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Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

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Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#201

Post by pfannkuchen »

lawn wrote: post #196
pfannkuchen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have people not noticed that Trump seems to habitually make hyperbolic and ridiculous sounding statements? Like it’s not doing him any favors, I tend to feel it’s some kind of personality defect. Though it did get him a lot of attention in the past, which substantially led to him becoming president. Either he can’t turn it off, or the decade plus of increasingly internet centric media exposure among the general popul…

Saying crazy things like implementing general tariffs? Or wanting to create "camps" to hold immigrants, and then sending them to Guantanamo? Things like threatening retaliations against perceived enemies? Withdrawing support from Ukraine and groveling to Putin? I'm pretty tired of people dismissing his crazy outbursts as something he just says because he's not just all talk, he (too) often does the crazy things.

[flagged]

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#202

Post by Tainnor »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #199
lazide wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of experience with this kind of person. I personally will bet real money that the US has troops in Greenland within a year, and is claiming it as US territory. In my experience, the ‘personality defect’ you are thinking of is what many folks would call ‘malignant narcissistic personality disorder’. He only wants Greenland because someone once told him he couldn’t have it, and it gets him attention every…

Yes, I agree that the personality defect is a form of narcissism. I think, though, that the narcissism mechanism acts a bit differently than you say. I think he sees himself as a great man, a man who can see further than others, a man who gets things done and above all a man who makes deals. I’m not saying his is any those things, he’s not, just that this is how he narcissistically sees himself. Interestingly, I thin…

> and if you listen to the man talk for a long enough time, as I have, he has shown signs of being many, many things, but being literally insane is not one of them

I guess the disconnect comes from the fact that for many people including myself, the perception has always been of the exact opposite.

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#203

Post by rsynnott »

balls187 wrote: post #129
johnnyanmac wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never particularly thought of "free trade" as a conservative policy. I thought it was fairly bipartisan that large corporations want to get the cheapest prices for stuff (which often is not within the US).

As far as I am aware, Free Trade was a clinton era policy, which sparked globalization. Yes it cost American industry jobs, but gave rise to a significant boom in non manufacturing jobs.

"Free trade", as a named policy position, goes back to the 19th century, though as a _thing_ it's somewhat older.

In particular it was a major political controversy in the UK for most of the 19th century.

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#204

Post by rsynnott »

verdverm wrote: post #147
balls187 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I am aware, Free Trade was a clinton era policy, which sparked globalization. Yes it cost American industry jobs, but gave rise to a significant boom in non manufacturing jobs.

Free trade and globalization have been around a lot longer than most of us here have been alive, maybe all of is It has been a rising tide that lifts all boats on our blue marble

All of us, presuming that there's no-one here aged over 200.

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#205

Post by rsynnott »

codazoda wrote: post #35
Sabinus wrote: post #3

Any bets on how this will be justified by Trump voters? I'm thinking at first it'll be 'playing hardball negotiating tactic' and when it looks like the tariffs are here to stay 'paying more is patriotic'.

I haven’t paid attention to the politics here much, but isn’t driving up the price the point? If you charge Canada a 25% tariff then products sold in the U.S. and shipped from Canada should cost U.S. consumers about 25% more. That, in turn, makes U.S. products look more attractive. A U.S. business pays taxes at the federal and state levels. A U.S. business also hires U.S. employees, who pay taxes as well and spend in…

> I’m sure I’m way over simplifying this, to the point of stupidity

This is, to an extent, the problem, yes.

There are plenty of problems, but here's one very obvious one; your own industry almost certainly depends heavily on imports, particularly if you're a developed country. If you basically only have primary industry, then this sort of protectionism can _theoretically_ work and allow development of secondary industry (though in practice there aren't many examples of this), but for a developed country it really makes very little sense.

You're also assuming that local industry _will_ compete on price, versus just accepting the newly-set tariff-induced base price. That will happen in some cases, but not all; in particular for near-monopolistic industries (cars, a lot of heavy consumer goods like kitchen appliances), really, it makes a lot of sense for them to raise their prices under such circumstances.

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#206

Post by lazide »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #199
lazide wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of experience with this kind of person. I personally will bet real money that the US has troops in Greenland within a year, and is claiming it as US territory. In my experience, the ‘personality defect’ you are thinking of is what many folks would call ‘malignant narcissistic personality disorder’. He only wants Greenland because someone once told him he couldn’t have it, and it gets him attention every…

Yes, I agree that the personality defect is a form of narcissism. I think, though, that the narcissism mechanism acts a bit differently than you say. I think he sees himself as a great man, a man who can see further than others, a man who gets things done and above all a man who makes deals. I’m not saying his is any those things, he’s not, just that this is how he narcissistically sees himself. Interestingly, I thin…

It depends entirely on the definition of insanity, eh?

I don’t think he is clinically insane, or incompetent in a court of law insane. Deep down he knows what the truth is, or he couldn’t do what he is doing. You can’t go in the opposite direction of something if part of you doesn’t know where it actually is.

NPD is a disorder, which isn’t the psychological definition of insanity either.

He just refuses to believe or acknowledge anything that doesn’t reinforce his world view, regularly preferring (and enforcing on others) his delusional world view instead, which has him as a strong man, excellent deal maker, etc.

He also goes out of his way to destroy anyone who disagrees with his delusional world view, to the point of committing what appears to be clear criminal acts to do so, and prefers coercive control over any sort of mutually beneficial bargaining.

It all fits.

Look at the consistent outcome for people who are around or under the control of malignant narcissists, and you’ll see why this is a big problem. He is going to end up destroying everything valuable or real in everything he has control over in his attempt to make it fit his world view, and destroy anyone he can who attempts to stop it.

If economic means don’t work, he has assassinated folks before, and while yes it doesn’t fit his MO to start wars directly - at some point it’s going to happen.

All it takes is for someone to stand up to him in the right circumstances.

If he can take Greenland, and sees no real consequences (he certainly didn’t get any for taking out the Iranian general, despite hundreds of service member injuries), even if it involves force - seriously, why wouldn’t he in your world view?

And do you think the cowards currently in power elsewhere are going to risk starting WW3 for a bunch of ice? Greenland only has 56k people in the whole country, and most of them are rural farmers who will never have to care what gov’t is actually running the country.

Oh, and here it is again today - he’s going to ‘make them rich’ [https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-people-greenland-we-will...].

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#207

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

chii wrote: post #195
emodendroket wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're clearly thinking much bigger, like returning to a model where tariffs are the primary mode of funding the government, and nuking whole sectors/devaluing the dollar to make US exports more competitive with a desperate potential workforce. Not a particularly compelling plan in my view but it has its own internal logic.

why would tariffs make US exports more competitive? It would make other countries under tariff to retaliate, which makes US exports less valuable. Unless, of course, the US has some sort of monopoly on an export that others have no choice but to take. I dont think the US has such a resource.

The US does have such a monopoly, in tech. But because that's services rather than goods, it seems to be ignored.

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#208

Post by rsynnott »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #65
warkdarrior wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the theory. But there is no incentive for US manufacturers to compete on price. If the product from China costs $100 (including the tariff), the same product from US will be $99.99. Selling it any cheaper would be stupid.

That would only be conceivable if there was a single domestic manufacturer. You don't need a foreign product to keep prices honest in a competitive domestic market.

See the Soviet and East German automobile industries, and to a large extent the British one pre-European accession. Hideously outdated and uncompetitive, years behind the rest of the world, and both vanished practically completely when the protectionist systems which kept them alive collapsed. When the government more or less makes people buy your shit no matter how bad it is, on the basis that it is the only option that isn't taxed into oblivion, there is little incentive to make it good, and in practice this does seem to hold up to a large extent even when there are a few local competitors.

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#209

Post by rsynnott »

beefnugs wrote: post #181

I wish humans were better at coordination, or instead of "social media" people got addicted to social bargaining: because this would be the perfect time for a united consumer front, demanding that that big companies take more of a hit from their profit margin than from employee wages or raised prices. Threatening to starve out a company if it doesn't implement these tariff increases in a more reasonable way than the…

> Threatening to starve out a company if it doesn't implement these tariff increases in a more reasonable way than the entirety of capitalism history would be the only way to turn around the avalanche it has been

I mean, depends on the industry, but for instance take Target. Its profit margin is 3-4%, and that was in 2024, which was, really, pretty good times, all things considered. It doesn't have much room to absorb source price increases. Few industries dependent on imports do.

Re: Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs

#210

Post by toxicunderGroov »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #207
chii wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why would tariffs make US exports more competitive? It would make other countries under tariff to retaliate, which makes US exports less valuable. Unless, of course, the US has some sort of monopoly on an export that others have no choice but to take. I dont think the US has such a resource.

The US does have such a monopoly, in tech. But because that's services rather than goods, it seems to be ignored.

I propose ASML raised prices for US customers by 30%, and maybe give China some freebies to thank them for the panda's.
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