Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by Aloha » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 5:57 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #227

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.

Import substitution industrialization is a pretty well established method to foster industries and frankly works really well for developing states (or did until the entire international system started conspiring to turn you into a pariah state for trying it). You can't export something you're not making in the first place. But it is quite unusual for a fully developed, post-industrial economy to try and move back dow…

But a 25% tariff isnt going to do that, its just going to make things much more expensive - its another thing if you're trying to do cost adjustment tariffs - and just price in all the externalities (labor cost, regulatory regime, environmental rules, and human rights costs) that US manufacturing must bear - and make it a level playing field - thats not what this is.

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

#232

Post by Aloha » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

Marsymars wrote: post #229

Aloha wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost adjustment tariffs is my argument - You use tariffs to equalize actual costs plus a little (environmental/climate rules, labor costs, regulatory environment, human rights, etc) between the US and a foreign country. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of increase either, 5-12% - and probably wouldn't apply to most developed countries, because it is based on that matrix of total cost of doing business. As far as r…

> I personally want to onshore as much production as I can What's the rationale for this? Like if you're already close to full employment, this isn't even zero-sum, you're throwing away your comparative advantage and spending part of your economy on production rather than higher-value services. I'm willing to spend part of my country's wealth to counteract, say, other countries' lack of environmental protections, but…

I want a better quality of jobs, in my experience service oriented industry often have a thinner margin than hardware.

Like walmart is the largest private employer in the US, the working conditions, pay and benefits one gets from working at walmart isnt comparable to what we used to give what was the largest private employer 50 years ago (which was AT&T) - nor can the margins that walmart generates support those kinds of generous pay and benefits either.

This story is repeated a 100 times over thruout the US - while yes we have full employment, its in service jobs (retail, food service, hospitality) and not in manufacturing or other high paying jobs.

The second thing I'm trying to deal with, for lack of a more polite way (without lapsing too far into euphemism) to put it is "jobs for stupid people" (edit, in hindsight the best way to put this is "good jobs for everyone") - for a significant portion of the population, the best job they can hope for in terms of wages and benefits is working on a production line in a factory, while you and I (presumably) work in some sort of information job - thats just not an option for a significant portion of the population, and until we solve that we're going to keep having an issue with a K-shaped economy.

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

#233

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 6:04 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #231

emodendroket wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Import substitution industrialization is a pretty well established method to foster industries and frankly works really well for developing states (or did until the entire international system started conspiring to turn you into a pariah state for trying it). You can't export something you're not making in the first place. But it is quite unusual for a fully developed, post-industrial economy to try and move back dow…

But a 25% tariff isnt going to do that, its just going to make things much more expensive - its another thing if you're trying to do cost adjustment tariffs - and just price in all the externalities (labor cost, regulatory regime, environmental rules, and human rights costs) that US manufacturing must bear - and make it a level playing field - thats not what this is.

> labor cost, regulatory regime, environmental rules, and human rights costs

These don't strike you as themes they're interested in? They're kneecapping or eliminating regulators and driving up unemployment. Their deportation drives, it's true, are a bit contradictory here, but those have other motivations.

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

#234

Post by Aloha » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 6:11 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #233

Aloha wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a 25% tariff isnt going to do that, its just going to make things much more expensive - its another thing if you're trying to do cost adjustment tariffs - and just price in all the externalities (labor cost, regulatory regime, environmental rules, and human rights costs) that US manufacturing must bear - and make it a level playing field - thats not what this is.

> labor cost, regulatory regime, environmental rules, and human rights costs These don't strike you as themes they're interested in? They're kneecapping or eliminating regulators and driving up unemployment. Their deportation drives, it's true, are a bit contradictory here, but those have other motivations.

Not particularly, no.

I do think they want to create more manufacturing jobs, which in general are a better quality than service ones however.

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

#235

Post by antifa » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

s3p wrote: post #219

declan_roberts wrote: post #28

I don't know if tariffs are the right answer but I want so much less Chinese junk in this country. We are absolutely overflowing with low quality junk.

Consumers in the US constantly complain of inflation and things becoming unaffordable, so much that it's become both a GOP and dem talking point. They definitely want to encourage US-made goods, but that would mean prices go up. and realistically consumers buy the cheap stuff from china en masse, knowing it's low quality, just because they want to save money. Or at least that's my 0.02 on the situation. I don't know…

Customers also want to buy once while companies want to replace products that have good reviews with lower quality revisions.

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

#236

Post by Marsymars » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #232

Marsymars wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally want to onshore as much production as I can What's the rationale for this? Like if you're already close to full employment, this isn't even zero-sum, you're throwing away your comparative advantage and spending part of your economy on production rather than higher-value services. I'm willing to spend part of my country's wealth to counteract, say, other countries' lack of environmental protections, but…

I want a better quality of jobs, in my experience service oriented industry often have a thinner margin than hardware. Like walmart is the largest private employer in the US, the working conditions, pay and benefits one gets from working at walmart isnt comparable to what we used to give what was the largest private employer 50 years ago (which was AT&T) - nor can the margins that walmart generates support those kind…

I get what you're saying, but I'm not getting any way that the economics here work. Expanding (rather than shrinking) the economy that way only works if you can export some of your production, which you won't be able to do if the production only exists because of tariffs. (Because other countries will enact counter-tarrifs.)

If you move Walmart employees to building widgets at a somewhat higher wage and that shrinks your economy, you'd have better overall results if you just raised taxes and gave the money to Walmart employees directly.

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

#237

Post by ToucanLoucan » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #134

MrMcCall wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It used to be simple: vote for the guy you liked the most. Then it became vote against the guy you disliked the most. Now it's vote for who you dislike the least." --A Whitney Brown I remember seeing that on SNL in the 80s; it has always stuck with me.

> Now it's vote for who you dislike the least. For 1/3 of eligible voters, it's "I don't care about voting".

For a substantial portion of those third:

1) They can't vote, either because of local politicians meddling in their election process/with their polling places, being convicted of bullshit non-crimes, or simply being unable to get to a polling place. Shock of shocks, majority of political fuckery involved in taking away people's right to vote is brought about by conservatives. Even more shocking, the groups that tend to be disenfranchised trend progressive in their voting habits, wow, such a weird coincidence.

2) They have no desire to vote, because as much as I understand voting for the lesser of two evils (and doing it with regularity) that just isn't motivating, and neither is choosing which party you want to join that's going to leave you for dead the second the election is over. To be clear: this is not "both sides are bad." Both sides are bad, but one is just useless bad, and the other is actively tearing down the state to sow chaos that it can use to consolidate power and bring about a theocracy. And while both of those are bad, they are not even remotely comparable.

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

#238

Post by idkfasayer » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 8:18 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #80

captainkrtek wrote: post #23

Sure miss the days where there wasn’t headline generating chaos from the White House resulting in market volatility. Make Government Boring Again.

Is the market actually disciplining? Or are Wall Street actors gaming the volatility for further profit? Or both?

[dead]

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

#239

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #230

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.

The issue with trying to do this is tariffs are both extremely regressive and wont generate enough revenue to move the needle. It'd be one thing if we were combining tariffs with a UBI - that can balance out most of the regressive effects of it, but we're not doing that.

I don't think they care about it being regressive. Perhaps they even consider that a benefit.

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

#240

Post by Marsymars » Wed, Mar 05, 2025, 9:00 PM UTC

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…

The other replies missed a big issue with the tariffs - which is that you're not wrong, but tariffs basically guarantee counter-tariffs, which means that while you're no longer buying imports, you're also no longer able to competitively export. In the case of Canada, if you don't include raw resources, the US has a trade surplus, so tariffs make the inputs of your value-added-over-raw-resources local goods more expensive while also cutting down the export market.