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People are very quick to make kneejerk reactions to tariffs while assuming the other guys have different opinions. The Biden admin went after Canada repeatedly

by 0xy 1mo ago

People are very quick to make kneejerk reactions to tariffs while assuming the other guys have different opinions. The Biden admin went after Canada repeatedly for unfair trade practices, and issued a blanket 10% tariff on Chinese goods. The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung. The one thing the current admin does have a point on is non-tariff meddling. Numerous countries make it almost impossible to sell goods in their countries while the same is not true in reverse, or they levy a high price in garbage regulatory fees (see the EU's new packaging identification directive that completely destroys small business), or in completely made-up fines for vague behaviors not even they can define (see the EU's DSA which is exclusively used against monopolizing American companies while completely ignoring monopolist and predatory EU ones like Booking.com).

inigyou 1mo ago
> completely destroys small business Citation needed, I'm in the EU and there is small business
- 0xy 1mo ago
  https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/eu-ppwr-pause-request-usa-based-organizatoin-small-business-burden-recycling/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/eu-ppwr-pause-request-us... This regulation forces very small businesses to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to comply and register in EACH EU country (what the hell's the point of the union, exactly?). Even if they sell only 10 widgets to Belgian buyers, they need to register in Belgium and pay the fee. Insane. So a small business selling 5-10k of widgets in EU now has to pay 2-5k in business destroying regulatory compliance fees, putting them out of business. Incredible incompetence from the people who brought you ineffective cookie nag screens. It's not possible to exist as a small business in the EU because they create regulations to destroy you. Try creating a business in Germany. You need 25,000 euros to create a GmbH! In the US you can walk into the office in New York City and have an LLC for $9 per 2 years. The EU is a nightmare hellscape of over-regulation. This is why there are essentially zero EU unicorns. EU bureaucrats support ONLY large and entrenched businesses.
  - inigyou 1mo ago
    Why does the restaurant across the street from my house need to register in Belgium? Sounds like you've identified an opportunity to make a company that helps EU startups navigate bureaucracy. You could do all the packaging registration on their behalf.
  - inigyou 1mo ago
    Separately, Germany hates limited liability in general and wants you to be a sole proprietor instead.
- tzs 1mo ago
  There was a big discussion of this recently here, which will give you more information, but yes, it is in fact destroying a large number of EU small businesses. The EU has recognized this and they are scrambling to fix it in legislation due later this year.
  - saghm 1mo ago
    So we've gone from "completely" to "partially", and the source is still just handwaved?
    - tzs 1mo ago
      Here's the 1000+ comment discussion of this from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49419237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49419237
      - inigyou 1mo ago
        And the evidence is where. Again, when I look out the window, the bodega is still there.
throw0101d 1mo ago
> The Biden admin went after Canada repeatedly for unfair trade practices […] What were these practices?
- FuriouslyAdrift 1mo ago
  Softwood dumping by Canada has been a huge issue for over 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_softwood_lumber_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
  - throw0101d 1mo ago
    So that's one (in which Canada happened to win multiple rulings at NAFTA and WTO panels). Any others?
- tim333 1mo ago
  Google's AI comes up with softwood, cheese, DSA and "Buy American" https://share.google/aimode/DL4saqlcSNZrngyPH https://share.google/aimode/DL4saqlcSNZrngyPH Those seem kind of minor gripes.
tzs 1mo ago
> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung. You are ignoring a massive difference. Trump wants balanced trade with each individual country. Pretty much everyone else who wants the US to reduce or eliminate its trade deficit just wants that to apply to total trade, not to each individual country. The main reason money was invented was so you don't have to have balanced trade with each individual trading partner. What is booking.com doing that violates DSA?
- 0xy 1mo ago
  It operates as a monopoly and 10,000 hotels have sued it for anti-trust in Europe. Despite qualifying for DSA thresholds, the EU pretends it doesn't exist and is not a monopoly. Because it's not American.
  - input_sh 1mo ago
    Booking.com literally is classified as a VLOP (very large online platform) under DSA: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses#ecl-inpage-booking https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-desig... It's also not the only European company to be designated as VLOP, as you'll find some EU-based adult content sites on that page as well, but if you really want a European company that is inexplicably missing from this list, I'd go with Spotify.
    - 0xy 1mo ago
      Cool! Link me to their fine under DSA.
jccalhoun 1mo ago
I don't really have any idea if tariffs are good or bad. What I do know is that just announcing that they will go into effect with very little notice and then they won't go into effect and then they do but then they are decalared illegal because they weren't passed through the official methods isn't good.
- eclipticplane 1mo ago
  It was _great_ for the companies that collected billions in tariffs and got refunds when the obviously illegal tariffs were declared illegal while training their customers to accept higher prices... that certainly won't go back to pre-tariff levels.
- adverbly 1mo ago
  > I don't really have any idea if tariffs are good or bad. tariffs are objectively* bad from a "big picture" perspective. There are some situations where they create winners and losers so that some people in some countries will win, but they always do more damage than good "overall"(or in aggregate across all parties). A link to the math behind it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss *in almost all cases... For certain goods where you actually want to lower consumption such as cigarettes, then maybe arguably they are good? Same argument as for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax
  - bluecheese452 1mo ago
    The “big picture” perspective is missing a bunch of reasons beyond just lowering consumption in the short term. For example even if you can buy cheaper food elsewhere it is still important to have a domestic food production industry.
dregitsky 1mo ago
> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung. I mean that's the point, no? Swing the hammer carefully at a nail or with maximum force at your own leg? Or to drop the metaphor - much of the difference between good and bad policy is a difference in degree. So your counterargument here is valid against "all tariffs are bad" but I believe the point most are making is "the current admin's use of tariffs is bad" which makes your counter appear as a bad-faith mischaracterization.
toast0 1mo ago
> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung. Which is a huge difference. Targetted tariffs can induce compliance with desired trade practices and influence purchasing towards more desirable sources. Global blanket tariffs on products without domestic sources of substitute goods is effective for increasing domestic prices and encouraging foreign producers to enhance their ex-US trade networks. If you wanted to encouage local manufacturing, you would add tariffs on finished goods, but leave raw materials untariffed. You might consider tariffing raw materials with ample local capacity. You might carefully consider tariffs for machine tools and other finshed goods which are necessary for manufacturing where there's not current local production capacity. You might consider reciprocal tarrifs that were actually reciprocal tariffs... you tarrif me, I tariff you. Not tarrifs on countries that have an export surplus because they can't afford to import goods from the US.
AnimalMuppet 1mo ago
The other difference is the legality of it. Trump is trying to do all this at his personal order, without Congress. And he's trying to jump through all kinds of shenanigans to do so. For example, he declared a state of emergency about fentanyl, and used that as cover to create tariffs toward every country on earth. That, obviously, has nothing to do with fentanyl; it's just a smoke screen. He wants to rule by decree. Biden didn't do that. (OK, didn't do it to anything like the same degree. I'm sure someone can find an example where he did. It still wasn't like this.)
Hammershaft 1mo ago
Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy. https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tariffs/ https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tarif... Literally 100% of the 50 expert economists polled by the Kent Clark Center think tariffs overall make Americans worse off. Nobody in politics can say this simple truth because the rust belt states are critical swing states.
- throw0101d 1mo ago
  > Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy. There are a few specific cases when one may want to implement them: * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good One should also be mindful one's manufacturing base: * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now

by 0xy 1mo ago

inigyou 1mo ago

> completely destroys small business Citation needed, I'm in the EU and there is small business

0xy 1mo ago
https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/eu-ppwr-pause-request-usa-based-organizatoin-small-business-burden-recycling/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/eu-ppwr-pause-request-us... This regulation forces very small businesses to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to comply and register in EACH EU country (what the hell's the point of the union, exactly?). Even if they sell only 10 widgets to Belgian buyers, they need to register in Belgium and pay the fee. Insane. So a small business selling 5-10k of widgets in EU now has to pay 2-5k in business destroying regulatory compliance fees, putting them out of business. Incredible incompetence from the people who brought you ineffective cookie nag screens. It's not possible to exist as a small business in the EU because they create regulations to destroy you. Try creating a business in Germany. You need 25,000 euros to create a GmbH! In the US you can walk into the office in New York City and have an LLC for $9 per 2 years. The EU is a nightmare hellscape of over-regulation. This is why there are essentially zero EU unicorns. EU bureaucrats support ONLY large and entrenched businesses.
- inigyou 1mo ago
  Why does the restaurant across the street from my house need to register in Belgium? Sounds like you've identified an opportunity to make a company that helps EU startups navigate bureaucracy. You could do all the packaging registration on their behalf.
- inigyou 1mo ago
  Separately, Germany hates limited liability in general and wants you to be a sole proprietor instead.
tzs 1mo ago
There was a big discussion of this recently here, which will give you more information, but yes, it is in fact destroying a large number of EU small businesses. The EU has recognized this and they are scrambling to fix it in legislation due later this year.
- saghm 1mo ago
  So we've gone from "completely" to "partially", and the source is still just handwaved?
  - tzs 1mo ago
    Here's the 1000+ comment discussion of this from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49419237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49419237
    - inigyou 1mo ago
      And the evidence is where. Again, when I look out the window, the bodega is still there.

throw0101d 1mo ago

> The Biden admin went after Canada repeatedly for unfair trade practices […] What were these practices?

FuriouslyAdrift 1mo ago
Softwood dumping by Canada has been a huge issue for over 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_softwood_lumber_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
- throw0101d 1mo ago
  So that's one (in which Canada happened to win multiple rulings at NAFTA and WTO panels). Any others?
tim333 1mo ago
Google's AI comes up with softwood, cheese, DSA and "Buy American" https://share.google/aimode/DL4saqlcSNZrngyPH https://share.google/aimode/DL4saqlcSNZrngyPH Those seem kind of minor gripes.

tzs 1mo ago

> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung. You are ignoring a massive difference. Trump wants balanced trade with each individual country. Pretty much everyone else who wants the US to reduce or eliminate its trade deficit just wants that to apply to total trade, not to each individual country. The main reason money was invented was so you don't have to have balanced trade with each individual trading partner. What is booking.com doing that violates DSA?

0xy 1mo ago
It operates as a monopoly and 10,000 hotels have sued it for anti-trust in Europe. Despite qualifying for DSA thresholds, the EU pretends it doesn't exist and is not a monopoly. Because it's not American.
- input_sh 1mo ago
  Booking.com literally is classified as a VLOP (very large online platform) under DSA: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-designated-vlops-and-vloses#ecl-inpage-booking https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/list-desig... It's also not the only European company to be designated as VLOP, as you'll find some EU-based adult content sites on that page as well, but if you really want a European company that is inexplicably missing from this list, I'd go with Spotify.
  - 0xy 1mo ago
    Cool! Link me to their fine under DSA.

jccalhoun 1mo ago

I don't really have any idea if tariffs are good or bad. What I do know is that just announcing that they will go into effect with very little notice and then they won't go into effect and then they do but then they are decalared illegal because they weren't passed through the official methods isn't good.

eclipticplane 1mo ago
It was _great_ for the companies that collected billions in tariffs and got refunds when the obviously illegal tariffs were declared illegal while training their customers to accept higher prices... that certainly won't go back to pre-tariff levels.
adverbly 1mo ago
> I don't really have any idea if tariffs are good or bad. tariffs are objectively* bad from a "big picture" perspective. There are some situations where they create winners and losers so that some people in some countries will win, but they always do more damage than good "overall"(or in aggregate across all parties). A link to the math behind it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss *in almost all cases... For certain goods where you actually want to lower consumption such as cigarettes, then maybe arguably they are good? Same argument as for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax
- bluecheese452 1mo ago
  The “big picture” perspective is missing a bunch of reasons beyond just lowering consumption in the short term. For example even if you can buy cheaper food elsewhere it is still important to have a domestic food production industry.

dregitsky 1mo ago

> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung. I mean that's the point, no? Swing the hammer carefully at a nail or with maximum force at your own leg? Or to drop the metaphor - much of the difference between good and bad policy is a difference in degree. So your counterargument here is valid against "all tariffs are bad" but I believe the point most are making is "the current admin's use of tariffs is bad" which makes your counter appear as a bad-faith mischaracterization.

toast0 1mo ago

> The only difference is to what degree they wield the tariff hammer, and in which direction it is swung. Which is a huge difference. Targetted tariffs can induce compliance with desired trade practices and influence purchasing towards more desirable sources. Global blanket tariffs on products without domestic sources of substitute goods is effective for increasing domestic prices and encouraging foreign producers to enhance their ex-US trade networks. If you wanted to encouage local manufacturing, you would add tariffs on finished goods, but leave raw materials untariffed. You might consider tariffing raw materials with ample local capacity. You might carefully consider tariffs for machine tools and other finshed goods which are necessary for manufacturing where there's not current local production capacity. You might consider reciprocal tarrifs that were actually reciprocal tariffs... you tarrif me, I tariff you. Not tarrifs on countries that have an export surplus because they can't afford to import goods from the US.

AnimalMuppet 1mo ago

The other difference is the legality of it. Trump is trying to do all this at his personal order, without Congress. And he's trying to jump through all kinds of shenanigans to do so. For example, he declared a state of emergency about fentanyl, and used that as cover to create tariffs toward every country on earth. That, obviously, has nothing to do with fentanyl; it's just a smoke screen. He wants to rule by decree. Biden didn't do that. (OK, didn't do it to anything like the same degree. I'm sure someone can find an example where he did. It still wasn't like this.)

Hammershaft 1mo ago

Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy. https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tariffs/ https://kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/steel-and-aluminum-tarif... Literally 100% of the 50 expert economists polled by the Kent Clark Center think tariffs overall make Americans worse off. Nobody in politics can say this simple truth because the rust belt states are critical swing states.

throw0101d 1mo ago
> Economists universally think tariffs are dumb policy. There are a few specific cases when one may want to implement them: * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good One should also be mindful one's manufacturing base: * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now