The point of tariffs is to make foreign goods (including parts) more expensive, and therefore spur a shift in production.
Not to somehow make foreign firms pay more or whatever, how would that work?
US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
131–140 of 193 posts
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#132A 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…
> without really generating much money for the government it's been reported that tariff collections have soared to the point that the budgeted spending is no longer in the red. this article is written in a confusing way, but your statement "not generating much money for the govt" appears to be incorrect https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/11/treasury-posts-unexpected-su...
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Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#133there are so many second order effects here who knows. for example (and im not saying this will always be the case) if a tariff pushes a foreign company's good out of the us marketplace and the customer is "forced" to pay 2x for something domestically manufactured that lasts 4x as long, did the american "pay for it"? how would this look in bulk economic data (spoiler it would look bad because consumption went down)
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2x was being generous. many us made things are outpriced on say amazon by 1.25 or 1.5 even but get far fewer clicks because of the sort algorithm.
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#134The irony of the situation is that tariffs can work to make domestic industry more competitive, if they are applied strategically and backed by focused industrial policy.
China's dominance of the EV market is a recent case in point. China went from having approximately zero percent of the EV market in 2008 to completely dominating by the end of 2024 with an end to end vertically integrated EV manufacturing capability and a definite technological edge in some of the most critical areas. It took a decade plus of stringent protection for the fledgling EV industry and a couple of hundred billion dollars in subsidies, but they have ensured their dominance of the EV industry for a generation at the very least.
The US on the other hard, applied tariffs in an indiscriminate, chaotic manner(no one sane is going to invest anything when US policy depends on the whim of the president) and applied it even to raw materials which our remaining industries desperately need.
Also, instead of creating sound industrial policy, we seem to be hell bent on destroying the very foundations of US dominance in many industries by actively attacking science and technology in the country, from gutting scientifically focused agencies to waging a vicious war on universities and foreign students.
All of this for what? To add 5 trillion to our debt by passing a tax cut that predominantly benefits corporations and billionaires? To make the MAGA base feel good about making life miserable for 'the others'? This truly feels like the beginning of the end for the American empire or even the American experiment.
You can never count out the American capability for reinvention, but at some point, patches and refactorings stop working and you need a rewrite.
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#135It is a tax on businesses who import things right? Basically exactly the same as corporate income tax, which Trump cut in his first term. Now the tax is being raised on companies who import goods made overseas, but companies who make their product in the US don’t have to pay the tax. If you are usually the type of person that supports taxing the rich and taxing large businesses, shouldn’t tariffs be something that yo…
only if the rich do not pass the cost down to the bottom 80%
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#136Supply side economics, which aims to stimulate growth by reducing costs for industry, is jeered today as “trickle down economics”; it’s considered regressive because the benefits are concentrated for suppliers while the benefits to consumers never materialise. This policy has “failed every time it’s tried!”
Tariffs are the antithesis of supply side strategy. Yet tariffs, which increase costs for suppliers like any other tax, are derided by the same people as “regressive” as if they will always be born 100% by the consumer. Supposedly, tariffs cannot possibly benefit the working class on any time scale.
At least one of these positions must be at least partly wrong. Which is it?
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention a large portion of that cohort views education as a moral wrong.
Birds did not read Ornithology to fly. Accumulation of knowledge is useful but real world experience and hard earned wisdom is more important. That is what you test-taking, credential hustlers do not understand.
Birds didn't read Ornithology in order to fly, sure. But you can be damn sure the engineers at Boeing cracked a textbook on the way to making the 747.
Real-world experience teaches you how you survived. Education teaches you how others failed. You need both to avoid old mistakes and make new ones.
It’s not about credential hustling, it’s about having more tools in the toolbox.
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No one is risking multi-year commitments of millions or billions of dollars to build a factory in America when the tariffs change week to week. Apple: $500M over four years including a facility in Houston opening next year Chobani: $1.7B for new facilities in Idaho and NY J&J: $55B over four years into new facilities, a 25% increase over previous Honda: moving 100% of Civic hybrid hatchback production to the US Hyun…
I don't know anything particular about the others, but Apple has been investing at least that much in increasing US production for many years now, and Chobani, AFAIK, has never had significant non-US facilities (and started in NYS—in fact, its first plant is less than 20 minutes' drive from where I work). Given that, I question how many of these are actually caused by the tariffs.
> Given that, I question how many of these are actually caused by the tariffs.
For automotive and electronics, a lot of it was a result of CHIPS and IRA related subsidizes
That said, the tariffs do help incentivize domestic production instead of taking advantage of subsidizes from CHIPS+IRA and then comingling with SKUs from abroad.
Think of the Biden-era CHIPS+IRA as the carrot, and the Trump associated tariffs and export controls as the stick.
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#139Supply side economics, which aims to stimulate growth by reducing costs for industry, is jeered today as “trickle down economics”; it’s considered regressive because the benefits are concentrated for suppliers while the benefits to consumers never materialise. This policy has “failed every time it’s tried!” Tariffs are the antithesis of supply side strategy. Yet tariffs, which increase costs for suppliers like any ot…
Does partly wrong imply they can both be partly right?
Regardless, within the current system (which is not based on theory and based on reality), we combine these elements, and neither seem to directly benefit certain industries depending on who you're looking at. If it does, these policies may not benefit everyone.
Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I can understand tariffs on high end goods but taxes on low-end goods or raw materials is insane. Any country doing it has hobbled it's industry for decades and some might prove that they don't work even if you keep these tariffs on for centuries... But politicians will politic what can we do huh... Really feels like no side, opinion or thought of every day folks matters anywhere.
I believe it was MIT that ran a study a couple of decades ago that proved that people were unable to influence policy through voting because the effectiveness of lobbying put the vote inputs below the noise floor?
Yup.
Our votes basically don't matter because our democracy is captured by lobbyists