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I'm glad they've done the work here and put a figure on it - the impact absolutely needed to be quantified - but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolu

I'm glad they've done the work here and put a figure on it - the impact absolutely needed to be quantified - but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. People, lots of people, lots of people who have a really deep understanding of national and global economics (unlike me), have been warning about this since talk of tariffs became common currency a year ago. I wouldn't like to comment on HN's political leanings in the round and, obviously, there are a large portion of non-US readers/commenters on the site (including me), but will say this: there are a portion of you who voted for this. Exactly this. What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. EDIT: Wow... well, having asked the question, it looks like I now have a lot of answers and perspectives to read. Thank you all for taking the time to comment.

amelius 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. See also Brexit.
hirako2000 9mo ago
It isn't US specific and what goes into people's head is what propaganda wants it to be. Economics tell people the clear impact, but it doesn't make the news. We get fed with whatever the political influencers decide to tell us. Did the brits expect the consequence of brexit? No but that's because they deemed whatever the news said to be unreliable on this topic. Which for once happened to be true.
- PaulRobinson 9mo ago
  Actually, it's pretty clear to those who have been paying attention that the main influence that swung the polls by about 4% from Remain to Leave in the last 2 days was a £10m advertising campaign on Facebook packed with lies, paid for by a Brexiteer who can't quite explain to the Electoral Commission where that money came from, but it did seem to just "appear" a few days after he allegedly met with the Russian ambassador to the UK. I'd get out more, but my tinfoil hat doesn't like the rain.
  - bjelkeman-again 9mo ago
    Is it this one you are talking about? https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/public-statement-on-nca-investigation-into-suspected-eu-referendum-offences https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/public-statement...
    - PaulRobinson 9mo ago
      Part of the picture, sure. I wonder where Rock Holdings Ltd got its money - PC Plod never really looked into that.
  - youngtaff 9mo ago
    There's also the unpublished report into Russian interference with the Brexit referendum and UK politics
- pixl97 9mo ago
  >Did the brits expect the consequence of brexit? I mean there were plenty of what would be considered intelligent people that laid out the exact consequences of brexit... problem is the masses don't seem to pay attention to well mannered intelligent people.
PaulRobinson 9mo ago
A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in. You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/control for benefit of themselves rather than for the benefit of that public. It's not unique to the US, it's just that they look like they are speed running it from outside.
- BanAntiVaxxers 9mo ago
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  - pinnochio 9mo ago
    What's the intersection of Americans who won't vote for a woman presidential candidate and Americans who support MAGA? I imagine it's fairly high. That said, I don't believe there's a single factor that determined the election. A flip in any of a dozen or more factors could have resulted in a different outcome.
    - wat10000 9mo ago
      I’m sure it’s only a small percentage of voters who would have voted for a male Democrat. But that’s all it would take to flip that election. Our elections have been so close that there are numerous single factors determining the outcomes, if that makes sense.
      - pinnochio 9mo ago
        > Our elections have been so close that there are numerous single factors determining the outcomes, if that makes sense. Not sure if that's specifically directed at me, but that's exactly what I said.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
0xy 9mo ago
Those same economists warning about tariffs also warned it would lead to runaway skyrocketing inflation and quote "the mother of all recessions" [1] [2] [3], which objectively did not happen. The same economists were nowhere to be seen when prices doubled 2020-24 and the official inflation numbers were 13%. Once again proving that economists are engaged in mere astrology. You also frame the argument that the last administration was tariff opposed, after they issued a 10% blanket tariff on the US' largest trading partner and tariffed Canadian wood products, directly causing house prices to skyrocket during the pandemic. You will never consider those impacts, because you're engaged in a fundamentally political argument, not an economic one. The US has 4% GDP growth and a 2.7% inflation run rate. Wage growth is exceeding inflation again. Data doesn't lie, but economists do. Routinely. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other/economist-warns-of-mother-of-all-recessions-over-trump-plans/ar-AA1UrlBh https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other/economist-warns-of-moth... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/economy/inflation-trump-economy-larry-summers https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/economy/inflation-trump-econo... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/25/nobel-prize-economists-warn-trump-inflation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/25/nobel-prize-economists-warn-...
- threethirtytwo 9mo ago
  Weather prediction is the more apt analogy here. Astrology is total bullshit, while economics and weather is an attempt to predict the chaos.
  - somenameforme 9mo ago
    Astrology is probably far more apt than you might think, because most don't know the history of astrology. For centuries it was taught as a scholarly proper and real 'science.' Think of something like e.g. modern psychology. Various fields like social psychology have something like a 20% replication rate among top journals which means the entire field is pretty dodgy, but plenty of people keep on repeating the latest headlines, which even end up shared on here fairly frequently, and treating it like any other science. Astrology only really fell out of fashion due to a perfect storm of a bunch of different factors. The Church defacto banned aspects of it that implied external forces driving human behavior as that would contradict free will, and that happened just about the Renaissance was kicking off and all sorts of new astronomical discoveries led to no greater precision in astrological predictions, along with a more broadly skeptical shift in society, which gradually left it relegated to where it remains to this day. "My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth." - Carl Jung to Sigmund Freud, 1911 --- It's a great example of how what is deemed proper and scientific at one point in time is still heavily influenced by things that, in the future, will be considered 'obviously' nonsense. Even in far more modern times, it wasn't long ago that lobotomization was considered an appropriate psychological treatment. No less than JFK's sister [1] was lobotomized as a 'cure' for her irritability. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy
wolvoleo 9mo ago
I'm not American but I don't think tariffs were mentioned in Trump's campaign? It was more the 'stick it to the liberals' and 'drain the swamp' stuff. He only started that tariff stuff when he took office. Edit: Clearly I was not following things well enough, sorry for the wrong information.
- rozap 9mo ago
  What? He rambled about it all the time. It wasn't coherent but he did always say this is what he was going to do.
  - wolvoleo 9mo ago
    Oh ok I didn't follow it that closely of course but that part didn't make it into the news here. He did complain about the trade imbalance but not specifically tariffs. Ps: there isn't really a trade imbalance if you take services into accounts but Trump calculated them only on goods as if that makes sense I don't think that would have resonated with his followers at all though.
    - estearum 9mo ago
      Did it require more than 6 syllables? Then no: no resonance among the base.
- maccard 9mo ago
  He also ran as the “no war” president and has so far attempted to start two, and is likely to be involved in a third. Besides, he started the tariff nonsense in his first term - it even has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
- stevenwoo 9mo ago
  This is incredibly wrong and untrue. He promised a $2000 check to every American as a payoff from tariffs during election year and balance the budget at the same time. His chief economic advisor wrote a book on using tariffs to wage war on China and bring manufacturing to USA. He has talked about using tariffs as tool for decades. He just promises so many things, even contradictory things, that it might be hard to keep track of. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c209x48ndjpo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c209x48ndjpo
benj111 9mo ago
As a Brit who studied history, the parallels to 1930s Germany are too strong for comfort. So I would suggest reading up on that for some answers. Although as the comparison hopefully makes clear, you worrying about tariffs is missing the point, it's more a question of basic democracy at this point. I'm also somewhat concerned about your (edit: as in the USs) new found lust for Lebensraum, because again, that went well last time.
- bartread 9mo ago
  > I'm also somewhat concerned about your new found lust for Lebensraum I beg your pardon?!? Who the hell do you think you're talking to? Read my comment again.
  - benj111 9mo ago
    Are you not from the US? I wasn't accusing you personally of supporting your governments actions, but I think you as in your country is acceptable terminology.
    - bartread 9mo ago
      No. I literally said in my original comment that I'm not from the US.
      - benj111 9mo ago
        Ok my apologies, no insult intended, I edited the post to make my meaning more clear.
- igogq425 9mo ago
  As a German, I am generally cautious about drawing hasty parallels with the Holocaust, but I must admit: now that you mention it, the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel probably began their work in the streets of the country in a similar way to ICE today. """ Sturmabteilung (SA) The SA was formed in 1921 as the paramilitary fighting organization of the NSDAP and protected party events. After 1933, under Ernst Röhm, it carried out street violence against Jews, communists, and trade unions, grew to millions of members, but was crushed in 1934 in the Röhm Putsch. Schutzstaffel (SS) The SS started in 1925 as Hitler's elite bodyguard under Heinrich Himmler and emancipated itself from the SA. From 1934, it took over police duties, concentration camp guarding, and from 1936, the Gestapo, directing deportations and the Holocaust. """ It sends a chill down my spine when I think about this comparison. I recently heard about an ICE agent who tried to drag an indigenous woman out of her car and said to her, “You're next!”
dzink 9mo ago
The election is a state at a moment in time. Before the election, to affect the state, propaganda machines target whatever is lower on the maslow hierarchy of needs for the voters - pesky tariffs are a tiny issue compared to that boogeyman that wants to target your children. Someone’s freedom is a pesky thing compared to that immigrant boogeyman going after your retirement savings. Once people have voted because they are scared for their life savings and their children, the elected can do whatever they want and target whomever they want with impunity for several years. Especially if they start building their own militia and threatening the judiciary. This authoritarian model has proven very successful for anyone Putin and his aparatus has installed anywhere. Now it may be franchised even further.
- pixl97 9mo ago
  >that boogeyman It's depressingly funny too when you ask these people if they've ever been directly affected by said boogeyman and they'll say no, but the know someone that has. Meanwhile you can ask them things about healthcare, local government, and other matters that affect their daily life, and they'll swear the trans-immigrant-boogeyman de jour is has far more affect on their lives.
dominicrose 9mo ago
I'm not American but tariffs might be a way to "make America great again" because it makes it harder to trade with other countries. This means that it makes it relatively easier than before, to trade within the USA. Another effect is that it serves as a tax. Easy for me to say but I think Americans aren't taxed enough.
- nozzlegear 9mo ago
  Globalism evokes scary thoughts for a lot of people, but globalism is what made America great. Nobody wins when protectionists come to power.
  - jonathanstrange 9mo ago
    What I find so astonishing about this recent US "debate" is that I was taught in my German high school during the 1980s in a discipline called "Erdkunde" that the US is transitioning from a manufacturing to a service-oriented economy that would be vastly superior to the classical manufacturing-based approach and that Germany would need to make this transition, too, if we wanted to remain globally competitive. I don't want to glorify German high schools but I find it hard to believe that those school books were so wrong that 40 years later it would make sense to return to a manufacturing-oriented economy.
- andsoitis 9mo ago
  > I think Americans aren't taxed enough. If tariffs are a tax on the consumer, then you probably think the tariffs are in fact good ("American's aren't taxed enough"). But I'm more curious about what makes you think Americans aren't taxed enough. Why do you say that and do you have something specific in mind?
  - dominicrose 9mo ago
    I don't "like" taxes I just think that people are more generous when they are obliged to be. It won't make them generous on top of the taxes but at least they'll pay the damn taxes. I live in France where the taxes are much higher than in the US. It's annoying but there are clearly some advantages and we are adapted to a more humble lifestyle, which is fine.
onetokeoverthe 9mo ago
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eudamoniac 9mo ago
Like you observed, no one with a grasp of economics thought exporters would absorb the cost of these tariffs. That includes myself, a person who supports tariffs. I don't think it should be necessary to explain why tariffs might be desirable, because they were not invented by idiots, but I will explain briefly. Tariffs make foreign imports more expensive. This dissuades people from buying them. Some of those people will instead buy equivalent American made products, now that the price difference has lessened. I consider that a good thing. There will be pain while local manufacturing ramps up (or forever, if it never does) for products that have no domestic equivalent. That sucks, but sometimes things need to suck before they improve. Paying off the national debt, for example, is something I support, even if we have to slash a lot of useful spending for awhile. I think most rational Republicans are voting for these sorts of things despite knowing they will make things temporarily worse, in the hopes of an eventual better. The left tends to never do this, for they are very attuned to the immediate suffering their plans cause. The right tends to be less sensitive to the short term suffering their plans cause; the right thinks that the alternative, a slow decline, is worth the pain to avoid. Trump has bungled the implementation of the tariffs, but I still support their use in general. Fundamentally it makes no sense to me to support a minimum wage for your countrymen, but also support them importing massive amounts of slave made goods. You are creating rules on the supply side that the demand side does not have to follow, which only harms your own domestic businesses. Your own country's businesses have to compete against slave labor while paying living wages; for most manufacturing this is just not possible. You are incentivizing off shoring, which harms your working class, who have to compete with subminimum wage workers. Workers rights must be paired with tariffs, or every additional worker right is a demerit on his hireability against foreign workers without those rights! If you want your country to produce anything, and to have a strong working class, you either remove minimum wage, or you implement tariffs. We cannot simultaneously support strong domestic workers rights and mass importation of sweatshop goods that were made without them. It hollows out the country. Edit: I am rate limited though I would like to reply to some of my interlocutors. I will reply later.
- sowbug 9mo ago
  How do you reconcile attitudes about climate change with your generalization about short/long-term pain?
MonkeyClub 9mo ago
> but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. Exactly: tariffs are taxes in another guise. They only serve to create an (artificial) price advantage of local over imported goods for as long as they're levied. > What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN subset) that was clamoring for tariffs thought it'd be anyone other than them shouldering the increase. Perhaps their influencers didn't spell it out for them? Now everyone gets to pay more - and not just in the US.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  > I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN subset) that was clamoring for tariffs thought it'd be anyone other than them shouldering the increase. Perhaps their influencers didn't spell it out for them? Now I'm neither in the US, American nor Democrat/Republican, but as far as I understand their argument, is that they know it means higher costs for those products for them, and it'll eventually lead to companies wanting to produce things within the border, and only after that is in place, will things actually get cheaper (and better?). So I think for these people with that perspective, the idea is: everything cheap -> tariffs to make imports expensive > People buy less imports and companies start selling within the border > Eventually things get cheap. Again, this is just me trying to understand their perspective.
  - MonkeyClub 9mo ago
    Yep, I came down to a similar conclusion in my thinking, and assumed they wouldn't have thought of the cost of restarting local industry, or of importing foreign (tariffed) materials for the local industry to work with.
  - sciencejerk 9mo ago
    Thank you for offering an additional perspective. The article reads like the tariffs were a complete and total failure. You are saying it is too soon to tell, correct?
ifwinterco 9mo ago
Tariffs could make sense economically, but even in that case, they would "hurt consumers", because that's the whole point - address the imbalance between consumption and production currently being made to add up with constantly increasing debt. If you were going to do that though, it would be more like a 10-20% blanket tariff on all goods. No exceptions, no special deals, and you can't use tariffs as a negotiating tool. So that's not what's going on and the current approach doesn't make any sense economically
- estearum 9mo ago
  Or you can use tariffs in a highly targeted way to try defend certain domestic industries from foreign competition. But as is common with this administration, they're doing everything in the dumbest and least productive way possible.
  - ifwinterco 9mo ago
    Yep you're right, that would be another possible legitimate (sort of) use of tariffs. Make the case that (for example) steel production is a vital national interest which must be defended even if it results in higher steel prices. Of course it will result in higher prices, that's the point, but also the part politicians aren't too keen to spell out
  - greenavocado 9mo ago
    You misunderstand. Tariffs have always been in place like this. They are just expanded now. Enacted in 1988 via the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, the HTS replaced the older Tariff Schedules of the United States and took effect January 1, 1989. It aligns with the World Customs Organization's HS, adopted globally by over 200 countries. https://hts.usitc.gov/ https://hts.usitc.gov/ You can see the archive going to "2015 and older" here https://hts.usitc.gov/download/archive https://hts.usitc.gov/download/archive
    - estearum 9mo ago
      Do you think I’m under the belief tariffs are actually new? Sorry buddy but it is you who misunderstands.
0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
> What was going through your heads? The same thing as usual: people don't like how things are going, they demand change, but they're not specific, so the result is extreme, and then people demand change again, and on it goes. There's no great insight or rationale going on. People are just dumb animals in hats.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  That reminds me, I should wear my hat more.
kaicianflone 9mo ago
The incidence result isn’t surprising, but incidence alone isn’t a full policy critique. Consumers bear most taxes in general: corporate, VAT, payroll, etc. The real distinction is that tariffs are conditional. Currently, firms can avoid them by changing sourcing. That makes them more behavior-shaping than revenue maximizing. Given that the U.S. never reversed the TCJA corporate cuts from 2020-2024, tariffs are one of the few active levers currently increasing the marginal cost of offshore supply chains.
- DangitBobby 9mo ago
  But it's only a lever to behavior changes if it's possible for domestic supply chains to compete with the costs global + tariff supply chains. My understanding is it's pretty much unfathomable for US manufacturing to compete on even with eye-watering tariffs on any reasonable timeline, let alone the handful of years (I suspect) the local companies will expect tariffs to continue. So I expect it's just lever for government revenue and citizen pain. The past 40 years or so of neoliberalism has effectively and intentionally dismantled domestic manufacturing.
ethersteeds 9mo ago
Outside the specious argument that other countries would pay, the other more serious argument was that tarrifs would promote the growth of domestic alternatives. Yes it will hurt, they argued, but the long term effect will be a stronger and more independent domestic economy. And the pain is worth it for that end. There's plenty of evidence that what actually results are inferior products from domestic companies insulated from international competition, but that was the pitch. There's also a large group in the base that voted for this who already had an ideological "buy local even if it costs more" philosophy, so to them the proposal was just to force everyone else to join their cause.
- notahacker 9mo ago
  Thing is, whilst you can make that argument for carefully chosen tariffs in strategic industries (something basically every country including the US was already trying to do, for better and for worse), you don't get much domestic production realignment for arbitrarily large short term tariffs as a precursor to a "big beautiful deal" or punitive tariffs because other countries push back on your proposal to annex another country. Or indeed tariffs levied on the exports of uninhabited islands In some cases, the Trump tariffs have actually been so poorly designed that US manufacturing has been hit, because the tariffs on the raw materials and parts are higher than the tariffs on importing finished products from third countries...
WillPostForFood 9mo ago
to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. No, it is surprising, as noted in the article, because basic economics suggests that suppliers will adjust pricing, and eat some of the tariff to keep their products competitive. Page 5: This finding was initially surprising to some observers. Standard economic models suggest that the incidence of a tariff depends on the relative elasticities of supply and demand. If foreign exporters face highly elastic demand (meaning buyers can easily switch to alternatives), they might be expected to absorb part of the tariff to remain competitive.
- rorylawless 9mo ago
  Yes, however the next paragraph outlines why it wasn’t surprising to other observers. Summarized, low competition and structural constraints.
  - WillPostForFood 9mo ago
    Yes, so turns out people with a basic grasp of how economies function can have different models of how things work. This a great paper, and important in that it shows who is paying the tariffs in the examples they looked at. What it still leaves unaddressed is the obvious prediction of increase in CPI not really showing up.
  - SailorJerry 9mo ago
    Yes, the next paragraph explains why the surprised economists were wrong. I agree with the GP though that the GGP was too quick to say > to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function.
- DrScientist 9mo ago
  What that view ignores is the opposite which is what happens if sellers can easily switch to new alternatives? ie what happens if global demand exceeds supply and a lot of companies have never tried to find other markets because of the inertia required to do so - but if they are pushed by tariffs they find there are alternative customers out there. As an example - Canada appear to replaced trading food for cars with the US, to food for cars with China. https://www.facebook.com/TechXnew/posts/canada-has-made-a-decisive-trade-move-by-striking-a-major-agreement-with-china-s/889239380464555/ https://www.facebook.com/TechXnew/posts/canada-has-made-a-de...
cael450 9mo ago
I’ll never be able to respect someone who voted for tariffs because they were upset about inflation. Five minutes on Google would have shown how dumb that was.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  I don’t remember there being a big discussion before the election about Trump using tariffs as a giant stick to try to make the world do what he wants by punishing US citizens.
koolba 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I’m adamantly against all forms of illegal immigration. There are plenty of people around the world that want to come here and are willing to wait in line. I’m perfectly fine with the intentions and methods of the current administration. I’m in favor of doing whatever we can to increase our manufacturing base for the future. I’m perfectly fine with paying more for imported goods that I don’t actually buy anyway. Paying 95% for crap from China that I have no intention of purchasing does not impact me. I hate all taxes and do not consider it charitable to spend other people’s money. Taxes are a necessity as we need to fund government functions. But it is those functions that should be limited. Because government is generally terrible at most of them.
- ezst 9mo ago
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  - koolba 9mo ago
    > And Trump did what, exactly, make something already illegal even more illegal? That’s the best part! There’s no new laws necessary. We’re simply enforcing the laws on the books and means of enforcement that we as a nation have already agreed upon! > And now that you are ruled by a de facto fascist with the rule of law only applicable to his enemies, how is the payoff? On the upside, illegal immigration is no longer a primary concern, I guess. I fail to see how a democratically elected President that won both the electoral college and the popular vote is a “de facto fascist”. > Better to let everything be run by cartels instead, surely they will have your best interests at heart. There's not a single example of a functional and effective government out there, so why even try? There’s plenty of examples of functional governments and plenty of dysfunctional ones. There’s functional programs and dysfunctional ones. And just because something may work for a small homogenous population in close proximity of each other doesn’t mean it would work or make sense for a heterogeneous population spread across thousands of miles.
    - grumio 9mo ago
      They're not simply enforcing laws on the books. They're breaking them. https://abcnews.go.com/US/lawyers-allege-dept-homeland-security-denying-legal-counsel/story?id=129335914 https://abcnews.go.com/US/lawyers-allege-dept-homeland-secur... DHS denying legal council to detainees. https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigratio... ICE using chokeholds in defiance of DOJ standards for use of force. > after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed. > The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death. > In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him. > In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said. Is this new information to you, koolba? Or do you believe this is enforcement of laws on the books?
worksonmine 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. The point when Trump was elected was to make americans buy american and to get international companies to move their production to the U.S. In Sweden they did something similar when they thought people were buying too much cheap stuff directly from China instead of from the middlemen paying taxes. The solution was to add a tariff on cheap goods from China specifically. I don't enough to know if it works, but it's not a new strategy. In Trumps current politics though it's used more as a bargaining tool and not something that's supposed to stimulate the economy, is anyone even claiming it is the goal?
mirekrusin 9mo ago
Moving production to US, ie. they were thinking about 2nd order implications, in other words works as expected?
- hallole 9mo ago
  Yeah essentially this. In my mental model, tariffs give an advantage to domestic suppliers / penalize foreign suppliers, and thus encourage domestic production by making it more viable. And bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. has been a pretty big GOP selling point.
  - array_key_first 9mo ago
    The implementation matters a lot. When fiscal policy is hand-wavy and unreliable, manufacturers can't risk huge domestic capital investment. They're trying to strategize on the order of decades, this administration is more so acting on the order of weeks.
  - matwood 9mo ago
    > And bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. has been a pretty big GOP selling point. Which is comical since the US is the #2 manufacturer in the world behind China. And that makes sense given the absolute size of China. The US manufacturing output continues to increase every year. What's not increasing are the manufacturing jobs because of automation. If there are strategic industries the US wants bolster, like microchips, there are ways to handle that through long term incentives. The CHIPS act did this, but was killed by Trump because Biden put it in place.
    - mirekrusin 9mo ago
      > (...) Donald Trump (...) asked (...) to "get rid" of the (...) act. (...) However, as of October 2025 the Trump administration has instead preserved the Act, even adding an additional 10 percentage points to the advanced semiconductor manufacturing tax credit. (...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act Tariffs and this act are not mutually exclusive, they can be complementary and seems both are currently in place?
rich_sasha 9mo ago
It's still a bit of a mystery to me TBH. Not that Americans are paying it, but where's the cash? The headline suggests it was all passed into consumers. So why is inflation still so low? If you add 10-30% to prices (granted, of imports, not of houses, domestic food etc), you'd expect more. If companies were eating it (which apparently they aren't) then their profitability should be down. But that doesn't seem to be the case either. So..??? It's like that riddle with the three guys buying a pizza. Where did the money go?
- greenavocado 9mo ago
  Chinese exporters and the Beijing government absorb most US tariffs rather than passing them fully to American consumers. Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick: “The model is clear: 10% tariffs or less are paid by the manufacturers, the distributors, the businesses,” he said. “The consumer doesn’t pay. The consumer doesn’t pay because the seller doesn’t want to raise prices, because if they could, they would, but they don’t want to sell less. So they eat it.” https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/lutnick-beijing-eating-majority-chinas-52-average-tariffs https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/lutnick-beijing-eating-maj...
  - jbm 9mo ago
    The article we are commenting on literally says 96% is paid for by Americans. Do you have a reason to accept Lutnick's position?
    - greenavocado 9mo ago
      Section 1 Paragraph 4: Every dollar of tariff revenue represents a dollar extracted from American businesses and households. Why am I not paying substantially more year over year for the wide variety of things I purchase?
      - jbm 9mo ago
        I feel we should have an independent source by now if that was true. Thousands of Chinese suppliers all taking losses to keep market share seems unlikely. A government program would have been clearly shown too. I think it is more likely that goods are being labelled with different origins and being imported through preexisting treaties like NAFTA (I forgot the Trumpian name for his negotiated version), or that Economists are shameless modern tortoise shell baking shamans that we need to sacrifice to appease angry dead ancestors.
melvinmelih 9mo ago
“Sir, you have the vote of every thinking person.” “That’s not enough — I need a majority.” — Adlai Stevenson
RandomTisk 9mo ago
Who ultimately pays the tariffs is missing the forest for the trees, their primary function is to tax, and taxation virtually always reduces spending. Don't want to pay tariffs? Buy domestic. Tariffs are the single reason (or one of very few) that the US isn't flooded with BYD electric cars from China. China's dirt cheap labor could decimate the US auto industry, but for tariffs and trade regulation, but I repeat myself.
- engineer_22 9mo ago
  > the US isn't flooded with BYD electric cars from China. China's dirt cheap labor could decimate the US auto industry, What you're describing is called "dumping", and it's a strategy China has used to varying degrees of success in other markets in order to destabilize foreign industries. It could be seen as an act of war. Chinese labor is not actually so cheap anymore, many other developing nations are significantly less expensive. But China's secret weapon is total control and coordination across industries. They use this to subsidize target industries for the export market. You've highlighted automakers, but they also target steel, aluminum, and others. To a casual observer it almost appears as if they were targeting industries that could be readily adapted to wartime production.
- NetMageSCW 9mo ago
  That’s an incredibly naive position that assumes there are domestic options available for most things, and that they would be cheaper than tariffed items.
- tartuffe78 9mo ago
  They're putting tariffs on things you can't buy or produce domestically, rubber, coffee, etc.
lovlar 9mo ago
One of the main reasons we end up with populist leaders who make decisions not in the interest of their population, but in service of their own pursuit of power, is social media and the attention economy. If people stopped spending hours each day scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook feeds, media incentives would change. Journalism would become more thorough and responsible, rather than optimized for outrage and clicks. People’s attention spans would recover, making them more capable of listening to opposing views and engaging in meaningful discussion. The overall quality of public debate would improve, and political leaders would be chosen based on objective, long-term policies rather than emotional manipulation. The reinforcement-learning algorithms that drive these feeds are fundamentally unnatural. They represent a massive, uncontrolled social experiment on humanity—one that is far too powerful for our psychological reward systems to handle. What needs to happen is education. Education on how the attention economy works. People must learn to resist becoming social media junkies, because every hour surrendered to these platforms reinforces the very systems that distort public discourse. When we lose control over our attention, we don’t just harm ourselves—we actively worsen the societal conditions that enable manipulation, polarization, and poor political leadership.
- throwaway_aiai 9mo ago
  Why did you feel the need to use an LLM to compose this comment?
  - lovlar 9mo ago
    English is not my native language, and I wanted to clean up the grammar.
    - frikk 9mo ago
      That's a great reason. I didn't pick up on usage of AI, it reads naturally.
      - dr-detroit 9mo ago
        [dead]
Workaccount2 9mo ago
Most people seem totally unaware that Bernie Sanders was (and probably secretly still is) a big proponent of tariffs. Horseshoe theory and all that, populists gonna populist.
DrScientist 9mo ago
Depends on your goals - what I see is it increases US government income to help reduce deficit ( without the political fall out from raising direct taxes ), and at the same time encouraging businesses to move manufacturing to the US to avoid tariffs. And in terms of burden - the cost hits the poor the most - but if your a billionaire funder of US political parties that's the point. For a non-US person the most worrying aspect of this is that it also helps make the US more self-sufficient which means it's better prepared to go to war - which is not really good news.
lijok 9mo ago
> to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function So roughly 98% of the population was surprised?
jedberg 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I know two people who voted for him. Person one has voted Democrat her whole life. Has worked for the Democratic Party. Has a son who was a Democratic elected official. But she lives in Texas, and watches too much local news, and believed that murderous immigrants were pouring over the border, guns blazing, taking out innocent American citizens daily at the beach and grocery store. So she voted for him because she believed only he could stop this from happening. Person two is a wealthy white boomer. His business already runs in America. He actually has an advanced degree in economics. He believed that the tariffs would only be used surgically by smart people to protect American business. He is not personally affected by any of the racist policies or any of the other shenanigans. So he voted for him because he liked the protectionist and tax cut policies. He regrets his vote. I haven't spoken to her in months because she stopped talking to me when I kept show her that her "facts" were made up.
leet_thow 9mo ago
Where on the US ballot was there an option to vote for tariffs? If I recall correctly, we vote for presidents, senators and the congress who have policy stances on a variety of issues. There are usually only two options, one of which stands for open borders, not enforcing laws, socialism and demonizing people who choose the other option on the ballot. A large cohort of independents didn't vote for republicans, they voted AGAINST democrats.
intended 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I like the idea of reaching across the aisle. However the divide is no longer the gap of a few feet. It’s a different world, with different rules. I just checked yougov, and Trump has an 88% approval rating amongst Republicans. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/donald-trump-approval?crossBreak=republican https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/donald-tru... Do check, since one hopes I erred in reading the chart. The victory of Trump is mostly the same process that gave the UK Brexit. Just people acting based on the information they are being provided. If the other side is filled with feckless buffoons, and every source of news you have is telling you the same thing, then what else will someone do?
dgellow 9mo ago
> have been warning about this since talk of tariffs became common currency a year ago. 10 years ago
skippyboxedhero 9mo ago
There are multiple research papers that indicate that this result (in terms of what you think the paper says) is not obvious. Indeed, to think this is the case, you need an extremely superficial understanding of economics based around "rules" that only exist in theory. And, if you read the paper, you will find that evidence. How these work depends on initial conditions that vary and exporters will not react in a consistent way. As a specific example, theoretical research in this area tends to make assumptions around the stationarity of margins that are obviously ludicrous in the context of reality in the US. It is quite easy to justify almost any policy with theoretical research in economics so people who have no understanding of economics will find evidence for whatever position they choose. Reality is quite different.
- malfist 9mo ago
  Can you name some of those peer reviewed publications say that tariffs wouldn't be paid by the consumer?
  - CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
    Below is the #1 paper, extraordinarily widely cited. They found that countries with significant market power systematically set higher tariffs on goods with inelastic supply, and in these cases the exporter lowers their price to absorb the tariff, improving the importer's terms of trade. https://www.columbia.edu/~dew35/Papers/Optimal_Tariffs_Market_Power.pdf https://www.columbia.edu/~dew35/Papers/Optimal_Tariffs_Marke...
  - skippyboxedhero 9mo ago
    There was a paper, that i am not going to dig out, on the first set of China tariffs by Trump that found that exporters reduced margins. You don't have to look far, you just need to look a few years ago. For some reason, the claims made earlier last year were apocalyptic despite there being clear evidence from the very recent past that this wasn't the case (making money in equities last year was terribly easy). Btw, you can find papers where tariffs are paid by consumer, where they aren't, where there is no effect. The thing that is being measured is completely different to the actual tariffs. The impact, like everything in economics, depends on the context in which the tool is used. That context is typically hard to model, so we end up with a lot of shitty papers claiming that it is about the tariff when it is about the context/implementation/etc.
seattlematt 9mo ago
First, people vote on a candidate, not a single issue. Many voted for Trump despite his tariffs stance rather than because of it. Second, reducing consumer prices was not the goal of the tariffs. The primary goals were to encourage companies to move manufacturing to the US and to be used as leverage in negotiating other matters with foreign leaders.
pton_xd 9mo ago
> to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. Trump and his entire administration admitted there would be short term pain, possibly a recession, but that it would be "worth it" to restructure the economy. So the question is: how long does the pain last? And is the economy stronger when it's over (do we get over it)? It's been 9 months so far. From my perspective the policy goals are very unclear since it seems like they're actively wielding tariffs both as a means to reorganize the economy and as a weapon to bully other countries. Mainly bullying. The intended effectiveness on our economy seems difficult to judge.
singingbard 9mo ago
The founders were skeptical of direct democracy because it assumes people have time and expertise they mostly don’t. People should not be voting based on their understanding of tariffs. It’s why we ended up with a republic. But social media changes the equation entirely. It gives us the speed of direct democracy without any of the structure or responsibility. It pushes people to judge candidates issue-by-issue, often on topics they don’t understand well, while eroding the deliberative layers a republic is supposed to have. The problem isn’t people or education — America didn’t get this far because Americans are any smarter or dumber than anyone else. It’s the design of the systems. The founding fathers built a system that has so far lasted almost 250 years. You cannot expect people to change — safety protocols, procedures, govenments — it’s about the systems.
- engineer_22 9mo ago
  I think you've hit on a good point. As a society we're still trying to figure out how to rule ourselves in the age of Social Media. Let's pray we're able to figure it out before more blood is shed.
- atoav 9mo ago
  In my book it is the duty of a democratic state to keep its population educated to make educated decisions. If you look at countries with more direct democracy like Switzerland not all the decisions are perfect, but they are by no means worse than if you had replaced the public vote with politicians that are heavily lobbied by corporate interest and have a time horizon that ends at their next election. In fact you will find that in many cases the population will even vote for unpopular measures if they are discussed and understood well ahead of the decision. But in the end that requires a decent education of the masses, a well functioning and uncaptured media landscape and a certain amount of democratic practise, all of which are missing in big parts of the US. Democracy is something everybody actively needs to work on, otherwise it withers. If you want to have a nice village it works best if everybody perceives themselves as an agent of creating a nice village. If you want a shit village, you best give everybody the impression it is somebody elses task.
engineer_22 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious Many people were thinking Joe Biden was looking old... Until 2 months before the election when a faceless political elite replaced him with a candidate who had repeatedly lied about Joe Biden looking old. The American public might be stupid, but they don't like being treated as though they are stupid - which is exactly what the DNC did.
jaredklewis 9mo ago
There is basically no overlap between the things that economists generally say are good (free trade, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, immigration, land value taxes, organ trade, congestion pricing, etc…) and the things that populists of either the left or right say are good (rent control, price controls, tariffs, wealth taxes, debt relief, minimum parking requirements, etc…). Why would you (or anyone) be surprised that economically sound policies are not popular? They are not popular in the US. They are not popular in Europe. They’re not even popular on HN. For reasons I don’t understand, almost everyone hates economics.
- superb_dev 9mo ago
  Because the economy doesn’t work for the average citizen, the economy works to make the numbers bigger
  - jaredklewis 9mo ago
    Well, those numbers economists are working to make bigger are often things that help the average citizen, like the median household income income, the median life expectancy, or the literacy rate. Sometimes economists are studying how to make numbers lower as well, like the median cost of housing or inflation.
- fruitworks 9mo ago
  good for whom?
- owisd 9mo ago
  Economics is usually optimising for a narrow utility function, usually something to do with price discovery, but that doesn’t normally align with more human societal goals. Take, say, surge pricing. Maybe without surge pricing you pay $60 for a taxi but have to wait 30 mins when it’s busy. With surge pricing at busy times it’s $120, so people who can afford $120 wait 0 minutes but people who can only afford $60 have to wait 2 hours for surge pricing to end. “Economists generally” would say surge pricing was better, but voters and politicians are considering the wider trade off of whether it’s fair some people get to jump the queue and some people have to wait longer. There’s also usually a bait-and-switch where the people having to wait 2hrs are told that the $120 will generate more in taxes so if they vote for surge pricing they’d actually be better off, then the $120 is spent lobbying to ensure the taxes never materialise.
ryan_n 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I don't think it's a simple answer. A couple things that likely contributed (I'm not an expert, just my opinion): there is an EXTRAORDINARY amount of propaganda being spread, whether people realize it or not, on and off the internet that gets consumed nearly 24/7. This happens on both sides of course, but think about some of the events leading up to the election. Musk bought twitter and quite literally turned it into a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine. The general "drain the swamp attitude" that the administration parroted during the election (and first term) represented a change from how "traditional" politicians/government do things. People value that even if they don't understand/think about how it would affect them personally. This ultimately lead to demonizing the federal work force and mass random firings (in many cases having nothing to do with merit). Trump also represented a push towards traditional values and national identity, which for some people was more important than whatever economic plan Trump had to improve things in the country. Other than tariffs, did he even have a plan? I don't know. But many people didn't/don't seem to care.
rsynnott 9mo ago
> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. See Brexit. As Michael Gove said, the people have had enough of experts; for a certain sort of person, not understanding things is a badge of pride, and they're more liable to trust people like Trump, who transparently do _not_ understand things, than _experts_.
weirdmantis69 9mo ago
So since you are so smart what do you think of the trade deficit collapsing?
- digitalPhonix 9mo ago
  Is it? https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0015.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0015.html 2025 deficit is not much smaller 2024 (looks within the normal year to year variance) and 2025’s deficit is still larger than 2023 and 2021. Definitely not collapsing.
omilu 9mo ago
Cost is not the only factor voters considered, bringing manufacturing jobs and expertise back to US is a big part of the tariff push. If cost were the only factor everyone would buy the cheapest crap off temu or amazon. People are willing to pay a premium for the hope of bringing manufacturing back and reducing reliance on foreign sources.
option_behavior 9mo ago
Tariffs are basically a stealth consumption tax. No big deal. Similar to an extremely modest increase in local consumption taxes or income tax.
EasyMark 9mo ago
I have a suspicion very few of HN voted for this, probably less than 1/4

amelius 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. See also Brexit.

hirako2000 9mo ago

It isn't US specific and what goes into people's head is what propaganda wants it to be. Economics tell people the clear impact, but it doesn't make the news. We get fed with whatever the political influencers decide to tell us. Did the brits expect the consequence of brexit? No but that's because they deemed whatever the news said to be unreliable on this topic. Which for once happened to be true.

PaulRobinson 9mo ago
Actually, it's pretty clear to those who have been paying attention that the main influence that swung the polls by about 4% from Remain to Leave in the last 2 days was a £10m advertising campaign on Facebook packed with lies, paid for by a Brexiteer who can't quite explain to the Electoral Commission where that money came from, but it did seem to just "appear" a few days after he allegedly met with the Russian ambassador to the UK. I'd get out more, but my tinfoil hat doesn't like the rain.
- bjelkeman-again 9mo ago
  Is it this one you are talking about? https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/public-statement-on-nca-investigation-into-suspected-eu-referendum-offences https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/public-statement...
  - PaulRobinson 9mo ago
    Part of the picture, sure. I wonder where Rock Holdings Ltd got its money - PC Plod never really looked into that.
- youngtaff 9mo ago
  There's also the unpublished report into Russian interference with the Brexit referendum and UK politics
pixl97 9mo ago
>Did the brits expect the consequence of brexit? I mean there were plenty of what would be considered intelligent people that laid out the exact consequences of brexit... problem is the masses don't seem to pay attention to well mannered intelligent people.

PaulRobinson 9mo ago

A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in. You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/control for benefit of themselves rather than for the benefit of that public. It's not unique to the US, it's just that they look like they are speed running it from outside.

BanAntiVaxxers 9mo ago
[flagged]
- pinnochio 9mo ago
  What's the intersection of Americans who won't vote for a woman presidential candidate and Americans who support MAGA? I imagine it's fairly high. That said, I don't believe there's a single factor that determined the election. A flip in any of a dozen or more factors could have resulted in a different outcome.
  - wat10000 9mo ago
    I’m sure it’s only a small percentage of voters who would have voted for a male Democrat. But that’s all it would take to flip that election. Our elections have been so close that there are numerous single factors determining the outcomes, if that makes sense.
    - pinnochio 9mo ago
      > Our elections have been so close that there are numerous single factors determining the outcomes, if that makes sense. Not sure if that's specifically directed at me, but that's exactly what I said.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]

0xy 9mo ago

Those same economists warning about tariffs also warned it would lead to runaway skyrocketing inflation and quote "the mother of all recessions" [1] [2] [3], which objectively did not happen. The same economists were nowhere to be seen when prices doubled 2020-24 and the official inflation numbers were 13%. Once again proving that economists are engaged in mere astrology. You also frame the argument that the last administration was tariff opposed, after they issued a 10% blanket tariff on the US' largest trading partner and tariffed Canadian wood products, directly causing house prices to skyrocket during the pandemic. You will never consider those impacts, because you're engaged in a fundamentally political argument, not an economic one. The US has 4% GDP growth and a 2.7% inflation run rate. Wage growth is exceeding inflation again. Data doesn't lie, but economists do. Routinely. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other/economist-warns-of-mother-of-all-recessions-over-trump-plans/ar-AA1UrlBh https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other/economist-warns-of-moth... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/economy/inflation-trump-economy-larry-summers https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/economy/inflation-trump-econo... [3] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/25/nobel-prize-economists-warn-trump-inflation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/25/nobel-prize-economists-warn-...

threethirtytwo 9mo ago
Weather prediction is the more apt analogy here. Astrology is total bullshit, while economics and weather is an attempt to predict the chaos.
- somenameforme 9mo ago
  Astrology is probably far more apt than you might think, because most don't know the history of astrology. For centuries it was taught as a scholarly proper and real 'science.' Think of something like e.g. modern psychology. Various fields like social psychology have something like a 20% replication rate among top journals which means the entire field is pretty dodgy, but plenty of people keep on repeating the latest headlines, which even end up shared on here fairly frequently, and treating it like any other science. Astrology only really fell out of fashion due to a perfect storm of a bunch of different factors. The Church defacto banned aspects of it that implied external forces driving human behavior as that would contradict free will, and that happened just about the Renaissance was kicking off and all sorts of new astronomical discoveries led to no greater precision in astrological predictions, along with a more broadly skeptical shift in society, which gradually left it relegated to where it remains to this day. "My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth." - Carl Jung to Sigmund Freud, 1911 --- It's a great example of how what is deemed proper and scientific at one point in time is still heavily influenced by things that, in the future, will be considered 'obviously' nonsense. Even in far more modern times, it wasn't long ago that lobotomization was considered an appropriate psychological treatment. No less than JFK's sister [1] was lobotomized as a 'cure' for her irritability. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy

wolvoleo 9mo ago

I'm not American but I don't think tariffs were mentioned in Trump's campaign? It was more the 'stick it to the liberals' and 'drain the swamp' stuff. He only started that tariff stuff when he took office. Edit: Clearly I was not following things well enough, sorry for the wrong information.

rozap 9mo ago
What? He rambled about it all the time. It wasn't coherent but he did always say this is what he was going to do.
- wolvoleo 9mo ago
  Oh ok I didn't follow it that closely of course but that part didn't make it into the news here. He did complain about the trade imbalance but not specifically tariffs. Ps: there isn't really a trade imbalance if you take services into accounts but Trump calculated them only on goods as if that makes sense I don't think that would have resonated with his followers at all though.
  - estearum 9mo ago
    Did it require more than 6 syllables? Then no: no resonance among the base.
maccard 9mo ago
He also ran as the “no war” president and has so far attempted to start two, and is likely to be involved in a third. Besides, he started the tariff nonsense in his first term - it even has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
stevenwoo 9mo ago
This is incredibly wrong and untrue. He promised a $2000 check to every American as a payoff from tariffs during election year and balance the budget at the same time. His chief economic advisor wrote a book on using tariffs to wage war on China and bring manufacturing to USA. He has talked about using tariffs as tool for decades. He just promises so many things, even contradictory things, that it might be hard to keep track of. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c209x48ndjpo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c209x48ndjpo

benj111 9mo ago

As a Brit who studied history, the parallels to 1930s Germany are too strong for comfort. So I would suggest reading up on that for some answers. Although as the comparison hopefully makes clear, you worrying about tariffs is missing the point, it's more a question of basic democracy at this point. I'm also somewhat concerned about your (edit: as in the USs) new found lust for Lebensraum, because again, that went well last time.

bartread 9mo ago
> I'm also somewhat concerned about your new found lust for Lebensraum I beg your pardon?!? Who the hell do you think you're talking to? Read my comment again.
- benj111 9mo ago
  Are you not from the US? I wasn't accusing you personally of supporting your governments actions, but I think you as in your country is acceptable terminology.
  - bartread 9mo ago
    No. I literally said in my original comment that I'm not from the US.
    - benj111 9mo ago
      Ok my apologies, no insult intended, I edited the post to make my meaning more clear.
igogq425 9mo ago
As a German, I am generally cautious about drawing hasty parallels with the Holocaust, but I must admit: now that you mention it, the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel probably began their work in the streets of the country in a similar way to ICE today. """ Sturmabteilung (SA) The SA was formed in 1921 as the paramilitary fighting organization of the NSDAP and protected party events. After 1933, under Ernst Röhm, it carried out street violence against Jews, communists, and trade unions, grew to millions of members, but was crushed in 1934 in the Röhm Putsch. Schutzstaffel (SS) The SS started in 1925 as Hitler's elite bodyguard under Heinrich Himmler and emancipated itself from the SA. From 1934, it took over police duties, concentration camp guarding, and from 1936, the Gestapo, directing deportations and the Holocaust. """ It sends a chill down my spine when I think about this comparison. I recently heard about an ICE agent who tried to drag an indigenous woman out of her car and said to her, “You're next!”

dzink 9mo ago

The election is a state at a moment in time. Before the election, to affect the state, propaganda machines target whatever is lower on the maslow hierarchy of needs for the voters - pesky tariffs are a tiny issue compared to that boogeyman that wants to target your children. Someone’s freedom is a pesky thing compared to that immigrant boogeyman going after your retirement savings. Once people have voted because they are scared for their life savings and their children, the elected can do whatever they want and target whomever they want with impunity for several years. Especially if they start building their own militia and threatening the judiciary. This authoritarian model has proven very successful for anyone Putin and his aparatus has installed anywhere. Now it may be franchised even further.

pixl97 9mo ago
>that boogeyman It's depressingly funny too when you ask these people if they've ever been directly affected by said boogeyman and they'll say no, but the know someone that has. Meanwhile you can ask them things about healthcare, local government, and other matters that affect their daily life, and they'll swear the trans-immigrant-boogeyman de jour is has far more affect on their lives.

dominicrose 9mo ago

I'm not American but tariffs might be a way to "make America great again" because it makes it harder to trade with other countries. This means that it makes it relatively easier than before, to trade within the USA. Another effect is that it serves as a tax. Easy for me to say but I think Americans aren't taxed enough.

nozzlegear 9mo ago
Globalism evokes scary thoughts for a lot of people, but globalism is what made America great. Nobody wins when protectionists come to power.
- jonathanstrange 9mo ago
  What I find so astonishing about this recent US "debate" is that I was taught in my German high school during the 1980s in a discipline called "Erdkunde" that the US is transitioning from a manufacturing to a service-oriented economy that would be vastly superior to the classical manufacturing-based approach and that Germany would need to make this transition, too, if we wanted to remain globally competitive. I don't want to glorify German high schools but I find it hard to believe that those school books were so wrong that 40 years later it would make sense to return to a manufacturing-oriented economy.
andsoitis 9mo ago
> I think Americans aren't taxed enough. If tariffs are a tax on the consumer, then you probably think the tariffs are in fact good ("American's aren't taxed enough"). But I'm more curious about what makes you think Americans aren't taxed enough. Why do you say that and do you have something specific in mind?
- dominicrose 9mo ago
  I don't "like" taxes I just think that people are more generous when they are obliged to be. It won't make them generous on top of the taxes but at least they'll pay the damn taxes. I live in France where the taxes are much higher than in the US. It's annoying but there are clearly some advantages and we are adapted to a more humble lifestyle, which is fine.

onetokeoverthe 9mo ago

[dead]

eudamoniac 9mo ago

Like you observed, no one with a grasp of economics thought exporters would absorb the cost of these tariffs. That includes myself, a person who supports tariffs. I don't think it should be necessary to explain why tariffs might be desirable, because they were not invented by idiots, but I will explain briefly. Tariffs make foreign imports more expensive. This dissuades people from buying them. Some of those people will instead buy equivalent American made products, now that the price difference has lessened. I consider that a good thing. There will be pain while local manufacturing ramps up (or forever, if it never does) for products that have no domestic equivalent. That sucks, but sometimes things need to suck before they improve. Paying off the national debt, for example, is something I support, even if we have to slash a lot of useful spending for awhile. I think most rational Republicans are voting for these sorts of things despite knowing they will make things temporarily worse, in the hopes of an eventual better. The left tends to never do this, for they are very attuned to the immediate suffering their plans cause. The right tends to be less sensitive to the short term suffering their plans cause; the right thinks that the alternative, a slow decline, is worth the pain to avoid. Trump has bungled the implementation of the tariffs, but I still support their use in general. Fundamentally it makes no sense to me to support a minimum wage for your countrymen, but also support them importing massive amounts of slave made goods. You are creating rules on the supply side that the demand side does not have to follow, which only harms your own domestic businesses. Your own country's businesses have to compete against slave labor while paying living wages; for most manufacturing this is just not possible. You are incentivizing off shoring, which harms your working class, who have to compete with subminimum wage workers. Workers rights must be paired with tariffs, or every additional worker right is a demerit on his hireability against foreign workers without those rights! If you want your country to produce anything, and to have a strong working class, you either remove minimum wage, or you implement tariffs. We cannot simultaneously support strong domestic workers rights and mass importation of sweatshop goods that were made without them. It hollows out the country. Edit: I am rate limited though I would like to reply to some of my interlocutors. I will reply later.

sowbug 9mo ago
How do you reconcile attitudes about climate change with your generalization about short/long-term pain?

MonkeyClub 9mo ago

> but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. Exactly: tariffs are taxes in another guise. They only serve to create an (artificial) price advantage of local over imported goods for as long as they're levied. > What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN subset) that was clamoring for tariffs thought it'd be anyone other than them shouldering the increase. Perhaps their influencers didn't spell it out for them? Now everyone gets to pay more - and not just in the US.

embedding-shape 9mo ago
> I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN subset) that was clamoring for tariffs thought it'd be anyone other than them shouldering the increase. Perhaps their influencers didn't spell it out for them? Now I'm neither in the US, American nor Democrat/Republican, but as far as I understand their argument, is that they know it means higher costs for those products for them, and it'll eventually lead to companies wanting to produce things within the border, and only after that is in place, will things actually get cheaper (and better?). So I think for these people with that perspective, the idea is: everything cheap -> tariffs to make imports expensive > People buy less imports and companies start selling within the border > Eventually things get cheap. Again, this is just me trying to understand their perspective.
- MonkeyClub 9mo ago
  Yep, I came down to a similar conclusion in my thinking, and assumed they wouldn't have thought of the cost of restarting local industry, or of importing foreign (tariffed) materials for the local industry to work with.
- sciencejerk 9mo ago
  Thank you for offering an additional perspective. The article reads like the tariffs were a complete and total failure. You are saying it is too soon to tell, correct?

ifwinterco 9mo ago

Tariffs could make sense economically, but even in that case, they would "hurt consumers", because that's the whole point - address the imbalance between consumption and production currently being made to add up with constantly increasing debt. If you were going to do that though, it would be more like a 10-20% blanket tariff on all goods. No exceptions, no special deals, and you can't use tariffs as a negotiating tool. So that's not what's going on and the current approach doesn't make any sense economically

estearum 9mo ago
Or you can use tariffs in a highly targeted way to try defend certain domestic industries from foreign competition. But as is common with this administration, they're doing everything in the dumbest and least productive way possible.
- ifwinterco 9mo ago
  Yep you're right, that would be another possible legitimate (sort of) use of tariffs. Make the case that (for example) steel production is a vital national interest which must be defended even if it results in higher steel prices. Of course it will result in higher prices, that's the point, but also the part politicians aren't too keen to spell out
- greenavocado 9mo ago
  You misunderstand. Tariffs have always been in place like this. They are just expanded now. Enacted in 1988 via the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, the HTS replaced the older Tariff Schedules of the United States and took effect January 1, 1989. It aligns with the World Customs Organization's HS, adopted globally by over 200 countries. https://hts.usitc.gov/ https://hts.usitc.gov/ You can see the archive going to "2015 and older" here https://hts.usitc.gov/download/archive https://hts.usitc.gov/download/archive
  - estearum 9mo ago
    Do you think I’m under the belief tariffs are actually new? Sorry buddy but it is you who misunderstands.

0xbadcafebee 9mo ago

> What was going through your heads? The same thing as usual: people don't like how things are going, they demand change, but they're not specific, so the result is extreme, and then people demand change again, and on it goes. There's no great insight or rationale going on. People are just dumb animals in hats.

NetMageSCW 9mo ago
That reminds me, I should wear my hat more.

kaicianflone 9mo ago

The incidence result isn’t surprising, but incidence alone isn’t a full policy critique. Consumers bear most taxes in general: corporate, VAT, payroll, etc. The real distinction is that tariffs are conditional. Currently, firms can avoid them by changing sourcing. That makes them more behavior-shaping than revenue maximizing. Given that the U.S. never reversed the TCJA corporate cuts from 2020-2024, tariffs are one of the few active levers currently increasing the marginal cost of offshore supply chains.

DangitBobby 9mo ago
But it's only a lever to behavior changes if it's possible for domestic supply chains to compete with the costs global + tariff supply chains. My understanding is it's pretty much unfathomable for US manufacturing to compete on even with eye-watering tariffs on any reasonable timeline, let alone the handful of years (I suspect) the local companies will expect tariffs to continue. So I expect it's just lever for government revenue and citizen pain. The past 40 years or so of neoliberalism has effectively and intentionally dismantled domestic manufacturing.

ethersteeds 9mo ago

Outside the specious argument that other countries would pay, the other more serious argument was that tarrifs would promote the growth of domestic alternatives. Yes it will hurt, they argued, but the long term effect will be a stronger and more independent domestic economy. And the pain is worth it for that end. There's plenty of evidence that what actually results are inferior products from domestic companies insulated from international competition, but that was the pitch. There's also a large group in the base that voted for this who already had an ideological "buy local even if it costs more" philosophy, so to them the proposal was just to force everyone else to join their cause.

notahacker 9mo ago
Thing is, whilst you can make that argument for carefully chosen tariffs in strategic industries (something basically every country including the US was already trying to do, for better and for worse), you don't get much domestic production realignment for arbitrarily large short term tariffs as a precursor to a "big beautiful deal" or punitive tariffs because other countries push back on your proposal to annex another country. Or indeed tariffs levied on the exports of uninhabited islands In some cases, the Trump tariffs have actually been so poorly designed that US manufacturing has been hit, because the tariffs on the raw materials and parts are higher than the tariffs on importing finished products from third countries...

WillPostForFood 9mo ago

to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. No, it is surprising, as noted in the article, because basic economics suggests that suppliers will adjust pricing, and eat some of the tariff to keep their products competitive. Page 5: This finding was initially surprising to some observers. Standard economic models suggest that the incidence of a tariff depends on the relative elasticities of supply and demand. If foreign exporters face highly elastic demand (meaning buyers can easily switch to alternatives), they might be expected to absorb part of the tariff to remain competitive.

rorylawless 9mo ago
Yes, however the next paragraph outlines why it wasn’t surprising to other observers. Summarized, low competition and structural constraints.
- WillPostForFood 9mo ago
  Yes, so turns out people with a basic grasp of how economies function can have different models of how things work. This a great paper, and important in that it shows who is paying the tariffs in the examples they looked at. What it still leaves unaddressed is the obvious prediction of increase in CPI not really showing up.
- SailorJerry 9mo ago
  Yes, the next paragraph explains why the surprised economists were wrong. I agree with the GP though that the GGP was too quick to say > to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function.
DrScientist 9mo ago
What that view ignores is the opposite which is what happens if sellers can easily switch to new alternatives? ie what happens if global demand exceeds supply and a lot of companies have never tried to find other markets because of the inertia required to do so - but if they are pushed by tariffs they find there are alternative customers out there. As an example - Canada appear to replaced trading food for cars with the US, to food for cars with China. https://www.facebook.com/TechXnew/posts/canada-has-made-a-decisive-trade-move-by-striking-a-major-agreement-with-china-s/889239380464555/ https://www.facebook.com/TechXnew/posts/canada-has-made-a-de...

cael450 9mo ago

I’ll never be able to respect someone who voted for tariffs because they were upset about inflation. Five minutes on Google would have shown how dumb that was.

NetMageSCW 9mo ago
I don’t remember there being a big discussion before the election about Trump using tariffs as a giant stick to try to make the world do what he wants by punishing US citizens.

koolba 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I’m adamantly against all forms of illegal immigration. There are plenty of people around the world that want to come here and are willing to wait in line. I’m perfectly fine with the intentions and methods of the current administration. I’m in favor of doing whatever we can to increase our manufacturing base for the future. I’m perfectly fine with paying more for imported goods that I don’t actually buy anyway. Paying 95% for crap from China that I have no intention of purchasing does not impact me. I hate all taxes and do not consider it charitable to spend other people’s money. Taxes are a necessity as we need to fund government functions. But it is those functions that should be limited. Because government is generally terrible at most of them.

ezst 9mo ago
[flagged]
- koolba 9mo ago
  > And Trump did what, exactly, make something already illegal even more illegal? That’s the best part! There’s no new laws necessary. We’re simply enforcing the laws on the books and means of enforcement that we as a nation have already agreed upon! > And now that you are ruled by a de facto fascist with the rule of law only applicable to his enemies, how is the payoff? On the upside, illegal immigration is no longer a primary concern, I guess. I fail to see how a democratically elected President that won both the electoral college and the popular vote is a “de facto fascist”. > Better to let everything be run by cartels instead, surely they will have your best interests at heart. There's not a single example of a functional and effective government out there, so why even try? There’s plenty of examples of functional governments and plenty of dysfunctional ones. There’s functional programs and dysfunctional ones. And just because something may work for a small homogenous population in close proximity of each other doesn’t mean it would work or make sense for a heterogeneous population spread across thousands of miles.
  - grumio 9mo ago
    They're not simply enforcing laws on the books. They're breaking them. https://abcnews.go.com/US/lawyers-allege-dept-homeland-security-denying-legal-counsel/story?id=129335914 https://abcnews.go.com/US/lawyers-allege-dept-homeland-secur... DHS denying legal council to detainees. https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigratio... ICE using chokeholds in defiance of DOJ standards for use of force. > after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed. > The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death. > In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him. > In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said. Is this new information to you, koolba? Or do you believe this is enforcement of laws on the books?

worksonmine 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. The point when Trump was elected was to make americans buy american and to get international companies to move their production to the U.S. In Sweden they did something similar when they thought people were buying too much cheap stuff directly from China instead of from the middlemen paying taxes. The solution was to add a tariff on cheap goods from China specifically. I don't enough to know if it works, but it's not a new strategy. In Trumps current politics though it's used more as a bargaining tool and not something that's supposed to stimulate the economy, is anyone even claiming it is the goal?

mirekrusin 9mo ago

Moving production to US, ie. they were thinking about 2nd order implications, in other words works as expected?

hallole 9mo ago
Yeah essentially this. In my mental model, tariffs give an advantage to domestic suppliers / penalize foreign suppliers, and thus encourage domestic production by making it more viable. And bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. has been a pretty big GOP selling point.
- array_key_first 9mo ago
  The implementation matters a lot. When fiscal policy is hand-wavy and unreliable, manufacturers can't risk huge domestic capital investment. They're trying to strategize on the order of decades, this administration is more so acting on the order of weeks.
- matwood 9mo ago
  > And bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. has been a pretty big GOP selling point. Which is comical since the US is the #2 manufacturer in the world behind China. And that makes sense given the absolute size of China. The US manufacturing output continues to increase every year. What's not increasing are the manufacturing jobs because of automation. If there are strategic industries the US wants bolster, like microchips, there are ways to handle that through long term incentives. The CHIPS act did this, but was killed by Trump because Biden put it in place.
  - mirekrusin 9mo ago
    > (...) Donald Trump (...) asked (...) to "get rid" of the (...) act. (...) However, as of October 2025 the Trump administration has instead preserved the Act, even adding an additional 10 percentage points to the advanced semiconductor manufacturing tax credit. (...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act Tariffs and this act are not mutually exclusive, they can be complementary and seems both are currently in place?

rich_sasha 9mo ago

It's still a bit of a mystery to me TBH. Not that Americans are paying it, but where's the cash? The headline suggests it was all passed into consumers. So why is inflation still so low? If you add 10-30% to prices (granted, of imports, not of houses, domestic food etc), you'd expect more. If companies were eating it (which apparently they aren't) then their profitability should be down. But that doesn't seem to be the case either. So..??? It's like that riddle with the three guys buying a pizza. Where did the money go?

greenavocado 9mo ago
Chinese exporters and the Beijing government absorb most US tariffs rather than passing them fully to American consumers. Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick: “The model is clear: 10% tariffs or less are paid by the manufacturers, the distributors, the businesses,” he said. “The consumer doesn’t pay. The consumer doesn’t pay because the seller doesn’t want to raise prices, because if they could, they would, but they don’t want to sell less. So they eat it.” https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/lutnick-beijing-eating-majority-chinas-52-average-tariffs https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/lutnick-beijing-eating-maj...
- jbm 9mo ago
  The article we are commenting on literally says 96% is paid for by Americans. Do you have a reason to accept Lutnick's position?
  - greenavocado 9mo ago
    Section 1 Paragraph 4: Every dollar of tariff revenue represents a dollar extracted from American businesses and households. Why am I not paying substantially more year over year for the wide variety of things I purchase?
    - jbm 9mo ago
      I feel we should have an independent source by now if that was true. Thousands of Chinese suppliers all taking losses to keep market share seems unlikely. A government program would have been clearly shown too. I think it is more likely that goods are being labelled with different origins and being imported through preexisting treaties like NAFTA (I forgot the Trumpian name for his negotiated version), or that Economists are shameless modern tortoise shell baking shamans that we need to sacrifice to appease angry dead ancestors.

melvinmelih 9mo ago

“Sir, you have the vote of every thinking person.” “That’s not enough — I need a majority.” — Adlai Stevenson

RandomTisk 9mo ago

Who ultimately pays the tariffs is missing the forest for the trees, their primary function is to tax, and taxation virtually always reduces spending. Don't want to pay tariffs? Buy domestic. Tariffs are the single reason (or one of very few) that the US isn't flooded with BYD electric cars from China. China's dirt cheap labor could decimate the US auto industry, but for tariffs and trade regulation, but I repeat myself.

engineer_22 9mo ago
> the US isn't flooded with BYD electric cars from China. China's dirt cheap labor could decimate the US auto industry, What you're describing is called "dumping", and it's a strategy China has used to varying degrees of success in other markets in order to destabilize foreign industries. It could be seen as an act of war. Chinese labor is not actually so cheap anymore, many other developing nations are significantly less expensive. But China's secret weapon is total control and coordination across industries. They use this to subsidize target industries for the export market. You've highlighted automakers, but they also target steel, aluminum, and others. To a casual observer it almost appears as if they were targeting industries that could be readily adapted to wartime production.
NetMageSCW 9mo ago
That’s an incredibly naive position that assumes there are domestic options available for most things, and that they would be cheaper than tariffed items.
tartuffe78 9mo ago
They're putting tariffs on things you can't buy or produce domestically, rubber, coffee, etc.

lovlar 9mo ago

One of the main reasons we end up with populist leaders who make decisions not in the interest of their population, but in service of their own pursuit of power, is social media and the attention economy. If people stopped spending hours each day scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook feeds, media incentives would change. Journalism would become more thorough and responsible, rather than optimized for outrage and clicks. People’s attention spans would recover, making them more capable of listening to opposing views and engaging in meaningful discussion. The overall quality of public debate would improve, and political leaders would be chosen based on objective, long-term policies rather than emotional manipulation. The reinforcement-learning algorithms that drive these feeds are fundamentally unnatural. They represent a massive, uncontrolled social experiment on humanity—one that is far too powerful for our psychological reward systems to handle. What needs to happen is education. Education on how the attention economy works. People must learn to resist becoming social media junkies, because every hour surrendered to these platforms reinforces the very systems that distort public discourse. When we lose control over our attention, we don’t just harm ourselves—we actively worsen the societal conditions that enable manipulation, polarization, and poor political leadership.

throwaway_aiai 9mo ago
Why did you feel the need to use an LLM to compose this comment?
- lovlar 9mo ago
  English is not my native language, and I wanted to clean up the grammar.
  - frikk 9mo ago
    That's a great reason. I didn't pick up on usage of AI, it reads naturally.
    - dr-detroit 9mo ago
      [dead]

Workaccount2 9mo ago

Most people seem totally unaware that Bernie Sanders was (and probably secretly still is) a big proponent of tariffs. Horseshoe theory and all that, populists gonna populist.

DrScientist 9mo ago

Depends on your goals - what I see is it increases US government income to help reduce deficit ( without the political fall out from raising direct taxes ), and at the same time encouraging businesses to move manufacturing to the US to avoid tariffs. And in terms of burden - the cost hits the poor the most - but if your a billionaire funder of US political parties that's the point. For a non-US person the most worrying aspect of this is that it also helps make the US more self-sufficient which means it's better prepared to go to war - which is not really good news.

lijok 9mo ago

> to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function So roughly 98% of the population was surprised?

jedberg 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I know two people who voted for him. Person one has voted Democrat her whole life. Has worked for the Democratic Party. Has a son who was a Democratic elected official. But she lives in Texas, and watches too much local news, and believed that murderous immigrants were pouring over the border, guns blazing, taking out innocent American citizens daily at the beach and grocery store. So she voted for him because she believed only he could stop this from happening. Person two is a wealthy white boomer. His business already runs in America. He actually has an advanced degree in economics. He believed that the tariffs would only be used surgically by smart people to protect American business. He is not personally affected by any of the racist policies or any of the other shenanigans. So he voted for him because he liked the protectionist and tax cut policies. He regrets his vote. I haven't spoken to her in months because she stopped talking to me when I kept show her that her "facts" were made up.

leet_thow 9mo ago

Where on the US ballot was there an option to vote for tariffs? If I recall correctly, we vote for presidents, senators and the congress who have policy stances on a variety of issues. There are usually only two options, one of which stands for open borders, not enforcing laws, socialism and demonizing people who choose the other option on the ballot. A large cohort of independents didn't vote for republicans, they voted AGAINST democrats.

intended 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I like the idea of reaching across the aisle. However the divide is no longer the gap of a few feet. It’s a different world, with different rules. I just checked yougov, and Trump has an 88% approval rating amongst Republicans. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/donald-trump-approval?crossBreak=republican https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/donald-tru... Do check, since one hopes I erred in reading the chart. The victory of Trump is mostly the same process that gave the UK Brexit. Just people acting based on the information they are being provided. If the other side is filled with feckless buffoons, and every source of news you have is telling you the same thing, then what else will someone do?

dgellow 9mo ago

> have been warning about this since talk of tariffs became common currency a year ago. 10 years ago

skippyboxedhero 9mo ago

There are multiple research papers that indicate that this result (in terms of what you think the paper says) is not obvious. Indeed, to think this is the case, you need an extremely superficial understanding of economics based around "rules" that only exist in theory. And, if you read the paper, you will find that evidence. How these work depends on initial conditions that vary and exporters will not react in a consistent way. As a specific example, theoretical research in this area tends to make assumptions around the stationarity of margins that are obviously ludicrous in the context of reality in the US. It is quite easy to justify almost any policy with theoretical research in economics so people who have no understanding of economics will find evidence for whatever position they choose. Reality is quite different.

malfist 9mo ago
Can you name some of those peer reviewed publications say that tariffs wouldn't be paid by the consumer?
- CGMthrowaway 9mo ago
  Below is the #1 paper, extraordinarily widely cited. They found that countries with significant market power systematically set higher tariffs on goods with inelastic supply, and in these cases the exporter lowers their price to absorb the tariff, improving the importer's terms of trade. https://www.columbia.edu/~dew35/Papers/Optimal_Tariffs_Market_Power.pdf https://www.columbia.edu/~dew35/Papers/Optimal_Tariffs_Marke...
- skippyboxedhero 9mo ago
  There was a paper, that i am not going to dig out, on the first set of China tariffs by Trump that found that exporters reduced margins. You don't have to look far, you just need to look a few years ago. For some reason, the claims made earlier last year were apocalyptic despite there being clear evidence from the very recent past that this wasn't the case (making money in equities last year was terribly easy). Btw, you can find papers where tariffs are paid by consumer, where they aren't, where there is no effect. The thing that is being measured is completely different to the actual tariffs. The impact, like everything in economics, depends on the context in which the tool is used. That context is typically hard to model, so we end up with a lot of shitty papers claiming that it is about the tariff when it is about the context/implementation/etc.

seattlematt 9mo ago

First, people vote on a candidate, not a single issue. Many voted for Trump despite his tariffs stance rather than because of it. Second, reducing consumer prices was not the goal of the tariffs. The primary goals were to encourage companies to move manufacturing to the US and to be used as leverage in negotiating other matters with foreign leaders.

pton_xd 9mo ago

> to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. Trump and his entire administration admitted there would be short term pain, possibly a recession, but that it would be "worth it" to restructure the economy. So the question is: how long does the pain last? And is the economy stronger when it's over (do we get over it)? It's been 9 months so far. From my perspective the policy goals are very unclear since it seems like they're actively wielding tariffs both as a means to reorganize the economy and as a weapon to bully other countries. Mainly bullying. The intended effectiveness on our economy seems difficult to judge.

singingbard 9mo ago

The founders were skeptical of direct democracy because it assumes people have time and expertise they mostly don’t. People should not be voting based on their understanding of tariffs. It’s why we ended up with a republic. But social media changes the equation entirely. It gives us the speed of direct democracy without any of the structure or responsibility. It pushes people to judge candidates issue-by-issue, often on topics they don’t understand well, while eroding the deliberative layers a republic is supposed to have. The problem isn’t people or education — America didn’t get this far because Americans are any smarter or dumber than anyone else. It’s the design of the systems. The founding fathers built a system that has so far lasted almost 250 years. You cannot expect people to change — safety protocols, procedures, govenments — it’s about the systems.

engineer_22 9mo ago
I think you've hit on a good point. As a society we're still trying to figure out how to rule ourselves in the age of Social Media. Let's pray we're able to figure it out before more blood is shed.
atoav 9mo ago
In my book it is the duty of a democratic state to keep its population educated to make educated decisions. If you look at countries with more direct democracy like Switzerland not all the decisions are perfect, but they are by no means worse than if you had replaced the public vote with politicians that are heavily lobbied by corporate interest and have a time horizon that ends at their next election. In fact you will find that in many cases the population will even vote for unpopular measures if they are discussed and understood well ahead of the decision. But in the end that requires a decent education of the masses, a well functioning and uncaptured media landscape and a certain amount of democratic practise, all of which are missing in big parts of the US. Democracy is something everybody actively needs to work on, otherwise it withers. If you want to have a nice village it works best if everybody perceives themselves as an agent of creating a nice village. If you want a shit village, you best give everybody the impression it is somebody elses task.

engineer_22 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious Many people were thinking Joe Biden was looking old... Until 2 months before the election when a faceless political elite replaced him with a candidate who had repeatedly lied about Joe Biden looking old. The American public might be stupid, but they don't like being treated as though they are stupid - which is exactly what the DNC did.

jaredklewis 9mo ago

There is basically no overlap between the things that economists generally say are good (free trade, carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, immigration, land value taxes, organ trade, congestion pricing, etc…) and the things that populists of either the left or right say are good (rent control, price controls, tariffs, wealth taxes, debt relief, minimum parking requirements, etc…). Why would you (or anyone) be surprised that economically sound policies are not popular? They are not popular in the US. They are not popular in Europe. They’re not even popular on HN. For reasons I don’t understand, almost everyone hates economics.

superb_dev 9mo ago
Because the economy doesn’t work for the average citizen, the economy works to make the numbers bigger
- jaredklewis 9mo ago
  Well, those numbers economists are working to make bigger are often things that help the average citizen, like the median household income income, the median life expectancy, or the literacy rate. Sometimes economists are studying how to make numbers lower as well, like the median cost of housing or inflation.
fruitworks 9mo ago
good for whom?
owisd 9mo ago
Economics is usually optimising for a narrow utility function, usually something to do with price discovery, but that doesn’t normally align with more human societal goals. Take, say, surge pricing. Maybe without surge pricing you pay $60 for a taxi but have to wait 30 mins when it’s busy. With surge pricing at busy times it’s $120, so people who can afford $120 wait 0 minutes but people who can only afford $60 have to wait 2 hours for surge pricing to end. “Economists generally” would say surge pricing was better, but voters and politicians are considering the wider trade off of whether it’s fair some people get to jump the queue and some people have to wait longer. There’s also usually a bait-and-switch where the people having to wait 2hrs are told that the $120 will generate more in taxes so if they vote for surge pricing they’d actually be better off, then the $120 is spent lobbying to ensure the taxes never materialise.

ryan_n 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I don't think it's a simple answer. A couple things that likely contributed (I'm not an expert, just my opinion): there is an EXTRAORDINARY amount of propaganda being spread, whether people realize it or not, on and off the internet that gets consumed nearly 24/7. This happens on both sides of course, but think about some of the events leading up to the election. Musk bought twitter and quite literally turned it into a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine. The general "drain the swamp attitude" that the administration parroted during the election (and first term) represented a change from how "traditional" politicians/government do things. People value that even if they don't understand/think about how it would affect them personally. This ultimately lead to demonizing the federal work force and mass random firings (in many cases having nothing to do with merit). Trump also represented a push towards traditional values and national identity, which for some people was more important than whatever economic plan Trump had to improve things in the country. Other than tariffs, did he even have a plan? I don't know. But many people didn't/don't seem to care.

rsynnott 9mo ago

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. See Brexit. As Michael Gove said, the people have had enough of experts; for a certain sort of person, not understanding things is a badge of pride, and they're more liable to trust people like Trump, who transparently do _not_ understand things, than _experts_.

weirdmantis69 9mo ago

So since you are so smart what do you think of the trade deficit collapsing?

digitalPhonix 9mo ago
Is it? https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0015.html https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0015.html 2025 deficit is not much smaller 2024 (looks within the normal year to year variance) and 2025’s deficit is still larger than 2023 and 2021. Definitely not collapsing.

omilu 9mo ago

Cost is not the only factor voters considered, bringing manufacturing jobs and expertise back to US is a big part of the tariff push. If cost were the only factor everyone would buy the cheapest crap off temu or amazon. People are willing to pay a premium for the hope of bringing manufacturing back and reducing reliance on foreign sources.

option_behavior 9mo ago

Tariffs are basically a stealth consumption tax. No big deal. Similar to an extremely modest increase in local consumption taxes or income tax.

EasyMark 9mo ago

I have a suspicion very few of HN voted for this, probably less than 1/4