651–660 of 721 posts
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The Donald tariffs certainly changed my behavior as a Canadian consumer. For example, i stopped buying US wine, US orange juice and I keep an eye open for any US made thing I could remove from my environment.
Nice, you found Canadian wine and orange juice?
Aren't Temu/Shein considered to be ultra-low-quality garbage, mostly? Don't people haul their items in order to promote their useless Instagram/TikTok, so their followers will buy the same ultra-low-quality garbage? Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of direct access to overseas markets, rather than local distributors slapping 200% margin on Chinese sourced/produced items that you can buy from AliExpress. But I'm not i…
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I've been short on work, which means I've been poor. I use my off time to work on side projects that I simply could not afford to complete if I paid what US companies charge for tools, components, and custom PCBs. My ability to innovate is seriously impacted by these tarrifs and there is no alternative that I can afford. I recently created something that people in my industry actually want to buy, but I only ordered…
To clarify, I'm not defending the tariffs or the way this whole thing is implemented. I'm sure it puts a lot of people in trouble. I'm only criticizing the race to the bottom that the platforms and kind of consumption mentioned are part of. Sure at the individual level we can find advantages to it, but I'm arguing that we're collectively worst off.
You're going to (collectively) need to increase the incomes at the low-end if you want people earning minimum-wage to still be clothed and able to furnish their homes. A significant portion of people who by from Shein have no other options within their budgets, and their existence tends to be ignored in conversations such as this one. The unspoken social contract has been "You get low wages, but get access to cheap consumer goods", but now the cheap consumer goods are being taken away.
There's a dissonance between wanting American-made/substantive/good quality/expensive consumer goods and maintaining the minimum wage at unlivable levels to avoid knock-on inflation. You can't have the economics of Switzerland coexisting with McJobs.
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Yeah pretty funny to see mostly the same people calling for a $20+/hr "minimum wage" on one hand, and bemoaning the tarrifs on the other hand. They will tell you that if you can't pay your employees that much, then you don't have a viable business. But they will turn around and whine about how their cheap Chinese crap purchases are now going to cost what a "viable" domestic producer would have to charge.
I'm a lefty lib and, like lots of us, I've wanted restricted trade with China since we granted them MFN status in the '90s. I think that was a bad idea in the first place. Neoliberalism is not popular and never was. Donors like it. Workers don't. The only reason either party could stick to it and still win elections, is because both stuck to it. Neither "defected". Tariffing Canada and Mexico? The EU? Yeah, not so mu…
Canada has been laundering Chinese aluminum and steel, Malaysia has been laundering Chinese ‘honey’, etc.
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There are kids in Congo that are claiming to be older than they are so they can get work in mines to feed themselves and their families. If they don’t work they and their families starve, but if they do work they are encouraging immoral child labor. I don’t understand why many people think the answer is easy and straightforward in that case, this sounds like the trolley problem to me.
The people involved in international aid in particular know fine well that it's not an easy problem to solve... Exploitation and corruption is at every level here. For a children in Congo it may be a better option if the only alternative is to starve, but let's not pretend that everyone from the mine owner to the smartphone buyer is not profiting from that situation. As a consumer one of the few immediate means of ac…
I kind of understand why China invests in Africa the way it does vs how the west seems to just throw charity and morality at it. Development would solve the problem naturally (a richer society will stop sending their kids to the mines, or having their schools organize them to make fireworks, a sad state of affairs that happened less than two decades ago in China but now is unthinkable).
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Much like brexit this will be a case of hindsight for many - people realising too late that they voted against their own interests
Brexit literally just resulted in the UK having lower tariffs and a probable free trade deal with the largest economy on the planet. ...unlike our friends on the European continent.
Get ready for the chlorine chicken!
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It's easy to find "real brands" if one looks outside of Amazon, Alibaba, etc. Surprisingly, I find I am more pleased with purchases I make outside of Amazon despite all of Amazon's perks. "Platforms" like Amazon and fake "brands" aside, online retailers that only sell "real brands" are still around; they never disappeared despite Amazon's meteoric rise. Many sell through Amazon but also sell outside Amazon, too. Some…
I've found I buy fewer things in general, and also the things I do buy are of higher quality when I do it in person. Might even get some useful advice if it's something like a tool. Also it's just more fun, especially if it's a nice bike ride, walk, or trip on transit. > And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/K…
As far as tools or other general hardware - the stores like mom and pop 100 year old hardware stores are amazing and have things you probably cant find online sitting on some shelf and the owner knows exactly what box its in. I love that experience.
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Amazon took down one of my reviews because I included a picture of the item's manual which had a page offering to pay for Amazon reviews (the item had unanimous 5 star reviews). To me that seemed like valuable info and legitimate context to include in a review but even after I appealed they disagreed because my picture was "irrelevant".
You're supposed to report review manipulation offers to Amazon. Reviews are for the product itself, not the seller (in theory multiple sellers can offer the same product, but for alphabet soup brands that's never the case).
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The USA and the EU more or less have had even import duties. The USA averaging out at 1.47 % and the EU at 1.39 %. [1] The EU has been advocating for a free-trade agreement, the TTIP, with the USA from 2013 on. It was buried in 2016 by the 45th president of the USA, who somehow thought it unfair. The EU has proposed a free-trade agreement only a few weeks ago. [2] You may believe what you want, but at least in dealin…
Hold on now. For consumers , the only thing that's mattered as far as we're concerned is the fact the US had de minimis, which effectively meant no duties paid on all relevant goods a US consumer might want. The EU, on the other hand, has made buying goods from the US, for consumers , horrifically expensive, including reducing the value of non-duty paid goods to essentially zero and leaving it up to EU member countri…
The actual, lived experience is far different than whatever any bloc or country may claim (such as being in favor of free trade). The EU has always been economically protectionist, since its birth.
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It's easy to find "real brands" if one looks outside of Amazon, Alibaba, etc. Surprisingly, I find I am more pleased with purchases I make outside of Amazon despite all of Amazon's perks. "Platforms" like Amazon and fake "brands" aside, online retailers that only sell "real brands" are still around; they never disappeared despite Amazon's meteoric rise. Many sell through Amazon but also sell outside Amazon, too. Some…
When I went to Shenzhen I found some of these brands with stalls in their vast malls. They're real places. As you walk through you navigate around an obstacle course of dollies, hear endless packing tape and occasionally point out, "oh look, there's Owawuwo, I got a cheap projector from them". Americans can get a Shenzhen-only 5-day Visa on arrival (VOA) from Hong Kong through the Luohu entry at the LoWu station via…