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When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

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Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#201
post #184
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Tariffs are great for a left wing, socialist, anti-globalist, green agenda.

are these bad things?

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#202
post #74

And 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…

As an American, I always smirk when people in the US say that gas is expensive.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#203
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans are responsible for an insane amount of pollution So does Canada. > far more per capita than any other people in the history of the world Not even remotely close to true. Aside from that it's down 20% from it's peak 40 (!) years ago. > much of which is tied to how easy/cheap it is to order shit we don't need. The data does not support this conclusion. > pretty bad if ya care about the next generation. Spe…

> Speaking of trends.. care to guess which country has doubled it's pollution in the last 10 years? I really don’t. I genuinely have no idea and I have zero interest in guessing. Just say it and stop wasting everyone’s time.

I think the answer is China (CO2 emissions). But the longer answer is that they are mainly making stuff for the US and the EU.

> While China emits over one-third of global CO2, it is also the world’s factory, producing more than one-third of global manufactured goods (IEA, 2024a; Norton, 2024) . Research indicates that China remains the world’s largest generator of embodied trade carbon emissions. The gap between emissions embodied in China’s exports and those in its imports widened from 0.7 GtCO2 in 1990 to 1.8 GtCO2 in 2019 (CGTN, 2024) . According to the Global Carbon Budget, China’s 2021 consumption-based CO2 emissions are about 10% (or 1.2 GtCO2) lower than the territorial emissions (Friedlingstein et al., 2025).

- https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#204

As 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…

The world's been through many past periods of tariffs. Generally the countries that do a lot end up hurting themselves - see say Argentina, near wealthiest in the world around 1890, now way down the list. Neighbours like Brazil that thought we'll tariff too have been meh. Countries like Singapore that went the other way and had zero tariffs got rich - from not much per capita to overtaking the US in that case.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#205
Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum, which required me to fill out a UPS-specific form attesting to the steel and aluminum content

I ordered a specialty lock and some keys valued at about $400, and paid an extra $400 in duties because of this. It's insane.

Plot twist: I'm in Canada and was ordering a made-in-USA product from a US vendor. The duties were due to matching countertartiffs at the time. Sorry, but that's the last lock I buy from the US (and maybe the last thing with metal in it if I can help it) until this mess is resolved.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need manufacturing in the US. The service economy can't survive long term; you have to make things. Tariffs are not fun, but they are an important part of making that happen. But, tariffs on used cameras or vintage electronics does not help bring manufacturing back. Let's just bring back the de minimis exemption for things like this. More industry targeted tariffs, fewer blanket tariffs.

No sure why you are being down-voted. Your argument is coherent and correct. Targeted tariffs on specific goods leads to the development of local production of that good. Lots and lots of countries have these in place. Blanket tariffs are, of course, useless. The US doesn't have the climate to grown coffee, so tarifing Brazil serves no purpose other than taxing coffee consumption. A surgeon uses a scalpel, not an axe…

While tariffs on coffee do not incentivize coffee growing in US they do two things that are very beneficial for US economy

1) People replace coffee with hot cider, infusion tea or some other local substitute good.

2) Tariff on coffee as set up by Trump incentivize coffee producing countries to buy US goods whether it’s oil or cars to make trade balance more equal.

The only question is the scale of above but tariff on coffee is unquestionably help US producers.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sure why you are being down-voted. Your argument is coherent and correct. Targeted tariffs on specific goods leads to the development of local production of that good. Lots and lots of countries have these in place. Blanket tariffs are, of course, useless. The US doesn't have the climate to grown coffee, so tarifing Brazil serves no purpose other than taxing coffee consumption. A surgeon uses a scalpel, not an axe…

By themselves even targeted tariffs don't work. Argentina did not become a mobile phone manufacturing hub. https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/milei-is-scrapping...

Scale of the country matters. If Argentina (or any other small to medium size country) require extra work, businesses can just walk away - size of market does not justify extra efforts. Bet is that US market size is big enough that no global business can afford to walk away. At 20% of global GDP, US markets is also big enough to make scaled production feasible.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside the other (valid) items in your list, reciprocal tarifs really aren't helpful. Firstly, they're unnecessary. Just do what Canadians are doing. Stop buying US goods. Stop going to the US on holiday. Shop keepers get the hint real quick. Secondly, they just make goods more expensive for you. They gave no impact on American producers. So it may feel like the EU is doing nothing. But really, there's nothing…

> Leaving aside the other (valid) items in your list, reciprocal tarifs really aren't helpful. You have completely missed my point: I don't care about them being helpful or not. It's not about the financial but political aspect.

I don’t think GP has missed the point at all. If the “political aspect” brings no concrete benefits for EU citizens, what’s the point?

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#209
post #46
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a comment I think by Nancy Teeters the first female Federal Reserve board member. She said the other board members thought they could savage the US manufacturing industry to kill wage inflation and break the unions and it would come right back once they stopped. And it didn't.

Sociopaths. It breaks me to see the Fed use interest rates to cause unemployment as the lever against inflation. It all seems so cruel.

Unemployement is a necessary part of the economy, what is cruel is making unemployment unlivable.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#210

As 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…

I feel the exact opposite (regarding reciprocal tariffs).

If your neighbor makes demands and threatens to shoot themselves in the foot if you don't accept, responding by shooting yourself in the face does not seem like a good tactic.

US tariff policy gifts European manufacturers with a competitive advantage.

A small example from a hobby of mine: electronic music, synthesis, audio gadgets, etc. The last decade or two has seen an explosion of innovation in this space driven by small boutique outfits on both sides of the Atlantic. This has only been made possible because of access to Chinese expertise in manufacturing.

The effect of US tariffs is to hurt everyone - but hurt US based companies more. If based in the EU, you pay 0% duty on your low-value-add Chinese inputs and sell finished products to customers - duty free to 450m inhabitants of the EU and with 15% tariff to the US. The same operation based in the US - pays 100% or more on inputs - making it uncompetitive in both markets (for any reasonable range of margin). This is just one small niche/corner of the economy where US-based companies are seeing profits being squeezed.

The other reason to avoid emulating US policy regarding tariffs, is the impact of the flip-flopping and uncertainty on industrial and manufacturing investment. How can anyone intelligently make a long-term (decades) investment decision to build a manufacturing facility in the US when at any moment, your input costs could increase 100%? Or the tariffs you were relying on to allow you to compete with foreign operations could suddenly be lowered as part of a "deal". Or they could go up and down within the space of months or even weeks? Or that in 3 years, the policy will be complete reversed?

Introducing uncertainty and volatility into trade policy might seem like a winning move if you view the world in game theoretic terms - that the global economy is a zero-sum game. I feel that the current US executive sees the world this way - if any other country is doing well, then it must be at the expense of the USA and vice-versa. And this basic misunderstanding of trade and economics is driving these self-harming policies.

As a fellow European, given we have no influence over US policy, I suggest standing back as the US re-learns the painful lesson of history regarding trying to stimulate your economy by making industrial and manufacturing inputs more expensive and adding volatility and uncertainty to the business environment. It sucks for everyone globally because the world isn't zero-sum, the USA suffering doesn't benefit others, so the best policy for Europe is to just refuse to play the game and sit it out.

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