52 ms·

US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

• c2k 2y ago
  cui bono? It is clear that the american taxpayer is not profiting from this but neither seem the billionaires. So who does?
  • max_ 2y ago
    Those that are long Gold
• dralley 2y ago
  25% on South Korea, 32% on Taiwan, 36% on Thailand, 46% on Vietnam What a massive and moronic blow to our soft power.
  • TomHenderson3 2y ago
    It's not just soft power. It is also economic power. Also, note that there is a baseline 10% on all countries.
  • bigyabai 2y ago
    America's leading supply chains just went up in smoke. The fallout is going to be pretty funny from an international POV, methinks.
    • wozer 2y ago
      Might cause a global recession, though. And that might be less funny.
  • ldng 2y ago
    Really curious on how it will blow-back on Americans. Because, make no mistakes, it will.
    • cmurf 2y ago
      The cost to move these industries to the U.S. exceeds the cost of these tariffs. The market will pass the cost of what are import taxes to the American consumer, resulting in inflation. True, the shareholders will take a pay cut too, because something less than 100% of American consumers will just suck it up without changing their behavior. But in aggregate, we will all save less. If inflation takes off again, maybe eventually there's some monestizing of debt. But in less than 4 years these tariffs will go away, which is why companies won't spent billions of dollars investing in state side manufacturing that'll take maybe 5 years to plan and build. Therefore I'm not sold on the montizing debt motivation yet.
      • tnt128 2y ago
        Why in 4 years they will go away? Is that assuming the new administration will reverse course? It’s my understanding that generally country don’t lower tariffs voluntarily. They are usually bargaining chips.
        • sunflowerfly 2y ago
          We have tried this before about 100 years ago. Supply chains and economies were not nearly as interconnected as they are now. Read the history of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act.
        • cmurf 2y ago
          Tariffs may not even last 4 months. Trump demanded Powell reduce interest rates, the FRB declined. The might be Trump's way of forcing the Fed to reduce interest rates, by inducing a recession with massive inflation. And then Trump takes the tariffs away once the Fed gives him what he wants. FRB won't reduce interest rates if there's inflation alone. They'd only reduce interest rates if the economy also slows down into recession territory. That's the short term view. In the long term view, they are the biggest tax increase in the history of the country, therefore they are potentially the biggest tax decrease in the history of the country. Political fodder, even for a corpse.
  • belter 2y ago
    Effective total tariffs on China will be 54% effective 9 April. No way US does not go into recession... And wait for the response from the trading partners...
    • galimalint 2y ago
      [dead]
    • fakeironman2 2y ago
      Correction: average tariffs on China prior to today was 42% https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-date-chart https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2019/us-china-trad.... This means after today, average tariffs on China will be 76%. China is already in a Great Depression, and this tariff hike guarantees China to be in 30+ years of economic depression.
      • belter 2y ago
        Between the US and China, I would be putting my money in China, who by the way, leads in AI. "I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America." - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-chi...
  • spacechild1 2y ago
    Don't worry, acoording to Trump this will generate billions and billions of dollars and America will be rich as it never has been before. /s
    • belter 2y ago
      Yeah, billions and billions: https://youtu.be/u_aLESDql1U https://youtu.be/u_aLESDql1U
    • xp84 2y ago
      The more I think about Trumpian strategies the more I suspect that he got some friends together (or they came to him) and decided they'll short everything, then he'll do this for a while. He and those friends would be able to 'generate billions' that way, by legal insider trading (since we learned that anything he does "in an official capacity" is legal and he can pardon anyone who ever got caught). Last term he did some tax on bauxite that had a similar effect of costing billions to a whole industry that processes or buys aluminum, but one of the few bauxite mines in the US, run by a Trump ally of some kind, made bank.
  • mindslight 2y ago
    Can't hear you! USA. USA. USA. Politically it's going to be just like how most everyone fell into line fervently supporting the Iraq War when the corpo media told them to. Then after the unavoidable truth finally seeped in, equivocation and rationalization from "I didn't really support it" to "we were misled". With a lot more visible economic pain, of course. Then that anger from having been "tricked" will be used as raw energy to drive the next con, and so forth. A broken clock is at least right twice a day, but these low information voters will sabotage themselves every single time.
    • runarberg 2y ago
      > but these low information voters will sabotage themselves every single time. It is generally not cool to blame the voters. There was a ton of misinformation preceding the Iraq war as you point out, but even then there was a massive popular opposition to it. Hundreds of thousands protested against the war before the invasion in New York and Washington DC. Some polls showed that 5% of all Americans participated in a rally or a protest in the weeks leading up to and following the invasion. And despite that popular opposition, among politicians there was a bipartisan support and just a handful of MPs opposed to it. Meaning the public was never really given a choice. In short, the Iraq war was the fault of the politicians and the politicians alone, the voters came nowhere near it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
      • mindslight 2y ago
        Yes, I went to a few of those protests. Despite the popularity of opposition, there were still plenty of people arguing in support of attacking Iraq. In fact I'd say that most people were in support of it. "They hate us for our freedom", "fight them over there instead of here", and general reflexive arguments supplicating to power. That's the dynamic I'm talking about. Whether invading Iraq would have still happened without that popular support is besides the point. The point is there was full-throated support from many people, who would reflexively reject dissent while parroting corpo media talking points, and who then only came to see what a poor idea it had been over time.
  • swat535 2y ago
    What's the actual strategy behind the current US administration slapping tariffs on everything? Feels like they're handing them out like Halloween candy. Is there a long game here, or is it just managed chaos and alienating trade partners for short term optics?
    • ironyman 2y ago
      People like Navarro believes a non-trivial amount of manufacturing can be coaxed back to the US from China and Vietnam.
      • sitkack 2y ago
        Only if we tank our currency and create a huge population of people willing to work for a buck oh five.
        • cmurf 2y ago
          Kill people's savings, might happen. Discretionary spending is about to get clobbered. Restaurants may be at the top of that list, and travel. I rather doubt Walmart is going to increase the price of only Chinese made goods 25%. I think everything goes up 25% and they pocket the margin as long as they can get away with it.
          • astrange 2y ago
            > Kill people's savings, might happen. It doesn't work because it's basically illegal to be poor in America, or rather to live like a poor person in a developing country. Because of theories about gentrification and such we just banned everything like SROs, company dorms, etc. It worked for a little while in the 2000s because earlier flight from cities had left a lot of empty housing open to gentrify, but none of that is left. There's a few classes of people left like supercommuters and people who live in RVs in the Amazon warehouse parking lot, but not going to run a big factory like that.
            • 2y ago
  • hnburnsy 2y ago
    >25% on South Korea, 32% on Taiwan, 36% on Thailand, 46% on Vietnam Harley Davidson moved some of its production to Thailand in 2018 to avoid a 31% tariff the EU had on US manufactured motorcycles, announced in 2024 it was moving more production there, and prior to today had plans to sell the Thailand produced bikes back into the US, as the US had a 0% tariff on bikes. Not surprisingly Thailand has a 60% tariff on imported motorcycles. This tariff jumping is real. I guess we will see how it works out for the US.
    • dralley 2y ago
      Just think how many companies moved production from China to Vietnam to avoid China tariffs, and now tariffs on Vietnam are larger than on China.
      • h0l0cube 2y ago
        It's just going to be a game of whack-a-mole as production and dumping shift to the less taxed countries. In the end, manufacturing won't shift to the US while labor costs are too high for factory workers. And the only way to remedy that is tanking the currency.
        • Server6 2y ago
          Tanking the currency is literally step 2 in their plan. https://www.nordea.com/en/news/mar-a-lago-accord-explained-a-new-era-for-the-dollar https://www.nordea.com/en/news/mar-a-lago-accord-explained-a...
          • h0l0cube 2y ago
            It's obviously the only real end game to this policy. Asia needs to divest itself off US bonds, which China has been slowly doing the background of late. No matter how it plays out, it's looking like higher interest rates, inflation, and foreclosures for everyday citizens and SMEs are going to be on the cards for the US, and it's going to take something akin to religious faith for people to tolerate the hardship on the way to this promised renewed prosperity.
  • belter 2y ago
    The full list: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/trump-reciprocal-tariffs-countries-chart-imports-united-states.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/trump-reciprocal-tariffs-cou... 10% tariffs on the Heard Island and McDonald Islands which are uninhabited, and can be reached only by sea, which from Australia takes two weeks by vessel. And also 10% on Svalbard and Jan Mayen which is also uninhabited. That will teach them not to ripoff the USA! Oh NO tariffs on Russia or Belarus. None.
    • vidarh 2y ago
      Both Svalbard and Jan Mayen are inhabited. Jan Mayen only by about 35 people, though. Svalbard has both Norwegian and Russian settlements, but of course entirely too small to have impact on US trade.
      • magicalhippo 2y ago
        Svalbard imports a lot of snowmobiles though, given their population. From what I know a substantial fraction, if not most, are from Polaris so made in the US[1]. [1]: https://www.polaris.com/en-us/snowmobiles/owner-resources/help-center/article/KA-01000/ https://www.polaris.com/en-us/snowmobiles/owner-resources/he...
        • vidarh 2y ago
          "A lot" is rather relative here given the total population is around 2.5k people.
          • magicalhippo 2y ago
            True but I think relative numbers are relevant in this context.
            • vidarh 2y ago
              The relative numbers says nothing about the impact on US trade.
  • treetalker 2y ago
    But can't you feel the liberation?
• generj 2y ago
  I guess I didn’t want to buy any new tech anyways. Thanks Tim Apple.
  • toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Can always vacation somewhere you can pickup gear and bring it back with you. Not customs advice.
    • darth_avocado 2y ago
      As long as it is less than $10000 in value. It is an interesting point though, if tourism outside the country will increase just for shopping.
    • generj 2y ago
      If you bring back goods worth more than $800 it has to be declared and a duty paid. Judging from the changes (currently paused) to the de minimus shipping rules (also formerly $800) I’d expect the threshold to be lowered substantially. Possibly arbitrarily while I’m on a trip and have already bought the goods. The risk being if detained by DHS for who knows how long is not worth saving $400 on a MacBook personally.
      • toomuchtodo 2y ago
        It is highly unlikely my iPhone or Macbook will be checked for newness when on my person, or the iPads in my kids' hands. I'll just time these purchases around trips to Mexico or Europe. Anything more powerful I will rent or colocate outside of the US in a rack somewhere, moving bits instead of atoms. In short, unless you spend a lot on tech, or tech that isn't portable, workarounds in some cases are available. Certainly, if you’re trapped in the US (or you need goods that are impossible to import on your person), you’re hosed and will be exposed to the tariff costs. I am allergic to kowtowing to stupidity.
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
• alephnerd 2y ago
  Matches the expectation analysts have had from December 2024 [0] "In the baseline scenario, we assume that the US will raise its effective WATR against Chinese goods by a total of 20 percentage points over 2025-27. We expect the effective tariff rate on China to rise by 5-10 percentage points in 2025, owing to the imposition of tariffs related to fentanyl smuggling disputes. Mr Trump will further phase in tariffs from late 2025 with a wider range of excuses and policy tools, eventually bringing the effective WATR facing Chinese exports to about 30% by 2027." [0] - https://www.eiu.com/n/the-impact-of-us-tariffs-on-china-three-scenarios/ https://www.eiu.com/n/the-impact-of-us-tariffs-on-china-thre...
  • generj 2y ago
    For China maybe, I doubt any serious analysts were expecting this high of tariffs on most other countries, like Mexico, the UK, and Canada. The methodology of counting non-price barriers on certain goods then applying it across the board on all goods as tariffs is bonkers. Doubtlessly they aren’t including all the non-price tariffs the US imposes on other countries either. I’m extremely skeptical the EU has effective tariff rates of 40% on all US goods, and furthermore skeptical that if so the US doesn’t have countervailing effective tariff rates at the same rate.
• fabian2k 2y ago
  Are those in addition to existing tariffs? And there are a lot more countries in that list, South Korea and Taiwan are going to really hurt for electronics. And I assume Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and other countries will hurt for other good that are made cheaply there.
  • alephnerd 2y ago
    > And I assume Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and other countries will hurt for other good that are made cheaply there Vietnam and Bangladesh would hurt American consumers (clothes). Cambodia not really. Silver lining, Brazil and Colombia (edit: and the rest of Latin America) are kept at baseline, and Philippines is now the lowest tariff developing Asian economy. We'll probably see a significant amount of capital returning to Philippines (who saw de-industrialization when South Korea signed their FTA with Vietnam). > Are those in addition to existing tariffs? Yes (Edit: not sure now, I'm hearing some say they include the 2017 tariff regime of flat 10% - smh shows how this was just a political ploy that answers for such a critical question are mixed) (Edit 2: was right initially - thanks u/inverted_flag)
    • fabian2k 2y ago
      So 54% on China, and this might not be the end of it as countries will retaliate and Trump might increase them even further.
      • alephnerd 2y ago
        > as countries will retaliate Depends on the country. India is negotiating a Bilateral Trade Agreement by mid-2025, Vietnam has sent a trade delegation to DC to negotiate as we speak, and tariffs on Colombia, Brazil, Philippines, and Turkiye are the lowest for middle income countries. The harshest pain will be felt by Cambodia and Vietnam, because both are part of ASEAN like Philippines and share similar trade partners (Japan, SK), Bangladesh as they have an FTA and significant capital from India, and China as EU (looking at you Poland and Czechia), Turkiye, Japan, SK, and India are now cost competitive You'll be seeing more "Made in Philippines", "Made in Colombia" "Made in Turkiye", "Made in Brazil", and "Made in India" shirts, auto parts, and assembled electronics now. We might also see a return of Malaysia in the semiconductor industry, as they are now cheaper than Taiwan - great for whoever buys Intel Foundry Services (Penang reax only)
• alephnerd 2y ago
  Complete tariff list - https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/3B0CC9EA63B82/media%2FGnjqyhrW8AE_WK6.jpg https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/3B0CC9EA63B82/media%2FGnjqy...
  • belter 2y ago
    What happened to Canada?
    • ldng 2y ago
      They responded with a middle finger plus a boycott and the message was received loud and clear ?
    • fabian2k 2y ago
      You obviously don't put tariffs on your own states /s
    • busyant 2y ago
      At the moment, the automotive tariffs still stand and go into effect ... tonight? tomorrow? Looks like they got cold feet on a blanket Canadian tariff. But the whole process is so chaotic and subject to mood swings that I expect more holes and carve-outs than a block of PDO emmentaler.
    • timbit42 2y ago
      Canada already has a customized tariff.
  • darth_avocado 2y ago
    An interesting observation is that the tariffs are half of what the other country is charging. Does that mean this was a common strategy across the board? Or was strategic importance of goods considered?
    • generj 2y ago
      There’s a 0% chance other countries were charging tariffs across the board on US goods at the rates claimed. The EU simply doesn’t charge 40% rates on the bulk of US goods. Let alone the random countries that all somehow have 10% tariff rates in the US.
• belter 2y ago
  Just leaving this here from 2023... "In America, estimates say that Chinese suppliers make up 70-80 percent of Walmart’s merchandise" - https://retailwire.com/discussion/walmarts-open-call-continues-to-support-products-made-in-the-usa/ https://retailwire.com/discussion/walmarts-open-call-continu...
  • toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Walmart has been trying to strong arm China into eating the cost of tariffs. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-02/walmart-keeps-price-pressure-on-suppliers-after-beijing-pushback https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-02/walmart-k... | https://archive.today/Q5CNc https://archive.today/Q5CNc
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • paxys 2y ago
      "Hey China, pay the tariffs or we'll go to another country." "You mean the countries with tariffs even higher than ours? Best of luck."
  • morkalork 2y ago
    Walmart is a drain on communities anyways, aren't their employees on food stamps at some ridiculously high rate?
    • darth_avocado 2y ago
      It’s not like mom and pop stores are equipped to source things locally any better than Walmart. They would also be relying on the same imports from abroad, but would not have the bargaining power that Walmart has.
    • bitmasher9 2y ago
      I’d rather buy from Walmart than Amazon. At least Walmart pays local taxes and has some level of quality assurance on their merchandise.
• ashoeafoot 2y ago
  what is stopping everybody from exporting to the one guy that knuckles under completely and circumvent the circus?
  • general_reveal 2y ago
    [dead]
• vFunct 2y ago
  Trump really thinks America is in the 1950's. He thinks people want to work at factories doing manual labor. He doesn't understand that we DON'T want to work at factories. Americans like our plush corporate office jobs building intellectual property. We aren't oxen doing physical labor. And we designed it that way. We pay thousands of dollars to each citizen in our public schools to teach them calculus, literature, world history, and science, so that they DON'T work at factories doing manual labor like we were oxen. We're supposed to be doing more valuable jobs in intellectual property and services. It's going to be hard lesson to be learned by Trump and his working class supporters when the inflation hits them because our economy doesn't have any workers that want to work at factories, but it'll have to be a lesson they learn the hard way. The correct economy is to let people do labor they're best at. If a foreigner can make a shirt cheaper than an American can, LET THEM. Our economy is already taken by the people that design the shirts.
  • jiggawatts 2y ago
    > It's going to be hard lesson to be learned by Trump and his working class supporters They won’t learn any lessons. The impacts will be felt years from now, when the Democrat are in power, and… you know the rest.
    • fzeroracer 2y ago
      Well, the unfortunate beauty of touching the incredibly hot stove of Tariffs is that the pain is immediate and obvious. So assuming that these tariffs go through as is, we'll immediately launch into one of the worst recessions we've seen with price increases unlike anything Americans are used to.
      • jiggawatts 2y ago
        A tariff of some +x% doesn’t cause a +x% increase in retail prices. The ratio is somewhere between 2:1 and 10:1 for most products, depending on the markup, local value add, taxes, etc… The real damage is business uncertainty, inefficient capital allocation, etc… all of which takes years to fully impact the economy.
• cmurf 2y ago
  These guys are untrustworthy liars. I assume there are thousands, possibly tens of thousands of carve outs for the tariffs, based on bribing the POTUS or approved affiliates.
• chvid 2y ago
  How did the value added tax (which is paid by all companies including domestic ones) become the same as import duty? The only way that you can make that tariffs charged to the USA is the level Trump claims (ie. 39% in the EU) is if you include VAT.
  • qwertox 2y ago
    Some of the workers won't understand that EU companies also have to pay the same VAT in the EU, so they think it's correct reasoning.
  • mytailorisrich 2y ago
    VAT is not paid by companies. It is paid by consumers and collected by companies. The US have the sales tax, which is similar. It absolutely does not make sense to count VAT as a "tariff". I am sure they know it.
    • butterknife 2y ago
      My company pays VAT surplus to government every quarter since the VAT we collect on our products and services is higher then the VAT we pay for our purchases. How are we not paying it?
      • mytailorisrich 2y ago
        You are answering your own question: companies collect VAT from consumers and pass it on to tax authorities. Then, as the company is VAT-registered what it purchases is either VAT-free or VAT paid can be deducted from the amount of VAT collected from consumers (as you said). Bottom line: companies do not pay VAT on their own purchases, they only pass on VAT collected from consumers. Obviously companies do make actual payments to the tax authorities but the point is that these are not from their own funds, they only effectively act as tax collectors.
        • butterknife 2y ago
          You are right I suppose. We pay it and then we can get some of it returned.
• 0x_rs 2y ago
  Inheriting a strong economy beating all expectations that was just about to end its fight with inflation and burning it all away in a pump and dump crypto scheme fashion, while doing nothing (or even working to expand) unprecedented wealth inequality. Good luck, going to need it. The world reserve currency status is faltering, and so will the benefits it allowed US economy.
  • iJohnDoe 2y ago
    Agree with everything you wrote. It’s almost like Trump and his administration are trying to purposely hurt America. I don’t want to be melodramatic, but if Russia had a ultra long-term plan to hurt America, it might look like this.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    > just about to end its fight with inflation Inflation will decline only when the deficit declines.
    • oezi 2y ago
      If there is a deficit at all. Looking at the monetary flows it seems most of the deficit outflows where just flowing back into the US through the stock market.
      • WalterBright 2y ago
        Interest is paid on the deficit, and once the interest gets large enough, there's a runaway doom loop.
        • oezi 2y ago
          It depends on who is spending. If American consumers or the American government borrow to consume, what you say is right. But it was US monetary policy for decades now that the deficit doesn't really matter, because the world trusts the US and loans the money back.
• simmerup 2y ago
  Pushing Vietnam into Chinas arms I see. Oh America.
• m463 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Cpoll 2y ago
    Reminder for others: paste jwz.org urls into the address bar instead of clicking on the link. If you come in with an HN referer you get scrotum.
    • m463 2y ago
      so sorry. I don't get that, I think my browser blocks referrer
• hnburnsy 2y ago
  Current EU tariffs on US goods... Product Category Tariff Rate ----------------------------- -------------- Dairy Products (e.g., cheese, butter) Up to 50% Processed Foods (e.g., chocolate, confectionery) 30-40% Alcoholic Beverages (e.g., whiskey, bourbon) 25% Steel and Aluminum Products 25% Automobiles 10% Industrial Goods 5-10%
  • dralley 2y ago
    Trump thinks VAT is comparable to a tariff. VATs are not directly comparable to tariffs.
    • hnburnsy 2y ago
      These are ex-VAT.
    • simne 2y ago
      I'm sorry, but could you provide link, where stated, VATs applied to import? - As I know, usually VAT deducted from exported goods, but I really don't know how VAT work with import - usually on import used tariffs.
      • g-b-r 2y ago
        The VAT is applied at the time of sale to the end consumer, it's irrelevant if the product is imported or manufactured locally.
        • xp84 2y ago
          So strange to take VAT into account when it's not discriminating between local or import. By that logic the US has a 5-10% tariff on everything too since we have sales tax in like 47 states.
          • bitshiftfaced 2y ago
• xfp 2y ago
  I'm taking bets, do you think the tariffs will: 1. be rescinded/paused in [0,2) days; 2. be rescinded/paused in [2,4) days; 3. be rescinded/paused in [4,7] days; 4. not be rescinded/paused.
  • floxy 2y ago
    3.5) rescinded/paused [30-61) days. There will be some bluster, and then announcements with the large trading partners like Japan, South Korea, etc., that some new deals have been struck.
    • userbinator 2y ago
      that some new deals have been struck. I believe that was the plan all along. He's just doing it aggressively with tariffs.
  • paxys 2y ago
    5. All of the above.
• Karupan 2y ago
  Genuine questions: why are they calling it “reciprocal”? Is the US just matching the tariffs set by the other countries? Also, this announcement has wiped out any plans of buying tech products this year, plus a holiday to the US and Canada later in the year. Good thing too, as the entire globe is probably staring down the barrel of a recession.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  • ModernMech 2y ago
    Because when the blowback comes, people will be looking to cast blame for starting this whole trade war, and when that time comes Trump will point to the word "reciprocal" and say "we didn't start this, we were only reciprocating".
  • gjsman-1000 2y ago
    > Is the US just matching the tariffs set by the other countries? No. Trump claims that the new tariffs are a 50% discount on what those countries tariff US goods at. (Even if that's questionable - is VAT a tariff?) If he's correct, or anywhere close, this is a "tough love" strategy to force negotiations. We'll see how it goes. It also plays to his base - why should we tariff any less than they do us? And they have a point, it's the principle of the thing.
    • f33d5173 2y ago
      It's so quaint to me that people actually believe his rhetoric. How long do you think people will put up with high prices before they turn on him?
      • barbazoo 2y ago
        If high prices are inevitable, what’s their endgame? Are they actually incompetent or are people too pessimistic about what they’re attempting to do?
• gtsop 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • Cpoll 2y ago
    Do you have some required reading to share here? As I remember it, the body of knowledge on economy is that tarriffs are good for collecting revenue, but bad for economic growth. What is the phase called? What is this amputation and what spreading is it stopping?
    • gtsop 2y ago
      > Do you have some required reading to share here Lenin's Imperialism > but bad for economic growth Yes, it is bad for economic growth, but this is not the tactic of protectionism. It is in the name that the purpose is to protect domestic production. It is done by forcing competition barriers on external producers > What is the phase called? Economic crisis / intense rivalry. US is economically threatened by the rise of China, it has been on the radar for many years. Things have reached a point where US can't just sit there and do nothing as China challenges the global status quo. > What is this amputation and what spreading is it stopping? The spreading is the slow but ongoing rise of Chinas economic power. The amputation is thr free-trade bariers
      • logicalmind 2y ago
        But even if this works. How is the best outcome achieved for the USA? Take phones for example. Today, Apple design phones in the USA and has them manufactured outside the USA by low wage workers. If the phone costs $1000. That price is the sum of production costs and profits (and other things, but those are negligible for this discussion). If the production cost portion increases, because of tariffs, then Apple either has to take less profit (shareholders unhappy) or increase the cost of the phone (shareholders happy). If the tariffs are increased enough, Apple could be forced to move production to the USA. But this only happens if the workers in the USA are willing to work the same wages as external production. If USA workers cost more than external production, then again, Apple loses profit or raises prices. Am I missing something? Unless USA workers are willing to work for wages as external production (give or take the tariff amount), then this simply doesn't work.
• jdb47 2y ago
  Would be good to know - Who are the people coming up with these specific rates? How are they modeling this system?
  • frogperson 2y ago
    I am certain they didn't use any liberal math or science or history to arrive at these numbers. It's all just made up by incompetent yes men.
  • lsllc 2y ago
    According to the BBC reporting, it appears that for each country he's charging 50% of the tariff they place on US goods coming into those countries, or a baseline of 10% for some countries like the UK. (sorry, this is a BBC live news ticker link): https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A3a34b977-a7be-4159-837c-40b082a54c72#post https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A3a34... And a picture of the chart they had showing the per-country tariffs: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A7f78539b-dfc0-4b31-889d-8c28546949d9#post https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A7f78...
    • lawlessone 2y ago
      its not tariffs Trump took the trade surplus the US has with those countries and calcuated the percentage from that.
      • lsllc 2y ago
        Interesting - I haven't seen that mentioned in any of the coverage, do you have a source for that?
        • aaron695 2y ago
          [dead]
        • ammo1662 2y ago
          A lot of comments have already mentioned that. You can also calculate it by yourself. For example, in 2024, the total value of US trade in goods with China was approximately $582.4 billion, comprising $143.5 billion in exports and $438.9 billion in imports. [0] (438.9-143.5)/438.9=67.3% [0] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peo...
• kylebenzle 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • gigatexal 2y ago
    What are you on about? “A broken legal system”?
    • flawn 2y ago
      OP's comment sounds like a red herring to me - is it the "broken legal system" that still keeps Trump away of turning the US into a technocracy/autocracy?
      • gigatexal 2y ago
        Could be. There’s that software engineer that is touting the king Trump thing. I forget his name. The whole idea is ridiculous. Imagine folks that want such a thing just imagine an AOC queenship.
        • kelseyfrog 2y ago
          Curtis Yarvin?
      • kylebenzle 2y ago
        What? No, just literally the US legal system is utterly broken. It's the reason we literally put black men in jail for Life over and over again for minor crimes, because we have a broken legal system.
    • kylebenzle 2y ago
      Just take it literally, the US legal system is utterly broken, as in it does not function. It's the reason we literally put black men in jail for Life over and over again for minor crimes, because we have a broken legal system, it's why in America whoever has the most money wins it's why all of our politicians are lawyers because the legal system is broken.
  • 2y ago
• Freedom2 2y ago
  As someone interested in "curious discussion", what are some of the positives we can take away from this? Is this a new standard for economic policy?
  • JohnFen 2y ago
    I can't think of any positives. Trump is saying the positives are the it will force companies to build stuff in the US, thus increasing our domestic manufacturing and increasing jobs. I don't see that happening in a significant way, but who knows? But if that does happen, then the huge amount of revenue that Trump thinks is going to come to the government's coffers won't happen, and that revenue is meant to offset some of the tax breaks for the wealthy, so we're kinda screwed either way.
  • ReflectedImage 2y ago
    Well it's positive for various countries that benefit from an end to US dominance over the world. :p So for the US itself? The theory would be that the tariffs will increase US manufacturing sector. But the cold hard truth is that it isn't the 1830s anymore and last time tariffs were tried happened to line up exactly with the Great Depression. Even an competent administration would have great difficulty making tariffs to restore manufacturing work in the US, if that is even at all possible. It fails because other countries just put the same tariffs back on the US. So with the Trump's administration some kinda of serious economy meltdown is almost certainly the result.
  • energy123 2y ago
    Autarky is just bad economic policy because comparative advantage is too powerful. Nobody benefits from this. The US loses and everyone else loses. The US loses the most however, both economically and in soft power. This isn't even the China model. Slapping tariffs on raw inputs guarantees that US industry cannot compete internationally. This is more like the North Korean model. While there are positives to targeted industrial policy, there are no positives to autarky.
    • rstuart4133 2y ago
      > The US loses the most however, both economically and in soft power. Yes. It loses most because 10-20% of world trade is for value added in the USA. The one exception is the USA of course, because their percentage is 100%. So USA is 100% effected, the rest of the world is 10-20% effected as they continue to happily trade with each other without tariffs. I dunno about everywhere else, but in Australia the effects are already noticeable. Trade with the USA is dropping, and trade with Canada is growing.
• Workaccount2 2y ago
  Trump is going for a 1-2 punch. First tariffs and then tax cuts to soften the blow of price increases. It also puts republicans in a choke hold to force the tax cut legislation through, because the fallout of tariffs with no tax cuts would be a death knell for the party. Maybe in a sim city game this would balance out, but it's a tall order for a real world scenario. Prepare for a bumpy road ahead.
  • gigatexal 2y ago
    It’s all a grift for the wealthy anyway. He doesn’t care about the hurting 50k a year worker. Low income MAGA voters are just fodder for Trump to enrich himself and the wealthy around him.
  • kelnos 2y ago
    > It also puts republicans in a choke hold to force the tax cut legislation through, because the fallout of tariffs with no tax cuts would be a death knell for the party. I mean, they could vote down the "emergency" Trump is using in order to obtain the authority to enact these tariffs instead, and that would be so much less work. But of course they won't go against their Dear Leader.
  • beAbU 2y ago
    omg do you think elon started playing simcity recently, trying out all these ridiculous things, and now he's advising donald to do same in the real world, because he's convinced it'll work based on the simcity experience?
• tnt128 2y ago
  I don’t buy the blanket statement that the consumer always pays the tariff. It depends on what alternative companies have. If a company can purchase the same clothing from Chinese, Vietnamese, or Mexican vendors, a tax on China only could make the Chinese vendors lower the price or risk losing the business. However, a blanket tax on every country, regardless of available alternatives, would leave businesses with fewer options and make it more likely that the cost is passed on to consumers.
  • taeric 2y ago
    For taxes to work in raising money, they have to be paid. So, if the goal is to make revenue from the taxes, then raising costs is expected? If the goal is to incentivize alternatives, then the tax has to be such that it raises the price above the gap there now. So, even if you do drive people to an alternative source, the new price will be higher than the old. (Unless the thought is that people were choosing to not buy the cheaper source to begin with?) I suppose you can argue that some suppliers have such a margin that the tax could be an effort to get them to cut into that? I have not seen evidence that that is the case?
  • s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Of course! That definitive statement is rhetoric. The payer of a tariff is decided by the relative elasticity of supply and elasticity of demand. Sometimes the seller will eat it. Sometimes they buyer will eat it. Sometimes the product wont get made or sold.
  • kazinator 2y ago
    The objective reality of the situation is that there is a transaction between a buyer and a seller. That transaction is what pays the tariff, VAT, property transfer tax or whatever vampirical suckage by whatevername. Both transacting counterparties are robbed. How that is distributed between them is a matter of which has more alternatives. E.g. if the seller has lots of prospective buyers, most of whom are not subject to the tax, then the market price they demand is not sensitive to the rare buyer who does pay the tax. If a big fraction of the seller's prospective buyers face a tax, then it makes their product or service look more expensive to a good chunk of the market, which exerts downward pressure on the price. The downward pressure on the price means that the seller effectively pays some of the tax, through lost revenue. So, the transaction pays the tax as such, but how much of it is distributed between buyer and seller depends on the degree of influence of the tax on the price point.
• hnburnsy 2y ago
  The exemptions... >Some goods will not be subject to the Reciprocal Tariff. These include: (1) articles subject to 50 USC 1702(b); (2) steel/aluminum articles and autos/auto parts already subject to Section 232 tariffs; (3) copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and lumber articles; (4) all articles that may become subject to future Section 232 tariffs; (5) bullion; and (6) energy and other certain minerals that are not available in the United States.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • TheJoeMan 2y ago
    I thought the tariff goal was also to fix the issue with Pharmaceuticals where the R&D happened in the US, the company then “exported” the IP to the EU factories, and now import the drugs back. This results in a US tax rate of 0%.
  • fspeech 2y ago
    Exempting chips alone doesn't make sense. Does Intel have to pay 20% on ASML lithography machines or more on Japanese ones? Meanwhile TSMC can fab chips in Taiwan and export to the US without tariffs.
• gigatexal 2y ago
  Americans have been hurt for 50 years … yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers. Buuuuuut - placing tariffs on our allies that will likely lead to a recession makes no sense. Devaluing the dollar and subsidizing production in the US makes far more sense. But I’m not an economist or anything.
  • bibanez 2y ago
    Devaluing the dollar makes paying national debt more expensive
    • insane_dreamer 2y ago
      No it makes it cheaper because the US is in a unique position of issuing debt in its own currency.
      • drivebyhooting 2y ago
        You can both be right. Old debt is cheaper to pay but new debt more expensive. And the government runs a deficit so new debt is always accruing.
        • insane_dreamer 2y ago
          New debt is only more expensive if you have to exchange something of value to obtain the USD to pay down the debt. But since the Fed can expand the money supply at will, it's essentially creating new USD out of thin air which can be used. (This is how the US has been able to sustain such a large debt without any real consequences.) What will happen though is that interest rates on T bills will rise, so yes, in that sense, it does eventually become "more expensive" to service new debt. But again it's in nominal dollar terms and so it's just a matter of issuing more dollars. The trick is to do this in a way that doesn't devalue the dollar thus triggering an inflationary cycle.
          • 2y ago
• TrackerFF 2y ago
  From what I understand, de minimis exemption has also been removed. That is a huge, huge deal. It effectively means that all goods imported from China will be slapped with a 30% import tax, as soon as said goods arrive the US border / customs. Usually what happens then, is that the courier will pay that tax, and then bill the recipient later on - as well as charge some fee/fees for the work done. This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from China with free shipping can end up costing $10, because you're paying $0.25 in VAT or import taxes, and $10 to the shipping courier for doing the paperwork. If that is the case in the US, I fully expect total chaos and mayhem when all the Temu / AliExpress/ Wish customers start receiving extra bills for their orders. (That's just from the most obvious consumer example...then you have pretty much everything else. Goods, commodities, etc.) EDIT: I found more info here https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-closes-de-minimis-exemptions-to-combat-chinas-role-in-americas-synthetic-opioid-crisis/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr... So it is even worse, you either pay $25 per shipment, or 30% - whichever is higher. Then later it moves up to $50 per shipment, or 30% - whichever is higher. a $1 item with $1 shipping will end up costing you as much as $52 after June!
  • flowerthoughts 2y ago
    In Europe, Alibaba has their own warehouse in the Netherlands. I wonder if that's to be able to do a single "international" import. Could the same happen in the US?
    • trinix912 2y ago
      Aliexpress does that as well, with a warehouse in Hungary. They ship the products there, import them en masse as a business, then relabel and send them off to the recipients.
      • omnimus 2y ago
        Alibaba is Aliexpress. They have multiple warehouses around europe.
    • 2y ago
• merek 2y ago
  This article has more information, such as > The 10% rate would be collected starting Saturday and the higher rates would be collected beginning April 9. https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-liberation-day-2a031b3c16120a5672a6ddd01da09933 https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-liberation-day-2a03...
• inverted_flag 2y ago
  Here's the brilliant formula they used to determine those tariffs by the way: https://xcancel.com/orthonormalist/status/1907545265818751037 https://xcancel.com/orthonormalist/status/190754526581875103... https://xcancel.com/corsaren/status/1907554824180105343 https://xcancel.com/corsaren/status/1907554824180105343 It's trade deficit divided by total exports divided by 2
  • lysace 2y ago
    This feels fairly close to Idiocracy (2006).
• olejorgenb 2y ago
  Can someone explain if there's any logic at all to counting a countrys VAT as part of its tariffs? In my home country VAT is ultimately charged the end-customer and this happens regardless of the origin of the goods. How can this be a seen as a tariff? Besides, isn't the "Use tax" most(?) American states have more or less equivalent in function?
  • lysace 2y ago
    There is no logic to it. It's just the US going insane and Americans nodding along. https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/04/02/no-vat-isnt-a-tariff-but-the-us-would-benefit-from-adopting-it/ https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/04/02/no-vat-isnt-a-tariff-but... https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/news/are-value-added-taxes-a-barrier-to-trade/ https://iccwbo.org/news-publications/news/are-value-added-ta... https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/as-trump-reciprocal-tariffs-near-economists-say-vats-arent-trade-barrier.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/as-trump-reciprocal-tariffs-... etc, etc. The only reasonable reply as a consumer and/or cloud-service purchaser: Economic wide-scale boycott of the US.
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      [flagged]
      • tempestn 2y ago
        Half the voting population voted for Trump. Twice. You can't really paint it as a fringe minority.
        • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
          Oh, I’m not letting them off the hook. I’m just saying that these policies are broadly unpopular outside a specific slice of the Republican Party. That’s relevant to lawmakers wondering about their job security in 2026.
          • 2y ago
• iteratethis 2y ago
  This won't bring home manufacturing but let's say that it will... The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. I saw a video recently explaining how sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage. Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions. In construction, for every 5 people that retire, only 2 enter. And it's been like that for over 10 years. The people aren't there nor is the motivation. I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where 50 educated people push some buttons though.
  • codedokode 2y ago
    > The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. A usual lack of high qualified low paid workers?
    • s1artibartfast 2y ago
      If that's really the case, then these tariffs are the cure. If outsourcing labor overseas is cost prohibitive, wages will have to rise.
      • danny_codes 2y ago
        Or standard of living can fall. Which is quite likely
        • s1artibartfast 2y ago
          Perhaps, but equality would rise in labor starved economy with low standard of living and high costs.
          • jquery 2y ago
            I don't see how that follows. It's not a step up to be forced to work in a factory, compared to before when not working was an option because costs were lower.
• codedokode 2y ago
  By chance could it be that US is still angry at those British tea tariffs?
• r00fus 2y ago
  Tariffs are a tax on consumer goods. They will also be counterproductive to economic growth.
• ggm 2y ago
  I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows. They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get their reset in a belief they can make it less like the Smoot-Hawley great depression because so many other economic levers exist now, including floating currency, MMT, and massive fintech. Personally I think it's a mistake but hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive. They know. They just don't care. Some amount of foreign trade will absorb the cost. Not all, not most. Not all prices in the US will rise and some substitution will happen although spinning up cheap labor factories again isn't going to happen in 2025. Maybe by 2027? Rust belt sewing shops and Walmart grade cheap goods production lines? What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the bottom is still chugging along. I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?
  • maxerickson 2y ago
    If that is the plan, it's terrible. The majority of US debt is domestic. https://usafacts.org/articles/which-countries-own-the-most-us-debt/ https://usafacts.org/articles/which-countries-own-the-most-u...
    • ggm 2y ago
      Yes and no. As a headline "I reduced $7t of foreign debt" is pretty good. The plan appears to be to invite people to Mar a Lago and offer to trade the existing debt for new instruments out in the never-never. Domestic debt might not be such a big deal? Who is coming to collect?
      • maxerickson 2y ago
        So the argument is that we crashed the economy but at least we screwed foreigners over and not just social security?
• phillipseamore 2y ago
  A blanket 10% minimum tariff is a great excuse for any local US manufacturing to increase their prices. I used to live in a country with heavy tariffs, every time tariffs were raised the local producers increased prices to be just below the imports. Even after the tariffs were abolished the prices (on local and imports) never really lowered in any significant way.
  • brabel 2y ago
    That always seems to happen with this sort of protections. It's like when the government tries to incentivize people to buy electric cars by paying 25% of it (example from the climate bonus in Sweden, which was given for years), but what happens is that buyers actually end up paying just maybe 5% less as the car companies now can increase their prices and still sell the cars they produce while making more money.
    • teruakohatu 2y ago
      That happened in New Zealand, where the govt. paid $5,000 for electric cars. When this subsidy expired, prices decreased by a few thousand. If a consumer was willing to pay $20,000 for a car why would they sell it to them for less than $25,000 when the final bill to the consumer will be $20,000, with the govt. paying an extra $5,000.
      • mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
        That's why the better policy is not to subsidize the purchase price of the car, but the various taxes associated with owning one, as well as offering certain perks like being able to drive in the bus lane. This was a huge success in Norway. Though now the percentage of new car purchases that are electric is so large that the subsidies are being rolled back because they've gotten too expensive(and the bus lane thing no longer makes sense because if the majority of cars can drive in it, it's not really a bus lane anymore). But I think that's fine. You can make an argument that when subsidies were introduced, electric cars were still struggling to compete with combustion cars in numerous ways, like range, capacity, access to chargers and repair services, etc. Subsidies/perks acted as compensation for those downsides for early adopters. The playing field is obviously a lot more even now. Chargers(including home chargers) are generally widely available, range is improved via better battery tech, there's a lot more players in the market, meaning more choice, etc. Not really a car guy, but I assume the repair situation is also improved, though it may not be on par yet.
• mcoliver 2y ago
  Here's a csv and google sheet of the data. Turns out they aren't tariffs countries charge us. They are trade imbalance percentages. Unreal: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xK0OQ5VGl8JHmDSIgbXhCIRyYe3Ta0qgFvTz7ASL7JM/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xK0OQ5VGl8JHmDSIgbXh... https://gist.github.com/mcoliver/69fe48d03c12388e29cc0cd87eb44df6 https://gist.github.com/mcoliver/69fe48d03c12388e29cc0cd87eb...
  • danny_codes 2y ago
    lol when I saw him hold up his piece of cardboard I thought, “yeah that’s definitely random numbers he invented 2 hours ago”
  • rramadass 2y ago
    I see how the tariff numbers may have been calculated. But why is it done that way? What is the rationale behind such a calculation? Is this a way to balance the existing trade deficits? How does it work? Would appreciate you (or anybody else) shed some light on the economics of the thing.
    • saberdancer 2y ago
      If he used real numbers the tariffs would be so low that it wouldn't make any sense.
    • n2d4 2y ago
      The label "tariffs charged to the US" is just straight-up wrong, either due to incompetence or malice (likely to justify the high tariffs). But basing the tariffs on import/export ratio makes sense if your goal is to be a net exporter with every country, as it discourages imports until that's the case. It's still somewhat arbitrary though; my guess is that the White House is pursuing that goal mostly for political, not economical reasons.
      • sorcerer-mar 2y ago
        It's because he thinks trade deficits are somehow a subsidy. He has literally used the terms interchangeably. He's just dumb.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• nurettin 2y ago
  "Reduces trillions of foreign debt, also causes double that in inflation"
• onetokeoverthe 2y ago
  [dead]
• Larrikin 2y ago
  There's a lot of speculation that the Switch 2 would be atleast hundred dollars less without this nonsense. The Japan exclusive version of the Switch 2 seems to support this, with it's restrictions that insulate Japan, support the notion that English actually isn't needed in Japan (nor any other languages), by releasing a version of the Switch 2 that is far cheaper but only allows you to play games in Japanese.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• VectorLock 2y ago
  Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade deficit with that country divided by the country's exports. I think more and more we see lots of evidence they don't know what they're doing.
  • Freedom2 2y ago
    So I'm guessing it's not important to tariff the penguins of Antarctic Island?
    • sandworm101 2y ago
      Penguins are a myth. They are all too identical. Clearly cgi.
      • xanathar 2y ago
        And they run Linux
        • CoastalCoder 2y ago
          Penguins are just mascots. You're probably thinking of that one dead badger.
      • gpderetta 2y ago
        Of course, penguins are birds and birds aren't real.
        • sandworm101 2y ago
          Oh, birds are very real. They just run on batteries.
  • dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade deficit with that country divided by the country's exports. Note that the White House has both (1) officially denied this, (2) provided the formula they assert was used as support for that denial; but the formula is exactly what they are denying but with two additional globally-constant elasticity factors in the divisor, however, those elasticity factors are 4 and 0.25, so...
• amoss 2y ago
  Mistake in headline: tge article says 54% rate on China. 34 looks like a typo.
  • saberdancer 2y ago
    Apparently it is 34% on top of current 20%, bringing it to a total of 54%. But who knows with these guys.
    • toasterlovin 2y ago
      Current tariffs for China are 45% because the original 25% tariffs from Trump I never went away and the 20% from Trump II are in addition. Source: have two containers en route from China at the moment, will be paying 45% on them.
• jenadine 2y ago
  I'm a freelance selling software services. Some of my customers are in the US. Am I affected? These tariff don't impact software, right? Different countries have different tariff. Is there room for arbitration? In which a 3rd party business from a country with low tariff would buy a product in one of the countries with high tariff and export that to the US, taking a small cut.
  • csomar 2y ago
    Upon import you have to declare the country of origin of the good. That's what is being tariffed and makes your arbitrage idea essentially fraud.
    • ccozan 2y ago
      Usually this is happening where you import "parts" and the final assembly "the product" is "made in" and sold as "product xyx". Then the origin country of the parts do not matter.
  • tempestn 2y ago
    Tariffs are on goods. Unless you're physically shipping software across the border it shouldn't affect you. You mean arbitrage, and yes, that definitely happens as a result of tariffs.
  • stakhanov 2y ago
    Services aren't traditionally part of tariffs; tariffs apply only to physical stuff moving across borders. That being said: I work in a services-oriented business right now "exporting" services to the U.S. and the leadership of that company is seemingly getting very worried, trying to diversify their customer base out of the U.S. If, in the cycle of retaliatory action, they run out of ammunition with tariffs on stuff, who knows what other crazy ideas will come to the surface: Tariffs on services do come to mind, maybe restrictions around recognition/enforcement of foreign-owned intellectual property,...
    • AnAfrican 2y ago
• aredox 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • rastignack 2y ago
    As a EU citizen, I think this voter ID argument is absolutely insane.
    • aredox 2y ago
      As a French I used to think too, "what's the big deal", "it has never been an issue here". But that's because we are used to it and getting an ID is easy and almost automatic. Whereas in a country like the US, it means missing several days of work, driving potentially hundreds of kilometers, and their geographic segregation means it's easy to make getting an ID harder for black people than for whites. As a European I also find insane elections are held on workdays (in France it is always on Sundays), that you may have to wait in line for hours to vote, that voting stations may be hours from where you live, etc.
      • rastignack 2y ago
        Do you have a more precise exemple of a state in which it is that difficult ? And a source ? I really find it hard to believe.
        • nl 2y ago
          Not the OP but here’s an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidquestions/comments/1ghrsbq/comment/luzygy9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidquestions/comments/1ghrsbq/co... Basically you need very specific letters where your exact name and address must match but those are issued without checking. So if one uses your middle initial instead of your name then no ID for you until you get it reissued. In Texas they have a shortage of staff issuing the ids too so there is a 3 month delay after you apply to find out what you did incorrectly https://www.statesman.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/08/19/texas-id-to-vote-reasonable-impediment-form-dps-staffing-shortage/74810945007/ https://www.statesman.com/story/opinion/columns/2024/08/19/t...
• casey2 2y ago
  The US particularly has an extremely large population of men (10s of millions) who don't work. Who knows if they'd be doing "low skill" manufacturing if somebody was around to hire them. But if you actually wanted this to work you would have started by subsidizing american raw materials.
  • ianpurton 2y ago
    Tesla in Berlin employs 12,000 workers and can produce 5000 cars a week. The US will need a lot of factories to employ 10s of millions of workers.I also imagine new factories will employ less workers due to increased automation. I'm interested to see how this plays out.
    • lm28469 2y ago
      This isn't the 1950s, factories are mostly automated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blW-Fa4a10g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blW-Fa4a10g That's the whole reason we went all in with tech and automation
  • UncleMeat 2y ago
    There are around 200m working age americans. So 100m working age american men. You are claiming that 20% of working age american men (at least) are playing video games all day (I assume that being in school or raising children or whatever is acceptable activity)? Where are you getting these numbers?
  • __turbobrew__ 2y ago
    Why is there a focus on men not working? I have seen it in at least 3 comments in this thread. Latest bls stats show men unemployment at 4.2% and women unemployment at 4.1% https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm
    • scryers_bloom 2y ago
      Civilization has always operated on the idea that men must work for it to function properly. When less people willingly work it can be detrimental for future welfare. The way that unemployment is interpreted by the public now is not very accurate. The gig economy has grown massively since 2020, which counts towards labor statistics, but its arguable to say if they should. The number of small or local owned businesses have grown substantially since 2020 - but is that because of a surplus of opportunity or people looking for ways to make additional money? The quality of the labor matters.
• toasterlovin 2y ago
  I believe this from the White House contains the only semi official numbers: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-national-emergency-to-increase-our-competitive-edge-protect-our-sovereignty-and-strengthen-our-national-and-economic-security/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr.... That has 10% across the board starting April 5th, then unspecified rates for the “worst offenders” starting April 9th. I say “semi official” because it’s not official until US Customs and Border Patrol publishes the rates. So far I don’t think they’ve done that. Their announcements page here doesn’t have anything: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/announcements https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/announcements
  • willvarfar 2y ago
    Yes Trump has a history of announcing shocks and then quietly back-peddling etc. But the numbers come from the big placard he holds up. There are pics of his announcement holding his rate card in article if you scroll down.
    • toasterlovin 2y ago
      Yeah, I’ve seen the boards he was holding up, but the fact that those numbers are not on the whitehouse.gov page and that they’ll be implemented a few days later makes me think they’re not final yet. Plus we don’t know if they’re in addition to or replace the existing China tariffs, for example.
      • Qworg 2y ago
        The admin has stated they are in addition to (totaling 54%).
      • Loughla 2y ago
        They're absolutely in addition to. We run a very small business (luckily just for side income). One of our suppliers expects prices to go up 45-55% by the time this is done. It sucks out loud because there are literally no suppliers from the US for the parts we need.
• pjmlp 2y ago
  Looking forward to the retaliatory tariffs, which seems to be only language this administration understands. I guess it will eventually be the year of FOSS software, I am only waiting for the administration going back to export restrictions in software as well.
• seydor 2y ago
  for starters, countries will sell to the UK , which will resell to the US at the lowest tarriff rate. Great for the UK, but stupid. I try to sympathize with trump's deglobalization agenda but it is probably exactly what it seems to be : a colossal stupidity.
  • patrickmcnamara 2y ago
    Just shipping goods through the UK does not make them UK-origin. They have to have a "substantial transformation".
    • seydor 2y ago
      "Johnnie Walker Champagne"
      • louthy 2y ago
        That’s good, but if you want the really good stuff: Rolls Royce Champagne
    • ddouglascarr 2y ago
      Do you have a reference for this? If they’re requiring substantial transformation, how is this assessed and enforced?
      • patrickmcnamara 2y ago
        It's pretty complicated and case-by-case, and I'm no expert. https://www.trade.gov/rules-origin-substantial-transformation https://www.trade.gov/rules-origin-substantial-transformatio...
  • bitshiftfaced 2y ago
    In that example, the UK would soon run a trade surplus, and presumably the US would increase their tariff.
• tmellon2 2y ago
  The De Minimis loophole is highly significant with 4 Million packages per day (What ?). The clause to address this loophole needs to be stated more accurately - It should clearly define it to be higher / lower of 30 % of value of shipment under $800 or $25 per shipment and not either Source :https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-closes-de-minimis-exemptions-to-combat-chinas-role-in-americas-synthetic-opioid-crisis/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr....
• misja111 2y ago
  The attempts to force a mineral deal on to Ukraine, and also the attempts to get hold of Greenland, start to make sense if you assume that the Trump administration is preparing for a permanent global trade war. Higher costs for mineral imports would hurt the US economy the most.
• Animats 2y ago
  Did the "de minimus" exemption on small packages from China go away, and are all those now going to have to go through customs clearance?
  • teruakohatu 2y ago
    What will happen is the same as when my govt. added GST (sales tax) on all imports with no de minimus exception [1], the overseas retailers will agree to add it on at checkout so their packages will sail through customs. From a practical perspective I can’t see any other way. Closing the “GST loophole” as they called it didn’t help New Zealand retailers, but did increase tax revenue and raise prices for consumers. [1] There is an exception if the retailer does less than a certain dollar figure of exports in total to New Zealand.
• kriro 2y ago
  Time for the EU to float the idea of the PetroEuro.
• whatshisface 2y ago
  There has been a lot of speculation about why this is being done, given that even a young child could understand that a grocery store is not taking advantage of you when you exchange your money for goods. Some say that it doesn't need an explanation, because the President has so much power that caprice and a little bad advice from a cabinet member is all it takes. That is not a complete picture, though, because power in the US is spread out enough that while only the President needs a reason to do something, many others must have a reason to allow it. Here's one idea for a "why are his supporters allowing this," sort of explanation. In the US, educated professionals hold way more importance than the global average, due to the US's status as an exporter of services. They tend to vote for liberal (in the European sense) policies, whether Republican or Democrat. If you wanted to destroy liberalism in the United States, you would have to drastically reduce the importance of higher education and professional labor. This can be done by placing very high taxes on the import of goods and base resources, so that young people who would have become engineers have to become miners, loggers and machinists instead. While I do not think this is true (blue-collar workers do not live up to the ultraright's "noble savage" sort of fantasy about their preferences and are actually just like anyone else... but if you're an elite you don't know that firsthand), it sounds plausible that enough of the people who are important for a season might believe it, and support it as a plan to remake American culture, not in their image, but in the image of a fantasy they share. This works together with the strategic need to decouple from trade with a country before invading them, dramatically increasing the number of opportunities for self-aggrandizement through the threatening of war, high-stakes diplomacy, negotiations over individual prices... which also offer some respite for elected officials who would otherwise take an unending beating in the news over consumer data.
• mailund 2y ago
  So now that the impacted countries will respond with tariffs, are there any chance they might include tariffs on digital services like AWS and Azure, or will they only target physical goods that cross the border? I don't know how these things usually work in the best cases, and it seems like we're living in exceptionally stupid ones right now.
  • bad_haircut72 2y ago
    Foreign countries will probably start taxing Google/Facebook ads if not outright banning US tech companies from operating. When that happens, watch the whitehouse roll back everything
    • drivebyhooting 2y ago
      Or escalate? Roll back defense guarantees.
• atoav 2y ago
  I guess we Europeans have to get our stuff from elsewhere than a nation hostile to the world with an insane unpredictable leader. China may also be authoritarian, but at least they are stable. The coolest thing to read are american takes that are like "hey this might be benefiting us for that obscure reason", totally ignoring the fact that you betrayed your allies. Land of fhe free my ass. The only ideology the US has is nihilistic greed paired with hyperindividualsm and transactionalism to the point where Americans think if someone else is getting a thing you are hurting. If the US was a kid it wouldn't invite others over because it wants to eat the birthday cake alone. And then it shits on all the cakes at the bakery because it wants to be the only kid eating cakes. If that is the American idea of how to lead a great life the rest of the world is better of without it.
  • drivebyhooting 2y ago
    You might enjoy your Chinese overlords more then. Time will tell.
    • atoav 2y ago
      As if the things the US produces aren't predominantly made in China already. Cutting out the middleman can't hurt, especially if the middleman behaves like a mob boss.
      • enaaem 2y ago
        I actually stopped buying from Amazon and went to either the producer's site or Aliexpress. Literally the same products but without the middleman. I once needed to claim warrantee on a broken charger and after navigating all the dark patters Amazon just referred me to the producer's website. It's not even convenient.
      • Nemrod67 2y ago
        oh the irony
        • atoav 2y ago
• ringeryless 2y ago
  No tariffs on Russia, interestingly enough. All actions by this administration point to Trump working in cahoots with Putin, which we were told was "a hoax". The White House dressing down of Zelensky, and this week Russias investment chief in the US, and just scads of obvious daily reminders that Trump has no bad words for his pal. Odd. Tariffs on our friends and allies while he speaks of dropping sanctions on Russia and meanwhile levies no tariffs upon goods from Russia, zero. Odd.
  • trallnag 2y ago
    Countries like North Korea and Russia are already covered by sanctions
    • nthingtohide 2y ago
      There are secondary tariffs on those countries who buy from Russia and Venezuela or Iran. i.e. if you buy oil from Venezuela, then your export of clothing will invite 25% tarrifs.
    • JKCalhoun 2y ago
      Are the two mutually exclusive? Because using the same formula they apply to other countries, Russia would have tariffs as high as 84%. (I confess to using an LLM to get me the data.)
    • ulfw 2y ago
      And you think Penguin islands have more trade?
• new_user_final 2y ago
  My understandings reading some comments. 1. Prices will increase 2. US will need to manufacture things and they will need a lots of workers. There will be shortage of workers because factory pays minimal wages. 3. Factories will have to offer higher amount of salary that will increase price Ultimately prices increases for everything and working class will suffer more.
  • pishpash 2y ago
    It's a scheme for the top-top to once again, not pay for anything because they pass the cost along. The W2 class gets to redistribute amongst themselves.
  • altacc 2y ago
    More likely that prices will go up and wages will stay the same. Factories take a long time to build and businesses know that Trump is erratic and therefore have no idea how long these tariffs will be in place for. So opening a totally new and otherwise unneeded factory is a big risk. (Some companies have made recent announcements about opening factories in the US but largely these factories were planned to meet existing marker needs, just not yet decided where they would be.) The price of a product will only go down when the majority of demand can be met by tariff free means. Until then a US company will sell a product at the same price as the imported, tariffed product because that's what they do. Same happened during the recent inflationary spike. Businesses put prices up more than their costs went up as they had an excuse. Large businesses hate putting up wages and the level of desperation in the US is such that there is a large pool of people to fill low paying factory jobs. The post-pandemic wage increases were noticeable for the opposition to them and that was a very short 12-18 month spike, with wage growth now back to normal. Yes, either way, the working class, indeed the median American, suffer.
  • lm28469 2y ago
    Don't forget that you first have to build the factories and somehow resuscitate the knowledge that died a few generations ago. A factory isn't just a big warehouse full of low skilled people, you need machines we don't have anymore, processes we lost, &c.
  • 2y ago
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  US says there was an imbalance in trade, and that is true only if we look at goods. If we look at services, I think the picture changes. What if the EU and rest of the world starts adding taxes to financial and IT services provided by the US? What if Amazon cloud and Netflix start costing 20% more? And let's not forget US is printing dollars which are being used for worldwide trade and the rest of the world subsidies their inflation and their economy through that. Let's not forget US exported the 2008 crysis and most of the world payed for that. I don't think US will like if the rest of the world stops using US dollars, stops using US financial services and stops investing in US economy by buying shares, bonds, securities.
  • enaaem 2y ago
    Interesting what happens to tech valuation. A large part depends on global reach, 'infinite' scaling and a winner takes all probability.
• yapyap 2y ago
  Wild
• jbverschoor 2y ago
  The whole table doesn't make sense. We (NL/EU) don't charge the US 39% to import . Apparently orange guy (not the Dutch) doesn't understand VAT rates. Car? max 4.5 + 21% VAT = 25%. But it simply doesn't matter bc we don't want their cars.. Except for thee Dodge RAM, which can be converted to a tax efficient company car (crazy).. What amazes me even more is that Elon doesn't seems to understand it either.
  • 0xy 2y ago
    It doesn't make sense because you didn't read the original board. It clearly states 'including trade barriers'. You're attacking a strawman. Countries, including the EU, like to have 'low tariffs' and then have sneaky backdoor taxes or outright bans on US goods through things like milk quotas (Canada), 'biosecurity' (Australia) or EU courts issuing spurious fines on US companies (based on vague laws that only get enforced against US companies, like DMA).
    • reaperman 2y ago
      I think you might be granting the administration too much benefit of the doubt. They aren't based on "tariffs + trade barriers", they're just based on trade deficit alone. https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907559189234196942 https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907559189234196942 https://archive.ph/kRkRh https://archive.ph/kRkRh
    • energy123 2y ago
      VAT isn't a trade barrier.
      • 0xy 2y ago
        DMA is. GDPR is. Both are applied principally against competitors using arbitrary fines invented by the EU. No compliance guidance is given, because the laws are inherently vague.
        • jbverschoor 2y ago
• doener 2y ago
  "This guy cracked the tariff formula: @orthonormalist It’s simply the nation’s trade deficit with us divided by the nation’s exports to us. Yes. Really. Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1 Deficit = 123.5 123.5/136.6 = 90%" https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1907568233239949431 https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1907568233239949431
  • mrb 2y ago
    Holy cow! I had to check for myself: there are even more data points on trade balance for all countries at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html (whereas @orthonormalist used a partial list from wikipedia) and the percentages I calculate line up exactly with the Trump's full list of "Tariffs Charged to the USA" percentages (https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1907541343250878752 https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1907541343250878752) !! Specifically they used 2024 trade balance figures. Example: take a random country, like Botswana, and the country's page at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7930.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7930.html shows a 2024 trade balance of 104.3 (exports) and 405.1 (imports) so 1-104.3/405.1 = 0.74 which matches the "74%" "tariffs charged to the USA" claimed by Trump... Rarely you get handed such blatant evidence that someone produced bullshit numbers and/or doesn't understand where the numbers come from !
    • mrb 2y ago
      Edit: someone said it doesn't work for Japan but it does. Every country I checked by hand matches the figures exactly... For Japan the figures are from https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5880.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5880.html and their 2024 trade balance is: 79,740.8 (exports) and 148,208.6 (imports) so 1-79740/148208 = 0.46 which matches the 46% "Tariffs charged to the USA " from the table shown by Trump...
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • croes 2y ago
    Some think AI helped with the formula https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114271484597938775 https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114271484597938775
• anal_reactor 2y ago
  I honestly didn't expect that Americans would simply... choose to be poor.
• mikewarot 2y ago
  As a preview of our future, it's now a good time to review the decline of standard of living that occurred when Great Britain lost the privilege of having the World's reserve currency, the Pound Sterling. My estimate is we're in for a 75% haircut to our personal standard of living as the US Dollar loses it's place, and we actually have to pay for everything we want in hard currency or real goods. Trump killed the golden Goose, and threw it into a wood chipper.
  • lysecret 2y ago
    Yep what many people overlook is that this deficient just means the rest of the world is financing the US overconsumption. And the only reason they are happy to do it is because they are happy to hold USD and are happy to invest in the US economy.
• jameslk 2y ago
  White collar jobs will be destroyed by AI/AGI. But the US workforce consists of a large portion of white collar workers. To replace the coming destruction of white collar jobs, manufacturing and industry jobs must be brought back, along with new resource collection initiatives (e.g. mining). They will be needed anyhow to build robots, drones, and other machines to compete with China and India, technologically and militarily. Globalization will be effectively dead, remaining trust in the petrodollar will be destroyed, therefore so will Pax Americana. Expect more wars.
  • ianpurton 2y ago
    In your scenario white collar jobs will be destroyed globally. So effectively you would be paying people to work in manufacturing even though it's no longer necessary. You may as well pay a basic income instead.
  • falcor84 2y ago
    There have been rapid recent advances in robotics, both classical industrial robotics (advanced by rapid iteration with digital twins and simulation environments like Omniverse), and humanoid robotics (pushed forwards by Boston Dynamics, Figure and a lot of other recent entrants). So if we really do achieve AGI that would take over white collar jobs, manufacturing jobs will likely too be taken over very soon thereafter.
• PeterStuer 2y ago
  Maybe if the US would clean up their production to what people actually want to buy it would help. EU does not just randomly target US products. No EU company would be allowed to sell food with the same processes (GMO, prohibited additives, medication traces, ...) The US is just running into these restrictions more than others because of their (lack of) health and safety standards being at odds with other markets. So, if the tarrifs lead to the world actually being able to buy something produced in the US with the dollars they were forced to accept, something real besides war equipment and (stale) IP bits, the problem would sort itself. At least the EU has discovered 'sovereignty', after ignoring it to the hilt for the last 55 years. Ringing up the concept even a year ago was at best met with a shrug and more often with a 'conspiracy theory' label. Sadly I don't even think they mean it, but I would be pleasantly surprised.
• glimshe 2y ago
  If we could manage the country using HN experts, we'd be incredibly prosperous. People here know so much more than the actual professionals in the government. Only a few people pointed out the obvious. Trump aims to bring everyone to table to renegotiate global commerce. Every country's economic strategy today is to have positive trade with the US and that is unsustainable. A risky tactic, but refreshing after decades of the old tired policies that brought us the collapse of parts of US manufacturing and so much pain during COVID due to a complete dependence on foreign suppliers for... Well, everything. I don't know if this will work. But I know what we had before wasn't working. We'll see.
  • akmarinov 2y ago
    The pot calling the kettle black...
  • omnimus 2y ago
    Why exactly wasn’t it working for US? The country with most wealth by like every measure? It’s not enough?
    • jiggawatts 2y ago
      This is the most mind-blowing thing to me: a bunch of multi-hundred-billionaries all standing beside a billionaire that shits in a gold toilet and is in charge of the richest country on Earth angrily proclaiming that "Everyone is taking advantage of us!"
      • scns 2y ago
        Seeing yourself as a victim makes it easy to justify your actions.
    • paxys 2y ago
      Well they were only getting one golden egg a day. If they cut the goose open they could get all the eggs in one go.
  • cbg0 2y ago
• Taniwha 2y ago
  So what's going to happen is: - each country will impose equivalent taxes on the import of US goods - this is not only expected, but the norm under international trade law. - with the rest of the world, still having free trade agreements between them, will start trading around the US, the US won't be able to compete The value of the US$ will likely drop by the value of the tariffs. If everyone starts trading around the US we'll probably lose the US$ as a standard currency to trade in, maybe switching to yuan or euros, the US$ is buoyed by it being the currency everyone uses, that's going to drive it even lower.
  • jbverschoor 2y ago
    That's precisely the point right? Devalue the dollar when so you can pay off your debt with a higher value asset. If the US$ drop 30%, the deficit magically dropped 30% when calculated in something else....
    • blatantly 2y ago
      Which is like burning all the houses (including your own) so you can use your houses to buy other people's houses cheap. This only works if you have superior manufacturing infra. To some extent the FAANGs export tech. But if FAANG is a tiny thing compared to say Toyota.
      • jbverschoor 2y ago
        "Pay with digital dollar, and you don't have to pay tarifs". Problem solved. Demand for digital dollar will grow, but can also be used for normal dollar transactions. Therefore the USD will devalue, and gone is the national debt. /s/digital dollar/bitcoin or trump coins or doge coins
        • blatantly 2y ago
          This make no sense. Tariffs are paid by the supplier who is receiving money from the US customer. Are you saying if they pay the tariff in doge coins the tariff is zero doge coins? As for other polices that "punish USD" "reward MagicCoins" ... well the market would hopefully see both currencies as crap and use Euros or Yuan. Or maybe new currency baskets will emerge to decentralise power.
• ryzvonusef 2y ago
  When americans are angry, they tend to spread that frustration with a shovel on everyone. My country as been hot by 29% tariffs.. I can't say what we did to upset americans, given that we do not compete with any american industry in any substantial way, bu we are bearing the wrath of the wounded american blue collar worker regardless. I wonder what the net effect of tariffs will be in an year, americans are so used to cheap imports, especially all those shien/aliexpress/temu stuff.
  • ookdatnog 2y ago
    In the culture of the contemporary American right, cruelty is a sign of strength and mercy (or even just empathy) is seen as weakness.
    • sirbutters 2y ago
      bingo.
  • 93po 2y ago
    That's a human trait and not really an American one, though I am definitely not an apologist for American-specific problems
  • rcstank 2y ago
    Pakistan has 58% tariffs on the US.
    • tacticalturtle 2y ago
      That’s using the bizarre trade deficit/total imports formula put forward by the administration. I’m curious what Pakistan actually imposes on US imports as a policy.
    • knowaveragejoe 2y ago
      No, they don't.
  • crazygringo 2y ago
• daco 2y ago
  how long before we start seing this reflecting in prices?
• ezoe 2y ago
  Most goods in US directly or indirectly relies on importing. So practically, I think it just mean US introduced VAT.
  • blatantly 2y ago
    Not quite the same. An item sold for $1000 say would pay $100 at 10% VAT. The items in the supply chain all charge VAT and reclaim VAT they spent. I think usually this terminates at the import (maybe?)
  • Mengkudulangsat 2y ago
    Well, when you put it that way... it doesn't seem that bad at all. Maybe the real innovation here is the political manouvering of coming up with a new, desperately-needed government revenue stream.
  • Palmik 2y ago
    Except VAT and Sales Tax is typically applied regardless of where the item / service originated from. It also doesn't apply potentially several layers down. That's not to mention things like reverse charge for B2B etc. In other words, not similar at all!
  • dguest 2y ago
    Except it seems like the president has more control over tariffs. Taxes are approved by congress, so this was surprising to me. Does the president essentially has full reign to tariff whoever they want (for whatever reason) until the end of their term? Maybe this is less about economic independence and more about grabbing whatever power is within reach. If domestic taxes were up to the president and tariffs were up to congress, would we see exactly the same situation with domestic taxes?
• 55555 2y ago
  Factories are not coming back to the USA in large number, for a lot of reasons, at least not until full automation + tariffs makes them economical. But the biggest reason is that what's going to happen is that the average joe is going to suffer a bit, then will vote against these policies in the next election, and that's only 3.5 years away. If it takes a year to build a factory -- and frankly these tariffs could be adjusted again or removed in a few months -- and then they're likely to be fully removed in 3.5 years, I'm just not sure it makes sense to invest in a factory.
  • aetimmes 2y ago
    Optimistic to assume that the US will have voting in 3.5 years.
    • c-linkage 2y ago
      My suspicion is that Trump will declare a national emergency and suspend elections at the mid-term if it looks like the Republicans will lose seats in the House.
      • bluGill 2y ago
        I doubt enough people would stand for that. He might try, similar to how South Korea tried a similar trick last year - it didn't stick.
        • Bhilai 2y ago
          The government is already actively ignoring federal courts. Who is going to stop them?
          • bluGill 2y ago
            The army isn't likely to stand for this
            • 2y ago
• kybernetyk 2y ago
  So has anyone an idea how those tariffs would affect software sales? Say I'm a German guy selling a license for my software to someone in the US. Will this fall under tariffs, too. Or are software licenses somehow exempt? Asking for a friend(me).
  • comrade1234 2y ago
    It won’t unless you’re shipping an item to the USA. I think the eu should look into taxes on u.s. services, instead of tariffs on products. Taxing AWS/Azure/etc +25% would do a lot in getting similar services in the eu expanded.
  • lysecret 2y ago
    My opinion. (Also as a German guy doing a similar thing). On the first order no. The tariffs just announced are only on goods and are collected at the ports when you physically import them. On the second and third order. What I think will happen is that the EU will mostly retaliate against US services. And then trump might counter retaliate against EU services. So I would start looking for customers outside the US.
• wtcactus 2y ago
  I have a doubt for some years about the US, but never really got good info on it (maybe because it’s a silly doubt). So, when I sell something to the USA (on eBay) for instance. It doesn’t pay VAT automatically. Do Americans pay VAT when it’s delivered? But, when an American buys something locally, they do pay VAT, correctly?
  • stevenwoo 2y ago
    We used to not pay anything for stuff, for instance I bought items that were dropped shipped from China under a certain value but that has ended. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-tariffs-trade-war-stock-market-04-02-2025/card/trump-ends-popular-de-minimis-trade-exemption-for-china-used-by-shein-temu-9Ib4ozrVgEK1OudeahtJ https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-tariffs-trade-war-sto... Sales taxes are on a state by state basis and online companies are required to collect it from the buyer and forward/report it to the state. Local purchases all have sales tax paid to state governments, some to city in urban areas. Some food items are exempt. A state can choose to not have a sales tax but most do IIRC. There is no federal sales tax. Until these tariffs which are essentially taxes.
  • SJC_Hacker 2y ago
    The US doesn't have an equivalent to VAT. Sales taxes at are at the level of states and cities. VAT would be in effect a federal sales tax, which the US doesn't have. Since different states had widely varying sales taxes (ranging from 0% to 8%), for people living close to state lines, it sometimes makes sense to buy items just across the line to avoid sales tax. Although some business/individuals would get in trouble for deliberately evading sales taxes, as you are technically supposed to report on taxes. This created a problem with online retailers, who were essentially avoiding sales taxes. Legislation in the mid 2010s changed that, the law is somewhat complicated but generally the sales tax is collected where the business "resides", which could be multiple jurisdictions. If there is any "office" in a state, all purchases originating from within that state have to pay that states sales taxes.
• wg0 2y ago
  Real problem is budget deficit not trade deficit. Trade deficit matters to countries who can't control the supply of dollar. The country that prints dollars doesn't have this to worry about. Main problem is budget deficit and the huge pile of debt.
• hayst4ck 2y ago
  The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US dollar as a global reserve currency. Since trade is conducted largely in USD, that means other governments must purchase USD to trade. This is the core of trade deficits. Foreign countries buy US dollars so they can trade with other people. That guarantees the deficit since they give us something in exchange for USD, which they do not then spend on goods we make. If you no longer want the trade deficit that means payments of fealty by those who trade in dollars, which countries aren't likely to tolerate, or abandoning the USD as a global reserve currency, which would be disastrous, truly disastrous. Our debts would suddenly become existential because inflating our currency to pay for them could result in functionally not being able to import goods required to run our economy. I don't think many truly understand just how disastrous it will be. This isn't America's liberation day. This is Russia's and China's liberation day. While America was once able to check their power, America is no longer in a position to do so, we will barely be in a position to satisfy our own military's logistics requirements. This is a decapitation strike (Timothy Snyder: Decapitation Strike -- https://archive.is/1xkxK https://archive.is/1xkxK) on America by our enemies. It is not only a de facto soft blockade of American trade, but it is an attack on the mechanics of American hegemony. Politicians already ask for money instead of votes or actions. That means if foreign governments spend money, they can elect their preferred candidates. America's own government was a result of french support. We institute regime change in other counties, and I see no reason to believe we are immune. If trade stops occurring in US Dollar, which is a consequence of the stated goal of our current ruling regime, that would be the coup de grace on this country's hegemony. It is the definitive end to it, and the birth of Chinese hegemony. Ray Dalio's Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order feels prescient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8
  • thegreatpeter 2y ago
    You should read the book lol
  • cromka 2y ago
    A big, resounding AMEN.
• remoquete 2y ago
  I'm wondering how this protectionist trend will impact overseas hires. Will US companies continue to hire talent remotely outside of their borders? Will they be incentivized to only hire in the US?
  • logicchains 2y ago
    More businesses will be incentivised to locate in the US, to avoid tariffs, but they'll still be incentivised to hire from outside the US due to cheaper labour (there's no tariff on wages).
    • tossandthrow 2y ago
      > there's no tariff on wages It is _really_ difficult to pay wages to internationals (As most people involved in remote work know). Usually you need to setup a subsidiary in the country you want to hire in - or convince the "employee" to be a contractor. In the end this is not "wages" that move over borders - but services. And these can indeed be tarrifed.
• guesswho_ 2y ago
  [dead]
• aucisson_masque 2y ago
  Here we go. My dumb ass invested money in usa stocks when trump got elected because trump is pro business, right ? Should have invested in Asia, today china is the usa from 40 year ago.
  • louthy 2y ago
    It doesn’t matter where you invested. Everyone’s taking a haircut.
    • s_dev 2y ago
      Not EU weapons manufacturing and defence industry.
  • bluGill 2y ago
    China would be very risky. Trump in his previous term declared a trade war with china, and there is every reason to think he would again. China is also make geopolitical moves that give a significant chance of war in SE asia. I wouldn't invest there. Now investing in Brazil or something might make sense.
• tonyhart7 2y ago
  what would happen to US??? I mean you cant ignore US market right now so is this enough that factory gonna comeback on US soil??
  • mirzap 2y ago
    Let's imagine they do come back. Let's say you have a toaster factory in Vietnam, which allows the US company to produce low-cost toasters for about $100. The factory workers earn $1 per hour. Now, due to the tariffs, a toaster will cost $146. And you say, "Okay, they just need to move their factory to the US and then the problem will be solved - no more tariffs. " Fine. Do you really think a US worker will work for $1 per hour? Even if you automate 80% of the factory, you still won't offset the 46% tariff. You will never get a toaster priced at $100. More likely, it will be $300.
• TheRealNGenius 2y ago
  [dead]
• TheRealNGenius 2y ago
  [dead]
• kwar13 2y ago
  Liberation day indeed... when Canada/Australia/Europe/South Korea/Japan are now the enemy I'm not sure there are any more friends left.
• ajb 2y ago
  This is basically the Kim Jong-Un approach to foreign policy: Kim: threaten a nuclear war, see if people will pay you to stop Trump: threaten to crash the world economy, see if other countries will pay to stop you He doesn't care that this will shrink the global economy, or even, at least in the short term, the US economy. If other countries submit in order to negotiate tariffs down then he has his "win" politically, if not then he has someone to blame.
• Gasp0de 2y ago
  A possible retaliation by the EU could be to not enforce US intellectual property rights in the EU anymore. Or we could start taxing cloud companies, who, until now, have not paid taxes in the EU for profits that they generate in the EU.
  • theuppermiddle 2y ago
    This is exactly what I was thinking. Is not the US export far higher than import if they take into account the software and other IT services they sell? I would expect other countires to tarrif that.
    • maaaaattttt 2y ago
      That would work of we had viable alternatives (on par with the US offers or as an easy migration). But we don’t really, so if the EU also adds tariffs than we’ll have the same issues the US is going to have. Meaning higher prices for the same offer since we’ll have no other choice but to stick with the US IT offer. Like other comments said, this could work only if this was long term and everybody bites the bullet until they have a good local alternative to foreign offers with high tariffs. And the chances of having a lower offer as the one you were importing are really high. So, everybody is betting on short term.
      • planb 2y ago
        Higher Prices? What is the "Price" of Instagram and Google Maps? But on the other hand, how would you put tariffs on these? The good thing is: If the EU finds a way to tax the money flowing from advertisers to big tech, consumers would not be affected (at least not financially), because they are not the ones paying the price.
        • Gasp0de 2y ago
          The price is not for using it, but for serving ads on it. They'd increase the price for ads that target European customers.
• cess11 2y ago
  I think it is a mistake to approach this policy as if it is about other states. One sign that it is not is that it seems to be based on a crude, almost simplistic calculation, something like trade deficit divided by exports, with a ten percent blanket tariff on states with trade surplus or no trade. Applying the same policy against everyone indicates it's not about them, it's about the usian 'us'. Another way to look at it might be as sanctions, but instead of applying them on another state, applying them at home. And sanctions are usually a means to influence oligarchs and industrialists in a state, which probably means this is a policy directed at those groups in the US. Why would you want to hurt US industrialists and oligarchs? Because then you can ease their pain in exchange for their loyalty. This is the logic behind castles in Europe. It's a place where the king decides the taxes, taxing illoyal barons or whatever more than loyal ones, and if they militantly disagree, shut the door and have them expend their resources on a hopefully futile siege and then be weakened anyway. Similar policy was common in colonial settings too, if the colony was uppity, tax them harshly. The world is changing fast anyway, the liberalist hegemony wasn't going to extend far into the future for many reasons, like climate change and the general rise of autocracy worldwide. Having guarantees of loyalty and stability from the state apparatus at home when the world order inevitably crumbles while burning some bridges that would likely fall apart anyway, instead of wasting resources keeping up a charade defending some 'status quo', has a kind of logic too it.
• pontiacbandit8 2y ago
  Trump must be a Russian asset. There can be no other explanation. To weaken NATO, remove U.S. dominance by withdrawing forces from bases worldwide, abandon maritime security, weaken the dollar, and implement hostile economic policies that maintain the dollar as the world’s currency, it seems that the final step of “America First” is to make the dollar the sole currency used only in the United States.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • cmurf 2y ago
    He's a psychopath. But I'm willing to compromise. He's a mentally ill Russian agent.
• RecycledEle 2y ago
  I understand the "and 10% on everyone else" part of the tariffs. Do you think the media is too dumb to understand that, or are they just playing games when they point out a 10% tariff in someone who does not export to the US?
• blurbleblurble 2y ago
  Are we gone flag this one too? Or just all the articles chronicling certain crypto invested tech billionaires pushing in this direction?
• Havoc 2y ago
  And here I thought brexit would keep the top spot as act of self harm
  • DanielVZ 2y ago
    Yep. This is like brexit but ten times worse.
  • dash2 2y ago
    Actually this is one time when Brexit is paying off. We get 10% tariffs, the EU gets 20%.
    • louthy 2y ago
      Not really, if the whole world sinks into an economic depression then the percentages won’t matter much. What will matter is the starting position and whether the country’s economy has enough headroom to ride it out. It doesn’t. Because of Brexit.
      • dash2 2y ago
        Jonathan Portes, who is very, very much not a Brexit fan, agrees with me.
        • louthy 2y ago
          3 days later and we’re in a global economic crisis. How’s that Brexit dividend paying off for the UK now? Oh right, we’re fucked like everybody else.
    • ncruces 2y ago
      You get a 10% tariff when you run a deficit with the US. EU gets a 20% tariff on a 40% surplus. You win!
    • s_dev 2y ago
      EU has signed up to lucrative trade deals with Canada and Mexico since Brexit and has many more similar ones with other Asian countries. International trade is complicated and it is very much something the EU specialises in.
• Beijinger 2y ago
  The EU probably does not have a trade surplus with the US, but rather a trade deficit. https://www-gmexconsulting-com.translate.goog/cms/de/dunkle-materie-in-der-amerikanischen-ausenhandelsbilanz/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-gmexconsulting-com.translate.goog/cms/de/dunkle-...
  • the_gipsy 2y ago
    I was thinking the same. IT is a huge business, the best kind of business right now, the pinnacle of human technology at this point in time. America is the world leader in development, and "exports" of IT. You can't really tariff software, as it's some kind of IP. On the other hand, much of the "digital infrastructure" is free and open. Perhaps if rival powers put enough effort into sanctioning US effective sales in IT, however that may work, America could lose it all.
    • cbg0 2y ago
      > You can't really tariff software, as it's some kind of IP. The bureaucrats in Brussels will easily find a way to do it.
      • the_gipsy 2y ago
        Yupp, no one says tariffs must only be matched with tariffs. This is a big trade war.
  • cbg0 2y ago
    With regards to goods, the EU exports more than it imports from the US, but we do import more services from the US, which can likely be taxed in retaliation.
    • Beijinger 2y ago
      Yes, but only because iPhones, Dell computers, HP printers are shipped from China and not the US. Yet the majority of profits from these trades are accrued in US companies or offshore tax shelters owned by them.
• TheAlchemist 2y ago
  I would bet that most of these tarrifs won't exist in <6 months. This reeks negotiation tactics from Trump. He's been playing this game for 2 months now with Canada and Mexico, and so far he's loosing. US & business are loosing even more. Keeping this kind of tarrifs, would be absolutely moronic even by Trump standards. That would be economic and financial suicide for the US.
  • deadbabe 2y ago
    Doesn’t matter if they’re gone in 6 months. The damage is done, businesses will see the United States as too unstable and unreliable to plan long term goals in. We will pay the penalty for decades. Even if you get a new administration, that administration can be gone in another 4 years.
    • TheAlchemist 2y ago
      Oh on that we agree - the damage to US reputation and reliability is already done and it will take decades or a world war to repair it.
      • deadbabe 2y ago
        We will not be alive to see it restored to its former glory ever again.
        • HankStallone 2y ago
          At least I lived long enough to see the liberals who spent the first 55 years of my life bashing the US (often correctly) for imperialistically stomping all over the rest of the world, using its massive military to force its currency and culture on other nations, and meddling in the elections of sovereign nations to create puppet governments (just to name a few of our favorite activities), turn to pining for the former glory of the US empire. That wasn't on my bingo card.
          • 2y ago
• amitrip 2y ago
  [dead]
• gadders 2y ago
  If anyone is interested, you can find the US's assessment of the tariffs imposed on the US by other countries here: https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Reports/2025NTE.pdf https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Reports/202... EG: "The UK has duties on approximately 5,000 tariff lines, including on certain agricultural products, ceramics, chemicals, bioethanol, and vehicles. Tariffs on some products such as bananas, raw cane sugar, and apparel, which tend not to be import sensitive for the UK, are maintained to provide for preferential access for imports from certain developing countries into the UK compared to the MFN rate. The UK has some high tariffs that affect U.S. exports, such as rates of up to 25.0 percent for some fish and seafood products, 10.0 percent for trucks, 10.0 percent for passenger vehicles, and up to 6.5 percent for certain mineral or chemical fertilizers"
• cbeach 2y ago
  Why haven't we questioned the asymmetric high tariffs imposed by the EU on America for decades? The EU imposed a 10% tariff on US cars for decades while the US only imposed 2.5% on the EU. And this happened while the EU exerted a significant trade surplus against the US on automobiles. I don't advocate trade wars, but I can understand the case for some rebalancing, given the historic context. Hopefully Trump will only use tariffs as a negotiating tool, and they will soon be lifted. He's a dealmaker.
  • detaro 2y ago
    Of course a lot of the vehicles that would be interesting to the US market are not classified as cars, but as (light) trucks, and have a 25% tariff applied (originally due to a minor tariff "war" in the 1960s around chicken exports). It's just wrong that the US until now has not questioned and acted upon foreign tariffs.
  • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    >The EU imposed a 10% tariff on US cars for decades while the US only imposed 2.5% on the EU. Whose faults? Someone signed the deal, someone let the deal stand 'for decades'. Trump could have 'rebalanced' any disparities...er, 'nicely', and been annoyingly victorious. As it is, nah. Lost trust. Not visiting, either.
• kindkang2024 2y ago
  The Hawk-Dove game is a wise framework to consider. When both are Hawks, both get harmed. When one is a Hawk and the other a Dove, the Dove gets hurt, and the Hawk laughs. I hope both can be Doves, bringing tariffs to zero and making all great again.
• tlogan 2y ago
  The next phase is likely geopolitical. Countries will begin negotiating directly with the U.S. administration to secure exemptions or reductions in tariffs. In effect, it’s the formation of a new American sphere of influence / empire.
  • jgilias 2y ago
    To me it seems like Americans are currently actively dismantling their sphere of influence.
    • lifeinthevoid 2y ago
      Yup, who wants to get deeper in business with a party you cannot - in any case - trust?
    • tlogan 2y ago
      Exactly. The old is based on Cold War. The new sphere of influence will be probably quite different.
      • jgilias 2y ago
        I don’t feel like there will be one worth talking about though if the current direction persists. If you don’t care about things like freedom, democracy, free press, the rule of law, free markets, then China seems like a much better overlord to take.
• tmellon2 2y ago
  The De Minimis loophole is highly significant with FOUR Million packages per day (What ???). The clause to address this loophole needs to be stated more accurately - It should be clearly defined to be higher or lower of 30 % of the value of shipment under $800 OR $25 per shipment and not either. If either then the De Minimis loophole will be continue to be used at $25 per shipment. Source : https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-closes-de-minimis-exemptions-to-combat-chinas-role-in-americas-synthetic-opioid-crisis/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
• nbzso 2y ago
  It is not a conspiracy anymore. Problem - Reaction - Solution. Start a war in the middle of Europe and Gaza. Tariffs. Recession - Panic - Digital ID, Social scoring, CDBC, Digital dollar, AI governance, tech feudalism. That's all folks. :)
• dandanua 2y ago
  The US Administration is dead. America is occupied by creatures that simply want to destroy the current world order, sow chaos, and profit from that by means of power and utter hate and disrespect for ordinary people, who live from paycheck to paycheck. Keep advancing AI, so they wouldn't need to employ humans to kill other humans.
• jongjong 2y ago
  I like the idea of tariffs but only if followed with income tax cuts.
• mherrmann 2y ago
  Can this be an arbitrage opportunity?
• sneak 2y ago
  Meanwhile the options level upgrade I asked e*trade for at 8am (before the 4pm announcement) so I can buy puts is still pending at 8am the following day. TIL one should configure brokerage accounts well in advance of events.
• nemo44x 2y ago
  Vietnam and Israel already agreed to remove tariffs on USA imports. Thailand is opening negotiations today. It’s simple - remove import duty from USA goods and the USA will remove tariffs. Reciprocal trade.
• dexcs 2y ago
  And as tech guys we always wonder if the world is a better place with AI Agents taking over. My guess is that even gpt-3 would have come up with a better solution than this.
• polski-g 2y ago
  I encourage everyone to contact their reps and demand a bill be advanced to return tariff authority to the Congress. There are enough GOP reps opposed to tariffs to get a discharge petition.
  • Loughla 2y ago
    Are they more opposed to tariffs than they are in support of their king Trump? I'm betting the number of Republicans in Congress who will oppose Trump is in the single digits at this point.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  This doesn't come as a surprise as we all know it's going to come. My question is, how does the US prepare to re-industrialize itself? Is the tariff good enough to provide incentives so that factories start to appear domestically? I fear this might not be the case.
  • bluGill 2y ago
    The US never lost manufacturing. It just automated it. Those people who know how to run a factory still exist. However there is no getting around it taking years to setup a factory (less if you can import the assembly line back from China). So nobody sane will start a new one in the next year based on these tariffs - odds are too high that in 2 years the democrats take over congress (the house not flipping would be a shock: typically the out of power party gains a few seats in non-presidential elections and only a few seats need to flip. The senate is somewhat unlikely, but the loss of the house would have ripple effects there). Even ignoring the above, any few factory would be highly automated. There won't be thousands of new no college required jobs created in any new factory. It will be maybe 100 (probably less), with a bunch more engineering degree required.
• jjice 2y ago
  From the people in my life who talked about their preference for this administration, the economy was the core reason I heard. Specifically interest rates, but ignoring that that’s the federal reserve and the president has no impact on that. Whatever - all that said, I can’t imagine this leads to an economic boom or anything near it by the midterms. Are the republicans going to lose midterms if the economy is shit? I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine this works out well. I’m no economist though, so what do I know.
  • Trasmatta 2y ago
    It's insane, because all those people have now backpedaled and no longer bring up the economy as their primary concern. Also insane because all of this was so predictable. Trump couldn't stop talking about tariffs throughout all of 2024. It was obvious that he was going to do this, and obvious that it would tank the economy.
    • jgilias 2y ago
      A lot of people rather change their beliefs than ever admit they’ve been wrong.
    • AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      > It's insane, because all those people have now backpedaled and no longer bring up the economy as their primary concern. Give it time. They will.
      • Trasmatta 2y ago
        As soon as they have the narrative to blame the incoming recession on Democrats, they definitely will
      • thrance 2y ago
        They will never if they keep getting constantly bombarded by right wing propaganda. They're already starting to call it "Biden's recession", as they've been told to do by Fox News.
• Waterluvian 2y ago
  Am I wrong to intuit that tariffs against everyone is less bad than tariffs against a few, because now the rest of the world has even more potentially willing replacement trade partners?
• lifeinthevoid 2y ago
  So the US has been, more or less, the best place in the world to do business. Stocks historically soaring, yadda yadda yadda ... and somehow this guy sells the story that the US has been taking advantage of by all the other evil countries in the world. It does not, in any way, make sense. What a clown. A totalitorian clown unfortunately.
  • MaxHoppersGhost 2y ago
    Would love to know what your country's tariffs are on the US.
    • teekert 2y ago
      You are downvoted but this never mentioned indeed. I have a hard time finding how much us Europeans pay in tariffs on stuff from China and the US.
      • knowaveragejoe 2y ago
        It's downvoted because it's a transparent and weak attempt to "both sides" something that's not both-sidesable.
        • colordrops 2y ago
          Why is it not "both-sidesable"?
          • asacrowflies 2y ago
            Middle ground fallacy
            • colordrops 2y ago
              No, I'm asking for details in this specific case. I don't have deep knowledge and understanding of the subject, so why is it no applicable in this case?
• roxolotl 2y ago
  Aside from everything else one thing what strikes me as particularly insane is how it’s not even defensible as a protective measure. My favorite everyday olive oil comes from Tunisia. They now have a 38% tariff on them. There are no out of work olive farmers in the US. The orange man wanted tariffs, the orange man is going to get tariffs. Now we have to hope the American people aren’t so dumb as to still be convinced only he can solve their issues. I don’t hold out hope for that.
  • _heimdall 2y ago
    > There are no out of work olive farmers in the US. Is that because we can't grow olives here, or because we don't have federal subsidies propping up a domestic olive industry that can compete with corn and soy? I ready don't know the details well enough there, but it feels like this could just be selection bias at play.
    • yifanl 2y ago
      Surely the null hypothesis isn't "The USA would have a domestic industry for every crop known to man if not for external factors"
      • apexalpha 2y ago
        Oh that's 100% what Potus thinks. There's no other rationale for this other than thinking this.
        • jredwards 2y ago
          You're assuming he has any rationale at all
          • overfeed 2y ago
            Leverage over importers, i.e. all of industry. If you're a captain of industry and want an exemption or a lowered rate, they you approach the deal table, cap in hand, with tears in your eyes and beg like a dog. "Please, sir..." In return for a minor reprieve, you ensure your factory bathrooms and hiring policies are aligned with the president's agenda, among many other things. This can be a cudgel over the heads of the Apples and Costcos of this country who dare to defy the edicts of POTUS on social policy.
• stickfigure 2y ago
  Here's something I want to understand: In 1930 the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed by congress - an act of legislation. Nearly 100 years later we have the president unilaterally picking any tariff numbers he wants. What happened?
  • timmg 2y ago
    As I understand: Congress gave the president the power to add tariffs in some "exceptional" cases. Trump claims this is an exceptional case. We'll see if Congress or the courts do something about it.
  • munchler 2y ago
    He invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which gives him the ability to levy tariffs in an “emergency”. There is no actual emergency, of course, but Congress does not have the political will to stop him.
  • xnx 2y ago
    Congress could stop this tomorrow if they wanted. They ceded all control to the executive. [Republican] Congress is hoping to claim credit for anything good that happens, but scapegoat Trump when things crash.
• torginus 2y ago
  This is just a stray thought of mine - but I feel like the US might go down a very dangerous path - I think to avoid retaliatory tariffs, US companies, such as NVIDIA might decide to create foreign subsidiaries, and license the technology to them - after all the tariffs don't apply if Europe does business with a Taiwanese subsidiary. But this will expose them to a technology exfiltration scheme and/or hostile takeover in the vein of what happened to ARM China. Am I reading too much into this?
  • rtkwe 2y ago
    They already wouldn't be subject to this tariff if they bought directly from Taiwan. Tariffs only happen when goods cross the border so unless Nvidia's logistics required them to ship into the US to get goods to Europe they shouldn't be affected by the tariffs directly.
• Andrex 2y ago
  Thank you, nonvoters.
  • s_dev 2y ago
    The only people who matter in an election are the voters so I'm always perplexed so many feel comfortable blaming non voters for the problems voters made. This non voter shaming is quickly eroded as soon as you ask voters if non voting is an issue. They will report it that is is a huge problem. Then ask what candidates or parties support mandatory voting and you'll get crickets. That's because it has nothing do with tackling the perceived problem of non voters and all to do with virtue signalling that you vote.
  • munchler 2y ago
    Trump is very popular among low-information citizens. If you corralled more of them into voting, he would have won by more. Call me an elitist, but at this point we'd be much better off if ignorant people stopped voting.
• delijati 2y ago
  So no soft landing anymore
• wolfcola 2y ago
  and it’s all thanks to a16z and co
• yyyk 2y ago
  The admin's think is that any negative trade balance is 'exploiting' the US. Logically, the opposite would mean US is exploiting others. So the only 'proper' balance is zero, which requires managed trade. An obvious impossibility in this age. There are ways to rebalance, they require time and patience and thought (the latter seems most lacking).
• dostick 2y ago
  This historical period will be remembered by being a cause for legislation to introduce strict testing for mental illness in government positions. Ask any psychologist and it’s clear what it is, but they won’t say it publicly because of Goldwater “rule”. fact is they have the most dangerous and destructive mental illness known, and they captured the power exactly because of their disorderly mindset. Yet for months and years everyone is observing and discussing what people with a serious mental illness are doing when they are given highest post in power and unlimited money.
  • teeray 2y ago
    > will be remembered by being a cause for legislation to introduce strict testing for mental illness You’re making some bold statements about the ability of congress to pass legislation at all.
  • Saline9515 2y ago
    So which illness it is?
    • davidmurdoch 2y ago
      Greed? I dunno
    • louthy 2y ago
      Presumably psychopathy combined with narcissism
    • jgilias 2y ago
      Malignant Narcissism https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/trump-nyt-ad-george-conway-pac https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/24/trump-nyt-ad...
  • kahrl 2y ago
    Nah.
  • baxtr 2y ago
    I don’t support tariffs at all, but calling these people mentally ill is the wrong approach. They’re not mentally ill, they’re obsessed with power. It’s dangerous to conflate the two.
• IMTDb 2y ago
  I am not a specialist; but isn't that the most "green" policy ever ? I mean: - Tariffs will increase the price of virtually everything -> By law of supply and demand; global trade and production will decrease, leading to less CO2 production - This effect will be stronger for stuff coming from far away (little for Canda / Mexico; more for EU; huge for China). So companies will have a tendency to rely on local producer (even at a higher price). This again will lower transoceanic shipping. Other countries will probably retaliate so this effect will go both for inbound and outbound shipping. Again; less CO2 production - More money for the government. There more stuff you buy, the more tariffs you pay, so rich pay more than poors. Which again is what green parties are looking for. I might be very wrong about this; I am not a Trump supporter in any way - and to be honest I ma not a fan of green parties either - but my initial reaction is that if we look at the conclusion of the policies; the results are looking to align quite well. Of course the surrounding storytelling is extremely different; which puzzles me a bit.
  • dpc_01234 2y ago
    Yes. If you're into green policies, then tariffs are aligned with what you'd probably want, at least on some level. Though it's more complicated and by no means a slam dunk. One could say that producing things locally in more places is less efficient (lower economies of scale, etc.) which might result in more overhead per item, which might outweigh the extra transportation, etc. General assumption is that an unconstrained free market arrangement encourages system optimizing itself. But then there's a question what is it optimizing itself for, and that's definitely not ecological impact. A change like that in a global economy has tons of non-linear effects, many of which it need to play over time, etc. Some changes are more easy to predict confidently, many not so much. But barely anyone argues from first principles, and its typically just tribal screeching on both sides.
• HelloAll 2y ago
  [flagged]
• _heimdall 2y ago
  I'm surprised by how many concerns there are here related to how the tariff amounts were calculated. It seems like they used a pretty simple algorithm to do it. Isn't that a good thing? Countries were treated the same and the tariff was decided primarily by the trade imbalance (with a minimum of 10%). Would we rather them use a combination of completely incomprehensible calculations and backroom deals? Its open season for debating whether tariffs will work, or even what the underlying motivations are. Attacking the use of a simple algorithm across the board just feels lazy and either emotionally or politically charged.
  • StefanBatory 2y ago
    It's both simple and stupid algorithm, though.
    • _heimdall 2y ago
      Why is it stupid? They claim to be concerned with trade imbalances, and that those imbalances are a problem. Using those trade imbalances to calculate a tariff seems reasonable, assuming the concerns are right. If tariffs are to be imposed, I'd at least rather be able to see how they were calculated and know it was done the same for every country.
      • dralley 2y ago
        The "numbers" appear to: * Punish Ecuador, who uses the US dollar, for being a "currency manipulator", which obviously makes zero sense * Punish Lesotho, whose population is too poor to ever afford US goods, because they export a lot of resources that we use * Punish countries like Columbia for being big coffee exporters where there is no hope of building up a domestic coffee industry because that's not how agriculture works * Tariff an island inhabited only by Penguins It's just dumb.
        • _heimdall 2y ago
          Aren't you cherry picking to make a point though? Certainly there are impacts on other countries though, and they're likely aligned (in theory) with their stated concern that countries are leveraging trade deficits to take advantage of the US. > Tariff an island inhabited only by Penguins This would be a great sound bite, but its also entirely useless. If the only inhabitants are penguins then a tariff on paper means nothing, they just avoided having to write one-off exceptions.
• nilkn 2y ago
  I don't know how I feel about this overall. But I do want to recount something from my childhood. I'm American. I grew up in the rural Midwest. The truth is that much of this country is a depressing shell of its former self. The town I grew up in is all but dead -- about 12,000 people still live there, though. The nearest big city, previously a hub of manufacturing innovation, has been on a steady decline for decades. Since the 70s, more and more powerful drugs have been flooding into the broad geographic region, decimating entire communities and creating generational cycles of poverty and addiction. It's an absolutely brutal combination that has totally killed almost all innovation and output in huge swathes of this country. Candidly, even if you brought back manufacturing to the area, the local population is so dependent on drugs that you'd struggle to even find workers today. Today's drugs are so powerful that addicts would rather live in total poverty with drugs daily than have a high-paying job without drugs. Every small business owner in these regions knows this, but the true scope and severity of the problem can otherwise be hard to fully notice and appreciate. It's not possible to operate a small business in these regions without encountering the drug problem on a regular basis. Do I think tariffs are going to fix this? Honestly, probably not, for the simple reason that Trump is old and won't be here much longer even if he tries to install himself as a dictator. The winning strategy for much of the world is to likely wait this out to some degree -- best case scenario for others is that this will just get reversed or significantly mitigated in 3.5 years, which is the blink of an eye on global timescales. Nonetheless, my heart goes out to the incredible loss this country has experienced over the last few decades. It's truly heartbreaking and devastating that we've sold out so much of the country for short-term profits to such a degree that we can probably never break out of the cycle without severe pain and sacrifice.
  • trgn 2y ago
    I see the drug problem in my midwest city too, it's literally on my doorstep on occasion. The country is also not struggling with high unemployment or stagnant wage growth. Multiple things can be true at once. Tariffs are a solution to an imagined problem. And fwiw - reshoring has been happening already, through congressional action (CHIPS, IRA), rather than presidential decree, and was doning so without wrecking the economy.
• hnarn 2y ago
  I'm European. While it's pretty childish to paint the US and the EU as two human being with a "relationship" it's of course pretty jarring to see a country that has for my entire life been the undisputed cultural hegemony simply check out of the world stage and suddenly treat everyone on "their" side (culturally, politically and economically) like an enemy, or at the very least an abuser. I'm not an economist, but I don't think you have to be one to realize that kicking the entire global economy right between the legs will lead to a recession -- just look at the supply chain issues that echoed for years after Covid, and the massive "quantitative easing" that had to be done to avoid a recession. The abandonment of trade partnerships I could live with, I'll make it through a recession and every country is free to elect their own politicians and make their own fiscal policies, dumb as they may be; I don't get my "feelings hurt" by Americans wanting to bring back manufacturing jobs -- although I have issues understanding the reasoning. What worries, and actually saddens me, is the complete doing away with of values, that I do think have existed in the past. The US has never been a beacon of exemplary behavior, and I understand that "nations have no friends, only interests" -- one needs to look no further than the US treatment of the Kurds for an example of this -- but it's unbelievable to me how so many Americans can not see the American self-interest in making Russia pay for what they've done in Ukraine. Russia has been the main antagonist of the US for the entire post-ww2 era. It's a totalitarian state and an obvious enemy to the US. Invading Ukraine was a massive mistake, and all the richest country in the world had to do to basically risk-free damage their biggest antagonist, was to keep pressing a dollar-button together with the EU. No boots on the ground, no Iraq- or Afghanistan scale disaster, just military and economic support for a country that could end up being an extremely close ally. There is literally zero chance Russia could win a war of attrition with this dynamic. Instead, it's like the Soviet union in the 70s would have given away Cuba for free and instead threatened to invade North Korea. In the end, I think what makes me uncomfortable is that I truly do not understand what it is that the average American (or voter) wants, because the actions of the US on the international stage makes no sense to me, yet so many Americans seem to cheer it on.
  • jgilias 2y ago
    Most Americans just don’t care that much about international affairs.
• throw4847285 2y ago
  I can't say it any better than Randy Newman: The end of an empire // Is messy at best And this empire's ending // Like all the rest Like the Spanish Armada // Adrift on the sea We're adrift in the land of the brave // And the home of the free https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0EAwSpTcM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0EAwSpTcM4
• andrewclunn 2y ago
  The blue collar workers are fine with enduring a bit more pain for a few months or even years as this pans out. Specifically if the investment classes (who will be most harmed) suffer more. Long term goals are other countries lower their tariffs with the US, more US manufacturing, a temporarily devalued US dollar to more easily pay down the national debt, and a renegotiation of the terms by which the US provides military protection to other nations. People who already had little if anything to lose not being able to buy cheap foreign goods they weren't going to purchase anyways for a chance to see if this works out, while seeing the tech bros, academics, and investment bankers squirm, rage, and seethe? Though I'll get down voted into oblivion, the unmitigated despair and outrage on display in these comments just make my smile that much wider.
• Havoc 2y ago
  Notably none of Russia, Belorussia or North Korea. Really starting to look like the US senior leadership is compromised
  • VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
    All of those already have heavy sanctions. Additional tariffs do nothing since it's already effectively illegal to do business with them.
    • jononor 2y ago
      There are several billions in trade with Russia. Higher than Ukraine currently, and Ukraine got a 10% tarrif.
  • MaxHoppersGhost 2y ago
    Yeah cause those are already sanctioned...
• michaelsshaw 2y ago
  So many people around the world have been hurt by the terrorist US government. This lessening legitimacy will hopefully provide them some sort of justice.
• breakyerself 2y ago
  [flagged]
• dev1ycan 2y ago
  Since the Nixon admin ended the dollar standard the world has basically been pumping the US economy in so many ways, enabling US imperialism. 1)Dollar standard guarantees countries will absorb US budget costs, since they all have to have dollars they have to accept their money devaluing as the US creates artificial inflation. 2)People buying the US stock market due to no fears of free trade, now why would a Chinese or citizens of certain other countries EVER risk buying US stocks? the trade has become so flimsy if even possible anymore, this is a cold war 2.0 at full scale, 54% tariffs on China are not a joke, that almost kills trade entirely, it wouldn't surprise me if China cut relations at some point now or if it keeps getting worse. The real reason for this tariffs is a very Thucydides trap moment, ALL these tariffs were primarily targeted to China and countries that could potentially be a "threat" again if China were to "fall" economically, example: Japan, SK, India. Oligarchs are for it because they want to eventually privatize the stock market and go back into a weird pseudo aristocracy, where they control the most powerful corporations in the world, just like back in the 1800s. (notice how Elon keeps SpaceX, Neuralink and others private?) Since the 90s unlike the rest of the world the stock market has halved in size in the US and the trend will keep going until only a couple individuals control the US economy. This whole plan however has a flaw, it assume China won't eventually pass the US technology wise, but in the event that it happens, what then? will you not trade with China then? if that happens then you become basically North Korea where you are isolated from the latest technology, as the gap grows you get further and further behind in your standard of living. If that scenario happens it would be catastrophic for the US.
• tinyhouse 2y ago
  One thing I don't understand. US is much bigger than most countries. Why would a country the size of Belgium (~12M people) needs to import as much as it export from the US in order not to have tariffs > 10%?
  • bitshiftfaced 2y ago
    You could flip this around. Why would a country the size of Belgium need to export as much as it imports from the US?
    • tinyhouse 2y ago
      Not sure I'm following. Isn't that supply and demand?
      • bitshiftfaced 2y ago
        What I'm saying is that if total exports to the US is a function of the difference between the US and Belgium population size, then why wouldn't imports be a function as well? Belgium has less people buy things to import, but also less people to sell things to export. It's not clear to me what the mechanism is that these two functions should be so different.
        • timbit42 2y ago
          Canada has only 41 million people, 1/8.5th of the US population, but it's a big country so it has lots of resources to export.
• acyou 2y ago
  Americans would want to have high value-added activities done in the USA, and low value-added activities done abroad. Tariffs are being marketed as trying to achieve that goal. The five strategic areas/sectors identified as a priority for repatriating activity into the USA are pharmaceuticals, forestry, steel/aluminum, automobiles, and semiconductors. How is forestry a high value added activity? Are we including furniture manufacturing, or maybe residential housing construction in that sector? Are we including all of the byproducts of steel and aluminum in the steel/aluminum strategic area? I assume it's not just the raw materials? Is software included as part of the semiconductor sector? The bull case for the USA is 1. Reshoring actually happens 2. Other countries actually drop their tariffs/trade barriers 3. A new golden age of Pax Americana/free trade ensues, with Americans exporting their high value manufactured goods worldwide The bear case for the USA is 1. Republicans get hammered in the midterms 2. Entire world raises tariffs against the USA 3. American factories close en masse 4. USA dollar is devalued and reserve currency status is threatened Historically, the pattern seems to be: 1. Acquire global empire 2. Promote free trade inside that empire, benefiting high-value added domestic activities and limiting high-value added activities in areas outside the core of the empire 3. Run out of money due to the costs of fighting wars to maintain the empire 4. Military power declines 5. Through one or more wars, another power takes over Proponents of tariffs argue that Trump is trying to take us back from Step 3 - run out of money to Step 2 - promote free trade. In order to understand this thinking, it's important to understand that your empire's colonies aren't supposed to be allowed to promote their own industries and limit free trade by enacting duties on your own high value exports. To enforce free trade, you then fight wars, you can send gunboats (Opium Wars) or invade (Gulf War). But you can't invade and fight everyone, and rising powers protect their own industries through various measures as they build up. But power is most powerful when it's not used. The threat of action is much more powerful than the actual action. That's why I'm more than surprised and not too happy that tariffs on a large scale have actually gone forward. Ideally, the threat of tariffs would be used to actually cause other countries to drop their tariffs, and free trade ensues. I'm not sure about historical examples of this working for getting other countries to drop their tariffs. You could certainly try suppress the growth of other countries, I'm not sure how well that works in a global marketplace scenario. The flip side of that is that if you threaten for too long and never actually do anything you may lose some credibility. But I don't think anyone is arguing that the Americans are gaining credibility by enacting tariffs. It's a big world, and unless Americans have the power to influence their trading partners not to trade with others, then everyone can just trade with each other instead of trading with the Americans.
• nailer 2y ago
  The media has been perpetuating that that tariffs are borne by consumers. This is partially the case, but not entirely: US dairy in Canada is not 3 x the price of Canadian dairy despite the 200% + tariff.
  • dagw 2y ago
    It really also depends on how a product is imported. Is dairy imported into Canada as a ready to sell retail product, or as bulk 'raw material' for local companies to turn into consumer products. In the latter case the tariff is less significant to the final price since most of the price the end user sees are local markups rather than the cost of the raw ingredient.
  • KeithBrink 2y ago
    Bad example. Most dairy imports from US -> Canada are not subject to the tariffs. This video goes over the details of the thresholds and how those dairy tariffs work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lURdVBCBo8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lURdVBCBo8 In short, nobody is paying 200% tariffs.
  • peeters 2y ago
    Admittedly without knowing much about our dairy industry and supply management, isn't this flawed logic? If a 200% import tariff means Canadian dairy can also be sold at a higher cost, then it's still the consumers bearing the cost--they are being denied access to cheaper dairy altogether.
  • sebazzz 2y ago
    > The media has been perpetuating that that tariffs are borne by consumers They’ve not done that enough. The title is literally “34% tarriffs on China”. Heh, not __on__ China but 34% import tax on products which come indirectly or directly from China, imported by $country residents or companies.
• fnord77 2y ago
  Russia defeated the UK with Brexit. Russia defeated the US with Trump's policies. Where's the internal opposition?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• oxqbldpxo 2y ago
  The lion is not killed by other beasts but by the worms inside.
• cshores 2y ago
  Trump is going at this with a big ask. I anticipate that these percentage numbers will settle much lower in the end.
• kaonashi 2y ago
  we've spent the last 50 years basing our currency in foreign manufacturing, seems like a good way to tank the dollar to me
• 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Can't we sue the President or something? What if he made it like 200% to really try to fuck the country over?
• beanjuiceII 2y ago
  can't wait to read all the bad HN takes on this one
• macinjosh 2y ago
  All the gigabrains trying to be economists ITT don't understand this is a political move for Trump's base. It is not about what is technically best or the most logical according to the academics. It is an emotional decision more than anything. It stems from the working class in America being given cheap crap from Asia that barely works in exchange for shipping the good jobs overseas to the lowest bidder. The working class has enough TVs, iPhones, and toys. We want secure housing, good education, healthy food, and an opportunity for promotion in life. Those things can only come with good jobs that are accessible to the whole working class, not just the well educated who make up most of the service economy.
  • mschoch 2y ago
    [dead]
  • mahogany 2y ago
    > We want secure housing, good education, healthy food, and an opportunity for promotion in life. Those things can only come with good jobs that are accessible to the whole working class, not just the well educated who make up most of the service economy. What level of confidence do you have that the tariffs are a path to this outcome?
  • trymas 2y ago
    > We want secure housing, good education, healthy food, and an opportunity for promotion in life. How come dismantling education, medical, various protective agencies and services will help with that?
• cs702 2y ago
  Three things: 1. On the face of it, this looks horrible. I won't rehash the many arguments against it here, though. This page is already chock-full of those arguments. 2. Robot labor could make ultra-low-cost manufacturing possible in the US, to the point that many things become cheaper to make locally than to ship from abroad, tariffs or or no tariffs. 3. If any major country/region negotiates lower tariffs by fully opening its market to US products, every other country/region will be forced to do the same, expanding free trade everywhere.
  • xnx 2y ago
    > If any major country/region reacts by negotiating lower tariffs in exchange for a full opening of its market to US products Would any country trust the US in a negotiation?
    • cs702 2y ago
      Probably only to the extent the US actually does what it has agreed to do.
  • mrguyorama 2y ago
    >Robot labor could make ultra-low-cost manufacturing possible in the US, to the point that many things become cheaper to make locally than to ship from abroad, tariffs or or no tariffs. That's not a solution to anything though. All it does is ensure your money goes to Mr. I-own-the-robots instead of to Foxcon's Mr I-own-the-people That doesn't bring back any jobs
• TaurenHunter 2y ago
  I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions, by issuing Treasury securities. These securities mature at varying intervals and require continuous "rolling" or refinancing to pay off old debt with new borrowing. Significant rollovers are expected from April through September 2025, with additional short-term maturities due by June. Higher interest rates significantly complicate US' ability to refinance. The cost of servicing this debt — paying interest rather than reducing principal — is already a major budget item, surpassing Medicare, approaching Defense and Social Security levels. If rates don't come down soon it locks in higher costs for years. The country is at risk of a debt spiral. How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy. Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis. Increased demand for Treasuries pushes their prices up and yields down, effectively lowering interest rates. What are the flaws in this thinking?
  • sathackr 2y ago
    "If the fed won't lower the interest rate I'll tank the economy until they do!"
  • zerreh50 2y ago
    An economic crisis will reduce tax income though, reducing the ability of government to pay even if the interest is lower
    • thworp 2y ago
      In the long term, yes. In the medium term, companies and people liquidating their assets and paying capital gains tax actually gives the state a windfall.
    • WXLCKNO 2y ago
      If the goal of Putin is to destroy the US through illogical fiscal policies by means of using his Puppet, it all makes sense.
  • 2y ago
• lucideng 2y ago
  [flagged]
• lumb63 2y ago
  Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don’t disagree that there are downsides to the approach, but there is a set of very real national problems that this might address. For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well? Increased foreign competition pulls down domestic wages; telling people that they should shut up and be okay with that because they can get cheaper goods isn’t palatable to a lot of people facing the negatives of globalization. Globalization has played a big role in creating the massive income inequality in our country; it seems like we should fix that. There really are structural challenges to onshoring production due to strength of the dollar due to its reserve currency status; our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods rather than exporting goods. This is a real challenge that needs to be addressed as well. Our national debt is not sustainable either. Either we pay it down some, or we inflate it away; these are the two ways it goes away, ignoring the option of a world-shattering default on the debt. Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar. So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you propose?
  • Ragnarork 2y ago
    According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, there are 7 million unemployed in the U.S. currently. I don't know how you expect these to cover for all the manufacturing you imply might come back to the U.S. with these tariffs, and that's assuming the space and the production means (factories, etc.) are here already. They aren't, and not for a couple years. Combined to the fact that the U.S. is clearly sending a signal that coming there is dangerous now, especially for any other category than white males, and I don't see how you can even imagine that this situation is going to be working out.
  • yodsanklai 2y ago
    Progressive taxation, better public services, universal healthcare, free education for all
    • 2y ago
• mk89 2y ago
  I am not an economist but I see two things 1) usa has a huge debt, 2) this feels a lot like VAT applied on a federal level, without calling it VAT. Ok "VAT on imports". Why not. Obviously this is being sold as a trading surplus BS, etc, but if you look at EU, the surplus is ridiculously low when you consider goods and services (something like 50B). I don't think it's the worst idea ever, I just dislike the useless hatred that this guy is spreading around and all the idiots believing him. But hey if he hadn't done it, people would have said he is a socialist :)
• mtlmtlmtlmtl 2y ago
  Nasdaq composite is down 5.6% at the time of writing this comment. I honestly think Trump is doing this just to enrich himself and his friends. Stock market crashes always end up transfering wealth from the poor to the rich.
• joshdavham 2y ago
  The goal of the world now is to specifically target red swing states with counter tariffs so that the democrats will win the midterms, pass legislation to prevent the president from being able to unilaterally impose tariffs in the future and thus put a swift end to the golden age.
  • bagels 2y ago
    Pass legislation? That will be vetoed or ignored?
• Yeul 2y ago
  Man the stock market today was a slaughter house. Unfortunately in America they choose a dictator for 4 years with a parlement made up of puppets so it is what it is.
• uoaei 2y ago
  I like to ask, "What would a Russian agent do to try to dethrone the USA as a global power?" * remove support from historic trading partners * break up NATO and similar military alliances * convince the world to distrust USD as default reserve currency * specifically make it harder to trade with China who makes a lot of our junk * remove a lot of the federal government workforce from their positions * convince those involved in Ukraine to back out so that the mineral-rich regions in the east can be appropriated * destroy the image of "democracy" and "free speech" by flaunting legal processes and crushing dissent I could list and think of more, but these are most illustrative IMO.
  • rhubarbtree 2y ago
    It does seem plausible that Trump is acting on behalf of Russia. It also seems plausible that he is trying to enrich himself and his supporters. It also seems plausible that he doesn’t understand economics. I’m genuinely lost as to which of those is correct. Can anyone eliminate one or two?
• le-mark 2y ago
  One thing we know for sure Trump will never back down or admit he’s wrong. So how to invest in this 4 year regime to survive or even thrive?
• boringg 2y ago
  Is there going to be a hearing into the stock transactions of any the cabinet related to this news? Seems to me like some people could make some significant money on information like this.
• donohoe 2y ago
  Are we surprised? If anyone watched the presidential debates VP Kamala Harris told us about this. From September 2024: "What Goldman Sachs has said is that Donald Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy. What the Wharton School has said is Donald Trump's plan would actually explode the deficit. Sixteen Nobel laureates have described his economic plan as something that would increase inflation and by the middle of next year would invite a recession." Emphasis on that last line: would increase inflation and by the middle of next year would invite a recession. btw the US Congress can stop this anytime they want.
• ForOldHack 2y ago
  https://shwin.co/blog/why-i-dont-discuss-politics-with-friends https://shwin.co/blog/why-i-dont-discuss-politics-with-frien...
• Mossy9 2y ago
  I wonder how long it takes until this trade war moves to the digital stage. It wouldn't be surprising to see that software license fees start increasing if this tit-for-tat continues for much longer
• olalonde 2y ago
  If there's one upside to Trump, it's that he might turn a lot of left-wingers into passionate free traders. Who would have thought.
• svara 2y ago
  It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US economy as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve currency. The flow of goods is balanced by a flow of US dollars to other countries, which are ultimately cycled back into the US financial system - enabling budget deficits and an abundance of capital to invest in high growth industries. The flip side of this is that it also drives inequality - the upside of this system is felt by the entrepreneurs, investors and high-skill employees in tech and finance, while the downside is concentrated with low-skill workers whose jobs are offshored to lower wage countries. The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end. As such, this administration's policies are foolish, but many on this very site would need to give up a little bit of their privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow citizens. That is something that in the current American political climate seems a nearly impossible sell.
  • ajross 2y ago
    You're arguing from a steady state. In point of fact the pain of the at-this-point-seemingly-inevitable recession is absolutely going to be concentrated on the working class. Those of us with savings and work flexibility will do just fine. Even someone making a first principles argument for a revision of US trade policy should agree that this is insane.
    • smallmancontrov 2y ago
      The real pain will hit the working class harder, but the nominal pain will hit the capital class harder. Historically, this is how inequality unwinds. See: recessions, World War II. Let's hope to god that this is "just" a recession and doesn't cook into World War III.
      • TehCorwiz 2y ago
        The current spending bill has a 4.5T giveaway to corps and the ultra rich. The goal is to drive prices to the floor and then buy everything up. What's a 50% drop in value to a billionaire? Most of them would still be a billionaire and the ones that fall from that group still have more money than they could ever spend. No wealthy person will truly feel what's going on. They'll still vacation and eat their caviar. Caricatures aside, it's absurd to compare someone stock sheet numbers going down with people not able to find medical care or feed themselves.
• yndoendo 2y ago
  Walton family, owners of Walmart, run the company by exploiting the labor force and social safety nets like welfare. Walmart is the largest company with the most employees on some sort of welfare. Tax payers are propping up their stock. This allows them to retain more of the profits versus sharing them and removing their employees from the welfare system. None of their listed actions have to do anything with globalization to retain their wealth. Taxing the wealth and redistributing helps. Saw this in the 1950-1960s with building of new infrastructure to replace the aging or expand the supply to offset the demand. Using the money to pay for new training so lost jobs can be replaced where jobs are needed helps too. Even the simple act of ending starvation in children increases their intellect for the next generation and helps support the future. This method will never be perfect. These are band-aid solutions that have actual results. Reality is that the inequality is a social problem masquerading as an economic problem. Society has moved to from respecting empathy and humanity to respecting greed and power. People mind set is anchored to, “That person is quite wealthy so they should be smart and some god must love them for it.” Reality is that person exploited a labor force to maximize their wealth. They are not more intelligent nor does some god like them better. Look at how many rich people fell for Elizabeth Holmes’s blood testing scam while a person that actually studies blood understands parts per millions in looking for test markers. A vial of blood or more is needed versus a drop. Want to fix the system? Start looking at the wealthy with disgust and damnation. Demonize them for being the driving force in economic inequality. Move back to honoring and respecting empathy and humanity. Real intelligent people have empty. It lets them be placed in the shoes of others when they will never can experience it themselves. I would also caption the wealth gab in the USA as modern day segregation. The world happiness index shows that equalizing the rich and poor creates a better sociality. Respecting the wealth and demonizing the poor is the complete inverse of a better society and maximizes soar. PS. Why do people think bulling trade partners will be beneficial? Say you are store owner or product producer and you keep trying to bully me to by your products. I will not and go the competition, even with higher costs or deem the product or service not worth it. I already started boycotting USA bourbon manufacturers with their arrogant and bully statements during the Tariff Wars. Do good, demonize extreme wealth. Irony is so many GOOD Christians even ignore Jesus’s statement on this matter with pretending Matthew 19:24 doesn’t exist.
• tombhowl 2y ago
  [flagged]
• siliconc0w 2y ago
  The idea that a giant regressive tax, which these are, will help the lower or middle class or do anything but kill demand and destroy jobs is madness. It also won't help the debt because even though we might collect some money in the short term, the long term solution is we need to grow our way out and these policies are recessionary.
• ramshanker 2y ago
  The way I see it, it is more like a very-high initial negotiation position. From here on, each country will be dealt with individually. You accept our terms and get 5% discount on tariff ! Every country has a set of red lines. Fewer the red lines better they will be placed in one-to-one "trade agreements". EDIT: Someone from white-house explicitly declined tariff to be a negotiation. Next few days will be interesting.
• SpaceManNabs 2y ago
  If Paul Graham is calling out conservatives for being driven stuff other than data, then you know people are losing it lol. Usually on here you see a bunch of apologia for when republicans do inane economic policy and I am not seeing that bs on here for once... Guess Trump really wasn't the crypto, AI, chips, wtv you wanna say president lmao. But nah all the naysayers just had TDS. Guess Wall St and others are going to have to re-learn that sound policy beats vibes.
• uptownfunk 2y ago
  What most people don’t see is that we are basically under “shadow austerity” to correct for the not so hyperinflation we saw post COVID. It is a combination of post WW2 Britain (China is the US in that analogy) - this helps to explain the Canada and Greenland issue; and Volcker era stagflation economics. It will not get any better in the short term, but there is likely to be substantial growth in the long term as a result. What that means is the fed likely won’t reduce rates, and it may reduce its rate decrease to 1 this year, if even that. It is entirely possible the rate doesn’t come down at all. Expect Layoffs to come, as the fed doesn’t seem to care about unemployment as its target is on inflation. Many zirp era businesses and funds will fail. Less cereal and eggs for the same dollar. I am really hoping we don’t start to de-anchor from 2% inflation as a result of all this. I wonder how various US infrastructure projects can and will be financed. Reduction in entitlements. Possibly some type of mandate to hold treasuries.
• thuanao 2y ago
  Just like Trump said, he could shoot someone on the street and the bootlickers here would still justify it.
  • SpaceManNabs 2y ago
    This thread is all you need to know that PG types are ok with losing 10-50% of their equity's value as long as they can play tribal politic games. PG is on X every day pretty much going "Why is trump doing this? There must be a reason!"
• MichaelMoser123 2y ago
  Naive question of a foreigner: I see a lot of approval on the youtube comments to Trump's liberation day speech and over at twitter. Now the consensus on HN is diametrically opposed. My question: why do some people think that this is a good idea? Why is there such a huge rift in US society and how do you plan to bridge this gap?
  • SmellyPotato22 2y ago
    This anecdotal, but I feel like YouTube applies a positive sentiment filter to its all of its comments. Somehow on most videos I watch never see anything critical at the top of the comment section.
• footlose_3815 2y ago
  You'd think that experts before this time would have considered this already, and rejected it. Every single move by Trump towards the world economy has always been a bad one. Too bad to be mistakes. They're not listening to the experts, and it's intentional.
• codesnik 2y ago
  So, it already starts affecting stuff. I and 10 other recent hires were cut today because our next round is in jeopardy. That startup is in sales and hiring area, so it senses recession much sooner than other industries, but there's that.
• acd10j 2y ago
  Number one rule of combat is that you need a very good homegrown industrial base. In order to be great country it needs to be combat-ready. If you apply that lens, what Trump is doing will start making sense. He is trying to revert globalisation and free trade in order to make the USA manufacturing superpower again. Not sure whether this will be successful or not, as China already has an order of magnitude advantage in manufacturing.
• jiveturkey 2y ago
  disastrous
• SteelByte 2y ago
  [flagged]
• jodacola 2y ago
  I'm an American. I've generally benefited from the system here (which speaks to my privilege, of which I'm aware). I don't want to wade into political battles, but I'm genuinely concerned for my future and the future of my children from an economic standpoint, based on where things seem to be going. I am considering options on the spectrum with ends like: * Staying here, because this is where I was born and raised and I've felt like the country has generally taken care of me - and hey, it can't stay bad forever, right? * Leaving to another country, because I am feeling less and less like the country's leadership care about building a society or economy that tries to take care of its people and creates incentives to innovate. This isn't because of just the last few months; I view the last few months as big symptoms of something more systemic that's been building up. I am also not looking to jump ship quickly because things "temporarily got hard." On the flip side, I'm also feeling incredibly jaded these days: how could it be much better anywhere else? Are there places out in the world where my wife and I could take our experience (mine being a strong career in tech, my wife's being a strong nursing career) and put it to use elsewhere where I could hope for a good standard of living, more stability in government leadership, and incentives similar to the economic system I grew up in, where our children could thrive and build a life? I'm not pulling any triggers quickly or easily... I'm just trying to gather some data and different perspectives, even those that might challenge my own. Maybe an answer is "stop reading news." edit: formatting
  • dumbledoren 2y ago
    Yeah, go gentrify the locals in some lower-cost-of-living country. You sure 'deserve' it because for some reason you have a 'right' to just immigrate there and buy their housing and sh*t from under their feet.
    • jodacola 2y ago
      I appreciate your frustration, dumbledoren. Your comment speaks to perspectives I could expect to face in another country - thank you. I can only say my personal intent isn't that. I live a simple life. My family has a small, old home. We garden, grow our own food, and are respectful to our environment. I prioritize supporting small, local businesses. I wouldn't want to parachute into another country acting as though I Know Better™ and bringing my "American sensibilities" to another country. If I were to leave the US, I see myself entering another country, hat in hand, knowing fully I'm not better or special, and it's my job to adapt and to respect the culture and country.
• phtrivier 2y ago
  Side concern: how impactful must the tarrifs be to make a noticable dent in global trend, and a noticable dent on climate change ? (I mean, it would not be noticed by the USA anymore, since they're not into that whole "science" stuff, but I heard that Europeans have learned how to make a couple satellites on the side.)
• andruby 2y ago
  How can companies, importers and ports even implement these tariffs so quickly? Do these tariffs go into effect immediately?
• ofirtwo 2y ago
  Damn it was hard looking at my portfolio today... I hope thing's change in the long run though
• Quarrelsome 2y ago
  This is absolutely shocking. As these tariffs are reflective of trade deficits this administration is taxing the cheapest sources of goods for the American economy in proportion of volume. This is economic handbrake territory. It will impact every industry that imports goods (as well as many raw materials and components) and will devestate many, if not all SMEs who rely on importing goods to sell to local customers. Fashion retail in particular and drop shippers will have to raise their prices considerably. While I imagine the ideas behind these tariffs have some sense of justification, the numbers simply don't add up. Manufacturing clothing in the US simply isn't viable at the sorts of scales for mass consumption. For example, you can pick up Levis at Walmart for around $25 that have been manufactured abroad. The Levi Vintage run, which are made within the US, have prices starting at $150. So all this will do is force people will less money to spend an extra ~50% (or $12.5 in this case) on their jeans, as this will still be cheaper than $150. Obviously to entirely succeed at the supposed aim would to create a world where all jeans cost $150 and this would simply mean that most people would not be able to afford jeans.
• theGnuMe 2y ago
  It’s a good time to enroll in grad school and get an economics phd.
• c0ndu17 2y ago
  Out of curiosity, would you still need to pay the full tariff, if the cost of an item that was shifted to a token/smart contract, that only enabled a right to purchase, but reduce the device cost to like a dollar or shipping. It’d be pretty cool if someone derived a legal smart contract solution. One could argue that, the tech enabled products are two things a digital service, and a manufactured product. Those costs could be potentially be seperated. Then again, I know nothing ^_^
• heavymetalpoizn 2y ago
  [dead]
• rkowal 2y ago
  ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude all recommend the same “nonsense” tariff calculation. https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-ai-chatgpt-gemini-claude-grok https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-a...
  • dragonwriter 2y ago
    Note that the prompt given here does not ask for a way of calculating the effective foreign tariffs imposed on the US (what the formula is used to dishonestly present) but to calculate the ideal US tariffs to level the trade deficit. That is, the LLMs do not give the formula the US actually used for setting US tariffs with this prompt asking for ideal US tariffs, instead, the response to this prompt about ideal US tariffs gives the calculation that the Administration used to calculate the effective foreign tariffs, not the US tariffs. Also, given that tariff rates must be a percentage, any answer is probably going to end up being a ratio, and the prompt naturally indicates that the numerator should be the trade deficit the US has with the country. So. this is essentially expressing surprise that when suggested half of the formula in the prompt, the models all come up with the same (and I would argue quite obvious once you've gotten that far) denominator. I don't think this indicates that that used an LLM, I think it indicates that they decided that all trade deficits shoule be ascribed to manipulation that was effectively tariff-like, and presented as a tariff rate imposed by the foreign country, and, having made that decision, the formula fell out naturally, and is what any reasonably knowledgeable human given the assignment—as well as any non-hallucinating, modestly capable LLM—would produce given the way the assignment already implicitly provides both the shape and one of two key pieces of the formula. (Of course, expressing surprise at AI doing something in a response and not realizing it was mostly just regurgitating what was already decided by the prompter and fed to it in the prompt in a slightly different form is quite common is quite common these days, though using that mistake as a basis for an accusation of using AI is somewhat novel.)
• wesapien 2y ago
  If you got time, this is IMO a very good critique of the recent events by senior Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594yN8rxIJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=594yN8rxIJo
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]