171–180 of 286 posts
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it's thanks to the lying that he was elected in the first place, and no one around him dares to contradict him, what would be the incentives to stop?
I wish there was simple three strike policy on any elected official. Three proven lies and they are remove from office for life. And these can be anything. And not knowing at time does not change it. Only silence or absolute truth should be accepted.
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Exactly right. There are trade deals forming between countries that in unprecedented ways to avoid dealing with the constantly changing tariffs while one country says they'll take their ball and play alone.
But the US is the bigger country just next to it, also the most practical to trade with. Trading with country further appart means less efficient in transport. Is it not still self inflicted harm?
Not after factoring in the 35%-50% tarrif Trump has imposed on many Canadian goods.
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Let's imagine, hypothetically speaking, that demand is perfectly inelastic. The price of a good is $10, and buyers will absolutely refuse to pay more than $10 under any circumstances. Before a tariff is imposed, the seller sells the good for $10 and keeps $10 in revenue. If a tariff of $1 is imposed under these hypothetical circumstances, does the buyer pay more? Does the exporter get paid the same as before? Clearly…
>I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case. To be fair most people on one side think they know better than Adam Smith and the people on the other side usually never opened a book, so it's a tough bargain.
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>I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case. To be fair most people on one side think they know better than Adam Smith and the people on the other side usually never opened a book, so it's a tough bargain.
One way 100% to get people to see your viewpoint is to insult them. Which side are you talking about?
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I don't see it. Exporter pays: Consumer ends up paying price + tariff, then seller pays the tariff to the shipping company, which pays it to the government. Importer pays: Consumer pays price, then later pays the tariff to the shipping company, which pays it to the government. In both cases the consumer is paying price + tariff. A small difference is that some consumers could be psychologically tricked by the lower p…
> In both cases the consumer is paying price + tariff. Consumers pay all of the operating costs and taxes of a company. That's not the debate. With tariffs, the cost of an imported product becomes higher than a domestically produced product, making consumers purchase the domestically produced product. This is the purpose. The long-term purpose is that foreign companies start making their products in your country to a…
There is no long term in the US anymore. TACO flip flops every few days, based on who he spoke to last.
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Let’s say I’m a widget seller in the US, and my widgets cost $100 to import from Switzerland before tariffs. I retail them at $150 USD in the US, but I sell internationally. In the UK for example, I retail them at £113 (simple conversion, obviously it doesn’t really work like this). Now tariffs are imposed, my import cost per widget is $139. Not only do I have to jack up my US price to $189, I have to jack up my UK p…
That only works if you have no competition in the UK. Why would your customers there continue to buy from you when you are now more expensive than the competition? Edit: for that matter, if you could raise your prices without losing any customers, why did you wait for the tarrifs? You should have already done it.
I didn’t say I wouldn’t lose any customers. I probably will, but this way I probably lose the fewest.
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Let’s say I’m a widget seller in the US, and my widgets cost $100 to import from Switzerland before tariffs. I retail them at $150 USD in the US, but I sell internationally. In the UK for example, I retail them at £113 (simple conversion, obviously it doesn’t really work like this). Now tariffs are imposed, my import cost per widget is $139. Not only do I have to jack up my US price to $189, I have to jack up my UK p…
Switzerland would sell the same widgets to the UK for much less, since they wouldn't be hit by the tariffs and also wouldn't be paying to ship Europe->America->Europe.
The number 39 refers to the 39% tariff rate on Switzerland. Kind of insane that the American President just made up a lie that tariffs are paid by foreign countries and rest of the administration just went along with it. It flies in the face of any common sense.
I don't know how this tariff stuff works, so for my own understanding, how come countries retaliate to US tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs? Are they punishing their own nationals?
That is a very simplistic way of looking at it.
Tariffs are taxes on exports and like every tax tool it has its specific purpose.
Lets say US for example has surplus diary. It can export the surplus to other countries. Without tariff the only barrier is the exchange rate. If the diary prices are cheaper than local produce, US diary takes over the market and the US farmers make bank.
Canadian government might want to protect local diary industry. Or Canadians might have concerns about the chemicals in US diary. They have more stringent requirements from their farmers. Either way they raise tariffs for US diary products so that is on par or costlier than local produce.
Tariffs are normally a precision tool. Countries target specific goods and industries.
Now what Trump has done is taken a blunt hammer to it and said all goods from all countries will have tariffs. But if you look at retaliatory tariffs, imposed by other countries, it is precise and meant to hurt very specific industries.
For example, China has raised tariffs on US soyabean. In way it is targeted at US rust belt farmers. The idea being that farmers are a politically active class and if tariffs cause them pain, maybe Trump will come to the table. But that has happened yet. Maybe US farmers just don't care as they are winning too much.
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If anything, it would be nice if a few places were left that didn't have American cultural artifacts everywhere. My experience in the Middle East was often wondering if I were actually in either an American colony or else some place that had dedicated itself to being a kind of museum of American culture, movies, models, advertising, and so forth.
100%. I'm excited to find somewhere not playing disco and skater boy, and instead supporting their local music. Hell, here in the UK I'm happy to hear Sheeran even though he's not really my style typically. I don't mention that because I like American cultural dominance, merely because it is so ubiquitous. I was in the middle of South Africa in the oughts and there were bootleg Britney Spears albums... Kind of shocki…
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You can go into hypotheticals, but unfortunately for you the data exists. And the data shows that American buyers are not paying their international supplies less for goods than they were before. In fact, if anything, they are paying slightly more, which maj be explained by general inflation and the fact that tariffs mean American buyers are placing smaller orders and therefore getting smaller percentage volume disco…
That opens up greater margin for local production. Not everything is elastic, but as long as the producer side cheats in term of local subsidies, less regulation, slave labor etc, implementing tariffs seem a good choice. you cannot just carbon tax everything locally and then let the other corner of the word produce at a fractional price polluting the same world, exploiting worker etc, without wrecking your internal l…
It opens up a larger profit margin for local producers for sure. Production? Maybe. Maybe not. Because there is no incentive to produce more or better. Because the cheap bad faith actor is gone and prices can now match the export price or be just slightly below it.
>but the effect of outsourcing to bad faith actors has pushed the working class out of balance, they simply have no way of competing internationally unless by accepting a step downgrade in working and living conditions
> What you see as customer paying more is cause by government letting this shit go on for too long, and now the correction is ugly. But it not like its not needed, and at some point needs to happen before it reaches the breaking point.
You don't seem to see the contradictions in both these statements. If the prices go up and working class isn't paid as much for their effort then it is for naught. The failure hasn't been to continue outsourcing, failure has been to improve wage conditions - because market was supposed to correct it or worst case it is "socialism" to even try and raise wages.
But as always people want to test economic theories for themselves and they should. See if their lives improve under a capitalist government which is going to trample on their rights.