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

bbc.com

211–220 of 1001 posts

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

#211
My understandings reading some comments. 1. Prices will increase 2. US will need to manufacture things and they will need a lots of workers. There will be shortage of workers because factory pays minimal wages. 3. Factories will have to offer higher amount of salary that will increase price

Ultimately prices increases for everything and working class will suffer more.

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

#212
post #134

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…

Well, the good news is almost nobody is gonna like this, so I don't anticipate it lasting beyond Trump's presidency, assuming he makes it 4 years at this rate. The bad news is that even after tariffs are removed, it will take years for prices to recover, if they ever do.

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

#213
US says there was an imbalance in trade, and that is true only if we look at goods. If we look at services, I think the picture changes.

What if the EU and rest of the world starts adding taxes to financial and IT services provided by the US? What if Amazon cloud and Netflix start costing 20% more?

And let's not forget US is printing dollars which are being used for worldwide trade and the rest of the world subsidies their inflation and their economy through that.

Let's not forget US exported the 2008 crysis and most of the world payed for that.

I don't think US will like if the rest of the world stops using US dollars, stops using US financial services and stops investing in US economy by buying shares, bonds, securities.

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

#215
post #152

[flagged]

On the scale of concern, voter ID is way down there. You've already had both "prosecute main political opponent" and "storm the legislature".

Voter ID is very common and sensible. The UK introduced it recently and while it did disenfranchise people this was not to the benefit of the party in power when the law was introduced.

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

#216

Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade deficit with that country divided by the country's exports. I think more and more we see lots of evidence they don't know what they're doing.

Have you considered the possibility that they know perfectly well what they're doing and they're just lying about it? Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has been CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald for over 2 decades. The treasury secretary has a similarly stellar resume. There is no way these people don't understand the difference between expressing a trade deficit as a ratio and actual tariffs laid by other countries.

Trump personally may or may not understand it (I think he does) but his political superpower is his willingness to stand up in public and say complete bullshit knowing that it's bullshit, knowing that some people are fools who will uncritically believe the bullshit, and other people are cynics who who will nod along with the bullshit either to make money out of the rubes or because they think it serves a strategic purpose.

You can waste years wondering which side of Hanlon's razor someone is on, but it's important to remember that obsessing over such dilemmas can lead to paralysis. Just like there are a lot of street hustles and cons that depend on confusing/misleading the mark before tricking or mugging them out of their money, there are a lot of political gambits that depend on inducing analysis-paralysis in opponents. Manufacturing dilemmas is also a key element in military strategy.

My advice is to stop worrying about whether these people are such fools that you owe them some sort of empathy and an effort to save them from themselves, or you will end up like Charlie Brown having the football pulled way by Lucy yet again. It is OK to cut them off and treat them as bad actors, for the same reason you should often round off quantitative values instead of obsessing over precision.

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

#217
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

Given how dependent usa is on foreign debt, that sounds crazy to me.

If they accomplish that sort of thing, they wont be able to borrow at favourable rates anymore. That seems incredibly bad for usa. Am i missing something on how severe that would be?

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

#218

Current EU tariffs on US goods... Product Category Tariff Rate ----------------------------- -------------- Dairy Products (e.g., cheese, butter) Up to 50% Processed Foods (e.g., chocolate, confectionery) 30-40% Alcoholic Beverages (e.g., whiskey, bourbon) 25% Steel and Aluminum Products 25% Automobiles 10% Industrial Goods 5-10%

That's a bit misleading. Make no mistake, current US tariffs are UNIVERSAL. Not specific to e.g. chicken or automobiles or purebred horses. They cover absolutely everything. While you may see 38% or more tariff on chocolate, chocolate export to the EU from the US is hardly an important issue. And for dairy products, the tariff is a fixed euro amount per weight, not %.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...

https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/search?origi...

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

#219

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...

I see how the tariff numbers may have been calculated. But why is it done that way? What is the rationale behind such a calculation? Is this a way to balance the existing trade deficits? How does it work? Would appreciate you (or anybody else) shed some light on the economics of the thing.

Suggestion that the admin is vibe governing: https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3lluo7jmsss...

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

#220

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...

Funny how Russia is absent from the list
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