Gamers Nexus essentially produced a 3-hr doc on how changing tariffs affect the US computer industry: "The Death of Affordable Computing | Tariffs Impact & Investigation" https://youtu.be/1W_mSOS1Qts?si=pBVt65SMqb1p-Zte . Best part is having a product manager show a spreadsheet of costs and margins and explain in real terms ($$$) what tariffs do to their business.
Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
301–310 of 672 posts
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if he wants to work in a shoe factory?
The US already makes highly advanced goods like cars using robotic manufacturing. Wouldn't an entrepreneur be able to figure out how to make something as simple as a shoe factory? And wouldn't that also result in fairly high paying union jobs, such as the people to maintain the machines and software?
Question might be first why haven't they already?
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#303Stopping the flow of Chinese products, often made with child or forced labor, is a good thing: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o... . Weren’t we upset about the Uyghurs five minutes ago? Trade with China is bad. It means a race to the bottom with a foreign country that doesn’t have our labor protections or environmental laws, and whose “comparative advantage” is cheaper labor. This was a wi…
Stopping the flow entirely would collapse western society as we would have no access to technology. I don't think anyone sane disagrees the geopolitical impact of dependence on China is a bad thing, but the mechanism by which this flow of goods is being disrupted is going to have a very negative impact on people's quality of life.
>Stopping the flow entirely would collapse western society as we would have no access to technology.
That is a wild exaggeration!
(Not that I want the flow to stop.)
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, life's better when you don't have to rely on the guns. If you're willing to work together to make the pie bigger for everyone, peacefully, you get further. Which is why you have to occasionally knock the people willing to exploit the peaceful order, off.
Which takes guns. And back at square 1.
I don’t know that it takes guns. If we moved to, say, ranked-choice voting and a multi-party system, the more extreme elements of our country would probably be sidelined.
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Empty shelves are just one of the symptoms. The real pain will come from companies having to deal with increased taxes (that's what tariffs are) for Chinese components, decreased exports (counter tariffs, anti US sentiments), etc. and then their follow up to that would be using tools like layoffs, price increases, etc. Some of those companies might have to close doors and go bankrupt. If that happens a lot you get th…
> There are of course quite a few large US businesses being affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate into shifts in political donations. Which, I'm sure is something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term elections get closer. That's a stick that can be (and probably already is) wielded that might produce results soonish. I…
is it not obvious the oligarchs control the globalist politicians and not the nationalists?
Is it controversial to say that if you really wanted to "fight the oligarchy", your policy positions would be pretty similar to the America first agenda (sans social issues)?
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#306I was going to purchase a shipping container for my property in the US a few days ago, but the company I was talking with has raised their prices 70% over the quote I got 2-3 weeks prior.
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing that’s been interesting (in a Ralp-Wiggins-esque “I’m in danger!” type way) to watch over the last few years is all the “end of history” types re-learning that Mao was right and that economic might only translates into real power when you use it to buy guns. Europe spent a decade trying to tie Russia into the global economy only to find all that cheap energy meant that when Russia walked into the Ukraine, t…
To be fair, life's better when you don't have to rely on the guns. If you're willing to work together to make the pie bigger for everyone, peacefully, you get further. Which is why you have to occasionally knock the people willing to exploit the peaceful order, off.
Completely agree. But I think something lost in this is how much violence the "end of history" state of affairs increasingly relied on to keep that "peaceful" context in place - among the reasons Russia walked into the Ukraine was that Russia considered the Ukraine to be its buffer against NATO, which it viewed as genuinely an existential threat. The Middle East has been in a state of war for 20 years now, the US drug wars in Central and South America have had absolutely disastrous consequences, and the level of environmental destruction we've outsourced to other parts of the world would preclude a lot of our current economic practices if we tried to do them at home. Even in the US, the Mangione killing highlighted this - UHC was the absolute top in denying health care claims, an activity with actual deaths associated with it. Just because the power centers aren't threatened doesn't mean there's not violence present in the system. In the west, we've relied a lot on the fact that the majority of the people with guns have typically been further out in the periphery than us, and all those guns have been pointed at other people on our behalf - our peace is not everyone's peace.
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that China only makes "cheap, disposable junk" and this faux-tough guy "we gotta man up and suffer through" pose is a big part of the problem.
Well yes, as I mentioned in my post China does make more than cheap junk. And our inability to make those advanced electronics is a specific problem I called out. With respect to the “man up” piece of it - well if you can’t go without TikTok and Temu junk you have a big problem. Both items: inability to manufacture advanced electronics, and inability to not go without cheap junk are separate but related problems. Whi…
>Well yes, as I mentioned in my post China does make more than cheap junk.
And yet you don't see the contradiction in characterizing people's fears as being unable to "go without TikTok and Temu junk" rather than being rightfully afraid of the recession and mass economic hardship this will trigger costing many people their jobs and savings. This is going to severely damage our economy for absolutely no reason with no plan whatsoever. People are entirely correct to be worried.
>While I think the Trump admin is weak
Again with the tough-guy nonsense. It's not about "weak" or "strong" it's that this whole endeavor is beyond idiotic. If the goal is rebuild American manufacturing capacity this just isn't a way to achieve that.
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#309I'm moving internationally (from China to EU) and the quote is 2.5-3x higher than 3 months ago. Sea freight seems to be inspected at a much higher rate, and they don't recommend it, and air freight is more expensive because of much lower volume overall. Not a good time to ship your stuff. And that's when you think "I'm far away from the US and the madness does not concern me"...
That's also a far different route... Has demand for additional shipping to Europe gone up because of increased demand? Is it seasonal? Does the US army's fairly incompetent police action [1][2] against Yemeni Houthis have much impact?
I'm very curious!
[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/04/commander-of-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/29/fighter-jet-...
Re: Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week
#310This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in comparison.
The weird thing is that toilet paper isn’t even a necessity. It’s a convenience. One could do just as well with a damp washcloth. Sure, you have to wash it afterwards, but it’s not that bad.
Or one could use a bidet, but I think most of these are imported from China. Oops.