Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

kielinstitut.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 814 posts

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#241

Post by dyauspitr »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #2

> Event studies around discrete tariff shocks on Brazil (50%) and India (25–50%) confirm: export prices did not decline. Trade volumes collapsed instead. What if that was the intended result?

Even if it was, the problem is that this is a classic trap where protecting your own market will result in overpriced goods in the home market. We would be paying extravagant amounts for everything. Most other countries wouldn’t have that problem and would result in being stuck in time like a lot of the former Soviet Union.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#242

Post by kryogen1c »

id34 wrote: post #203
kryogen1c wrote: post #168

Almost all the comments acting like this is some truth bombshell, like people in trumpistan all thought raising tariffs magically made the us economy better. This is a straw man, no? Tariffs are a mid-long term strategy to encourage onshoring business, for reasons including military, national security, and political influence on foreign powers. This is a complicated topic involving the global economy and evolving int…

The use of tariffs as a mid-long strategy, in my view, would require a stable, long-term communication that the US government will implement careful, strategic tariffs alongside incentives to strengthen chosen domestic industries where they believe a domestic alternative is feasible. We haven't seen anything even close to that at any point in this tariff rollercoaster - tariffs for products that cannot be produced at…

Im inclined to agree with most of what you say, although I dont follow economics or current events closely enough to have a strong opinion.

My point is that your thoughtful response about reliable continuity, both inter- and intra- president, is not present in a lot of the comments.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#243

Post by WillPostForFood »

BanAntiVaxxers wrote: post #121
PaulRobinson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in. You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/cont…

[flagged]

this is a classic "nice story, bro".

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#244

Post by notahacker »

ethersteeds wrote: post #223
bartread wrote: post #56

I'm glad they've done the work here and put a figure on it - the impact absolutely needed to be quantified - but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. People, lots of people, lots of people who have a really deep understanding of national and global economics (unlike me), have been warning about this since talk of tariffs became common cur…

Outside the specious argument that other countries would pay, the other more serious argument was that tarrifs would promote the growth of domestic alternatives. Yes it will hurt, they argued, but the long term effect will be a stronger and more independent domestic economy. And the pain is worth it for that end. There's plenty of evidence that what actually results are inferior products from domestic companies insul…

Thing is, whilst you can make that argument for carefully chosen tariffs in strategic industries (something basically every country including the US was already trying to do, for better and for worse), you don't get much domestic production realignment for arbitrarily large short term tariffs as a precursor to a "big beautiful deal" or punitive tariffs because other countries push back on your proposal to annex another country. Or indeed tariffs levied on the exports of uninhabited islands

In some cases, the Trump tariffs have actually been so poorly designed that US manufacturing has been hit, because the tariffs on the raw materials and parts are higher than the tariffs on importing finished products from third countries...

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#245

Post by jacquesm »

notahacker wrote: post #205
jacquesm wrote: post #140

Ladies & Gentlemen, the President of the United States of Amerca: “Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and w…

It is quite amusing watching people try to argue that there's a very serious plan behind Greenland whilst Trump privately lobbies for it with the arguments of a young and very spoiled child. His tariff preferences have the same level of thought behind them, at least until the people that have the slightest idea of how things actually work can tone them down and put his ideas on the shelf for long enough to stave off…

What amazes me is that all of the checks and balances have either failed or have been disabled. The US is always full of their 'Founding Fathers', I can't help but think that they'd be horrified to see the situation as it has developed so far and that's with a serious note that I suspect it will get a lot worse still.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#247

Post by nathan_compton »

BanAntiVaxxers wrote: post #214
nathan_compton wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this - Harris had a big bump in the polls as soon as she entered the race and I think she could have won if she had offered voters anything . This bullshit that American's won't vote for a woman is just an excuse not to run women and to deflect blame towards a culture war issue and away from the fact that the democrats don't actually have popular policies. I voted for Harris, I even canvased for her, but…

She’s known to own firearms. I wonder what would happen if one of these Democrat candidates released a video like “A girl and her Glock: Kamala goes John Wick”. Similarly, AOC should visit the south, eat some grits, volunteer with some Black churches, and do a little skeet shooting with some good ole boys.

It would be perceived as pandering bullshit from either of them.

What the democrats need is an aggressive economic policy that actually will manifestly improve regular people's lives. If they cannot articulate such a thing and credibly convince the voter that they will fucking fight for it, they will never win.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#248

Post by oulipo2 »

nathan_compton wrote: post #167
BanAntiVaxxers wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't buy this - Harris had a big bump in the polls as soon as she entered the race and I think she could have won if she had offered voters anything . This bullshit that American's won't vote for a woman is just an excuse not to run women and to deflect blame towards a culture war issue and away from the fact that the democrats don't actually have popular policies. I voted for Harris, I even canvased for her, but…

I think that's wrong. The Democrat platform offered a lot.

It's just that if in front of you, you have a weirdo who gives some stupid "with me, everything is free, and there's no problem" line, that is provable completely bullshit, but that your population is too uneducated (or too in a cult) to understand, then this happens...

What did you want Democrat to do? Give the same lies that GOP does? then what's the endgame?

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#249

Post by js2 »

bparsons wrote: post #212
PaulRobinson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in. You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/cont…

Things aren't perfect in a lot of countries, but what is happening in the US right now is absolutely unique. Things are careening out of control, and the political system seems completely incapable of getting a handle on it. Most people I speak to in Canada, Europe and Central America seem perplexed why Americans they know do not seem more alarmed.

> Seem perplexed why Americans they know do not seem more alarmed.

It's because we live in the beginnings of a dual state:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/opinion/renee-good-ice-im...

Quoting the key point:

> The two components of the dual state are the normative state — the seemingly normal world that you and I inhabit, where, as Huq writes, the “ordinary legal system of rules, procedures and precedents” applies — and the prerogative state, which is marked (in Fraenkel’s words) by “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees.”

> “The key here,” Huq writes, “is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state.”

> It’s the continued existence of the normative state that lulls a population to sleep. It makes you discount the warnings of others. “Surely,” you say to yourself, “things aren’t that bad. My life is pretty much what it was.”

More at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-e...

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#250

Post by rawgabbit »

nathan_compton wrote: post #167
BanAntiVaxxers wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't buy this - Harris had a big bump in the polls as soon as she entered the race and I think she could have won if she had offered voters anything . This bullshit that American's won't vote for a woman is just an excuse not to run women and to deflect blame towards a culture war issue and away from the fact that the democrats don't actually have popular policies. I voted for Harris, I even canvased for her, but…

She lost for the same reason Hillary lost. She came across as Marie Antoinette. Oblivious to the anger of the working class. Touting how great the economy was going and ignoring the resentment felt by those who believed the “liberal elite” betrayed them.
Post reply on HN