141–150 of 184 posts
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I read recently the tariffs are the policy of some guy Trump latched onto because Kushner likes the title of his book ("Death by China")
Trump took out full page ads about this in the 80s.
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Are you going to make a point or just ask questions?
The point is that not everything is imported. You can import oil but you can't import an oilfield. You can import food but you can't import the ground.
And ground is useless without seeds, fertilizers, farm equipment and spare parts.
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Just to get the numbers right: [0] there is a $25 minimum, that becomes $50 June 1st, on all packages below or at $800. So those $0.25 transistors - after June 1st - come at $50.25 plus shipping. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
> Just to get the numbers right: Yes, we should always strive to do that. I haven’t gotten something from Aliexpress “sent through the international postal network” in a very long time (15 months or more and I think probably several years). Most everything I get comes from an Aliexpress-run line haul (which brokers the export and import customs clearance) and then is delivered by a local carrier (usually UniUni or an…
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Shipping is not tariffed, so I expect that hobby PCBs will still be affordable. ($2 PCBs becoming $5 is hardly a deal-breaker.) Aliexpress I expect will adapt to end (or at least sharply curtail) free shipping promotions and start charging for shipping (which will not be tariffed), which better aligns what you’re actually paying for anyway. So, getting 100 transistors for $1.02 and free shipping with $10 total might…
If clearing customs per-package is too expensive or inconvenient, I expect Aliexpress will tweak their managed logistics process to import items as bulk shipments in the cargo container at wholesale value and add estimated customs charges as a checkout fee on top of item prices. I don't think big print "free shipping" will be affected as it gets people to buy more often and it pads the margins when people buy more at…
With their "Standard Choice" shipping, for me where I am, that means that my stuff is sent from New York to me in Ohio with USPS. There's no customs forms attached when it comes my way, nor should there be: I didn't import anything.
How it gets from wherever it started to New York is not my problem -- just as it isn't my problem with the other imported stuff I buy, from any other place that I buy it (whether from Amazon or the bricks-and-mortar store on the corner). They import things in bulk, and the importer pays tariffs as they do so. The cost of them doing this is built into the price that I paid up-front.
The recent non-committal slapstick comedy approach of the current administration does make things hard to predict, but: I predict that a widget that used to cost 50 cents to buy on AE with Standard Choice may end up costing me a dollar or two -- a huge increase as a percentage, but meh. It's not like that 50-cent widget going to suddenly cost fifty bucks or something.
(Now, that said: I have bought inexpensive widgets from China that I imported directly -- sans Standard Choice. But that's different. In these instances, the seller just puts my widget in the mail on their side of the world, and it shows up in the mail on my side of the world -- with a customs form stuck to it. Elimination of de minimis will affect the things that I import in this fashion in a very expensive way because that customs form is going to have an additional price attached to it.)
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> Just to get the numbers right: Yes, we should always strive to do that. I haven’t gotten something from Aliexpress “sent through the international postal network” in a very long time (15 months or more and I think probably several years). Most everything I get comes from an Aliexpress-run line haul (which brokers the export and import customs clearance) and then is delivered by a local carrier (usually UniUni or an…
> "I’m pretty sure" That's an interesting thing to say after tariff-on / tariff-off high intensity workouts almost every day. Not to mention the great desire to fire everyone standing in the way of the glorious inflation... did you take that into account while calculating the "little less cheap" thing? Just read the executive order linked in presto8's comment (above yours) and tell me you are sure what it means. Spag…
In Europe these kind of decisions take months of meetings and consultations.
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Trump now has knobs he alone (unless congress stops him) can turn to save or wreck any country, even specific businesses and people (i.e. those that don’t surrender more power to him). For a power obsessed, extreme narcissist, that is worth more than economic success.
The only country he is wrecking is the US. Every other country can still happily trade with every other country. Sure, for some countries it will hurt short term, but long term they will all just increase trade between each other and do perfectly fine. China’s exports to the US are only 7% of their GDP. Even if all that went to zero, they’ll still have the highest GDP soon enough.
And the EU has free trade in it's DNA.
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> "I’m pretty sure" That's an interesting thing to say after tariff-on / tariff-off high intensity workouts almost every day. Not to mention the great desire to fire everyone standing in the way of the glorious inflation... did you take that into account while calculating the "little less cheap" thing? Just read the executive order linked in presto8's comment (above yours) and tell me you are sure what it means. Spag…
Its interesting how America is basically run by an elected king. In Europe these kind of decisions take months of meetings and consultations.
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Its interesting how America is basically run by an elected king. In Europe these kind of decisions take months of meetings and consultations.
He's not a king, he's CEO In Chief. This is the inevitable result of a society which pathologically mistrusts government on principle, but which worships celebrity and free market capitalism. It's surprising the pretense of being a Republic lasted as long as it did.
But we don't. What we do have is pathological mistrust of our political opponents in the government. More so on the right, but it's fairly pervasive. So "small government" gets used as a way to trip up your opposition when it's in power, but as soon as you get the reins, it's full steam ahead.
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> nuking the economy, neutering the Pentagon, trashing public health, isolating the US from tourists and skilled immigrants, walking public education back at least a century, killing the next generation of R&D, murdering rational climate policy with a coal-powered chainsaw, and handing government software and data to enemy powers. How is that any different from what has been going on in the past 40 years... Biden kep…
This comment is so disingenous it's almost pointless to respond to. Previous presidents did things because they genuinely believed that what they were doing was the right thing for America based on their deeply-held beliefs. Trump has no beliefs. He does not act from rational thought. He does whatever makes him feel good in the immediate moment, without regard to the consequences or even his own prior words and deeds…
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Or it would make it politically quite tenable to get rid of tariffs and greatly raise income taxes on people making over $150k.
They already do pay the vast majority of income taxes.