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I would just like Trump to be honest with his supporters about what tariffs really are and what they entail. He repeatedly implies that these are fees that oth

I would just like Trump to be honest with his supporters about what tariffs really are and what they entail. He repeatedly implies that these are fees that other countries will shoulder to “bring them into compliance.” The truth is (as I’m sure you all know) these are fees that we pay to the federal government separately when we import goods from these countries. Other countries don’t pay a dime. On top of that, supply chains don’t (or can’t) change at the drop of a hat. Large scale onshoring takes time and investment. So the reality for the average American is that the crippling inflation we’ve endured for the last 3 years is not going away, and we’re going to pay an extra 25% on top of it for the vast majority of our imported goods (which is basically everything nowadays). The thing I can’t figure out is if he really doesn’t know how tariffs work, or if he’s just a liar. Either way it doesn’t make him look good. And from any reasonable analysis I’ve seen, I just don’t understand how this is going to bring anything back home. It’s just going to raise prices and cause more suffering for those who can least afford it. But I think most people understand that it’s not actually about accomplishing any goal in particular or about solving any problem, it’s just a bro flex. Awesome. Your guy can flex. Congratulations. All your shit just went up 25%, so now you’re paying too. Elections have consequences, as they like to say.

ojbyrne 2y ago
I'm pretty sure his thinking is - say to every company that wants a break on the tariff - here, buy some $DJT, we'll take a look.
- bediger4000 2y ago
  Wait, are you saying that a US president would take bribes?
  - caspper69 2y ago
    Not directly. The only type of business relationship his feeble little mind understands is quid pro quo. He is incapable of nuance and is unfit to lead. This is a man who went broke more than once in the casino industry. He’s either stupid or corrupt, take your pick.
voidhorse 2y ago
> The thing I can’t figure out is if he really doesn’t know how tariffs work, or if he’s just a liar. Either way it doesn’t make him look good. The second proposition has already been proven many times over. The first is very likely also true. > And from any reasonable analysis I’ve seen, I just don’t understand how this is going to bring anything back home. It’s just going to raise prices and cause more suffering for those who can least afford it. It won't. I think the best thing we can hope for is that it brings economic frustrations to an untenable boiling point and either forces the administration to correct course (ultimately still costing us significantly in terms of global trade positioning) or it spurs the idiots who voted for this administration into action agains the administration.
- caspper69 2y ago
  They’re too busy high-fiving and laughing like jackasses over their revenge porn fantasies coming true to notice. For now at least. There’s a lot more Cleetuses than Elons though. And Cleetus is the one who’s going to suffer.
  - xor-eax-eax 2y ago
    [flagged]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
4hg4ufxhy 2y ago
>Other countries don’t pay a dime. We will indirectly pay in reduction of demand, which will reduce the price or production. Maybe not 25%, but probably not 0%? If we didn't pay for it, I wouldn't see our prime minister be worried about our industry and scared of trump.
- caspper69 2y ago
  Of course it will cost you in terms of loss of demand. But there’s no guarantee that your factories will be able to reduce prices though. Everyone is worried about it. The global supply chain is a well oiled machine after the last 40 years. Problem is, Trump’s enablers and the media are too scared of retribution to tell people just how bad this will be. It’s a solution looking for a problem. You should have seen my frustration during Trump I explaining to my die hard Trumper why he kept getting customs bills from DHL, FedEx and UPS for his equipment and supply orders. I was literally exacerbated trying to tell him he was paying the tariffs that Trump enacted. It’s like he was incapable of understanding plain English because it conflicted with his Fox induced worldview.
bongodongobob 2y ago
I know someone who works for a construction company that does big jobs, factories, airports, hospitals, etc, and asked him about building a new factory. He said if someone woke up tomorrow and said "I'm going to build a new plant", 2 years would be an aggressive timeline just for the construction. That doesn't take into account the planning, design, permits, machinery installation, etc. It wouldn't be producing anything until after his presidency. Now, that's all fine and good, but construction materials like steel, wood, and aluminum are about to go up due to the tariffs not to mention supply chain disruption and stockpiling, making prices even worse. Construction is going to contract. The publicly traded companies all went down as soon as this was announced. Noone is going to want to build this stuff while materials prices are going up. There are other ways to encourage onshoring. 25% tariffs and a tariff war with our main trading partners ain't it.
- caspper69 2y ago
  Amen
p3rls 2y ago
The complete lack of charity in these neoliberal critiques always crack me up. Haha, those poor blue collar plebs don't know what's even in their best interest! "any reasonable analysis"-- I will help you out, right now you can ask deepseek how tariffs helped power the asian economic miracle.
- caspper69 2y ago
  Why would I ask an llm anything? The asian economic miracle as you put it took place in countries with cheap land, essentially free labor (by Western standards), zero environmental protections, and cheap global shipping. News flash Einstein, they weren’t buying our expensive shit to begin with. So they didn’t really need tariffs. Why? Because they lived in huts with no electricity or running water and ate rice and vegetables for every meal. Neoliberal takes. I’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal daily since before you were born, back when it wasn’t just another mouthpiece for some rich asshole with an axe to grind.
  - p3rls 2y ago
    You're a retard.
- voidhorse 2y ago
  Even if I assume that is true, Asia in the 60s-90s and the USA in 2025 are very different geopolitical entities with very different trade relations to navigate and resources that they have/do not have available. This is the whole reason an analysis is necessary. Making good political choices is about taking relevant information and making trade offs, these levers are not some context-independent magic wand that we should hope will work because "hey it worked for the other guy". You'll also note that good trade relations with the US, not pissing off your trading partners, were a key element to that success. I'm sure deepseek will also let you know that tariffs are by and large considered a terrible strategy in the vast majority of circumstances.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  The asian economic uplift was powered by exports, not by reducing imports. Tariffs were the exact opposite of what they wanted as they were reliant on exporting their cheap labor and a trade war makes that much harder. Latin american countries made the mistake of trying to build an economy by reducing imports through tariffs, as we can see it did not work.
archagon 2y ago
If Trump was capable of being honest, he wouldn't be a twice-impeached felon.
tivert 2y ago
> The truth is (as I’m sure you all know) these are fees that we pay to the federal government separately when we import goods from these countries. Other countries don’t pay a dime. The mistake you're making is only considering first order effects (gov collecting tariff taxes), and ignoring second and greater order effects (how people respond to those taxes). The truth about tariffs is actually more complicated: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/opinion/trump-tariffs-trade.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/opinion/trump-tariffs-tra...: > A good place to start disentangling things is the argument ad nauseam over who pays for tariffs — the consumer or the foreign producer? Contrary to what both sides sometimes assert, the question has no simple answer. “Despite over a century of theoretical debate on the incidence of tariffs, sound empirical evidence on who bears the burden of trade tariffs is sparse,” according to a 2015 article in the University of Chicago’s Chicago Policy Review. > ...It’s true that up front, a U.S. tariff is levied on Americans, not foreign producers. But what really matters is who bears the ultimate cost. If the foreign producer continues to charge the same amount at the border, then the final price goes up by the amount of the tariff, and the American bears the full cost. But if the foreign producer cuts its price at the border by the amount of the tariff so that the final price paid by the American is unchanged, then the foreign producer bears the full cost of the tariff. > Typically, the cost will be split. Americans won’t have to bear much of the cost of the tariff if the foreign producer is willing to accept a smaller profit to hang on to its share of the U.S. market. That calculation will vary product by product.
- caspper69 2y ago
  I don't want to insult you, but I do want to insult the NYT quotes you posted. Frankly, they are about the dumbest effing comments I've read in a while. I will just pose a simple question- how many industries that trade in real goods have margins in excess of 25%? How many industries do you know of that would keep going in the face of a 50% haircut to their profit? Those quotes say nothing and are pure conjecture. I will tell you exactly who will pay the increase (and then some, because there's always juice on top of juice): we will; you and I, and every person and family we know. That's who.
  - orwin 2y ago

ojbyrne 2y ago

I'm pretty sure his thinking is - say to every company that wants a break on the tariff - here, buy some $DJT, we'll take a look.

bediger4000 2y ago
Wait, are you saying that a US president would take bribes?
- caspper69 2y ago
  Not directly. The only type of business relationship his feeble little mind understands is quid pro quo. He is incapable of nuance and is unfit to lead. This is a man who went broke more than once in the casino industry. He’s either stupid or corrupt, take your pick.

voidhorse 2y ago

> The thing I can’t figure out is if he really doesn’t know how tariffs work, or if he’s just a liar. Either way it doesn’t make him look good. The second proposition has already been proven many times over. The first is very likely also true. > And from any reasonable analysis I’ve seen, I just don’t understand how this is going to bring anything back home. It’s just going to raise prices and cause more suffering for those who can least afford it. It won't. I think the best thing we can hope for is that it brings economic frustrations to an untenable boiling point and either forces the administration to correct course (ultimately still costing us significantly in terms of global trade positioning) or it spurs the idiots who voted for this administration into action agains the administration.

caspper69 2y ago
They’re too busy high-fiving and laughing like jackasses over their revenge porn fantasies coming true to notice. For now at least. There’s a lot more Cleetuses than Elons though. And Cleetus is the one who’s going to suffer.
- xor-eax-eax 2y ago
  [flagged]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

4hg4ufxhy 2y ago

>Other countries don’t pay a dime. We will indirectly pay in reduction of demand, which will reduce the price or production. Maybe not 25%, but probably not 0%? If we didn't pay for it, I wouldn't see our prime minister be worried about our industry and scared of trump.

caspper69 2y ago
Of course it will cost you in terms of loss of demand. But there’s no guarantee that your factories will be able to reduce prices though. Everyone is worried about it. The global supply chain is a well oiled machine after the last 40 years. Problem is, Trump’s enablers and the media are too scared of retribution to tell people just how bad this will be. It’s a solution looking for a problem. You should have seen my frustration during Trump I explaining to my die hard Trumper why he kept getting customs bills from DHL, FedEx and UPS for his equipment and supply orders. I was literally exacerbated trying to tell him he was paying the tariffs that Trump enacted. It’s like he was incapable of understanding plain English because it conflicted with his Fox induced worldview.

bongodongobob 2y ago

I know someone who works for a construction company that does big jobs, factories, airports, hospitals, etc, and asked him about building a new factory. He said if someone woke up tomorrow and said "I'm going to build a new plant", 2 years would be an aggressive timeline just for the construction. That doesn't take into account the planning, design, permits, machinery installation, etc. It wouldn't be producing anything until after his presidency. Now, that's all fine and good, but construction materials like steel, wood, and aluminum are about to go up due to the tariffs not to mention supply chain disruption and stockpiling, making prices even worse. Construction is going to contract. The publicly traded companies all went down as soon as this was announced. Noone is going to want to build this stuff while materials prices are going up. There are other ways to encourage onshoring. 25% tariffs and a tariff war with our main trading partners ain't it.

caspper69 2y ago
Amen

p3rls 2y ago

The complete lack of charity in these neoliberal critiques always crack me up. Haha, those poor blue collar plebs don't know what's even in their best interest! "any reasonable analysis"-- I will help you out, right now you can ask deepseek how tariffs helped power the asian economic miracle.

caspper69 2y ago
Why would I ask an llm anything? The asian economic miracle as you put it took place in countries with cheap land, essentially free labor (by Western standards), zero environmental protections, and cheap global shipping. News flash Einstein, they weren’t buying our expensive shit to begin with. So they didn’t really need tariffs. Why? Because they lived in huts with no electricity or running water and ate rice and vegetables for every meal. Neoliberal takes. I’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal daily since before you were born, back when it wasn’t just another mouthpiece for some rich asshole with an axe to grind.
- p3rls 2y ago
  You're a retard.
voidhorse 2y ago
Even if I assume that is true, Asia in the 60s-90s and the USA in 2025 are very different geopolitical entities with very different trade relations to navigate and resources that they have/do not have available. This is the whole reason an analysis is necessary. Making good political choices is about taking relevant information and making trade offs, these levers are not some context-independent magic wand that we should hope will work because "hey it worked for the other guy". You'll also note that good trade relations with the US, not pissing off your trading partners, were a key element to that success. I'm sure deepseek will also let you know that tariffs are by and large considered a terrible strategy in the vast majority of circumstances.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
The asian economic uplift was powered by exports, not by reducing imports. Tariffs were the exact opposite of what they wanted as they were reliant on exporting their cheap labor and a trade war makes that much harder. Latin american countries made the mistake of trying to build an economy by reducing imports through tariffs, as we can see it did not work.

archagon 2y ago

If Trump was capable of being honest, he wouldn't be a twice-impeached felon.

tivert 2y ago

> The truth is (as I’m sure you all know) these are fees that we pay to the federal government separately when we import goods from these countries. Other countries don’t pay a dime. The mistake you're making is only considering first order effects (gov collecting tariff taxes), and ignoring second and greater order effects (how people respond to those taxes). The truth about tariffs is actually more complicated: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/opinion/trump-tariffs-trade.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/opinion/trump-tariffs-tra...: > A good place to start disentangling things is the argument ad nauseam over who pays for tariffs — the consumer or the foreign producer? Contrary to what both sides sometimes assert, the question has no simple answer. “Despite over a century of theoretical debate on the incidence of tariffs, sound empirical evidence on who bears the burden of trade tariffs is sparse,” according to a 2015 article in the University of Chicago’s Chicago Policy Review. > ...It’s true that up front, a U.S. tariff is levied on Americans, not foreign producers. But what really matters is who bears the ultimate cost. If the foreign producer continues to charge the same amount at the border, then the final price goes up by the amount of the tariff, and the American bears the full cost. But if the foreign producer cuts its price at the border by the amount of the tariff so that the final price paid by the American is unchanged, then the foreign producer bears the full cost of the tariff. > Typically, the cost will be split. Americans won’t have to bear much of the cost of the tariff if the foreign producer is willing to accept a smaller profit to hang on to its share of the U.S. market. That calculation will vary product by product.

caspper69 2y ago
I don't want to insult you, but I do want to insult the NYT quotes you posted. Frankly, they are about the dumbest effing comments I've read in a while. I will just pose a simple question- how many industries that trade in real goods have margins in excess of 25%? How many industries do you know of that would keep going in the face of a 50% haircut to their profit? Those quotes say nothing and are pure conjecture. I will tell you exactly who will pay the increase (and then some, because there's always juice on top of juice): we will; you and I, and every person and family we know. That's who.
- orwin 2y ago