41 ms·

Suspending Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries

41 points by jonbaer 1y ago

mikewarot 1y ago
Ugh.... I'll try to keep the rant level down to a low roar... but.... Is he actively trying to implode the US economy, and kill the reserve currency status of the dollar? I ask because it sure seems like it to me. I expect a wave of US business collapses in the next 18 months as a direct result of this action. I do NOT expect an instant resurgence of manufacturing in the US. You might be tempted to look back at the semi-miraculous turnaround of manufacturing from the depths of the Great Depression, into the wartime production of the US that out-produced the rest of the world, in what appeared to be less than 3 years, and think we can just do that again. However, appearances are deceiving, the industrial mobilization of 1941-1943 was the result of years of preparation from graduates of the Army Industrial College, who had a new plan every few years for complete mobilization of our extant manufacturing infrastructure. Given our current administrations penchant for bulldozing Chesterton's fence and putting in a concentration camp in it's place, it's likely the folks who may actually have had a plan for the present, have all been fired. We barely have the infrastructure in the US to make the machine tools to make the production tools to ramp up industrial production. We've spent the last few decades telling all the promising youth that production and factory jobs were a dead end, thus compromising our labor force. This is not going to end well. Edit/Append: It occurs to me that this is Trump's way of trying to get back to "the good old days" when the Federal Government was almost entirely funded by tariffs (aka import taxes/duties).
- mindslight 1y ago
  > Is he actively trying to implode the US economy, and kill the reserve currency status of the dollar? I ask because it sure seems like it to me. Yes. If you read the regime's crackpot "economist's" book it lays out a bizzarro upside down framework whereby having a strong currency is a liability and needing manufactured goods is a strength, with the cure being to destroy our currency such that we too can be an impoverished work camp. In reality of course the actual problem was never a strong currency by itself, but rather that the political establishment didn't spend the gains from a strong currency on mitigating the damage to our industrial base (under the banner of fake "fiscal responsibility"), but rather just gave that wealth away as artificially low interest loans to make the all important Line go up.
  - casefields 1y ago
    Or read Warren Buffet: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
    - mindslight 1y ago
      [2003]. I don't see how a description of the problem from 20 years ago, with a proposed solution much different than what is being done at the moment, has any relation to what I said. I agree that the looting of much of our industrial base was a terrible thing to let happen. That doesn't mean applying a solution that would have been appropriate decades ago will have the same effect now that the horses have long ago left the barn. It's merely setting us up for the next trend by which we will be sold off.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  > I do NOT expect an instant resurgence of manufacturing in the US. It takes several years and lots of money. And investment ain't going to happen without both stability and demand. This merely allows domestic competitors to raise prices to encourage more inflation with a profit-price spiral. Aggregate demand will soften by virtue of increasing prices. Furthermore, trade deficits are stupid metrics to fixate on when fair value (cash and goods) flows in both directions. This is what happens when a stupid, ignorant person is surrounded by even more evil, greedier, manipulative advisors, anointed unitary executive, and allowed to legislate by fiat. (Trump isn't very dangerous or concerning by himself; it's the advisors plus the power given to him to rapidly rubber stamp special interest agendas that are concerning.)
  - ghufran_syed 1y ago
    if it would give domestic manufacturers such great pricing power, then wouldn’t it also encourage foreign manufacturers to manufacture in the US to take advantage of that pricing power? Wouldn’t that be a good thing for the US? and as more manufacturers move to the US, wouldn’t that competition then tend to lower prices?
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      >if it would give domestic manufacturers such great pricing power, then wouldn’t it also encourage foreign manufacturers to manufacture in the US to take advantage of that pricing power? Wouldn’t that be a good thing for the US? and as more manufacturers move to the US, wouldn’t that competition then tend to lower prices? Moving manufacturing into the US takes a lot of up-front investment and would take a long time to pay off. It could happen if the manufacturers believe that the pricing pressure is going to remain present for the time that it takes to pay off. This is what's meant by 'business wants to see stability'. The current administration has shown the opposite of that, with a chaotic series of rules which don't appear to be well thought through, or likely to stick, so it's mostly achieving the worst of both worlds. (A similar thing is true of defense spending: if the government is commissioning some manufacturing for which it is the only buyer, and it has demonstrated that the amount that it actually buys is liable to fluctuate wildly in the name of 'cost savings', then the price it pays per unit is going to reflect the risk that the business which is setting up that manufacturing doesn't actually sell as many as promised)
- HelloNurse 1y ago
  Obviously, evil capitalists like to buy or supplant imploded businesses cheaply. National and global prosperity can be burned to obtain private wealth.
- treetalker 1y ago
  That's a bingo!
- Isamu 1y ago
  >It occurs to me that this is Trump's way of trying to get back to "the good old days" when the Federal Government was almost entirely funded by tariffs (aka import taxes/duties). That’s exactly it, he wants to eliminate income taxes. In particular his own taxes. Everyone else is along for the ride. Because tariffs won’t be enough, he needs to cut the federal budget in ways that don’t affect him personally.
- braggado 1y ago
  [dead]
throwaway81523 1y ago
They're gonna spend a fortune intercepting every dinky little package sent to the US from Ali Express? Good luck with that.
k310 1y ago
A ton of small businesses (think Amazon sellers) import from China et. al. This blows up their businesses. There simply is no other cost-effective source.
- patrickhogan1 1y ago
  For a typical Amazon FBA seller importing bulk orders (eg 1,000+ items), who orders and stores them in an Amazon warehouse AFAIK eliminating de minimis doesn't affect their imports much since they already pay duties. Direct-to-consumer overseas companies (Temu/Shein style) yes this is a big change.
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    The big issue I see is how effective the customs can be in handling the new volume they need to handle. EU has shown that no De Minimis on VAT is not big problem. Chinese ecommerce can pay those costs just fine if the systems are in place. And price is still competitive for customer. Considering retail margins, even 100% tariff still probably means at least 30% cheaper product.
  - k310 1y ago
    Makes one wonder if small importers can cooperate to raise volume. Naturally, this can't work for "Ship from China" items.
dsign 1y ago
Politics aside, does this mean that I can’t send a physical book to somebody in USA? I mean, it’s a tariff, and in theory all that is required is to pay some money to customs, but in the case of small traders and private individuals, the onus of setting up a price to base the tariff on, demonstrating that that price is real (otherwise one could set the price to 1 cent), and then figuring out who pays what and how… well, all of that is overkill. And, given present circumstances, all non USA citizens anywhere in the world may feel a very reasonable hesitation to interact with the USA government…customs works next door to ICE, so to speak.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Sounds like a business opportunity
patrickhogan1 1y ago
The US is eliminating its $800 duty-free import threshold. This isn't radical. It mostly brings America in line with what other major markets already do (or are about to do). EU: Only packages under €150 ($160) are duty-free, and they're planning to scrap even that. Since 2021, they collect VAT on everything, no matter how small. Japan: Has a ¥10,000 ($70) threshold now, but already announced they're killing it by late 2026. China: Basically no threshold at all. You only avoid duty if the calculated tax is under $7. Even their special e-commerce imports pay 70% of normal VAT.
- intermerda 1y ago
  > In Executive Order 14193 of February 1, 2025 (Imposing Duties To Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs Across Our Northern Border), I declared a national emergency regarding the unusual and extraordinary threat to the safety and security of Americans, including the public health crisis caused by fentanyl and other illicit drugs and the failure of Canada to do more to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept drug trafficking organizations, other drug and human traffickers, criminals at large, and illicit drugs Yes, totally normal and not radical at all. I really don't get why HN posters feel the need to polish a turd.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    Those Canadians - gonna getcha
  - ghufran_syed 1y ago
    could you maybe respond to the point made in the comment you are replying to? If it’s a good idea for all those other countries, why does the idea become a “turd” when america does it? is this some kind of “manifest destiny” (to be dumber than other countries)???
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Unsurprising, since if I were an importer, and I saw I can get tax-free just by breaking things up into small quantities, guess what I'm doing
samrus 1y ago
This only works if manufacturing coke back to the US is there a way to track the progress on that btw? Like a dashboard or something to show the number of machinists being hired, average salary for a machinist, maybe a volume weighted average of percentage of small parts that can not be made in the US. metrics like that would really showif all this trade war stuff is working or not

41 points by jonbaer 1y ago

Ugh.... I'll try to keep the rant level down to a low roar... but.... Is he actively trying to implode the US economy, and kill the reserve currency status of the dollar? I ask because it sure seems like it to me. I expect a wave of US business collapses in the next 18 months as a direct result of this action. I do NOT expect an instant resurgence of manufacturing in the US. You might be tempted to look back at the semi-miraculous turnaround of manufacturing from the depths of the Great Depression, into the wartime production of the US that out-produced the rest of the world, in what appeared to be less than 3 years, and think we can just do that again. However, appearances are deceiving, the industrial mobilization of 1941-1943 was the result of years of preparation from graduates of the Army Industrial College, who had a new plan every few years for complete mobilization of our extant manufacturing infrastructure. Given our current administrations penchant for bulldozing Chesterton's fence and putting in a concentration camp in it's place, it's likely the folks who may actually have had a plan for the present, have all been fired. We barely have the infrastructure in the US to make the machine tools to make the production tools to ramp up industrial production. We've spent the last few decades telling all the promising youth that production and factory jobs were a dead end, thus compromising our labor force. This is not going to end well. Edit/Append: It occurs to me that this is Trump's way of trying to get back to "the good old days" when the Federal Government was almost entirely funded by tariffs (aka import taxes/duties).

mindslight 1y ago
> Is he actively trying to implode the US economy, and kill the reserve currency status of the dollar? I ask because it sure seems like it to me. Yes. If you read the regime's crackpot "economist's" book it lays out a bizzarro upside down framework whereby having a strong currency is a liability and needing manufactured goods is a strength, with the cure being to destroy our currency such that we too can be an impoverished work camp. In reality of course the actual problem was never a strong currency by itself, but rather that the political establishment didn't spend the gains from a strong currency on mitigating the damage to our industrial base (under the banner of fake "fiscal responsibility"), but rather just gave that wealth away as artificially low interest loans to make the all important Line go up.
- casefields 1y ago
  Or read Warren Buffet: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf
  - mindslight 1y ago
    [2003]. I don't see how a description of the problem from 20 years ago, with a proposed solution much different than what is being done at the moment, has any relation to what I said. I agree that the looting of much of our industrial base was a terrible thing to let happen. That doesn't mean applying a solution that would have been appropriate decades ago will have the same effect now that the horses have long ago left the barn. It's merely setting us up for the next trend by which we will be sold off.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
> I do NOT expect an instant resurgence of manufacturing in the US. It takes several years and lots of money. And investment ain't going to happen without both stability and demand. This merely allows domestic competitors to raise prices to encourage more inflation with a profit-price spiral. Aggregate demand will soften by virtue of increasing prices. Furthermore, trade deficits are stupid metrics to fixate on when fair value (cash and goods) flows in both directions. This is what happens when a stupid, ignorant person is surrounded by even more evil, greedier, manipulative advisors, anointed unitary executive, and allowed to legislate by fiat. (Trump isn't very dangerous or concerning by himself; it's the advisors plus the power given to him to rapidly rubber stamp special interest agendas that are concerning.)
- ghufran_syed 1y ago
  if it would give domestic manufacturers such great pricing power, then wouldn’t it also encourage foreign manufacturers to manufacture in the US to take advantage of that pricing power? Wouldn’t that be a good thing for the US? and as more manufacturers move to the US, wouldn’t that competition then tend to lower prices?
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    >if it would give domestic manufacturers such great pricing power, then wouldn’t it also encourage foreign manufacturers to manufacture in the US to take advantage of that pricing power? Wouldn’t that be a good thing for the US? and as more manufacturers move to the US, wouldn’t that competition then tend to lower prices? Moving manufacturing into the US takes a lot of up-front investment and would take a long time to pay off. It could happen if the manufacturers believe that the pricing pressure is going to remain present for the time that it takes to pay off. This is what's meant by 'business wants to see stability'. The current administration has shown the opposite of that, with a chaotic series of rules which don't appear to be well thought through, or likely to stick, so it's mostly achieving the worst of both worlds. (A similar thing is true of defense spending: if the government is commissioning some manufacturing for which it is the only buyer, and it has demonstrated that the amount that it actually buys is liable to fluctuate wildly in the name of 'cost savings', then the price it pays per unit is going to reflect the risk that the business which is setting up that manufacturing doesn't actually sell as many as promised)
HelloNurse 1y ago
Obviously, evil capitalists like to buy or supplant imploded businesses cheaply. National and global prosperity can be burned to obtain private wealth.
treetalker 1y ago
That's a bingo!
Isamu 1y ago
>It occurs to me that this is Trump's way of trying to get back to "the good old days" when the Federal Government was almost entirely funded by tariffs (aka import taxes/duties). That’s exactly it, he wants to eliminate income taxes. In particular his own taxes. Everyone else is along for the ride. Because tariffs won’t be enough, he needs to cut the federal budget in ways that don’t affect him personally.
braggado 1y ago
[dead]

throwaway81523 1y ago

They're gonna spend a fortune intercepting every dinky little package sent to the US from Ali Express? Good luck with that.

k310 1y ago

A ton of small businesses (think Amazon sellers) import from China et. al. This blows up their businesses. There simply is no other cost-effective source.

patrickhogan1 1y ago
For a typical Amazon FBA seller importing bulk orders (eg 1,000+ items), who orders and stores them in an Amazon warehouse AFAIK eliminating de minimis doesn't affect their imports much since they already pay duties. Direct-to-consumer overseas companies (Temu/Shein style) yes this is a big change.
- Ekaros 1y ago
  The big issue I see is how effective the customs can be in handling the new volume they need to handle. EU has shown that no De Minimis on VAT is not big problem. Chinese ecommerce can pay those costs just fine if the systems are in place. And price is still competitive for customer. Considering retail margins, even 100% tariff still probably means at least 30% cheaper product.
- k310 1y ago
  Makes one wonder if small importers can cooperate to raise volume. Naturally, this can't work for "Ship from China" items.

dsign 1y ago

Politics aside, does this mean that I can’t send a physical book to somebody in USA? I mean, it’s a tariff, and in theory all that is required is to pay some money to customs, but in the case of small traders and private individuals, the onus of setting up a price to base the tariff on, demonstrating that that price is real (otherwise one could set the price to 1 cent), and then figuring out who pays what and how… well, all of that is overkill. And, given present circumstances, all non USA citizens anywhere in the world may feel a very reasonable hesitation to interact with the USA government…customs works next door to ICE, so to speak.

jalapenos 1y ago
Sounds like a business opportunity

patrickhogan1 1y ago

The US is eliminating its $800 duty-free import threshold. This isn't radical. It mostly brings America in line with what other major markets already do (or are about to do). EU: Only packages under €150 ($160) are duty-free, and they're planning to scrap even that. Since 2021, they collect VAT on everything, no matter how small. Japan: Has a ¥10,000 ($70) threshold now, but already announced they're killing it by late 2026. China: Basically no threshold at all. You only avoid duty if the calculated tax is under $7. Even their special e-commerce imports pay 70% of normal VAT.

intermerda 1y ago
> In Executive Order 14193 of February 1, 2025 (Imposing Duties To Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs Across Our Northern Border), I declared a national emergency regarding the unusual and extraordinary threat to the safety and security of Americans, including the public health crisis caused by fentanyl and other illicit drugs and the failure of Canada to do more to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept drug trafficking organizations, other drug and human traffickers, criminals at large, and illicit drugs Yes, totally normal and not radical at all. I really don't get why HN posters feel the need to polish a turd.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Those Canadians - gonna getcha
- ghufran_syed 1y ago
  could you maybe respond to the point made in the comment you are replying to? If it’s a good idea for all those other countries, why does the idea become a “turd” when america does it? is this some kind of “manifest destiny” (to be dumber than other countries)???
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
jalapenos 1y ago
Unsurprising, since if I were an importer, and I saw I can get tax-free just by breaking things up into small quantities, guess what I'm doing

samrus 1y ago

This only works if manufacturing coke back to the US is there a way to track the progress on that btw? Like a dashboard or something to show the number of machinists being hired, average salary for a machinist, maybe a volume weighted average of percentage of small parts that can not be made in the US. metrics like that would really showif all this trade war stuff is working or not