[HN Gopher] Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plumme...
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Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
Author : perihelions
Score : 629 points
Date : 2025-04-30 13:07 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| duxup wrote:
| It will be interesting to see if retailers choose raising prices
| or if they lean more towards ... just not offering some things.
| codingbot3000 wrote:
| Gilead might be in for empty shelves like Venezuela and Cuba
| :-D
| duxup wrote:
| I'll be sad, but amused, when Trump and Co declare that each
| state should build factories to fill their needs for basic
| products ... similar to proposals made during the economic
| collapse days in Venezuela.
| taylodl wrote:
| The United States has never had such incompetence in
| governance. Americans aren't accustomed to this degree of
| ineptness.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Everyone made fun of W about being the least competent,
| but then the GOP went and collectively said "hold my
| beer". Twice.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It's surprising that we would actually vote for this of
| our own free will.
|
| That's gotta be something historians will puzzle over for
| the next two hundred years. It's mind blowing that we did
| that.
|
| Stepping a level lower even, how, on Earth, could our
| system possibly have produced Harris, Vance and Trump as
| the options? Then you step a level lower than that, and
| even the challengers were like, DeSantis and Haley?
|
| It was corruption and ineptitude the entire way down. How
| could that have happened?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The two party system, forced on us by plurality voting,
| is the reason people feel they don't have a choice.
|
| Pick one of two very different sides. If a third
| candidate tries to enter the race, they harm themselves
| and the person they are similar to, and they help the
| opposition.
|
| Any form of ranked voting will rid us of this restriction
| and allow more candidates to run for an office, and allow
| citizens to vote their true preference.
|
| Yesterday, HR 3040 was introduced by a GOP member from
| Arizona, which intends to ban ranked choice voting from
| federal elections. The GOP has already banned it in the
| state of Florida.
|
| A radical party is terrified of a system that enables
| more electoral competition and throttles radicalism.
| umanwizard wrote:
| No idea why you got downvoted. This is exactly the
| answer.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| The only "non-objective" component of my comment is the
| analysis of the GOP's motives to stop voting reform.
| taylodl wrote:
| What you're talking about is known as Duverger's Law -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Yep! And the "spoiler effect" is when a voting system
| fails to meet the "independence of clones" criterion.
|
| In an election, the addition of a candidate similar to an
| existing candidate should not adversely impact both
| candidates.
| nradov wrote:
| Right. The last serious third-party presidential
| candidate was Ross Perot in 1992. In terms of political
| platform and voter appeal he was slightly more similar to
| the incumbent Republican candidate George H. W. Bush,
| which probably enabled the Democrat candidate Bill
| Clinton to win (although it's impossible to know what
| would have happened if Perot didn't run).
|
| Some political analysts claim that Perot entered the race
| not really intending to win but rather as retribution
| against Bush. In 1979 the Iranian regime imprisoned two
| of Perot's EDS employees. Perot asked Bush, who was then
| Director of the CIA, to get them out. Bush refused to act
| and Perot held a grudge against him ever since.
| Ccecil wrote:
| "In 1979 the Iranian regime imprisoned two of Perot's EDS
| employees. Perot asked Bush, who was then Director of the
| CIA, to get them out"
|
| Most interesting part of that story is that once the
| government failed to help he organized and trained his
| own operation and successfully extracted his employees.
|
| edit: https://www.rossperot.com/life-story/iran-hostage-
| rescue
| yks wrote:
| > Harris, Vance and Trump
|
| Oh ffs, Harris in charge would've been just fine. If
| we're talking about economy/stock market only, even Vance
| as president would've been fine as well, although he'd
| destroy American democracy way more efficiently than
| Trump.
| dudinax wrote:
| Trump had much superior social media targeting.
|
| Muslims in Michegan were convinced Harris is a genocidal
| maniac, while most everybody else heard she was in bed
| with hamas.
|
| Liberal suburban housewives heard she was a merciless
| prosecutor while others learned she was soft on crime.
| parineum wrote:
| > Stepping a level lower even, how, on Earth, could our
| system possibly have produced Harris, Vance and Trump as
| the options? Then you step a level lower than that, and
| even the challengers were like, DeSantis and Haley?
|
| I guess you forgot about the corpse of Biden. Harris
| belongs in that "challengers" category except she had
| less support than DeSantis and Haley (from both Democrats
| and Republicans!). Harris has never received a vote in a
| presidential primary.
|
| The Democratic party enabled Trump to win by not forcing
| a clearly incapable Biden out of the race earlier,
| allowing them to run an actual primary and then choosing
| a terrible candidate because they backed themselves into
| a corner with identity politics. Remember, the Democratic
| party was totally fine with Biden until he was forced in
| front of the American people and they got as good of a
| look at him as the party had.
|
| That's how our system produces these horrible candidates.
| Each party acts in their own self-interest because they
| have a stranglehold over the electoral process.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| It started in 2008. The Democratic party tried to rig it
| for Clinton.
|
| I'm sure she's a wonderful person in real life, but she's
| one of the most unpopular people to ever run for office.
|
| Obama actually is likeable, easily winning the primary
| and both elections.
|
| The Dems, because deep down they'd rather have the GOP
| over real progressives. Decided to rig it for Hillary
| again in 2016. Sanders had an actual base, but the DNC
| didn't want him to win.
|
| Biden was a rigged candidate too, but the pandemic swayed
| things in his direction.
|
| With Harris, the Dems decide to skip the rigged primary,
| the little people (the actual voters) don't need to have
| a say. Here's your moderate Republican from the mid 90s.
|
| At least the Republicans didn't rig every primary they've
| had since 2008. They don't play the super delegate dance.
|
| Well... Time to try and establish residency elsewhere.
| aweiland wrote:
| They did cancel some primaries in 2019 to protect Trump
| or at least his feelings.
|
| https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/06/republicans-
| cancel...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| That's different since generally you don't need a primary
| when your party is running for re election.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| His most die-hard supporters will hang on to the bitter
| end - and they're the least capable of doing so. I've
| gone from mocking them => feeling sorry for them => fear
| them - these people are definitely not harmless.
|
| these are sad/scary times.
| Loughla wrote:
| I had a conversation with someone who I usually respect,
| and would say is an intelligent person. He's a trump
| supporter for the manufacturing support.
|
| He said, "It's just not that hard to get these factories
| back to the states. We can get that done this month."
|
| The amount of cognitive dissonance and just outright
| believing the lies is astounding.
|
| Trump won't say that states need to build those factories.
| He'll tell governors that they're failures for not having
| done it already.
| bjourne wrote:
| He's not wrong. It is technically possible. However,
| transforming the US into a command economy may not be the
| best thing to do.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| We can build a factory in a month, including permitting,
| acquiring the land, planning the building and constucting
| it, as well as procuring or building the machinery and
| setting it up in the factory, programming it and hiring
| and training the workforce during high employment? That's
| very impressive!
| masfuerte wrote:
| High employment isn't going to be a blocker for much
| longer.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Perhaps not a month but the US really can build things
| fast if that's actually prioritized.
|
| https://www.globalhighways.com/wh10/feature/building-
| replace...
|
| tbh, as far as I'm concerned the hollowing out of the USG
| is why we can't do things fast. How many times has your
| boss had the entire team submit a proposal on how long it
| would take each member of the team to complete a JIRA
| ticket and then use that bidding as to who to assign the
| ticket? Like if you could build bridges and stuff in-
| house then you really speed things up.
|
| Given that something like a factory is probably going to
| require eminent domain to get a large contiguous tract
| (or built in the middle of nowhere so no counter-lawsuit)
| it seems fine for the government to build the shell of a
| building and then sell it off to be customized.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| 11 months is truly impressive but of course a far cry
| from a single month. A bridge also needs no machinery and
| workers permanently dedicated to it. IMO it's absolutely
| crucial for the US to cut down red tape and silly
| regulations to allow all construction to get done much
| more rapidly. I also wonder how this translates to
| building many projects like it at the same time. I
| understand construction capacity and backlogs are a huge
| bottleneck and we are in the process of deporting large
| numbers of people who could work on it while never having
| been good at growing a strong workforce in trades that
| require certification like electricians because we won't
| give out H1Bs for those.
| bluGill wrote:
| He didn't specify what factory.
|
| I have a metal lathe in my shop, if I thought it was
| worth it I could turn it into a factory in 10 minutes -
| including the time to change my clothes. I could a
| factory to build simple toolboxes in about a month - not
| much space or equipment needed. Building a car assembly
| line - one month if you will accept a production rate of
| 1 every year. Want to turn out a new car every minute and
| it will take a lot longer.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| No we can't. I work for a national construction company
| that works on large projects like that. From plans to
| production, you're looking at 2-3 years.
| bjourne wrote:
| In order to save its industry from the Nazis, the USSR
| moved over 1,500 large factories eastward in under six
| months in 1941. So the US in 2025 could certainly build
| at least a few factories in under a month. It would be a
| complete waste of government resources and certainly
| should be spent on something more worthwhile (like
| eradicating homelessness), but it's not impossible.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| It's not possible without seizing the means of
| production. An electrical switchboard that can power a
| factory has a minimum 24 week lead time, probably more
| like 52 weeks.
|
| In my local construction market _everyone_ is already
| working. There's no slack manpower, particularly in the
| skilled trades (mech, elec, plumbing)
|
| The above also ignores the fact that nobody wants to lend
| capital for such projects, so the government will need to
| finance it.
| mediaman wrote:
| If you have ever been involved in new factory
| construction for anything that's more than light manual
| assembly, this statement would be very amusing to you.
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder if he wants to work in a shoe factory?
| Loughla wrote:
| It's funny you say that, because we talked about
| literally that. No joke.
|
| No, he does not and would not want to work in a shoe
| factory, but he remembers when he was 16 and his first
| job was actually in a local shoe factory. He said it was
| a terrible job, but taught him how to keep a job. And he
| appreciated being able to buy shoes that were made by
| people he knew. . . . "I want that opportunity for my
| grandson."
|
| It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to exist in
| quantity.
| gosub100 wrote:
| How is that any different than hourly wage slave jobs
| now? It's better than being homeless or spending
| imaginary bucks printed against a debt that will never be
| paid off
| duxup wrote:
| >How is that any different than hourly wage slave jobs
| now?
|
| It doesn't sound like you like those jobs, shoe factory
| might not be better, so yay?
|
| Better than being homeless isn't much of a selling
| point...
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The US already makes highly advanced goods like cars
| using robotic manufacturing.
|
| Wouldn't an entrepreneur be able to figure out how to
| make something as simple as a shoe factory? And wouldn't
| that also result in fairly high paying union jobs, such
| as the people to maintain the machines and software?
| duxup wrote:
| Question might be first why haven't they already?
| bluGill wrote:
| Clothing is hard because it needs to have stretch. Iron
| is easy to automate because it doesn't stretch (well it
| does but not by enough to worry about). Thus we have been
| automating steel for a long time, and clothing still has
| a lot of manual sewing done on it. To the extent we have
| automated sewing it is often has a significant quality
| reduction.
|
| Hopefully somebody can solve the problem. There is a lot
| of work on it, and progress is being made. Don't ask me
| how close they are, I don't work in that space.
| runako wrote:
| The question really is if such entrepreneur made such a
| shoe factory that still employed union labor at fairly
| high rates of pay, why wouldn't they just install that
| factory in a place where labor costs less?
|
| If the goal is union jobs at fairly high rates of pay, we
| can make high-productivity jobs like CVS employee
| (~$1.2mm revenue per employee IIRC) into good high-paying
| union jobs by incentivizing CVS employees to unionize.
|
| Even the type of high-value manufacturing present in the
| US tends to be less productive with labor than Costco
| (~$30k net profit per employee) or Delta (~$56k net per
| employee) or ADP (~$84k net). Since our labor pool is
| decreasing, it is even more critical for Americans to
| work in high-productivity jobs rather than moving the
| other direction.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| > The US already makes highly advanced goods...
|
| and one of the ways to do that effectively is with
| intense automation and integrated supply chains
| regardless of geo-political borders. Neither of these is
| attractive to this circus
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Why would an entrepreneur even think about building a
| factory when building materials might potentially
| skyrocket? Anyone who is considering something like this
| is just going to wait until Trump isn't in office so
| things can stabilize. If you said, right now, I'm gonna
| build a factory, it probably wouldn't start producing
| anything until 2028 at best.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _something as simple as a shoe factory_
|
| What? Of all the non-high-tech things you can
| manufacture, shoes actually seem pretty complicated. You
| have a mix of different materials, if you want to go more
| traditional you need a higher level of employee skill,
| you need a big variety of styles and sizes to be
| competitive, and if people have one bad experience with
| your product they'll probably never buy from you again.
| Also the margins and competition are brutal.
| xnx wrote:
| A retailer would be irrational to let stock run out instead of
| continuously raising prices.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| For stuff that people need and will buy at heavily inflated
| prices, sure. But there are a lot of non-essential items that
| people probably won't buy if the price increases
| significantly. And for those items, I suspect a lot of stores
| will just let the shelves stay empty instead of spending a
| lot of money for inventory they can't sell.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Candy bars for example. They want to charge $3 for a single
| candy bar now, but no one wants to pay that much so they're
| selling them 2 for $5.
|
| But retailers have studied that this trick isn't going to
| last because not everyone wants to buy candy bars in bulk,
| and they won't spend more than $3 for a single candy bar,
| which means if it goes any higher they won't by any candy
| bars at all.
| 9rx wrote:
| The customer will only bear so much, though, so at some point
| the businesses that keep buying stock and raising prices will
| be left with stock that cannot be priced any higher, leaving
| it to be unloaded at a loss. That can be a far worse
| situation than not having any stock at all. Either way, it is
| an uncomfortable gamble.
| duxup wrote:
| Depends on the product and if your marketing is low prices do
| you want to be the one to first crank them up and get Trump
| all upset?
| teeray wrote:
| Not enough greed: Stockpile in a back warehouse and raise
| prices on the two or three items per day you allow on the
| shelves.
| mindslight wrote:
| Aliexpress is already displaying tariff-inclusive prices.
|
| A curious dynamic: A seller importing a container of cargo to
| Amazon (or other US warehouse) has to pay the tariffs up front
| while trusting that dear leader won't lower the tariff amount
| before they can sell them. A seller that ships directly from
| China has a committed purchase with cash in hand by the time
| the specific tariff needs to be paid. I can see this leading to
| drastically _less_ selection from US warehouses of long tail
| items that would otherwise sit around.
|
| Speculation: I wouldn't be surprised if Aliexpress (/Choice)
| charges sellers a fixed fee based on the current tariff rates,
| but still covers whatever the tariff ends up being when the
| item arrives at the port, to make it really straightforward for
| sellers. The kind of eat-it investment you get in a society
| working to build up institutions rather than tear them down.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| I think it will be both. Raising prices for some goods because
| of tariffs (and adding some percent for good measure and
| profit) while also discontinuing others. It may go like the car
| market where cheaper options are slowly being phased out and
| the focus goes to higher priced vehicles.
| jmyeet wrote:
| For many goods a 145% tariff is a ban for all intents and
| purposes and no different to a 100% tariff or a 200% tariff.
| This is just more evidence (as if we needed it) that the
| administration has no idea what they're doing.
|
| Certain goods are extremely high mark up. For example, clothing
| is typically 100-200% markup. So if you buy a $5 t-shirt and
| sell it for $15, the tariffed price is now ~$12. You may find
| retailers will sell that at $20, absorbing some of the cost on
| a temporary basis.
|
| Also, many such retailers have already sought to diversify
| their supply chains (eg buying clothing from Vietnam and other
| places).
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Prices never really came down after the COVID shortages, I
| really don't expect this round of shortage to be any different.
| Companies have a convenient excuse to jack up prices with the
| comforting lie that they'll go back down when shortages are
| over.
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| Seattle ports are currently empty, will be interesting to see if
| this holds true . https://seemorerocks.substack.com/p/port-of-
| seattle-empty-ze...
| thehoff wrote:
| I hate to be so cynical these days....but if this is true, that
| would mean a lot of dockworkers/longshoreman are out of jobs or
| not working right? Truck drivers, and who knows what other jobs
| are just not doing anything at this point?
| trymas wrote:
| I think there were already multiple posts on HN about this.
|
| Most recent I remember UPS firing 20 000 people.
|
| Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43835849
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This was because UPS let an Amazon delivery deal roll off
| that was not profitable.
|
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1090727/00010907272
| 5...
|
| https://about.ups.com/us/en/newsroom/press-
| releases/financia...
| wavefunction wrote:
| UPS said it was because shipping volumes at Amazon are
| down, so it's not-profitable because shipping-volumes are
| down. lol
| rdtsc wrote:
| > I hate to be so cynical these days....but if this is true,
| that would mean a lot of
|
| But since we're being cynical, is importing stuff just to
| keep the port workers busy a good idea?
| louthy wrote:
| Because that's the only reason things are imported?
| rdtsc wrote:
| No but it's presented as the major problem to solve.
| There are lot larger issues at play and if keeping pork
| workers buys is the goal, then we should have them load
| and unload empty boxes /s
| profmonocle wrote:
| I don't think OP was specifically stating we need to save
| these _specific_ jobs, rather they were pointing out the
| interconnected nature of the economy. Less importing
| hurts the workers in those industries. Taking that
| further, it will hurt businesses near the ports where the
| workers may have gotten lunch, etc. etc. etc. That 's how
| recessions look at a microeconomic scale.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > rather they were pointing out the interconnected nature
| of the economy. Less importing hurts the workers in those
| industries.
|
| Well I agree with that phrasing however the OP said it
| as:
|
| > to be so cynical [...] that would mean a lot of
| dockworkers/longshoreman are out of jobs or not working
| right?
|
| That leads to a different interpretation and sounds like
| something else than what you said (which I agree with).
| thehoff wrote:
| I didn't mean we should keep importing to keep people busy.
| I'm sure that whatever was coming through those ports was
| ordered by a large number of companies/individuals.
|
| Sure, if we were in a downturn it would slow but not come
| to a standstill.
|
| From this article "Even during the COVID nonsense, the
| supply chain did not experience THIS kind of sudden shut
| down."
| optimalsolver wrote:
| It's not a downturn, it's a trade war, complete with
| effective blockade.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > I didn't mean we should keep importing to keep people
| busy. I'm sure that whatever was coming through those
| ports was ordered by a large number of
| companies/individual
|
| Sure but you were being cynical and presented port
| workers not having having thing to unload as a major
| issue to worry about. In the whole scheme it seemed like
| not the first problem to solve.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, probably. Lose skilled, trained workers to another
| industry and it may be tough to get them back later on when
| you need them again.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Yes, probably. Lose skilled, trained workers to another
| industry and it may be tough to get them back later on
| when you need them again.
|
| I love it! If that's the case, then it's easily solved,
| just ship empty cardboard boxes back and forth to/from
| Hawaii. The workers can diligently load and unload them,
| and then load them right back. The truck drivers can do a
| few loops around Los Angeles even to keep up their
| training.
|
| That that kind of happened during a phase of the Soviet
| Union's economic development. The economic success of a
| branch was measured by the amount of resources consumed
| and the allocated work done. So they had started building
| large couches and started running empty trains back and
| forth to consume wood or fuel and add up "miles driven"
| to their ledger. We can do the same /s
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Or... undo the change that caused a _temporary_ shock.
|
| By all means, retrain the blacksmiths in the early
| 1900s... but this isn't that sort of situation. We'll
| need the port workers again.
| duxup wrote:
| > just
|
| Well we don't import things to just do that.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Sure, but it's presented as the major problem here. There
| are other problems to worry about at that scale
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| No, but we're not just importing stuff because it keeps
| port workers busy. We import stuff because there is demand
| for it, and port workers' labor generates many multiples of
| profitable business activity downstream.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Dockworkers, logistics, truck delivery drivers, warehouse
| workers, etc.
|
| On the other hand, I guess it might be a great time for small
| shops and businesses that produce low to medium tech stuff-
| from crafts, clothing and furniture to electronics. Even if
| the country's going to suffer they should profit handsomely
| (which is not a bad thing per se).
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| Except those businesses relay heavily on imported
| materials. For example, no one is weaving cotton into
| fabric in the US at any scale.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Well... it's the best time to start? I guess that's what
| the MAGA Sun is hoping for.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Who's going to invest in a business that's only
| profitable as long as we keep these insane tariff level
| up and will take several years to spin up? (Plus where
| are they going to get the machines to do the actual work?
| Those are being tariffed too!)
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I don't know. Maybe MAGA Sun knows.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Yea, the bank is just going to love to hand out money
| with the amount of political and economic uncertainty
| injected into the system....
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| If the bank can not finance your stuff maybe Trump knows
| some people who can borrow you money? On preferential
| conditions, of course... who knows, maybe he gets into
| loan business himself.
| Aurornis wrote:
| It's actually not. If you're starting a business right
| now with the goal of selling to customers all over the
| world, setting up shop in America is not looking good.
| You'd pay exorbitant tariffs on inputs and machines.
|
| It's better to manufacture out of the country and let US
| consumers eat the tariff cost on import while keeping
| your operations efficient outside of the US tariff zone.
|
| It's an extraordinarily poorly planned policy.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's not what MAGA world wants though. They want
| products made here, sold here, bought here. MAGA world
| does not care about the rest of what the world's people
| do. If they want to buy our stuff, great, but then blame
| other governments for taxing American products like
| there's no blame to share.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Sure, but in that case, tariffs on finished goods are the
| way to go. You'll first recover the assembly business and
| then over time you could reshore more of the inputs.
|
| But like, it's not the 1950s anymore, basically every
| product consists of parts from all over the world.
|
| You can't unpick that in 90 days.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Well... what can I tell you. Talk to your president
| regarding dismantling your country? It's not difficult to
| figure out that I'm being sarcastic.
|
| What I'm saying is: the problem sits in the white house.
| Someone wrote:
| > If you're starting a business right now with the goal
| of selling to customers all over the world
|
| If you do that now in the USA, there's a fairly large
| risk that your exports will be taxed, and, with exports
| to the USA tanking, there's excess production in the rest
| parts of the world, so prices will go down outside the
| USA, at least temporarily.
|
| = If you're starting a business in the USA today, you
| should only aim for the domestic market.
| throw310822 wrote:
| > with the goal of selling to customers all over the
| world
|
| No, I think you're missing the point. This is not to
| create world-class companies, capable of selling abroad.
| This is to inject money and optimism in small, local,
| antiquated businesses that have been long priced out of
| any competition with the rest of the world.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Cool, so in a year or three the fabric factory would be
| up and running. Oh wait, we need to first build a factory
| for the machines we need in the fabric factory...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Well... that's exactly what I mean. But you guys have
| chosen a president.
| _joel wrote:
| Even their hats are made in China.
| zelda420 wrote:
| Unfortunately the largest cotton producing country is
| china, followed by India.
|
| My grandparents actually worked and met at a denim
| factory in west Texas which was renowned for its cotton
| production. Growing up I remember giant cotton fields
| which have all been replaced with strip malls and sprawl.
|
| It's going to be a multi-year project at the very least.
| And even then probably still cheaper to make clothes in
| Vietnam.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > It's going to be a multi-year project
|
| But that's what MAGA wants and Trump clearly, like Putin,
| doesn't want to go anywhere so maybe start now? I can
| see, like you, how tragically comedic this situation is.
| esseph wrote:
| Won't happen.
|
| Takes years, decades to build or rebuild new industries.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > On the other hand, I guess it might be a great time for
| small shops and businesses that produce low to medium tech
| stuff- from crafts, clothing and furniture to electronics.
|
| Absolutely not. All of the small businesses I know are
| getting crushed by tariffs.
|
| Electronics especially. With 125% tariffs on everyone from
| China, prices just exploded.
|
| Even domestic PCB manufacturers prices and lead times have
| shot up due to demand.
|
| It's extremely bad. I don't think people realize how
| devastating this is to company that couldn't amass huge
| inventories prior to tariffs arriving and can't lobby the
| Trump administration for an exemption.
| throw310822 wrote:
| I didn't mean that this is going to be a net positive or
| even better than disastrous. I'm just saying that if you
| already have a small business in the US making stuff that
| was hard to sell locally given the cheaper competition
| from abroad, people will have no choice but come to you.
|
| > Even domestic PCB manufacturers prices and lead times
| have shot up due to demand.
|
| Exactly this, I bet those PCB manufacturers are quite
| happy. Some of their employees might get the idea of
| setting up a new business, too.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >I didn't mean that this is going to be a net positive or
| even better than disastrous. I'm just saying that if you
| already have a small business in the US making stuff that
| was hard to sell locally given the cheaper competition
| from abroad, people will have no choice but come to you.
|
| Unless those businesses have inputs that rely on
| China...which many do, those guys are going under.
|
| >Exactly this, I bet those PCB manufacturers are quite
| happy. Some of their employees might get the idea of
| setting up a new business, too.
|
| Those US PCB manufacturers didn't care for that business
| before, they focus on getting fat government or
| industrial contracts. The reason China was so consumer
| focused was because they have so much capacity that they
| must be friendly to my dinky $5 order. Furthermore
| consider that with 1.4 billion people, there are _so
| many_ engineers that its extremely cutthroat. You then
| have a scenario where they assign an engineer to look at
| my dinky little $5 order because they can.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| If anything it will be very short term. Nobody knows where
| this is going so it would be suicidal for small businesses
| to scale up. Large companies have the reserves but little
| guys don't. I am very worried that this will lead to
| another dying of small businesses like happened during
| COVID.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It depends what sort of demand there is for your product.
| If it's an essential and you can bring it in at a good
| price, your business might jump. If it's discretionary and
| is the sort of thing people postpone buying due to
| recession, not so much.
| perihelions wrote:
| But, China itself is automating away most of those jobs. It's
| a stark difference between Chinese and Western--just look at
| the phraseology we're using, without thinking about it: "out
| of jobs"; in China's zeitgeist they wouldn't say they _lost
| jobs_ to technology, they say they _" saved 80 percent of
| manpower"_ [0].
|
| [0] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202312/1304443.shtml ( _"
| China's first self-built fully automated dock enters
| operation in Qingdao, Shandong Province"_ (2023))
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Because their centralized government seems to have a
| purpose other than gaining power and wealth.
| 9rx wrote:
| Even where power and wealth is the sole purpose, "saving
| labor" to allow them to move into new jobs with higher
| meaning to your power/wealth would be your default take.
| "Job loss" is the position only when you've stopped
| innovating and can't imagine that there is anything else
| people can do.
| philipallstar wrote:
| It's just people commentating differently depending on
| what "team" they think the target of the comment is on -
| people who think socialism is probably a good idea, but
| bemoan any automation done by private industry that
| causes job losses. However they will love China's
| efficiency doing the same thing.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| What do you think gaining power and wealth looks like? To
| me the Chinese central government seem hyper-fixated on
| it and it is working out well for them. Making strategic
| dual-purpose investments is directly aligned with gaining
| power and wealth.
| ebruchez wrote:
| True or not, be aware that "The Global Times is a daily
| tabloid newspaper under the auspices of the Chinese
| Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the People's Daily,
| commenting on international issues from a Chinese
| nationalistic perspective." (Wikipedia)
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Chinese nationalistic perspective"_
|
| Yes, that was the point I tried to make. The story isn't
| the point; the _choice of language_ Chinese state media
| uses is the point.
|
| Can you even imagine the US government, under either
| party, boasting about eliminating tens of thousands of US
| longshoremen jobs?
| vaidhy wrote:
| They won't because it costs votes. Is it better for the
| US in long term that these jobs are automated?
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Pretty sure that the dockworker who is now unemployed, in
| China or in the US, isn't thinking "we saved 80% of
| manpower" but is more likely thinking "fuck, I lost my
| job."
|
| The dock owners, OTOH...
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Intermodal freight drayage industry, which is largely
| comprised of a thousands of very small and ineffocoently run
| mom and pop nepo-companies run dependent upon an open
| tolerance of very scammy business tactics extending temporary
| surcharges indefinitely, milking covid business relief loans
| to the fullest extent possible) in order to survive, is going
| to experience a mass die-off if this tariff war lasts another
| 6 to 9 months.
| juujian wrote:
| Can't wait to find out...
| xyst wrote:
| > Remember what I told all of you about stocking up on stuff
| and arbitraging it later once the shelves were emptied?
| Well...we're just about there.
|
| Price gouging is so hot rn...
| razepan wrote:
| This SS post is fear porn. The Seattle Times article they link
| to at the bottom of their post gives actual numbers, not just
| vibes based on what poster can see with their binoculars.
|
| "Data from the Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, an industry
| association, shows the number of arriving container ships
| berthing at Seattle and Tacoma terminals from April 1 to April
| 24 was down 12% compared with the same period in 2024."
|
| Make no mistake this is bad, but "Port of Seattle EMPTY - ZERO
| Inbound Ocean Container Ships" is some straight up bullshit.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Trump only announced the tariffs on April 2, and the crossing
| takes weeks, and some traffic will left later than that
| having gambled that it'd be undone in transit. (Some of it
| was!)
|
| The stat for "April 1 to April 24" is likely to be different
| than the stat on April 27th alone. Both may be true.
|
| The port _does_ look pretty empty on https://www.marinetraffi
| c.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-122.373/c...
|
| Your stat also includes Tacoma, a close but different port.
| The Port of Seattle isn't _quite_ empty, but numbers... aren
| 't awesome.
|
| https://www.king5.com/article/news/verify/what-we-can-
| verify...
|
| > Northwest Seaport Alliance Port of Seattle Commissioner,
| Ryan Calkins, said the future does not look as good. "The
| last forecast I saw was forecasting out over the next three
| months, and each month was forecasted to be down around 25%
| per month," Calkins said. The Seaport Alliance said some
| ships are coming in with less cargo than anticipated. In some
| cases, it is 30% lower.
| asah wrote:
| Port of LA: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/cente
| rx:-118.168/c...
|
| NJ: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-74.1
| 48/ce...
| polyomino wrote:
| lies, source: I looked out my window
| jjulius wrote:
| >Seattle ports are currently empty...
|
| At the time of my response, there are five container ships in
| Eliot Bay, and a large container ship, along with a smaller
| container ship that just arrived, docked at Harbor Island (the
| primary port in question).
|
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-122.338/c...
| flustercan wrote:
| I am literally looking at a port with many containers and a
| fully loaded ship waiting to unload more containers at the port
| of Seattle right this second.
|
| (based on other replies I guess I'm not the only one in Pioneer
| Square lol)
| taylodl wrote:
| This could get _really ugly_ when the shelves start going empty.
| This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in
| comparison.
| thehoff wrote:
| FTA: Maybe not empty but less choice and alternatives not
| necessarily what you're looking for.
|
| "I don't see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online
| when we're buying. But if you're out looking for a blue shirt,
| you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that's not
| yours. So we'll start seeing less choice on those shelves
| simply because we're not getting the variety of goods coming in
| here based on the additional costs in place. And for that one
| blue shirt that's still left, you'll see a price hike," Seroka
| said.
| taylodl wrote:
| Markets don't work that way. Supply is tuned to demand. When
| the supply is artificially constrained while the demand
| remains constant, it further strains already limited
| supplies, leading to empty shelves and rising prices. This is
| a fundamental principle of market economics. It's important
| to understand how these dynamics operate to grasp the broader
| implications of reduced imports from China.
| pixl97 wrote:
| In addition tik-tok/insta are having post after post
| warning people that the shelves are going to be empty which
| tends to feedback into itself.
|
| If you were going to buy 1 of X normally if you think X may
| be out for sometime you may end up buying 2-4 of X which
| will run the shelves out very quickly when 10-15% of
| purchasers do that unexpectedly. Other people see the
| shelves emptying and buy more too.
|
| Going to be messy.
|
| All I have to say is imagine if Biden did this, what the
| news would be saying.
| philipallstar wrote:
| I'd imagine they'd be saying, "Why haven't we seen Biden
| in over 100 days?"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > All I have to say is imagine if Biden did this, what
| the news would be saying.
|
| Give it a few years. They'll say he did it.
|
| "Why do you think Barack Obama wasn't in the Oval Office
| on 9/11?" "That, I don't know. Would like to get to the
| bottom of that."
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPfRGJRMbN8
| slashdev wrote:
| > All I have to say is imagine if Biden did this, what
| the news would be saying.
|
| Surely you don't mean to imply the media treated Biden
| less favorably than Trump?
| Retric wrote:
| Aggregate media bias across TV/Radio/Newspapers is
| interesting because both the direction and scale matters.
| Of course bias is only part of the story, do an
| objectively terrible job and you get more negative
| stories overall.
|
| As a concrete example a great deal of left leaning media
| was very critical of Biden running for reelection and
| especially waiting that long to pull out. You almost
| never see that kind of thing from right leaning media
| outlets.
|
| So, yes overall media bias favors Trump not because more
| outlets favor him but because the ones that do heavily
| favor him. Far left media is simply a more niche market
| than far right media. Mother Jones for example is well
| known but only pulls in ~16 million$ / year and even they
| where critical of Biden.
| newfriend wrote:
| NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS are not niche. They
| all ran cover for Biden until the debate made it too
| obvious. They were not "very critical". They are,
| however, extremely critical of anything Trump does.
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| I wouldn't say extremely critical of Trump. He brings
| half of it on himself. Simply reporting what he says and
| does that makes him look incompetent is not being
| particularly critical.
| slashdev wrote:
| The media has been extremely critical of Trump. Sometimes
| deserved, sometimes not. But impossible to deny the bias.
| Retric wrote:
| A neutral stance isn't an uncritical stance.
|
| It's undeserved praise vs undeserved damnation that
| signifies a non neutral position.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The media is also extremely critical of shooting yourself
| in the face.
|
| Is that bias? Or sensible?
| Retric wrote:
| You can't ignore scale of bias here.
|
| CNN and Fox don't come close to canceling each other out
| because Fox is way to the right and CNN is more subtle.
| -2 + 4 is not zero.
|
| Similarity Fox viewership is 3 million viewers in
| primetime vs CNN at 1/6th those numbers.
| i80and wrote:
| At least for the 2024 election, I find it difficult to
| believe one could come to any other conclusion with all
| the rampant sane-washing that NYT, WaPo, etc. engaged in
| guntars wrote:
| Ah, yes, the difference between taking two slices at a
| pizza party because you fear it might run out vs taking
| none because you fear it might run out.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > If you were going to buy 1 of X normally if you think X
| may be out for sometime you may end up buying 2-4 of X
| which will run the shelves out very quickly when 10-15%
| of purchasers do that unexpectedly.
|
| There are enough people who buy 0 of X normally, but if
| they think there might be stockouts, will visit every
| store in their area and buy 100 of X so they can scalp
| them and make a buck off their neighbors.
| everforward wrote:
| I think the above quote is accounting for both constrained
| supply and reduced demand from rising prices. Vendors
| consolidate their product lines to remove redundant (ish)
| offerings due to reduced demand and the new difficulties in
| managing supply chains. I.e. a shirt may only come in 3
| colors instead of 10, and it may be harder to get the
| popular color because vendors are less likely to keep a
| large stock in warehouses.
|
| It doesn't violate market dynamics that I can see, though
| I'm far from an expert.
| skybrian wrote:
| One possible complication is that there's quite a lot of
| waste that's tolerated in pursuit of fashion and variety.
| (For example, Ross Dress For Less specializes in
| liquidating excess inventory.)
|
| So I wonder how that plays out? My guess is that retailers
| take fewer risks when ordering, sticking with products that
| they know they can sell, even if prices are higher.
|
| But they will still guess wrong sometimes.
| treis wrote:
| There's a lot of levers and people to squeeze along the
| way:
|
| Currency Manipulation to relatively increase Chinese
| manufacturing income
|
| Relocating manufacturing based on tariffs
|
| Retail margin
|
| US based design & engineering of products
|
| Advertising and other marketing activities
|
| Depending on the product some will be passed onto
| consumers. But for something like Nike's it's probably more
| like fewer shoe designers, Footlockers, less advertising,
| smaller contracts to athletes, more manufacturing in non-
| China countries, and so on. Everyone is going to take a bit
| of a bit and it's probably not going to be super noticable
| to any one part.
|
| No reason to expect empty shelves. Higher prices for stuff
| that can't be moved out of China. Sure. But it's a tariff,
| not an embargo.
| daveguy wrote:
| Currency manipulation - No. Inflation concern.
|
| Relocation of mfg - years long process won't help the
| shelves or the prices.
|
| Retail margin - yeah... retail will balance price hikes
| to avoid hitting profits with not pricing too high to
| further reduce demand. This is just one of the reasons
| prices will go up. It will reduce the demand to less
| efficient and profitable levels, but won't increase the
| supply. Shelves will be sparsely filled with more
| expensive items.
|
| US based engineering and design -- analogous to mfg. Not
| a near term solution.
|
| Advertising -- it doesn't matter how much you tell people
| to go buy shit if they don't have money and/or the prices
| are too high.
|
| Why are you still apologizing for Trump's absolutely
| incompetent policies?
| XorNot wrote:
| It takes exactly 1 "bare shelves" post on social media to
| kick off panic buying which cascades.
|
| In fact it doesn't take much of a change in regular buying
| habits to cause that it it's all aligned in the same
| direction.
|
| i.e. a chunk of the toilet paper "shortage" can just be every
| customer suddenly buying one more pack that day "just to be
| on the safe side". Your local supermarket isn't expecting
| that, so the shelves still clear out that day - then the last
| person snaps a pic for social media....
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, my Great Aunt and her friends would coordinate their
| purchase of sugar for making preserves each year w/ the
| local grocer --- while each of them could have bought all
| they needed at once, his stocking couldn't accommodate
| that, so everyone would let him know when they would start,
| and stop, buying a 5 lb. bag each week for each year's
| preserves.
| rc5150 wrote:
| It's that one person on the highway driving just a little
| too fast and a little too close to the person in front of
| them, then they tap on their brakes and it starts the chain
| reaction of 3 hours of bumper to bumper rush hour traffic.
| croes wrote:
| So I look for shirts and only find pants.
|
| Not an empty shelf in the literal way but empty on my demand
| lazide wrote:
| Which will cause a significant revenue issue for the
| retailer.
|
| And depending on how much you've thought ahead, a
| significant supply chain issue for you.
|
| Notably, this is _really_ going to screw everyone using JIT
| supply chains.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This guy is not pricing in panic and irrational behavior.
| People do the dumbest shit when supplies start getting low
| and the news is non-stop talking about shortages.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Honestly I doubt that shelves will be empty. Retailers are
| ordering less stuff from China because they're predicting
| that demand will go down when the price is higher. If
| retailers were marking stuff up roughly 100% and take the
| same markup (in absolute terms), everything from China will
| go up about 70%, and people will simply not be able to afford
| to buy as much stuff.
| minitoar wrote:
| No. The price insensitive shoppers will buy everything and
| the shelves will be empty.
| SwamyM wrote:
| Genuine question but how likely is that to happen?
|
| The media doesn't seem to be doing a good job articulating what
| the (likely) real world impact is going to be. I keep hearing
| how other countries are negotiating but when you look into the
| details, there is nothing of substance actually happening.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Well every time they speculate people pounce on them for
| being wrong, lying, fake news, etc.
|
| We will see!
| duxup wrote:
| I don't think the media really knows what will happen. Trump
| randomly decides to lift tariffs and any prediction is off.
| brookst wrote:
| The specifics of predictions may change, but the supply
| chain shock doesn't just evaporate. Trump could transform
| into a 100% rational, economically wise leader today and
| the impacts of the past few months' insanity would still be
| felt for years. Those bullets are already in flight and
| can't be recalled.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Even if the future of the tariffs themselves were at all
| predictable many outlets are allergic to any connecting of
| dots. I saw an article from The Hill just yesterday that
| took the line that the RTO mandate for federal workers was
| an actual attempt to "improve productivity" at face value
| without an ounce of push back in an article about how
| poorly the RTO is going.
|
| The big outlets are terrified to get on this admin's bad
| side because their current business wants to do a lot of
| mergers which have to be approved and the administration
| can tie those up for years on a whim so they're already
| lying down.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| Or he doesn't lower them randomly, but in response to other
| countries lowering their own tariffs and other
| protectionist measures against the US, resulting in the
| more "balanced" trade which, whether we agree with it or
| not, has been the goal all along.
|
| But yes, whatever the reason, the situation could change
| too quickly for safe predictions. In 2020, the US economy
| had recovered from the massive disruptions of the Covid
| lockdowns by Q4. There were shortages of toilet paper and
| eggs for a while, then there were surpluses and sales for a
| while, and then it smoothed out.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > but in response to other countries lowering their own
| tariffs and other protectionist measures against the US,
| resulting in the more "balanced" trade which, whether we
| agree with it or not, has been the goal all along.
|
| That is just one of the many, often conflicting, goals
| cited by the administration, and doesn't make sense on
| its face: the reason we have a trade deficit with most
| countries has nothing to do with them tariffing our goods
| or taking other protectionist measures.
| kergonath wrote:
| > in response to other countries lowering their own
| tariffs and other protectionist measures against the US,
| resulting in the more "balanced" trade which, whether we
| agree with it or not, has been the goal all along.
|
| If _that_ is the goal, then it's a terrible way of doing
| it. And also inflationary.
| taylodl wrote:
| More concerning: I don't think the administration really
| knows what will happen and I lack confidence in their
| ability to appropriately handle any fallout.
| chunky1994 wrote:
| This is a good discussion around the supply chain issues that
| will likely be happening: https://youtu.be/-dgHWv-Dh6Q?t=1370
|
| Ryan runs Flexport which is a supply chain company so its
| from the "source" if you will.
| taylodl wrote:
| I'm in the same boat as you, trying to figure out the impacts
| of all this. We're hearing reports that the ports are empty,
| and we know the CEOs of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot
| recently visited Trump to warn him of empty store shelves.
| The fact that these key ports are seeing reduced shipments
| corroborates their warning.
|
| Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic
| Council, said just yesterday that he doesn't believe any
| shelves will be empty due to retailers planning ahead for the
| supply disruption--directly contradicting what the CEOs of
| those retailers had warned Trump just a few days earlier.
|
| I have serious concerns about the competency of this
| administration. The CEOs of major retailers have a vested
| interest in understanding supply and demand and have intimate
| knowledge of supply chains and retail channels. If they say
| shelves are going to be empty, then you can take it to the
| bank that shelves are going to be empty.
|
| Everything is pointing to shelves being empty. What happens
| after the shelves start going empty is what has me concerned.
| It could be a minor issue, or it could lead to mass panic. My
| concern is that I have no confidence in this administration's
| ability to resolve any issues that may arise due to their
| actions. They're making the mess and are expecting us to
| clean it up after them.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| the question is which shelves. Not ALL shelves. only 13% of
| our stuff comes from China. they might run out of toys and
| electric shavers but there will still be a lot left to buy.
| taylodl wrote:
| As I've said elsewhere, that's not how markets work.
| Supply is balanced with demand. Disrupting supply while
| keeping demand constant will result in an increase in
| prices and less stock available to purchase. Add in
| irrational hoarding when people see fewer things
| available, and we could have a real problem on our hands.
| This isn't even addressing the fact that not everything
| coming from China are items available for immediate sale;
| many are components used in other products. If shelves
| don't go empty, it's likely to be the result of the price
| of everything increasing to quell demand.
| dgfitz wrote:
| As long as it isn't food. Heard a quote once (Last of US
| maybe?): humanity is always about 3 missed meals away
| from riots." In reality its probably more like 6-10, but
| the details aren't important. It doesn't seem like there
| will be food scarcity, but perhaps there could be. I'm
| sure there will be less food diversity, which stinks, but
| that is a different conversation. People will still eat.
|
| As for toys, most kids don't play with a plastic toy for
| more than like, 3-10 hours of its existence and then it
| rots on a shelf or in a drawer until is eventually ends
| up in a landfill. I'm not going to miss that. I'm sure
| that someone will point out important things that china
| makes dirt cheap and I'm sure they'll be right. I
| personally don't care if clothing options are limited or
| plastic toys are scarce. The US will not implode.
|
| It really seems like china has more to lose than we do,
| but because they're a communist country they can just
| deploy troops to quell uprisings. Tiananmen Square comes
| to mind. So we play this game of chicken and the media
| screams that they sky is falling.
|
| Of course the Walmarts and Amazons of the world care,
| most of what they sell is plastic shit and clothes. I
| have little sympathy for them.
| dakr wrote:
| You didn't cite a source there, but aside from finished
| products, American companies that make things
| domestically source many materials from China. I remember
| a few years ago a news story about a company that makes
| crab pots being impacted because the steel wire they use
| was imported from China. There are a lot of secondary
| impacts.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| It's already happening for certain products, but we don't see
| it yet. The shelves lag a couple months behind the actual
| purchases. For example, you are Walmart and buy a bulk order
| of something from China. The order processes a couple days
| later, then it sits and waits to be shipped for days lets
| say. It gets in the ship and takes 2-3 weeks to get here.
| Then it takes a couple days to be unloaded. Then it needs to
| get trucked to the main distribution center. Then it's
| packaged/processed and shipped to intermediate warehouses.
| Then from there, shipped to the store, sits for a few days-
| week then gets put on shelves.
|
| Even worse is that depending on the product, you might not
| even be able to place an order from the importer because they
| are completely unable to actually price the things with all
| of the uncertainty right now. A friend of mine is a hearing
| device retailer/distributor. He tried to order way more than
| he usually does a month ago to get ahead of this. The order
| was denied because they said they have no idea how to price
| any of it. So he's just going to have to wait an
| indeterminate amount of time which then makes it impossible
| for him to plan. He has to jack up his prices to cover future
| potential price increases and to be able to keep the lights
| on if they run out of stock.
| elbasti wrote:
| I asked a good friend that runs a multi-billion dollar CPG
| business that relies on China imports. His answer:
|
| > Almost guaranteed.
|
| > There are some categories (toys, pet stuff,computer
| accessories) where HUGE percentages of goods are made in
| china. Those shelves will be empty as soon as inventory runs
| out, which will be soon.
|
| > Shelves would get re-stocked once tariffs are removed and
| the ships start sailing again.
|
| > If it takes longer than 60 days from now, we're looking at
| 10s of thousands of bankruptcies. This will make covid look
| like a weekend at the ritz carlton. Biggest financial crisis
| since the great depression.
|
| My takeaway: People are not taking this NEARLY seriously
| enough.
|
| My tinfoil hat interpretation: The US govt knows how serious
| this is, and they know that if people panic (which honestly,
| they fucking should) it increases China's leverage
| substantially.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| >GPG business
|
| what does that mean
| elbasti wrote:
| Sorry, it was a typo (now corrected). I meant to type
| "CPG" (Consumer Packaged Goods). Ie, stuff they sell in
| supermarket aisles that is not food.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| Is there a sense of what products are actually at risk of not
| being in stock?
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Anything made of cheap plastic, like all kids toys and lower
| end electronics. Anything you wouldn't really pay double for.
| danans wrote:
| Anything low cost that requires a significant amount of
| manual labor to assemble. So clothes, toys, accessories, etc.
| tim333 wrote:
| There's going to be a lot of that turning up from other
| cheap countries like Vietnam, either made there of just
| stuff from China rebranded.
|
| I can see more problems with high tech stuff from China
| like the rare earths.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unfortunately the tariffs hit cheap places like Vietnam
| just as much or more. (while Vietnam is not perfect I
| still have hope that supporting them will reform them for
| the better. Until Xi took power in China I had the same
| hope for them though. Only time will tell)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| A lot of packaging is sourced from China.
|
| Things that wouldn't otherwise be a problem will become a
| problem. Potentially that includes bottles, tins, plastic
| food packaging, niche carboard boxes.
|
| Imports from China are ~40% of all US imports. Even a 10%
| drop would be difficult, and at current levels it's going to
| be more than that.
| woobar wrote:
| > Imports from China are ~40% of all US imports
|
| You mean 14%?
|
| https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports-by-
| countr...
| olddustytrail wrote:
| That's by value. I reckon since Chinese imported goods
| tend to be cheaper they probably make up a greater number
| than the value percentage would indicate.
|
| So I suspect 40% figure is how many items in a typical
| household are from China.
|
| Edit: in case that's not clear, here's an example:
|
| I have one item from the USA that costs $80. I have four
| items from China that cost $5 each.
|
| My imports from China are 20% of my spending. My imports
| from China are 80% of my goods.
| pkulak wrote:
| Trump will back down and lift the teriffs the second there are
| widespread consequences. He'll give some excuse, and his
| supporters will eat it up.
|
| That or he'll make so many deals with CEOs for political
| support and financial contributions that we won't even notice
| that a few smaller companies went out of business or pulled out
| of the US.
| Anon84 wrote:
| It may not matter. The ships that were supposed to be here,
| aren't. Even if the tariffs were lifted today, it would still
| take weeks for new orders to be shipped and delivered to the
| US. We're very much in the FO part of FAFO
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Unfortunately, that has only fueled this madness. Because
| there is a lead time for shipments, things didn't instantly
| go bad when the tariffs were announced, so many people
| mistakenly seem to believe there's no problem. A lot of
| people apparently need instant feedback to understand cause
| and effect.
| kergonath wrote:
| Which is quite surprising, because we went through
| several stress tests for globalised logistics in recent
| years with Covid, the Red Sea situation, and the Ukraine
| invasion. You'd think people would remember what happened
| 3 years ago.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| Read any of the "let's talk to a panel of people who
| voted for Trump and see how they feel now" articles that
| NYT, etc put out and you might be shocked at how short
| memories can be, and how little critical thinking many
| people are able to apply to the information available to
| them.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The flexport CEO, in the video shared in this discussion,
| predicts a back down on the basis that 80% of small business
| that rely on Chinese imports going bust if they continue.
|
| Even if they attempt to switch suppliers to avoid tariffs
| they'll be at the back of the line behind the bigger fish.
| cryptonym wrote:
| Trade war isn't real until shelves are empty and black market
| is blooming, like a regular war.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The "empty shelves" discourse is alarmist and honestly kind of
| annoying.
|
| Almost all of the food on the shelves is locally produced or,
| in the very least, not produced in China. Some foods may
| disappear or become more expensive but there'll really be no
| disruption in food supply.
|
| This will however affect markets dominated by Chinese goods,
| particularly clothing. Even here the effects will be somewhat
| mitigated by existing strategies to avoid China tariffs eg
| selling through Vietnam.
|
| Certain businesses will be hit hard. And that's really the
| biggest problem: cascading effects leading to an inevitable
| recession. Already, truckers who ship goods from ports are
| sitting around idle. We've cut tens of thousands from the
| government. More layoffs are to come.
| jghn wrote:
| I both agree and have been worried that this is overly
| reductive.
|
| As far as I can tell, literally nothing that I buy regularly
| is directly sourced from China. Or anywhere other than the US
| & neighboring countries. The vast majority of my groceries
| are locally sourced. And the vast majority of the rest come
| from expected regions, for instance San Marzano tomatoes from
| Italy. I do not regularly buy clothes, children's supplies,
| electronics, etc. Sure, I'll buy them once in a while but not
| with any regularity. My understanding is that the classic
| paper products famous from COVID shortages are made in the
| US.
|
| So with that in mind what you say is 100% true, at least for
| me. But I'm not so sure. Who makes the containers that my
| local milk is put into? Who makes the cans that my canned
| goods are using? What meta-products are being consumed by the
| local industries, such as the ones making my TP? I have a
| feeling the answer is scarier than it'd seem on the surface.
| But I don't know.
| Teever wrote:
| Where do the farmers that grow your food get their
| fertilizer and fuel from? Or the electronics and hydraulics
| in their tractors?
| jghn wrote:
| That's exactly my point.
|
| In other words, the threat model people should be
| worrying about isn't "bare shelves due to no goods from
| China to stock them" but rather "bare shelves because the
| entities who make the goods to stock them are missing
| critical components". And that's much harder for someone
| to predict what impact it'll have.
|
| I imagine that my daily life is very skewed away from
| direct impact from a Chinese embargo relative to other US
| citizens. And even still, I'm pretty sure it's going to
| be a problem.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Daily life is very skewed away from understanding how
| everything works. Supply chains, power grids, the
| Internet, large-scale farming - these are all complete
| mysteries to most people. They see the results but they
| have no idea how the sausage is made. (Or shipped.)
|
| It's one reason why this is happening at all. People not
| only don't know what makes a lightbulb turn on, they _can
| 't imagine_ the complexity of a power grid and how it's
| stabilised.
|
| They don't have the first idea how a phone works, or how
| much science, engineering, and fundamental research went
| into making it work.
|
| When they don't know any of this, they can't imagine any
| of it having a serious problem.
| nradov wrote:
| Most fertilizer and fuel used in US agriculture is
| domestically produced. We do import some fertilizer from
| China. For fertilizers manufactured using natural gas as
| a feed stock, the US is well positioned to expand
| production because we have cheaper and more abundant
| supplies.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| If people can't buy Chinese tomatoes, what kind of tomatoes
| do you think they're going to buy m? the same ones that you
| do!
|
| That means the prices of your tomatoes are going to go up!
|
| No one is going to be immune from these pricing increases
| from the tariffs.
| parineum wrote:
| Where do I buy Chinese tomatoes?
| nartho wrote:
| My best guess would be China
| jghn wrote:
| You're largely making the point I was raising.
|
| For your specific example though, I'm not so sure. As a
| counterexample, I buy my eggs direct from a local farm,
| not in a store. Neither the ease of availability nor the
| price of the eggs I buy have changed one iota over the
| last several months. And yet I see local friends posting
| pictures of empty egg shelves here and there on Facebook.
| My takeaway has been that the average person has no idea
| they can buy goods outside of a grocery store.
|
| So back to your point, I buy most of my tomatoes direct
| from local farmers. Unless people start buying from
| *them* it is fine.
|
| HOWEVER, if those local farmers can't get parts for their
| farm equipment or something like that, I'm just as
| screwed.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > My takeaway has been that the average person has no
| idea they can buy goods outside of a grocery store.
|
| I'm sorry, but most people live in cities or towns with
| their only reasonable access to food being via stores. It
| is one of the wonderful things that civilization has
| produced and I'm here for it.
| jghn wrote:
| I live in a city. Yet what I said is true.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Most people don't buy from small local farmers.
|
| When it comes to eggs and vegetables there are
| opportunities for city farms. So there might be some of
| that.
|
| But meat animals are much harder to "grow".
| tomcar288 wrote:
| i grow a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes in my backyard
| every year. I'd happily sell some to my neighbors.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Everyone here is worried about it from the American side, but
| China has motivation to settle this too, so they can continue
| to sell their enshitified plastic crap. It's not like most
| other wealthy countries want it, at least not any more than
| they are already buying.
| jmyeet wrote:
| China is holding pretty much all the cards here.
|
| First, it has a command economy. It's much more equipped to
| handle this in keeping factories afloat and people employed
| and housed.
|
| Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of
| those exports will continue even with tariffs. Some by
| diversified supply chains (eg "laundering" Chinese made
| goods through Vietnam) or the Chinese goods are so low cost
| that the tariffs will be paid (eg a milk carton represents
| a small percentage of the cost of a carton of milk).
|
| Third, the US will feel the inflationary effects. China
| will not.
|
| Fourth, if China needs to raise funds they can and will
| sell US treasuries, spiking yields, hitting the ability of
| the US to issue further debt as well as borrowing costs for
| homeowners and businesses.
|
| Lastly, the rest of the world is on China's side. This
| whole tariff fiasco may be the largest self-own in American
| history. Additionally, it's undoing generations of American
| soft power globally.
| dgfitz wrote:
| My only two thoughts there are, China needs to fill that
| 15% gap, and I don't know where they'll do it. China also
| doesn't want to sell too many treasuries least it upset
| their own financial stability in terms of purchasing
| power for their own citizens.
|
| The economic outlook in China isn't great right now. The
| US and China are playing a game a chicken, not sure who
| blinks first.
| kergonath wrote:
| That 15% is not going to go away overnight. Some of won't
| be sent to the US will be sold to the rest of the world
| instead. Possibly at a discount, so it is not ideal from
| the point of view of the Chinese government, but they are
| still well equipped to weather a temporary dip of 7% in
| their foreign trade.
|
| Nobody said that it would be painless for China. Just
| that
|
| 1- it will be less painful for China than the US
|
| 2- China is more resilient against this particular kind
| of stress because they have a command economy and have
| more control on the population.
|
| If the US blinks and caves, it does not matter whether
| China got a scratch, it's still going to win the war. And
| Covid taught us that something would need to be quite
| dire for China to blink.
|
| Also, it got lost in the noise, but right now there is
| still a blanket 10% tariff on anything that enters the
| US, and presumably these 10% can turn to much more when
| Trumps feels like it. It's not the US against China, it's
| the US against the world.
| parineum wrote:
| China is selling goods to the US because it's good for
| China. China not selling goods to the US is, therefore,
| bad for China. China doesn't care about how it affects
| the US but it does effect them negatively. They are
| "holding all the cards" except the one that says "The US
| must buy things from China" which is the one they care
| about.
|
| > Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of
| those exports will continue even with tariffs. Some by
| diversified supply chains (eg "laundering" Chinese made
| goods through Vietnam)
|
| Sure. 15% of their economy either just disappears, gets
| dramatically more expensive (laundering goods cost money
| too) or they have to reduce the prices so they can sell
| their extra 15% of goods to the people that are already
| buying them.
|
| Keep in mind that China is also only around 15% of US
| imports too so if 15% is negligible, it's negligible for
| the US too.
|
| > or the Chinese goods are so low cost that the tariffs
| will be paid (eg a milk carton represents a small
| percentage of the cost of a carton of milk).
|
| The tariffs are a percent. Just because the cost of a
| single item is low doesn't mean the cost of the tariffs
| paid by the company is going to be low. Low cost goods
| are profitable because they sell in bulk. It's going to
| hit their bottom line in the same way it hits everyone
| else. You've obviously not given much thought into that
| point.
|
| > Third, the US will feel the inflationary effects. China
| will not.
|
| China isn't immune to 15% of their economy disappearing.
| Selling of an extra 15% of the goods in your warehouse at
| discounted rates while you scale down your factory
| production 15% is bad.
|
| > Fourth, if China needs to raise funds they can and will
| sell US treasuries, spiking yields, hitting the ability
| of the US to issue further debt as well as borrowing
| costs for homeowners and businesses.
|
| That's a good way to permanently remove 15% of their
| economy.
|
| > Lastly, the rest of the world is on China's side. This
| whole tariff fiasco may be the largest self-own in
| American history. Additionally, it's undoing generations
| of American soft power globally.
|
| That's not relevant at all. What's relevant is who the
| American people are on the side of. I'm not saying Trump
| has unanimous support or anything but he doesn't care at
| all what Switzerland thinks of tariffs on the Chinese.
|
| Your #4 doomsday scenario is bad for the EU given the
| role that the US plays in their defense and as trade
| partners. WTO countries will be urging both sides to come
| to an agreement.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > China is selling goods to the US because it's good for
| China. China not selling goods to the US is, therefore,
| bad for China
|
| In the case of a hypothetical trade embargo or at least
| punitive tariffs, who would you rather be: the buyer of
| insulin or the seller of insulin? The seller can be
| propped up by the government or loans. The buyer? Well,
| they need insulin. There's a natural imbalance here.
|
| Us not buying Chinese goods has a ton of downstream
| effects like what if you need parts to repair trucks and
| those trucks are then out of service so can't haul stuff
| around?
|
| > China isn't immune to 15% of their economy
| disappearing.
|
| It won't disappear. It'll diminish. It'll get diverted
| through third countries. In some cases, the tariffs will
| be paid. China will have a reduction in exports. The US
| will have increased inflation, shortages and supply chain
| issues.
|
| > That's not relevant at all.
|
| It's 100% relevant. Everything is sentiment based. If the
| world is on China's side, then they'll look the other way
| when China buys oil and gas from sanctioned countries,
| for example.
| kolanos wrote:
| I see commentary like this frequently in the west, then I
| read financial analysis like this:
|
| > Goldman Sachs in its latest China forecast, reports
| China's GDP is about to fall off a cliff: the bank now
| expects China's Q2 GDP growth to crater to just 0.8% QoQ
| from 4.9% in Q1.
|
| [0]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/view-
| chinas-q2-gdp-grow...
| xienze wrote:
| > Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of
| those exports will continue even with tariffs.
|
| But I was told the ports were empty and the shelves would
| be bare. That implies almost all of that 15% being shut
| down, doesn't it?
| vaidhy wrote:
| US is 15% of China, but China is 40% of US imports..
| Maybe you are mixing up the countries?
| xienze wrote:
| No. The parent was saying that only a portion of China's
| 15% would fall off entirely. Meanwhile we have reports
| that the ports have become ghost towns due to tariffs.
| Doesn't that then imply that China's exports to the US
| have effectively halted?
| nradov wrote:
| China holds only a few percent of outstanding US
| treasuries. Selling those won't spike yields, nor will it
| be a sufficient revenue source for them to wait out a
| prolonged trade war.
| r053bud wrote:
| No, China doesn't need us at all. They are going to come
| out of this without a scratch. Everyone is getting this
| equation wrong.
| nradov wrote:
| Where is China going to sell their exports? There are
| limits to what Europe is able and willing to absorb.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"enshitified plastic crap"
|
| Cut the bull. Generally you get what you pay for. China
| does both. You can get crap for a penny but you can also
| get high quality stuff which costs more. Both made in
| China.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 'plastic junk' seems to be the latest MAGA talking point.
| parineum wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone saying that there's going to be no
| food. All reporting I've seen is that Walmart/Target shelves
| are going to be empty because of the glut of consumer goods
| they sell that are manufacture in China, ie, clothing, toys,
| electronics, etc.
| consp wrote:
| Isn't most clothing made all over asia? As in: some brands
| will be affected and others will not?
| parineum wrote:
| That's certainly true.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Consider that even for food that is produced locally, there
| are inputs (tin for cans, electricity, etc.) that is being
| negatively impacted by the tariff circus, unnecessarily.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I'd be fine if cheaply made plastic junk is gone from the
| shelves. Where are the environmentalists now? The ones who
| warned us to stop overconsuming? Their tribe conflicts with
| Trump so their refrain goes mute until a more convenient
| time.
| adamc wrote:
| I buy dish soap on a regular basis. Not sure where the soap
| is produced, but I would guess the bottles might be from
| China -- a lot of packaging is. Sure, there are some US
| companies that make bottles, but can they expand their
| capacity? Probably not quickly.
|
| I think there will be a lot of unintuitive effects from
| things like packaging.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This could get really ugly when the shelves start going
| empty._
|
| Retailers Fear Toy Shortages at Christmas as Tariffs Freeze
| Supply Chain:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/business/trump-tariffs-ch...
|
| _In a Toy Association survey of 410 toy manufacturers with
| annual sales of less than $100 million, more than 60 percent
| said they had canceled orders, and around 50 percent said they
| would go out of business within weeks or months if the tariffs
| remained. ... She had placed a large order of scooters to
| arrive for the summer. But the importer rerouted the shipment
| to Canada because it did not want to pay the tariff._
| rs999gti wrote:
| > the toilet paper
|
| I guess these US manufacturers will need to step it up:
| Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble, and Georgia-Pacific
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The feedstock for toilet paper (wood pulp) comes from Canada.
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-tariffs-on-canadian-
| lumber...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Paper is one of the things one should be least worried
| about.
|
| We source chips from Canada because it's marginally cheaper
| to source it from there. It's not like the US doesn't have
| a ton of sources of wood pulp. Canada just has bigger
| cheaper sources (comparing like for like quality).
|
| We also burn a lot of "less than ideal for paper" chips for
| energy rather than feed them into a paper mill, also for
| marginal cost per result reasons.
|
| Wood chips suitable for paper pulp are also hugely elastic
| in the same way that recycled metal is. Huge volume is
| either directed into the supply chain or not based on
| marginal price. The people making every wood product are
| choosing what do with their waste based on chip prices and
| energy prices. Even your local tree service is choosing
| what to chip and where to dump based on economic conditions
| and balancing act between relative prices.
|
| If you wanna be worried about something be worried about
| stuff we don't make much of in the US. Super high volume
| commodity widgets made from metal, all manner of
| electronics, etc, basically the kind of stuff where our
| only domestic capacity is super high dollar stuff to serve
| defense and aerospace.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Please provide citations for these assertions.
| everforward wrote:
| It's probably true, because I think wood pulp for paper
| doesn't have rigid requirements on type of wood, or size,
| or strength. There are also alternative materials if we
| had to, like hemp. There's probably a dozen others; I
| wouldn't be surprised if grass trimmings could be turned
| into toilet paper.
|
| The threat to lumber for building is a much greater
| concern because there aren't ready and price-comparable
| alternatives.
| wiether wrote:
| With raw material coming from other countries, probably.
| torton wrote:
| As we learned from COVID-19, manufacturers really don't like
| building new factories or even changing the tooling to
| support a different kind of product (such as commercial vs
| household toilet paper) for a short-lived surge in demand.
|
| An antifragile solution would be learning to use a bidet.
| selectodude wrote:
| I've seen all three begin short-shipping us, especially on
| cheaper brands.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Who is "us"? Do you work for a grocery store?
| selectodude wrote:
| I won't disclose my employer for obvious reasons but I
| work in supply chain.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| People seem to think, including very disturbingly our secretary
| of the Treasury, the companies maintain huge warehouses of back
| stock.
|
| That hasn't been the case since the mid-90s when the PC
| revolution started pushing out supply chain management
| software. If I recall correctly, Walmart was the innovator in
| this space in one of their key ways to gain economic advantage
| over other retailers was low back stock demand tracking
|
| On top of that the '90s was when free trade agreements came
| into Vogue and the supply lines and outsourcing of
| manufacturing cranked up into high gear.
|
| So as we saw with covid, any disruption to this a highly
| extended optimized supply chain results in massive disruption.
|
| I can't see how any massive new tariffs isn't going to
| essentially be a covid level or worse disruption to this entire
| supply chain
| antonvs wrote:
| > That hasn't been the case since the mid-90s when the PC
| revolution started pushing out supply chain management
| software.
|
| I worked on PC software for optimizing warehouse inventory in
| the mid-1980s. The system was designed by an applied
| mathematician and used by large national companies. Customers
| made substantial savings - double digit percentages of
| inventory cost.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Toyota is famous for inventing Just-in-Time production and
| logistics system:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System
| bluGill wrote:
| Yeah, it goes back to at least the 1950s. Different
| companies adopted it at different times, but by the 1980s
| most already had. Note that Just in time is not a single
| metric, with one correct level of inventory. Adopting it in
| 1950 doesn't mean the company isn't still finding more
| places to adopt it.
| jp57 wrote:
| HN should have a feature where you can tag a prediction to come
| back for review after some period of time.
| jdc0589 wrote:
| we need the reddit remindme bot
| kergonath wrote:
| No, we really don't. We don't need a bot bringing
| marginally positive value for a single person and shitting
| the bed, cluttering everything with stupid useless noise
| and bringing negative value for everyone else. "Be more
| like Reddit" is really not something HN should aspire to.
| If you like Reddit, it's ok to be both there and here.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Please let's not make this place any more like Reddit than
| it's already become lately.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| "Show HN: Automatic HN Prediction Market"
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Empty shelves are just one of the symptoms. The real pain will
| come from companies having to deal with increased taxes (that's
| what tariffs are) for Chinese components, decreased exports
| (counter tariffs, anti US sentiments), etc. and then their
| follow up to that would be using tools like layoffs, price
| increases, etc. Some of those companies might have to close
| doors and go bankrupt. If that happens a lot you get the ripple
| effect on banks via foreclosures of businesses and mortgages
| (like sixteen years ago).
|
| There are of course quite a few large US businesses being
| affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not
| happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate
| into shifts in political donations. Which, I'm sure is
| something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term
| elections get closer. That's a stick that can be (and probably
| already is) wielded that might produce results soonish.
|
| At least, I imagine the CEOs of GM, Ford, Boeing, etc. might
| have a thing or two to say about seeing China disappear as a
| market where they can do business to sell stuff or to source
| key components that they require for their own products. China
| was not being subtle rejecting delivery of a couple of new
| Boeing planes. And reductions in container traffic from China
| (which are the life blood of the US economy) are of course a
| very visible thing. And since container deliveries are critical
| for supply chains of most manufacturing that actually still
| happens in the US, that could get ugly really quickly.
|
| Worst case all this triggers a recession. Those are rarely
| predicted accurately until after they've happened. But the
| signs aren't great and wall street is definitely nervous. A few
| stocks crashing because investors start panic selling could do
| the job. We're not there yet, but it got close a few weeks ago.
| roughly wrote:
| > There are of course quite a few large US businesses being
| affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not
| happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate
| into shifts in political donations. Which, I'm sure is
| something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term
| elections get closer. That's a stick that can be (and
| probably already is) wielded that might produce results
| soonish.
|
| I sincerely hope you're right, but all initial evidence is
| the oligarchs kissing the ring, not pulling the strings.
| Maybe when it becomes obvious that they're not getting
| anything for all that abasement they change tacks, but
| nothing in the Trump era has suggested to me that these folks
| have the tiger by anything but the tail.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >all initial evidence is the oligarchs kissing the ring,
| not pulling the strings.
|
| It was _comical_ how quickly amazon back pedaled on showing
| tariffs transparently in pricing as soon as the whitehouse
| complained.
| roughly wrote:
| One thing that's been interesting (in a Ralp-Wiggins-
| esque "I'm in danger!" type way) to watch over the last
| few years is all the "end of history" types re-learning
| that Mao was right and that economic might only
| translates into real power when you use it to buy guns.
| Europe spent a decade trying to tie Russia into the
| global economy only to find all that cheap energy meant
| that when Russia walked into the Ukraine, they were on
| the wrong side of the ledger to throw their weight
| around. In the US, our oligarchs didn't realize how much
| they were relying on the fact that US government
| officials believed the same lies about the power of
| capital that they did, and were caught entirely off guard
| when Trump walked in, picked up the gun on the table,
| pointed it at them, and said "I'll take your wallet,
| please."
|
| There's a whole generation of neoliberals learning
| Littlefinger's lesson these days:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifaRhL95HUM - it's a
| shame the rest of us are stuck on this ride with them.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| To be fair, life's better when you don't have to rely on
| the guns. If you're willing to work together to make the
| pie bigger for everyone, peacefully, you get further.
|
| Which is why you have to occasionally knock the people
| willing to exploit the peaceful order, off.
| lazide wrote:
| Which takes guns. And back at square 1.
| otterley wrote:
| I don't know that it takes guns. If we moved to, say,
| ranked-choice voting and a multi-party system, the more
| extreme elements of our country would probably be
| sidelined.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Did you see the bill introduced the other day?
|
| H.R.3040 - To prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in
| elections for Federal office.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-
| bill/3040
| otterley wrote:
| I did not. Talk about a blatant attempt to power grab,
| though. Hopefully it never makes it out of committee.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| It still takes them.
|
| You need to present it as a choice: you either bring
| about ranked-choice voting and a wider range of political
| parties so that issues can be dealt with peacefully, or,
| face real consequences for attempts to block the efforts
| at peace.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| And if they feel sufficiently shut out of the political
| process they'll rely on their guns. If you think the US
| is immune from insurgent dynamics, please read more
| widely. I think you'd find it particularly worthwhile to
| look into the collapse of Yugoslavia, which also had a
| federal system.
| otterley wrote:
| Well, we did have a civil war some time ago! But given
| the gross imbalance of military capability between the
| state and the citizen, I'm not worried today about a
| successful violent overthrow of the USA.
| bregma wrote:
| A few smaller guns used judiciously will achieve that
| purpose. You don't need everyone using a tank in a
| Mexican standoff just to have peace.
| lazide wrote:
| _glances at the MAD stockpile_ I'm not sure that is
| really true, eh?
| roughly wrote:
| Completely agree. But I think something lost in this is
| how much violence the "end of history" state of affairs
| increasingly relied on to keep that "peaceful" context in
| place - among the reasons Russia walked into the Ukraine
| was that Russia considered the Ukraine to be its buffer
| against NATO, which it viewed as genuinely an existential
| threat. The Middle East has been in a state of war for 20
| years now, the US drug wars in Central and South America
| have had absolutely disastrous consequences, and the
| level of environmental destruction we've outsourced to
| other parts of the world would preclude a lot of our
| current economic practices if we tried to do them at
| home. Even in the US, the Mangione killing highlighted
| this - UHC was the absolute top in denying health care
| claims, an activity with actual deaths associated with
| it. Just because the power centers aren't threatened
| doesn't mean there's not violence present in the system.
| In the west, we've relied a lot on the fact that the
| majority of the people with guns have typically been
| further out in the periphery than us, and all those guns
| have been pointed at other people on our behalf - our
| peace is not everyone's peace.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| And the violence of the next system is going to be far,
| far greater.
|
| But the others will have their peace.
| geoka9 wrote:
| A nit: "Ukraine" (not "the Ukraine).
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18233844
| jpadkins wrote:
| is it not obvious the oligarchs control the globalist
| politicians and not the nationalists?
|
| Is it controversial to say that if you really wanted to
| "fight the oligarchy", your policy positions would be
| pretty similar to the America first agenda (sans social
| issues)?
| roughly wrote:
| I think it's impossible to understand the relationships
| here without really grokking that the MAGA set is both
| incompetent and incoherent. The movement is properly seen
| as an angry tantrum - a reaction to the state of the
| world, not a coherent ideology and plan for improving it.
| The coherent ideology and plan for improving it involves
| actually investing in domestic manufacturing, a strong
| push for labor rights and unions to make sure people are
| getting paid, a commitment to antitrust action, and, yes,
| protectionism of domestic industry (as a fun bonus,
| compare that to Biden's economic policies), but that's
| not what we've got here - we've got rage and anger and
| personal vendettas and wishful thinking as policy.
|
| This is what I mean when I say the oligarchs have the
| tiger by the tail - from the time of the Moral Majority
| through the evangelicals of Bush's era through the Tea
| Party through MAGA, the business wing of the republican
| party has been cultivating the populist wing as an
| electoral strategy. They've managed to muddy the water
| with enough "government bad, immigrant criminals, trans
| athletes" rhetoric that what you've got now is a party
| and a movement that can _feel_ that there's something
| wrong - stagnant wages, inaccessible health care, deaths
| of despair, and Jeff Bezos - but the right wing message
| machine still has enough of a hand on the wheel that they
| can't actually get their way to things like labor rights
| and social security and all the other stuff we came up
| with last time this kind of thing happened.
|
| Then you get Donald Trump, who well and truly does not
| give a shit about anything at all, and so he's absolutely
| fine to grab the wheel here and yank it hard into
| populism land, and now the oligarchs have a problem,
| because they've got a mafia boss at the head of an angry
| mob, and no part of that has any coherent ideology except
| Trump's crystal clear vision of people paying him a lot
| of money and treating him like a king, and now you've got
| tantrum as policy and no actual adults left in the room.
|
| So, yes, America First and the MAGA movement are,
| depending on the day and time, anti-oligarch, but they're
| anti-oligarch like a dog is anti-car - there's not really
| a _plan_ there, just a lot of noise and motion and
| probably some teeth marks, but I don't really think it's
| gonna work out great for the dog either.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Dictionary definition of oligarchy: "a small group of
| people having control of a country, organization, or
| institution."
|
| If you're "kissing the ring", you're not in control. The
| people with the ring are.
|
| To spell it out, the US is _not_ governed by a billionaire
| oligarchy.
| rotexo wrote:
| > _There are of course quite a few large US businesses being
| affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not
| happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate
| into shifts in political donations. Which, I 'm sure is
| something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term
| elections get closer._
|
| Maybe. It is possible, though, that we are now in a situation
| like in the third Nolan Batman movie where Tom hardy puts his
| hand on the rich guy's neck and says "do you feel in charge?"
| csomar wrote:
| > The real pain will come from companies having to deal with
| increased taxes (that's what tariffs are) for Chinese
| components
|
| In a sane world, that's what _targeted_ tariffs are. You don
| 't want to tariffs across the whole board because you might
| affect exporting manufactures whose prices will go through
| the roof and might experience disruption. It is kind of what
| is happening with auto tariffs now that there is a huge blow
| back but one wonder how many industries out there can't voice
| their concerns or are not aware of this.
| jgeada wrote:
| Any assumption that there is targeting or any sort of
| planning by the chaos goblins we currently have running
| this administration is long on hope and short on reality.
| lazide wrote:
| Well, they're targeting right at the jugular.
| robomartin wrote:
| I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you,
| without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in
| manufacturing across various industries for over thirty
| years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose
| nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe
| twenty at best.
|
| How do we compare the pain (and yes, some destruction) that
| we have to endure today against the devastation that is
| clearly in the horizon for both regions within a decade or
| two?
|
| To be sure, what's going on today should have been done
| twenty to thirty years ago. Doing this today is far more
| difficult and painful.
|
| I think Kevin O'Leary put it best: What we want a reasonably
| free markets. It isn't just about tariffs. It's about
| regulatory lockout, intellectual property and more.
|
| For example, India imposes as much as a 110% tariff on US
| cars and trucks. The list of such actions --which also
| included non-tariff rules-based restrictions-- is long. From
| China imposing up to 25% on our cars, autos, chemicals and
| food to the EU, Canada, Mexico and others following suit.
| Brazil collected over $800 million in retaliatory tariffs
| blocking US pharmaceuticals, autos and textiles.
|
| In other words, the relationship with hundreds of countries
| has been very one-sided for a long time. US industry needs to
| export to thrive, but if countries like Turkey impose 140%
| tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets are de-facto shut
| down.
|
| How long can any country survive this kind of inequity?
|
| So, yeah, this is a rough moment. I hope it is for the best.
| Everyone benefits from a more open and balanced market.
|
| And then, of course, there's one of the elephants in the
| room: Intellectual property theft.
|
| Going back to Kevin O'Learly:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkdor6_rw4
|
| https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=567065763062114
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFWWqbDwuw
|
| https://www.tmz.com/watch/kevin-o-leary-china-
| tariffs-04-09-...
| HFguy wrote:
| I think you do a good job of high-lighting the underlying
| problem.
|
| Which is not being discussed enough.
|
| And that the current situation can go on a long time but
| not forever.
| pbronez wrote:
| > the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft.
|
| Yup. China has been systematically stealing the IP of
| anything made in their country since forever. Companies
| kept falling for it because the potential market looked so
| big. Now BYD makes cars as good as Tesla and it's all
| #ShockedPikachuFace
| dmarlow wrote:
| Doesn't Tesla have an open patent philosophy? I've heard
| Musk say that if someone builds a better electric car and
| it causes the end of Tesla, he's fine with that.
| bluGill wrote:
| He has said that, but I haven't seen any legal paperwork
| to back it up.
|
| Not that is matters. Cars, including electric cars have
| been around for 100 years. There are very little
| important patents he could have. Sure there is a lot you
| can patent, but the vast majority is details that are
| trivial for any competent engineer to work around just
| using known prior art.
|
| The important patents are likely in batteries which Tesla
| doesn't develop. Or chargers, but again the important
| details come with the battery.
|
| TESLA might have some patents on the NACS connector and
| similar things. Those are easy to work around, but you
| wouldn't want to.
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| Are their shareholders fine with that?
| projectazorian wrote:
| > I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you,
| without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in
| manufacturing across various industries for over thirty
| years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose
| nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe
| twenty at best.
|
| I've now been around long enough to remember people saying
| this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing
| still happening.
| xienze wrote:
| > I've now been around long enough to remember people
| saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of
| manufacturing still happening.
|
| "Plenty" but still less overall than 10-20 years ago, 30,
| 40, 50 years ago. There's a quite clear trend to zero
| here.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| This graph of US manufacturing output in gross dollars
| suggests otherwise: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-
| metrics/countries/USA/uni...
|
| If you could explain why it's trending to zero when the
| dollar value of American manufacturing outputs keeps
| rising, I'd appreciate it.
|
| There are plenty of other charts that contradict you on
| the St Louis Fed FRED website.
| xienze wrote:
| > gross dollars
|
| So, not inflation adjusted. Also doesn't capture the mix
| of what's being produced, i.e., a shift towards only
| manufacturing high value items versus being more broadly
| diversified and manufacturing things along a range of
| price points. In other words, a complete hollowing out of
| our manufacturing base.
|
| Your same link shows $1.38T in 1997. Which is $2.77T
| today. In other words, DOWN in inflation adjusted terms
| from nearly 30 years ago.
| ianburrell wrote:
| "Data are in current U.S. dollars." Plus, the growth has
| been large enough to outpace inflation except for the
| last couple years.
|
| The percent of GDP has been dropping but that is just
| that GDP has been growing faster. Which means that the US
| has been doing more valuable things than making stuff.
| adamc wrote:
| Paul Krugman made this point in a podcast with Ezra
| Klein. People remember a time when manufacturing was 30%
| of the economy, but that will never return, because the
| economy grew far more than our appetites for stuff. His
| estimate was that even if it worked and jobs returned,
| you'd be talking about going from 10% of GDP to 12 or
| 13%.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > So, not inflation adjusted.
|
| All dollar values on that chart are adjusted for
| inflation.
|
| > Also doesn't capture the mix of what's being produced,
| i.e., a shift towards only manufacturing high value items
| versus being more broadly diversified and manufacturing
| things along a range of price points.
|
| The chart does not capture the trend you speak of,
| assuming it exists.
|
| > In other words, a complete hollowing out of our
| manufacturing base.
|
| That's not how I would put it, if you want to look at it
| through that lens, it's your right.
|
| I would say we manufacture things higher up the value
| chain and use the dollars we earn from making that stuff
| to import cheaper foreign commodities instead of
| manufacturing them here and using dollars to buy American
| made clothes and shoes and other commodity items at a
| much higher price than we can buy them from other
| countries.
|
| We also export services and receive dollars in return,
| this is much more lucrative that manufacturing imo.
| bluGill wrote:
| The only trend is the amount of labor in manufacturing.
| the US produces just as much or more than any other year.
| However we do it on far less labor.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Not sure how this comforts anyone. We need labor, there
| aren't enough spa management and pet groomer positions to
| build an economy upon. What good does it do for anyone
| that we manufacture more, if there aren't enough good-
| paying jobs to go around to support a broad consumer base
| for those same products you say are being manufactured
| without (much) labor?
|
| Why would any foreign nation even want to manufacture
| goods to ship here, if there's nothing much to buy with
| our currency? If our currency does devalue, we run the
| risk of not being able to import what we need, and not
| being able to afford to tool up to manufacture it
| domestically. And yet trends are clear that in many
| industrial sectors US manufacturing has already fallen to
| what might as well be zero.
| projectazorian wrote:
| > We need labor, there aren't enough spa management and
| pet groomer positions to build an economy upon.
|
| Is it your impression that spa management and pet care
| are the only working-class service jobs available?
|
| Most of the trades are categorized as service professions
| in the statistics. So is construction.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| You're expecting that in the coming months the demand for
| master plumbers will double or something? Or are you
| saying that the existing demand is already so high that
| it can do more than provide some fraction of one percent
| of the jobs that our nation of 300-million-ish needs to
| have a strong economy?
|
| I think we both agree that one of us has unrealistic
| impressions of the big picture here. When we regularly
| here of layoffs that affect hundreds and thousands of
| jobs, welders and electricians can't absorb those
| unemployed to any great degree. Nor all of the trades put
| together.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| But why do you expect manufacturing to do that? It's just
| not as labor intensive as it used to be, and if there's a
| recession demand for manufactured goods falls, resulting
| in layoffs.
| bluGill wrote:
| We need jobs for everyone for various reasons. However we
| do not need factory jobs for everyone. The manufacture
| more with less people means those other people can move
| on to other jobs. They can start another factory to make
| goods.
|
| There are plenty of jobs. Every person who isn't
| manufacturing is a person who can do something else. A
| modern car uses a lot more engineers. While we don't need
| many spa mangers, it is nice that spas exist and so some
| of those spa managers are needed.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Declining absolutely does not mean "clear trend to zero".
| There are a great many things which decline for a long
| time, but have a lower limit.
| xienze wrote:
| Bit pedantic there, aren't you? I suppose as long as a
| single factory is still open in the US we're doing just
| fine, it's not zero, right?
| dehrmann wrote:
| Why would the US and EU losing manufacturing be bad?
|
| > How long can any country survive this kind of inequity?
|
| What worries me more is that the US has been funding global
| military security through deficit spending funded by
| foreign investors (who got their dollars from US trade).
| We're cutting legs off that stool, so we might see more
| wars and a declining dollar, never mind fewer cheap
| imports.
| bluGill wrote:
| > Why would the US and EU losing manufacturing be bad?
|
| Because if they can't make thing you can win a war - just
| stop all their trade and then invade. When they are
| limited to stick and stone while you have guns war is
| easy to win.
|
| Of course in reality the US and EU are not in danger of
| losing all manufacturing, and their military leaders are
| will aware of this and so put extra effort into keeping
| some important manufacturing in the country. Politicians
| are generally (but not always!) aware of this and try to
| be friends with others who can make things you don't make
| locally.
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| > In other words, the relationship with hundreds of
| countries has been very one-sided for a long time. US
| industry needs to export to thrive, but if countries like
| Turkey impose 140% tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets
| are de-facto shut down.
|
| These comparisons (and conclusions of one-sidedness) always
| leave the greatest benefit the US has enjoyed: access to a
| massive labor force willing to do work most Americans
| aren't[1] at wages lower than are Legal in the US.
|
| [1] https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-
| manufacturing-empl...
| cduzz wrote:
| Whatever your hopes and dreams around domestic
| manufacturing, blanket tariffs capriciously imposed at
| random are unlikely to get any dream closer to reality,
| except perhaps the dream of total devastation of all
| manufacturing.
|
| Let's look at what an actual domestic manufacturer has to
| say about tariffs[1]?
|
| Oh, looks bad! Turns out, manufacturers import stuff, add
| value to it, and sell it for more money!
|
| Hopefully we'll get more cast iron plants in Cape Cod. I'm
| off to the mill!
|
| [1]https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump
| -tar...
| corimaith wrote:
| While there are more peaceful ways of rebalancing trade,
| unilateral tariffs would be able to rebalance things on
| the long term. The problem is that alot of people in HN
| think in terms in export-driven economy, when in reality
| the majority of USA's economy is consumption, it's the
| largest consumer in the world. Loosing access to foreign
| markets dosen't mean as much to USA as it does to the
| rest of the world loosing access to USA.
|
| Long term, manufacturers will come back or be created to
| grab all those customers. But for the rest of the world,
| it's much harder for suppliers who lost a massive chunk
| of their customers to suddenly find new customers beyond
| what's already existing. Creating demand is notoriously
| harder than increasing supply. And it dosen't help that
| the majority of other major economies are also export-
| based, so unless if some are willing to run deficits (and
| they won't), there's literally nowhere else to go other
| than a global recession. Developing countries are far too
| poor and would essentially be turned into captive markets
| bereft of industrialization.
|
| I don't agree with the implementation of Trump's
| policies, but this is going right back to Keynes'
| concerns about limitations of global trade balancing,
| it's a long time coming, and much of the blame does come
| back to the surplus economies that doubled down on
| manufacturing rather than transitioning to consumer based
| economies.
| cduzz wrote:
| Balance trade? Trade isn't a single ledger that needs to
| be in balance.
|
| If you read that article about Haas automation, they say
| that they import cast iron and PCBs, presumably they
| import some chips and use some domestic chips, they put
| these all together and sell machine tools (big machines
| used to make machines, the exact sort of thing that trump
| et all are banging on about needing to be made in the
| usa, which last I checked, Oxnard california counts as
| "USA").
|
| Nobody in the USA makes cast iron in the volume needed by
| haas; nobody in the USA makes PCBs at the price point
| needed by haas. Nobody's going to be able to start
| domestic production of either now, because they'd need to
| import all the materials from elsewhere to make the cast
| iron foundry, and nobody's going to take the chance that
| their multi million dollar investment isn't going to be
| ruined by trump changing his mind in a month.
|
| So whatever you think you're arguing for, the world's way
| more complex than you think it is. And this execution of
| whatever the plans are, has been so far beyond inept as
| to land in a different scale altogether.
| apercu wrote:
| You lost me at Kevin O'Leary. He's historically been a
| dishonest and unethical snake oil salesman and I doubt he's
| changed.
|
| One of my career highlights was having him explain how much
| it will do for my career to do his project at a discount (I
| was helping a friend as a favor) and I told Kevin that it
| was just as likely to have the opposite effect.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Manufacturing investment in the US hit all time highs
| during Biden, by far.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| Kevin O'Leary is not a credentialed economist.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| My only complaint with China's intellectual property theft
| is that they don't share.
|
| It's my genuine belief that the vast majority of
| intellectual property ownership is purely to draw a moat
| around a country's oligarchs. Copyright does not protect
| creators and patents do not protect inventors[0].
|
| Trump's thinking is:
|
| - America used to have lots of tariffs in the 70s, and lots
| of jobs in the 70s,
|
| - But we got rid of the tariffs and the jobs moved,
|
| - So if I put the tariffs back the jobs will come back!
|
| Problem is, we're not in the same market we were in the
| 70s, and all those tariffs risk turning us into Brazil.
| More specifically the reason why the intellectual property
| system we have is fucked is because it's designed to let
| corporations move jobs to foreign countries while still
| maintaining maximum control over the end result. It's
| designed to facilitate neocolonialism.
|
| The "open and balanced" global market you're decrying was,
| until recently, heavily tilted to favor American ownership
| over everything. China and Mexico are there to castrate the
| unions: if you don't work for peanuts, we move the work to
| another country that will, and we don't worry about any of
| the business risk that entails because WIPO and Berne
| ensure none of the goods the other country makes get to
| compete with us unless we put our stamp on it.
|
| You know what would _really_ break this system? If China,
| Canada, or some other country were to junk WIPO and DMCA
| 1201 and start up a national lab to develop and distribute
| jailbreaks for shitty disposable American tech. Practically
| speaking, America can 't stop knowledge from entering the
| country, and it would spur a huge explosion of new American
| businesses to fix the shit our own oligarchs broke.
|
| In a world where you _can 't_ rely on intellectual property
| bullshit, outsourcing becomes a crapshoot, and it makes a
| lot more sense to pay workers what they're worth and focus
| on automation instead.
|
| [0] Yes, they _can_ and _have_ been used by creators in the
| past, but that 's not what the system does today.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Worst case all this triggers a recession.
|
| Recession is probably the best case scenario. If only we get
| through this with just a recession!
|
| The world's economic inter-dependence is one of the things
| that have kept World War 3 at bay for decades. Nobody's going
| to start a hot war with their neighbor when they rely on each
| other through trading. Russia shows what happens when you
| economically isolate a country with sanctions and force them
| to rely on themselves economically: It reduces one of the
| downsides of warfighting. Do we really want an isolated,
| independent and self-sufficient China?
| immibis wrote:
| So what you're saying is, there still won't be a world war,
| but everyone else might go to war with the US.
| corimaith wrote:
| A world war for the right to sell goods to USA? That
| sounds like straight up imperialism.
| immibis wrote:
| No, just for its natural resources, land for settlements
| and its people as slaves.
| Teever wrote:
| That isn't the lesson from Russia invading Ukraine.
|
| The lesson from Russia invading Ukraine is that the
| presence of authoritarians anywhere is a threat to
| democracies everywhere.
|
| The kind of people who crush freedom aren't content to just
| do so within their own borders and will eventually do so to
| others around them.
|
| As such it should be the priority of all democracies to
| extinguish authoritarians whenever possible.
| nemothekid wrote:
| This is circular reasoning. You are pretty much saying
| democracies should be aggressors first. If you swap
| `authoritarian` and `democracy` in your statement, it
| will also ring true.
|
| However, the parent poster paints a different picture. If
| people in Moscow were economically threatened by reduced
| trade caused by an invasion, the elite appetite for such
| a move would be reduced.
| ericmay wrote:
| It's also just not the general lesson from history
| either. Plus you have to recall that in many cases war is
| about resource acquisition as much as anything else, and
| sometimes wars are popularized as ideological crusades
| when they are masquerading as resource disputes in order
| to motivate a populace.
|
| Something that has become apparent to me is that in our
| years of somewhat peaceful economic growth, we seem to
| have forgotten that there are haves and have-nots and
| that the economic system that was created to hopefully
| replace war with peaceful competition only works so much
| as the large powers decide that it works well enough.
| Those who are have-nots tend to not have the proportional
| military leverage to do something about their position.
|
| Our rejection of colonialism, mercantilism, and
| imperialism in favor of a "rules based international
| order" has blinded us a bit through abstraction and
| legalese to the reality of how the world works and the
| limits of resource availability given the size of the
| planet and the population numbers.
|
| > As such it should be the priority of all democracies to
| extinguish authoritarians whenever possible.
|
| I used to think this as well, but I recently re-read
| George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address [1] and it
| aided me in coming to the conclusion that such a moral
| crusade is neither wise, nor moral, and least of all
| practical.
|
| There will always be some nations that have governments,
| authoritarian in our eyes or otherwise, that we disagree
| with from a political perspective. But we simply do not
| have the time, resources, or motivation to do something
| about all of them, and even as we try to do something
| about one or more of them we wind up with others popping
| up. Instead we should seek to treat fairly where
| possible, and treat not at all where necessary due to
| immoral behavior and stop trying to control the entire
| world. That doesn't mean we should _never_ intervene or
| do anything, as in the case of Nazi Germany or perhaps
| other atrocities, but a national policy of extinguishing
| authoritarians seems to me to be one that isn 't in our
| best interest.
|
| [1] https://www.georgewashington.org/farewell-address.jsp
| Teever wrote:
| I'm not pitching this as a moral crusade, but as a
| practical one. Authoritarianism is a cancer that
| invariably spreads and disrupts the global system.
|
| It is simply in our best interest to starve cancer
| whenever we find it and excise it if possible.
|
| If the goal of buying Russian hydrocarbons was to
| increase the economic stability of Russia and to foster
| capitalistic market systems in the country to prevent the
| rise of authoritarianism then the second they invaded
| Georgia should have resulted in the cutting of those
| economic ties.
|
| If the goal of opening trade up to China was to prevent a
| Chinese-Soviet alliance and to weaken the USSR then the
| second the USSR fell we should have pivoted to defeating
| Chinese authoritarianism instead of strengthening
| economic ties to them which has ultimately provided fuel
| for an authoritarian economic machine that has grown to
| surpass the capacity of the US and made the US dependent
| on it.
|
| We didn't do those things and now we're facing
| existential economic and military threats.
| ericmay wrote:
| Are you ready to sign up and go fight in Ukraine or
| elsewhere and die to stop authoritarianism as a matter of
| practicality?
|
| It's not a very fair question to ask, I know, but I think
| we really need to make sure we are honest about what
| we're asking people to do.
|
| Cutting economic ties in these specific cases isn't
| enough to actually stop the bloodshed and bring about
| stability.
|
| There are practical limits to our willpower and resources
| and we can't just stamp out every dictatorship in the
| world, remember Iraq and Afghanistan? I fully support our
| actions in Ukraine, by the way, and in terms of picking
| fights that's probably one of our better ones to help
| stop authoritarianism.
| selectodude wrote:
| > Are you ready to sign up and go fight in Ukraine or
| elsewhere and die to stop authoritarianism as a matter of
| practicality?
|
| Not necessarily, as I'm not directly threatened, but I'm
| more than happy to carve out a piece of my paycheck to
| give Ukrainians any and every piece of equipment they
| need to do it for me.
| ericmay wrote:
| Ok but that's not enough to fight all of these
| authoritarian regimes that spring up. We don't have
| enough people, resources, or willpower to defeat all
| authoritarian regimes militarily forever. We have to be
| prudent, and sometimes we just have to live with such
| regimes.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| We have typically lived with regimes until they invade
| elsewhere. It seems like a reasonable middle ground.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| There is more than one lesson. The poster above is 100%
| correct.
| freefrog1234 wrote:
| This is sort of a white man's burden argument.
|
| From the Russian perspective, the US promised not to
| expand NATO eastwards in return for allowing German
| unification. While Russia was weak, NATO ignored the
| promise, but miscalculated after Russia strengthened.
|
| Ultimately, you need to understand the Russia reasons,
| and they had been threatening war since 2008 when Bush
| announced Ukraine could become a NATO member.
|
| If you rely on Western sources to interpreted Eastern
| motives, you end up with rubbish like "they hate us for
| our freedoms".
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > "they hate us for our freedoms"
|
| Great point. Also "because of our love of jesus christ"
| has been thrown at me a few times when I'm trying to
| provide more nuanced arguments for why people in other
| countries might not favor us.
| corimaith wrote:
| >Nobody's going to start a hot war with their neighbor when
| they rely on each other through trading.
|
| World War 1 begs to differ, hell even the Russian invasion
| of Crimea back in 2014 begs to differ. Economic
| interdependence dosen't stop authoritarians, it only
| threatens democracies with a larger margin for dissent.
| wahern wrote:
| WWI started in countries (Balkans) with the least
| economic interdependence, then pulled in more Western
| European countries through defense alliances. While
| technically someone could have put the brakes on, it was
| an autopilot sort of thing. The lesson of WWI is that if
| you're going to enter into defense agreements that
| obligate you, be careful to whom you're wedding yourself.
| In particular, don't wed yourself to someone who has much
| less to lose than you do.
|
| One of the lessons from the prelude to WWII is to be
| careful about trade imbalances, as they can breed
| instability and radicalism. During the 1920s the US
| enjoyed huge trade surpluses with Europe, which caused
| all manner of monetary and labor dislocation in Europe.
| Worse, the US wasn't content with this surplus, so
| similar to modern China they erected additional barriers
| to imports to try to have their cake and eat it, too.
| These effects were amplified by the gold standard, which
| accelerated deflation and unemployment in Europe, and
| accelerated (stock market) inflation in the US. And of
| course all these ill effects were amplified again for
| Germany.
|
| Toward the end of the 1920s and during the 1930s, the
| whole system was disassembled as every country,
| understandably, retreated to lick its wounds. Economic
| interdependence is critical to maintaining global
| security, but that interdependence itself isn't self-
| sustaining. It can fall apart if dislocations aren't
| managed well across the system. For example, the lessons
| from the 1990s and early 2000s is, "just go back to
| college or trade school" is an absolutely horrible
| approach to dealing with labor dislocation. Significant
| changes in labor structure need to happen inter-
| generationally, not intra-generationally.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > The world's economic inter-dependence is one of the
| things that have kept World War 3 at bay for decades.
|
| Common misconception that trade prevents war and war
| prevents trade. Turns out that it is wrong: https://www.cor
| nellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501782466/trad...
| rchaud wrote:
| There's a difference between preventing war and
| preventing a wider world war. Trade links persisting even
| when countries are opposed to each other contributes to a
| certain level of global order between the biggest powers.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| If trade can persist in war then by definition trade will
| not prevent war
|
| If A -> B not A -> B
|
| then it cannot be said that B -> not A
| kolanos wrote:
| > At least, I imagine the CEOs of GM, Ford, Boeing, etc.
| might have a thing or two to say about seeing China disappear
| as a market where they can do business to sell stuff....
|
| They largely weren't doing this anyway due to Chinese
| economic policy. For example:
|
| > Ford's market share in China has declined significantly.In
| 2024, Ford's market share was 1.6%, down from a peak of 4.7%
| in 2015. Over the past three years, Ford's average market
| share in China has been a modest 1.8%.
| MaxPock wrote:
| GM used to sell more cars in China than in the US .Same
| with VW , Mercedes and BMW
| kolanos wrote:
| While this is true, this changed around 2009. What
| happened? The Chinese government started heavily
| subsidizing domestic automakers [0]while continuing the
| joint venture requirements for foreign automakers, which
| started in 1979 [1]. These joint venture requirements
| have been a source of significant intellectual property
| theft [2]. All foreign automakers operating in China, not
| just U.S. ones, have either faced bankruptcy or a
| significant downturn in market share in China over the
| past 15 years.
|
| [0]: https://www.carscoops.com/2024/07/china-gives-its-
| automakers... [1]:
| https://www.imd.org/ibyimd/innovation/chinas-automotive-
| odys... [2]: https://harris-
| sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/china-joint-venture...
| bink wrote:
| Coincidentally around the same time that the US bailed
| out its own automakers. The US also heavily subsidizes
| it's own auto industry, see the billions loaned to Rivian
| to build their new plant.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Ford is a bad example because the Chinese never really
| liked American cars. Before the EV boom they preferred BBA
| (Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi). Right now it's homegrown
| brands.
|
| Pharmaceuticals would be a slightly better example.
| platevoltage wrote:
| They do seem to love Buick, for some reason I can't wrap
| my head around.
| rvba wrote:
| Why do you say "China was nor subtle by rejecting a plane"?
|
| It was some semi private line, who would have to pay twice
| the usual price in a unfavorable market.
|
| The part apparatchiks didnt need to order them. They just
| dont want to overpay.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Recession is the base case. The worst case is ... worse.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Plus China as a country seems more capable of "toughing it
| out". That's not necessarily a compliment on the situation,
| but it is what it is.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Retail shelves are a easy personally viewable measure, but a
| ramping logistics disruption & price increase on all sorts of
| processes we rely on daily may also be going on in parallel
| with more empty shelves. Parts for factories, cars, appliances,
| power stations etc...
| aziaziazi wrote:
| The smart ones will head to the hardware store instead of
| rushing to the paper: bidet-washing-tube will makes you free of
| toilet paper for life.
|
| Cost: 10-30$
|
| Installation: 20min with basic tools on your existing toilet.
|
| Usage: tons and tons of online tutorials because 1/3 of the
| world already use that daily. But you can also figure it out
| yourself easely, it's way easier than managing node_modules on
| a shared project.
|
| Even cheaper alternative: a simple plastic bottle half-full and
| half bend. Many cheap labours in my city (Paris, fr) use one at
| work (cook, night cleaners, construction...). While the
| bourgeoisie fight for pooping clean during a world crisis,
| their Pakistani labor do they shit as usual. We should be
| inspired.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| As someone who has used real bidets, I've tried bidet
| attachments - they suck.
|
| I'm going to remain with my traditional toilet until I move
| into my "forever home" at which point I will install bidets.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| If you can't use one of above methods for reason, there's
| some << seats attachment >> to transform your toilet in a
| (cheap) Japanese style. Here's a 79EUR one [0] but there's
| many alternative brands with less marketing bundled in the
| price.
|
| 0 https://www.helloboku.com/
| projectazorian wrote:
| You can get a Toto Washlet attachment for ~$300 (who knows
| what it costs now after tariffs) that as far as I can tell
| is almost exactly the same model used in Japan. Heated
| seat, remote control, dryer, etc.
| tclancy wrote:
| They're great relative to not having the option. I panicked
| and bought two more in January for just what seems about to
| happen.
|
| Should have gotten three.
| pavon wrote:
| Since we got a bidet we use more toilet paper for drying than
| we used to use for wiping. Perhaps the full-size ones work
| better, but the fans for add-on bidets are worthless.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Some people use 1 square of paper to check if they're clean
| then a normal towel to finish the job.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Those fans just take nasty air and blow it up into your
| nostrils. I still haven't figured out how to get any value
| out of them.
| techpineapple wrote:
| I would imagine the reaction from the white house will be to
| attack businesses for failing to order product for political
| reasons, traitors trying to help China avoid paying Tarrifs.
|
| And I imagine this strategy will be more effective than one
| would first think, since it's nuts. I imagine it will change
| business behavior, maybe even to the point that business act
| against their own economic interests, the question is how much?
| The crazy thing is that will the Trump effect last long enough
| to negatively impact the next president or the Democratic
| congress assuming they win in 2026? The presidents numbers
| wouldn't suggest that it could go that long, but the world is
| upside down right now.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| I made my first trip (of many) to the store to stock up on
| shelf-stable items this morning.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| let's not forget, "In 2024, China supplied approximately 13.4%
| of the total goods imported by the United States, with a total
| value of $438.9 billion. " '
|
| And those are heavily concentrated in certain industries like
| basic electronics, toys, etc.
|
| in anycase, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
| otterley wrote:
| The weird thing is that toilet paper isn't even a necessity.
| It's a convenience. One could do just as well with a damp
| washcloth. Sure, you have to wash it afterwards, but it's not
| _that_ bad.
|
| Or one could use a bidet, but I think most of these are
| imported from China. Oops.
| kolanos wrote:
| It's a good thing the United States doesn't depend on China for
| toilet paper, then.
|
| > The United States primarily sources its toilet paper
| domestically, with about 90% being manufactured within the
| country.However, a significant portion of imports come from
| Canada and Mexico.
|
| In fact, the United States does not depend on China for any
| essential consumer goods from what I can find.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| What do you define as "essential consumer goods"?
|
| American parents would probably put car seats and strollers
| in that bucket.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/business/strollers-car-
| seats-...
| rvba wrote:
| What is the source of wood for that paper? Canada?
| kolanos wrote:
| > The top 10 softwood lumber producers in the US have a
| combined capacity of 24.1 billion board feet, representing
| 50% of the US industry, according to Forisk.
|
| > The U.S. imports a significant portion of its softwood
| lumber from Canada, with roughly 30% of its softwood lumber
| needs being met by Canadian exports.Specifically, in 2023,
| Canada exported 28.1 million cubic meters of softwood
| lumber to the U.S. This accounts for a large percentage of
| the total softwood lumber imported by the U.S., with Canada
| being the primary supplier.
|
| > The United States can potentially supply up to 95% of its
| own softwood lumber consumption through domestic
| production.While the U.S. is a net importer of lumber, its
| domestic industry has the capacity to meet most of its
| needs.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| This assumes domestic production does not ramp up to meet
| demand. Yes, prices will increase (pushing down demand).
|
| I work for an org that does packaging (boxes, pallets, etc) for
| a whole bunch of manufacturing, ag, and retail firms (Tesla,
| Thyssenkrup, Target, etc.) and we are booming right now.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| IMO For impact on normal people's day-to-day life, the suspension
| of the de minimis rule that allowed boxes under $800 declared
| value (i.e., construction cost) to be imported with no tariff
| will have more of an impact than any other recent change.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/what-the-end-of-the-de-...
| Aurornis wrote:
| I think you're underestimating how many products have inputs
| that come from China and overestimating how many direct-ship
| packages the average person receives internationally.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The GP sounds more like someone that routinely bought from
| places like Shein, Temu, etc.
| sigwinch wrote:
| Taxpayers as a group will pay $1 for each $0.50 collected on
| that. We are not yet on track for a net savings on spending.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| I never shopped Temu / Shein but got lots of electronics from
| AliExpress. My last purchase was a spectrometer, I would never
| be able to afford it now with tariffs + de minimus gone.
|
| I think this will hurt the DIY / Maker / IoT community hard.
| c22 wrote:
| The DIY / Maker crowd seems the most insulated from this,
| being in a prime position to recycle and repurpose materials
| that are already here to make their own tools.
| architango wrote:
| Some of that impact will be positive, as de minimis shipments
| are a major route for importing drugs and their precursors into
| the US: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-
| exploi...
| dralley wrote:
| And strip searching everyone who enters a school building
| would have a positive impact on the rate of school shootings.
|
| Over-enforcement creates its own major issues. The cure is
| worse than the disease.
| architango wrote:
| We don't have 120,000 school shooting deaths a year, but we
| do have that many overdose fatalities. I'd say the cure is
| just fine in this case.
| dralley wrote:
| If searching every single de minimis package would
| actually save 120,000 lives a year, I might even agree
| with you. But it would not. It would accomplish next to
| nothing. To say nothing of the fact that fentanyl is not
| just a supply issue, the supply would just shift to other
| routes of ingress.
| architango wrote:
| I'll refer you to the article I sent, which you seem not
| to have read. Or this one:
| https://thecityvoice.org/2024/10/18/de-minimis-the-us-
| law-th...
| dawnerd wrote:
| That doesn't apply to the containers Walmart/ bestbuy/ target/
| etc import. They're going to pay the insane tariffs but spread
| the cost over all of their inventory to help hide it from
| consumers. No matter what prices will go up. The locally
| sourced higher volume goods like food will end up subsidizing
| slower moving items like TVs.
| xnx wrote:
| What's a good/authoritative site for tracking activity of US
| ports. This tells a little bit of the story:
| https://www.drewry.co.uk/supply-chain-advisors/supply-chain-...
|
| Longer term trends would be nice.
| Nezteb wrote:
| A few options:
|
| - https://www.bts.gov/freight-indicators
|
| - https://www.marinetraffic.com/
|
| - https://www.vesselfinder.com/
| eber wrote:
| I looked for something like this yesterday, and came across
| this dashboard with trends for the Port of LA only:
| https://signal.portoptimizer.com/ which seems to be a port
| activity dashboard (demo with real data) for the port of LA via
| portoptimizer.com
|
| You'll see the trends don't seem so bad yet, but they have a
| previous-12-weeks graph of current year vs previous year which
| will be interesting to follow
| trebligdivad wrote:
| The youtuber 'What's going on with shipping?' has a good
| description in; it includes pointers to loads of sites with the
| actual data.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgcIuQ4X5k
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The youtuber 'What's going on with shipping?'_
|
| The "Youtuber" is actually a professor and Chair, Department of
| History, Criminal Justice and Politics at Campbell:
|
| * https://directory.campbell.edu/people/sal-mercogliano/
|
| * https://twitter.com/mercoglianos
| dullcrisp wrote:
| You mean the chair of the department of history is actually a
| YouTuber.
| bombcar wrote:
| Someday colleges will have Tubers, who outrank Chairs.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Indeed, and some Tubers will be Common Taters, while
| others will be Gingers, and some will rise to the ranks
| of Howard Cosell
| dehrmann wrote:
| The job is essentially the same: publish or perish.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Sal Mercogliano who runs "What's Going On with Shipping?" is
| one of the best informed commentators in the subjects of
| logistics and shipping. He's also a skilled presenter... enough
| so that I subscribe to his channel and I've not got any real
| special interest in subject (but I do recognize it's economic
| importance).
|
| Also, in a different comment, his work at Campbell is
| mentioned, but I think that leaves open why he has anything
| important to say on the subject. His bio at the U.S. Naval
| Institute is more informative:
|
| "Dr. Salvatore R. Mercogliano is an associate professor of
| history at Campbell University in North Carolina and adjunct
| professor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. He holds a
| bachelor of science in marine transportation from the State
| University of New York Maritime College, along with a merchant
| marine deck officer license (unlimited tonnage 2nd mate), a
| master's in maritime history and nautical archaeology from East
| Carolina University, and a Ph.D. in military and naval history
| from the University of Alabama."
|
| https://www.usni.org/people/salvatore-r-mercogliano
| mezeek wrote:
| this guy really blew up after that bridge went down in
| Baltimore
| pests wrote:
| Been seeing his videos pop up more. Wasn't sure if it was
| completely legit or just reactionary takes but I'll check one
| out now thanks.
| atonse wrote:
| Wow I loved this "What's going on with US Ports" video.
| Subscribed. I love channels like this. People with a deep
| understanding that just report facts as they are.
|
| I wish more mainstream media did this.
| Take8435 wrote:
| That's the thing. "Mainstream" Media in the US are no
| longer bound to the fairness doctrine. Thus, we have
| corporate ownership which steers how a story is written or
| at all. Independent media beholden only to their viewers
| (not corporate benefactors) are incentivized to do what you
| want more effectively.
| boringg wrote:
| I mean media was never fair. Started out with corporate
| interests at heart in the early days - only kicked off
| fairness in the 60s i believe.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| I, like Houston Wade, have for years been like, "why don't I
| see any ships or activity" each time I pass by the ports of
| LA/LB. But I, unlike Houston Wade, wouldn't be so arrogant to
| conclude from my observation that shipping has stopped.
| xyst wrote:
| What's the data on exports as well? Some stories of farmers
| taking massive hits with demand that was only fulfilled by global
| market.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Depends on the commodity and any reciprocal (actually
| reciprocal) tariffs that were imposed on US products.
|
| Soybean farmers are hit hard because a lot of their crops went
| to China. Meanwhile some other exports are basically unaffected
| right now.
|
| Other countries have generally not been so haphazard in
| application of tariffs. They don't want to actively harm their
| citizens and they try to plan tariffs with more precision and
| consideration.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| It's also worth noting that some of the damage will be
| permanent.
|
| Trump's mini trade war with China in 2018 (for which he had to
| bail out farmers) led to US farmers permanently losing market
| share in soybean exports to Brazil.
|
| > In 2018, during Trump's first term, the U.S. and China
| engaged in tit-for-tat tariffs that led Beijing to take
| permanent steps to reduce its reliance on American farm goods.
|
| > The share of China's soybean imports from the United States
| dropped to 18% in the first 11 months of 2024, from 40% in the
| whole of 2016, while Brazil's share grew to 74% from 46%,
| according to Chinese customs data.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinese-buyers-s...
| ramesh31 wrote:
| The port of Long Beach is the most mind blowing thing I have ever
| seen in my life. Hundreds of trucks stretching for miles, 24
| hours a day. I would not wish that job on anyone... but the
| thought of it being empty is just terrifying.
| dr_pardee wrote:
| Knowing someone who imports from China, there are ways around
| tariffs
|
| https://harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/the-guide-for-legal...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2025/03/07/nx-s1-5318785/tariff-dodging-...
|
| Shady ways as well https://www.voanews.com/a/as-us-tariffs-
| expand-chinese-firms...
| digdugdirk wrote:
| None of these are easy, and none of them are free. Prices are
| going up regardless.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Ha ha, the ribbon manufacturer is about to get a lot more than
| they bargained for. Who the fuck is going to buy ribbon in a
| depression?
| rtkwe wrote:
| The general disruption could wind up blocking or delaying even
| goods that are still viable and profitable or simply only
| available from China under the tariffs simply because the ships
| themselves are only viable if they are fully loaded so they'll
| wind up not coming to the US for long gaps if the broader
| "reciprocal" tariffs stop other SEA traffic as well.
| rayiner wrote:
| Stopping the flow of Chinese products, often made with child or
| forced labor, is a good thing:
| https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o....
| Weren't we upset about the Uyghurs five minutes ago?
|
| Trade with China is bad. It means a race to the bottom with a
| foreign country that doesn't have our labor protections or
| environmental laws, and whose "comparative advantage" is cheaper
| labor. This was a widely accepted belief among the left until
| recently: https://youtu.be/kHRZnz5oHsE?si=A3QViVdPHISAP6qI. It's
| insane to give up on beliefs-especially when you're right--
| because you're mad the "wrong people" have finally come around to
| agreeing with you!
|
| What would the tariffs be if you made them only high enough to
| offset China's looser regulation and cheaper labor? The current
| tariffs probably are in the same ballpark.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| If it was only China being tariffed, instead of including all
| the allies we need to stand against China, you would start to
| have a point. If they were based on something other than a
| 1600s child king's understanding of trade balance, maybe
| focused on particular kinds of manufacturing, or even just
| explicitly based on morals instead of this fantasy of
| manufacturing returning to the US, you would have a point. But
| none of those things are true. Trump is at best a stopped clock
| with gears poking out through the casing.
| rayiner wrote:
| That might all be true, but Trump is also the only one in
| decades to move the needle in the direction it needs to go.
| Even Obama was pushing us in the direction of even more free
| trade with TPP.
| otterley wrote:
| Perhaps so, but that doesn't mean he's free from criticism.
| It's important not just to fix problems, but also make sure
| you don't break other things that were previously working
| when you do. We don't applaud the plumber who successfully
| unclogs a drain and then causes a catastrophic water leak
| in the fixture.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| No points for messing up evey single detail, not to mention
| discrediting the idea with his abominable implementation.
| It will most likely have the opposite of the (ostensible)
| intended effect. Most people don't want to make multi-year
| investments in manufacturing in a country run by a mad king
| who has already changed the policy multiple times. And
| again, China is the only part that I can agree is even
| vaguely in the right direction. Tariffing Europe was
| profoundly self-defeating.
| seabrookmx wrote:
| Stopping the flow entirely would collapse western society as we
| would have no access to technology. I don't think anyone sane
| disagrees the geopolitical impact of dependence on China is a
| bad thing, but the mechanism by which this flow of goods is
| being disrupted is going to have a very negative impact on
| people's quality of life.
| hollerith wrote:
| >Stopping the flow entirely would collapse western society as
| we would have no access to technology.
|
| That is a wild exaggeration!
|
| (Not that I want the flow to stop.)
| chunky1994 wrote:
| I don't think anyone is advocating for incentivizing
| forced/child labour.
|
| Given that the ILAB link you posted itself is maintained by EO
| 13126 signed by the Clinton Administration, I think there can
| be nuance in the discussion around whether or not the blanket
| application of certain foreign policy instruments is the right
| way to induce a change in the domestic policy of another
| country to solve the problem of bad labour practices.
|
| We can do this without it becoming an argument about whether
| trade is "good" or "bad" depending on what "side" you are on.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| This is so disingenuous a defense of the circus going on right
| now for so many reasons.
|
| First of all, nobody in the current administration would give a
| shit if somehow China made a deal. The Tariffs would go back
| down again. The Tariffs are not contingent upon good labor laws
| in China or anything like that. Like seriously. Yes, the left
| wants better labor power and yes the left continues to
| understand that offshoring reduces labor power. But Trump et al
| are not credible as champions of the working man and this
| policy is not even really directed that way.
|
| Second, even if this were a policy goal, going about it this
| way is, and I really can't put this any other way, fucking
| stupid. Even your dumbest leftist can understand that if you
| want to make changes to your economy you do so with some lead
| time and in such a way as to, you know, not empty shelves and
| drive up costs for the regular working people.
|
| By all means, we should pursue a humanist trade policy that
| pressures developing countries to improve labor rules, human
| rights, democracy, etc. But to characterize this present
| circumstance as that is ridiculous.
| rayiner wrote:
| > By all means, we should pursue a humanist trade policy that
| pressures developing countries to improve labor rules, human
| rights, democracy, etc. But to characterize this present
| circumstance as that is ridiculous.
|
| But nobody besides Trump is going to do that, because
| everyone is addicted to the short term boosts of free trade.
| Obama talked a big game and then in office became a free
| trader that was pushing TPP before Trump killed it.
|
| The reason Trump happened is because the grownups have been
| rowing in the wrong direction for 40 years.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| "We have to like Trump throwing a tantrum and fucking
| everything up because liberal politicians suck." is such an
| incredibly lame rhetorical thing. We don't have to like it,
| we don't have to pretend "maybe its good?"
|
| Trump clearly has zero interest in the human rights of
| people who are not American, and even Americans don't seem
| to rate too high if they don't support him. Just because
| liberal politicians did too much free trade we do not have
| to pretend like this is a good policy or that Trump cares
| about International Labor.
| FredPret wrote:
| China is not only cheaper but in many cases better at
| manufacturing.
|
| I sometimes deal with a Canadian vs a Chinese supplier for a
| component of a consumer product, and the difference in customer
| service, quality, and speed is stark. AND it's cheaper. The
| only issue from a logistics point of view is that China is far
| and shipping is slow.
| mk89 wrote:
| Is Canadian quality bad? As a European I don't have much
| experience with stuff made in Canada, I think. At least I
| can't think of any...
| FredPret wrote:
| No it's usually great, for the things that are usually made
| here.
|
| But the item I in question is low-cost and plastic.
|
| There are other, higher-margin things we buy from Canadians
| and the experience is very different. But these aren't the
| things people typically want to onshore with tariffs.
| mstaoru wrote:
| I'm moving internationally (from China to EU) and the quote is
| 2.5-3x higher than 3 months ago. Sea freight seems to be
| inspected at a much higher rate, and they don't recommend it, and
| air freight is more expensive because of much lower volume
| overall. Not a good time to ship your stuff. And that's when you
| think "I'm far away from the US and the madness does not concern
| me"...
| tim333 wrote:
| The 2.5-3x higher is probably temporary while people rush to
| ship stuff before the tariffs. It may get much cheaper shortly.
| spacemadness wrote:
| If the assumed be negative indicators for the US economy come
| to light, and it's made clear that the US has committed
| economic suicide, now with data, there aren't going to be many
| safe harbors in the world for the average person.
| graeme wrote:
| Interesting. Inspected more regularly by who?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| This is _fascinating_. I wonder what impacts island nations
| like New Zealand are facing?
| consp wrote:
| If the quote is higher, doesn't that mean the demand is higher
| and less empty containers are available? The EU does not have
| an extreme tariff on most products from china, only some. I
| guess I'm missing something here.
| h2zizzle wrote:
| Begging the question/speaking out of my butt: fewer empty
| containers may mean they're running fewer ships, not filling
| up the normal volume.
| bluGill wrote:
| Same number of ships, but they are skipping the shortcut
| through he Suez canal (and have been for a year) thus
| meaning they take longer and so can haul a lot less.
| epistasis wrote:
| That's also a far different route... Has demand for additional
| shipping to Europe gone up because of increased demand? Is it
| seasonal? Does the US army's fairly incompetent police action
| [1][2] against Yemeni Houthis have much impact?
|
| I'm very curious!
|
| [1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/04/commander-
| of-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/apr/29/fighter-jet-...
| bluGill wrote:
| The Suez canal is very much affecting anyone in the EU and has
| for a lot longer than Trump has been in office. Almost no ships
| have been going that way since early/mid last year, preferring
| to go the more expensive/long way around Africa instead.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >And that's when you think "I'm far away from the US and the
| madness does not concern me"
|
| But why would you ever think that?
| sailfast wrote:
| Folks are anticipating increases in shipping due to large
| companies making last-minute buying decisions for the Christmas
| holiday instead of starting to ship things now through
| December. As a result, it will be very hard to find a container
| toward Q3 (at least this is what I'm reading across news
| articles)
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are two things I want people to remember:
|
| 1. The administration has absolutely no idea what they're doing.
| Don't be tempted to think this is part of some grand plan. Don't
| believe any narrative about how short-term pain was intentional.
| There's borderline or actual panic in the administration, going
| so far as to sideline Peter Navarro to get Trump to back down
| [1]; and
|
| 2. All of this is happening so the wealthiest 1000 people, who
| already pay almost no taxes, can pay slightly less in taxes.
| They've already started the rhetoric about tax cuts for average
| people based on the 2017 tax cuts for people _below the top
| bracket_ expiring this year. The cut in the top bracket and the
| corporate tax rate cuts were permanent. So another likely
| temporary tax cut will be sold while giving away trillions to the
| wealthiest people on the planet.
|
| [1]: https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-
| navar...
| macspoofing wrote:
| >The administration has absolutely no idea what they're doing.
|
| In general, I agree with your sentiment, but there are
| competent people in the administration. However, all of them
| are paralyzed because Trump can alter any plan or policy at a
| whim, and he insists being involved in everything. And you can
| see that in the interviews Bessent or even Lutnick give - where
| they hedge everything because they know it could change any
| minute. For example, there was no plan to set 145% tariffs on
| Chinese imports, Trump just did it out of nowhere on
| TruthSocial.
|
| That's also true of foreign policy in general. Rubio and State
| Department have zero power at the moment. Neither the Russia-
| Ukraine peace plan, nor Iranian nuclear arms control, nor Gaza-
| Israel negotiations are going through the State Department.
|
| >All of this is happening so the wealthiest 1000 people, who
| already pay almost no taxes, can pay slightly less in taxes.
|
| I disagree with that. This all happening because Trump is
| incompetent but also arrogant and highly opinionated. I don't
| think there is a nefarious plan here. Trump probably really
| does think that you can replace income tax with tariff revenue.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Trump is the culmination of the 50+ year Republican project,
| a project intentionally designed to transfer wealth from the
| poor to the rich. He's not an anomaly. He's the inevitable
| end product of decades of consistent insitutional destruction
| and corruption.
|
| I agree that Trump is delusional about tafiffs but think abou
| tit: income tax is pretty much the only progressive tax left.
| There's serious momentum in the conservative movement to get
| rid of it for that reason: it's further wealth transfer to
| the ultra-wealthy.
|
| It sounds like you're not seeing the bigger picture here: the
| wealthy view themselves as inherently better. In tech circles
| (including Elon and Thiel) transhumanism is popular.
|
| What is transhumanism ultimately? it's eugenics. It's why
| these weirdos fill the world with their IVR fetishes,
| spreading their "superior" genes. It's co-opted the
| conservative movement, which itself is rooted in eugenics (ie
| white supremacy).
| sleepybrett wrote:
| FOR HE IS THE KWISATZ HADERACH!
|
| He isn't actually, if anything he is an empty suit that
| yells whatever the last guy in the room told him and that
| guy tends to be the most extreme dumbass on whatever topic
| it was.
|
| So when you hear him yell about tarrifs, you are hearing
| him yell whatever peter navaro last told him (plus or minus
| trumps misunderstanding of the situation, see also trump
| screaming at the reporter yesterday about how the maryland
| guy in the el salvadorian prison has literal MS13 tattooed
| on his knuckles, where it's very clear that the picture he
| saw had those letters photoshopped onto the photo)
|
| When you hear him yell about immigration/the
| border/racistbullshit, he's just yelling whatever stephen
| miller yelled at him.
|
| He is just the avatar for whatever sychophant that is
| currently in his good graces (ie whoever bribed him or
| sucked his dick last (see also laura loomer))
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] More discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43843821
| guywithahat wrote:
| Not too long ago I tried to raise money for a PCB assembly plant
| in the US, but couldn't raise the funding and got a "real job".
| Posts like these really make me wish I didn't give up lol
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| This is something I am personally mixed about, working in
| electronics and having had boards made both domestically and in
| China.
|
| The thing is that China is just really damn good at electronics
| manufacturing. Their tooling is cutting edge, their workers are
| career electronics manufacturing workers, and their supply
| chain is _insane_.
|
| However I do have a feeling of "if you build it, they will
| come". But I think it would need to rely heavily on automation.
| And I'm also not sure how you would deal with the waste in the
| US. In China the volume is high enough to have local companies
| that deal with all the byproduct. In the US I would imagine you
| would have to pay through the nose to dispose of it through
| some small time contractor 6 states away.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| These are the king of capabilities, like semiconductor
| manufacturing, that we want to have (at least some) locally
| for more reasons than just economics though. It seems like a
| national security issue.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| About a year ago I checked out _every_ US manufacturer I could
| find. Most don 't offer any pricing of any kind, strictly 'call
| for quote'. The ones that did offer pricing either don't want
| small prototype runs, or charge 5-10x what China does, and with
| 2-3x lead time, even counting shipping.
|
| Only one or two I looked at offered an online quote tool, and
| _none_ of them came even close to the usability and
| functionality of PCBWay 's website. The best one I found was
| this ridiculously overbuilt system with an embedded 3D engine
| and one of those shitty 200MB web apps that take 30 seconds to
| register a click and breaks your back button.
|
| USA is simply not competitive with China on PCBs. For small,
| cash strapped business, domestic manufacture has never been an
| option. I expect prices will only go up and up as our entire
| domestic capacity is absorbed by big corps that can afford the
| premium. I have no idea how us little guys are supposed to get
| boards now.
| mlyons1340 wrote:
| It's true US isn't competitive but what you looked at was
| hobbyist PCB services which is not representative of the
| industry as a whole. I get the frustration but i don't see
| how you can draw any conclusion from it.
| bluGill wrote:
| Engineering often needs one off PCBs until their design is
| trusted enough to work. That doesn't look any different
| from what a hobbyist wants other than the account type.
| (final manufacturing will likely be done by someone else)
| vaidhy wrote:
| It is not just hobbyist. My friend runs a business of smart
| stove tops and they do have a lot of R&D which needs small
| runs as they fine-tune the electronics and test them out.
| All the R&D is now moving out.
| teeray wrote:
| > I have no idea how us little guys are supposed to get
| boards now.
|
| You're not supposed to. It's a backhanded way to quash all
| competition.
| aweiland wrote:
| An on shore competitor to JLCPCB would be amazing. I assume
| most of the work is automated as well.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| You might as well watch the entire process of how JLCPCB
| works and then tell me if all of that can be "automated":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljOoGyCso8s
| aweiland wrote:
| That video is amazing. Thanks!
| gonzo41 wrote:
| The Bloomberg podcast odd lots recently had an episode about
| this. Essentially, there's bubbles in the pipeline now. Expect
| Halloween and the shopping around that time to feature lots of
| scarcity.
| dten wrote:
| I found out yesterday that the port of LA has a free real-time
| dashboard (https://tower.portoptimizer.com/) so you can check the
| stats yourself. While it's interesting that next (week 19) shows
| a 35% drop YoY, the following week predicts a 25% increase from
| w19 and "only" 8.7% drop YoY.
| globalise83 wrote:
| Could it be similar to weather forecasts where the further out
| the forecast goes the more it relies on seasonal averages?
| jhickok wrote:
| Yeah I was wondering if those models try to smooth those
| bumps.
| thfuran wrote:
| I think two weeks is pretty much the low end of transit time
| for a container from China to US, so I wouldn't expect
| needing much modeling within that window.
| crote wrote:
| Ships can be rerouted while in transit. I bet it is
| extremely unusual for a _container_ ship, but we do live in
| interesting times.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Container ships did get rerouted when that ship got stuck
| in the Suez Canal.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| But that's "same port, different route" rerouting right?
| Here you would have to have "different port" rerouting
| (or some really weird weather making the Pacific
| intransitable"
| immibis wrote:
| There was an interview with a shipping manager somewhere
| (probably the 3-hour documentary by Gamers Nexus?). They
| said absolutely have been rerouting container ships in
| transit.
| toast0 wrote:
| Cruising speed can also be modulated, easily within some
| ranges. You might speed up a little if you think you can
| land cargo before new tariffs, and you may slow if you
| think tariffs may be reduced if you land later. Staff
| costs for the vessel are relatively small, so as long as
| you don't go outside the range of speeds that are fuel
| efficient, there's flexibility.
|
| Some of the tariff increases are so high that they
| effectively spoil the cargo; there's no point in bringing
| it through customs at those prices, and it typically
| won't make sense to ship it back, and it may not be
| possible to ship it elsewhere from the port either, so it
| is most likely to be destroyed at the port. Delaying to
| see if tariffs go down may be worthwhile for enough of
| the cargo that it makes sense to slow the whole boat.
|
| Additionally, if demand for shipping is up, going faster
| allows for more supply, and if demand has slowed, going
| slower reduces supply.
| LeChuck wrote:
| It happens all the time but it's more useful to think in
| terms of container flows getting rerouted. Container
| ships sail in fixed loops so have containers on board for
| multiple ports. It often happens that the order in which
| the ports are called (the rotation) is changed, or a
| particular port gets skipped all together. Reasons can be
| congestion, delays in previous ports, etc. etc. The line
| can choose to transship the cargo, so pick it up with a
| second ship to carry it to destination, have the customer
| pick it up in the new location (possibly with a rebate)
| or truck/rail it to the final destination themselves.
| etimberg wrote:
| That number for w20 will probably change. For example, when
| https://youtu.be/2GgcIuQ4X5k?t=324 was produced w20 was
| predicted to be up 0.84% YoY.
| kristjansson wrote:
| I think its: https://volumes.portoptimizer.com/ ?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Predictions are based on historical data which isn't relevant
| in this case.
| cle wrote:
| Week 9->10 2025 had a 35% drop too. And Week 9->10 2024 had a
| 45% drop and a 26% drop Week 16->17 2024.
|
| Starting to wonder how significant this news really is?
| dtech wrote:
| That is Chinese New Year, it has always a very large drop.
| It's very impactful but expected and yearly.
|
| My companies reporting needs to correct for it since the date
| shifts on western calendar and if would mess up all reporting
| otherwise, so yes, this is extremely significant.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This site is obviously a "hostile and political act" by the
| Port of LA.
| atoav wrote:
| Turns out reality itself is a hostile and political concept
| if your political leadership is incompetent enough.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| That's why there's such a strong push towards "alternative
| facts"
| isaacremuant wrote:
| This is dangerously close to "reality has a liberal
| (Democrat) bias" which somehow proves not to be true on
| many cases (and loses elections that are never acknowledged
| for in earnest) but since it's all absolutely blue or
| absolutely red for people, you refuse to see the insanely
| ridiculous stances that tribalism leads to.
|
| War is good. Biology is fake. Healthy is sick. Freedom of
| speech is bad. But hey, you can always just label the next
| guy and that's it.
|
| Yawn. It's boring at this point.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| > proves not to be true
|
| Perhaps. It's not black and white of course, more like
| black and grey.
|
| Majority of all things Cheeto says are either outright
| lies or just incoherent rambling which is too hard to
| decipher.
|
| I mean you do have a point about tribalism and the danger
| of blindly supporting anyone. However that's almost
| entirely tangential in this specific case. Just stating
| the fact that Trump and his cabinet are extremely
| (purposefully or not) incompetent and corrupt is not
| partisan in any way whatsoever.
| netsharc wrote:
| Reality loses elections? What a surprise! How many
| politicians have so far sold bullshit lies like greatness
| again, which the desperate voters keep buying? Freaking
| planet has double the people (4 extra billions) compared
| to the 1970's and effects of burning the resources are
| now more and more apparent, but oh hey, that politician
| promises a return the prosperity of those times when you
| didn't even need condoms to fuck, do I want to face
| reality or do I want to vote for fake hope?
| watwut wrote:
| It was Trump whobrefused to accept election results, not
| democrats.
|
| And yes, conservatives base their policies and electoral
| successes on massive amount of lies.
| nilsbunger wrote:
| "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert
| danans wrote:
| This Verge Decoder podcast interview with Flexport's CEO is a
| good take on the situation:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/64...
| guywithahat wrote:
| A surprising amount of LA's economy is just warehouses. This
| could have an interesting effect on the cost of housing in LA,
| which would have an effect on Phoenix, which has seen massive
| growth in warehouses as LA has gotten expensive
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Housing won't be affected in LA because the issue is zoning +
| cost to get started. There are too many reviews blocking
| housing; it isn't blocked by warehouses being "more valuable"
| than housing in those lots
| fckgw wrote:
| The vast amount of warehousing in SoCal is in the Inland
| Empire, the logistics capital of the country, not LA proper.
| There's very little warehousing being done in LA and there's
| still ample land in the IE and high desert areas. It should
| have zero effect on housing prices in the area, they already
| moved further inland since ecommerce took off 20 years ago and
| only accelerated since the pandemic.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Doesn't seem to be affecting prices much. My best quote for
| moving a household's belongings via container from US
| (California) to the UK (Northwest) is ~$26k including insurance
| (which is mandatory).
| energy123 wrote:
| I don't see why it should increase the costs of shipping. Can
| you outline a plausible mechanism?
| Schnitz wrote:
| That's what winning looks like!
| relwin wrote:
| Gamers Nexus essentially produced a 3-hr doc on how changing
| tariffs affect the US computer industry: "The Death of Affordable
| Computing | Tariffs Impact & Investigation"
| https://youtu.be/1W_mSOS1Qts?si=pBVt65SMqb1p-Zte . Best part is
| having a product manager show a spreadsheet of costs and margins
| and explain in real terms ($$$) what tariffs do to their
| business.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It's even farmers and growers -
|
| https://youtu.be/aCI9xlMrb1w
|
| Seeds sourced from China - which a lot are - have skyrocketed
| in price.
| georgehm wrote:
| Maybe I am being foolishly optimistic, the section in the
| video (~ 4:50) where it is mentioned that some giant seed
| corporation is staying the course betting that this thing
| will blow over in a quarter or so actually gives me some hope
| ?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| IMO, which isn't worth a lot, it'll go on as long as Trump
| refuses to eat crow. China hunkered down under extreme
| duress during COVID and emerged stable. We barely managed
| to survive much milder restrictions. And that was a global
| natural disaster of no one's choosing. In this situation
| it's all artificial, but it stokes the nationalism of
| literally every other country than America. The imperialism
| and condescension at work, the pure malice towards our
| allies and partners, it all works against America. China
| will never bend and nor do they need to or should they. In
| fact at this point it's probably a point of national pride
| to maximize the embarrassment of Trump, and national
| strategy to push him into a corner hoping he lashes out
| more and further isolates America from its partners. This
| is an opportunity for China to break out of the corner
| America and its partners put it into and flip the roles.
| Once done, and Trump is neutered and America reduced, China
| will have a clear path to ascendancy as the primary global
| super power.
|
| I'm actually not sure this is all bad. A flatter more
| multipolar world is probably better for everyone, including
| America. But I think it'll be a tough time in our history
| and the people who voted for Trump will be the ones who
| bear the most pain for his delusional misunderstanding of
| the way the world actually is vs what he wishes it were.
|
| But if I were to put $5 down, I'd wager this lasts until
| the GOP political fortunes have been decimated through
| their hubris and magical thinking and Trump is personally
| hung out to dry for his strategic blunder in launching a
| 195 front war.
| sanderjd wrote:
| It definitely isn't better for America or the world. We
| had a "flatter more multipolar world" during the "long
| 19th century". Pax Americana is certainly subject to a
| lot of valid criticism, but it was an even bigger mess
| before that.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Except I think as long as the "new world order" built
| around globalized trade networks of interdependence and
| agreements with dispute arbitration that China and the EU
| are leaning into was the framework Pax America built and
| was built to withstand unilateralism. Global
| organizations built around mutual benefit are ultimately
| going to win the day here, and it'll be without American
| leadership - which will solidify the power of those
| organizations independently and through multiple power
| players rather than one. This is probably better than the
| prior order, and distinctly different than the pre-WW2
| order.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Maybe! I struggle to see why you would feel confident in
| this outcome.
| krapp wrote:
| We had a flatter more multipolar world primarily run by
| the Church and imperialist absolute monarchies. There is
| no reason to assume a world not dominated by American
| imperialism but primarily made up of modern democracies
| and republics must revert to a 19th century status quo.
| sanderjd wrote:
| There's also no reason that whatever it does look like
| would be better than that, or even that the "modern
| democracies" we currently have would actually survive.
| krapp wrote:
| I disagree. The biggest destabilizing force in the world
| right now is the US. The loss of American superpower
| status will make the world and its democracies more
| stable practically by definition.
|
| You might argue that absent American military hegemony,
| Russia and China become belligerent. But the US isn't
| really doing much about either, so that's a moot point.
| All the world really loses is America's interference in
| their affairs, which I think the world can do without.
| ethersteeds wrote:
| I've also read that China's leadership really learned
| from the experience of the tarrifs during the first Trump
| admin. They made strategic changes that they wouldn't be
| vulnerable to that again. They spent the last 4+ years
| preparing, unlike the US which got maybe a quarter to
| stockpile and prepare. The asymmetry is huge.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| ... what hope exactly.
|
| The republicans in congress are so lost in the sauce that
| they won't challenge the great orange hope in the quarter.
| The soonest I think we can see anyone fighting back,
| politically, won't happen until the midterms AT BEST.
|
| This is assuming that the republicans/trump don't come up
| with some issue that they can swing the midterms on and/or
| don't gut the electoral system to the point that they can't
| lose.
|
| And even then I'm not sure that congress can actually do
| anything to fix this issue while trump is still in the
| white house and impeachment and removal seems unachievable.
| Say congress reverses it's delegation of tarrif power to
| the president. What happens if trump just does not obey
| congress, much like they are not obeying the supreme court.
| Do the republicans in congress have enough of a spine to
| actually remove him? How do we assure that removal actually
| takes place in the event that we can even meet the
| threshold? The man still, ostensibly, still has control of
| the military. Perhaps the military, secret service, any
| other guys with guns just refuses to help him resist
| congress like they did when he tried to deploy the military
| after jan 6th.. but they seem to have already cleaned house
| at the pentagon, with hagseth getting rid of more people
| who aren't sufficiently loyal enough to do crimes and/or
| coup the fucking government for trump.
|
| shit is getting scary.
| Animats wrote:
| > impeachment and removal seems unachievable.
|
| It takes 20 of 53 Republican senators for impeachment.
| That's a high bar, but Nixon was close when he resigned.
|
| Useful reading: "How the Good Guys Finally Won" (1975),
| by Jimmy Breslin. This covers how Nixon and Agnew were
| ejected. The Internet Archive has full text.[1]
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/howgoodguysfinal00bres/pa
| ge/n9/m...
| DrillShopper wrote:
| The Republicans are the party of Trump. You're going to
| get nowhere near 20 out of 53 to convict. They will not
| let him get thrown out of office.
|
| If they didn't vote for impeachment in the two times he
| was impeached in his first term, and if they supported
| him after January 6th then they're not going to vote for
| impeachment now.
|
| The Republicans under Nixon were the same party in name
| only, and they did not have the same blind loyalty to
| Nixon. They had opposing voices. They had separate
| factions. Now the only faction is Trump-worship.
| Animats wrote:
| I'm wondering how this will change if the US goes into a
| deep recession. Polling at the Business Roundtable
| indicates that support for Trump takes a dive at the CEO
| level when the market is down 20%. 30% for the hardcore
| Trump supporters.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The senate is less the party of Trump as they have to win
| state wide elections and Trump barely beat Harris. They
| also tend to have longer tenures that spans presidents.
| While he is ascendant he can command loyalty, but once
| his ship is sinking the rats will abandon him faster in
| the senate than the house. The house takes care of itself
| with its relatively rapid turnover, making incumbents
| more likely to stick by him. There are a handful of
| sycophant senators that would have trouble distancing
| themselves too much, but they are also well known
| chameleons so I think no one would be surprised when they
| flip.
|
| The real test will be the summer and fall as natural
| disasters and the accumulation of cuts and the trade war
| all converge into a crescendo of negativity.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| We went through all this during his previous term. They
| GOP Senate had the perfect excuse to make a break with
| the past during the impeachment following January 6, all
| they had to do was huff and puff a bit and stand on the
| Constitution, and they could have moved on with their
| political lives. But they fielded a bunch of BS excuses
| and stood behind the guy who called a rally that resulted
| in the Congress being overrun and trashed by a mob. Only
| a few voted to remove him from office.
|
| It's worth considering the possibility that as a party
| they're nowadays more into fascism than republicanism.
| Rome was a republic too, until it wasn't.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think of Trump as a Sulla like figure - not the guy who
| ends the republic but who cracks the republic opening the
| door to someone more calculating - Julius Caesar.
|
| The difference though is the Roman republic had a
| constitutional order that was implicit rather than
| explicit. The American constitution and bill of rights is
| very difficult to change, and the order is fairly
| explicit. This was intentional with the assumption that
| even if a Sulla like figure emerges and consolidates
| power, it'll revert over time to a liberal humanist
| republic. The anti federalists examine this in some depth
| and the scenario we are in was definitely considered
| carefully. It's remarkable it took 249 years - but it was
| 430 years before Sulla seized the dictatorship by
| declaring emergency powers and cracked the constitutional
| order of Rome.
| netsharc wrote:
| It's a party of spineless hypocrites... given the choice
| of the embarassment, admitting they were wrong, and
| coming out somewhat ok vs. the choice of supporting a
| dictatorship that erodes free and fair elections, my
| pessimism says most Republicans will vote for the latter.
| As a bonus, they'll get to have Trump-level immunity.
| Then it'll be a simple email to the businesspeople of the
| state asking who wants to be an oligarch, start opening
| your wallets. And for the weekend fun, line up those
| girls (and boys!) and get grabbin'!
| _xerces_ wrote:
| Two interesting things I took away from that were first that
| the uncertainty and constant changes of mind by the President
| on the actual rates and lack of reliable communications were
| almost as harmful as the tariffs. Second, that there is a
| "snowball effect" in that you often have to pre-pay, so you
| take out more loans at a worse interest rate to make your order
| and then if because costs went up, you order fewer items as
| well as being hit with a higher per-item cost.
|
| The whole thing is a mess and shows how incompetent the current
| implementation is.
| hathym wrote:
| it's called strategic uncertainty :D
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Hmm, I've been using the phrase _a fox in the hen house_.
| Seems apt?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's why the government needs to curb and heel billionaires.
| A bunch of techbros who mistake money for smarts pushes an
| obviously dumb strategy to a pack of populist clowns and
| grifters.
|
| That should not be possible. The kickback from this mania is
| going to be pretty extreme pain for these clowns.
| trhway wrote:
| The retailers need to start showing tariff charge as separate
| line. People have the right to to see what they voted for.
| Yesterday Trump frantically called Bezos when Bezos threatened
| to do it, and Bezos seems to have backed up (probably got some
| concession for that).
|
| Edit: it is also can be treated as a consumer right to know, by
| analogy with food labeling), what are the major components of
| the price they are paying, and thus allowing for informed
| choice.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| Amazon considered it as a separate line, the White House
| called it un-American, Amazon stopped considering it.
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| No they didn't. If anything it was being discussed and most
| likely only for Amazon Haul, which is not normal Amazon.
|
| That said I wish they would.
| meesles wrote:
| Source? I did not see this active anywhere, only mentioned.
| trhway wrote:
| >the White House called it un-American
|
| If anything, what can be more American than making clear
| when and how much the government is taxing the people? It
| is like at the core of this nation's founding.
| silisili wrote:
| Retailers and middlemen typically don't like exposing how
| much -they- paid for an item. Exposing tariffs would show how
| much things are marked up from time of landing to reaching
| the shelves.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Varies based on market. Where middle men actually do things
| and add lots of value they don't generally care.
|
| When your value-add is fronting the cash for a container of
| something, doing paper pushing and sending the resultant
| product to an Amazon warehouse people will ask tough
| questions like "who are all these parties you're pushing
| papers to? What is their purpose and should they even exist
| in 2025" all of which is just a proxy for "if we fixed the
| system you wouldn't exist" and you can't really fault them
| for that.
| rvba wrote:
| What do you mean here? That all should be owned by
| amazon? Or straight from factory to consumer?
| trhway wrote:
| Those with high markup wouldn't get affected that much.
| Those with lower markup will get affected more, and they
| need to show the tariff charge.
|
| The tariff charge may also naturally include say the
| directly related charges like for example the increased
| insurance premium for the increased, due to the tariff,
| insured value of the goods while they are being
| transported/stored. Add to that increased financing
| required to cover all those costs, etc., and that can
| snowball to feel significant even for the ones with higher
| markup.
| bruce511 wrote:
| That's not really how markup works.
|
| Let's say 1 pay x for a product. Gross markup is say 100%.
| Do I sell it for 2x. Let's say there's a tariff cost of y.
| That means the cost price is x + y. I mark that up to 2x +
| 2y. It's easy to up the price by 2y and disclose the tariff
| as "z%".
|
| But this of course presumes all your expenses remain flat.
| And they likely don't. As your expenses go up (2nd order
| effects) that 100% markup starts to not be enough. So the
| markup goes up a bit.
|
| Plus since things are going up anyway, and since there's
| uncertainty (which has a cost) we need to bump the price up
| even more (because hey, free market.)
|
| And when the tariffs go away, we can remove the primary
| cost, but all the secondary hikes remain. Because that's
| all just extra profit, and, like, free market right?
|
| This round of inflation is going to make covid look mild.
| (And as I point out to my Republican friends, just
| remember, you voted for this.)
|
| The way out of this is to devalue the dollar. That would
| erode the real value of the outstanding debt (which is
| delimited in dollars.) Alas the US has worked very hard to
| make the dollar the world currency, so devaluing it is
| complex.
|
| The US consumer (voter) is of course the big loser. At
| least this generation is. Folk born around 2030 may be the
| big winners.
| silisili wrote:
| I'm rather aware of the concept of markup. Marking up
| itself isn't the problem, it's completely understandable
| -why- that must exist in most cases. But either way,
| companies don't like to disclose their landed costs for
| obvious reason - people will think they're being ripped
| off.
|
| Tariffs are in the news and the percentages are known. If
| I'm selling a wallet made in China, in the US for $80,
| and list a tariff line item of $2 - people will calculate
| and easily know that I imported said wallet from China
| for <$1 and start to question why I'm charging so much.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| I on the other hand think it would be great if they exposed
| how much they paid.
| sgc wrote:
| We need a browser extension that shows estimated tariffs
| based on "made in" info on the page.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yeah, I watched that last week. Absolutely outstanding
| reporting, which I had not expected from a gaming channel.
| Kneedler wrote:
| I was going to purchase a shipping container for my property in
| the US a few days ago, but the company I was talking with has
| raised their prices 70% over the quote I got 2-3 weeks prior.
| kaikai wrote:
| Oh no, I'm in the same situation and was wondering how this
| would affect the quote.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Wouldn't there be an excess of containers?
| bluGill wrote:
| No because containers are in high demand overall. While the
| US is importing less, stuff to the EU is taking the long way
| around Africa and that means more containers are needed.
| hello_computer wrote:
| good. we have too much shit. too much noise. i grew up without
| most of it, and life was fine. inb4 trump ballwasher: i'd applaud
| regardless of party or personality.
| Havoc wrote:
| There is a good yt channel that deciphers all shipping related
| news (collisions, cable cuts etc) and makes it more digestible to
| non-sailors like me here. Definitely recommend.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping
|
| He pointed out that these stats are week on week so tend to
| understate how big the drop really is on a more long term scale
|
| [not affiliated, just like the channel]
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Of all the death and terror caused by this administration, at
| least we might get an American build of Lua
| djha-skin wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: this isn't that big of a deal for most people.
|
| Gdp, consumer index scores, all that stuff is a measure of how
| much poor people are willing to spend and how hard they're
| working. What really matters is, can these people buy a house?
| Can they buy eggs?
|
| I don't know how many of them will be all that caught up that
| they can't buy some disposable flip-flops on Temu anymore. We
| need to focus more on how hard it is to live than how hard it is
| to import stuff.
| kace91 wrote:
| Well, if their business relied on reselling those flipflops
| they won't be buying many eggs.
|
| Same if they were transporting them to the store, or delivering
| them to a home, or...
| tomcar288 wrote:
| i agree. but i think most people are worried about second order
| effects (the impact of supply chains on the whole economy)
| rather than whether or not you can buy 3$ shoes on temu.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| These things are being talked about in the context of
| predicting a future recession, in which case it may be very
| difficult for people to afford housing and other essentials.
|
| [^1]: Of course, the whole "eggs as an economic indicator" was
| far right propaganda to conflate the bird flu with the broader
| economy
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| It's an unpopular opinion because it's wrong.
|
| No single aspect of the economy exists in a vacuum. Tariffs and
| lower shipping volumes portend thousands of small businesses
| potentially going under, translating to many more thousands of
| people losing their jobs and incomes. This has many unforeseen
| knock-on effects in declining economic activity.
| djha-skin wrote:
| Are we really subscribing to Reaganistic trickle-down
| economic theory now? How sure are we that those imports
| aren't mostly just lining the pockets of the rich?
|
| We're measuring the wrong things. We need to measure cost of
| living instead of how empty or full a Port is. We don't know
| if these two things are correlated yet.
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| That's not what trickle-down economics mean.
|
| Trickle-down is the idea that giving tax breaks or benefits
| to the wealthy or big corporations will eventually benefit
| everyone else through increased investment or job creation.
| What I'm talking about here is the basic flow of goods and
| services in an economy--when that gets disrupted, the
| effects hit workers and consumers directly, not eventually
| or indirectly.
|
| When imports slow down, businesses have fewer goods to sell
| or face higher input costs. That leads to higher prices for
| consumers and layoffs for workers. It doesn't just impact
| "the rich."
|
| This isn't about trickle-down economics; it's about how
| supply chains work. The impact of these tariffs will show
| up in lost jobs, higher prices, and reduced access to
| everyday goods. Those are real effects for regular people,
| not just abstract economic concerns.
|
| Reduced shipping volumes immediately mean less work for
| truckers--thousands of people taking a hit to their income
| right off the bat, which in turns leads to less economic
| activity. This is exactly what people mean when they say no
| part of the economy exists in a vacuum. It's all connected.
| broost3r wrote:
| for the curious amongst us, will meaningful real-time
| data be available to track the impact to the supply
| chain?
| Zamaamiro wrote:
| Yes. The port traffic data discussed in this thread is
| one such example.
|
| I'm not an economist or supply chain expert myself, so I
| rely on actual subject-matter experts to interpret and
| contextualize the raw numbers for me. So far, they're all
| painting a pretty gloomy picture.
|
| Good people to follow on this are CEO of Flexport Ryan
| Petersen [1], Jason Miller from MSU who had a great
| podcast with Derek Thompson [2], CEO of FreightWaves
| Craig Fuller [3], etc.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/small-businesses-
| buying-impo...
|
| [2] https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/plain-english-
| with-derek-...
|
| [3] https://www.cnbc.com/video/2025/04/28/its-about-to-
| get-much-...
| sanderjd wrote:
| No, that's all just normal "this is how an economy works"
| stuff. It has nothing to do with Reagan or what people
| refer to as "trickle down economics".
| flustercan wrote:
| People care immensely about having a job. If tariffs mean that
| businesses don't hire as much or do layoffs then this is a big
| deal for most people. The unemployment rate doesn't even need
| to go up that much to have a huge effect on people's general
| feeling about the economy.
| renjimen wrote:
| A decent share of US food [1] and construction materials [2]
| are imported. So yes, this is going to impact everyone.
|
| [1] https://www.traceone.com/resources/plm-compliance-
| blog/foods...
|
| [2] https://www.nahb.org/advocacy/top-priorities/building-
| materi...
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| the people this impacts aren't buying eggs let alone houses.
| You and I are addicted to cheap flip flops; many poor people
| require cheap goods - including household and food - to
| survive.
| thrance wrote:
| 2025, in which Americans realize Greatness is never achieved
| alone.
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