The whole thing is unbelievably infuriating and insane and I will warn anyone in the States to never again use UPS for shipping abroad.
When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
181–190 of 316 posts
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of that in the US got spun up with Nixon, Reagan brought a lot of it to the mainstream though. Both of them hated unions with a passion that is for sure.
Unions are the best of all the bad solutions we’ve come up with so far for labor to compete with capital. The worst of course is collectivism through government, though that’s being tried again…
Unions often even make this worse because they'll latch on to a monopolistic employer and then lobby with them to retain the monopoly at the expense of all the workers who are their customers rather than their employees.
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hardware companies often operate on a relatively thin margin, especially as compared to say, software companies. Let's say a companies margin was 40%. The cost of their constituent parts doubles due to tariffs, they are no longer making money as a result. I hope this helps explain it for you.
It's more complicated than that. For example, the company can raise its prices. How well that works depends on whether there is competition for the company's product. If the competition is also hit by the tariffs, then they're on an even playing field. If the competition is using native parts, then the competitor gets the business.
That assumes the customers are price insensitive. If you're making vintage parts for hobbyists and archivists, maybe they're not; maybe they don't get a raise just because the price went up and your thing is the thing they cut out of the budget when it all won't fit anymore.
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#184And herein lies the rub: It's been like this in many countries for the longest time. In Thailand, say, you receive an order from abroad, the post office sends you a slip and you have to pay the assessed duties to receive the package. It often ends up feeing arbitrary; some stuff comes through, others get assessed at a higher value and you have to show receipts and convince them that no, this isn't that expensive of a…
>America had no idea how good they had it, in the before times. The downside is the insane consumption associated with that. Americans are responsible for an insane amount of pollution, far more per capita than any other people in the history of the world, much of which is tied to how easy/cheap it is to order shit we don't need. So, good if ya wanna buy cheap pollution, pretty bad if ya care about the next generatio…
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Too bad all the competent politicians were dead set against preventing the "free market" from hollowing out American manufacturing.
I understand your sentiment, but I feel like your position is somewhat simplistic, and the actual situation is more complicated. First, overall, the US has increased manufacturing output over the last couple decades. 2019 was the highest year ever, covid interupted a bit, but levels are back there again. However the number of people involved has dropped a lot. US manufacturing prefers automation and prefers to manufa…
That's fine and indeed about the only way it even can be done in a country with higher wages. The question is, why can't we do more of that? Basic simple components like capacitors should be possible to automate, so what's preventing it? Why don't we have policies tuned towards causing more domestic automation?
The number of jobs won't be what it was when it was done by hand, but that's never coming back either way, and some is better than none. Meanwhile you reduce dependency on adversarial countries.
> the only real lever they have is to increase the cost of imported goods (ie tarrif them) which in turn gets consumers upset.
There is another alternative: Lower the cost of domestic goods, i.e. lower taxes or provide credits to domestic manufacturers. For example, allow capital investments in domestic manufacturing to be deducted immediately rather than over time.
This is actually one of the longstanding major problems with the US tax code right now. It creates a preference for international supply chains because that allows profits to be shifted into countries with lower tax rates and penalizes purely domestic supply chains.
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
... "cheap" is the main metric consumers care about because whenever anything can be supplied for less, the Federal Reserve calls that "deflationary" and creates enough new money to make sure prices go up to erase those gains. So the cost of buying anything isn't bottom of the barrel keeps going up in real terms. Most people can afford to swim against the current in one product category, and some people [the affluent…
Dang it no! That isn’t remotely how deflationary works. There’s always things being supplied for at lower prices. That is what product or service improvements do. Your car is vastly safer than a Ford Model T. Air bags, better brakes, power steering, AC - all of which make it a vastly superior vehicle. If inflation worked the way you implied, the price of it would have constantly gone up, and never would it have manag…
In 1924 a Ford Model T cost $260. Adjusted for inflation to 2025 this is <$5000. The average new car price in 2025 is ~$50,000.
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the great misconceptions. There are often no "native" alternatives. Even the machines that make the chips are nearly all made in one country and then shipped around the world. The amazing, modern nature of our modern world is built on the collective effort and knowledge of humankind globally. Globally.
There's concern that if all our chips come from one country, they could cut the supply off and make demands. That's called an "embargo". It's also done to protect local industries, hence the term "protectionism". For example, Canada's large tariffs on American milk are there to protect the local Canadian milk producers. AFAIK, Trump's tariffs are meant to serve the following purposes: 1. so critical supplies, like ch…
3 and 5 are undermined by the fact that even nations with positive trade surpluses with the US, and countries like Japan with Trump first term negotiated trade treaties (which for Japan included major concessions already) are being hit with these tariffs.
1 and 4 are a problem because many of the inputs into building out US manufacturing capacity come from abroad and are hit by tariffs. Secondly many of the manufacturing inputs into making products in these factories would come from abroad and be tariffed, unless those supplies are bootstrapped domestically first but there is no policy to ensure this. Thirdly as soon as the tariffs go away, these factories would become uneconomical, so they are a gamble on that not happening in the lifetime of the factories.
Finally, who’s going to build and operate this huge new manufacturing sector? Infrastructure construction relies heavily on immigrant labour that’s being driven out, so does actual manufacturing, and there are no hordes of unemployed Americans lining up for manufacturing jobs. It’s addressing a problem that largely doesn’t exist, to build out less efficient more expensive ways to make stuff, in a way that can’t work anyway.
Manufacturing investment surged in the last few years with the introduction of the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction acts. It’s going to be hard to disentangle the continuing effects of that from the effects of the Tariffs, but it’s hard to see how the Tariffs can have a positive effect.
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
WHOA! I prefer my po-tay-toes sliced and fried in duck fat.
Since ducks are migratory shouldn’t duck products be tariffed?
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
While tariffs aren't a secret, they are a new reality for majority of americans. They never had to bother with any of that before they ended De Minimis, now every single package must go through a complicated import process and if you are somewhat inexperienced with it (as most people do), you might end up with UPS screwing up the paperwork and charging you wrongly hundreds of dollars. That's ultimately what the US ci…
The annoying thing about this setup is that people outside the us pay tariffs going both ways. They must pay the us tariffs to send into the us and then they must pay their countries tariffs receiving goods coming from the us. I read that the EU is ending de minimus in 2026. This is going to really put a hurt on small businesses like crafters, used bookstores, antique dealers, … Yeah, it’s what they voted for, but ha…
It's not ending it but adding a fixed tarriff fee (about 2 euros I think) for low value shipments.
Sucks either way though.
Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts
#190As an European, I'm kinda pissed we don't retaliate the duties. I'd rather take a financial hit than act so weak and passive. I swear between chat control, selling out EU's privacy to US tech companies (you can check how many times Palantir & others met commission members, it's public), the insanity of the ICE ban and this tariffs passivity I'm very unhappy. Also, it's too convenient to only focus on material goods w…
"Someone is trying to shoot me so I'll shoot myself in the foot in retaliation"
Sometimes, doing nothing is the best move. Doing something self destructive to make yourself feel better makes no sense at all.