Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 1001 posts

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#151

Post by nabla9 »

ggm wrote: post #87

I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows. They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get t…

>They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD

Devaluing dollar does not reduce debt measured in dollars. It only makes US debt less valuable to forefingers.

Devaluing dollar can work well only if foreign investments into US stop or reverse. "foreign investors at the end of last year owned 18% of U.S. stocks, according to Goldman Sachs" The trend has already reversed https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/foreign-demand-us-assets-... Killing foreign demand for US assets more permanently is possible but it means financial market crash.

What WILL happen is recession. Atlanta Fed GDPNow dropped from -2.8 to -3.7 percent in a week. https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow?date=2025-04...

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#153

Post by zzzeek »

ggm wrote: post #87

I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows. They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get t…

bit of an 11 dimensional chess answer. Senator Chris Murphy has a much better explanation, which is simply this is Trump's way of holding private industry hostage [1]. The tariffs will be incrementally removed as various private industries give him loyalty pledges just as he is doing with large law firms and universities. that's it! so simple.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3llu...

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#154

Post by porridgeraisin »

codedokode wrote: post #80
iteratethis wrote: post #75

This won't bring home manufacturing but let's say that it will... The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. I saw a video recently explaining how sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage. Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in…

> The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. A usual lack of high qualified low paid workers?

No, this is the effect for the last 50 years' usual "I will have my high paid cushy job while some other country somewhere manufactures products for me, taking on all the negative effects. Only positive effects for me. Yes, you should use our currency and take part in our inflation. Or we'll invade you. We will print 6T USD[1] in 2 years and you need to absorb that along with us."

Thankfully, this is coming to an end soon. No tears anywhere.

I know a version of this is what happens in every human age, not singling anything out, but don't get onto the moral high ground of "I am just trying to ensure everyone is well paid".

[1] additionally, 80% of all US dollars added to the supply were added in the last 5 years.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#155

Post by tempestn »

apparent wrote: post #129
TrackerFF wrote: post #62

From what I understand, de minimis exemption has also been removed. That is a huge, huge deal. It effectively means that all goods imported from China will be slapped with a 30% import tax, as soon as said goods arrive the US border / customs. Usually what happens then, is that the courier will pay that tax, and then bill the recipient later on - as well as charge some fee/fees for the work done. This is why in some…

So is AMZN stock up?

Most of the stuff on amazon comes from China, so I doubt it.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#156

Post by casey2 »

The US particularly has an extremely large population of men (10s of millions) who don't work. Who knows if they'd be doing "low skill" manufacturing if somebody was around to hire them. But if you actually wanted this to work you would have started by subsidizing american raw materials.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#157

Post by flowerthoughts »

TrackerFF wrote: post #62

From what I understand, de minimis exemption has also been removed. That is a huge, huge deal. It effectively means that all goods imported from China will be slapped with a 30% import tax, as soon as said goods arrive the US border / customs. Usually what happens then, is that the courier will pay that tax, and then bill the recipient later on - as well as charge some fee/fees for the work done. This is why in some…

In Europe, Alibaba has their own warehouse in the Netherlands. I wonder if that's to be able to do a single "international" import. Could the same happen in the US?

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#158

Post by brabel »

phillipseamore wrote: post #90

A blanket 10% minimum tariff is a great excuse for any local US manufacturing to increase their prices. I used to live in a country with heavy tariffs, every time tariffs were raised the local producers increased prices to be just below the imports. Even after the tariffs were abolished the prices (on local and imports) never really lowered in any significant way.

That always seems to happen with this sort of protections. It's like when the government tries to incentivize people to buy electric cars by paying 25% of it (example from the climate bonus in Sweden, which was given for years), but what happens is that buyers actually end up paying just maybe 5% less as the car companies now can increase their prices and still sell the cars they produce while making more money.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#159

Post by nullhole »

mcoliver wrote: post #92

Here's a csv and google sheet of the data. Turns out they aren't tariffs countries charge us. They are trade imbalance percentages. Unreal: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xK0OQ5VGl8JHmDSIgbXh... https://gist.github.com/mcoliver/69fe48d03c12388e29cc0cd87eb...

The bit I love is that countries with which the US has a trade surplus aren't getting the opposite of a tariff (a grant, I guess) on their imports to the US, they aren't getting zero tariffs on their imports to the US, they're getting 10% tariffs.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#160

Post by tempestn »

jenadine wrote: post #147

I'm a freelance selling software services. Some of my customers are in the US. Am I affected? These tariff don't impact software, right? Different countries have different tariff. Is there room for arbitration? In which a 3rd party business from a country with low tariff would buy a product in one of the countries with high tariff and export that to the US, taking a small cut.

Tariffs are on goods. Unless you're physically shipping software across the border it shouldn't affect you.

You mean arbitrage, and yes, that definitely happens as a result of tariffs.

Post reply on HN