Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What if tariffs?

swatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 286 posts

Re: What if tariffs?

#101

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

Borealid wrote: post #59
exe34 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exporter gets paid the same as before. The buyer pays more. There's a subtle difference, can you spot it?

Let's imagine, hypothetically speaking, that demand is perfectly inelastic. The price of a good is $10, and buyers will absolutely refuse to pay more than $10 under any circumstances. Before a tariff is imposed, the seller sells the good for $10 and keeps $10 in revenue. If a tariff of $1 is imposed under these hypothetical circumstances, does the buyer pay more? Does the exporter get paid the same as before? Clearly…

You can go into hypotheticals, but unfortunately for you the data exists.

And the data shows that American buyers are not paying their international supplies less for goods than they were before. In fact, if anything, they are paying slightly more, which maj be explained by general inflation and the fact that tariffs mean American buyers are placing smaller orders and therefore getting smaller percentage volume discounts.

Re: What if tariffs?

#102

Post by ThunderSizzle »

tjpnz wrote: post #85
nicois wrote: post #21

This would be more impactful if we could see the cost to US purchasers was actually 39% more. Sadly some manufacturers spread the cost across all consumers, which actually means non-US customers are actually paying some of the tariff costs too.

Seems to have been the case with PS5 and Xbox consoles. The rest of the world was effectively subsidizing US gamers for a while, until prices there were jacked up even higher.

Aren't most subscriptions significantly cheaper outside the US? I don't know specifically about those, but YouTube's premium is pennies on the dollar in places like Ukraine, Turkey, etc.

Re: What if tariffs?

#103

Post by vachina »

nicois wrote: post #21

This would be more impactful if we could see the cost to US purchasers was actually 39% more. Sadly some manufacturers spread the cost across all consumers, which actually means non-US customers are actually paying some of the tariff costs too.

Settlement in RMB, pay the producer not the middleman.

Re: What if tariffs?

#104

Post by tjpnz »

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #102
tjpnz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to have been the case with PS5 and Xbox consoles. The rest of the world was effectively subsidizing US gamers for a while, until prices there were jacked up even higher.

Aren't most subscriptions significantly cheaper outside the US? I don't know specifically about those, but YouTube's premium is pennies on the dollar in places like Ukraine, Turkey, etc.

I'm talking about console prices specifically.

Re: What if tariffs?

#105

Post by croisillon »

lukan wrote: post #90
croisillon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's thanks to the lying that he was elected in the first place, and no one around him dares to contradict him, what would be the incentives to stop?

[flagged]

it's funny you'd ask because it's litterally the first time out of three that he got more votes than his opponent ; and he got more votes thanks to lying, inclusive lying about having won the 2 precedent ones

Re: What if tariffs?

#106

Post by nurettin »

At first I thought tariffs were just more inflation. Import prices increase, sales prices balance it out and people will buy anyway.

But no, it hurt import businesses in unforseen ways. I saw entire shipment crates get discarded because it was suddenly too expensive to get into the country overnight and too expensive to ship back. Just senseless, pointless waste.

Re: What if tariffs?

#107

Post by throw0101a »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #93
lukan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why are you attacking a point he didn't make? Trump lies. Almost every sentence is a lie. If you're allowed to lie during your campaign and you're immune from the repercussions, of course you're going to sway voters. Don't close your eyes to obvious truths.

> Trump lies. Almost every sentence is a lie.

To be fair, a lie is when some knows the truth but says the not-truth.

Trump may (a) actually believe the things he is saying (i.e., has no firm grasp on reality), or (b) doesn't care enough to actually find out what is true and just says whatever enters his mind to try to get to the destination he wants:

> On Bullshit is a 1986 essay and 2005 book by the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false.[1]:61

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Re: What if tariffs?

#108

Post by avereveard »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #101
Borealid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's imagine, hypothetically speaking, that demand is perfectly inelastic. The price of a good is $10, and buyers will absolutely refuse to pay more than $10 under any circumstances. Before a tariff is imposed, the seller sells the good for $10 and keeps $10 in revenue. If a tariff of $1 is imposed under these hypothetical circumstances, does the buyer pay more? Does the exporter get paid the same as before? Clearly…

You can go into hypotheticals, but unfortunately for you the data exists. And the data shows that American buyers are not paying their international supplies less for goods than they were before. In fact, if anything, they are paying slightly more, which maj be explained by general inflation and the fact that tariffs mean American buyers are placing smaller orders and therefore getting smaller percentage volume disco…

That opens up greater margin for local production. Not everything is elastic, but as long as the producer side cheats in term of local subsidies, less regulation, slave labor etc, implementing tariffs seem a good choice.

you cannot just carbon tax everything locally and then let the other corner of the word produce at a fractional price polluting the same world, exploiting worker etc, without wrecking your internal labor market.

What you see as customer paying more is cause by government letting this shit go on for too long, and now the correction is ugly. But it not like its not needed, and at some point needs to happen before it reaches the breaking point.

I'm not in favor of the current round of tariffs as used by current administration which seem a baseless negotiating tactic, but the effect of outsourcing to bad faith actors has pushed the working class out of balance, they simply have no way of competing internationally unless by accepting a step downgrade in working and living conditions

Re: What if tariffs?

#109

Post by CoastalCoder »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #99

It’s actually quite shocking to leave the U.S. and experience the drastic fall in respect. The U.S. has over a century’s worth of dominance and control built in, so it’s not gonna unravel anytime soon and countries will need to grovel along for a bit. But the decoupling has begun, is almost certainly irreversible and is gonna hit Americans hard at most a decade from now. We have no idea the the chain of motion that h…

> It’s actually quite shocking to leave the U.S. and experience the drastic fall in respect.

My only vantage point is from inside the U.S., but I find the loss of prestige completely believable.

What amazed me was discovering that my own countrymen would vote in, and continue to support, someone like Trump.

My political views are pretty centrist, and I thought I understood the views of most liberals and conservatives.

But I never thought there would be so little resistance to the lies, corruption, authoritarianism, and the breakdown of the separation of powers. And the simple incompetence w.r.t. running the executive branch.

It's like my mental framework has no way to model whatever is going on here.

Re: What if tariffs?

#110

Post by sojournerc »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #99

It’s actually quite shocking to leave the U.S. and experience the drastic fall in respect. The U.S. has over a century’s worth of dominance and control built in, so it’s not gonna unravel anytime soon and countries will need to grovel along for a bit. But the decoupling has begun, is almost certainly irreversible and is gonna hit Americans hard at most a decade from now. We have no idea the the chain of motion that h…

I'm not sure it's all that new. During the Bush Jr. years America was not highly thought of.

I'm an American traveling through Scandinavia and Northern continental Europe for the last three weeks, now in the UK.

I haven't experienced a bit of grief. Their opinion of our politics is generally separate from how they treat me personally, and I do the same for people of other nationalities.

American cultural dominance is everywhere. I can barely find a pub or restaurant not playing American music, for instance.

Post reply on HN