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Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

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Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#221

Post by mlyle »

tsunamifury wrote: post #217
mlyle wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We need demand more than supply" is a macro diagnosis. But tariff incidence is a micro question. Elasticity analysis doesn’t care whether the world has a demand shortfall or a supply glut. It asks: when a tax raises transaction costs, which side is less able to change behavior? In the long run, suppliers usually have more flexibility than consumers.

I can't believe I'm going to look like I'm defending this but here it goes: The market 'offering' the most demand to the global economy right now is America, by far and away, with a distant second of Europe and Middle East. America has chosen to use tariffs in an attempt to 'tax the demand offered' to the global economy in order to stop the localize debt accumulation of that demand, along with other justifications (r…

I'm not talking about trade imbalance. I'm simply saying, tax incidence is predicted by elasticity, and in the long run suppliers have very high elasticity.

You can possibly improve trade imbalance with tariffs (though retaliation makes it hard). But it's hard to escape your consumers paying most or all of the costs of those tariffs.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#222

Post by Retric »

ethbr1 wrote: post #209
Retric wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation consistently outcompetes sweatshops. What’s missing from these discussions is the idea of competitive advantage. It is inherently more efficient to grow crops in climates where they thrive, tacking a tariff to protect domestic production means intentionally lowering the standard of living of everyone both domestically and abroad to favor some tiny group doing something wasteful.

There are a few situations where tariffs are beneficial: 1. To preserve strategically important domestic industries (historically: food production and mechanization industry) 2. To shield domestic industries while they're growing to take on already efficient and scaled global competitors Benefiting labor or saving jobs is probably the stupidest use of tariffs, if one of the above isn't also in play, because it'd be m…

Food production isn’t some homogeneous entity, it might make sense to subsidize some level of staples but direct subsidies are more transparent and can be more easily limited. But, obviously industry doesn’t want the government feeding through to stop simply because the’ve scaled vastly past domestic consumption.

Similarly, military procurement can subsidize relevant industries without impacting the wider economy. In other words you can maintain some domestic steel production etc without impacting the cost of goods.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#223

Post by selectodude »

monero-xmr wrote: post #75
fzeroracer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see an argument for tax cuts everywhere. Taxes are literally brakes on financial transactions. The number 1 way to slow down your economy is to tax every transaction possible as highly as possible. It is an interesting thought experiment to eliminate income and sales taxes, and try to only finance the government via tariffs. Then you don't actually see an argument for tax cuts everywhere. What you want is a tax t…

My preferred way would also to be to eliminate expenditures, but failing that, redirecting taxes in a way that grows the US internal economy as much as possible, and incentives the re-industrialization simultaneously, is an interesting experiment.

Everybody wants to reindustrialize yet I don’t see a lot of people signing up to work in a factory. Why don’t you go be the change you seek?

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#224

Post by folsom »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #166
helloooooooo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think anyone here has yet come to the realization that ending rampant consumerism is the whole damn point of the tariffs.

This is a ridiculous attempt at sanewashing. When has Trump or anyone in the GOP EVER stated that they want to end consumerism?

https://apnews.com/article/trump-two-dolls-tariffs-toys-7b0e...

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#225

Post by lucky_cloud »

timr wrote: post #45

Title is not accurate. They're allowing personal shipments under $100, and the rest can be shipped via their UGX service. It sounds like JP doesn't want to deal with the customs paperwork at scale (edit: also the deposits).

Under $100... by what measure? I'm going to Japan soon and was planning on shipping a bunch of clothes, books, etc to myself. I'm not going to sell any of it, I just want to send a bunch of stuff back without having to deal with checking another bag. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no dollar value. I'm buying stuff in Yen for my own personal use...

But I suppose I'll just check a bag or use a different carrier...

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#226

Post by ethbr1 »

Hot take: good

The de minimis treatment has been abused beyond original intent. Specifically by China, but you can't fix that without fixing the general case.

Fast fashion and other low-value drop air shipping across oceans is ecologically insane: as a planet we literally can't afford to keep doing this. And the US, by virtue of population + relative consumer wealth, is the biggest customer for this.

Furthermore, the inability to reliably screen low-value packages is a problem. To wit, I should not be able to order illegal drugs on the internet and have them delivered by the federal postal system to my door without inspection.

Unfortunately, the way to actually address this requires thoughtful regulation (Congress+customs), modernization and funding of enforcement at scale (Congress+customs), and doesn't produce a quick win... so isn't going to be done.

More likely, it's used as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, then the problem is declared "won", then it's back to business as usual.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#227

Post by pessimizer »

bsimpson wrote: post #198

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries…

I don't understand the argument that it's bad that the government is suppressing grey markets in goods that aren't approved in the US.

I get it from a selfish point of view, as in I want a particular helmet and I think the design is safer, so I'm upset when I can't have it at the price I want it. I don't understand it as a political argument. If our government isn't meant to do anything, shut it down entirely. Don't have processes and subvert them so everybody can do what they want when they want.

Who would you vote for to get rules broken whenever they stop you from doing what you want, and why would anybody else vote for that person?

That being said, I deeply understand that the science and regulation around any sort of helmeting in the US (also in the case of motorcycles) is completely compromised by the people who sell helmets. The way you fix that is by fixing regulatory processes, not making rules easier to break for connected, smart, wealthy people. If you think fixing regulatory processes is an absurd, naïve impossibility, shut the government down and stop complaining about trivialities.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#228

Post by Muromec »

bsimpson wrote: post #198

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries…

That's an interesting way to approach regulation.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#229

Post by eagerpace »

ethbr1 wrote: post #226

Hot take: good The de minimis treatment has been abused beyond original intent. Specifically by China, but you can't fix that without fixing the general case. Fast fashion and other low-value drop air shipping across oceans is ecologically insane: as a planet we literally can't afford to keep doing this. And the US, by virtue of population + relative consumer wealth, is the biggest customer for this. Furthermore, the…

This. It’s well past time to fix this. We can live without Temu for a little while.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#230

Post by jacobolus »

philwelch wrote: post #157
jacobolus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is power explicitly reserved for Congress, which is being extra-constitutionally seized by the President (on the pretext of "national security") with no public support. The problem here is electing a lawless president and putting the Congress in charge of a GOP which is full of unprincipled cowards from top to bottom, not the institutional framework.

The Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which is still current statutory law, empowers the president to set tariffs. There’s an argument that Congress didn’t have the power to pass that law, but they did.

In my understanding, this is only applicable when "an article is being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten or impair the national security". But "national security" is pretextual in this case.
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