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Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" or fill-in-the-blank on what country we're "getting" with them. The reality is that's a fundam

Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" or fill-in-the-blank on what country we're "getting" with them. The reality is that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tariff is. There is a reason you will find tariffs drop off after the great depression. They make everything more expensive for businesses and in turn, the end consumer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Average_Tariff_Rates_in_USA_(1821-2016).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_Unit... "Fighting" China with tariffs is like fighting your neighbor who's dog keeps peeing in your yard by lighting your own couch on fire.

fc417fc802 8mo ago
Subsidies are also expensive for the tax payer. Warping the market costs money. (No comment on whether it's being warped in the "right" way right now.)
- mindslight 8mo ago
  Having the world reserve currency is an independent source of revenue for the US Government, as it allows for an amount of monetary inflation without corresponding price inflation. Through a combination of Federal Reserve policy and the political martingale of "balanced budgets", most of this revenue has been simply given away to asset holders in the form of low-interest loans. This money could/should instead be spent to purposefully mitigate the damage to domestic industry that comes from having the world reserve currency.
  - hammock 8mo ago
    Wish this comment was higher up. A balanced, reasonable, non-partisan take
amelius 8mo ago
It could work if you put the couch in your neighbor's yard first.
- SunshineTheCat 8mo ago
  True but you still lose your couch! >:(
  - amelius 8mo ago
    Yes, but it's the optics that matters.
- nixosbestos 8mo ago
  I'd prefer to not give JD Vance any reason to visit my neighbor.
testing22321 8mo ago
I can’t help wondering if the biggest problem in the US right now is that a majority of people having a “fundamental misunderstanding” about many, many very important things. Maybe it’s because of propaganda, mis information, social media, education or because they’re too busy and tired trying to make ends meet so they don’t have time to research issues for themselves. It feels like it will be very difficult to course correct when so much money and power wants it this way.
- Refreeze5224 8mo ago
  Flat out lies about how tariffs work from the leader of the country might be part of it.
  - ohyoutravel 8mo ago
    Yes, but people have to have a modicum of awareness of how things work, even though the administration is lying.
    - ourmandave 8mo ago
      Or take the easy way and just assume that everything the admin says is a lie and can't be trusted.
- stevenjgarner 8mo ago
  Most people here in the US that I talk to understand that the additional tariffs imposed by the Trump administration are an attempt to get domestic US industries to produce the items that are now being imported subject to the tariff. In some cases that has been successful. In many cases not. Many industries are virtually impossible to de-globalize.
  - CamperBob2 8mo ago
    No, the tariffs are just a grift designed to force CEOs to pay tribute to Trump. If the tariffs were "an attempt to get domestic US industries to produce items now being imported," they wouldn't be levied on manufacturing inputs.
taeric 8mo ago
It is baffling to me, as it is no different than thinking that "sugar taxes" are taxes that soda companies pay. There is even a straight forward analysis that shows it does impact the soda companies rather heavily. But it is objectively paid by the consumers. And nobody is really confused by that.
- alistairSH 8mo ago
  And nobody is really confused by that. Yet that's not what the administration says about the subject. They're either confused or they're lying (and the people who support them and regurgitate their talking points are confused).
  - John23832 8mo ago
    > They're either confused or they're lying The belief that they are confused is a generosity that we should really be disabused of at this point.
    - taeric 8mo ago
      I don't think I can beat the drum of "they are liars" heavily enough. It remains frustrating to see so much accidental carrying of water for them as people look for a hint of legitimacy.
  - ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
    I don't think they're confused or lying. I think they're ideologically driven buffoons, the preferred recruits of all fascist administrations. They don't care about American manufacturing, and they don't understand economics. They want to advance their agenda. Like, even the propaganda by fascists claiming fascism makes for good policies is bad. Germany under the Reich, completely setting aside the human atrocities, was a fucking SHIT SHOW of a nation state.
- SoftTalker 8mo ago
  Pretty much every tax is ultimately paid by the consumer, because all the suppliers have to make a profit or they won't stay in business. The point of an import tariff isn't to make anything cheaper, it's to level the market in the presence of a foreign supplier who has much lower costs (e.g. sweatshop labor, state-supported industry, etc.) that are not available to domestic suppliers.
cucumber3732842 8mo ago
>There is a reason you will find tariffs drop off after the great depression. Alternatively: You don't need tariffs when you're the only industrial nation not bombed into oblivion. >They make everything more expensive for businesses and in turn, the end consumer. Agreed
ranger_danger 8mo ago
I think the misunderstanding is in a combination of wording + practical application. Tariffs in the legal sense are technically paid by the importer who sells a product. It's their responsibility to pay it... always. The importer could technically eat that cost, and the consumer wouldn't see a difference on their price tag. But what happens in practice, the vast majority of the time, is the importer passes that extra cost on to the consumer by raising the price they're selling it for. This is technically a business decision made by every importer individually, it is not a requirement. The people saying tariffs are paid by the importer, or tariffs are paid by the consumer, are both right, but within different perspectives and depending on how each importer chooses to handle their tariffs.
- SunshineTheCat 8mo ago
  I know of a 10-12 employee business in my town who custom-designs kids products that are manufactured in China because they want to keep their products affordable for parents. Getting them manufactured in the US (even though they wanted to) was way too expensive and would require them to charge way above retail just to stay open. Once the tariffs dropped, their cost of goods more than doubled. Their business in that capacity, was gone overnight. It's easy to think in some vacuum businesses can just "absorb" costs, but as many businesses know, this is rarely the case.
  - temp8830 8mo ago
    OK, so the custom-designed kids product becomes a luxury item and the business has to charge above retail. The kids learn that adults time is too valuable to be spent on manufacturing trinkets that get thrown away. They take better care of the few toys they do own. There is less plastic crap in landfills. Seems like a win all around?
    - JoshTriplett 8mo ago
      > so the custom-designed kids product becomes a luxury item No, it becomes a non-existent item. > Seems like a win all around? If you burn your neighbor's house down, it's possible that what will get built in its place will be nicer. That doesn't make it a "win all around".
mathgradthrow 8mo ago
A tariff can only cost as much to the consumer as an embargo.
- throwup238 8mo ago
  So practically infinite downside?
culi 8mo ago
The fighting part isn't just us tariffing China, it's bullying other countries to do the same. That's how the US won the first trade war under trump 1 (and continued by Biden). Now Trump 2 tried to ramp it up and this time its backfired because other countries have refused to go along. Many have even been pushed to collaborate more closely with China. China's exports have only grown to record highs
- mindslight 8mo ago
  > other countries have refused to go along Trump failed to convince other countries to continue going along because he's a simplistic zero-sum bully who barks orders, expects others to fall in line, and then throws a tantrum when they don't - rather than a tactful leader capable of maintaining the trust of a voluntary positive-sum coalition. That he's also been overtly attacking allies at the same time doesn't help convince anyone either - the new regime was attacking Canada straight out of the gate, and it's hard to explain attacking Greenland any other way than a Putin-favored plan to drive a wedge between us and our traditional allies.
  - culi 8mo ago
    > Trump failed to convince other countries to continue going along because he's a simplistic zero-sum bully who barks orders, expects others to fall in line, and then throws a tantrum when they don't All of these things were true in 2016 as well yet other countries went along then.
    - mindslight 8mo ago
      I think there were more adults in the room, more legal checks, plus a lack of experience holding Turmp back. Foreign leaders also held their nose thinking he was an aberration that would pass. Whereas in 2025 his sponsors had their plans set and ready to go out of the gate, the Supreme Council had fully burnt a good chunk of our Constitution, and the fact that the American people choose this idiot a second time reflected upon the whole country.
engineer_22 8mo ago
Of course they increase the price of goods - that's the whole point!!! > is like fighting your neighbor who's dog keeps peeing in your yard by lighting your own couch on fire. it's more like buying your own dog to pee in your yard, and keep out the neighbor's What is missing from the convo is where the tarriffs go - they go to fund the federal gov't, which spends on Goods and Services for the American People (you hope). What you would want to see is a reduction on income taxes concomitant with the increased tarriff revenue. US Gov gets the same amount of money, US consumers pay the same in taxes + tarriffs, but American industries get protection from overseas competition, strengthening key sectors of the US economy.
- twoodfin 8mo ago
  Generally, protective trade policies weaken rather than strengthen competitiveness in industrialized nations. I guess you could argue that we’re so far behind in some sector like manufacturing that we need developing-nation-like trade barriers to nurture embryonic growth, but a look at real numbers would, I think, demonstrate that’s rubbish.
  - engineer_22 8mo ago
    > Generally, protective trade policies weaken rather than strengthen competitiveness in industrialized nations. Yes, that's historically been the argument used to pry open foreign markets
- etc-hosts 8mo ago
  Federal Gov't only spends its discretionary funds now on funding ICE with 70 billion dollars.
hackyhacky 8mo ago
> Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" Everyone? No, only the willfully ignorant.
- gdilla 8mo ago
  well it's a cult, after all.
- phkahler 8mo ago
  Right. They're on goods from China. The intent is to make that stuff more expensive so we can compete.
  - hackyhacky 8mo ago
    > The intent is to make that stuff more expensive so we can compete. This would seem to be an admission that the domestic product is inferior, otherwise why would it be necessary to burden the import with tariffs? In any case, if that's the intent, it's not working out for fairly predictable reasons. Lots of imported goods have no domestic equivalent. The factories required to make them require years of investment, which is not forthcoming, because the longevity of these tariffs is highly dubious and the government is doing nothing to encourage business development. And even if there were new factories, they would have to import machines and raw materials, which are of course tariffed, driving up the cost of domestic goods, and defeating the alleged purpose of the tariffs. There's no just explanation that can make the tariffs look useful to anyone. Like everything from this administration, it's about the appearance of action.
    - newfriend 8mo ago
      If one country has labor protection and pollution regulations, and another country has near-slave labor and dumps chemicals into rivers, would you consider the former inferior? Unable to compete?
      - hackyhacky 8mo ago
engineer_22 8mo ago
> There is a reason you will find tariffs drop off after the great depression. The reason is, the whole world's manufacturing base had been destroyed in the War and the USA was the only man left standing! We didnt need tarriffs because we were already winning the trade balance. Tarriffs made it harder to repatriate overseas gains. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2019/may/historical-u-s-trade-deficits https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2019/may/historica...
LastTrain 8mo ago
Very, very few people believe that. This is how it works: Republicans willfully lie to their supporters, who know it is lie, and they then knowingly pass on the lie to you. This could be your conservative friends, family, co-workers. They are all knowingly lying to you. This is a pretty simple form of debasement and a loyalty test - will you repeat this lie for me? The bigger the lie, the more loyal.
- JungleGymSam 8mo ago
  you don't actually believe that is a one sided thing do you?
  - amanaplanacanal 8mo ago
    What's the other side, do you think?
  - LastTrain 8mo ago
    Predominately, yes. It has been weaponized by the current Republican party. I'm not saying Democrats never ever do it, just that it isn't part of their MO like it is in the current Republican party. Let me propose a game. You name a bald-face lie told by the last administration. A bald-face lie is one where the person telling the lie knows its a lie, and knows that the people they saying the lie to knows that it is a lie. Got it? Bald face lies are generally only told by sociopaths. So, you do that, and I will give you 5 told by this admin. I will include at least one from the last month. We'll keep going back and forth and keep a tally. With you getting a 5x handicap. Now, do you think you will win that game? Do you think it will even be close? Be honest with your answer.
    - tw85 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      - DeRock 8mo ago
        Where are these quotes from? They appear to be made up by you.
phkahler 8mo ago
No. The point is to make foreign goods more expensive in order to bring production back to the US. People who don't realize this point out who is actually paying and claim its a problem. Will this bring manufacturing back? It seems to be working to some extent, but its a risk to manufacturers because the whole thing could get reversed after an election.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 8mo ago
  Tariffs can be used to support domestic production. But not with how Trump is implementing them. Pointing out that tariffs can be used this way is ignoring what's actually happening. > its a risk to manufacturers because the whole thing could get reversed after an election. It's a risk to manufacturers when Trump might wildly change tariffs for a country / set of goods / whatever, up or down, at any time, because someone said something he didn't like somewhere, or some other non-economic rationalization. The instability and lack of cohesive direction mean it's impossible for manufacturers to respond to tariffs with investment even within Trump's term.
- FuriouslyAdrift 8mo ago
  I work at a manufacturing supplier (packaging and logistics) and our business has been on fire since the trade war kicked off. Pre-COVID we were at ~$25MM yearly and now we are $150MM+ and growing steadily. We just bought a million sq ft building (that was an old RCA plant) and millions in new machinery to keep up. We are only a regional player, too.
  - dalyons 8mo ago
    It’s not entirely clear to me why tariffs would help your local logistics businesses? Doesn’t the same amount of stuff get moved around , just changes origin? I believe you I just would like to understand
    - Symbiote 8mo ago
      I was shocked when I last visited the USA (from Europe) and saw things like Walmart paper bags labelled "Made in Germany". Perhaps some of that has been replaced by "Made in USA". (Day-to-day, I generally don't buy things not made in the EU — packaging, for example, will typically be from Sweden, France or Poland.)
curun1r 8mo ago
What’s obnoxious about them isn’t tariffs conceptually, it’s the implementation. There’s an argument that some sort of tariffs are actually necessary. The world is changing and the US has become reliant on countries who increasingly have divergent interests from the US. Additionally, some countries have aging populations that will make them more and more unreliable places to manufacture stuff in the next couple decades. It’s entirely reasonable to believe that it’s pretty critical for the US to begin the process of re-industrializing as soon as possible and tariffs are a crucial lever to make that happen. But…how you do that matters. Re-industrialization is a process that will take decades and the businesses doing that need to be fairly sure of the government’s policy for most of that period. If Trump had built a broad consensus with Democrats for the tariff policy so that businesses could have understood that a future Democratic president or congressional majority would continue the tariff policy, then businesses would be able to plan accordingly and begin the massive capital outlays that come with re-shoring manufacturing. And the tariffs would strategically exclude certain items like the steel that would be necessary to build factories. And, lastly, you wouldn’t pick now to go on a deportation spree when a sizable chunk of the nations construction workers are undocumented immigrants, since all those factories will need to be built by someone and there aren’t enough Americans to do it. But instead of the sane and well-reasoned way to do it, we’ve got Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip chaos version. The tariff policy changes weekly, so businesses can’t predict it, let alone rely on it in the way they would need to to spend the collective trillions of dollars on manufacturing infrastructure that need to be spent. And he’s antagonizing Democrats to such and extent that any future Democratic administration will drop the tariffs on day one. The result of which is that businesses, understandably, are hunkering down until he’s out of office. Instead of spurring the massive investment we need, his policies have chilled spending on manufacturing. The only thing we’re really building at the moment are data centers. So there’s this narrative that tariffs are awful now that’s really the result of someone incompetently deploying them. Some sort of tariff policy would actually be a necessary medicine for the country to help heal the damage from an over reliance on a globalized system that is going to crumble in the coming decades. It won’t be easy, but the earlier the country starts to address it, the better the outcome will be. But it needs to be done intentionally, in a bi-partisan way and through acts of Congress, not in a scattershot fashion where Congress is a bystander and a single deranged lunatic pulls tariff percentages out of ass whenever the mood strikes him.
mandeepj 8mo ago
> Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" or fill-in-the-blank on what country we're "getting" with them. Just like Mexico will pay for the wall? > The reality is that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tariff is. Nope! It's a politician talk! People fall for lies whenever they are sold wrapped in a label of "cheap prices".
danesparza 8mo ago
I have definitely had to pay tariffs on goods I have ordered from the UK. They arrive as a separate bill, and with the threat that if I don't pay them in within a certain time (usually a week) that the good will be returned to the seller. US Tariffs only hurt US citizens. Anything else is simply the stuttering of a simpleton.
- munk-a 8mo ago
  Even if it isn't as clearly separately billed - the market works the way it does and that cost is going to be passed onto the consumer unless the seller just decides to eat the cost (and I am aware of several small businesses that are eating the costs to try and avoid any PR backlash with the hope that this is a temporary situation). And if the tariffs are ruled invalid you're free to speculate whether target is going to send you a check for what you effectively paid or just pocket the difference.
nixosbestos 8mo ago
Sure I understand why you'd write "Everyone" on HN. But no, some of us have had functional brains for a while. Thanks. EDIT: to be fair, if you were even slighly more specific about the shit-eating morons that ate this illogical, stupid rhetoric, it would be too political and, at best, result in your comment getting clobbered so.... "everyone" it is. Can't make the dumb****s that led us here feel bad.
nitwit005 8mo ago
> Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" or fill-in-the-blank on what country we're "getting" with them. I suspect very few believes the claims other countries are paying the tariffs anymore. People are just saying that's true to stick to the party line. Unfortunately, saying plainly untrue things has become a major part of US politics.

fc417fc802 8mo ago

Subsidies are also expensive for the tax payer. Warping the market costs money. (No comment on whether it's being warped in the "right" way right now.)

mindslight 8mo ago
Having the world reserve currency is an independent source of revenue for the US Government, as it allows for an amount of monetary inflation without corresponding price inflation. Through a combination of Federal Reserve policy and the political martingale of "balanced budgets", most of this revenue has been simply given away to asset holders in the form of low-interest loans. This money could/should instead be spent to purposefully mitigate the damage to domestic industry that comes from having the world reserve currency.
- hammock 8mo ago
  Wish this comment was higher up. A balanced, reasonable, non-partisan take

amelius 8mo ago

It could work if you put the couch in your neighbor's yard first.

SunshineTheCat 8mo ago
True but you still lose your couch! >:(
- amelius 8mo ago
  Yes, but it's the optics that matters.
nixosbestos 8mo ago
I'd prefer to not give JD Vance any reason to visit my neighbor.

testing22321 8mo ago

I can’t help wondering if the biggest problem in the US right now is that a majority of people having a “fundamental misunderstanding” about many, many very important things. Maybe it’s because of propaganda, mis information, social media, education or because they’re too busy and tired trying to make ends meet so they don’t have time to research issues for themselves. It feels like it will be very difficult to course correct when so much money and power wants it this way.

Refreeze5224 8mo ago
Flat out lies about how tariffs work from the leader of the country might be part of it.
- ohyoutravel 8mo ago
  Yes, but people have to have a modicum of awareness of how things work, even though the administration is lying.
  - ourmandave 8mo ago
    Or take the easy way and just assume that everything the admin says is a lie and can't be trusted.
stevenjgarner 8mo ago
Most people here in the US that I talk to understand that the additional tariffs imposed by the Trump administration are an attempt to get domestic US industries to produce the items that are now being imported subject to the tariff. In some cases that has been successful. In many cases not. Many industries are virtually impossible to de-globalize.
- CamperBob2 8mo ago
  No, the tariffs are just a grift designed to force CEOs to pay tribute to Trump. If the tariffs were "an attempt to get domestic US industries to produce items now being imported," they wouldn't be levied on manufacturing inputs.

taeric 8mo ago

It is baffling to me, as it is no different than thinking that "sugar taxes" are taxes that soda companies pay. There is even a straight forward analysis that shows it does impact the soda companies rather heavily. But it is objectively paid by the consumers. And nobody is really confused by that.

alistairSH 8mo ago
And nobody is really confused by that. Yet that's not what the administration says about the subject. They're either confused or they're lying (and the people who support them and regurgitate their talking points are confused).
- John23832 8mo ago
  > They're either confused or they're lying The belief that they are confused is a generosity that we should really be disabused of at this point.
  - taeric 8mo ago
    I don't think I can beat the drum of "they are liars" heavily enough. It remains frustrating to see so much accidental carrying of water for them as people look for a hint of legitimacy.
- ToucanLoucan 8mo ago
  I don't think they're confused or lying. I think they're ideologically driven buffoons, the preferred recruits of all fascist administrations. They don't care about American manufacturing, and they don't understand economics. They want to advance their agenda. Like, even the propaganda by fascists claiming fascism makes for good policies is bad. Germany under the Reich, completely setting aside the human atrocities, was a fucking SHIT SHOW of a nation state.
SoftTalker 8mo ago
Pretty much every tax is ultimately paid by the consumer, because all the suppliers have to make a profit or they won't stay in business. The point of an import tariff isn't to make anything cheaper, it's to level the market in the presence of a foreign supplier who has much lower costs (e.g. sweatshop labor, state-supported industry, etc.) that are not available to domestic suppliers.

cucumber3732842 8mo ago

>There is a reason you will find tariffs drop off after the great depression. Alternatively: You don't need tariffs when you're the only industrial nation not bombed into oblivion. >They make everything more expensive for businesses and in turn, the end consumer. Agreed

ranger_danger 8mo ago

I think the misunderstanding is in a combination of wording + practical application. Tariffs in the legal sense are technically paid by the importer who sells a product. It's their responsibility to pay it... always. The importer could technically eat that cost, and the consumer wouldn't see a difference on their price tag. But what happens in practice, the vast majority of the time, is the importer passes that extra cost on to the consumer by raising the price they're selling it for. This is technically a business decision made by every importer individually, it is not a requirement. The people saying tariffs are paid by the importer, or tariffs are paid by the consumer, are both right, but within different perspectives and depending on how each importer chooses to handle their tariffs.

SunshineTheCat 8mo ago
I know of a 10-12 employee business in my town who custom-designs kids products that are manufactured in China because they want to keep their products affordable for parents. Getting them manufactured in the US (even though they wanted to) was way too expensive and would require them to charge way above retail just to stay open. Once the tariffs dropped, their cost of goods more than doubled. Their business in that capacity, was gone overnight. It's easy to think in some vacuum businesses can just "absorb" costs, but as many businesses know, this is rarely the case.
- temp8830 8mo ago
  OK, so the custom-designed kids product becomes a luxury item and the business has to charge above retail. The kids learn that adults time is too valuable to be spent on manufacturing trinkets that get thrown away. They take better care of the few toys they do own. There is less plastic crap in landfills. Seems like a win all around?
  - JoshTriplett 8mo ago
    > so the custom-designed kids product becomes a luxury item No, it becomes a non-existent item. > Seems like a win all around? If you burn your neighbor's house down, it's possible that what will get built in its place will be nicer. That doesn't make it a "win all around".

mathgradthrow 8mo ago

A tariff can only cost as much to the consumer as an embargo.

throwup238 8mo ago
So practically infinite downside?

culi 8mo ago

The fighting part isn't just us tariffing China, it's bullying other countries to do the same. That's how the US won the first trade war under trump 1 (and continued by Biden). Now Trump 2 tried to ramp it up and this time its backfired because other countries have refused to go along. Many have even been pushed to collaborate more closely with China. China's exports have only grown to record highs

mindslight 8mo ago
> other countries have refused to go along Trump failed to convince other countries to continue going along because he's a simplistic zero-sum bully who barks orders, expects others to fall in line, and then throws a tantrum when they don't - rather than a tactful leader capable of maintaining the trust of a voluntary positive-sum coalition. That he's also been overtly attacking allies at the same time doesn't help convince anyone either - the new regime was attacking Canada straight out of the gate, and it's hard to explain attacking Greenland any other way than a Putin-favored plan to drive a wedge between us and our traditional allies.
- culi 8mo ago
  > Trump failed to convince other countries to continue going along because he's a simplistic zero-sum bully who barks orders, expects others to fall in line, and then throws a tantrum when they don't All of these things were true in 2016 as well yet other countries went along then.
  - mindslight 8mo ago
    I think there were more adults in the room, more legal checks, plus a lack of experience holding Turmp back. Foreign leaders also held their nose thinking he was an aberration that would pass. Whereas in 2025 his sponsors had their plans set and ready to go out of the gate, the Supreme Council had fully burnt a good chunk of our Constitution, and the fact that the American people choose this idiot a second time reflected upon the whole country.

engineer_22 8mo ago

Of course they increase the price of goods - that's the whole point!!! > is like fighting your neighbor who's dog keeps peeing in your yard by lighting your own couch on fire. it's more like buying your own dog to pee in your yard, and keep out the neighbor's What is missing from the convo is where the tarriffs go - they go to fund the federal gov't, which spends on Goods and Services for the American People (you hope). What you would want to see is a reduction on income taxes concomitant with the increased tarriff revenue. US Gov gets the same amount of money, US consumers pay the same in taxes + tarriffs, but American industries get protection from overseas competition, strengthening key sectors of the US economy.

twoodfin 8mo ago
Generally, protective trade policies weaken rather than strengthen competitiveness in industrialized nations. I guess you could argue that we’re so far behind in some sector like manufacturing that we need developing-nation-like trade barriers to nurture embryonic growth, but a look at real numbers would, I think, demonstrate that’s rubbish.
- engineer_22 8mo ago
  > Generally, protective trade policies weaken rather than strengthen competitiveness in industrialized nations. Yes, that's historically been the argument used to pry open foreign markets
etc-hosts 8mo ago
Federal Gov't only spends its discretionary funds now on funding ICE with 70 billion dollars.

hackyhacky 8mo ago

> Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" Everyone? No, only the willfully ignorant.

gdilla 8mo ago
well it's a cult, after all.
phkahler 8mo ago
Right. They're on goods from China. The intent is to make that stuff more expensive so we can compete.
- hackyhacky 8mo ago
  > The intent is to make that stuff more expensive so we can compete. This would seem to be an admission that the domestic product is inferior, otherwise why would it be necessary to burden the import with tariffs? In any case, if that's the intent, it's not working out for fairly predictable reasons. Lots of imported goods have no domestic equivalent. The factories required to make them require years of investment, which is not forthcoming, because the longevity of these tariffs is highly dubious and the government is doing nothing to encourage business development. And even if there were new factories, they would have to import machines and raw materials, which are of course tariffed, driving up the cost of domestic goods, and defeating the alleged purpose of the tariffs. There's no just explanation that can make the tariffs look useful to anyone. Like everything from this administration, it's about the appearance of action.
  - newfriend 8mo ago
    If one country has labor protection and pollution regulations, and another country has near-slave labor and dumps chemicals into rivers, would you consider the former inferior? Unable to compete?
    - hackyhacky 8mo ago

engineer_22 8mo ago

> There is a reason you will find tariffs drop off after the great depression. The reason is, the whole world's manufacturing base had been destroyed in the War and the USA was the only man left standing! We didnt need tarriffs because we were already winning the trade balance. Tarriffs made it harder to repatriate overseas gains. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2019/may/historical-u-s-trade-deficits https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2019/may/historica...

LastTrain 8mo ago

Very, very few people believe that. This is how it works: Republicans willfully lie to their supporters, who know it is lie, and they then knowingly pass on the lie to you. This could be your conservative friends, family, co-workers. They are all knowingly lying to you. This is a pretty simple form of debasement and a loyalty test - will you repeat this lie for me? The bigger the lie, the more loyal.

JungleGymSam 8mo ago
you don't actually believe that is a one sided thing do you?
- amanaplanacanal 8mo ago
  What's the other side, do you think?
- LastTrain 8mo ago
  Predominately, yes. It has been weaponized by the current Republican party. I'm not saying Democrats never ever do it, just that it isn't part of their MO like it is in the current Republican party. Let me propose a game. You name a bald-face lie told by the last administration. A bald-face lie is one where the person telling the lie knows its a lie, and knows that the people they saying the lie to knows that it is a lie. Got it? Bald face lies are generally only told by sociopaths. So, you do that, and I will give you 5 told by this admin. I will include at least one from the last month. We'll keep going back and forth and keep a tally. With you getting a 5x handicap. Now, do you think you will win that game? Do you think it will even be close? Be honest with your answer.
  - tw85 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - DeRock 8mo ago
      Where are these quotes from? They appear to be made up by you.

phkahler 8mo ago

No. The point is to make foreign goods more expensive in order to bring production back to the US. People who don't realize this point out who is actually paying and claim its a problem. Will this bring manufacturing back? It seems to be working to some extent, but its a risk to manufacturers because the whole thing could get reversed after an election.

sjsdaiuasgdia 8mo ago
Tariffs can be used to support domestic production. But not with how Trump is implementing them. Pointing out that tariffs can be used this way is ignoring what's actually happening. > its a risk to manufacturers because the whole thing could get reversed after an election. It's a risk to manufacturers when Trump might wildly change tariffs for a country / set of goods / whatever, up or down, at any time, because someone said something he didn't like somewhere, or some other non-economic rationalization. The instability and lack of cohesive direction mean it's impossible for manufacturers to respond to tariffs with investment even within Trump's term.
FuriouslyAdrift 8mo ago
I work at a manufacturing supplier (packaging and logistics) and our business has been on fire since the trade war kicked off. Pre-COVID we were at ~$25MM yearly and now we are $150MM+ and growing steadily. We just bought a million sq ft building (that was an old RCA plant) and millions in new machinery to keep up. We are only a regional player, too.
- dalyons 8mo ago
  It’s not entirely clear to me why tariffs would help your local logistics businesses? Doesn’t the same amount of stuff get moved around , just changes origin? I believe you I just would like to understand
  - Symbiote 8mo ago
    I was shocked when I last visited the USA (from Europe) and saw things like Walmart paper bags labelled "Made in Germany". Perhaps some of that has been replaced by "Made in USA". (Day-to-day, I generally don't buy things not made in the EU — packaging, for example, will typically be from Sweden, France or Poland.)

curun1r 8mo ago

What’s obnoxious about them isn’t tariffs conceptually, it’s the implementation. There’s an argument that some sort of tariffs are actually necessary. The world is changing and the US has become reliant on countries who increasingly have divergent interests from the US. Additionally, some countries have aging populations that will make them more and more unreliable places to manufacture stuff in the next couple decades. It’s entirely reasonable to believe that it’s pretty critical for the US to begin the process of re-industrializing as soon as possible and tariffs are a crucial lever to make that happen. But…how you do that matters. Re-industrialization is a process that will take decades and the businesses doing that need to be fairly sure of the government’s policy for most of that period. If Trump had built a broad consensus with Democrats for the tariff policy so that businesses could have understood that a future Democratic president or congressional majority would continue the tariff policy, then businesses would be able to plan accordingly and begin the massive capital outlays that come with re-shoring manufacturing. And the tariffs would strategically exclude certain items like the steel that would be necessary to build factories. And, lastly, you wouldn’t pick now to go on a deportation spree when a sizable chunk of the nations construction workers are undocumented immigrants, since all those factories will need to be built by someone and there aren’t enough Americans to do it. But instead of the sane and well-reasoned way to do it, we’ve got Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip chaos version. The tariff policy changes weekly, so businesses can’t predict it, let alone rely on it in the way they would need to to spend the collective trillions of dollars on manufacturing infrastructure that need to be spent. And he’s antagonizing Democrats to such and extent that any future Democratic administration will drop the tariffs on day one. The result of which is that businesses, understandably, are hunkering down until he’s out of office. Instead of spurring the massive investment we need, his policies have chilled spending on manufacturing. The only thing we’re really building at the moment are data centers. So there’s this narrative that tariffs are awful now that’s really the result of someone incompetently deploying them. Some sort of tariff policy would actually be a necessary medicine for the country to help heal the damage from an over reliance on a globalized system that is going to crumble in the coming decades. It won’t be easy, but the earlier the country starts to address it, the better the outcome will be. But it needs to be done intentionally, in a bi-partisan way and through acts of Congress, not in a scattershot fashion where Congress is a bystander and a single deranged lunatic pulls tariff percentages out of ass whenever the mood strikes him.

mandeepj 8mo ago

> Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" or fill-in-the-blank on what country we're "getting" with them. Just like Mexico will pay for the wall? > The reality is that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tariff is. Nope! It's a politician talk! People fall for lies whenever they are sold wrapped in a label of "cheap prices".

danesparza 8mo ago

I have definitely had to pay tariffs on goods I have ordered from the UK. They arrive as a separate bill, and with the threat that if I don't pay them in within a certain time (usually a week) that the good will be returned to the seller. US Tariffs only hurt US citizens. Anything else is simply the stuttering of a simpleton.

munk-a 8mo ago
Even if it isn't as clearly separately billed - the market works the way it does and that cost is going to be passed onto the consumer unless the seller just decides to eat the cost (and I am aware of several small businesses that are eating the costs to try and avoid any PR backlash with the hope that this is a temporary situation). And if the tariffs are ruled invalid you're free to speculate whether target is going to send you a check for what you effectively paid or just pocket the difference.

nixosbestos 8mo ago

Sure I understand why you'd write "Everyone" on HN. But no, some of us have had functional brains for a while. Thanks. EDIT: to be fair, if you were even slighly more specific about the shit-eating morons that ate this illogical, stupid rhetoric, it would be too political and, at best, result in your comment getting clobbered so.... "everyone" it is. Can't make the dumb****s that led us here feel bad.

nitwit005 8mo ago

> Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" or fill-in-the-blank on what country we're "getting" with them. I suspect very few believes the claims other countries are paying the tariffs anymore. People are just saying that's true to stick to the party line. Unfortunately, saying plainly untrue things has become a major part of US politics.