7 ms·

Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.

nebula8804 2y ago
Its going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of them.
- marticode 2y ago
  They'll blame Biden and Soros, as usual.
- roshin 2y ago
  If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it, then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and significantly so in the "short term" (however long that is ...), but in the long term we will have more local manufacturing. disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.
  - thelastgallon 2y ago
    And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky, all Americans can be as happy as billionaines: https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-should-you-be-a-billionaire-or-be-amish-2012-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-sh... "Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is what the Amish have done. They have learned to live without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. The Amish are content because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic pleas for more." https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-and-the-amish https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-...
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      > Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. One wonders if this is simply due to under-diagnosis.
      - gblargg 2y ago
        My theory is that all our modern junk doesn't necessarily cause depression, but it allows us to take on more chronic depression and other mental problems (distraction, dopamine hits, etc.) Like the way added safety features to cars just caused drivers to drive worse to compensate.
      - gaiagraphia 2y ago
        >under diagnosis Telling the Amish they're depressed sounds like a wonderful business oppportunity! Think of all the follow up products and services!
    - echoangle 2y ago
      What would happen if everyone lived like the Amish though? I’m assuming they are still profiting from modern science they wouldn’t be able to come up with, right? Or are they refusing MRI scans and Chemotherapy too?
      - adrianN 2y ago
        A lot of people would starve without industrialized agriculture.
        xeromal 2y ago
        But you could build the hell out of a barn
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        I think the point wasn't that that specific example scales to the whole nation but more that if that specific example works as well as it does at the scale that it does than surely some middle ground between "import basically every consumer good" and "the amish" would scale to the entire nation with acceptable tradeoffs.
  - tpm 2y ago
    > buy local I suspect for many imported items there is no local manufacturing and there won't be one. Oh well we'll see soon how the voters react to that.
  - clutchdude 2y ago
    Ok - so here's an example I can provide input on. I have a bunch of white oak from a tree I cut down and had milled into lumber. I wanted to make a bunch of benches for friends/family, etc. I have the lumber so all I needed was the bench ends/legs. I looked at the domestic options and it was going to cost. I couldn't find anyone that would sell a set of legs for under $300 a piece or wanted me to "contact them for pricing." and that's all BEFORE shipping. Keep in mind that your local bigbox store sells an almost exact replica of the made in China bench legs with crap lumber for $99. It'd be cheaper for me to buy those, junk the lumber and use my own. I then checked alibaba and walked through the process of getting RFQ. The competent sellers who knew what I wanted and what to do were easy to work with and quick to check the various shipping costs - the per unit price would be pretty low($20ish even with my low volume order) but shipping would be $50-$70 a per set of legs due to the weight of the cast iron. BUT, now, even with tariffs, that leg would go from $~90 to $180ish AND I'd still be well below what the domestic cost is. If I go forward at all, I'll still probably go with the Alibaba folks. I don't see how USA manufacturers will suddenly start producing these sort of bulky intermediary consumer products anytime soon.
- nkrisc 2y ago
  No it won’t. It will be either 1) good or 2) somebody else’s fault.
gscott 2y ago
I am going to miss getting free seeds from China.
- oth001 2y ago
  Free seeds?
  - evan_ 2y ago
    Sites like Amazon and probably aliexpress/temu require a documented shipment before you can write a review. Shippers sometimes send extremely inexpensive stuff like seeds to random US/overseas addresses and launder the shipping receipt into a fake review for something more expensive.
    - mvdtnz 2y ago
      This sounds fake. Why send seeds, of all things? Why not some equally cheap item like electrical wire insulation off-cuts, a piece of scrap bubble wrap or just a note (or just nothing)? Seeds are likely to set off alarm bells for biosecurity at many borders for no benefit.
      - evan_ 2y ago
        It is real, it's called brushing: https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam They send all sorts of things but there was a big wave of seeds that got a lot of news coverage because of biosecurity fears.
forgotoldacc 2y ago
There's so much chaos being flooded out all at once that things that massively impact normal people don't have time to gain traction in the news. And the moment things do make the news, there's an even larger flood of people everywhere saying, "Fake news. Didn't happen." followed by "So what? How does this affect you personally?" and then ending with "This is actually a great thing and you're suspicious if you're against this."
- pixl97 2y ago
  "Firehose of falsehood" in action. :/
paganel 2y ago
Truth be told, the status quo, with 5-dollar packages clogging the USPS, was a DoS on-going thing in real life/physical form, there had been many posts in here detailing that. Yes, it will most probably negatively affect a lot of people who were relying on that DoS thing to carry on, and, yes, most probably the proposed charges are too high, but it was obvious that something needed to change.
- jay_kyburz 2y ago
  I don't agree with Tariffs, but the discounts some countries get on postage is BS. It should not be cheaper to have a parcel delivered from overseas than interstate in your own country. https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866cd8a https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866c...
threeseed 2y ago
I've seen countless interviews of Trump supporters who believe that China is the one paying for it. Which I can completely understand because if it is a cost on them it would be typically be called a tax. That said the overwhelmingly majority are shocked but believe it's all just a negotiating tactic: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-tariffs-13-04-2025/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-tariffs-13-04-2025/
- imposterr 2y ago
  Some Chinese exporters are definitely splitting the cost of these tariffs with their American importer counterparts. While this isn't as significant as "China pays all the tariffs", it's also not "Americans pay all the tariffs". Though, I haven't seen any analysis on how common this is, so the effect might be negligible in terms of how much "the Chinese" are paying for these tariffs.
  - naijaboiler 2y ago
    Every tax, and tariff a tax, is shared between producer and consumer depending on elasticity of demand for the goods
    - stavros 2y ago
      Why is that the case? If an item (from every manufacturer) costs $5, and there's a new tax on it, making it cost $10, why would this be split between buyer and seller? The seller needs to make a certain margin on it, and it's not like the competition can sell any cheaper, or they already would have been.
      - immibis 2y ago
        The seller doesn't "need" to make any margin on it. Margins are set by the free market, and they are what they are, no more, no less. Prices go down when demand goes down, right? Why's that, don't sellers need to make a certain margin?
      - 2y ago
idle_zealot 2y ago
US "liberal" media is being extremely cagey about what and how it reports on this admin. They know they're in its crosshairs and are doing this clumsy balancing act of trying to retain their relatively left-leaning or centrist viewers while trying not to draw any more ire. It won't work, of course, and if we continue on this trajectory you can expect that they'll change over to apologia and ass-kissing or be dismantled.
- cyanydeez 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mapt 2y ago
    There's a very large political base, particularly of young people, that is more than ready for leftist politics. It just doesn't get any funding from the millionaires who fund the DNC or the billionaires who fund the GOP. And money is how political organizations run. We have too much wealth inequality to effectively enfranchise most of the population; Capitalism ate democracy, film at 11.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    > At this point it's basically capitlism against authoritarianism Ha. You say that as though those things are incompatible. Some capital is putting up token resistance to the rise of authoritarianism, but it can't be a strong counterforce because that would risk retribution. Instead more and more capitalists bend the knee in hopes of favorable treatment. That's why I say the likes of CNN and NBC will switch to bootlicking before long.
    - cyanydeez 2y ago
      I mean, they are in the interim. I fully understand capitalists can make money on cruelty. But we're talking about the statement made and transitions.
sofixa 2y ago
> Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press It's hard reporting on the current administration, it's the classic Russian flood style messaging, where you just flood as much (mis)information as you can, and people just can't follow.

nebula8804 2y ago

Its going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of them.

marticode 2y ago
They'll blame Biden and Soros, as usual.
roshin 2y ago
If what Trump says is any sign to how MAGA explains it, then the answer is: if you don't want to pay those large fees, buy local. Sure the cost will go up, and significantly so in the "short term" (however long that is ...), but in the long term we will have more local manufacturing. disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.
- thelastgallon 2y ago
  And its going to be fine. Amish mostly make everything they need, have no debt, no trade deficits, have lots of kids and are thriving. I'm not saying this to be snarky, all Americans can be as happy as billionaines: https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-should-you-be-a-billionaire-or-be-amish-2012-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-want-to-be-happier-sh... "Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is what the Amish have done. They have learned to live without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. The Amish are content because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic pleas for more." https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-and-the-amish https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-...
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. One wonders if this is simply due to under-diagnosis.
    - gblargg 2y ago
      My theory is that all our modern junk doesn't necessarily cause depression, but it allows us to take on more chronic depression and other mental problems (distraction, dopamine hits, etc.) Like the way added safety features to cars just caused drivers to drive worse to compensate.
    - gaiagraphia 2y ago
      >under diagnosis Telling the Amish they're depressed sounds like a wonderful business oppportunity! Think of all the follow up products and services!
  - echoangle 2y ago
    What would happen if everyone lived like the Amish though? I’m assuming they are still profiting from modern science they wouldn’t be able to come up with, right? Or are they refusing MRI scans and Chemotherapy too?
    - adrianN 2y ago
      A lot of people would starve without industrialized agriculture.
      - xeromal 2y ago
        But you could build the hell out of a barn
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      I think the point wasn't that that specific example scales to the whole nation but more that if that specific example works as well as it does at the scale that it does than surely some middle ground between "import basically every consumer good" and "the amish" would scale to the entire nation with acceptable tradeoffs.
- tpm 2y ago
  > buy local I suspect for many imported items there is no local manufacturing and there won't be one. Oh well we'll see soon how the voters react to that.
- clutchdude 2y ago
  Ok - so here's an example I can provide input on. I have a bunch of white oak from a tree I cut down and had milled into lumber. I wanted to make a bunch of benches for friends/family, etc. I have the lumber so all I needed was the bench ends/legs. I looked at the domestic options and it was going to cost. I couldn't find anyone that would sell a set of legs for under $300 a piece or wanted me to "contact them for pricing." and that's all BEFORE shipping. Keep in mind that your local bigbox store sells an almost exact replica of the made in China bench legs with crap lumber for $99. It'd be cheaper for me to buy those, junk the lumber and use my own. I then checked alibaba and walked through the process of getting RFQ. The competent sellers who knew what I wanted and what to do were easy to work with and quick to check the various shipping costs - the per unit price would be pretty low($20ish even with my low volume order) but shipping would be $50-$70 a per set of legs due to the weight of the cast iron. BUT, now, even with tariffs, that leg would go from $~90 to $180ish AND I'd still be well below what the domestic cost is. If I go forward at all, I'll still probably go with the Alibaba folks. I don't see how USA manufacturers will suddenly start producing these sort of bulky intermediary consumer products anytime soon.
nkrisc 2y ago
No it won’t. It will be either 1) good or 2) somebody else’s fault.

gscott 2y ago

I am going to miss getting free seeds from China.

oth001 2y ago
Free seeds?
- evan_ 2y ago
  Sites like Amazon and probably aliexpress/temu require a documented shipment before you can write a review. Shippers sometimes send extremely inexpensive stuff like seeds to random US/overseas addresses and launder the shipping receipt into a fake review for something more expensive.
  - mvdtnz 2y ago
    This sounds fake. Why send seeds, of all things? Why not some equally cheap item like electrical wire insulation off-cuts, a piece of scrap bubble wrap or just a note (or just nothing)? Seeds are likely to set off alarm bells for biosecurity at many borders for no benefit.
    - evan_ 2y ago
      It is real, it's called brushing: https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam They send all sorts of things but there was a big wave of seeds that got a lot of news coverage because of biosecurity fears.

forgotoldacc 2y ago

There's so much chaos being flooded out all at once that things that massively impact normal people don't have time to gain traction in the news. And the moment things do make the news, there's an even larger flood of people everywhere saying, "Fake news. Didn't happen." followed by "So what? How does this affect you personally?" and then ending with "This is actually a great thing and you're suspicious if you're against this."

pixl97 2y ago
"Firehose of falsehood" in action. :/

paganel 2y ago

Truth be told, the status quo, with 5-dollar packages clogging the USPS, was a DoS on-going thing in real life/physical form, there had been many posts in here detailing that. Yes, it will most probably negatively affect a lot of people who were relying on that DoS thing to carry on, and, yes, most probably the proposed charges are too high, but it was obvious that something needed to change.

jay_kyburz 2y ago
I don't agree with Tariffs, but the discounts some countries get on postage is BS. It should not be cheaper to have a parcel delivered from overseas than interstate in your own country. https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866cd8a https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866c...

threeseed 2y ago

I've seen countless interviews of Trump supporters who believe that China is the one paying for it. Which I can completely understand because if it is a cost on them it would be typically be called a tax. That said the overwhelmingly majority are shocked but believe it's all just a negotiating tactic: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-tariffs-13-04-2025/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-trump-tariffs-13-04-2025/

imposterr 2y ago
Some Chinese exporters are definitely splitting the cost of these tariffs with their American importer counterparts. While this isn't as significant as "China pays all the tariffs", it's also not "Americans pay all the tariffs". Though, I haven't seen any analysis on how common this is, so the effect might be negligible in terms of how much "the Chinese" are paying for these tariffs.
- naijaboiler 2y ago
  Every tax, and tariff a tax, is shared between producer and consumer depending on elasticity of demand for the goods
  - stavros 2y ago
    Why is that the case? If an item (from every manufacturer) costs $5, and there's a new tax on it, making it cost $10, why would this be split between buyer and seller? The seller needs to make a certain margin on it, and it's not like the competition can sell any cheaper, or they already would have been.
    - immibis 2y ago
      The seller doesn't "need" to make any margin on it. Margins are set by the free market, and they are what they are, no more, no less. Prices go down when demand goes down, right? Why's that, don't sellers need to make a certain margin?
    - 2y ago

idle_zealot 2y ago

US "liberal" media is being extremely cagey about what and how it reports on this admin. They know they're in its crosshairs and are doing this clumsy balancing act of trying to retain their relatively left-leaning or centrist viewers while trying not to draw any more ire. It won't work, of course, and if we continue on this trajectory you can expect that they'll change over to apologia and ass-kissing or be dismantled.

cyanydeez 2y ago
[flagged]
- mapt 2y ago
  There's a very large political base, particularly of young people, that is more than ready for leftist politics. It just doesn't get any funding from the millionaires who fund the DNC or the billionaires who fund the GOP. And money is how political organizations run. We have too much wealth inequality to effectively enfranchise most of the population; Capitalism ate democracy, film at 11.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  > At this point it's basically capitlism against authoritarianism Ha. You say that as though those things are incompatible. Some capital is putting up token resistance to the rise of authoritarianism, but it can't be a strong counterforce because that would risk retribution. Instead more and more capitalists bend the knee in hopes of favorable treatment. That's why I say the likes of CNN and NBC will switch to bootlicking before long.
  - cyanydeez 2y ago
    I mean, they are in the interim. I fully understand capitalists can make money on cruelty. But we're talking about the statement made and transitions.

sofixa 2y ago

> Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press It's hard reporting on the current administration, it's the classic Russian flood style messaging, where you just flood as much (mis)information as you can, and people just can't follow.