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American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

kielinstitut.de

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Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#101

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

jcims wrote: post #58
sensanaty wrote: post #13

Isn't this literally economics 101? How did we ever even end up imagining that tariffs are somehow paid by the exporter??

There's been this phrase 'passing costs off to the consumer' that I've heard since I was a kid, used as some kind of indictment against companies raising prices when their costs go up. Even as a kid I was confused. Where else is the money going to come from?

Profits, bonuses, and dividends.

Which would be a nice balance to the way productivity has rocketed since the late 70s, and has mostly flowed to the top 1%.

Ultimately - and predictably - wealth hoarding becomes economic self-harm. You need distributed prosperity if you want diverse growth and economic and social stability.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#103

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

vlovich123 wrote: post #61
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the justification for Obama Care was by calling it a 'type of tax'. Which actually was the reason to negate the rights argument at the time, they were using to cancel it. The government is allowed to create 'taxes', and since it was a 'type of tax', it is allowed.

Specifically Congress. The President doesn’t have the right to create taxes which is one key difference here. The argument is whether Congress abdicated their power here and whether that’s something they can do in the first place.

> The argument is whether Congress abdicated their power here and whether that’s something they can do in the first place.

It would seem that as elected representatives of the people (we are literally their boss), they can't do that without asking us first. The whole point of them existing is to give us power and limit the executive's power, not the opposite.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#104

Post by Pxtl »

sensanaty wrote: post #13

Isn't this literally economics 101? How did we ever even end up imagining that tariffs are somehow paid by the exporter??

American Conservatives explicitly admitted they are not part of the reality-based community (their words) back in 2004 [1]. In 2017 Kellyanne Conway offered "alternative facts" (her words). In a lawsuit, Fox News admitted that Tucker Carlson's commentary was not to be taken literally. Alex Jones similarly claimed in a lawsuit that his work is "performance art" and is playing a character like The Joker. [4]

It's constantly disappointing how the apparent intellectuals who frequent and operate HN will rally to that side out of libertarian convenience and out of annoyance and disgust at "wokism". And then will inevitably be shocked when everything goes sideways again. Hopefully the education will stick longer this time than it did after G.W.Bush.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_facts

[3] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...

[4] https://mashable.com/article/alex-jones-defense-performance-...

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#105

Post by strgrd »

jmyeet wrote: post #27

The most depressing thing about the tariff fiasco is how stupid and gullible many people are because a significant number of them thought that the other country was somehow going to pay the tariff. I don't mind people being ignorant. We all are at some point. We all learn. But what's really depressing is that people who wear their ignorance and intentional unwillingness to learn like it's a badge of honor. In the ear…

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#106

Post by PaulRobinson »

bartread wrote: post #56

I'm glad they've done the work here and put a figure on it - the impact absolutely needed to be quantified - but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. People, lots of people, lots of people who have a really deep understanding of national and global economics (unlike me), have been warning about this since talk of tariffs became common cur…

A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in.

You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/control for benefit of themselves rather than for the benefit of that public.

It's not unique to the US, it's just that they look like they are speed running it from outside.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#107

Post by the_gipsy »

ta988 wrote: post #39
philk10 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your question implies that the person in charge of tariffs has any idea of the effect of using them...

What if the idea was to add a tax without calling it a tax so they would have more revenue to apply their plan?

Or to tax the poor.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#108

Post by BanAntiVaxxers »

Perhaps American men would understand this better if you put it in terms of an NASCAR analogy.

Tarrifs are a restrictor plate on a big block V-8 engine.

Take it away and you get more power, more noise, more freedom.

Don’t you want more freedom?

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#109

Post by uniqueuid »

dfee wrote: post #17

Americans will rightly be suspicious when a think tank in Germany writes about tariff relief that benefits them. Of course, we should all be critical always – that's the first word in the term "critical thinking".

Nitpick: The Kiel Institute is not a think tank in the sense that people would understand the word.

It is a federally funded research organization (part of the family of Leibniz institutes) similar to a university but without teaching. Here's a list of the others [1].

These are independent, high-quality research institutions without political money or a designated political agenda.

[1] https://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/institutes/leibniz-in...

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#110

Post by treis »

agumonkey wrote: post #49

The issue is that the USA are in 100% post truth and 0% of the recent potus voters are able to reflect on economic policies level-headed.

I think it's the opposite. These were announced 9 months ago and none of the doomsday predictions have come to pass. There's been major impact to some things but for the most part the economy has hummed along without a blip. Certainly not the everything in Walmart is going to get 34% prognostications that some were making:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43561253

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