621–630 of 672 posts
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That's easy enough to fake. How is US customs going to know when a German company's ship registered in the Philippines left a Chinese port?
Presumably by asking the Chinese authorities directly? We have near instantaneous global communication these days - that's how I'm conversing with you right now.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/
Of course enabled by the very tech you mention.
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That's easy enough to fake. How is US customs going to know when a German company's ship registered in the Philippines left a Chinese port?
You’d just lie about which ship it was on.
good sick of all the cheap Chinese products that break in a week and have to order another. Even the clothing seems to fade and be useless in 6 months.
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The smart ones will head to the hardware store instead of rushing to the paper: bidet-washing-tube will makes you free of toilet paper for life. Cost: 10-30$ Installation: 20min with basic tools on your existing toilet. Usage: tons and tons of online tutorials because 1/3 of the world already use that daily. But you can also figure it out yourself easely, it’s way easier than managing node_modules on a shared project…
As someone who has used real bidets, I've tried bidet attachments - they suck. I'm going to remain with my traditional toilet until I move into my "forever home" at which point I will install bidets.
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While there are more peaceful ways of rebalancing trade, unilateral tariffs would be able to rebalance things on the long term. The problem is that alot of people in HN think in terms in export-driven economy, when in reality the majority of USA's economy is consumption, it's the largest consumer in the world. Loosing access to foreign markets dosen't mean as much to USA as it does to the rest of the world loosing ac…
Balance trade? Trade isn't a single ledger that needs to be in balance. If you read that article about Haas automation, they say that they import cast iron and PCBs, presumably they import some chips and use some domestic chips, they put these all together and sell machine tools (big machines used to make machines, the exact sort of thing that trump et all are banging on about needing to be made in the usa, which las…
By definition, global exports must be matched with global imports to sum to zero, unless if you are trading with aliens. This is basic double-entry accounting and mainstream economics.
>Nobody in the USA makes cast iron in the volume needed by haas; nobody in the USA makes PCBs at the price point needed by haas. Nobody's going to be able to start domestic production of either now
On the long term, factories can be built, workers can be trained. If the price point of manufacturing is more profitable domestically than through outsourcing via tariffs, then investment will naturally flow to account for those opportunities.
But like I said, what you fail to see is that firms like Haas Automation are not reflective of the larger US economy, the majority of the US economy is supported by consumption, not manufacturing, and actually it's the top 10% that accounts for almost 50% of domestic consumption, meaning a whopping 10% of US consumers account for 15% of global consumption. Counter-Tariffs aren't going to mean as much to Investment Bankers, Lawyers, Doctors, Senior SWE etc. People will come to and build production if China is not available because they will want to grab the lucrative opportunities of the largest consumer base in the world.
On the other hand for surplus exporters, bereft of such a consumer base, unless if they find a way to make up for that consumer base (which is very difficult), all those factories are going to close down very quickly, and mass unemployment ensues. It's not just China, it's possibly Vietnam, most of SEA, Germany, Japan, etc. And that matters for the negotiating table, hence why many did not pursue counter-tariffs. But they've been doubling down on manufacturing rather than shoring up domestic consumption, the US reaction is by definition the Beggar-Thy-Neighbour as a consequence of their greedy actions.
The larger argument really is for a more balanced global trade, where countries current account balances would be near 0. It's true that US consumption rate will probably need to go down for it, but that also means that the rest of the world would be increasing their consumption (and their living standards) rather than suppressing domestic demand for the sake of manufacturing fetishism. It would be an all around more resilient to trade shocks than the status quo today.
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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.
I'm in the same boat as you, trying to figure out the impacts of all this. We're hearing reports that the ports are empty, and we know the CEOs of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot recently visited Trump to warn him of empty store shelves. The fact that these key ports are seeing reduced shipments corroborates their warning. Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, said just yesterday that h…
However, it is worth noting that CEOs also have a vested interest in trying to reduce tariffs. And they would absolutely fearmonger if they thought it would help them.
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Declining absolutely does not mean “clear trend to zero”. There are a great many things which decline for a long time, but have a lower limit.
Bit pedantic there, aren't you? I suppose as long as a single factory is still open in the US we're doing just fine, it's not zero, right?
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Ships can be rerouted while in transit. I bet it is extremely unusual for a container ship, but we do live in interesting times.
There was an interview with a shipping manager somewhere (probably the 3-hour documentary by Gamers Nexus?). They said absolutely have been rerouting container ships in transit.
If some companies want the goods now and other companies need to hold off, how does that work?
Just whoever's shipping the most goods wins?
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Yeah but the Christmas toys mentioned above are cheap disposable junk.
You're an intelligent well educated person so I wonder why you insist on poisoning the well with shallow tropes that you know to be false.