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Tariffs result in 10% laptop price hike in U.S. says Acer CEO
- monkeytime19878 2y agoWho uses Acer? Not me....
- belter 2y agoDon't worry...The tariffs are only on Acer \s
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- busterarm 2y agoAcer doesn't do final assembly in the US. Many other brands do. Apple is already shifting a lot of production from China to Vietnam, which hasn't been mentioned as a tariff target yet.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoAnd didn’t Apple move iPhone production to India already?
- addicted 2y agoTrue. Those other brands will see price hikes that are slightly lower than 10% then.
- addicted 2y agoOnly about 15% of Apple’s iPhone production is in India with it expected to rise to about 25% over the next few years. But the administration is likely to impose even higher tariffs on India, so that doesn’t help either.
- freeone3000 2y agoGood! It’s high time we put in some protectionary measures to protect our domestic laptop assemblers!
- busterarm 2y agoYou mean Dell, HP and Lenovo? Heck, I could drive to the Lenovo plant on my lunch break...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- MisterTea 2y agohttps://static.lenovo.com/ww/docs/sustainability/list-of-lenovo-mfg-sites-and-suppliers-27oct.pdf https://static.lenovo.com/ww/docs/sustainability/list-of-len... I doubt that USA factory does much more than packaging, final assembly and customization of business computers/servers.
- realo 2y agoI work for a big global company. We have started to see customers who refuse to buy our devices if Lenovo computers were used at anytime during their manufacture. Interesting times.
- watwut 2y agoCanadians?
- timeon 2y agoReminds me of those "made in Italy" Chinese bikes assembled and painted in Italy.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoGreat news for System76; and great news for if the tariffs stick around. We could use more computers made in Colorado.
- amazingamazing 2y agoTariffs result in higher prices, resulting in less demand, resulting in less consumption, resulting in less production, resulting in fewer greenhouse gases produced resulting in saving the planet? Trump is saving the planet? /s
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoI'm skeptical of tariffs in general, but it seems like there's a clear strategic case for tariffs on a country whose market may become unavailable entirely when they begin their long-promised invasion of their neighbor.
- alabastervlog 2y agoReducing trade with China (and sure, tariffs work for that purpose, why not?) is one of the only things I agree with as far as policies Trump has actually taken action on (both terms). ... I think it'd be more effective and less painful if we weren't signaling to other liberal democracies that we're an unreliable trading & security partner at the same time, but hey, it's something.
- pkaye 2y agoBiden maintained the tariffs against China and many companies were moving out of China to other countries like Vietnam, India and of course Mexico. When suddenly Trump wanted to put tariffs on Mexico it took some of them off guard. Labor costs in Mexico are lower than China from what I heard. The problem has been that in many cases Chinese companies have been moving their production to those other countries. But even that could have been solved with cooperation and incentives to these countries.
- alabastervlog 2y agoYep, exactly, you want a united front to make it effective, especially when you're dealing with an economy as large as China's. That's why it'd be nice if we were focusing mainly on that, and not also on weird low-value games with other less-abusive and more-ideologically-aligned trading partners.
- josefritzishere 2y agoThere it is... the consequences of our actions.
- jermberj 2y agoWhose actions?
- belorn 2y agoI have no doubt they will argue the price increase as a result of tariffs, but market prices are and will always be about what the market will tolerate and rarely nothing else. This is why many other companies will segment the market with what often is the same product under different prices. Acer is not selling laptop based on the cost of raw resources and then adding a fixed markup. Most costs are in development. A large shared of a high end laptop is share components among all of their products. Depending on specific, their most expensive laptop can be a loss or profit per when accounting for development, research and marketing. Flagship products are generally not about selling individual units. Looking at Acer profit as a company, one can not add import tax to the end number.
- bayarearefugee 2y agoFor the vast majority of laptops that aren't made by Apple all profit margins are entirely erased (and then some) by these tariffs. So yeah the manufacturers could eat the cost... as long as they don't mind losing money on every sale.
- belorn 2y agoManufacturer that builds laptops has the following costs: Components, Assembly, Software & Licensing, Research & Development, Marketing & Branding. Out of those, components and assembly is the unit cost. If the cost of components and assembly are greater than sell price then every sale is a loss. Tariffs impact this cost, and they are not close to erase the difference between sticker price and unit price. The estimated per-unit profit margins for a company like Lenovo, Acer, Dell and so on is in the range of 25-30% per laptop, through the exact numbers do not get published. In comparison, Apple is estimated to be around 60% per laptop. It is when you then add Software & Licensing, Research & Development, Marketing & Branding, and static costs, spread out on all sold units, the profit margin goes down to 5-10% (with Apple here having a margin around 40%). Some of that margin get significant increased with added services like extended warranty and payment plans. Tariffs will decrease profits. In order to get the same profit as before tariffs they can increase prices, but it risk decreasing sales. If sales drop then the static costs is spread out over fewer sold units, which mean they would need to increase prices even more to cover the lost sales. If they increase it too much, sales drop below viability and they go bankrupt. Alternative they could decrease price (compared to the competition) in order to increase sales, covering the increased unit cost by increasing sales volume. The best strategy is to have a price that results in the highest combination of price and sales volumes.
- markus_zhang 2y agoHow much of a price hike can actually being more assembly jobs back to North America? Or are they already brought back?
- rubyn00bie 2y agoLikely, none, zero, zilch. It will just cause inflation as it spreads across goods and domestic companies raise prices simply because they can.
- kibwen 2y agoThe only way that a 10% tariff could bring jobs back would be if the difference between paying someone in the US to do it is less than 10% more than paying someone outside the US to do it. Otherwise it will still be profitable to do this outside the US, and this is just a tax hike on Americans, who don't generally seem to understand that tariffs are taxes.
- nirav72 2y agoBringing it all back to North America isn't going to help much, since its almost impossible to locally source every single component that goes into a modern computing device. There there is the cost of labor.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoTariffs have various long term effects that are useful. One is shifting where that manufacturing is done and in the longer term it could bring it back, depending on the cost of doing it in a different, non China, country. But another long term effect is geopolitical - China is in a more difficult economic position than the US and tariffs will make it difficult for them to keep building their military and difficult to envision war. It will also weaken their authoritarian government, which has an interest in annexing Taiwan and also in undermining the US, Europe, and other free societies. The other benefits of tariffs matter - it isn’t just about the short term effects (of inflating costs or whatever).
- kibwen 2y ago> One is shifting where that manufacturing is done and in the longer term it could bring it back, depending on the cost of doing it in a different, non China, country. Unfortunately, the taxes in question are also targeting imports from Canada and Mexico, two countries that are firmly in the US sphere of influence, and the beneficiaries of these new taxes will be countries in SEA which are increasingly in China's sphere of influence. This is a geopolitical own-goal from an administration with no coherent strategy.
- varelse 2y ago[dead]
- cft 2y agoThe last reliable laptops I had were IBM T40 (my first one) and IBM/Lenovo W500. I ran a bootstrapped software company and they didn't fail me. After that I briefly had a Samsung ultrabook (that was semi-reliable) and then a Dell XPS 13 that one day had a screen crack when I opened it. Then I switched to MacBooks when M1 came out: first keys got stuck in my M1, then the screen bezel spontaneously cracked on an M2 just when the warranty ended and I was in Europe. Apparently now Apple laptops are luxury items, you have to wipe the keyboard from dust before closing the lid. I do not care about cost, I just need something that won't suddenly break when I am abroad and need to do something important. I miss those American IBM ThinkPads.
- alephnerd 2y agoI know it's often heresy on HN, but I've found Macbooks to be fairly reliable. I've used my Macbook air for a decade now at this point - first as a Mac and later switching to Ubuntu.
- nottorp 2y agoSome are, but some are utter crap. I have a 2018 with the emoji keyboard where said keyboard obviously failed, and then the display cable (i think, because it wasn't worth repairing) failed too. That generation was mostly defective by design. The keyboard is too dust sensitive and uncleanable, while the display cable is simply too short. I still have two apple laptops made before the 2018 and one made after that are working perfectly.
- fxtentacle 2y agoI'm very happy with my Acer Aspire Nitro 5. It was cheap. And it looks cheap. It's mostly plastic. And it'll slightly bend if you carry it on one edge. Plus I took it apart once to upgrade the internal SSD. But it has survived 3 years of frequent travel including 10+ international flights. I run Pop!OS on it so that it's all encrypted in case I ever lose it. And a Syncthing daemon in the background to securely backup all of its data.
- qzw 2y agoFramework? Or do you need something mainstream?
- notcrazylol 2y agoSo if people buy an acer laptop, acer makes more profit? Quick math - if a laptop is retailing for 1000 and acer makes it for 500(just a random number), due to the tariffs, acer has to pay 550(10% extra) to bring it to the US and now sells it for 1100 due to 10% hike? profit before = 1000-500 = 500 profit now = 1100 - 550 = 550 So the company is making more profit from you now? What am I missing?
- manojlds 2y agoYeah exactly, companies just have to say the price increase is due to tariffs and increase their margins. That's exactly what Acer CEO is doing here.
- evanriley 2y agoYou're not missing anything. This is how every company has taken advantage of rising inflation and now tariffs.
- Macha 2y agoShareholders demand it, even. If your costs increased but your profits stayed constant after your price increase, then a small business owner might be perfectly happy with that. But it's a decline in profit margin so investors would go ballistic.
- bayarearefugee 2y ago[flagged]
- manojlds 2y agoPlease don't post if you can't understand an example.
- bayarearefugee 2y agoIts a patently ridiculous example that wildly misrepresents the actual situation.
- cheema33 2y agoTariffs are a tax on the low and middle class. Upper income people will be fine with a 10-25% increase in cost of things they purchase. Regular income taxes are progressive. Tariffs are not. There is a reason why rich prefer tariffs over a progressive income tax.
- justin66 2y ago> There is a reason why rich prefer tariffs over a progressive income tax. Or sales taxes, or VAT, for that matter.
- tim333 2y agoI'm not sure who these rich are who like tariffs apart from Trump? Mostly rich people like low tax and low meddling with trade. I think it's the politicians who like tarrifs as it gives them a way to meddle.
- justin66 2y agoPerhaps that was badly put, but I'm quite certain that the interests in the US who advocate for tariffs are among the wealthy. It would not be accurate to imply that all of the wealthy advocate for tariffs, yes. Tariffs in agriculture, automotive, and all sorts of other things have benefitted corporations and people with a lot of money and cost people who need to buy those things. (I hope I can say that without getting into whether those tariffs also serve the greater good) > Mostly rich people like low tax and low meddling with trade. That's imprecise. America's rich are often unmoved when it's pointed out that their employees pay more taxes than they do as a percentage of income. I'm sure that they like it when their taxes are low.
- foobarian 2y agoCurious that it's rarely mentioned where the tariff collections go. Presumably into the federal budget?
- justin66 2y ago
- newsclues 2y agoBuild motherboards & GPUs and laptops in America, and I’ll pay 20% premium for made in America (I’m Canadian).
- soco 2y agoI'm afraid building stuff locally will mean significantly more than 20% premium. Not sure if even double is the right price range increase.
- reneretord 2y agoYou and virtually nobody else. Hell, I’m not even convinced you would given the option.
- npteljes 2y agoThis is my opinion as well, not knowing OP, but getting to know myself well enough. And by looking at other loud minorities on the internet, like the "don't preorder video games" crowd. I doubt the companies ever noticed the difference financially.
- CamperBob2 2y agoIt won't be a 20% premium. More like 100%+.
- gruez 2y agoThe Librem 5 USA phone is made in the US, and costs $1600. That might seem reasonable compared to the $1000 iPhone 16 Pro, but if you look at the spec sheet it's clear that it's closer to a $100 phone than a flagship. That's not a 20% premium, that's over 1000% premium. https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/ https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
- SiliconSplash 2y agoIt is not really a fair comparison between an iPhone and the Librem because the Librem is catering for a completely different market. The phone itself is quite different in some respect to other mobile phones e.g. parts of the phone that would be on the SoC are on removable M.2 cards. It is a niche product, meant for a particular audience. You are going to be paying a premium even if it was manufactured in offshore. I pay a premium on any add-on/upgrade card to my Amiga. These products are made in smaller batches and thus cost a lot more than simply getting an ARM chip and emulating it. I accept that because my use case is extremely niche.
- 6DM 2y agoIf the companies are interested in protecting their margins, I think we will see prices higher than the % increase in tariffs e.g. many grocery stores have a 1 - 4% profit margin, so a 25% increase would mean they have to increase more than 25% because the overall profit margin will decrease. $1 with a 4% profit margin means it make 4 cents, but $1.25 with a 4% profit margin is 5 cents. So that means they'd have to raise it like 27%.
- alephnerd 2y ago> I think we will see prices higher than the % increase in tariffs Pretty much. Most consumers (and even a lot of purchasers) don't know about the individual tariff rates per good, so it's safe to assume that you can optimize pricing to maximize your margin where possible.
- defiantset 2y ago[dead]
- jayd16 2y agoBeyond that, there's economies of scale that won't scale as far, based on lowered demand.
- koolba 2y agoThe vast majority of products at grocery stores are not imported from overseas. And even when they are, the cost of the good is only a part of the total cost to the store. For example no tariff would change the price of intra-USA transport of imported goods (well besides oil…). Labor and real estate need to taken out as well. Obviously if you increase a cost the price is going to go up, but it’s not anywhere near 27% for groceries specifically. Now pure imports, like most of the crap on Amazon or Temu, is another story.
- fumar 2y agoI am curious how all of these economic decisions play out. Are these even well thought out economic strategies? I acknowledge that I am living through this experiment, and feel less in control about my destiny compared to a few years ago.
- cratermoon 2y agoAbout as well thought out as the Laffer curve.
- Gormo 2y agoWith the added detriment of also being incorrect.
- chasing 2y ago> Are these even well thought out economic strategies? Have any of Trump/Musk's actions in the past month seemed particularly well thought-out? It's sharp-elbowed bullying by people who will never see any consequences for their actions.
- suraci 2y agotrump's logic is very simple: 1. make players in the room happy - tax cuts and deregulation 2. make his voters happy - tariffs and immigration control 3. enjoy the power - memecoin and cola button and there are indeed some 'well thought out' economic strategies behind tarrifs > "In theory, tariffs would be a shrinking ice cube. That you would tariff a country and then as the production comes back to the U.S. the income tax - the corporate revenues and the paid income tax - goes up and the tariff income would go down." https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/treasury-secretary-bessent-says-tariffs-aimed-bringing-manufacturing-back-us-2025-02-05/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/treasury-secretary-bessen... it is the strategy, as long as the US is building a laptop production industry in domestic
- randcraw 2y agoI think the main purpose of tariffs is to serve as a 'stick', to (supposedly) punish other countries for not doing what they're told. Trump has no concept of 'constructive engagement' or negotiation. He thinks in black and white -- do what I want or else. Tariffs are 'else', despite the fact they'll likely hurt America more than help.
- doener 2y agoWait, next thing you tell me is Mexico will not pay for the wall?!
- dragontamer 2y agoHelping Mexico build a wall on it's southern border will certainly help reduce the number of Venezuelan and Guatemalan immigrants entering Mexico or the USA. The irony is that build a wall and have Mexico pay for it makes a degree of sense. As long as we are talking about the MEXICAN southern border. The dumbass in charge cannot figure this one out though, as diplomacy and discussion is beyond their abilities. ------- Biden was making a degree of progress here. Mexico wants fewer firearms leaving Texas into the hands of Mexican gangs. But otherwise seemed open to the idea of we could cover more cross border issues. I don't believe we can create tighter gun control regime in Texas though, but these are the kinds of things Mexico wants. Discussion to find a more politically realistic exchange is the point of diplomacy. Maybe we never find anything, but the hope of a mutually beneficial solution is closer than you might think.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- perihelions 2y agoTariffs on the high-productivity PC-using sectors of the US economy, in order to subsidize the nascent US sector of people assembling plastic components by hand. Just as the theory of comparative advantages prescribed.
- Gormo 2y agoOr increasing taxes on the domestic industries that use steel and aluminum, in order to prop up the orders of magnitude smaller domestic steel and aluminum industries. The likely result will be a net loss of jobs and a net negative to GDP.
- nashashmi 2y agoGood. When new designs for new laptops come out, they will be looking at where to get their supplies. And often times it will be local. The effect will be felt in 3-5 years. And it won’t be with reduced prices. It will be with better job prospects. Tax the wealthy. Provide jobs for the poor. A Natural distribution of wealth.
- bentt 2y agoThey would NEVER take advantage of the tariff scare to take more profits. /s
- giantg2 2y agoIs this really any different than EU applying import duties and VAT? I'm not seeing what the big deal is here.
- lgeorget 2y agoIn the case of VAT, it applies equally to national and foreign companies.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoImport duties aren't imposed by an orange man.
- hyperpape 2y agoVAT is categorically different--it is applied to both domestically and foreign produced goods. I believe import duties are similar to tariffs, and open to criticism on the same grounds.
- dboreham 2y agoVAT is what Americans call sales tax (yes I know it's slightly different, but not for the purposes of this discussion). Imported goods into the US are subject to sales tax too, if the sate where the buyer lives has sales tax. Quite amazing that people on HN are swallowing the disinformation on this.
- giantg2 2y agoWhat disinformation are you talking about? Part of VAT is paid during import (rather than after production for domestic goods) and applied to the item. These values could be different whether produced or imported, right?
- insane_dreamer 2y agoVAT is a sales tax. Tariffs are a sales tax. But while VAT is an "honest" sales tax (meaning it's transparent to users), tariffs is a "dishonest" sales tax (consumers don't realize they're being taxed). The problem is that Trump is telling voters that he is _decreasing_ their taxes, whereas he's actually _increasing_ them.
- tlogan 2y agoThe goal of tariffs is to gradually replace (or supplement) income taxes with a Value-Added Tax (VAT). In the current political climate, implementing a flat 20% VAT all at once would be unrealistic. Instead, economists are introducing it incrementally. Is VAT a better system? Arguably, yes—given that the majority of countries worldwide have adopted it as their preferred taxation model.
- gtirloni 2y agoI was a kid but I remember Brazil had huge tariffs on electronics to "protect the national industry". That actually set the country back a decade. I remember people talking about the "new" 386 processor in 1995-ish (it started mass production in 1986). That's not even remotely comparable to the US situation but it gives me pause when countries enact tariffs to protect anything.
- bagels 2y agoYou're telling me that domestic chip fabs didn't just pop out of the ground?
- jaredklewis 2y agoTariffs protect domestic companies against competition from more innovative foreign companies. Because they remove incentives for domestic companies to improve their products or reduce their prices, tariffs gradually reduce the competitiveness of domestic firms; the longer and higher the tariffs, the more likely domestic industries are to turn into rent extractors, only able to sell their products because foreign competition has been handicapped. If a country wants to have globally competitive, innovative companies, that is not compatible with tariffs.
- allknowingfrog 2y agoTo be fair, some of this "innovation" is just a lack of environmental regulations and human safety standards.
- bombcar 2y agoThis is a huge, huge part of it. Tariffs on high-tech electronic devices and tariffs on steel are different beasts. We're rightfully appalled at companies that literally grind up employees - but we happily buy from companies in countries where that's just Tuesday. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2025/osha-workplace-deaths-safety-sawmill/?tid=ptv_rellink https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2025/osh...
- 2y ago
- Workaccount2 2y agoI work in electronics and deal with electronics manufacturing. The tariffs are about as annoying as a mosquito. Not great but also not bad enough to bring the party inside. To reach parity with manufacturing electronics in the US, tariffs would have to be on the order of 500-1000%. I could be paying double right now for the stuff we have made in China, and it would still totally blow the socks off domestic quotes. Never mind that domestic capabilities have been crumbling, meaning you spend way more to get a lower quality result, churned out by equipment that is 40 years old.
- twodave 2y agoMuch of this I assume is due to labor costs. We're already seeing some basic techs start to return back to higher-tech, higher-labor-cost countries (like the US Gulf Coast) because of automation improvements. So now things that have historically been low-hanging fruit for countries trying to industrialize (and therefore able to provide the labor cheaply) are being taken away from them, because now one systems engineer can oversee, say, an entire textiles or smelting or wiring facility. It's only a matter of time until this bleeds further up the ladder, in my opinion, and electronics isn't too far up the ladder from wiring.
- tokioyoyo 2y ago> We're already seeing some basic techs start to return back to higher-tech, higher-labor-cost countries Is there a place where I can look up what's being brought up back to North America? Last time I tried searching for it, all I found was: 1) TSMC et al. building big factories over here (which, I think, is a bit different because of subsidies, and realpolitik) 2) People complaining in pro-manufacturing Twitter posts how nobody wants to automate the existing factories
- Workaccount2 2y agoThat's part of it for sure, but really the killers are that China has an insane electronics pipeline from component manufacturing to distribution, insane investment in electronics manufacturing R&D, and a supply a fresh young heads to keep things moving forward. They also do insane volume and can buy everything in quantity 10 billion (exaggeration- sort of, but economies of scale to the max). The US has basically no domestic component manufacturing, no central hubs of electronics parts distribution, no young talent entering the field, and no new shops entering the market with cutting edge automation/capabilities. And it doesn't make much sense from a financial POV either. A team of one writing an AI wrapper "electronic parts picker" SaaS app will pull more money than a team of 50 building a board house, and they don't need $50 million upfront for capex.
- yapyap 2y agoWonder if the price will go down after the tariffs are lifted
- racl101 2y agoDefinitely gonna buy the MacBook I was deferring to purchase for later before Tariffs start. (Canadian here)
- randcraw 2y agoDid that just last week. $200 off at lots of places until February 25, IIRC.
- boshomi 2y agoWe live in a world of freely floating currencies. In such an environment, tariffs are like trying to nail a jelly to the wall. Tariffs reduce imports and thus lead to a higher exchange rate for the currency. Nevertheless, tariffs lead to higher prices in the supply chain. Expensive currency and high procurement costs endanger the export industry in the medium term. The introduction of tariffs is the poor man's monetary policy. Nations that understand this find sharp weapons against it.
- cynicalpeace 2y agoTariffs were the central political issue from Reconstruction (1870s) until WW1 (1910s). It was the main source of income for the federal government prior to the propagation of the income tax during WW1. We actually learned a lot about tariffs during that time and the conclusion is not unambiguously bad as many would have you believe. The argument for tariffs is that the United States became extremely self sufficient and eventually produced the cheapest products in the world. Also, the jobs that come with this. The argument against is that "products for the American consumer would be even cheaper with free trade". The counterfactual of slightly more expensive products in the short run is worth being self sufficient and having better jobs. Especially since history shows products can actually be very cheap for countries with high tariffs and a strong manufacturing base. This was a view shared by pretty much every great American politician by the way. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Monroe, Clay, Lincoln, T Roosevelt. The politicians that argued against it were pretty forgettable. Also, the first Trump tariffs were by and large maintained by Biden, precisely because the long term effects are beneficial.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago> United States became extremely self sufficient and eventually produced the cheapest products in the world 100 years ago > a strong manufacturing base if the US had a strong manufacturing base, your argument would be relevant to today The time when tariffs would have worked would have been around the time that China was trying to build up its manufacturing capabilities, as it would have made it more attractive for US companies to keep their manufacturing onshore instead of offshore. That time is long long gone.
- cynicalpeace 2y agoThat would have been a good time, but actually the opposite of what America did (successfully) in the 1800s. Britain had pulled far ahead in manufacturing, and only afterwards did America institute a policy of protectionism. The result was America caught back up and surpassed Britain.
- 2y ago
- yalogin 2y agoLike others have said, tariffs are just a tax on the people. However, the more important thing, similar to how prices of any other item in the grocery store, these prices once they go up are never coming down. This is a huge opportunity for businesses. All of them can increase prices without thinking of competition since all of them are in the same boat.
- dboreham 2y agoAlso free of blame, since the increases can be labeled "Trump Tarif Surcharge".
- juujian 2y agoThe sad thing is that even if this is undone, most companies won't bring their prices back down. CEOs have learned how to pretend that "stuff is just this more expensive for us to make" while raking in record profits.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoBasically this amounts to a sales tax on the American people, because Americans now pay 10% more for the product, and that 10% goes to the government. So much for Trump cutting taxes; more like the opposite.
- iteratethis 2y agoThis is good for Americans because their new "External Revenue Service" is going to get very rich this way.