121–130 of 286 posts
The number 39 refers to the 39% tariff rate on Switzerland. Kind of insane that the American President just made up a lie that tariffs are paid by foreign countries and rest of the administration just went along with it. It flies in the face of any common sense.
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.
Of course not. They charge the highest price they possibly can in each market, regardless of other factors. They're not compensating this here or that there. Every company always charge as much as they can get away with, that is the core function of business.
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As with many things in economics the effect of a measure often depends on the timeframe one considers. Honestly, anything could be true if one just chooses the appropriate timeframe. However, the tariffs clearly introduce an inefficiency which - globally speaking - will be net negative. Locally speaking, though, who knows …
Tariffs existed before Trump, and existed by other countries against the US. Did those not introduce inefficiency? Actually, it probably produced more inefficiency because most people were probably under thr impression most of the world was under free trade, hence the existence of the WTC. Not knowing a tax is much more inefficient than knowing a tax.
> Not knowing a tax is much more inefficient than knowing a tax.
Why would this be true?
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…
Certainly, I’m not here to spread conspiracy and I agree with you here, the results are the only evidence we have of the current situation. Given that, I think many of us were amazed.
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I imagine some manufacturers used tariffs as a reason to lower the price of their products that imported into the US while also raising the price outside of the US to balance that change, but that doesn't mean the manufacturer or their customers outside of the USA are paying anything towards tariffs. The entire tariff transaction is between the customer and the US government, and it's all transacted within the USA. T…
Let’s say I’m a widget seller in the US, and my widgets cost $100 to import from Switzerland before tariffs. I retail them at $150 USD in the US, but I sell internationally. In the UK for example, I retail them at £113 (simple conversion, obviously it doesn’t really work like this). Now tariffs are imposed, my import cost per widget is $139. Not only do I have to jack up my US price to $189, I have to jack up my UK p…
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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…
Losing sales isn't the same as paying the tariff. The person importing the item pays the tariff. Their item won't be released from customs if they don't pay. They pay to the US government. The correct thing to say is that the tariff has an effect on demand because of the impact of adding a tariff on top of the price.
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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?
I wish there was simple three strike policy on any elected official. Three proven lies and they are remove from office for life. And these can be anything. And not knowing at time does not change it. Only silence or absolute truth should be accepted.
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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 l…
My country mostly produce pine wood (and other soft wood). I like hardwood furniture, but its only imported stuff because we have very few producers. Putting a tariff on hardwood furniture could be a good idea to increase local production, as long as hardwood is not tariffed. If both hardwood and hardwood furniture get taxed, i will have to pay more, and local production will never have greater margin, as those will be hit by base material tariffs.
(To be clear: I live near on of the biggest hardwood harbour in Europe, and buy my wood directly out of the sawmill, but my point stands)
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…
>I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case. To be fair most people on one side think they know better than Adam Smith and the people on the other side usually never opened a book, so it's a tough bargain.
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…
Yes, but the decline is precipitous now. It's gone from "eh, we don't like Americans much, but they're a useful ally" to "wow these guys are fucking insane and we need to divest ASAP".