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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

#241

Post by lesuorac »

epolanski wrote: post #53

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'd rather take a financial hit than act so weak and passive.

What's passive about what Europeans are doing?

They marked products as USA-origin and sales of those products are way down (or they just pulled the USA products from the shelf). It's basically an infinite tariff.

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

#242

Post by lesuorac »

Terr_ wrote: post #101
rabf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its funny how little US citizens know about this, meanwhile in the rest of the world we have been paying import duties our entire lives. When an item is posted abroad forms have to be filled detailing the sender, the nature of the goods and the value. Some sellers willl bend the law for you and decalre the value of the goods to be lower than what you actually paid if you ask nicely. The main danger being that if the…

> Its funny how little US citizens know about this Is it really? It sounds like you're implying it's some kind of woeful ignorance, but I say it's perfectly reasonable: 1. Each US state is already in a open-borders zero-tariff framework with all other states, which covers a very large portion of what people purchase. 2. Until recently, most individual consumers didn't need to think about tariffs on international good…

I disagree, it's woeful ignorance (and sometimes even willful).

When Amazon and all first came out they didn't charge sales taxes and states were pretty unhappy because largely nobody was paying the sales taxes they were supposed to on their tax returns.

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

#243

Post by frankharv »

thepryz wrote: post #219
johnebgd wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Where is collectivism being tried again? Sure there are a number of Democratic Socialists and other progressives winning elections and driving changes but everything I’ve seen policy-wise has been directly targeted areas where unchecked capitalism has clearly failed their constituents. Even in those cases, there’s no dramatic shift towards government ownership.

Unchecked capitalism?

The new NY city mayor wants to convert parks into low income housing.

https://abc7ny.com/post/mayor-adams-makes-elizabeth-street-g...

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

#244

Post by mindslight »

bruce511 wrote: post #174
mindslight wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 managed to be affordable. You're talking about something different than what I was - improvements that make a product better without the price going up (because the cost is small enough to become the new baseline…

Clearly monetary policy is a big subject, and yes the Fed has specific targets etc in mind. But I was talking more about a mindset. And of course speaking generally- lots of people (everywhere) have budget constraints. Having traveled in the US and Europe I'd suggest that in the US "volume" is rewarded as "good". For the same amount of money, "more" is preferred to "good". In contrast in Europe it's less "look how bi…

I definitely agree with this point. I'd say food is a special case though, where the US really did have much more than Europe after WWII. Why do most Americans seem allergic to spices and flavor? I wish I knew. And this applies even to food that is supposed to be flavorful like burritos when scaled to national chains - eg Chipotle/Qdoba/Fresh City.

But economics shapes culture, too. There are certainly no shortage of subcultures trying to swim against the grain - buy American, local/organic food, German tool enthusiasts, even the tech community's libre software and anti-cloud. It feels like they remain subcultures because they're fundamentally fighting an uphill battle against top-down prices/advertising/etc set by large market makers. Which is why I initially took issue with your comment, framing it solely in terms of individual choice.

But the dynamic extends other places too, say the housing market with everything "move in ready" being beige, spec grade fixtures, and "fancy" appliances bought from a market for lemons. Trying to chew on that it still feels like not exactly what people prefer, but rather what people don't disprefer - the least offensive option to enable economies of scale (which once again comes down to monetary policy supporting the housing bubble, but I'm certainly not trying to ram the whole topic back into that)

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

#245

Post by [deleted] »

CPLX wrote: post #227
maguay wrote: 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…

> America had no idea how good they had it, in the before times. The de minimis exception was absolutely insane. It was a full-blown loophole that caused tens of billions of dollars in goods to come through the border almost completely unregulated, ranging from the stuff that should have had tariffs on it, to knockoffs, to drugs and chemicals that shouldn't be in the United States at all. Even if you are a free trade…

[deleted]

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #94
celeritascelery wrote: post #26

I had this happen to me on an order from Sweden. The order was about $450 + $50 shipping. I used an online tariff calculator and it said it should be 15%. So I was expecting ~$70. A few days before it is supposed to arrive UPS sends me a $242 bill for “tariffs, customs, and brokerage fees”. That basically made it 50% more expensive, but it was either pay it or loose the item. A month later they sent me an invoice tha…

I used an online tariff calculator and it said it should be 15%. I got tempted by one of the Brymen/EEVBlog multimeters. There's still stuff on US gov sites (and tariff calcs) suggesting we've a free trade agreement with Australia. The reality is that a 40% tariff is likely to be applied, and the worst case is that someone decides that the copper tariff also applies and in lieu of a declaration of the amount of coppe…

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by esalman »

WalterBright wrote: post #129
esalman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you run a business with good margin, good cash flow, optimally leveraged and for profit? If yes, please tell us more about how tariffs have helped you.

If you've been making the products locally, the tariffs on foreign products help you.

You cannot truly make anything locally these days. We had decades of free trade. It will take decades to roll back. And you will lose all the benefit that came with it.

Even if we pretend the policies are well-intentioned, it takes decades of investment to make the infrastructure and workforce ready to produce things locally at scale. With policies like the dismantling of department of education, I do not see any initiative being taken to prepare the workforce for the future.

Let's face it, tariffs are a disaster. The increased prices, hurt American businesses, caused job loss, and increased waste and bloat. The administration created a problem (tariff induced inflation), now they are selling the solution by rolling back tariffs to bring prices down. Anybody older than 8 years know this was the same playbook in previous administration. And they know their base is gullible eough to fall for it. It's just unfortunate that hacker news audience in included in there as well.

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

#248

Post by CGMthrowaway »

adrian_b wrote: post #193
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #95

Somewhat clickbait. The $684 duty charge was in error, and they got it reduced to the correct amount (an order of magnitude lower)

Not a clickbait, because it was quite difficult to get it reduced, so it is good to know how to do it. Moreover, the money have not been returned yet, that could take a long time and for many people losing access to such an amount would be very inconvenient, even if they knew that the money would be returned, eventually.

It's definitely good to know how to do it. This guy shares his anecdote and it's worth pointing out while UPS made an error there is plenty of responsibility that can be taken by the buyer and seller when importing. Don't put your life and finances in the hands of someone else like a chump if you can avoid it. The buyer can request/urge the seller to properly declare items (e.g. as used vintage computer parts), and the seller can declare items and prices clearly. The buyer can also pre-clear with customs (this is more advanced, level 2, but Customs has been investing a lot into making pre-clear process easy and useful)

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

#249

Post by epolanski »

bartread wrote: post #208
epolanski wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's asinine to think that higher taxes on American goods, which should include services, would not negatively impact US companies.
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