I am a small electronic board manufacturer in US.
I buy bare PCB boards from China and populate them here.
Usually the parts are bought from Digikey, Mouser or other distributor.
Adding a 25% tax will not incentivize any American company to start produce parts here.It is way to little and to late.
If 10 boards are $2 in China, are maybe $30 in US , so even you put 100% import tax, the China price is still
competitive.
The law is unfairly hitting the small US companies. Sparkfun , Adafruit will be hit, but not Apple or HP because they are finishing the product in China.
The only ones winning from this is the US government that is getting 25% of the money .
This is definitely not creating jobs.
New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
251–260 of 357 posts
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
They will raise prices regardless of their cost structure. The millions of unfilled manufacturing "jobs" are ~$14 an hour jobs that have significant upfront training requirements, so I doubt that onshoring lower skilled manufacturing is going to lead to much of a renaissance.
Even better, they will re-open the factory but because of better tech, instead of the 5000 employees from 20-30 years ago, they'll have just 100, many of which will be either remote or specialists who move in for this exact position. Not the 5000 local blue collar workers :)
Advances in manufacturing automation is actually the strongest argument in favor of rebuilding a domestic manufacturing base.
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If they want to have a nation in 20 years they likely will not stop playing the US agenda" What a strange claim. How are they going to lose their nation? The EU has a GDP 20x Russia's (not to mention having nuclear armed nations). Canada alone has a GDP 2x Russia. Any of these countries can fend off any imaginary assault, most of which are instigated by the US. The largest market...wait, do you think the US is going…
A shut off would be disastrous for everyone involved so I doubt it would ever happen. Worst case scenario, the US would pick apart the EU. "Hey Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal, free trade if you exit the EU. We'll toss in protection from foreign invasion"
Leaving the EU takes a few years which exceeds your presidents attention span by a few years. Nobody would trust he’d honor an agreement for that long.
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Trump's ignorant, hap-hazard way of "negotiating" has alienated foes and made the world re-evaluate why it is playing the US agenda." What's much worse is that he has allienated friends (specifically when they refuse to kiss his ring, but I digress) and mostly for no good reason at all. The US squandered their advantage of having been respected as a (mostly) reliable partner to a definite CAN NOT BE TRUSTED! in not…
I think you’re using the word respect wrong. Respect is not earned by being amiable. In the not too distant past we had a president draw lines in the sand and dared others to cross it. Then they crossed it and we did nothing. That did more to lose respect in the world than anything being done today. Today we are saying we want better trade deals for US goods and we’re not asking .
Earning respect starts by behaving respectably.
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#255Reading the comments I think people are forgetting this is a cooercive and retaliatory tariff on China, not a merchantislist policy. Is someone going to change their whole supply chain if this gets resolved in 3-6 months? The US is arguing that effectively China has been waging a trade war with the US and has merchantialist and nationalistic economic policies that make it difficult for US companies to compete.
So why institute a tariff that makes it harder for US companies to compete, by excusing finished products in order not to piss off consumers?
To change trade policy between the competing governments. Whether it's an effective policy we will have to wait and see.
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#256Reading the comments I think people are forgetting this is a cooercive and retaliatory tariff on China, not a merchantislist policy. Is someone going to change their whole supply chain if this gets resolved in 3-6 months? The US is arguing that effectively China has been waging a trade war with the US and has merchantialist and nationalistic economic policies that make it difficult for US companies to compete.
Providing US companies with an even greater financial incentive to move their final assembly in China seems like a rather counter-productive retaliation.
What am I missing?
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The recently announced tariffs are leverage to get a fair deal at the negotiating table." The US has a trade surplus with Canada, has a higher average tariff, has been the bigger beneficiary of trade, yet Trump has announced tariffs on Canada, to an enormous backlash (and Canadians seriously rethinking their integration in the US economy). This isn't leverage, or masterful negotiating. It's a hamfisted moron bashing…
Your TDS is altering your perception of the world around you. I’m no Trump fan, but at least I can be objective. Stop reading the headlines and start reading between the lines. It’s a skill that will serve you well in life. Last time I checked most people in the US were against the TPP including Clinton. A good trade deal doesn’t require 5,600 pages. I’m not worried about trade imbalances in absolute dollars, I’m con…
Your first two lines are indistinguishable from parody.
"A good trade deal doesn’t require 5,600 pages."
A Trump talking point, like every one of your posts. But you're surely no Trump fan...
Yes, of course trade agreements are voluminous. Saying that it's suspicious because it's big is the sort of nonsensical claim that sells to idiots.
TPP was very unpopular, humorously because of sections added by the United States. Corporate rights, right to sue sovereigns, etc, were all at the behest of the US of A. Sections on extending copyrights and IP rights -- US of A. TPP was viewed as some new world order with some superseding power, and all of that was the work of the US.
>The number alone is meaningless without context.
Just as trade imbalances are meaningless because [waves hand], until they're what you want to argue.
When the US, with a large trade surplus, complains about a tariff in dairy, where the US has a large trade surplus, in an industry where the US has enormous subsidies ($22B USD per year in direct and indirect subsidies), the whole conversations turns to just farce. It is patter to sell to imbeciles.
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. Wavepool, Maytag, etc.. Americans washer and dryer cloth machines pushed for Tariff from the Obama administration to fight against Samsung and other. The tariff target machine coming out from specific countries so Samsung and other moved to other South Eastern companies such as Vietnam. So the American companies pushed for tariff for all incoming washing machine that aren't American. Trump administration…
"I'm not a libertarian but The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith states that all country will have certain expertise they are just good at. Whether it is because the geography that enable them to be better than other or other things, because they're good at certain thing, countries should play to their strength and trade for what they need." And I am not against free trade (well, with reservations), but I think this id…
This idea is often formally referred to as the "Law of Comparative Advantage", and most economists do believe it provides a logical defense of free trade. That said, there are some interesting criticisms of it [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Criticis...
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
China also gives us goods far below what we could produce them for which lowers our cost of living. Complaining about China stealing $300b (I'll use your number because it doesn't really matter) in IP is like complaining about high school kids stealing Adobe CC - it's a theoretical loss, they weren't going to be a customer regardless. Tariffs don't even do anything to prevent IP theft
It gives Chinese companies a competitive advantage because instead of spending billions on R&D they just steal it. The point is that the tariffs will be removed IF China stops stealing IP
That's the dumbest way to enforce IP law. Just take the companies to court in the US if they sell in the US or international court if selling to other countries where Chinese companies compete with American manuf. - tariffs just aren't a good way to do this as it royally fucks American consumers
Re: New US Tariffs are Anti-Maker and Will Encourage Offshoring
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
That will work as soon as we have a single currency. The EU is a really good example here of how a single currency puts everyone on the same economic accounting basis and so eliminates the ability of a country to 'fudge' the numbers through either internal subsidies or currency manipulation. The reason you need a single currency is that if you're going to sell barrels of wheat from country X to country Y, and country…
This is incorrect understanding of how currencies work. Same currency works only when the area satisfies optimum currency area criteria well enough. Euroarea is in constant trouble because it is not good currency region as it is now. You need at least common fiscal policy to fix it. In general, freely floating currencies fix all problems you mention.
FWIW, I'm not a big fan of OCA theory. Or perhaps a better way to say it is that I think the case for making the entire planet with its next day transport of goods and immediate delivery of services would nominally qualify as a single OCA. Note that Mundells criteria are focused primarily on sovereignty and not economics per se (see the Greek comment in peer comment).
Tariffs and currency manipulation are a sovereign response to prevent efficient markets that would render local labor noncompetitive.
And as I mentioned earlier, a single currency makes such manipulations ineffective and you get Greece. They can't bring their productivity up to the level of Germany or France and their economy suffers for it because all of the capital goes elsewhere.