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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

#171

Post by timr »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #139
timr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's true that NYC private sector employment is different from the US labor market as a whole, but NYC private sector employment is better representative of what readers of this site care about than overall US employment. Readers are much more likely to be affected by changes in the professional services and information sectors than, say, agriculture.

And again, even if you assume that all of that is true, you're still making a leap of logic that these changes are because of the tariffs.

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

#172

Post by vkou »

alex1138 wrote: post #123
breadwinner wrote: post #72

Trump is even using Tariff threats to strong-arm other countries to retreat on their climate goals [1]. If the Supreme Court agrees that the Trump can do this then that means we have a dictator — one that will do way more harm than the one in North Korea. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/climate/trump-internation...

How can you possibly do more harm than the one in NK, literally starving your population?

Nobody outside of SK, NK, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Of The People's Republic of China seriously two figs about anything that happens in NK.

The country could get hit by a meteor tomorrow, and nobody else would notice.

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

#173

Post by lazide »

jameslk wrote: post #141
Braxton1980 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A sudden claim against many should be priced into the cost of the insurance, offset by some risk adjustment. The goal is ultimately price stability, if the price is not too high (that’s the unknown)

Insurance tends to do really badly in ‘black swan’ type situations. Which pretty much are what Trump is doing.

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

#174

Post by mupuff1234 »

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

And yet the rent in NYC just seems to go up and up.

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

#175

Post by charcircuit »

anigbrowl wrote: post #79

As well as big business, this is just shutting down or radically altering many small industries. FIlmmakers, authors/book publishers, musicians etc. are negatively incentivized to ship product to the US, so good luck if you are an American consumer with niche cultural hobbies or a specialized importer who does a lot of small-batch orders.

Books aren't tarrifed.

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

#176

Post by mattmaroon »

YZF wrote: post #108
macintux wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious whether it’s more the tariffs, or the uncertainty. No one knows what will happen on a day-to-day basis: the chaotic (and illegal) decision-making leaves everyone wondering what’s next.

The hiring slowdown predates tariffs. For various reasons CEOs either believe they can do more with less people, or that they can hire cheaper people in other geographies, or both. Businesses (tech or financials) don't seem to be telegraphing uncertainty, S&P 500 revenue is at all times high and trending up, earnings/profit all time highs and trending up, valuations all times high and trending up.

There are other options, it’s not that simple. They may foresee an economic slowdown (they certainly say they do at every opportunity), they feel they are currently overstaffed, the ETF and hedge fund managers who own most of their stock are pressuring them to save money because they don’t like what they’re reading in the tea leaves, etc.

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

#177

Post by ekianjo »

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…

When you look at things per Capita in China things look very different from what you describe. Sure, you have pockets of very affluent societies (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and more) but the majority of the country is not there.

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

#178

Post by mattmaroon »

vkou wrote: post #170
YZF wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hiring slowdown predates tariffs. For various reasons CEOs either believe they can do more with less people, or that they can hire cheaper people in other geographies, or both. Businesses (tech or financials) don't seem to be telegraphing uncertainty, S&P 500 revenue is at all times high and trending up, earnings/profit all time highs and trending up, valuations all times high and trending up.

> The hiring slowdown predates tariffs. That's true, but it didn't predate the election of a man who has made his understanding of tariffs and economics crystal clear in the months and years leading up to January 2025.

The tariffs this time are far in excess of anything he did previously or promised to do while running for office again and took nearly everyone by surprise though.

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

#179

Post by selectodude »

pydry wrote: post #128
platevoltage wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this is what I don't understand. Everything you just said about China is a positive. Everything you said about China is achievable in the USA, and we at least HAD a head start on soft-power influence. Instead we should just have tariffs instead of actually making the lives of Americans better while FIGHTING affordable housing, high speed rail, and EVs. We've got an entire team of goons who would rather rack up pe…

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.

Reindustrializing America requires people that are actually willing to work in a factory.

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

#180

Post by Izkata »

ronsor wrote: post #41
ashton314 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like there's a year at the end; might be to facilitate suckurity requirements such as yearly password rotation.

Some places do 3 months! It's amazing

I keep a list of every time I change one of my work passwords with the date it would have expired, and it seems to fluctuate between 2.5 and 3.5 months with little consistency. Some of us used to have it locked so we didn't need to keep changing it, but they reenabled it some time ago and we got confirmation it was for some sort of external security requirements.
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