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Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

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Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#151

Post by esseph »

hippo22 wrote: post #132
esseph wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both raw materials and finished goods are tariffed. So if the idea is to be more self sustaining: we cannot. Also, read this: https://www.molsonhart.com/blog/america-underestimates-the-d...

Is the argument here what we should forgo important things because they’re difficult? As far as I can tell, the difficulty will only increase as time goes on.

It is neither in our best interests to continue this, because I can't give you the level of detail this can. It would be a pale imitation of the reasons in front of you.

Basically, there is no way we "win" this economically through tariffs. Nor can we power through it by trying to throw labor at the problem, because the labor cost is cheaper everywhere else.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#152

Post by apical_dendrite »

hippo22 wrote: post #85

I’d like to lay out an argument about why tariffs are good. The only businesses that are derailing with tariffs issues are those that import goods to sell. The argument against tariffs is that they make goods more expensive. Of course, this argument is true. But that’s not the end of the story. Because prices are higher for imported goods, demand for domestically produced goods increases. This increase in demand lead…

How does this argument apply to a good like coffee? We drink a lot of coffee, and it makes us more productive, but we produce very little of it. Maybe we could increase coffee production in Hawaii, but since we can use the land and the labor for more high-value purposes, it would cost a lot more than importing it from Brazil or Colombia. So when we slap a 50% tariff on Brazil, the average American ends up consuming less of something that they enjoy and find valuable, or paying more to consume the same amount. Maybe some land owners and agricultural workers in Hawaii benefit. Doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade-off.

I think there are some categories of goods where protectionism makes sense for national security reasons, but for most goods, I don't really see the value of propping up less productive domestic production and causing increased prices for consumers. Do we need to make underwear in America? Or toys?

And of course tariffs are not one-sided, so retaliatory tariffs hurt the domestic industries where our exports are competitive, which tend to be high-value.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#153

Post by bediger4000 »

jennyholzer wrote: post #145
pydry wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ironic thing is that tariffs are the right tool to reindustrialize America (over the period of ~a decade) but theyre being wielded with the skill and grace of a crack addled ferret by somebody who thinks it's a magic wand.

i don't see any indication that either republicans or democrats intend to reindustrialize america

Agreed. This is hermeneutics for Trump's self enriching or just plain dumb actions.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#154

Post by estimator7292 »

haunter wrote: post #97

In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever: China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries as…

[flagged]

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#155

Post by JumpCrisscross »

trasirinc wrote: post #125
haunter wrote: post #97

In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever: China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries as…

What numbers are you seeing for the surpassing living standards? Their gpd per capita flatlined in 2024 at $13k. That's with only 80M of their citizens making above $2000/month. The bulk of their citizens make less than $100/month, and there's a declining middle class of around 200M that makes around $800/month. But they have high youth unemployment rate (>40%), there's a massive layoff wave coming in September with…

> GDP per capital with PPP

China’s ‘25 GDP per capita on a purchasing-power parity basis is $29k to America’s $90k [1]. American real GDP per capita grew at 1.7% a year from 2015 to 2025 [2]. (American PPP GDP/c grew 4.5% a year from 2014 to 2024 [3].)

From 2004 to 2024, Chinese PPP GDP/c grew 7.4% a year [4]. If China and America keep growing at their respective rates, we wouldn’t expect convergence for 20+ (40, using America’s PPP GDP/c) years. That’s too long for our if condition to be expected to hold.

There is not a strong argument for Chinese GDP/capita, PPP-adjusted or not, approaching America’s within a generation. There is a risk China’s economy becomes bigger than ours in aggregate.

> what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility)

Your comment loses credibility with this rant.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA/

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...

[4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locat...

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#156

Post by atoav »

timr wrote: post #104
lazarus01 wrote: post #69

In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created. Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in. NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html

Even assuming that there were no other federal, state or local YoY differences [1] that could explain this change (and that the numbers are right as presented in the first place), New York City private sector employment is nothing like most other parts of the US: it's the largest city in the US by a large margin, it has a concentration of employment in a few major industries (finance, fashion, publishing, software) t…

Yes, a tariff can be a good measure. But for that the tariffed goods need to be selected carefully and rationally und not whatever the heck the Trump administration is doing.

For example you can tariff bananas all you like, that won't spark widespread banana production in a climate that can't grow them.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#157

Post by JumpCrisscross »

estimator7292 wrote: post #154
haunter wrote: post #97

In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever: China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries as…

[flagged]

> Literally, kill people

OP never literally called for killing anyone.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#158

Post by goosedragons »

hippo22 wrote: post #99
kristjansson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cogent, long range tariff and industrial policy might accomplish something like this over a period of years. Does that describe the last 6 months?

Sure, a cogent policy would be ideal. But you can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. America was getting their lunch eaten well before Trump. At least the tariff policy is an attempt at rectifying the situation.

Lunch eaten by whom? Who was eating the world's richest country's lunch? The only lunch eating going on is the American rich eating the poors', something that's only accelerated under Trump. The tariffs are a tax that is most disproportionate on the poor. And they are in no way, shape or form actually intelligently designed to help them. It's just stupid madness.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#159

Post by mcdoogal »

hippo22 wrote: post #85

I’d like to lay out an argument about why tariffs are good. The only businesses that are derailing with tariffs issues are those that import goods to sell. The argument against tariffs is that they make goods more expensive. Of course, this argument is true. But that’s not the end of the story. Because prices are higher for imported goods, demand for domestically produced goods increases. This increase in demand lead…

How about direct orders from retailers in foreign countries of products that aren’t made domestically (and are so specialized and small market in the US that there’s no world where they manufacture here)? I’ve already been burned on specialty products just suspending shipping here due to tariff uncertainty in addition to the various postal services suspending to the US, like JP Post.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#160

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #86
jameslk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumers will pay more regardless in this type of circumstance. But they will pay less if businesses don’t suddenly start going out of business, eliminating competition and jobs

Doesn't insurance normally work by protecting rare instances whose cost is amortized over the base? This would be a claim by a large amount of insurance clients at once

> would be a claim by a large amount of insurance clients at once

You’d insure against a specific product from a specific country being hit with a tariff. Tariffs are going up and down, sometimes in a way that may as well be random. (India not recommending Trump for a Nobel prize.) On its face, this doesn’t seem uninsurable.

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