7 ms·
This reads to me as "we're doubling-down on 145%+ tariffs for everyone else". This is getting frighteningly close to a Russian-style economy. As in, a handful
by perihelions 2y ago
This reads to me as "we're doubling-down on 145%+ tariffs for everyone else".
This is getting frighteningly close to a Russian-style economy. As in, a handful of powerful, connected "insiders" will be allowed to operate businesses, and will dominate... while everyone else gets wiped out, by acts of government. The furthest system possible from the free-market paradigm that built the American economy as it stands today.
Russia is not a prosperous nation.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hackernewds 2y agoIt opens up avenues to all sorts off oligarchy style bribery and lack of market competition. ultimately, the country will be looted, since the most successful businesses will not thrive on its merits
- aswanson 2y agoHis crypto coin also allows anyone to bribe him anonymously. It's incredibly corrupt.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jader201 2y ago> a handful of powerful, connected "insiders" will be allowed to operate businesses, and will dominate... while everyone else gets wiped out, by acts of government Note that this is not an exemption for companies, but an exemption for goods: > A new list of goods to be exempted from the latest round of tariffs on U.S. importers was released, and it includes smartphones, PCs, servers, and other technology goods, many of which are assembled in China.
- redserk 2y agoIt isn’t really cheap or easy to build a PC or smartphone business with name recognition… Nor is it cheap or easy to build a company that would likely be able to appeal tariff exemptions…
- asadotzler 2y agoSo all anyone has to do to qualify is produce some of the most complicated electronic devices and components in the history of the world at the largest scale possible, without which there is zero chance of being sustainable or competitive, and then they can benefit from the gifts to the established giants? What a gift. What a great idea. That'll surely spur innovation and domestic production and have no effect to further insulate the giants from competition.
- eastbound 2y agoAnd if you build your tech in US, well, you are disadvantaged because you have to pay the tariffs on every component you import from China. So it’s actually an incentive to build in China.
- ojbyrne 2y agoSo is your component in the list from a comment below - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43665766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43665766 Then you don't pay the tariff.
- iAMkenough 2y agoAluminum isn’t a component, but you would pay a tariff on importing it to build with it.
- rvnx 2y agoThe other benefit of building in China is that you will get unrestricted access to Europe and other markets
- Gud 2y agoWhy is this downvoted? This is factual. Electronic imports, no/low tariffs. Import material to produce electronics, high imports.
- stubish 2y agoIt is incentive to somewhere you can get Chinese components without massive Chinese tariffs, can sell to the US without massive tariffs, and has cheap labour or tax incentives. Several countries will be sticking up their hand, if manufacturers take the gamble that the tariffs will remain for a long enough period.
- nabla9 2y agoThis reeks "pay to play" very typical for banana republics. Donations to presidential inauguration fund to get access to the president was already tradition in the US. Trump government just exploits it without shame.
- joshuanapoli 2y agoThis is a populism move, not pay-to-play. The imminent reality would have been this: many Americans will want to take a vacation to Canada to get a deal on their phone. That just doesn’t make sense.
- koolba 2y ago> many Americans will want to take a vacation to Canada to get a deal on their phone. That just doesn’t make sense. If they’re following the law they’d have to declare the purchase when they come home.
- joshuanapoli 2y agoOf course, I would declare the purchase, but I imagine not everyone would.
- acdha 2y agoYes, but people don’t always follow the law. CBP reported a spike in people smuggling eggs last month, and the margin on iPhones is a lot more tempting.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yks 2y agoLet me explain how that works in the real world — you drop all the tags/boxes/receipts for the merchandise, maybe apply some dirt, then you can claim that it's not new and you brought it with you from your home country originally. Also in the airport there is a rather high chance you get to go through the green lane where your bags aren't checked. There are certain manners that help with not being singled out for the bag check. How do regular people learn these? When you live in the corrupt country, you quickly learn how to look ordinary and not interesting to the authorities.
- bitsage 2y agoThe prevailing school of economic thought in America, until Nixon, is actually what Trump idealizes. Protectionism from outside “threats”, on the basis of security and sufficiency, and a loosely regulated internal market. In comparison, Russia has a lot of regulatory capture and straight up corruption that stifles the internal market.
- asadotzler 2y agoThere's no "regulatory capture and straight up corruption" in the US, that's for sure /s
- energy123 2y agoThe Russia comparison is the corruption, not the protectionism.
- bitsage 2y agoI’d understand if these exemptions applied to companies and not industries. For comparison, Putin unilaterally nationalizes and sells off companies to benefit his inner circle. The US isn’t nationalizing AMD and selling it to Nvidia at the behest of Jensen.
- ModernMech 2y agoYet. They are still in the process of consolidating control over the government, the law, and universities. Once that's done, they will move on to corporations. It's been 2 months and change, give them time.
- const_cast 2y ago> I’d understand if these exemptions applied to companies and not industries. Same thing, these companies essentially run these industries and nobody else can get in. If you want to make a competitor to Nvidia it would take you 20 years if you started RIGHT NOW. Hope you have a few hundred billion dollars lying around :P The distinction between domains and companies fully disappears in an oligarchy.
- Spooky23 2y agoWe're building a hybrid of Italian Fascist and a Argentinian Peronist like state. The desire for transactional wins and power overshadows all. Trump will unironically ally himself with a turd like Elon, or a turd like the UAW dude who glazed him on "Liberation Day". The state control of business is missing... perhaps we'll see that develop with Tesla. It's a weird movement, because the baseline assumption is that the country is ruined. So any marginal win is celebrated, any loss is "priced in" politically.
- grey-area 2y agoWell these tariffs are a great opportunity for state control and corruption, companies are bribing him already. Every dictatorship is unhappy in its own way but they all involve: Myth of the strong man dictator Erosion of rule of law Undermining independent judiciary Arbitrary detention and arbitrary enforcement of laws Separate paramilitary groups There are signs of all of this in the US just now.
- grandempire 2y agoI didn’t know HN was coming around to how regulation and bureaucracy are anti-competitive.
- xbmcuser 2y agoThe US economy was not built on a free-market. US private capitalists have been built on a free market; now that their profits are under attack because they are being outcompeted by China, so they are running away with the ball. American economy real growth, where most white Americans gained wealth, came after World War II, where it was government led and controlled. It was the same for Europe, where they had to rebuild all that was destroyed after the war. It was all mostly government controlled and financed. The problem today is that US and European capitalists are in power and do not want to admit that the Chinese economic model of government-controlled economic direction, though not perfect, would work better and help all the world's people rather than the select few. As China becomes the dominant economy, the rest of the world has to follow to stay competitive. So these are the death knell of a dying economic and government system. The US had the chance to bring real change for the people with Bernie Sanders, but that was scuttled by the capitalist non-democratic forces, allowing for the rise of Trump. US citizens have been hoodwinked by linking socialist thought, where caring about your fellow man is undemocratic, i.e., socialism.
- dtquad 2y ago>the Chinese economic model of government-controlled economic direction, though not perfect, would work better You want the US government to provide more subsidies to US tech companies so they can stay competitive? Because that is what China is doing for its tech sector.
- throw310822 2y agoWhy not if it brings long term benefits to the country? Better than putting that money in the military, isn't it?
- xbmcuser 2y agoYou only look at the surface China is subsidizing everything but at the same time forcing the companies to share the wealth created with all of its populace not just the company and company share holders. Subsidizing companies is not the problem not sharing the wealth with the workers is the problem. US not subsidizing it companies is bullshit fed to you. As Boeing, Tesla, SpaceX, Microsoft from the tel-cos to the power suppliers to banks and hedge fund all have been subsidized by American tax payers or are still being subsidized with and you get share buybacks. Americans are being bullshitted into loosing their social and healthcare subsidies in favor of giving it to corporations but the sharing back of the wealth in conveniently forgotten
- 01100011 2y agoNo. This reads as capitulation by Trump who is now finding out his long held, half-baked economic theories are wrong. Trump got spanked by the bond market and realized how weak his position was. He can't walk it all back overnight without appearing even weaker than he already is. He's going to slowly roll back most consequential tariffs to try to escape blame for damaging the economy.
- numa7numa7 2y agoThis is it exactly. And all the people who are calling Trump a 4cd chess master and a genius are in my opinion highly influenced by his propaganda. They have a Trump Derangement Syndrome in a worship sense.
- amelius 2y agoTrump's Reality Distortion Field.
- spacemadness 2y agoI’m completely over the tech industry falling over itself to bootlick and apologize away everything we’ve seen play out recently. The Cloudflare CEO, Matthew Prince, recently posted on X trying to explain the strategy and likely calm investors fears: https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1909822463707652192 https://x.com/eastdakota/status/1909822463707652192 “They’re not stupid. I know enough of the players involved to know they’re not idiots.” “They’re not just in it for themselves. I get that this has become non-conventional wisdom, but I am going to assume for this that the goal isn’t merely grift.” TLDR: don’t worry, it’s 5D chess. Keep on bootlicking your way to success while your stock gets trashed by these policies and we double down on anti-science rhetoric which will hasten our decline. I guess most of these leaders will have cashed out before it all implodes.
- ejoso 2y agoThese excerpts and especially your TLDR doesn’t fairly digest his thesis and is a disingenuous and skewed read. Encourage others to read the whole tweet and form their own opinion instead.
- aswanson 2y agoExactly. I hope our government can survive the next 4 years for criminal investigations into this era. We can't become Russia.
- Herring 2y agoTrump won the popular vote. I don't think this is going away without a major demographic shift, time probably measured in decades.
- sylos 2y agoTinfoil hat time, I don't think the man claiming everyone else cheated and who got caught cheating in a previous election got all his votes in a legal manner
- aswanson 2y agoAll the data suggests the opposite. He wasn't in a position of power at the time; the federal government was controlled by the democrats. Elections are run at the state level and are so disparate procedurally that Russia gave up trying to flip them directly. There has been no discrepancy between exit polls and the results. We have to face the fact that this is who the United States chose, and this is who a significant portion of the electorate is ok with.
- danaris 2y agoElections are, in many if not most states, run electronically. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't trust all the companies that make the voting machines. For instance, does Musk own stock in some of them? Do their owners vote Trump?
- pseudalopex 2y agoConflicts of interest are not evidence of fraud.[1] [1] https://bsky.app/profile/mattblaze.org/post/3lmgt4ufllc26 https://bsky.app/profile/mattblaze.org/post/3lmgt4ufllc26
- dev_l1x_be 2y agoI thought this is what happened during covid already. We wiped out a large number of small businesses. https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/bankruptorpermanentlyclosedbusinessesduringthecovid19pandemic https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
- vkou 2y agoSmall businesses die and start all the time. It's unsurprising that more of them would die during a massive recession and a global pandemic. Those numbers are meaningless without a similar count of small businesses opening.
- jtthe13 2y agoI gather you haven't started your own business, or did yours start and die repeatedly?
- vkou 2y agoPeople die all the time, and every year, more people are dying than any prior year in history. Without context for how many people are born every year, one might read that and conclude that we're about to all die out.
- amelius 2y agoSpeaking of which, what are the tariffs for Russia?
- JohnTHaller 2y agoOh, we don't need tariffs for Russia. But we put them in for Ukraine. - the Republican administration
- eej71 2y agoThere will be a new aristocracy. The aristocracy of pull. #iykyk
- ModernMech 2y agoIt's not the furthest thing from the American economy as it stands today, but the inevitable conclusion of the "free-market" capitalism we've been practicing over the past number of decades. Donald Trump is the poster child of American capitalism gone right, he's an aspiration for wealthy capitalists across the nation. Generally people have felt that if only we could get an American businessman like Trump in charge of the country, running things the way a true capitalist would (as opposed to how those dirty awful communists/socialists tend to run things), then the country would start going right for a change. Well now we have that, and in short order the country has Russian-style crony capitalism from the top. This would not happen in a country that actually cares about free markets. But we don't. Everything we consume is owned by like 10 companies. If you want to get a start in the market you have to get access to capital they control, or meet regulations they set, because they've captured the government regulators through bribes. Trump is just taking this whole system of favoritism we've been living under and making it official. I for one am for it because honestly people pretending there is no corruption is worse than the corruption at this point.
- pstuart 2y ago> Donald Trump is the poster child of American capitalism gone right This is the same guy who went bankrupt 3 times, including a casino? The same guy who'd be as rich as he is today if he had invested the funds bequeathed by his father? The one who had a TV show based on him that was incredibly manipulated to make him appear richer and wiser than he really is?
- ModernMech 2y agoThey don't put the reality on the poster.
- g0db1t 2y ago* stood yesterday