[HN Gopher] High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill
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High tariffs become 'real' with our first $36K bill
Author : ptorrone
Score : 343 points
Date : 2025-05-08 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.adafruit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.adafruit.com)
| duxup wrote:
| One thing I wonder is:
|
| If you're a business used to selling at a certain price point,
| and the value proposition is established with your customers ....
| do you bother risking shattering that expectation if the future
| is unknown?
|
| Do you risk customers saying "Oh crap my hobby that I did with
| Adafruit is now untenable ... well I'm out." vs "Well they're low
| on stock, I'll check back when this is all over."
|
| I don't know if it is all or nothing but it seems like there's a
| lot of risk either way.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You charge a separate tariff charge.
| duxup wrote:
| I think it is a good choice to be transparent. I 100% agree
| with that. But I don't know that it really changes the "I'm
| out" dynamic or risk that they won't just show up again.
|
| Also if there's a lot of "I'm out" you just bought a lot of
| stuff nobody wants to pay anything near the cost of.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know why any business with the capacity
| wouldn't be being explicit about this. If you're going to get
| hate, might as well try to point the hate in the right
| direction. It makes absolutely no sense to fall on that
| particular sword.
| grey-area wrote:
| Something this administration considers a 'hostile and
| political move'?
|
| If you're small enough I guess you might get a way with it,
| if you're big enough you'll be threatened into compliance.
|
| Either way the US customers and the rest of the world lose,
| everyone is a little poorer because of these tariffs.
| tantalor wrote:
| I don't understand how they can say its hostile to list
| tariffs when plenty of merchants will advertise "made in
| America" as a selling point. It's the same thing!
| duxup wrote:
| The current administration considers "I don't like it" to
| be hostile, it's really that simple.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, it really feels like a strained lack of
| understanding. If you challenge the orange man, you're
| immediately deemed hostile.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| More to the point, if high tariffs are _GOOD_ , we should
| be embracing them and the WH should be working to promote
| 'pride in tariffs!' messaging. Show how much you love
| your country and leader by how much in tariffs you pay!
| It'll be great, because you won't have to pay $3k income
| tax, just... an extra $5k in cost of living every year.
| Forever. Even when you stop working.
| mlinhares wrote:
| The people running the government are making bank with
| shitcoins so some people are winning.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| You'd think these big companies would want to stand up
| against this nonsense. Microsoft fired their law firm who
| sucked up to Trump's threats.
|
| Why doesn't Wal-Mart or whoever make a loud pronouncement
| that they'll fund primary campaigns against any
| congressperson who supports these tariffs? These companies
| got Citizens United passed so they can spend unlimited
| amounts of political money, so why don't they use this
| power when their business is threatened like this?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Well, there's ~1,461 days in a presidential term and only
| just over a hundred have gone by so far. I think
| companies are concerned about focused and crippling
| reprisal.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| They only have to get enough folks elected to push him
| out of office after the midterms. So half that.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| To push him out of office would require impeachment, and
| that's basically an impossibility, even if there's a
| significant shift blue. At best there'd be some checks on
| his power, but he's ultimately still going to be POTUS
| with all the rights and (denied) responsibilities
| therein.
| vkou wrote:
| Because anyone making public moves against this will be
| punished further by the regime.
|
| That's how autocracies work, my friend, you can't rules
| lawyer your way out of one, because the rules can always
| be changed to fuck you over some more.
| seunosewa wrote:
| Trump is willing and able to ruin any business. He
| doesn't respect democratic norms.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Because those companies rightly recognize that this
| administration is following no rules? Like, they were
| jumping on board for the fascism explicitly, businesses
| love fascism because it always kills labor rights. All
| you have to do is stay out of the ire of the dictator and
| you can do very well.
|
| Like always, the morons who carry water for the fascists
| think they can "control" them, or radically underestimate
| the damage a moron with no accountability can do.
|
| Amazon tried to _barely_ show consumers the tariff hurt
| them, and Trump called Bezos directly, and that plan went
| away instantly.
|
| Companies are rightly afraid of an administration that
| demonstrably has nobody stopping them from doing outright
| criminal and illegal things, and has a rabid fanbase
| ready to plan bombings of whoever is the target. They
| know the courts can't protect them. They know the law
| means nothing right now. They know an entire board can be
| murdered and the culprits pardoned if Trump feels like
| it.
|
| Trump's entire shtick is that people who go against him
| in the Republican party _already_ get primaried. He doesn
| 't even need to ask his supporters, because loyalty is an
| expected and intrinsic part of the MAGA movement.
|
| This is also assuming that future elections are free and
| fair, or at least follow previous US rules.
| jm4 wrote:
| And if you're big enough and you do that, you get bullied
| into submission by the White House. It's really hard to look
| at this administration's economic policies and not wonder
| whether there is deliberate sabotage going on. The best case
| scenario is these people are woefully uninformed and
| incompetent. These tariffs will hurt consumers, destroy small
| businesses, and simultaneously have the potential to enrich
| the largest players in the market. This never would have
| happened if our population was better educated and
| particularly more financially literate.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I mean Besset, Trump's Secretary of Treasury, was on Soros'
| team that broke the Bank of England. According to MAGA he
| is literally the Soros swamp that got rich basically
| breaking a friendly country.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/business/scott-bessent-
| wa...
| anjel wrote:
| Amerexit
| Neywiny wrote:
| Yeah I would've expected that like other companies they'd buy
| sparingly and see what happens. That said, 42 units seems low
| for them, so maybe they nominally ship hundreds/thousands of
| that device and are doing a "magic number" trial run.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's 42 packages with a total weight of 445kg, we don't know
| how many items are within each package.
| simple10 wrote:
| I worked with a lot of ecomm and especially crowdfunded
| companies that shipped to 100+ countries. Outside of the US,
| most consumers expect to have to pay import fees as a separate
| line item.
|
| But this is new for US consumers. My hope is that US companies
| will add temporary price increases if they can't eat the
| tariffs in their existing margins and then reduce when tariffs
| are reduced. But my guess is that most companies will increase
| prices, blame the tariffs (rightfully so), but then not fully
| reduce prices if/when the tariffs decrease.
|
| It's similar to what happened with tipping for takeout food
| during Covid. It's now a permanent tax.
| dtech wrote:
| > Outside of the US, most consumers expect to have to pay
| import fees as a separate line item.
|
| Only if you buy from a foreign store directly which is
| relatively niche. It's much more common for an importer to
| pay the duties and then put the product in local stores.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Part of the reason it's relatively niche is because people
| did it once, then didn't like the surprise customs bill
| that arrived. (Or they heard about this from a
| friend/colleague.)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That makes no difference for the price.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well yeah. The point they're responding to was about how
| different stores display things in the same economic
| situation.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Buying from a foreign store is not niche at all. I think
| it's insanely common. I think most people do it multiple
| times a year. Why would you think it's niche?
| sleepyguy wrote:
| When freight rates skyrocketed due to fuel prices, freight
| companies added a fuel surcharge, which reflects the additional
| cost of moving your product. Retailers need to do the same
| thing with the Republican Tariffs.
|
| It is fair, and the consumer deserves to know.
| duxup wrote:
| I agree, although fuel surcharge is totally expected and
| common in logistics land.
|
| Consumers ... going to have to learn something new.
| CSSer wrote:
| On a podcast I listened to yesterday (Marketplace, from
| American Public Media), they mentioned that many businesses
| seem to be approaching this with an "We're in this together"
| type of attitude. They played some audio clips of business
| owners on their social media channels saying things like,
| "Don't worry [company name] is going to do absolutely
| everything to fight this. We'll do everything we can to avoid
| raising prices on you!"
|
| The reality, of course, which they reveal when interviewed, is
| that they know they're completely powerless. In the best case,
| all they can do is delay the inevitable and they know it. This
| approach exists purely to keep themselves from being made into
| the enemy. As you noted, some business owners admitted to
| considering if they should just shutter their business too.
| advisedwang wrote:
| A company can do that on a few SKUs, but not their entire
| catalog. Pausing your entire revenue stream for more than a
| very short period means laying off staff, breaking leases,
| ending dividends (if you give them), taking a stock price hit
| (if you are public) etc. It's potentially a fatal move. Better
| to lose some customers than fold completely.
| duxup wrote:
| Part of what I'm referencing is that you don't know how much
| "lose some customers" even is. And if you buy stock and pay
| the tariffs, you might have stock that almost nobody wants...
| haswell wrote:
| There are some people in my circles who have remained convinced
| that tariffs won't actually amount to anything and that it's all
| bluster.
|
| It seems we're now entering the "find out" stage, and it's
| incredibly frustrating.
|
| As a tinkerer who loves building things, this is heartbreaking
| stuff. I have projects in progress that may have to be put on
| hold.
|
| I tend to order things as I need them, but it's tempting to
| stockpile the basics. But I don't think it will help much in the
| long run if this continues, and truly hope this madness will be
| seen for what it is and an appropriate backlash/correction will
| follow.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I stockpiled the basics for my projects before I learned how
| fast the basics can shift.
| haswell wrote:
| That's a really good point that makes this so much worse.
|
| It's not just that I may not be able to continue some
| projects, but that I may not be able to continue pushing the
| boundaries of my knowledge and experience as I learn more.
|
| Thinking about this in terms of younger aspiring builders,
| this will stagnate the technical growth of a generation.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I've been "stockpiling" car parts for years for various
| maintenance I need to do... I guess I should get to doing
| that actual maintenance but those strut springs still scare
| me.
|
| When covid hit, I def sold a lot of junk that I had sitting
| around for years
| alabastervlog wrote:
| This getting-ahead-of-the-tax-hikes/inflation thing was
| probably why the segment of households with meaningful
| disposable income (top quintile or so) increased spending in
| Q1 even as everyone else was pulling back.
|
| We did it with air conditioner upgrades, among other things.
| Now? Five figures of previously-probable, but optional,
| spending for the rest of the year is on hold indefinitely.
| Prices on lots of things (construction materials, holy shit)
| are already way up, so we'll be sitting on as much cash as we
| can until that eases up. We don't _need_ that much,
| really....
| sharken wrote:
| The madness is the total reliance on cheap Chinese products,
| with very few or zero US alternatives. But building knowhow and
| sourcing rare metals will be a very tough challenge.
|
| It seems that China has the upper hand for now, so it will be
| interesting to see how it plays out.
| LPisGood wrote:
| Global trade is goodness, not madness.
| jl6 wrote:
| There is surely a balance to be struck to get some of the
| benefits of global trade, without creating a dependency
| that can be exploited to create leverage against you.
| collingreen wrote:
| There surely is and there are many paths toward that and
| many options for timelines that make it more or less
| impactful on businesses and consumers.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I struggle to comprehend this viewpoint, echoed by many,
| with respect to: what possible benefit of global trade is
| the United States (well, previous to tariffs anyway)
| already not receiving?
|
| We can buy goods by printing money, which no other nation
| can lay claim to, because the U.S. Dollar is the default
| world currency. Everyone accepts USD, and wants USD.
| Every other nation on Earth in fact is always looking to
| buy dollars, because dollars are _what everything is
| purchased in._ Further, our standing in the globe and
| favorable geographic location means we can import
| anything from virtually anywhere, but most especially
| China, Korea, and Japan.
|
| Yeah we don't "make things" here anymore, the pundits
| say, apart from dozens of product categories over
| hundreds of industries. "Everything comes from China!"
| Okay, and? I don't want a job in a factory and I suspect
| a shitload of other people here also don't, and my source
| for that is every factory and logistics center near me is
| constantly trying to hire people and seemingly being
| unable to.
| PKop wrote:
| There's no permanence here, and you don't understand
| history or even business if you think this imbalance and
| dependence doesn't equal weakness at some point in the
| future. Just because we want China to always work for us
| and give us what we want doesn't mean completely ceding
| control of the decision means it will work out. Does any
| business (operating in much less cut throat stakes than
| great-power geopolitics) even bank all their supply on
| external sources, let alone one, let alone that one being
| their biggest adversary? Madness.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| But we have every reason to believe China will continue
| working for us because _China benefits from that work._
| And insofar as the U.S. and China are adversaries at all
| seems to be purely culture war nonsense. China is not
| setting out to destroy the United States, they 're
| setting out to _sell the United States shit_ and we are
| setting out to buy it. The only reason there is even
| contention in this at all is that many pundits and
| analysts see the collapse of the American manufacturing
| sector as somehow the devious plans of a foreign
| adversary, and not the result of _American business
| people seeking cheaper labor that works more efficiently
| overseas._
|
| If we assume China is an adversary, then I would say it
| logically follows that the vast majority of American
| executives are in fact collaborating with the enemy,
| because they played critical roles in getting China to
| where it is today.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| China is a potential adversary because they are an
| authoritarian, undemocratic regime making military
| threats against neighboring free, democratic nations
| (Taiwan). If everything stayed exactly the way it is
| today, except the Communist party rulership were
| dissolved and replaced by a multi-party constitutional
| republic with representatives appointed through free,
| open elections I don't think the US would have nearly the
| same incentive to divest from China.
|
| Free markets don't care about moral concerns like that
| though, just what's most economically efficient. And in
| the absence of tariffs, trading with China is very
| economically efficient.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > China is a potential adversary because they are an
| authoritarian, undemocratic regime making military
| threats against neighboring free, democratic nations
| (Taiwan).
|
| As opposed to an authoritarian, Democratic regime making
| military threats against neighboring free, democratic
| nations (Canada)?
|
| > If everything stayed exactly the way it is today,
| except the Communist party rulership were dissolved and
| replaced by a multi-party constitutional republic with
| representatives appointed through free, open elections I
| don't think the US would have nearly the same incentive
| to divest from China.
|
| Why does the U.S. have the right to declare unilaterally
| what forms of government are acceptable and what aren't?
| And no I'm not saying we have to necessarily trade with
| them, obviously, apart from the fact that the CCP came
| into power in 1949. We're a bit late to suddenly have
| issues with their government NOW after nearly half a
| century spent working with them in the open, and giving
| them shit tons of money.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The US's authoritarian tendencies are not in remotely the
| same league as China and it's absurd to pretend
| otherwise.
|
| Our right to declare that rule apart from the consent of
| the governed is unacceptable comes from the fact that it
| is unacceptable, not because the US has any special
| rights to declare it so. We hold these truths to be self-
| evident, now just as we did then.
|
| The US has always had that same fundamental issue with
| China's government; we've just chosen to react to that
| reality in different ways over the years. China being
| more of an economic powerhouse now makes it a larger
| threat to human freedom than it has been in the past, so
| there are valid reasons to re-consider the status quo.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| > <blank> is a potential adversary because they are an
| authoritarian, undemocratic regime making military
| threats against neighboring free, democratic nations
|
| Fill in the blank with preferred major nation power of
| your choice.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| If your trading partner is an authoritarian dictatorship
| that has publicly stated they are in a thousands-year
| struggle for global supremacy, then maybe we should shift
| some key imports away from them
| foogazi wrote:
| I thought this was about fentanyl and getting rich enough
| to remove the income tax
|
| Have not heard anything about 1,000 years fight for
| global supremacy
| kragen wrote:
| It's 100 years, not 1000 years, and it's a fight for
| Chinese well-being, not global supremacy, though it's
| understandable that people who believe Chinese well-being
| is incompatible with US hegemony would confuse the two:
| https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-long-game-chinas-
| gran...
| betterThanTexas wrote:
| I don't see how the us is supposed to be any better. Why
| can't we use this energy to fight the rich people making
| this country a shithole rather than starting a beef we
| can only lose.
| LPisGood wrote:
| Maybe USA should do that, but what's been attempted is a
| horrible way to do that.
| exe34 wrote:
| What exactly were you importing from the penguins?
| breakyerself wrote:
| China has the upper hand and the US is being run by morons.
| With the US cutting itself off from the largest supplier of
| electronics while simultaneously destroying the basic
| research infrastructure that keeps America on the bleeding
| edge you can expect a brain drain towards Europe and Asia.
| The damage from this administration will last generations.
| x0x0 wrote:
| We are being run by abject morons who will never be able to
| understand simple truths, one of which is China is in a far
| stronger position: their factories are missing dollars. We
| are missing goods. One of those is easy for a central bank
| / government to replace.
|
| Watching these people discover where the world's rare
| earths come from is equally amazing and terrifying.
| nickff wrote:
| Rare earth metals aren't very rare, they're just messy to
| extract and refine.
|
| There are reasons that the Chinese (government) want so
| many dollars, and the external funds are not easy to
| replace (or they would have done it already). This is not
| to support the current trade 'war', but just to point out
| that it's a bit more complicated than you can describe in
| a pithy comment.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Don't worry, we'll just mine everything we need ourselves
| in the active warzones in Ukraine! I bet Yosemite has
| tons of the rare earth we need, we just have to dynamite
| everything in there to find it! /s
| monocasa wrote:
| I swear to god, if we set off the Yosemite supervolcano
| from heavy mining there...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| The supervolcano is in the other iconic, international-
| destination national park starting with Y, Yellowstone.
| photonthug wrote:
| The sooner we kill all the animals, the quicker we can
| find where they are hiding all their gold.
| PKop wrote:
| What do you think the point of rebalancing trade is? To
| get out of dependence on foreign suppliers. "China's
| economy, copmposed of massive domestic production,
| industrial capacity, and manufacturing inputs is in a
| stronger position"
|
| Yes, sounds like something that should be changed to
| increase the strength of the US. China has protectionist
| economic policy and trade barriers. If that equals
| strength why shouldn't we do it too?
| no_wizard wrote:
| >If that equals strength why shouldn't we do it too?
|
| Tall order to prove this. Does it actually equal
| strength? What _is_ strength and does China actually have
| said strength? None of this is defined.
|
| Additionally, China has economic policies that if the US
| followed would be very, like the games they play with
| their currency valuation for example. They also have
| stringent capital controls, many of their largest
| businesses are the government has a large slice of the
| ownership, they subsidize export corporations to a much
| broader degree etc.
|
| Are you also arguing for those things as well? Because
| its not simply tariffs that mark the only difference in
| economic policy between the US and China
|
| The other asinine thing is we implemented tariffs against
| _all_ countries, without a plan, and without a definitive
| proven reason as to why. As many economists have pointed
| out, the trade deficit is very deceiving and does not
| equate to there being a problem for the US inherently.
| mindslight wrote:
| The current nonsense is the opposite of strength - it is
| empty bluster, based on ideas two decades out of date, by
| a "man" who talks like he's had a frontal lobotomy and
| who can't even sit on a chair properly.
|
| Actually righting the severe damage done to our
| industrial base would take constructive direction by the
| government to build it back - once again the complete
| opposite of what they're actually doing by attacking our
| still-existing educational/research institutions.
|
| At best high tariff taxes are just closing the barn door
| long after the horse ran away. But really it's just the
| same old pattern of the same type of hollow politicians
| using pent up frustration about the last scam to drive
| support for their next scam.
| libertine wrote:
| But now Greenland being annexed through military means is
| on the table - we can't make this up.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| But think of the coal mining jobs...
|
| In all seriousness though, China is also not some young
| slick economic powerhouse. It's largely propped up facade
| with serious structural issues that the US doesn't have.
|
| Also keep in mind that while countries are annoyed with the
| US, that doesn't mean they are going to welcome Chinese
| ships into their waters.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| At this point that ship has sailed.
|
| I think the answer fairly conclusively in the global
| south is that, yes, yes they will let Chinese ships in
| their waters.
|
| It will be bizarro-land if we have people in Kenya,
| Colombia, South Africa, and Peru driving around in 10000
| dollar Chinese EVs and using 5000 dollar Chinese robots
| to clean their homes. While we pay 5 to 10 times that for
| the same conveniences.
|
| I seriously think there's a really good chance the world
| 25 years from now may have a fundamentally different
| structure than it has had for the past 100 years.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's time to open your eyes to the way the rest of the
| world lives because "bizzaro land" is basically here.
| Cheap Chinese roomba replacements clean people's homes,
| $15000 Chinese EVs are insanely popular, and the price of
| all these goods certified for the US market is 200-300%
| higher, so many Chinese companies don't bother.
| Izkata wrote:
| Some quick searches on car costs and converting between
| South African rand and USD, it looks like US consumers
| already pay around 2-3x as much for a car (just in
| general using averages, didn't look for specific models
| or EVs).
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Car prices in the US are _way_ up over the last few years
| --prices, which were already trending up, spiked with
| "Covid shortages" and then just kept going up after those
| should have been alleviated. Was the ratio as bad in,
| say, 2015? (I really don't know)
| woooooo wrote:
| They are far and away the leaders in manufacturing. Also
| the only country with a tech sector on near parity with
| the US.
|
| Yes, their housing market is messed up and that causes
| problems in the financial sector, but it's a real stretch
| to call everything else in the country "propped up".
| zelda420 wrote:
| Are Chinese ships not already delivering products and
| welcomed?
|
| I was Peru last year and saw nothing but Chinese made
| electronics, especially phones, and a lot of cars. I see
| more and more Chinese electric cars in Mexico too.
| Talking to the locals they seem to like Chinese tourists
| just wish they spent as much as Americans.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Warships.
| littlecorner wrote:
| The brain drain started decades ago. We've been importing
| people for STEM jobs and exporting manufacturing for a
| while, leaving behind large numbers of people with no hope
| for a better future. Now the rest of the country faces that
| prospect as well
| dtech wrote:
| That's a valid argument, but a 125% tariff with basically
| zero notice - on manufacturing and shipping timelines - is
| not the solution.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"... is not the solution"
|
| The source thinks the opposite. You can complain directly.
| I don't think it gives a flying fuck
| haswell wrote:
| I think the total reliance is a legitimate concern that needs
| to be addressed.
|
| I still think this approach to addressing that issue is
| complete madness.
|
| Not only is there no coherent plan for how that reliance will
| be reduced, but we've now crippled ourselves in the meantime.
| justin66 wrote:
| Yeah. One thing among many that some in the US don't seem
| to get: only one side in this war needs to completely
| rearrange their economy in order to survive, and it's us.
| PKop wrote:
| I think the people attempting to do that understand it
| justin66 wrote:
| On the contrary, they give the appearance of simply
| assuming "the market" will solve the problem they've
| created.
| mullingitover wrote:
| The people who believe government intervention can't do
| anything good are arguing that we're in an existential
| crisis because the Chinese government is executing _too_
| well.
|
| And their approach is to cripple our own government.
| nickff wrote:
| I have no idea what the administration's plan or thoughts
| might be, but I suspect that one part of it is that they've
| seen how many governments (including their own, as well as
| allies like the EU) delay and defer as negotiation
| strategies. The EU even used delays and uncertainty against
| its very closest ally (the UK) in trade negotiations. As a
| result, sudden and 'violent' shifts are the only way to get
| things done in the current environment.
| Izkata wrote:
| Trump has said as much in interviews - just asking gets
| nothing done, and now all those governments are coming to
| him for deals.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| > I think the total reliance is a legitimate concern that
| needs to be addressed.
|
| > I still think this approach to addressing that issue is
| complete madness.
|
| You're assuming the 'total reliance' argument and
| corresponding actions are being done in good faith. The
| original 'emergency' declarations justifying large initial
| tariffs in February were because of a 'fentanyl crisis'.
| Which then morphed in to 'well, we should be manufacturing
| here for defense purposes' and assorted other arguments
| along the way ("we're getting _ripped off_! ", etc).
|
| There's a danger in being cynical about this, but also
| danger in taking everything at face value. There's been no
| coherent communicated policy with justifications and
| expected outcomes or timelines ever put forward the same
| way twice from this administration.
| haswell wrote:
| > _You 're assuming the 'total reliance' argument and
| corresponding actions are being done in good faith._
|
| To clarify, I'm not assuming the _administration_ is
| acting in good faith.
|
| But in casual conversation, I try to assume the person
| who worries about total reliance is acting in good faith,
| so my reply was primarily directed at the comment itself
| which I have to assume comes from someone who may believe
| the administration is actually attempting to address the
| issue.
|
| I think there are numerous ways to split this:
|
| - The reliance concern as a standalone consideration
|
| - How the current administration sees/uses this concern
|
| - How the public perceives this concern
|
| - How the current administration claims they're
| addressing it
|
| - Whatever the current administration's true goals are
| melenaboija wrote:
| Not sure why people keep insisting that goods from China are
| "cheap," which always seems to carry a negative connotation
| when in reality, "cheap" is exactly what we seem to want as
| consumers in wealthier western countries.
|
| And in many cases, these products are neither cheap nor
| expensive, they're simply the only option, because no one
| else in the world manufactures them. So, what exactly are we
| comparing them to? And if the assumption is that producing
| the same goods in Europe or the US would be more expensive
| then that's likely true but only because we still expect to
| earn a living wage, even in factory jobs
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > these products are neither cheap nor expensive, they're
| simply the only option, because no one else in the world
| manufactures them.
|
| This is exactly it. And even if an item can be US-supplied,
| it's components are only available from China.
|
| Tariffs are how we get it to stop being built in the US.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I agree, and I am in favor of protectionist tariffs. But it
| does seem to be poor strategy to rush into high tariffs
| without the pieces put in the place for American industry to
| grow and benefit. That said, I don't believe Trump is that
| stupid (despite the trendy opinion to the contrary), and I
| think he knows this is doomed to fail if the goal is
| immediate American industry bloom. Which is why I don't
| believe these are intended to be long term. Based on how the
| other tariffs have gone, it seems to be more of a negotiation
| tactic to reduce tariffs on both sides, not protectionism.
| China has just put up more of a resistance to it than other
| nations have, so now it's turned into a game of chicken.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > That said, I don't believe Trump is that stupid
|
| Do you think he's acting when he does things like keep
| preventing an interviewer from moving on because he wants
| to make _extra sure_ everyone knows he entirely believes
| that obviously-photoshopped, not-trying-to-look-like-
| anything-but-an-overlay letters and numbers on a picture of
| someone 's hand were in fact real tattoos?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Wait till this person finds out he can't have his mandarin
| orange segments in his nightly Jello salad anymore and then I
| expect they'll have a different opinion.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I get what you are saying, but the U.S. BUYS goods, because
| we are "too rich" to make them. We SELL services, because
| other countries are "too poor" to offer them.
|
| When this administration focuses solely on one side of that
| (Goods vs Services), they miss the forest for the trees. I'm
| not saying we shouldn't bring back manufacturing, because we
| should, but we can't pretend that we get the short end of the
| stick in this trade partnership.
|
| China makes the cheap shit that isn't economical here, and
| the only way to make it economical here is to pay a tax on
| the cheap shit we want if it isn't made here, but the crazy
| thing is we could do a 400% tariff on Chinese imports, and it
| is still too expensive to buy American for most goods. Not
| even getting to the point that we don't have the
| infrastructure here because that also costs money, which
| would rise the price for American goods even higher.
|
| Does Bill Gates mow his own lawn? No!
|
| Does Donald Trump grill his own Big Mac? No!
|
| Because when you hit a certain "wealth bracket" you stop
| doing things that are below that and hire them out. We hired
| China because we were too rich.
| evantbyrne wrote:
| The only way for China to lose influence in this fight is by
| playing ball. They can simply continue to trade with the rest
| of the world and be totally fine when it is US consumers
| paying the bill.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This is what I don't quite get? What is the impetus for
| their government to want to play ball with us?
|
| The incentive for their companies is that they can access
| US markets. But their government is a bit different. That
| government has clearly been serious about 2 things for the
| past couple of decades, one is developing an internal
| market. (Which, prior to our imposition of tariffs, they
| were failing miserably at). The other is their pivot to the
| global south. (Which, prior to our imposition of tariffs,
| they were wildly successful at).
|
| Now that we started a trade war, they will be more
| successful at both. Especially the pivot to the global
| south. I guess I just can't see why the government of China
| feels more urgency to talk with us, than it feels to
| accelerate their pivot to, and development of, markets in
| the global south for instance? Why is talking to us the
| better choice for their government strategically speaking?
|
| I mean, if I were sitting in their shoes, I'd just be like,
| "Man, this is be the perfect illustration of why it was so
| important to pivot to the global south in the first place."
| betterThanTexas wrote:
| What would an american upper hand look like?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The USA could bring manufacturing back, but not with tariffs.
|
| They can't tell businesses "Look, we've dramatically
| increased your cost of doing business, made your products
| more expensive (which will likely lead to lower sales) and
| we're forcing you to spend extra capital by paying tariffs on
| your products... Now all you need to do is come up with
| billions of dollars to build the factories that build your
| product and eat the high costs for the 5 - 10 years it will
| take to build the factories. We don't care if you're a small
| business that only sells $1M of product a year, if you want
| to reduce your costs, you need to build the factories."
|
| Of course, the question is whether Americans really _want_
| those factory jobs -- do parents aspire to have their
| children work in a factory assembling iPhones? There 's only
| so many Robot Technician jobs to go around (despite the
| promise of unlimited high paid technician jobs, for the
| forseable future there will be plenty of menial factory jobs)
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Something my half-brother said ...
|
| "Cheap foreign products are a necessity when so-called
| American companies don't love Americans enough to pay them
| what they're worth. It's the whole reason things went
| overseas in the first place. It's gonna be nice if we can
| finally get American companies to actually support America
| and pay citizens what they're worth."
|
| The above sounds nice, but it's oversimplified, like a lot of
| political rhetoric recently. Now, if this does end up making
| real living wages for the American worker a commonplace
| thing, that's awesome, but I'm pessimistic given the history
| of things, how money can influence politics, and how
| corporate lawyers can find loopholes.
| scoofy wrote:
| I actually moved a bunch of money around after the recovery
| from April 2nd. I just sat their thinking... wow, short term
| bonds have a really decent interest rate, and I don't think
| people are taking seriously the fact that the markets can
| actually fall apart because business is an incredibly complex,
| multi-variate process, and right now where just throwing
| wrenches into the gears for funsies.
|
| I'm not even completely anti-tariff. I just think the way we're
| going about doing these tariffs is pretty much the opposite way
| anyone who was trying to bring manufacturing back to the US
| would do them. Low, clear ratcheting up tariffs are tariffs
| that allow businesses time to change their strategy without
| disrupting their income streams. Instead, we're going to
| bankrupt basically anyone who isn't already a multi-national.
|
| Maybe I'm an idiot and I'm missing something clear, but to me,
| the reason why the S&P500 and passive investing have been so
| successful since basically the 1940's is simply that we have
| had competent, technocratic administrations for the last
| hundred years. Other countries' markets have not fared so
| "efficiently."
|
| Again, maybe I'm missing something, but I'm looking at this
| much more defensively than I did under the first
| administration. The one thing I can't figure out is the dollar.
| My brother is obsessed with the "dollar milkshake" theory,
| whereas it seems clear that we are messing with reserve status
| and are trying to intentionally weaken the dollar... I just
| don't know. It doesn't really make much sense what we're doing,
| and I haven't found anyone who can make an argument that makes
| sense to me.
| pstuart wrote:
| > I haven't found anyone who can make an argument that makes
| sense to me.
|
| The goal is to eliminate income taxes and replace it with
| tariffs. An added bonus (for the administration), is that
| tariffs can be changed if the party in question pays for
| access to make their case.
|
| The stated reasoning of supporting domestic industry is a
| smoke screen for the above.
| scoofy wrote:
| Right, except that's self-defeating and won't work. The
| idea that we can plausibly generate enough revenue from
| tariffs to replace the income tax is inherently self-
| defeating, because if the tariffs work at bringing back
| manufacturing, we'll stop imports. If they don't, we'll
| consume significantly less, more people will become poorer,
| and expenditures will increase as revenues decrease.
|
| Maybe there is an equilibrium in there, but I don't see it.
| pupperino wrote:
| Baked in this plan is the idea that the revenue from
| tariffs will be much smaller than income tax revenues,
| and therefore that the federal government will also get
| smaller.
| scoofy wrote:
| Right, but that implies that spending is controlled by
| revenues... when it's clearly not. That just means higher
| deficits, threatening a default of US Bonds, which is a
| worst case scenario for American prosperity.
| pupperino wrote:
| I'm confident the people pursuing this mad agenda don't
| know the first thing about US budget laws and think they
| can just cut spending DOGE-style forever.
| pstuart wrote:
| Considering that the driver of all this is surrounded by
| yes-men and has spent his entire entitled life getting
| his way, I think their goal is to will it into being. And
| when it fails, blame the other party.
| beAbU wrote:
| Replacing taxes with import tarriffs will dramatically
| reduce consumption, and therefore tax revenue.
|
| Taxes don't incentivise earning less, but tarriffs most
| definitely incentivises spending less!
|
| This theory does not make sense.
| pstuart wrote:
| > This theory does not make sense.
|
| The theory "makes sense" in that it's what he's stated as
| a goal. But as policy, it's nonsensical. This is our
| world now.
| pupperino wrote:
| As a Latin American, I can't help but buy the American
| Exceptionalism thesis, and seeing you guys in this situation
| humanizes you so much. The US has such a strong bureaucracy
| and high bar for competence that you generally lack the
| immune system required for detecting con artists and social
| climbers - at least in politics. Ask a random Argentinian or
| Brazilian what politicians Trump reminds them of, and you'll
| get a seemingly endless lists of genuinely stupid, borderline
| sociopath populists. Follow up with a question on what are
| the consequences of having arbitrary, ever-changing tariffs
| on most goods for the purpose of industrialization, and
| you'll get a laugh, then a sad face.
|
| Import-substitution is bad for econ 101 reasons that most
| people who have an axe to grind against Dems would've been
| absolutely capable of grasping only a few years ago. Now, it
| seems so many are willing to turn off a part of their brains
| for this short-sighted wishful thinking. "Well, the official
| narrative is that we're doing this to get manufacturing back,
| so let's wait and see" is something most people would
| immediately perceive as bs if a Dem was sitting in the Oval
| Office. Seeing a politician campaign on a stupid platform,
| and then getting surprised he actually shoots himself in the
| foot spending political capital pursuing is also very Latin
| American.
|
| The good part is that the soon-to-be-coming recession the
| federal government just fabricated out of thin air is fully
| self-inflicted, and therefore somewhat easy to fix. The bad
| part is you have (at least) 4 more years of this lunacy, so
| it might take a while.
| shantara wrote:
| As someone who grew up in Eastern Europe, I had a
| completely identical reaction. We had so many similar
| populists and idiots in power, one cannot help but
| recognize the obvious pattern.
|
| Many people in America seem to be convinced that their
| involvement in the democracy ended after voting in the
| elections, and cannot conceptualize how to deal with an
| adversarial government. The scale of the protests and
| pushback Trump administration has received is laughably
| small compared to the scale of America as a country. People
| are lacking a basic political immune system, or even a
| sense of self preservation.
|
| And the most puzzling part is that the entire situation is
| 100% self-inflicted. It usually takes a major war or a
| sustained external campaign to inflict the kind of damage
| Trump administration has done to the country in such a
| short period of time.
| gopher_space wrote:
| The vibe on /r/wallstreetbets seems to be "this all makes
| sense as a massive pump and dump". Very useful source of info
| if you view them as essentially black boxing the stock
| market.
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean, WSB isn't a serious place, but they have their
| moments. I just have no idea who would or even _could_
| "pump" the entire S &P 500. My best theory of the last
| month is just basic "sell in May and go away" theory where
| you get rosier fundamentals in spring because everyone
| buries the bad news in Q1 reports, but it's more difficult
| to hide as the fiscal year actually happens.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| The signal to noise ratio is difficult but now and then a
| factoid pops up - like the amount of retail investors
| piling in recently. It aligns with messaging in other
| forms of media that they, well, only use as indicators
| and frequently don't take seriously. I'm using it often
| as a useful tool for counter-balancing my long term plans
| with the impatient gambling mentality which feeds the
| machine there. I learned my lesson ages ago from
| ZeroHedge about being overly bearish and things didn't
| play out, so WSB is helpful in my situation because in
| principle I agree with the market is distorted assertion
| but believe the collapse will manifest months from now
| and this is a sucker's market. Q2 earnings calls are
| going to be telling.
| scoofy wrote:
| I don't think any collapse is coming. I just think the
| risk profile doesn't justify many of my smaller cap
| investments, and where I am in life.
| inamorty wrote:
| A factoid is something that is masquerading as a fact,
| not a small fact.
| Thrymr wrote:
| Game recognize game.
| chneu wrote:
| Anyone can see this is a pump and dump. Trump literally
| tweeted that it's a great time to buy right before
| announcing tariffs.
| spacemadness wrote:
| I think the burden of proof is entirely on the admin in the
| White House who seem completely incapable of keeping their
| story straight and providing anything of value to sooth
| anyones fears other than "trust me, bro!"
| zamalek wrote:
| > As a tinkerer who loves building things, this is
| heartbreaking stuff.
|
| Tinkers are inventors, which are future entrepreneurs. This
| administration can't think as far ahead as its nose.
| spacemadness wrote:
| I think hobby areas involving anything produced overseas will
| get utterly annihilated. Board game companies are already
| shutting down. That whole industry went from a multi-year boom
| to a bust this year due to tariffs.
| donohoe wrote:
| I'm in a "Verifying you are human. This may take a few seconds."
| loop trying to load this post.
|
| I'm so sick and tired of Cloudflare at this point.
| chgs wrote:
| Sadly no tariffs on them
| flotzam wrote:
| Adafruit's Cloudflare settings must be dialed up to an extreme
| level, they're blocking web.archive.org, archive.today, Tor,
| Startpage's Anonymous View, ...
|
| Like cmon you're running a shop and a blog, not a missile
| launch facility
| walthamstow wrote:
| > tariff taxes are paid before we sell any of the products and
| are due within a week of receipt
|
| This is going to smash the cash flow of so many small businesses
| joezydeco wrote:
| And if that tax isn't paid the shipment goes _back_ , billed to
| the original shipper.
|
| I wonder how much stuff is going to be completely wasted by
| this process.
| jkestner wrote:
| I mean, aside from the profits.
|
| Very exciting that we can't predict how much extra we'll pay by
| the time our orders hit the shores.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I just got an email this morning from ARACE, one of the main
| suppliers of Radxa boards for global shipping.
|
| I ordered their Orion O6 Mini ITX board back in December, for
| $430.49 total ($85 shipping).
|
| The email this morning said they had to cancel all un-shipped
| orders, and I could re-order and prepay the tariff through 4XL
| (they dropped DHL and FedEx due to tariff complications).
|
| I put the board in my cart, and now the total is $1500.90 ($1,150
| in shipping).
|
| I'm happy to pay for the actual cost of shipping a single item
| across an entire ocean, but maybe that increase is a bit much...
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I'm happy to pay for the actual cost of shipping a single
| item across an entire ocean, but maybe that increase is a bit
| much...
|
| The Import-ant thing (heh) is that the additional money you
| must pay is _not_ going to the manufacturer or the shipper. It
| won 't be improving working-conditions of foreign sweatshop
| laborers, or upgrading cargo ships to reduce pollution, etc.
|
| Instead, it's going to a US government official that basically
| seizes goods crossing the border who won't give them back
| without a payment.,
|
| Worse: These higher import-taxes all US companies and consumers
| are being made to pay will probably go towards the benefit
| of... lowering what rich Americans pay on their personal income
| taxes.
| collingreen wrote:
| This made me wonder what the tariffs will do to private jets
| and if the 100% write off for them just includes everything
| or if there is more nuance there.
| generj wrote:
| I've heard private jets goers barely get bothered with
| customs - I'm curious how much smuggling starts happening
| via them.
| dylan604 wrote:
| starts? Might I introduce you to the story of Barry Seal?
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3532216/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_t
| t_8...
| Symbiote wrote:
| The jets can be registered somewhere else (Bermuda, Cayman
| Islands, Aruba, Isle of Man) and thus never officially
| imported into the USA.
|
| e.g. https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/tax-rules-for-
| the-sup...
| collingreen wrote:
| Genius!
| nunez wrote:
| Same as yachts and big ships.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| No. I live in a wealthy Wyoming town. We already have
| runners who will bring tax-free construction materials in
| from Canada and Mexico (or hell, in undeclared cargo, idk)
| for cash. This is how life works in high-tax states like
| Greece and India.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| My point is less about where the money goes and more about
| not subsidizing cheap Chinese shipping.
|
| I don't think I should be able to order a little plastic
| trinket for $10 shipped direct from China, when just shipping
| the same thing inside the US costs $10+!
| vntok wrote:
| Why not? The trinket was made in China in the first place,
| so it had to already cost some amount to import into the US
| + some amount to ship to you + some amount to the reseller.
|
| Skipping the reseller saves you money and pollutes the
| environnement less.
| vel0city wrote:
| They're talking about just the _postage_ cost being $10.
| Even for something that _is_ produced domestically.
| Postage to mail something >1,000mi: pennies. Postage to
| mail something across town: $10.
|
| You think that makes sense?
| tayo42 wrote:
| Yes becasue it'll go on an airplane and make it in under
| a day. Also economies of scale will apply.Traveling
| through continents like Asia is just cheaper in general
| too.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm not talking about overnight postage; I'm talking
| standard 3 or 4 day ground. It ends up on the same trucks
| after it clears the port. There's no choice of postage
| that makes it cost less to mail something I made in my
| own home to my family 300mi away (no matter _how_ long I
| choose it to be) than to ship the same kind of thing from
| China within a week. In fact, I 've often found it just
| cheaper to buy a new item with their home be the shipping
| address than mail the thing I already have to them.
|
| Once again, _tell me how that makes any goddamn sense._
|
| https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/Notice123.htm#_c450
|
| You should really research UPU rules.
| Terr_ wrote:
| This seems like an "argument from incredulity", where
| there's no particular reason beyond "it doesn't match my
| intuition". While I agree that it feels somehow wrong,
| there are a lot of factors to explain it like:
|
| A few possible factors off the top of my head:
|
| 1. Shipping is much cheaper in bulk.
|
| 2. A local delivery service has different markups for
| different kinds of delivery.
|
| 3. Local delivery services that pick up from you may have
| additional expenses, like a wide but shallow network of
| pickup locations and daily collections.
|
| 4. It costs more because somebody is charging what the
| market will bear and the local market is more affluent.
| vel0city wrote:
| > 1. Shipping is much cheaper in bulk.
|
| These are small parcels. Its not really "bulk", as in
| shipping whole pallets from point A to B. Even then its
| still cheaper even if you look at commercial bulk account
| rates. You're ignoring UPU rules.
|
| > 2. Sea-shipping is extremely cheap compared to over
| land--and has been for literally thousands of years.
|
| And then once it gets to the port it goes on the same
| trucks that would be driving to drive it across town.
| It's still driving hundreds to thousands of miles
| compared to driving 300mi between Dallas and Houston. So
| its paying for sea shipping _and then_ paying to put it
| on a truck and drive it even further. It still doesn 't
| make sense it would be cheaper overall, and _massively
| cheaper_ at that.
|
| For example, say you lived in LA, _even right on the
| water across the street from the port._. Lets say you
| have widget A shipped from China and widget B shipped
| from a warehouse at the docks. Cost to ship widget A from
| China, which includes the cost to get it to their port,
| on to the boat, across the ocean, off the boat, inspected
| by customs, resorted, put on a truck, and sent to your
| home _is probably several times cheaper_ than from that
| warehouse, sorted, put on a truck, and delivered to your
| house. Delivered by the same truck, sorted at the same
| parcel sorting facility.
|
| Once again, _tell me how that makes sense_ or how that
| should _obviously_ be cheaper.
|
| > 3. A local delivery service charges more for one kind
| of delivery so that they can charge less for another
| kind.
|
| > 4. The local delivery service charges more to cover
| additional expenses, like a wide but shallow network of
| pickup locations and daily collections.
|
| I didn't realize UPS and USPS and FedEx are bespoke local
| delivery services, news to me! In fact, the bespoke
| "local" delivery services that only offer specific
| services tend to be cheaper in those specific domains,
| such as overnighting documents between common city pairs
| (like DFW<->Austin, DFW<->Houston, etc). But they really
| only do documents and only do overnights between
| commercial buildings.
|
| These orgs I'm talking about (USPS, for example) are the
| same people doing the delivery for those China Post
| parcels. It's not like China Post is driving through my
| neighborhood delivering these things. So any idea of that
| cost being a part of it is once again not based in
| reality, at least not in the way you're putting it.
|
| > 5. It costs more because somebody is charging what the
| market will bear and the local market is more affluent.
|
| Its shipping to the same people. This isn't a change of
| affluence at all. And once again, UPS, USPS, and FedEx
| aren't some local delivery companies at least to my
| knowledge.
|
| The biggest factor are UPU rules.
|
| > A few possible factors off the top of my head:
|
| Try actually looking into the topics instead of just
| throwing out random ideas that aren't based in reality or
| facts and acting like I'm the one that has logical
| fallacies in my arguments. Yours is filled with logical
| fallacies such as an argument from ignorance and a hasty
| generalization. Maybe this doesn't make sense because
| it's an illogical state to be in outside of appeasing
| bullshit international laws.
|
| Why do they choose to deliver it to me for so cheap while
| charging me a fortune to deliver my packages to my family
| the next town over? Because they're required to by
| international law. In fact, me paying a ton more to ship
| domestically _subsidizes_ that cheap delivery from China.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Cost to ship widget A from China, which includes the
| cost to get it to their port, on to the boat, across the
| ocean, off the boat, inspected by customs, resorted, put
| on a truck, and sent to your home is probably several
| times cheaper than from that warehouse, sorted, put on a
| truck, and delivered to your house. Delivered by the same
| truck, sorted at the same parcel sorting facility.
|
| What's "several times cheaper" in terms of dollars?
|
| How does it change if both packages get sent to Chicago
| instead?
|
| While I agree shipping from China shouldn't be cheaper,
| boats don't add much. Getting a 40 foot container to the
| port, across the ocean, and away from the port is several
| thousand dollars of costs. For small packages averaging 1
| liter and .4kg, you can split that bill across 50
| thousand of them. That leaves customs, but how many man-
| hours does it take to inspect a container of mail? Half
| the point of de minimis is that there's no detailed
| inspection per package.
|
| As far as the price to ship cross-country versus cross-
| town, that's a whole different can of worms I don't want
| to open very far. Let's focus on "shipped from China"
| versus "shipped from a warehouse next to the US port".
| Terr_ wrote:
| My "this implementation ticket is not actually what the
| customer wants to achieve" senses are tingling. :p
|
| What is the fundamental harm or injustice that needs to be
| fixed or reduced here?
|
| I'm confident there are _much_ better ways to tackle those
| things (e.g. pollution, consumer waste, moral failings)
| than a blanket import tax on an entire country-of-origin,
| even one done in a proper and legal way.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's a reasonable desire, but I'm not convinced the real
| shipping cost is being subsidized very much. At one point
| the US was losing a dollar per item. Fix that and the
| trinket only goes up to $12. And we've already been fixing
| it.
|
| When shipping from China instead of the US, the first
| segment is cheaper, the middle distribution and last mile
| are the same, and there's a ship segment that splits a
| couple thousand dollar container cost across a massive pile
| of packages. I don't expect a particularly big difference.
| duxup wrote:
| I think the pay up front thing makes sense. Nobody knows who is
| going to actually pay / what the volume will be at the new
| tariff/tax point and the businesses need to find out fast / up
| front.
| tim333 wrote:
| In a lot of developing countries with high tariffs people end
| up going abroad to buy stuff and bring it back in their luggage
| as used of not much value. Like in Vietnam a lot of people
| would visit Singapore. It's funny seeing the US in that
| position. Maybe you'll have to visit a friend in Canada or
| Mexico?
| hypeatei wrote:
| I truly believe Q2 numbers are going to be ugly and these
| temporary pumps in the market are very irrational. We're going to
| see the effects on earnings and employment from costs
| skyrocketing overnight. Many small businesses can't front the
| money for tariffs.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I can tell you our tariff markups are ugly. Q2 is going to be a
| bloodbath where I work.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Market has been divorced from fundamentals since COVID IMO. Too
| much money with nowhere else to go and too many index fund
| investors really inhibit price discovery. If folks start having
| to cash out their 401ks, we might start seeing a decline, but
| even then that's a tiny % ownership of the market.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| What do market models say about what happens as more and more
| of the "pie" shifts toward people and entities whose only
| demand is _investments_ , not (a meaningful amount,
| proportionately, of) consumer goods or non-financial services
| for ordinary human wants and needs?
|
| It's gotta be... bad, right? It seems like it'd be bad.
| jl6 wrote:
| More investment money available => the net must be cast
| wider to find investment opportunities => riskier
| opportunities get funded.
|
| Is it a net good or bad thing to try riskier stuff? Maybe
| some moonshots pay off, maybe a ton of money gets wasted on
| stupid ideas.
|
| This is pretty much what's been happening since 2008.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| This would be happening even as the proportion of the
| "pie" going toward _actual consumer demand_ shrinks,
| though, so there are two sides to the (maybe? I dunno)
| problem.
| jl6 wrote:
| Investment is a form of demand though. When you invest in
| a startup, the money is spent on wages, rent, equipment,
| supplies, etc., all of which circulates into the economy.
| Investment is a transfer of wealth to doers, in exchange
| for a chance at getting a return for yourself.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Investment in real estate
| doesn't necessarily "transfer wealth to doers".
| Investment in crypto doesn't. Investment in buying
| existing stock doesn't (until and unless value is
| realized by e.g. issuing new stock--and it can be, and
| is, but isn't _necessarily_ ). Investment in government
| bonds that ultimately just pay interest on existing debt
| doesn't.
|
| Investment in anything that may move certain indicators a
| good direction (some of the money pays workers; GDP
| perhaps even goes up as a result of the activity) but
| worsens the economic position of "doers" _across the
| overall population_ doesn 't just fail to transfer money
| downward and stimulate consumer demand, but does the
| opposite. Investment in ways to more efficiently and
| effectively deny people healthcare coverage they're
| supposed to have, for instance. Lots of activity in
| weakly-competitive markets falls under this heading, and
| since we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in
| the '70s, that describes an increasingly large proportion
| of the economy with each passing year.
| jl6 wrote:
| Sure it does! Investment in all those things creates
| demand.
|
| Real estate: demand for houses means demand for house
| building and maintenance.
|
| Crypto: demand for chips and electricity (yes, this is
| super-dumb demand for dubious benefit, but demand
| nonetheless, just like paying people to dig holes and
| fill them in is also demand).
|
| Stock: I _almost_ agree with you, but 1) stockbroking is
| a whole industry funded by taking a percentage on stock
| purchases, 2) if you buy some stock for some cash, the
| counterparty now has cash, which they are either going to
| keep, spend, or invest in something else, so the
| transaction is neutral-to-positive in terms of demand
| generation.
|
| Bonds: why do governments issue bonds? To get money to
| spend on stuff! Every penny of your bond purchase gets
| spent on government activities. Some of that is paying
| interest, but that interest is income for other
| bondholders (who then typically spend it)
|
| With taxes and transaction fees skimming a little bit off
| the top of everything, it's actually almost impossible to
| engage in _any_ financial transaction without that
| transaction stimulating all kinds of additional activity.
| Not all of it is valuable or even ethical activity, but
| the point is that the scenario posited ("everyone is just
| investing and there's no real demand underpinning it") is
| very unlikely to happen.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Yeah, it's a dynamic system, I get it, but it does seem
| like the beneficial effect of adding another dollar to
| the investment-side versus the demand-side ought to
| differ as balance of the overall money-supply shifts
| between the two, and it seems to me that if the rate of
| accumulation to one side is excessive it could outpace
| the ability of the system to "naturally" redistribute
| that balance.
|
| I'd expect "more investment dollars chasing smaller
| returns" (because the demand-side doesn't have enough
| cash) to show up as a declining velocity of money, and
| from what I can tell that _has_ been trending downward
| from a peak in the late '90s (M2) or around '08 (M1).
| I'd also expect this to cause some apparently-goofy
| valuations in the stock market, and... ditto. Increasing
| reliance on investments that rely on the _price of the
| investment_ simply going up for returns, not on returns
| from productive activity, and... yep (real estate _sure
| appears to be_ caught in a nasty trap of this sort, in
| particular). Or an enthusiastic boom in "investment
| vehicles" that permit near-zero-actual-economic-value
| speedrunning of the entire history of financial scams,
| and... yep, again.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| It feels like a weird backdoor to socialism. Look, we're
| capitalists, we trade stock on open markets ... but really
| most stock market gains come from a tiny fraction of
| companies with incredible performance, so everyone just
| invests in index funds to make sure they own all of the
| stocks, including the ones that will go up a lot ... and
| since we all own all of the companies, we start making sure
| our government works to prevent the companies we own from
| going out of business ...
| Analemma_ wrote:
| So what should be done instead? I pile everything into
| index funds because actively-managed funds charge higher
| fees for worse performance, and telling me I _must_
| invest with them instead of indexes seems much more
| straightforwardly socialist than whatever you 're
| fretting about.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Of course you do, that's the reasonable thing to do. It's
| just interesting to think about what broader shifts will
| accompany the transition from pension to 401(k) style
| retirement. My parents and grandparents owned little to
| no stock AFAIK. They didn't care directly how Wall Street
| did, they just cared about their pensions (which
| admittedly, I'm sure was opaquely tied to how well some
| companies were doing). With a sizeable 401(k) I
| absolutely care about how Wall Street does, and so does a
| much higher percentage of the population these days.
|
| You used to occasionally see bailouts of too-big-to-fail
| companies or industries, now the White House holds buy-a-
| Tesla day, presumably to boost TSLA. Just today the US
| Commerce Secretary announced that a UK airline would buy
| at least $10 billion of Boeing airplanes (Boeing stock is
| up ~4%).
|
| Maybe it's just me paying more attention to stock market
| news these days, but my impression is that politicians
| have recently begun to care a lot more about the overall
| stock market going up because a lot more voters care
| about the overall stock market going up.
| duxup wrote:
| I'd argue market patterns have been confusing since the end
| of the mortgage crisis.
| justin66 wrote:
| > too many index fund investors really inhibit price
| discovery
|
| What?
| selectodude wrote:
| The price of a stock like Tesla is supported due to its
| inclusion in the S&P 500 index funds. If you asked every
| person who owns SPY if they'd want to own TSLA, I imagine
| it would not add up to 100%. If State Street decided
| tomorrow that they were removing TSLA from SPY, it would
| crater the stock.
| kragen wrote:
| The Efficient Market Hypothesis is that securities prices
| represent the best available information in the market,
| because if they didn't, smart investors would take
| advantage of the unincorporated information to make money
| by buying the underpriced securities and/or selling the
| overpriced ones.
|
| Index fund investors do not do that; they just buy the
| securities that are listed in the index, which are selected
| typically because they have large market capitalization or
| are old, not because they are underpriced. So, to whatever
| extent the market conforms to the Efficient Market
| Hypothesis, it's not doing so because of the index fund
| investors.
| justin66 wrote:
| > So, to whatever extent the market conforms to the
| Efficient Market Hypothesis, it's not doing so because of
| the index fund investors.
|
| I don't disagree. I also don't believe this observation
| in isolation supports the assertion "too many index fund
| investors really inhibit price discovery." Remember, that
| statement was made in the context of _today,_ not in a
| hypothetical world where only a few lone traders at home
| trade individual shares and high frequency traders, hedge
| funds, and pension plans are for some reason no longer
| willing to place their own bets.
|
| I'd rather not let some of the anti-index investing
| tropes gain traction, since they're insanely stupid and,
| to the extent that index investing is good for people who
| aren't very skilled at investing, quite damaging.
| kragen wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the thesis myself, and even if it is
| correct, I don't think it makes a good argument for
| sacrificing your own wealth in the service of improving
| price discovery.
|
| One slight quibble, though: high frequency traders make
| their money by providing liquidity, not (as far as
| possible) betting on the future profits of companies.
| justin66 wrote:
| Oh, that's an interesting point about high frequency
| trading.
|
| I think the question of what percentage of the market
| could be invested in index funds before things got weird
| is an interesting one. It really _is_ hypothetical,
| though. Independent investors have more sway, not less,
| as an increasing number of people put money in index
| funds. There will always be a lot of people who are very
| rationally (and also depending on the investor... less
| rationally) unwilling to give that up.
| kragen wrote:
| Yeah, I agree.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| IMO the 2008 financial crisis was the beginning. Stock market
| has been following the monetary pump since then. The crisis
| was never solved. Now we are going to suffer a much larger
| one.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Markets have been divorced from fundamentals for years before
| COVID. Wealth is just too concentrated in a few hands and
| people don't seem to understand the affect this is having on
| the market.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Time and time again we see when the investors want to see a
| bump, they lay people off. We have execs that openly talk about
| maximizing head winds by running leaner than necessary so that
| when the next tail wind comes the gains from the shift are as
| big as possible... for investors.
|
| I'm not excited to see how an administration that seems to
| enjoy manipulating market swings pairs with investors that
| treat the labor force as a stock price lever.
| jbs789 wrote:
| The market should discount all future cash flows so as long as
| we end up in a more normal place the results of any one quarter
| don't really matter. But yeah, the market is assuming this all
| resolves itself in relatively short order, which may not be the
| case. Whether or not the response is rational... depends how
| quickly it resolves.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Q2 GDP is estimated to come in at 2.3%, aka no recession:
| https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
|
| This estimate was produced today (May 8), and represents
| increasing GDP growth vs. the previous estimate
| borvo wrote:
| In January their model estimated 2.4% https://web.archive.org
| /web/20250107140003/https://www.atlan...
|
| The model is likely based on fundamental economic factors and
| rational decision making. The latter is why Q1 ended up with
| -0.3% growth. You could call this the Trump effect.
| zhivota wrote:
| Hilarious because 10 days ago it was -2.7%:
|
| https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow/archives
|
| This wild of a swing makes me re-assess depending on this
| data for anything.
| sandinmyjoints wrote:
| That was for Q1, not Q2.
| zhivota wrote:
| Ah fair, though it seems the real number was -0.3% so
| still not really useful... being off by 2.4 on a number
| that has a historical range of [-5, 5] or so is not
| great.
| bgirard wrote:
| > products we couldn't manufacture ourselves even if we wanted
| to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections
|
| That's something I hadn't though about in the context of tariffs
| with interesting implications.
|
| Does following IP rules mean that any products and technologies
| that wont manufacturer in the US but holds IP protections become
| subject to a permanent tariff? Giving countries a permanent 125%
| advantage over US businesses when using that IP?
|
| What's the plan here?
| philshem wrote:
| > What's the plan here?
|
| ...
| duxup wrote:
| >What's the plan here?
|
| As far as the Trump administration goes, there doesn't seem to
| be a coherent plan. Among themselves they can't even decide if
| they were or were not already negotiating with China.
|
| I've yet to see someone who is a part of the administration who
| is clearly educated about trade making an coherent argument
| about the tariffs.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| I watched the UK/US press conference this morning. Lutnick is
| infuriating. Anything remotely resembling an explanation or
| justification for 'tariffs' devolves in to obsequeous praise
| of how great Trump is. It's as if they can't function for an
| hour or two without overtly proclaiming the wonder of Trump.
|
| "Jamison and I working together couldn't have put this deal
| together in 3 years, but President Trump was able to pull
| this off in less than 45 days!" (paraphrasing but IIRC it was
| pretty close).
| duxup wrote:
| The administration is now Trump and yes men, there's
| nothing that isn't "great".
| tw04 wrote:
| I feel like a broken record, but it makes perfect sense if
| you ask yourself, what would Putin want?
|
| Putin would love the US government destroying large portions
| of its economy for no discernible gain. I think Putin
| probably encouraged Trump by telling him all the idiotic
| things he keeps repeating like how the trade deficit shows
| the US is getting ripped off. Or that huge tariffs will bring
| manufacturing back to the US. Or that countries would be
| lining up to make a deal.
|
| But no actual sane person can explain the end game because
| anyone with even a basic understanding of economics and trade
| knows that none of those things are or were ever true.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I think the plan is to consolidate power at any cost. If
| people are too broke and scared to resist, it's a win for
| them. The claims that tariffs will help the economy or
| kidnapping citizens and judges will protect national
| security, is just a nonsense excuse.
|
| I think this because the right wing think tanks published
| that Project 2025 plan and it's clearly being followed even
| though Trump lied and said he wasn't aware of it
| drstewart wrote:
| >Giving countries a permanent 125% advantage over US businesses
| when using that IP?
|
| This makes zero sense.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| If a business in France uses tech X imported from China, and
| a competing US business uses the same tech X imported from
| China but has to pay 145% more than the French company, is
| that not an advantage they have over the US company?
| tantalor wrote:
| Given the tariff are here to stay, the only logical solution is
| for the US to withdraw from international IP treaties &
| conventions.
| bgirard wrote:
| I wouldn't call it logical for the US to lose all the IP
| protections they benefit from. But I doubt the international
| community would mind if suddenly American IP became free
| after the US withdrew itself from international trade.
| FpUser wrote:
| I guess then might try to buy the IP
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Given the tariff are here to stay_
|
| Based on what? They're going up and down every day. And the
| Trump administration is clearly desperate enough for a deal
| with China to be caught lying about engaging in talks.
| tantalor wrote:
| "given" as in "assuming"
| jm4 wrote:
| Other countries wouldn't get a permanent 125% advantage over
| the U.S. They have zero involvement with the tariff because
| it's the importer who pays it to the U.S. Treasury when the
| cargo arrives in the U.S. In the case where it's a single-
| source, IP-protected item, the tariff is largely irrelevant to
| the country that produces it. People will buy it if it's a
| necessary item. The tariff doesn't give them a reason to adjust
| the price up or down or do anything different at all. They sell
| to their U.S. wholesale customer at the same price, that
| wholesale customer pays the tariff, and then the wholesale
| customer either passes the tariff through to the retail
| customer or charges multiples to maintain the same profit
| margin percentage.
|
| In the absence of IP protections, it would hurt the countries
| with the highest tariffs on their products because there would
| be an incentive to produce an equivalent product domestically
| or source it from another country whose products are taxed at a
| lower rate. In practice, it still doesn't work out to impose
| broad tariffs because no one has a fully domestic supply chain.
| It really only makes sense to tariff very specific items in
| new-ish markets where you have a foreign player whose
| government is subsidizing production, e.g. Chinese EV's,
| Chinese EV batteries, solar panels, etc.
| bgirard wrote:
| > People will buy it if it's a necessary item.
|
| What do you call necessary? What about non-necessary items?
| What about IP that improves manufacturing efficiency by 5% in
| some process? Better battery tech? Better UI? Better chips?
| Better sensors? In some cases the answer is yes, in some
| cases the answer is no. If the answer is yes then the US pays
| 125% more for that item, if the answer is no then the US has
| worse efficiency, worse prices, worse technologies.
|
| You talk in absolute which makes me feel like you're missing
| all the nuances at play.
| kragen wrote:
| It's the buyers in the other countries who get the "125%"
| permanent advantage, not the sellers. Sure, it doesn't affect
| you if you're TCL making flat-panel displays. It affects you
| if you're buying flat-panel displays to incorporate into your
| product, by making your product a lot more expensive.
| grey-area wrote:
| The article points out some really important downsides of tariffs
| for any business but particularly small businesses:
|
| Unlike sales taxes or income taxes they are paid up front, before
| the sale.
|
| If they don't make a sale due to tariffs they still have to pay
| them and end up with unprofitable inventory.
|
| Tariffs can change at any time, and order/shipping times are
| long, so they are very difficult to plan for. Products may have
| been ordered months before tariffs but end up liable.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I found this interesting:
|
| > Since they are electronics products/components, there's a
| chance we may be able to request reclassification on some items
| to avoid the 125% 'reciprocal' tariff, but there's no assurance
| that it will succeed, and even if it does, it is many, many
| months until we could see a refund.
|
| I did not realize exemptions were processed as refund requests.
| So even if they are granted, it still kills cash flow in the
| meantime.
| duxup wrote:
| The exemption process probably was never intended to be used in
| a dynamic / high tariff situation. And to avoid fraud you don't
| want to just let them off the hook for taxes up front and have
| them vanish...
| tlogan wrote:
| > products we couldn't manufacture ourselves even if we wanted
| to, since the vendor has well-deserved IP protections
|
| Tariffs are working as intended: if somebody can manufacture
| similar things here they will be in advantage.
|
| This isn't an endorsement of tariffs, just an observation: their
| goal is to give domestic manufacturers an edge when similar goods
| can be made locally. In that sense, they're functioning exactly
| as intended.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It is if it's part of a strategy. The oafish nature of this
| expression of one man and his whack pack of losers surrounding
| him is beyond that.
|
| I'm doing what most people who can are - freezing capital
| spend, unwinding positions and contracts that will be hit and
| planning for the inevitable crash in the fall. The companies
| that rely on advertising for revenue are going to be purging
| workforce -- there nothing to sell.
|
| Ironically the idiots rallying for the clown will be hardest
| hit when the farms loans are due and the cotton and soybeans
| are rotting in the fields.
| senderista wrote:
| They will be bailed out at everyone else's expense like they
| were in his first term.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| And for things that _can not_ be manufactured or grown here...
| we just suck it up and pay the extra 10-20-30% anyway?
|
| If the 'intent' was to spur manufacturing, you'd enact laws
| with long term financial stability planned in. Few are going to
| commit to spending millions equipping factories when the
| 'tariff moat' that might make those factories sustainable will
| go away if Trump sees a movie in six weeks that says tariffs
| are bad.
|
| The 'intent' seems to be to create financial instability and
| chaos, to allow Trump to position himself as the financial
| savior, and we are concentrating huge amounts of economic power
| in the hands of a single person.
| 4star3star wrote:
| It would make a lot more sense to boil the frog over a long
| period of time with steady, scheduled increases in tariffs
| instead of pouring scalding water on everyone's heads all at
| once. Even with plenty of capital and willpower and know how,
| it takes plenty of time for industry to be built out. Under
| ideal conditions, even, these tariffs are harmful (and we don't
| have ideal conditions).
| fzeroracer wrote:
| There are no domestic manufacturers for the majority of things
| tariffed.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| Companies aren't going to invest 4+ years to get a supply-chain
| setup in the US when they can just wait for the next
| administration to roll these back. It's just needless economic
| turbulence.
| Arnt wrote:
| Your statement there implies that the intention is related to
| such a price point.
|
| I suspect that's wrong, and that they didn't even try to
| calculate those price points, which will vary per kind of good,
| not per country. If the per-country tariffs happen to match
| those unknown numbers they didn't even try to calculate, that
| can't be due to intention, it can only be dumb luck.
| Suppafly wrote:
| > if somebody can manufacture similar things here they will be
| in advantage.
|
| They can't and it's not worth the multi-year effort to start up
| a factory to do so. That's why these tariffs are so dumb, they
| aren't protecting US manufacturers, they are just hurting
| consumers needlessly.
| triceratops wrote:
| > if somebody can manufacture similar things here
|
| Gotta pay tariffs on the machines to manufacture the stuff
| first.
| zhivota wrote:
| And the raw materials. Oh I guess just start a mining
| operation, and a refining operation, and...
| const_cast wrote:
| Yeah and then all we'll have to do is build a multi-
| dimensional teleporter so that we can go to an alternate
| timeline where the US has all minerals it needs in it's
| earth.
|
| So just a few steps and we'll be good.
| ranger207 wrote:
| Even for things that are manufactured in the US, the products
| they make are still going to be more expensive than untariffed
| goods manufactured in China. The point of tariffs is that
| manufacturing is cheaper in other countries and so domestic
| manufacturers can't compete on price, so the tariffs add onto
| foreign prices until they're above domestic manufacturing
| prices. So even if magically there was a factory in the US
| tomorrow for every product manufactured in China, prices would
| still be higher with the tariffs than without
| avsteele wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat. Does anyone know any US PCB assemblers
| similar to PCBWay or JLCPCB? (e.g. small volume) I couldn't find
| any when i looked about a year ago
| sottol wrote:
| I used OSH PARK ~ 10-12 years ago - it looks like they're still
| around and somewhat affordable, but that was just a 20 second
| scan of their homepage. They used to be the affordable choice
| back in the day.
|
| https://oshpark.com
| the__alchemist wrote:
| No assembly.
| shraiwi wrote:
| OSHPark is US-based and they have excellent service.
| generj wrote:
| They are expensive for larger boards however.
|
| Great if you only need a few square inches.
| rozap wrote:
| They don't do assembly, do they?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| They don't exist. I had hope DigiKey would be the one, but it
| is not. (You need vertical integration with a parts library to
| pull this off)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| We work with a few, but they just do assembly, you bring the
| parts and PCBs.
|
| They are also insanely expensive if you are used to China
| prices. Boards with 10-15 components being $100+ each. Couple
| that with a domestic PCB manufacturing which is ~10x the cost
| of China, you are looking at something like an Arduino costing
| $250.
| avsteele wrote:
| OK, can you name one you've used/been happy with?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I don't know where you are located, but if you just search
| google maps for "electronics assembly" you can find places
| to call. You really want something nearby because it is
| pretty much the only upside that you can go and talk to
| them while going over the board and you don't have to
| hassle with shipping. You can also go inspect the first few
| boards done before they do the whole run.
| avsteele wrote:
| I mean in this case the upside for me is no tariff. I
| don't mind paying some premium for assembly in USA.
|
| Perhaps I'm missing something, but I haven't ever had to
| 'go over' the board with PCBWay. Maybe why they are so
| cheap, but I've only ever had one quality issue.
|
| I send the gerbers and pick and place and take it from
| there. I approve photos If they have any question (which
| is rare) its over email. I don't even mind sourcing the
| parts/pcb/stencil myself. Its the components which make
| the tariff painful.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Has anyone tried ordering a prototype PCB lately? Holy fuck.
| Prototype and small-run PCBs are effectively dead if you're in
| the US.
| generj wrote:
| Oshpark is still decent for small PCBs, since they are made in
| the US.
|
| From what I've seen the biggest impact is just the carriers
| requiring a huge fee (relative to my $40 worth of PCBs) just to
| deal with the tariffs at all. I almost wonder if there's a
| profitable side gig for someone couriering PCBs from Canada ->
| US, mailing them, and then flying back. A single suitcase can
| carry a LOT of PCBs. Obviously declaring it all still but just
| structured as a single import so the fees as a percentage would
| go down.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| No assembly.
| rozap wrote:
| Yep. They're insane. And there's no alternative locally.
|
| Biggest tax hike in my lifetime.
| polpo wrote:
| I switched to Aisler who are in Germany. They're certainly more
| expensive than China but still way less than quick turn options
| in the US. There will still be tariffs but they won't be nearly
| as high. There are also smaller PCB vendors in China other than
| the "big two" of JLCPCB and PCBWay that are willing to be a bit
| more flexible and not charge the max possible duty upfront via
| DDP incoterms.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| This gives me a feeling that a lot of smaller embedded players
| in the US are going to die...
| paulkrush wrote:
| If you're curious about how the DIY open-source hardware market
| for Chinese-made goods is reacting to the recent 145% tariffs,
| check out the eBay sales data here: eBay Sold
| Listings:https://www.ebay.com/sh/research?marketplace=EBAY-
| US&tabName...
|
| Spoiler alert: There hasn't been any noticeable reaction yet. You
| might expect to see price increases or higher order volumes when
| searching for items like the ESP32, but that hasn't been the case
| so far.
|
| I'd love to hear your thoughts on the potential impact of
| removing the de minimis threshold on shipments. It's hard to
| imagine how the postal system could efficiently handle tariffs on
| a dozen small $1 packages from AliExpress landing in the mailbox.
| I suspect we're moving beyond that point, with private companies
| likely clearing these shipments in bulk before they reach USPS--
| if they even make it that far.
| polpo wrote:
| As a maker of open source hardware, I and others in the US
| selling my projects stocked up before the de minimis threshold
| was eliminated on May 2. We're not increasing our prices until
| those stocks run out and we have to reorder - we don't want to
| screw the community over.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >We're not increasing our prices until those stocks run out
| and we have to reorder - we don't want to screw the community
| over.
|
| That's a nice thing to do, but it might be more sustainable
| to increase the cost some now, so that you don't have to
| increase it as much to cover the tariffs in the future.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > It's hard to imagine how the postal system could efficiently
| handle tariffs on a dozen small $1 packages from AliExpress
| landing in the mailbox.
|
| De minimis in Canada has been $20 (and sorta $40) for a loooong
| time. That's like US$14 these days.
|
| Usually brokers and brokered shipments (like UPS, Fedex, DHL,
| etc) will charge any and every tax/duty absolutely correctly.
| Possibly charging you more than the cost of the item to
| calculate all that. And notoriously delivering the parcel and
| mailing you a bill 2 weeks later. Virtually every Canadian that
| shops online has some horror story about it.
|
| For stuff coming by post and directly assessed by customs, they
| _used_ to be sticklers and assess charges on everything worth
| >$20, even if it's $2.60 in taxes and a $8.95 fee for the
| privilege of calculating it. In the last ~15 years, they pick
| and choose.
|
| They seem to ignore China stuff since it's mostly low value and
| have a sharp eye to spot stuff from, e.g. Japan that's probably
| higher value.
|
| No idea how Aliexpress and others that use gig workers for
| last-mile delivery do it. Maybe they just pay the tariffs/taxes
| because the item value is still low once you exclude the final
| delivery costs from the valuation.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There is quite a bit of supply still on the US side from
| vendors preparing for this.
| kotaKat wrote:
| I'm already finding it in niche listings by way of shipping
| price inflation.
|
| What was free shipping to the US is now $60 on this item:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/388222776222 (a $200 shipping version
| at https://www.ebay.com/itm/405822192434).
|
| Here's a keyloading adapter for one of my radios at $600
| shipping(!) - https://www.ebay.com/itm/146313261605
|
| Absolute frustration.
| beAbU wrote:
| Its $10 shipping to Ireland for that keyloading adapter.
| jkestner wrote:
| I like closing the loophole, but the overall turbulence seems
| to have made many sellers just turn off US sales. I had sourced
| an off-the-shelf part for our product, so cheap that I wouldn't
| mind paying 300%, but I can't see the page on AliExpress unless
| I change my VPN origin.
| tim333 wrote:
| Re de minimis I imagine suppliers instead of sending lots of $1
| packages from Asia will send 1000 x $1 items to some bloke in
| the US who will send them on, so it will be one import
| transaction. And quite likely sent from somewhere near China
| like Vietnam to try to avoid too much tariff.
| blitzar wrote:
| Hostile and political. Fake news - everyone knows China paid.
| (/s)
| Fokamul wrote:
| Finally americans will experience expensive electronics. I guess
| nobody in US realize how much more expensive is electronics for
| people in EU. Every electronics is more expensive by hundreds of
| EUR and with added bonus, the price is same for every country in
| EU, which in turn means when you live in EU country where median
| salary is 5x lower than US, you will have great time buying
| electronics, steam games, etc.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| The most expensive electronics the typical American experiences
| is often their phone, and I think this won't matter too much,
| because I believe a majority of people basically get them on an
| installment plan from their cellular carrier. They'll own the
| phone in 4 years instead of 2, but they probably would have
| upgraded to a new phone in 2 years and would have been paying
| the $200/mo. anyway.
|
| Timing is good for phone makers here honestly because phone
| innovation is slowing down so high prices for the same stuff
| can be blamed on tarriffs instead of lack of innovation.
|
| The second most expensive electronics would be game systems,
| and that'll be painful, but I do wonder if e.g. Nintendo would
| pair with cellular companies and do installment plans like
| phones, and/or if PS/Xbox would try to do something similar
| with ISPs (e.g. AT&T Gamer Deal) or rent their consoles instead
| of selling them.
|
| Gamer PCs are gonna take a serious hit though, and the price of
| individual games is certain to increase.
| r0ckarong wrote:
| Winning so hard right now.
| somanyphotons wrote:
| I hope they list out the tarrif costs explicitly at online
| checkout time
| Evidlo wrote:
| Amazon discussed this internally apparently, and when the White
| House found out they called it a "hostile act"
| iancmceachern wrote:
| And where is this money going? Is it going to be used to directly
| help companies like Adafruit which are being directly harmed?
| jacobyoder wrote:
| Going directly in to the Treasury.
|
| https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/static-data/published-report...
|
| $252 million was collected from excise tariffs on May 6. You
| can look at this PDF day to day.
|
| EDIT: adding on to this... most days are between $150m and
| $300m. There's been a few days north of $300m this calendar
| year. There was also one day - April 16? 17th? - with $11.5b
| coming in. Under 'excise taxes'. I have to assume that was
| something to do with early April tariff announcements? But
| haven't seen anything remotely similar since.
|
| So this "billions of dollars are pouring in from tariffs!"
| is... simply not true. There's not been a huge shift one way or
| the other yet.
|
| EDIT 2 - April 22 - https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/static-
| data/published-report.... $11b in excise taxes deposited.
| senderista wrote:
| A bunch of it will go to bail out US farmers who would
| otherwise be wiped out.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| That's intense and probably Made in USA products when they become
| available will cost adjacent the same.
| nrclark wrote:
| I won't defend these tariffs, or their rollout. But I will say
| that our dependence on Chinese manufacturing (and engineering,
| these days) is not good for our nation.
|
| Free trade combined with cheap labor led to a massive loss of
| national capability. We outsourced 75% of the supply chain for
| electronics, and provided decades of free training to foreign
| companies. Then we pulled a surprised mug when those same
| companies decided that they don't need us any more.
|
| As a parent of young kids, I'm also keenly aware of how much
| random plastic garbage we import - just to throw it away after
| maybe one use. Party favors are a big one. Families are drowning
| in low-cost, low-quality products that wind up in a landfill.
| Free trade created this situation, and I don't think it's good
| for anybody except importers and factory owners.
|
| I don't know what the solution is, and the current tariffs
| clearly aren't it. But free trade with China hasn't exactly been
| great for the US in a longterm sense, and we shouldn't pretend
| otherwise just because we're getting cheap consumer goods.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Sure. But this is not the way to do it. In fact if I were to
| think of a way to destroy the USA, this plan of Trumps would be
| it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| especially with the recent military changes. everything I'm
| seeing just reeks of foreign operatives initiating plans that
| benefit the foreign government.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Had tariffs been applied early when American corporations
| stated offshoring manufacturing to increase their profits the
| industry base might have been saved. But now these tariffs are
| just going to introduce pain to people in substantial price
| hikes and no company in this chaotic environment is going to
| put the collective trillions of dollars to building capability
| back in the USA. This requires a better plan.
| hollerith wrote:
| I wonder whether you realize that the US is currently second
| in manufacturing capacity and far ahead of the country
| (Japan) in third place. (I'm not defending Trump's tariffs.)
|
| The situation in electronics manufacturing specifically I
| will concede is concerning.
| beAbU wrote:
| Is that a per capita metric, or overall? America is fuckin
| huge.
| hollerith wrote:
| Overall.
|
| Energy costs (particularly natural gas prices) are much
| lower in the US than in the other manufacturing
| powerhouses, and some manufacturing is very energy-
| intensive.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| That's a goofy argument because manufacturing did not start
| to be offshored until AFTER tariffs were removed.
|
| Chart: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Av
| erage_...
| lesuorac wrote:
| Eh, doesn't that chart support their argument?
|
| Domestic manufacturing decreasing as tariffs decrease
| implies that increasing tariffs would increase domestic
| manufacturing. With their argument being that you needed to
| do it 50 years ago when the shift started because if you do
| it now it's really painful.
| philistine wrote:
| > if you do it now it's really painful.
|
| That's a misnomer if ever there was one. The current
| batch of tariffs will destroy enough American wealth to
| nosedive the economy before any long-term change.
| Manufacturing is not coming back, there's just not gonna
| be enough wealth in the US to warrant it. Plus there are
| counter-tariffs, so if you make it in America, you can't
| reliably export it.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| The pain increases with time, but we don't have a time
| machine so what is the alternative?
| dmonitor wrote:
| the current strategy seems to be the equivalent of taking
| a chainsaw to someone's chest and calling it heart
| surgery. I don't know how to do a heart transplant, but I
| know the tools require some amount of subtlety.
| dttze wrote:
| Invest in economic zones. Enforce the usage of the
| investment into infrastructure and not stock buybacks.
| Rebuild industry. Then establish tariffs to cement it.
| tristor wrote:
| Correct, however that doesn't mean that bringing tariffs
| back will have any immediate impact to reverse this change.
| 2025 is not 1980.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| >I won't defend these tariffs, or their rollout. But I will say
| that our dependence on Chinese manufacturing (and engineering,
| these days) is not good for our nation.
|
| How would you solve it differently?
| dylan604 wrote:
| With what we know now, or going back in time and making
| different decisions than what were made? offshoring isn't
| necessarily the wrong decision, but sending it all to one
| country with hostile form of government to your own does seem
| like a bad move. China just happened to be smart enough to
| develop in this way where Mexico or other Latin American
| countries did not, nor did other Asian countries. They are
| all now trying to play catch up, but only after China became
| _THE_ place for all of this manufacturing.
|
| There is no overnight solve at this point. But a solution
| would be working to help countries with more friendly
| government to your own to build up their manufacturing with
| the promise of guaranteed business to help prop it up by
| moving away from the hostile government.
| scoofy wrote:
| Not OP, but it's clear that slow, low, _scheduled_ tariffs
| are how you move manufacturing. When a business say, hmm...
| in 5 years, we 're going to be unprofitable, we should
| probably invest in an American fab.
|
| This is also why you pass the tariffs _through the
| legislature_ and not via some literal "emergency" order,
| which means that the tariffs could disappear at literally any
| point, and probably will if things get bad. So what's the
| point of investment if you have a better than 50-50 chance
| and you're going to feel the pain either way?
|
| It's just exactly the opposite way anyone who is seriously
| trying to shift manufacturing would go about doing it. There
| is also some strong dollar issues, but that's really
| complicated.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Have a diverse economy and tell corporations "no" when they
| want to move manufacturing to other nations. Or tell them to
| delist off American markets and move the actual company to
| the cheaper nation. They want the protections and freedom of
| the US economy but they don't want to pay for any of it.
| That's called a parasite and they aren't needed here.
| justin66 wrote:
| The Chinese and others often prefer to subsidize their
| important industries rather than taxing their own citizens in
| the form of tariffs.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| I'm confused. Average tariff rate in China is higher than
| in US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ta
| riff_ra...
| xenadu02 wrote:
| No, China imposes rather large tariffs on external goods to
| force internal consumption. That's beyond a bunch of other
| measures that prevent foreigners from starting businesses
| or owning property.
|
| Of course as other comments in the thread have pointed out:
| a much smarter way to roll out tariffs to encourage
| domestic manufacturing is by slowing ramping them up to
| give industry time to react.
|
| My lathe was $3400. A week later the price is now $4000
| thanks to tariffs. There are no domestic manufacturers left
| and banks/Wall Street aren't going to finance someone
| spinning up a machine tools company. The difference in
| price isn't enough to erase China's excessive subsidies to
| their industry combined with their lower labor pay rates so
| even if someone did try to compete they still couldn't
| match $4000. My best guess is more like $6-7k. In the end
| all the tariffs are doing is making it more difficult to
| get into machining.
|
| If idiots and sycophants weren't steering the ship the US
| would have a state-run investment bank that partnered with
| private capital to offer investments to anyone who wanted
| to start a business. Frankly I think there is lots of
| opportunity in various spaces like machine tools to make
| innovative products at all scales from the small hobbyist
| to big industrial shops. It won't be a 1000x return though
| so no one cares.
| justin66 wrote:
| > That's beyond a bunch of other measures that prevent
| foreigners from starting businesses or owning property.
|
| In defense of the comment you're responding to: measures
| like making it impossible to compete by subsidizing their
| domestic competition. (I wasn't trying to suggest China
| and others do not use tariffs)
| soared wrote:
| > Then we pulled a surprised mug when those same companies
| decided that they don't need us any more.
|
| What does this mean?
| mtlynch wrote:
| mug = face
|
| The clearer wording is probably:
|
| >Then we were surprised when those same companies decided
| that they don't need us any more.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _our dependence on Chinese manufacturing (and engineering,
| these days) is not good for our nation_
|
| If we only tariffed China, this argument would hold water.
| Instead, we're handing every country's imports to China on a
| platter.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| > Families are drowning in low-cost, low-quality products that
| wind up in a landfill. Free trade created this situation, and I
| don't think it's good for anybody except importers and factory
| owners.
|
| No, free trade did not create this situation. People like you
| did. I'm not over here drowning in useless plastic and we've
| lived in the same globalised world together.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| The bulk of US wealth and economic strength is is high value,
| highly profitable services. I worked in sales support for
| Engineering and a 60% profit on labor was the norm. There's a
| tremendous gap in low value services (restaurants) which
| distort the efficiency of the US economy as best reflected in a
| lack of social safety nets on morality grounds rather than
| economics. COVID stimulus proved that the nation would not
| collapse if the most vulnerable were subsidized, and it's
| against the political machine's interests to confront this
| reality.
| molszanski wrote:
| This kill US based vendors and stores. Everyone will move to a
| JIT model. Shipping to US only after you buy a product.
|
| I expect Mexico and Canadian warehouses will have a lot of
| business. Stocking a warehouse in USA would be insanely risky
| because of this upfront cost.
|
| This will kill smaller and medium sized businesses and
| concentrate capital. Corporations with deep pockets must be
| elated. This kills their mid sized competitors.
| mig39 wrote:
| Social media is filled with people who are in disbelief when they
| get UPS or DHL invoices for tariffs. It's hard to watch people
| who really believed the "China will pay the tariffs" trope start
| to wake up to reality.
| more_corn wrote:
| We should all stop buying everything till this blows over.
|
| Even if it only caused a 20% drop in spending, a lot of powerful
| people would take notice.
|
| In capitalism you vote with your wallet. If we continue buying
| stuff like nothing has happened, whatever happened must be fine.
| It's not fine and the quickest and cleanest way to say that is to
| simply stop.
|
| No new cars, no new appliances. No new anything. Don't buy any
| foreign goods, go on a spending diet. If you absolutely must, buy
| used and buy local.
|
| If some policy brings the economy to a screeching halt smart
| money pays attention real fast.
| fmsf wrote:
| I have been sharing this to try to raise awareness, the impact is
| going to be high!
|
| Companies are really struggling to optimise their suppliers, it
| is pretty hard. If they start on bill of materials they can often
| sort by most common parts and then it becomes a graph problem
| finding "cheapest" paths between often traversing four tables bom
| <> parts <> suppliers <> tariffs.
|
| The really hard part is mapping parts down to sku level to tariff
| codes. Specially at scale (think datasets with many million
| rows).
|
| Either way we built https://www.searchtariff.com/?q=lights as an
| entry point and and have been getting more and more worried with
| the market as we help companies out. They are not ready for this
| at all and it is bitting deep. Let us know if you also need help
| mapping products to tariffs, we have a product for that!
|
| Alternatively we also welcome feedback!
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