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

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211–220 of 704 posts

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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because it's obvious those countries don't have the leverage to negotiate. Trump hasn't even started discussing h1b with India.

So what you want is extortion, not trade. It's a worldwide version of the mafia.

Maybe we should just lay down and let the world do whatever they want. I would hate to be accused of negotiating from a position of power.

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

#212

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...

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

#213

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The system that allows very wealthy to exist is also the reason the US has the highest class mobility among western nations. Also, on a purely pragmatic note, capital is mobile. If you penalize the rich, they just move, and then the new system will stop class mobility.

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

#214

I kind of welcome this. Corporations panicking and being afraid to raise prices too much, and perhaps having to take a loss because they're essentially giving away product, is the LEAST that could happen to them after their naked and abusive COVID-era gouging. EDIT: You had years of corporate stimulus and ZIRP expanding M2, but the inflation floodgates only opened after a paltry return of a small fraction of the real…

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

#215
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The craziest thing about all this is that Chinese exports to the US aren't even that big a part of the Chinese economy (3% or so). Sure, it'll hurt and there's multiplier effects, but the entire rest of the world is more than happy to take up the slack. So the tariffs really are the US cutting its own nose off to spite its face.

What do you mean “the rest of the world will take up the slack”? Is the rest of the world suddenly going to start buying something they haven’t in the past? Why? And the US consumer market is 2x the size of the next biggest (EU). How exactly is the the rest of the world going to replace the demand of something several times its size?

If the US buys less, there will be unsold inventory and a temporary glut in supply, which will lead to the Chinese dropping prices and exporting elsewhere. This is already happening in SE Asia:

https://www.chiangraitimes.com/china/china-export-dumping/

Obviously the profit margin will be less than selling to the US, but it does mean that the 3% of GDP mentioned above is not going away entirely, just shrinking to (say) 2 or 2.5%.

The article also mentions transshipment, where Chinese goods get routed to the US via a third country. Although Trump's strategy of "tariff everybody for all the things" is putting a damper on this too.

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

#216
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What else changed?

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system that allows very wealthy to exist is also the reason the US has the highest class mobility among western nations. Also, on a purely pragmatic note, capital is mobile. If you penalize the rich, they just move, and then the new system will stop class mobility.

The globe can collaborate to make sure capital has nowhere to fly to. Form the USSA and get china onboard and let the USSR come back (they’re still the loyal opposition in today’s Russia) and capital will just fucking take it like they deserve to. What, you gonna go to the moon now?

> The globe can collaborate to make sure capital has nowhere to fly to

hahahaha no

There are countless places that are more than happy to accept capital with few questions asked. Including, funnily enough, the US itself.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/america-becomin...

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system that allows very wealthy to exist is also the reason the US has the highest class mobility among western nations. Also, on a purely pragmatic note, capital is mobile. If you penalize the rich, they just move, and then the new system will stop class mobility.

the US has the highest class mobility among western nations Source? The rankings I see have the US behind most of Europe.

The average European is poorer than the average person from Mississippi, the US’ poorest state. It isn’t even comparable

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

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The one in NK is doing that only to his own country. Trump is destroying the whole planet by withdrawing from the Paris agreement and then by strong-arming other countries to do the same. If we haven't already passed the tipping point Trump's actions will make sure we do, destroying all hope.

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

#220

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...

The Paris agreement was very important when renewable energy required state subsidies, but it is no longer necessary. Fossil-fuel power is no longer economically competitive without subsidies thanks to (largely Chinese) improvements in the costs of solar panels and the necessary power electronics. Over a few decades, solar-powered energy superabundance will reduce the costs of atmospheric carbon capture to the point where even private charity can handle it.

On https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... you can see that mainstream solar panels have returned to their all-time low price of €0.100 per peak watt from November, while low-cost solar panels have fallen to a new all-time low of €0.055 per peak watt, an all-time low first achieved last month, and a 21% decline from a year ago. The "mainstream" category price is down 17% from a year ago. This is driving down the prices of complementary products and enabling new low-cost installation methods that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

Because it's so astoundingly cheap, last year China installed 277 GW(p) of solar power generation capacity: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65064. This compares to a total electrical generation capacity in the US of 1189 GW, albeit with a higher capacity factor: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-.... This year the projection is that China will have installed another 380 GW of solar capacity, giving it more solar electrical generation capacity than the US has total electrical generation capacity from all sources: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/07/10/china-on-track-to-dep...

Consequently we're seeing reports that, for Chinese AI startups, energy is a "solved problem", while US companies worry they'll be unable to get enough energy to compete: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell....

This is one of the most historically important things happening in the world today, but it's surprisingly little known even among people who are otherwise well informed.

Even if Trump could strong-arm other rich countries into imposing US-style prohibitive tariffs on Chinese solar panels, he certainly won't strong-arm China, so the cat is out of the bag; that would just make those countries economically uncompetitive with Chinese products produced with superabundant solar energy. And panels are already being mass-produced overseas with Chinese technology at prices fossil fuels can't compete with.

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