521–530 of 672 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are you ready to sign up and go fight in Ukraine or elsewhere and die to stop authoritarianism as a matter of practicality? Not necessarily, as I’m not directly threatened, but I’m more than happy to carve out a piece of my paycheck to give Ukrainians any and every piece of equipment they need to do it for me.
Ok but that's not enough to fight all of these authoritarian regimes that spring up. We don't have enough people, resources, or willpower to defeat all authoritarian regimes militarily forever. We have to be prudent, and sometimes we just have to live with such regimes.
This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in comparison.
Genuine question but how likely is that to happen? The media doesn't seem to be doing a good job articulating what the (likely) real world impact is going to be. I keep hearing how other countries are negotiating but when you look into the details, there is nothing of substance actually happening.
> Almost guaranteed.
> There are some categories (toys, pet stuff,computer accessories) where HUGE percentages of goods are made in china. Those shelves will be empty as soon as inventory runs out, which will be soon.
> Shelves would get re-stocked once tariffs are removed and the ships start sailing again.
> If it takes longer than 60 days from now, we're looking at 10s of thousands of bankruptcies. This will make covid look like a weekend at the ritz carlton. Biggest financial crisis since the great depression.
My takeaway: People are not taking this NEARLY seriously enough.
My tinfoil hat interpretation: The US govt knows how serious this is, and they know that if people panic (which honestly, they fucking should) it increases China's leverage substantially.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Retailers and middlemen typically don't like exposing how much -they- paid for an item. Exposing tariffs would show how much things are marked up from time of landing to reaching the shelves.
That's not really how markup works. Let's say 1 pay x for a product. Gross markup is say 100%. Do I sell it for 2x. Let's say there's a tariff cost of y. That means the cost price is x + y. I mark that up to 2x + 2y. It's easy to up the price by 2y and disclose the tariff as "z%". But this of course presumes all your expenses remain flat. And they likely don't. As your expenses go up (2nd order effects) that 100% mar…
Tariffs are in the news and the percentages are known. If I'm selling a wallet made in China, in the US for $80, and list a tariff line item of $2 - people will calculate and easily know that I imported said wallet from China for <$1 and start to question why I'm charging so much.
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.
Two interesting things I took away from that were first that the uncertainty and constant changes of mind by the President on the actual rates and lack of reliable communications were almost as harmful as the tariffs. Second, that there is a "snowball effect" in that you often have to pre-pay, so you take out more loans at a worse interest rate to make your order and then if because costs went up, you order fewer ite…
That should not be possible. The kickback from this mania is going to be pretty extreme pain for these clowns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The world's economic inter-dependence is one of the things that have kept World War 3 at bay for decades. Common misconception that trade prevents war and war prevents trade. Turns out that it is wrong: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501782466/trad...
There's a difference between preventing war and preventing a wider world war. Trade links persisting even when countries are opposed to each other contributes to a certain level of global order between the biggest powers.
If
A -> B
not A -> B
B -> not AEarlier quoted context omitted.
> On the other hand, I guess it might be a great time for small shops and businesses that produce low to medium tech stuff- from crafts, clothing and furniture to electronics. Absolutely not. All of the small businesses I know are getting crushed by tariffs. Electronics especially. With 125% tariffs on everyone from China, prices just exploded. Even domestic PCB manufacturers prices and lead times have shot up due to…
I didn't mean that this is going to be a net positive or even better than disastrous. I'm just saying that if you already have a small business in the US making stuff that was hard to sell locally given the cheaper competition from abroad, people will have no choice but come to you. > Even domestic PCB manufacturers prices and lead times have shot up due to demand. Exactly this, I bet those PCB manufacturers are quit…
Unless those businesses have inputs that rely on China...which many do, those guys are going under.
>Exactly this, I bet those PCB manufacturers are quite happy. Some of their employees might get the idea of setting up a new business, too.
Those US PCB manufacturers didn't care for that business before, they focus on getting fat government or industrial contracts. The reason China was so consumer focused was because they have so much capacity that they must be friendly to my dinky $5 order. Furthermore consider that with 1.4 billion people, there are so many engineers that its extremely cutthroat. You then have a scenario where they assign an engineer to look at my dinky little $5 order because they can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO, which isn’t worth a lot, it’ll go on as long as Trump refuses to eat crow. China hunkered down under extreme duress during COVID and emerged stable. We barely managed to survive much milder restrictions. And that was a global natural disaster of no one’s choosing. In this situation it’s all artificial, but it stokes the nationalism of literally every other country than America. The imperialism and condescension…
It definitely isn't better for America or the world. We had a "flatter more multipolar world" during the "long 19th century". Pax Americana is certainly subject to a lot of valid criticism, but it was an even bigger mess before that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Republicans are the party of Trump. You're going to get nowhere near 20 out of 53 to convict. They will not let him get thrown out of office. If they didn't vote for impeachment in the two times he was impeached in his first term, and if they supported him after January 6th then they're not going to vote for impeachment now. The Republicans under Nixon were the same party in name only, and they did not have the s…
The senate is less the party of Trump as they have to win state wide elections and Trump barely beat Harris. They also tend to have longer tenures that spans presidents. While he is ascendant he can command loyalty, but once his ship is sinking the rats will abandon him faster in the senate than the house. The house takes care of itself with its relatively rapid turnover, making incumbents more likely to stick by him…
It's worth considering the possibility that as a party they're nowadays more into fascism than republicanism. Rome was a republic too, until it wasn't.