country, even specific businesses and
| people (i.e. those that don't surrender more power to him). For
| a power obsessed, extreme narcissist, that is worth more than
| economic success.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs
|
| Nor, seemingly, does the U.S. president. It's the same rhetoric
| we've heard from him since the mid 1980's onward. "We're being
| ripped off," "We're being laughed at," "We need to fix the
| trade deficit...tariffs..." A case of arrested development.
| Going back to his earliest projects as a nominal real estate
| developer, the same inability or unwillingness to capitalize on
| the expertise of others to the detriment of most of his
| endeavours. Except for image-making. There he excels. This
| time, the project he is inevitably destroying is the global
| economy. And there's no Fred C. Trump to bail us out.
| diego_moita wrote:
| > I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs.
|
| They are being implemented by people that think that "evolution
| is just a theory", "global warming is a hoax", "vaccines cause
| autism and are dangerous", etc.
|
| Free trade is a core belief of Economics as a science, from
| Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" until the Nobel Prize of
| Economics in 2024. And discarding inconvenient science is a
| standard among Republicans (viz their attack on universities).
|
| They're just morons.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| I think you're only half right. Most people are woefully
| undereducated or _unwilling_ to gain knowledge for the sake
| of understanding things in the modern world. A fatal flaw,
| because then they rely on smart sounding people, dressed in
| nice clothing, to tell them how to think.
|
| > I've honestly never understood the point of the tariffs.>
| At the risk of sounding rude, why the hell don't you
| understand the point of tariffs?!? Look up as many source as
| you can on the internet and learn something! You could also
| read some books.
| tzs wrote:
| > I can tell you, for myself? Any major purchases are now off
| the table. I will happily keep my 18 year old car running
| instead of buying a new honda civic.
|
| Aren't Civics made in the US, with mostly US and Canadian
| parts? They might come through the tariffs without too big a
| hit.
| echoangle wrote:
| As long as the tariffs reduce competition, the prices will
| still increase. Stuff isn't priced at cost.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Trump's been obsessed with them since the 80s. That seems to,
| er, be... about all the rationalisation that is required. No-
| one thinks this is a good idea; he managed to dig up the
| world's weirdest economist to give his blessing, and that's
| about it.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The world's weirdest economist who then _made up an even
| weirder economist_ to bolster his case.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/16/us/politics/peter-
| navarro...
| rsynnott wrote:
| Bigly smart, everyone's saying it: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Pseudonyms_used_by_Donald_Trum...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Donald Trump does not need to win an election in any of the
| years you named
| whateveracct wrote:
| I read recently the tariffs are the policy of some guy Trump
| latched onto because Kushner likes the title of his book
| ("Death by China")
| andsoitis wrote:
| > China could continue to produce smartphones for Europe, Asia,
| and Latin America.
|
| And Africa. Asia and Africa are at the forefront of mobile money
| adoption.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes. Google says " _in March 2025, the top five smartphone
| brands in Africa by market share were Samsung (29.86%), Apple
| (14.11%), Tecno (13.65%), Infinix (6.62%), and Huawei (6.29%)
| [Xiaomi and other smaller brands make up the remaining share]_
| ".
|
| So basically, Chinese brands have a 56% market share in Africa
| (1.5 billion people and probably the market with the most
| growth reserve).
| jameslk wrote:
| > The estimates become highly dependent on how influential China
| is for final assembly.
|
| The article mentions this but then doesn't go much further into
| it. But this will likely be the biggest factor with tariffs.
|
| China will still produce the electronics and many other goods,
| but then the goods will be shipped to another country for
| "substantial modifications" before being shipped to the US to
| evade the US tariffs on China
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| typo in the title: tarrifs should be tariffs.
| energy123 wrote:
| These tariffs will have a deindustrializing effect for complex
| goods.
|
| - Exemptions for electronics
|
| - Unemployment at 4%, no labor to work in factories
|
| - Raw inputs now 10%+ more expensive, meaning worse international
| competitiveness
|
| - Policy uncertainty deterring investment
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