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> importers must declare the exact amount of steel, copper, and aluminum in products, with a 100% tariff applied to these materials. This makes little sense—PCB
by zaptheimpaler 1y ago
> importers must declare the exact amount of steel, copper, and aluminum in products, with a 100% tariff applied to these materials. This makes little sense—PCBs, for instance, contain copper traces, but the quantity is nearly impossible to estimate.
Wow this administration is f**ing batshit insane. I thought the tariffs would be on raw metals, not anything at all that happens to contain them.
- WorkerBee28474 1y agoThe amount of copper on a PCB is only impossible to estimate if you don't try. Otherwise, you take the PCB copper thickness that you paid for, multiply it by the surface area, and multiply it by a guess of how much remains after etching.
- os2warpman 1y agoWhy do you assume the person selling the PCB is the one who designed and ordered its manufacture? Olimex sells kits, kits made by others. They don't know how much copper is in the MPS430F5438 because Texas Instruments made the MPS430F5438.
- xerp2914 1y agoIt's not that easy according to the post: > U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product. This is a prime example of unnecessary complexity in international trade. Also why would they go through all that trouble? Easier to not sell there anymore.
- kube-system 1y agoThe two statements in the OP seem opposed to each other. Why would one need to estimate if an estimate isn't sufficient?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- petercooper 1y agoAlso why would they go through all that trouble? Easier to not sell there anymore. I don't agree with it, but isn't that ostensibly the end goal? That is, to force/encourage the manufacturing of goods in the US, rather than importing them. Of course, the metal itself still needs to enter the US either way.
- organsnyder 1y agoSure, that could be the eventual goal. But for that to happen, we need to ramp up manufacturing in thousands of sectors: not just the device, and not just everything it contains, but also the machines that make each of the components, the machines that make the parts for those machines, the raw materials for each... If this was a serious economic policy, it would have started small—perhaps a 5% tariff, to take effect in six months. Then, promise to ramp it up (say an additional 5% every year).
- xg15 1y agoAlso, it's a weird way to do "hidden" tariffs, in addition to the official ones that are bad enough. E.g. if he wanted to tariff electronic devices, why not tariff them directly, instead of those weird mental gymnastics?
- freejazz 1y agoYeah, I could also cut off my hand in order to resolve an itch on it. End goal met!
- 1-more 1y ago> to force/encourage the manufacturing of goods in the US, rather than importing them. There are two mutually exclusive stated goals. One is, as you said, onshoring tech manufacturing to the USA [1]. The other stated goal is to eliminate income tax and replace it with income from tariffs [2][3]. To play these out on their own terms: if the first goal succeeds, then import volume would drop, and total tariff income would be too low to replace income taxes. If the first goal fails, then tariff income would be high enough to replace income taxes. IDK I haven't done the napkin math and I suspect neither have they. [1]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-says-his-tariffs-aim-promote-us-production-tanks-not-t-shirts-we-want-make-big-things https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-says-his-tariffs-... [2]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/trump-proposes-abolishment-federal-income-tax-bringing-us-back-richest-period-history https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/trump-proposes-abolishment... [3]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6371514396112 https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6371514396112 Going with Fox Business links to avoid accusations of bias.
- xg15 1y ago> otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product. This seems like it could also lead to absurd situations. If a device contained both, would customs pretend it was simultaneously 100% made out of copper and 100% made out of steel and apply both tariffs?
- Mtinie 1y ago> This seems like it could also lead to absurd situations. If a device contained both, would customs pretend it was simultaneously 100% made out of copper and 100% made out of steel and apply both tariffs? Yes, because it benefits the “here’s how much extra revenue our copper tariffs generate in 2025” sound bites for the Administration to tout (even if they are fabricated numbers based on nonsensical assumptions.)
- general1726 1y agoYes they would 200% of product won't be a problem for them. Furthermore as I know customs, the moment you will start making stuff up in a too brazen way, they will just use Google, search some average price of products and use that instead what you are declaring. Sometimes it looks like they are getting a cut from amount of tariff they successfully scalp from you.
- MadnessASAP 1y agoThe situation is already absurd, what's a little more absurdity.
- jasonjayr 1y agoEven before these changes, there were absurdities where items cross a border with one step of the manufacturing process missing because in one direction it's an unfinished good that has no tariff, and in the other direction it's a finished good coming from a preferred country with a lower or no tariff.
- wqaatwt 1y agoIt’s easiest to not make any money in general. Per capita Americans consumer more stuff than almost everyone else. It’s a huge and highly lucrative market and will remain such for at least some time still. Losing a significant proportion of their revenue can easily bring down plenty of businesses.
- 4ndrewl 1y agoI think that's fair. It's also fair for a company to say 'f- that, even just doing that eats away at our bottom line, we'll concentrate on more profitable markets' (which is the intention I guess. Go and build it in USA,USA,USA).
- iAMkenough 1y agoEven if you build in USA, you'll likely still need to import materials or pay a premium for domestic.
- throwmeaway222 1y agoeven at a 100% import on the mats, the actual end product would only go up 25 cents - the labor will get us- but that's the point. merican jobs
- kjs3 1y agomultiply it by a guess There's your problem. It enables selective enforcement, because the authorities can decide at any time "if you're off by 0.1% we'll consider you in violation".
- crote 1y agoGreat! Now prove it. The problem isn't creating a reasonable estimate, anyone can do that. Most cheap consumer PCBs are going to be 2-layer FR4 with 1oz/sq. ft. of copper, minus some etched away, with negligible copper in parts like chips. That indeed should get you fairly close. But there are also 32-layer PCBs, and even PCBs with a solid copper core. And your PCB could be filled with copper inductors! Similarly, it could also be a solid aluminum-core PCB. If I were a malicious customs officer, I would insist that the only valid upper bound is a 100% copper PCB, which is also 100% aluminum, and 100% whatever else. Don't want to pay that? No problem, just provide a certified lab analysis report! Simple things rapidly get complicated when the goal is to frustrate the process as much as possible. You don't live in a modern economy focused on global trade anymore, you are now living in a Kafka book.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago2-layer or 4-layer board? It makes a difference, you know.
- liuliu 1y ago> Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane. No, it is not insane. This creates perfect "everyone violates the law, we can selectively enforce it" scenario. That's how 10% Intel-like condition can be created for other companies.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” -- Field Marshal Óscar R. Benavides, former president of Peru. ("History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," attributed to Twain)
- liuliu 1y agoAlso, let's not forget that Apple / Google is violating PAFACAA right now (the TikTok act, by allowing TikTok in the U.S. AppStore / PlayStore) b/c DoJ is instructed to sue anyone who is following PAFACAA. This will create a lot of headache for Apple / Google when a different administration comes into power. (The extension signed by EO is not to do the 90-day extension permitted by PAFACAA, it is merely says DoJ won't enforce PAFACAA and will sue anyone following PAFACAA b/c DoJ should be the only one who enforces PAFACAA).
- layer8 1y ago> "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," attributed to Twain https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/
- deleted 1y ago
- nabla9 1y agoAcross EU and Asia packet shipments into the US are being shout down until the things are resolved. This is bullshit that hurts everybody, but Americans the most.
- darth_avocado 1y ago> This is bullshit that hurts everybody, but Americans the most. Price I pay is not getting my $20 fairy lights that made my backyard look cute. The price foreign factory workers pay is that they’re out of a job. I don’t think Americans pay the most, but they do pay. Edit: Clearly people are missing the point Im trying to make here. I’m trying to address the viewpoint that Americans will somehow lose the most, which i don’t think is the case. This isn’t a pro tariff argument. American consumer is the biggest market there is on the planet. Pretending we can just find other buyers is ludicrous. Yes, there will be some jobs affected domestically, but that number will be much higher elsewhere.
- cjs_ac 1y agoThe foreign factory workers will still have jobs making the same products, except those products won't be exported to the US. Luckily for them, 95% of humans live outside the US.
- delusional 1y agoCan we try to not fall victim to this sort of "us or them" rhetoric. It's obviously exactly what this is being framed as officially, but it's way worse than that. Yes, the the cost of (at least) some foreign workers is that the jobs they had creating good exported to America will go away. That's true. The trade-off though isn't just that the Americans don't get their stuff. The real trade off is that the good those factory workers buy (whether they be physical or immaterial, cultural or financial services) will not get bought. Americans making those good will therefore ALSO be out of a job. In the end, nobody gets what they want and everybody loses employment. It's a lose/lose for everybody involved.
- 1y ago
- jibe 1y agoHow would you handle importing raw copper, vs a spool of 0000 gauge copper wire?
- wpm 1y agoDifferently? One has been processed, presuably for a value-add.
- GordonS 1y agoOne is "raw material", the other is "finished goods". This kind of distinction is pretty standard across the world.
- jibe 1y agoYes, that was my point. If you only tariff raw copper (which is what the parent thought), you could avoid the tariff by importing lightly process copper (e.g. a spool of 0000 wire instead of bar of copper).
- GordonS 1y agoYet another tarrif level is often set on "semi-finished goods" too. It does seem like these tariffs haven't really been thought through though, so I wouldn't be surprised if "hacks" existed.
- quickthrowman 1y agoRaw copper isn’t tariffed, #4/0 bare copper wire would be tariffed since it’s a finished product.
- jibe 1y agoYes, I was commenting on the parent poster's suggestion that only raw copper might be tariffed. If only raw copper was tariffed, you could bypass it by importing very lightly process copper, like thick wire.
- miltonlost 1y agoTarriffs on raw materials in order to boost local manufactring is also insane. That's what needs to be cheap. Corrupt, stupid, evil policies.
- oersted 1y agoI don't disagree with the general premise, but it's not so clear-cut with regards to raw materials. For example, the US has some of the largest lithium deposits in the world, but it's not being exploited because extraction is dirty and polluting, generally the compliance for opening a new mine is very complex (takes 7-10 years), and catching-up on refinery capacity will take an enormous investment (China does almost all Li refining now). Similarly, developing the techniques to boost oil extraction (fracking, EOR...) took significant and sustained government support of different kinds until it became competitive, it's unclear if market pressure alone would have done it. This made the US again into the largest exporter rather than the largest importer of oil. There are many such cases. Note: I'm not from the US, and I'm not particularly pro-US, I'm not saying that tariffs are a good mechanism to support these industries, and I'm not necessarily in favour of such anti-environmental policies. But those are the facts as I understand them.
- wasabi991011 1y agoThere's something I've never understood about resource extraction and globalization, maybe you could help. If the US has a ton of Lithium but finds it too expensive to extract, why not buy it now while it's cheap, wait for it to become rarer in other countries so more expensive, and only extract it once it's worth it (or close to worth it)?
- oersted 1y agoWell that is what happens when you let the market guide industrial strategy, and very often it is the right call. But these things take time and significant capital to develop, you often need to be non-competitive for years, doing things in a more expensive way, until you can catch-up. But then you can overtake everyone else, if nothing else due to the momentum of growth and the higher efficiency you had to maintain to catch-up. Just like it happened with oil in the US, or with Germany, Japan, Korea or China recovering from catastrophe. If you don't do this, you can get cornered, where in principle you can produce a resource much more efficiently in your country, but you can't quite climb over the hill because you are addicted to depending on others as an economy and you don't anymore have the capital, know-how or culture for such things.
- duped 1y ago> Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane It's reasons why this that I refuse to associate with Republicans in my daily life anymore. They are undeserving of respect or decency for how they continue to make our lives worse.
- philipallstar 1y agoHaven't people been saying this for a decade now? The democrats purity tests make this test for copper look like child's play.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- duped 1y agoDonald Trump did get elected about a decade ago, so sure?
- philipallstar 1y agoIndeed. The worst purity test to fail is being an ex-Democrat.
- Mtinie 1y agoI’m genuinely interested in which “purity tests” you are referring to. I’m all for bi-partisan ridicule if it’s warranted.
- throwmeaway222 1y agohttps://nypost.com/2025/08/25/opinion/dems-nix-45-woke-words-from-vocab-privilege-birthing-person-latinx-intersectionality-and-more/ https://nypost.com/2025/08/25/opinion/dems-nix-45-woke-words...
- miltonlost 1y agoAn opinion article from the NY Post. Neat.
- lenerdenator 1y ago... you're surprised? It's been ten years.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hnburnsy 1y agoHere is how the EU expects PCB imports... >For PCBs shipped to the EU, a Certificate of Analysis is not typically required for determining tariffs, as tariffs are based on the HS code (e.g., 8534.00 for bare PCBs), country of origin, and customs value. However, a CoA or similar documentation (e.g., material composition report) may be needed for: Regulatory compliance with REACH or RoHS, especially if the PCBs contain restricted substances like lead or cadmium. Customs verification if the product’s classification or materials are questioned.
- floxy 1y agoThat is exactly the same for the U.S., with the same Harmonized code, 8534.00. https://hts.usitc.gov/search?query=8534 https://hts.usitc.gov/search?query=8534 ...and has been that way for a long time. Only thing that might be different now is that the de-minimus import exemption is going away for (certain?) countries? (and of course the tariff rate changing).
- XorNot 1y agoThe difference now is the US wants mail carriers to collect tarrifs themselves and pay the US government. They have no way to do this, because it's normally not done - tarrifs are paid by the importer, and responsibility for correct labeling is by the importer.
- floxy 1y ago>They have no way to do this, because it's normally not done UPS can collect tariffs. Source: I've written checks recently to UPS to cover tariffs.
- XorNot 1y agoThat's on the importer side for delivery to you. As I understand it, US customs wants foreign carriers to collect tarriffs when packages are shipped, and pay them to the US. There is no system to do this, nor a system to actually receive payments and associate them with a package. Nor any clarity on what the rules actually are and thus what the import duties will be when things arrive. The normal course of things is that things get shipped, hit customs and get assessed for duties, and then the importer pays for release. If you've ever experienced differently it's because someone is handling it for you - e.g. Amazon provide this service and absorb the complexity and risk.
- FpUser 1y ago>"Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane. " I would not limit it to "this administration". Bureacracy tends to fuck thing up royally regardless of which imbecile they're currently serving.
- cosmicgadget 1y agoI thought the criticism was that it was slow moving and thereby resistant to abrupt fuck ups.
- 8note 1y agothis isnt bureaucracy doing it though, its only the top of the executive. bureaucracy tends to make processes that are complicated but still straightforward to complete, even if they take decades for skmethjng that shiuld only be a couple minutes
- FpUser 1y agobullshit. they often make things impossible in practice. I have numerous examples in my own life dealing with their "straightforwards". It is anything but.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- elbasti 1y agoI manufacture steel/aluminum goods for the US and I have direct experience with these tariffs. Let me explain why it must be this way and how it's actually supposed to work. This is not a defense of the tariffs, just an explanation. First of all, if you want to use tariffs to boost domestic manufacturing, you must also tax the steel/al content of finished (or intermediate) goods. Otherwise, you put your local producers at a disadvantage, making the tariffs worse. If you only tariff raw materials, then an american manufacturer has to pay either US steel prices or imported steel + tariff to manufacture, but a company overseas can use the cheaper foreign steel. So if you want to tax raw materials, then you also want to tax those goods where raw materials are an important part of the cost. The US has a catalog called the "Harmonized Tariff Schedule" (HTS) which is a catalog of basically everything under the sun [0]. When the steel & AL tariffs were announced, they also published a list of all the HTS codes where the steel/al content would also be taxed. Last week the US published a revised list of HTS codes to which these tariffs apply, and they added about 400 items to them. For example, the aluminum content of cans is now taxed when it wasn't before. Flexport has a very cool (and useful!) tariff simulator where you can look up any item and it will tell you if the steel/al content will be subject to these tariffs: https://tariffs.flexport.com https://tariffs.flexport.com [0]: https://hts.usitc.gov/ https://hts.usitc.gov/
- danielvf 1y agoYes, it's a very logical part of a tariff regime, and tariffs penalize domestic manufacturers without it. But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently.
- jayd16 1y agoI mean...they're still punished by tariffs with these changes, but they're also punished without them.
- Levitz 1y ago>But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently. Well, that depends on what you are getting done. If your objective is solely to get a product done, the most efficient way is probably going to involve terrible salaries plus ample disregard for the environment and human life. Anything else is going to be disruptive to that end.
- jandrese 1y agoI understand where they are coming from. Otherwise you will definitely have people who take a metric ton of copper and slap a sticker on the side and declare that they are shipping stickers around to avoid the tariff. Of course a sane policy would be to have a "trace amounts" option in the tariff if your product contains less than a kg or less than 1% by mass of the stuff to avoid the paperwork, but the people who set this up are the kind of people who worry more about what criminals do than what productive people do. It's just plain badly designed regulation.
- intended 1y agoThe fact that tariffs exist, is sufficient marker of insanity in this day and age. Why carve out a validation relating to the degree of transformation of raw material.
- lazide 1y agoAlmost every country has had massive tariffs on a wide variety of goods for a very long time. It’s why ‘free trade agreements’ were such a big deal. This is more a reversion to the mean/making them more equal. Which is a big deal.
- weinzierl 1y agoI worked in German automotive for a good decade and there this was not an unusual requirement. Measuring steel, copper and aluminum to the gram is not that hard. Where it gets tricky and where the German automotive companies were super strict even 15 years ago is rare earth metals.
- TZubiri 1y agoSounds like a non issue in this case, we are talking about grams of metal? You are engineers, provide an estimation, pay the tariffs on 2 grams of metals and move on. Is certificate of analysis anything more than a pdf made with word with your signature on it?
- jama211 1y agoWhy are people still surprised that this administration which has done nothing but act batshit insane continues to do so?
- petre 1y agoWhat did you expect from Tariff Man 2.0? Get more reasonable with age?
- jama211 1y agoHaha, right??
- delecti 1y agoYou can accept that they're fundamentally batshit insane and also be surprised upon learning about a specific new kind of batshit insanity. And also, letting new batshit insane things slide is just complying in advance. If we're ever going to get back to a sane society (a big "if"), we can't accept the insanity until then, or it'll stick.
- jama211 1y agoI didn’t say let it slide, I’m just over all the shocked faces, us doing the shocked step is something they bank upon, as it sorta stun-locks us sometimes for lack of a better term as they continue the bombardment.
- btbuildem 1y agoThe importer is supposed to "make a deal" with the administration, ie, bribe them to obtain an exemption.
- tempodox 1y agoExactly, it’s mafia style business.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoNow's the time to invest in gold plaque futures.
- anigbrowl 1y agoCareful where you get that gold from. The administration recently announced a 40% tariff on refined gold imported from Switzerland.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoWe're going to just seize the foreign gold stored in the US. Finders keepers.
- reenorap 1y agoThis has nothing to do with the administration and just how tariffs work around the world.
- worik 1y agoNo "Tarrifs" are paid by the importer. These are being charged to the exporter These are not tarries. But novel arbitrary taxes Batshit crazy does not come close
- anigbrowl 1y agoI thought it was more the case that shippers are asking the exporter to pay up front (and pass the prices along as they see fit) to limit the risk that the customer refuses to pay customs duties and rejects the package delivery, causing it to sit taking up valuable space in the shippers' warehouses.
- lxgr 1y ago> "Tarrifs" are paid by the importer. [...] These are being charged to the exporter Ultimately, that's always the case. But just like VAT or sales taxes are usually paid by the seller on behalf of the buyer, so could customs duties be levied by the exporter.
- Henchman21 1y agoYou expected this to make sense. The goal is to destroy the US economy. Full stop. There aren’t many lenses that make sense anymore but this one? This one has made sense for quite some time now. Reexamining the behavior of the people in power using this lens should assist you in understanding the world we find ourselves in.
- tempodox 1y agoJust picture them as a mafia mob and everything falls into place.
- Levitz 1y agoCan you justify this kind of response after other explanations have already been given?
- anigbrowl 1y agoI don't think it's at odds with other explanations. If you wanted a working tariff regime you'd make the tariffs graduated and reasonable - big enough to sway customer choices and ithus investment decisions, but not arbitrary seeming. More importantly, you'd work hard to ensure it rolled out smoothly and minimized commercial disruption so as to allow your price signals to function clearly.
- antonvs 1y agoIf you wanted a working tariff regime, you'd also couple tariffs with investments and tax incentives for domestic businesses. Just hoping that the market will (somehow!) sort it out is a recipe for failure, quite possibly of disastrous levels.
- hluska 1y agoI think that’s a little extreme, but here is a balance sheet based explanation where it works. The US just sort of randomly decided to tariff everything from people they don’t like anymore. Because of the randomness of these tariffs, they impact not only consumer goods but production equipment. The justification for these tariffs is something along the lines of “let’s bring production back to the United States.” That’s likely a good idea (says the Canadian), but when they use that justification while simultaneously tariffing production equipment the same as consumer goods you have to wonder what’s actually going on. With production equipment, you amortize the cost of that tool over the years of usage. These tariffs are not amortized, meaning they must be paid at import. That takes cash off the balance sheet, puts it into equipment and hits liquidity. If I was wickedly powerful and really hated Americans, going after SMB liquidity would be the most convenient (and profitable) way to cause generational harm.
- fknorangesite 1y ago> Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane. You're allowed to say "fucking".