Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#171

Post by DidYaWipe »

phillipseamore wrote: post #90

A blanket 10% minimum tariff is a great excuse for any local US manufacturing to increase their prices. I used to live in a country with heavy tariffs, every time tariffs were raised the local producers increased prices to be just below the imports. Even after the tariffs were abolished the prices (on local and imports) never really lowered in any significant way.

Count on it. Especially after Trump (AKA we the taxpayers) gave the oligopolies and monopolies huge corporate tax handouts, for which they thanked us with massive price hikes and the current "inflation."

Oh, and of course there were Trump's tax hikes on middle-class Americans to boot.

What a mind-blowing betrayal and mess.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#172

Post by pjmlp »

Looking forward to the retaliatory tariffs, which seems to be only language this administration understands.

I guess it will eventually be the year of FOSS software, I am only waiting for the administration going back to export restrictions in software as well.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#173

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ggm wrote: post #87

I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows. They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get t…

Foreign debt is held in US treasuries, surely they know that? Trump can decide that treasuries can no longer be redeemed, but foreigners only hold 20% of them, so…he would have to somehow make them selectively redeemable, and anyways, there would go the USA’s credit, unless you mean other countries can bribe Trump with treasuries to bring down their tariff? They could also depreciate the USD reducing its debt in real terms but that will most definitely cause hyper inflation along with tariffs.

They have no plan, not even a concept of a plan. Trump is just hoping that he can get lucky with a good outcome, but that is really improbable. This is a huge opportunity for China though if they make deals with everyone else to the exclusion of the USA.

Even the idea of moving production back the USA is misguided, we are already at low unemployment, and haven’t made enough investments in automation like the Chinese are doing ATM. I doubt China will let us import that tech to setup our own factories quickly without worrying about who will work them.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#174

Post by peterlada »

ggm wrote: post #87

I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows. They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get t…

I hold a more pessimistic view of the cause and I do agree with your argument that they do know the consequences. But they don't care for another reason.

The plutocracy has fully captured the government and now seeks its ultimate goal: complete transfer of all tax burden to the 99%. For this end they cut the government spending, wrecking the democracy and they impose tariffs to generate fake temporary revenues, so they can argue that the huge tax cut (dwarfing all that came before) is economically sound and fully justified.

This will wreck the global economy and with the coming bad times (wars, famine, extreme migration) nobody will have the presence or the governmental weight to rein in these few rich man.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#175

Post by seydor »

for starters, countries will sell to the UK , which will resell to the US at the lowest tarriff rate. Great for the UK, but stupid.

I try to sympathize with trump's deglobalization agenda but it is probably exactly what it seems to be : a colossal stupidity.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#176

Post by refurb »

ggm wrote: post #87

I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows. They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get t…

This explanation doesn’t make sense because dollar denominated debt doesn’t change with devaluation.

What is the more likely explanation is all the countries with trade surpluses will feel the pain long before the US and agree to much better terms than before.

The PM of Canada had already indicated progress is being made on their trade deal.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#177

Post by willvarfar »

toasterlovin wrote: post #165

I believe this from the White House contains the only semi official numbers: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr... . That has 10% across the board starting April 5th, then unspecified rates for the “worst offenders” starting April 9th. I say “semi official” because it’s not official until US Customs and Border Patrol publishes the rates. So far I don’t think they’ve done that. Their announce…

Yes Trump has a history of announcing shocks and then quietly back-peddling etc. But the numbers come from the big placard he holds up. There are pics of his announcement holding his rate card in article if you scroll down.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#178

Post by yibg »

ggm wrote: post #87

I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows. They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get t…

The bring manufacturing back to the US never made sense to be numbers wise.

Thing A is currently manufactured in China | Vietnam | whatever lower cost country and sold for $x today. Slap on 50% tariffs so now it costs $1.5x. That provides an incentive to produce thing A locally sure.

But if you can already produce thing A locally for $x, you wouldn't have offshored the production in the first place. Maybe producing thing A locally will cost less than $1.5x, but it'll still be more than $x. So cost still end up increasing.

Am I missing something?

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#179

Post by anon373839 »

VectorLock wrote: post #114

Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade deficit with that country divided by the country's exports. I think more and more we see lots of evidence they don't know what they're doing.

Who needs more evidence?

I watched the man with my own eyes as he seriously floated the idea of injecting disinfectants to treat Covid-19. That was five years ago. His mental faculties have not improved since then.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#180

Post by tmellon2 »

The De Minimis loophole is highly significant with 4 Million packages per day (What ?). The clause to address this loophole needs to be stated more accurately - It should clearly define it to be higher / lower of 30 % of value of shipment under $800 or $25 per shipment and not either

Source :https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr....

Post reply on HN