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US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

bloomberg.com

11–20 of 193 posts

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#11

Tariffs are just a mechanism to adjust the calculus of where something is made. Consumers getting Nd:YAG lasers from China below cost are also weakening the laser supply chain elsewhere. Tariffs are a type of response to these situations.

yes, sure, except in many cases, where something is made has nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with geology.

As such, the way in which they're used can easily be disguished between "hidden tax" and "design to affect production location".

These tariffs are, as a whole, about adding a hidden tax.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#13
A reminder, most tariffs will not be paid because consumers will just shift their spending habits to match or just buy less.

Tariffs are a double edged sword because the hurt purchasing power of consumers without really generating much money for the government.

The administration is going to focus on the fact that tariffs don't really drive inflation, but are going to miss the forest for the trees: prices won't go up because we all have become a little poorer.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#14

Tariffs are just a mechanism to adjust the calculus of where something is made. Consumers getting Nd:YAG lasers from China below cost are also weakening the laser supply chain elsewhere. Tariffs are a type of response to these situations.

They should be that. But a Tariff on avocado exports from Mexico doesn't mean more avocados get grown in the US, because it simply isn't possible.

Tariffs need to be applied surgically and... they are not

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#16
post #14

Tariffs are just a mechanism to adjust the calculus of where something is made. Consumers getting Nd:YAG lasers from China below cost are also weakening the laser supply chain elsewhere. Tariffs are a type of response to these situations.

They should be that. But a Tariff on avocado exports from Mexico doesn't mean more avocados get grown in the US, because it simply isn't possible. Tariffs need to be applied surgically and... they are not

It would take many years for production to meaningfully ramp up, but there absolutely is a lot of land in California that could be used to grow avocados if it made economic sense.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be that. But a Tariff on avocado exports from Mexico doesn't mean more avocados get grown in the US, because it simply isn't possible. Tariffs need to be applied surgically and... they are not

It would take many years for production to meaningfully ramp up, but there absolutely is a lot of land in California that could be used to grow avocados if it made economic sense.

So, on to the next example: Brazilian coffee.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#19

Tariffs are just a mechanism to adjust the calculus of where something is made. Consumers getting Nd:YAG lasers from China below cost are also weakening the laser supply chain elsewhere. Tariffs are a type of response to these situations.

Do you think all the stuff made in China can be made at the same price in the US?

At the end of the day the prices still rise just not as much as with the tariffs but higher than foreign made without tariffs.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#20
American tariffs are meant to be paid by Americans, and not usually meant to damage foreign companies. A rise in the price of imports is not an unforeseen consequence of tariffs, it's their entire purpose. This is basic knowledge that everybody at Bloomberg knows. You know the tariffs are targeted well enough because Bloomberg is against them; they wouldn't care at all if they felt that the costs could be passed onto the consumer. The consumer, when confronted with high prices due to tariffs, often buys something else that is not subject to tariffs.

Grover Norquist is smiling from the grave right now, watching this bipartisan anti-tax push.

More interesting to me is how Trump has managed to multiply the effects of tariffs by creating complete chaos (either on purpose or by accident.) The tariffs never turn out to be as high as they were marketed as. They are reapplied and dropped on alternate months. He makes the ending of tariffs contingent on actual concessions on other issues that the US is concerned about, but also makes them contingent on bullshit that no one would ever agree to.

All of this is creating the stress that causes people to restructure their supply chains, manufacturing, and logistics, at first to get the flexibility to adjust when Trump veers, but they can always see the alternative of cutting out imports at all which would frees them from any of that. The drama ("uncertainty") around tariffs is in and of itself a tariff (that will be seen in prices) that isn't being collected by the government, it's going into efforts by businesses to onshore and/or diversify their vendors. That onshoring is also going to raise consumer prices until it lowers them again.

That would be the price for demanding US labor standards be used in making US products, too. If we wanted to stop depending on foreign slave labor for cheap disposable shit, I don't know how we do that without tariffs. "Free trade" is an active enemy of labor rights.

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