12 ms·

> 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. Agreed. However,

> 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. Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier. If the solution was instead along the lines of changing tax-brackets to tax the 'privileged' more, that might have better addressed the problem you mention in the beginning.

DSingularity 2y ago
Nobody has faith in the governments ability to put that money to good use. The US gov uses significant amounts of its budget to fund weapon development, promote weapon sales, change unfriendly foreign governments, support friendly foreign governments, and genocide troublesome foreign populations. Who will support raising more taxes to maintain and expand such efforts?
- mjevans 2y ago
  Offhand, I'm unaware of where to even look to get an easy to digest version of 'where tax dollars go'. Would the GAO make such a report? Something for Congress otherwise? Would there be a classified and an public version? Even better would be a tool that, E.G. with your IRS filing number, shows how much 'you' paid in, breaks down where that went, and shows how 'you' compare to other areas. Such tools and reports would cost money, but making them is practically an audit anyway which is a good use of resources in a bureaucracy (part of the self-calibration system).
  - LaffertyDev 2y ago
    https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... What you seek is available and has been available for a very long time. Mathing out how your individual tax dollars map to these buckets is a fairly straightforward (IMO) exercise.
    - blargey 2y ago
      https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function (linked on that page but easy to miss) provides a great visualization/interface for the budget that can drill down deep into each category's sub-categories and beyond. OTOH they might be asking more specifically for a view that controls for how different tax/income sources might be earmarked for specific spending, thus skewing how income tax dollars are distributed compared to the overall budget distribution - though I'm not sure that's going to change one's income tax dollar distribution much. AFAIK even social security is only nominally funded by social security tax, and the deficit means there's debt filling the gaps everywhere anyway.
      - mjevans 2y ago
        That page is a good start. It at least shows the breakdown of % by programs, etc. However as you point out there are different types and methods of tax which go to different bins. The IRS filings are the most likely place to have all that together. *value for taxation* is also really difficult to discern. The report needs to help break down where someone's tax dollars went... But it also needs to help collectively show how tax dollars _benefit_ them. That one not just in the taxes they paid but overall based on where they are and what they're doing.
  - plantain 2y ago
    Many civilized countries give you a receipt when you file your taxes that show exactly how your contribution was spent: https://www.ato.gov.au/api/public/content/385a815c51944638a3ec0f2e38fd246a?v=0cbe7ce3 https://www.ato.gov.au/api/public/content/385a815c51944638a3...
- sirbutters 2y ago
  Letting billionaires hoard all the money has gotten us to where we are today. It seems worse than government mismanaging the budget. Was that concern also there in the 50s and 60s when the wealthy was taxed at a substantial higher rate? I don't believe so. It all seems to point at the failure of trickled down economics of Reagan.
  - sabarn01 2y ago
    The us was the only industrialized economy to come out ww2 unscathed. We didn't have to compete for 2 decades. The end results of these policies was the stagnate 70s Reagan was a corrective. However, the policies of Regan only made sense in that context. Republicans became too found of cutting top end taxes when most of what could be gained already was in the 80s. There is no historical period to look at on how to deal with the consequences of integrating China with the rest of the world.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    Your answer is somewhat typical for Americans: because in my experience, Americans tend to think that all American developments are caused by domestic factors - governance, taxes, billionaires, whatever. Insular thinking, as if the rest of the world did not matter. Left or right, this is a fairly frequent pattern in the US. But in the meantime, over a billion people elsewhere got out of poverty and built relatively developed economies. The US is no longer an automatic Nr 1 on the world scene by this fact alone. How precisely do you want to keep a massive edge over a billion hardworking East Asians who now have a lot of capital and know-how at their disposal? Neither Musk nor Lenin can solve this. The US is simply in a relative decline.
    - saturn8601 2y ago
      >How precisely do you want to keep a massive edge over a billion hardworking East Asians who now have a lot of capital and know-how at their disposal? Promote the lie down movement in the short term and let the negative birth rate take care of them in the long term. Thats the only way unless the US somehow gets a magical AGI and robots before China.
jopsen 2y ago
Yeah, isn't this just regressive taxation? How much all the imports are realistically going to be made in the US?
- ty6853 2y ago
  Somewhat yes. But more precisely it is a reallocation from things we have the best comparative advantage to things where we have less comparative advantage. The main effect is to make almost everyone poorer.
- garciasn 2y ago
  If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing back to the US; however, with the changing of the guard on the regular, most companies are just going to ignore it for 3.5 more years and hope that someone stops this from continuing. Because, if you think about it, it took decades to get us to where we are today and it'll take decades to reverse, even logistically. This is a bunch of stupidity and meaningless saber rattling that will do nothing but hurt everyone except the extremely wealthy who can afford the additional taxation on the consumer side because the Republicans will further reduce the taxation on the income side.
  - reverendsteveii 2y ago
    Even if tariffs remained for decades reciprocal tariffs mean that no matter where you're located you pay a penalty when you buy manufacturing inputs and when you sell outputs.
  - overfeed 2y ago
    > If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move In 3 decades, the US won't be the biggest market for most products - sooner if the harebrained economic decisions somehow persist. Capital knows no borders, and American companies will "do the needful" to maximize profits wherever they may be found.
    - 2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jollyllama 2y ago
> However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier. I don't think this is necessarily true. 1 day into tariffs and things are probably the same for the low-skill workers. So far, the stockholders are the ones taking a beating. Sure, that includes some low income retirees, but for the working poor, I would bet that proportionally they consume fewer foreign made goods. They're not drinking imported booze.
- HDThoreaun 2y ago
  Everything at Walmart is about to be 34% more expensive but you think the rich are hurt more than the poor?
  - jollyllama 2y ago
    Yes, in as much as it can be true for anything, because they make their money from poor people spending. Edit: as a follow up, you can basically think of this as the "Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay" experiment as implemented by those who are averse to socialism. If you're already poor, tanking the economy hurts you less than it hurts those who are benefitting.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    Stock market went down a lot. And no, not everything at Walmart goes up 34%, food is not imported from China etc, most of the stuff poor people spend money on like home and food and used cars and services wont go up that much.
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      Stock market is down 10%. Unless you’re gambling with leverage you’re fine. Much of our food is imported.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > food is not imported from China No, but components used everywhere from agriculture to transportation to producing food products from raw agricultural output are imported from China.
nurettin 2y ago
Taxing the rich is wishful thinking. They don't just give up wealth. They will simply look at it as an additional cost and hike the prices of their products up causing more inflation and that means even more trade deficit.
- autoexec 2y ago
  If companies could hike up their prices and still get consumers to pay them they'd already have done it. In fact, companies are constantly increasing prices as high as they possibly can up to the point where sales suffer. They've taken advantage of recent events to prevent customers from feeling too ripped off though. When covid happened there were legit supply chain issues but even once they let up, and there were warehouse shortages because companies had so much unsold inventory, the companies continued to artificially restrict supply and blame the pandemic for higher prices. Egg producers were busted colluding to inflate prices far higher than normal using the excuse of "bird flu" even as the largest supplier of eggs in the nation wasn't impacted at all by it (that's less of an excuse this time around though) and "inflation" is the new boogeyman companies are using to set expectations with consumers so that they can deflect blame for overcharging them, but even that only works for so long. Nobody is going to pay $30 for a happymeal while their wages stagnate and their real earnings decline year after year. Taxing the rich works just fine. We know it does because we used to actually do it. They'll spend billions trying to convince you that taking taxes from them is impossible and not worth trying tho. Why wouldn't they? That tactic has worked for them for a long time. Don't fall for it.
  - IcyWindows 2y ago
    So tariffs are fine because it's a tax on big importers?
    - autoexec 2y ago
      Some tariffs are fine. These tariffs are a disaster. There are some companies that could eat the increased costs (or at least a large percentage of them) and still make a healthy amount of profit overall, but they won't. They'd rather import less and/or jack up prices until people are priced out of things they'd normally buy. Some companies are fine with turning what used to be common purchases into luxury items available only to a small number of people. If these tariffs continue for long, it'll mean many more people needing to put up with having a lot less.
autoexec 2y ago
> Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. I thought the idea was that the billionaires would buy up all the crashed stocks then suddenly the tariffs would be lifted so that they can sell them off as soon as they recover. If so, the privileged will be affected the most but only in terms of how much money they'll make while everyone else suffers in the meantime.
- dalyons 2y ago
  I never really understood this argument. The billionaires wealth is mostly in stock. In a crash like this their wealth goes down 10% like of all us. They can buy assets on the dip, but it will only regain that 10% they lost.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Their wealth hasn't gone down at all. The crash isn't real. It was caused by the tariffs. They just need to hang onto the stocks they have until the value goes back up, which they will shortly after the tariffs are lifted. In the meantime they can buy up more of whatever they want at rock bottom prices.
    - dalyons 2y ago
      What are they buying it up with? Their buying power takes the same hit in the crash.
      - autoexec 2y ago
        billionaires have a lot of money tied up in the market but they aren't cash poor. They typically keep hundreds of millions in cash on hand. Supposedly, Jeff Bezos keeps over $9 billion in cash. Their day to day lifestyle doesn't change one bit when the market drops. They don't have to stop buying the groceries they normally do just because a stock drops by 10%. Buying up some stock while it's down when they know they can sell it back when it jumps back up is just free money. Even if they somehow ran out of money in all of their accounts (and that's extremely unlikely) and at the same time lost all the money they had that wasn't in stocks they could very easily borrow money.
baranul 2y ago
Not only are the poor going to bear the brunt of these tariffs, but this has been tried multiple times before, and failed. As in, catastrophic failure. "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" People should check out all the tariff insanity before and during the period of The Great Depression. That includes the justifications given.
- Yeul 1y ago
  This is HN. Nobody here understands how "plastic crap from China" is what keeps poor people alive. There are folks who earn $1000 per month who also occasionally want to buy a birthday gift for their nephew. I advise everyone to just occasionally go to a budget store and walk around looking at the customers.
  - tekknik 1y ago
    interestingly though, unless it’s plastic clothes, anything made of plastic doesn’t fall into the needs category since you can’t eat it and it isn’t durable enough to make a house out of. so what cheap plastic brush is keeping people alive?
    - trentlott 1y ago
      I'm sure you'd be annoyed if poor people couldn't buy or use brushes, and their quality of live would decrease. Amusing that 'plastic=wasteful purchase" de facto in your mind (for the purposes of this thread)
    - lucyjojo 1y ago
      stuff from plastic/oil-derivated products in dollar stores. cutlery, toothbrush, sponges, cleaning stuff, garbage bags, pen/glue/notebooks/glue (if you want your kids to go to school), basic self-care things (hairbands, razors etc., if you want a job), bandages and a score of health stuff, screen protectors (gotta make your phone last, that's how you get jobs), batteries. and then some toys for your kids to keep them busy because you will be working a lot...
- 1y ago
LinuxBender 1y ago
By low-skilled workers do you mean the working class in general? If so it is my understanding that the overall goal is to help them at the same time as the privileged by shifting taxes at the same time as tariffs start to come down to create a re-balance of sorts in theory. Here [1] is a quick interview of Treasury Secretary Bessent by CNN Kaitlan Collins that I think covers this idea at least a little bit. I am curious to see how this plays out in practice. It's explained a little more in depth here [2] including how this was done in the past. I know videos are an unpopular medium on HN but I believe they are both worth the time to watch. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WWvBEiFvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WWvBEiFvE [video][10 mins][cnn interview] [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA [video][24 mins]
hattmall 1y ago
How can a lack of tariffs AND the presence of tariffs both hurt low skill workers. Secondly why do all of these countries have tariffs if they are so bad for the economy.
- greycol 1y ago
  Because tariffs can be applied on specific goods rather than the current blanket tariffs. i.e. You could place a tariff on steel to ensure local manufactures use American steel while placing a tariff that includes cocoa does not necessarily mean American chocolate producers can buy more from American cocoa producers so it only injures the local chocolate producers (and downstream consumers) without protecting or improving another local industry. You could still argue that the steel tariff is not a net positive but at least the positives and negatives of tariffs are arguable. To your second question three (inexhaustive) possible reasons are that the industry has large political sway, or it's part of a plan to stop the quick collapse of an industry while the economy develops other industries, or it's a defense against the artificial short term lowering of external prices (i.e. foreign government subsidies either to grow an industry in their country or to destroy the industry in other countries).

DSingularity 2y ago

Nobody has faith in the governments ability to put that money to good use. The US gov uses significant amounts of its budget to fund weapon development, promote weapon sales, change unfriendly foreign governments, support friendly foreign governments, and genocide troublesome foreign populations. Who will support raising more taxes to maintain and expand such efforts?

mjevans 2y ago
Offhand, I'm unaware of where to even look to get an easy to digest version of 'where tax dollars go'. Would the GAO make such a report? Something for Congress otherwise? Would there be a classified and an public version? Even better would be a tool that, E.G. with your IRS filing number, shows how much 'you' paid in, breaks down where that went, and shows how 'you' compare to other areas. Such tools and reports would cost money, but making them is practically an audit anyway which is a good use of resources in a bureaucracy (part of the self-calibration system).
- LaffertyDev 2y ago
  https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... What you seek is available and has been available for a very long time. Mathing out how your individual tax dollars map to these buckets is a fairly straightforward (IMO) exercise.
  - blargey 2y ago
    https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function (linked on that page but easy to miss) provides a great visualization/interface for the budget that can drill down deep into each category's sub-categories and beyond. OTOH they might be asking more specifically for a view that controls for how different tax/income sources might be earmarked for specific spending, thus skewing how income tax dollars are distributed compared to the overall budget distribution - though I'm not sure that's going to change one's income tax dollar distribution much. AFAIK even social security is only nominally funded by social security tax, and the deficit means there's debt filling the gaps everywhere anyway.
    - mjevans 2y ago
      That page is a good start. It at least shows the breakdown of % by programs, etc. However as you point out there are different types and methods of tax which go to different bins. The IRS filings are the most likely place to have all that together. *value for taxation* is also really difficult to discern. The report needs to help break down where someone's tax dollars went... But it also needs to help collectively show how tax dollars _benefit_ them. That one not just in the taxes they paid but overall based on where they are and what they're doing.
- plantain 2y ago
  Many civilized countries give you a receipt when you file your taxes that show exactly how your contribution was spent: https://www.ato.gov.au/api/public/content/385a815c51944638a3ec0f2e38fd246a?v=0cbe7ce3 https://www.ato.gov.au/api/public/content/385a815c51944638a3...
sirbutters 2y ago
Letting billionaires hoard all the money has gotten us to where we are today. It seems worse than government mismanaging the budget. Was that concern also there in the 50s and 60s when the wealthy was taxed at a substantial higher rate? I don't believe so. It all seems to point at the failure of trickled down economics of Reagan.
- sabarn01 2y ago
  The us was the only industrialized economy to come out ww2 unscathed. We didn't have to compete for 2 decades. The end results of these policies was the stagnate 70s Reagan was a corrective. However, the policies of Regan only made sense in that context. Republicans became too found of cutting top end taxes when most of what could be gained already was in the 80s. There is no historical period to look at on how to deal with the consequences of integrating China with the rest of the world.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Your answer is somewhat typical for Americans: because in my experience, Americans tend to think that all American developments are caused by domestic factors - governance, taxes, billionaires, whatever. Insular thinking, as if the rest of the world did not matter. Left or right, this is a fairly frequent pattern in the US. But in the meantime, over a billion people elsewhere got out of poverty and built relatively developed economies. The US is no longer an automatic Nr 1 on the world scene by this fact alone. How precisely do you want to keep a massive edge over a billion hardworking East Asians who now have a lot of capital and know-how at their disposal? Neither Musk nor Lenin can solve this. The US is simply in a relative decline.
  - saturn8601 2y ago
    >How precisely do you want to keep a massive edge over a billion hardworking East Asians who now have a lot of capital and know-how at their disposal? Promote the lie down movement in the short term and let the negative birth rate take care of them in the long term. Thats the only way unless the US somehow gets a magical AGI and robots before China.

jopsen 2y ago

Yeah, isn't this just regressive taxation? How much all the imports are realistically going to be made in the US?

ty6853 2y ago
Somewhat yes. But more precisely it is a reallocation from things we have the best comparative advantage to things where we have less comparative advantage. The main effect is to make almost everyone poorer.
garciasn 2y ago
If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move manufacturing back to the US; however, with the changing of the guard on the regular, most companies are just going to ignore it for 3.5 more years and hope that someone stops this from continuing. Because, if you think about it, it took decades to get us to where we are today and it'll take decades to reverse, even logistically. This is a bunch of stupidity and meaningless saber rattling that will do nothing but hurt everyone except the extremely wealthy who can afford the additional taxation on the consumer side because the Republicans will further reduce the taxation on the income side.
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
  Even if tariffs remained for decades reciprocal tariffs mean that no matter where you're located you pay a penalty when you buy manufacturing inputs and when you sell outputs.
- overfeed 2y ago
  > If the tariffs remained in effect for three decades, or more, there may have been incentive to move In 3 decades, the US won't be the biggest market for most products - sooner if the harebrained economic decisions somehow persist. Capital knows no borders, and American companies will "do the needful" to maximize profits wherever they may be found.
  - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jollyllama 2y ago

> However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier. I don't think this is necessarily true. 1 day into tariffs and things are probably the same for the low-skill workers. So far, the stockholders are the ones taking a beating. Sure, that includes some low income retirees, but for the working poor, I would bet that proportionally they consume fewer foreign made goods. They're not drinking imported booze.

HDThoreaun 2y ago
Everything at Walmart is about to be 34% more expensive but you think the rich are hurt more than the poor?
- jollyllama 2y ago
  Yes, in as much as it can be true for anything, because they make their money from poor people spending. Edit: as a follow up, you can basically think of this as the "Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay" experiment as implemented by those who are averse to socialism. If you're already poor, tanking the economy hurts you less than it hurts those who are benefitting.
- Jensson 2y ago
  Stock market went down a lot. And no, not everything at Walmart goes up 34%, food is not imported from China etc, most of the stuff poor people spend money on like home and food and used cars and services wont go up that much.
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Stock market is down 10%. Unless you’re gambling with leverage you’re fine. Much of our food is imported.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > food is not imported from China No, but components used everywhere from agriculture to transportation to producing food products from raw agricultural output are imported from China.

nurettin 2y ago

Taxing the rich is wishful thinking. They don't just give up wealth. They will simply look at it as an additional cost and hike the prices of their products up causing more inflation and that means even more trade deficit.

autoexec 2y ago
If companies could hike up their prices and still get consumers to pay them they'd already have done it. In fact, companies are constantly increasing prices as high as they possibly can up to the point where sales suffer. They've taken advantage of recent events to prevent customers from feeling too ripped off though. When covid happened there were legit supply chain issues but even once they let up, and there were warehouse shortages because companies had so much unsold inventory, the companies continued to artificially restrict supply and blame the pandemic for higher prices. Egg producers were busted colluding to inflate prices far higher than normal using the excuse of "bird flu" even as the largest supplier of eggs in the nation wasn't impacted at all by it (that's less of an excuse this time around though) and "inflation" is the new boogeyman companies are using to set expectations with consumers so that they can deflect blame for overcharging them, but even that only works for so long. Nobody is going to pay $30 for a happymeal while their wages stagnate and their real earnings decline year after year. Taxing the rich works just fine. We know it does because we used to actually do it. They'll spend billions trying to convince you that taking taxes from them is impossible and not worth trying tho. Why wouldn't they? That tactic has worked for them for a long time. Don't fall for it.
- IcyWindows 2y ago
  So tariffs are fine because it's a tax on big importers?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Some tariffs are fine. These tariffs are a disaster. There are some companies that could eat the increased costs (or at least a large percentage of them) and still make a healthy amount of profit overall, but they won't. They'd rather import less and/or jack up prices until people are priced out of things they'd normally buy. Some companies are fine with turning what used to be common purchases into luxury items available only to a small number of people. If these tariffs continue for long, it'll mean many more people needing to put up with having a lot less.

autoexec 2y ago

> Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. I thought the idea was that the billionaires would buy up all the crashed stocks then suddenly the tariffs would be lifted so that they can sell them off as soon as they recover. If so, the privileged will be affected the most but only in terms of how much money they'll make while everyone else suffers in the meantime.

dalyons 2y ago
I never really understood this argument. The billionaires wealth is mostly in stock. In a crash like this their wealth goes down 10% like of all us. They can buy assets on the dip, but it will only regain that 10% they lost.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Their wealth hasn't gone down at all. The crash isn't real. It was caused by the tariffs. They just need to hang onto the stocks they have until the value goes back up, which they will shortly after the tariffs are lifted. In the meantime they can buy up more of whatever they want at rock bottom prices.
  - dalyons 2y ago
    What are they buying it up with? Their buying power takes the same hit in the crash.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      billionaires have a lot of money tied up in the market but they aren't cash poor. They typically keep hundreds of millions in cash on hand. Supposedly, Jeff Bezos keeps over $9 billion in cash. Their day to day lifestyle doesn't change one bit when the market drops. They don't have to stop buying the groceries they normally do just because a stock drops by 10%. Buying up some stock while it's down when they know they can sell it back when it jumps back up is just free money. Even if they somehow ran out of money in all of their accounts (and that's extremely unlikely) and at the same time lost all the money they had that wasn't in stocks they could very easily borrow money.

baranul 2y ago

Not only are the poor going to bear the brunt of these tariffs, but this has been tried multiple times before, and failed. As in, catastrophic failure. "Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" People should check out all the tariff insanity before and during the period of The Great Depression. That includes the justifications given.

Yeul 1y ago
This is HN. Nobody here understands how "plastic crap from China" is what keeps poor people alive. There are folks who earn $1000 per month who also occasionally want to buy a birthday gift for their nephew. I advise everyone to just occasionally go to a budget store and walk around looking at the customers.
- tekknik 1y ago
  interestingly though, unless it’s plastic clothes, anything made of plastic doesn’t fall into the needs category since you can’t eat it and it isn’t durable enough to make a house out of. so what cheap plastic brush is keeping people alive?
  - trentlott 1y ago
    I'm sure you'd be annoyed if poor people couldn't buy or use brushes, and their quality of live would decrease. Amusing that 'plastic=wasteful purchase" de facto in your mind (for the purposes of this thread)
  - lucyjojo 1y ago
    stuff from plastic/oil-derivated products in dollar stores. cutlery, toothbrush, sponges, cleaning stuff, garbage bags, pen/glue/notebooks/glue (if you want your kids to go to school), basic self-care things (hairbands, razors etc., if you want a job), bandages and a score of health stuff, screen protectors (gotta make your phone last, that's how you get jobs), batteries. and then some toys for your kids to keep them busy because you will be working a lot...
1y ago

LinuxBender 1y ago

By low-skilled workers do you mean the working class in general? If so it is my understanding that the overall goal is to help them at the same time as the privileged by shifting taxes at the same time as tariffs start to come down to create a re-balance of sorts in theory. Here [1] is a quick interview of Treasury Secretary Bessent by CNN Kaitlan Collins that I think covers this idea at least a little bit. I am curious to see how this plays out in practice. It's explained a little more in depth here [2] including how this was done in the past. I know videos are an unpopular medium on HN but I believe they are both worth the time to watch. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WWvBEiFvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WWvBEiFvE [video][10 mins][cnn interview] [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA [video][24 mins]

hattmall 1y ago

How can a lack of tariffs AND the presence of tariffs both hurt low skill workers. Secondly why do all of these countries have tariffs if they are so bad for the economy.

greycol 1y ago
Because tariffs can be applied on specific goods rather than the current blanket tariffs. i.e. You could place a tariff on steel to ensure local manufactures use American steel while placing a tariff that includes cocoa does not necessarily mean American chocolate producers can buy more from American cocoa producers so it only injures the local chocolate producers (and downstream consumers) without protecting or improving another local industry. You could still argue that the steel tariff is not a net positive but at least the positives and negatives of tariffs are arguable. To your second question three (inexhaustive) possible reasons are that the industry has large political sway, or it's part of a plan to stop the quick collapse of an industry while the economy develops other industries, or it's a defense against the artificial short term lowering of external prices (i.e. foreign government subsidies either to grow an industry in their country or to destroy the industry in other countries).