241–250 of 339 posts
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What’s obnoxious about them isn’t tariffs conceptually, it’s the implementation. There’s an argument that some sort of tariffs are actually necessary. The world is changing and the US has become reliant on countries who increasingly have divergent interests from the US. Additionally, some countries have aging populations that will make them more and more unreliable places to manufacture stuff in the next couple decad…
Plenty of Americans are ready and able to do the work if the conditions and wages are at the market rate. We're addicted to abusing the illegal immigrant underclass. Returning undocumented people to their homes is the moral issue of our time; Trump is ending a system of neo-slavery.
See also his brief hesitation only when his farming and hospitality CEO buddies ask him to leave some illegals for their business needs.
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It is baffling to me, as it is no different than thinking that "sugar taxes" are taxes that soda companies pay. There is even a straight forward analysis that shows it does impact the soda companies rather heavily. But it is objectively paid by the consumers. And nobody is really confused by that.
The trouble with sugar taxes is it does drive soda-company behaviour. A. G. Barr killed the real Irn Bru in 2018 to avoid the Scottish sugar tax. It could've passed on the tax to the consumer, but it didn't. It has ceased making its iconic beverage and now only sells a variant that tastes crap. No amount of money can bring the good stuff back. The sugar tax killed it. The world is now a slightly worse place, thanks t…
Tariffs are import taxes. The pre-Maga republican party used to be against taxes.
The regional/small business owners are always threatened by competition from larger international firms and benefit less from international trade. They believe in the nationalist rhetoric and are opposed to free trade because it undercuts their businesses with cheaper products. They think the U.S. can remain the world's superpower without running a trade deficit and doesn't need to build alliances to maintain its power. This is Trump's base, and their misunderstanding of U.S. power is why they love the idea of tariffs. (good for local producers!) They want to get all the benefits of being a superpower without any of the costs.
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Sure, Fedex/UPS's brokerage fees are legendary for small shipments. The problem is better stated as the removal of the de minimis threshold. So in this case an American is still paying for the misguided close-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-ran-out policy, just with most going directly to the corporate interests that helped install this corrupt administration. (but the joke is on them - Aliexpress Choice doesn't charge…
Brokerage fees are a business decision. USPS only charges about $5 for dutiable international parcels - and with 15 years in logistics I can confidently say they often don't even charge that fee at all. Tariffs are designed to change consumer spending habits, and force international businesses to create on-shore operations. To that end, they are effective - but it takes longer than 365 days for those patterns to shif…
I didn't say they aren't, rather I focused on the higher-level context which seems more relevant.
> the efficacy of tariffs
I'm not arguing against tariffs in general. I'm taking issue with applying them twenty years too late (after entire industries have wholesale moved away), in an arbitrary, capricious, and illegal manner (dubious for encouraging long-term investment), while expecting them to create well-paying domestic jobs - the only ways to compete with Chinese labor prices are creating domestic "lights out" factories (which given the regime's continued rolling out the red carpet for cross-border capital, likely won't even be American owned), or devaluing our currency to turn our country into an impoverished manual-labor work camp of the type that China worked desperately to move beyond.
As I alluded to with my last parenthetical, I expect the main outcome to be further erosion of what domestic industry we have left (eg Amazon [0] is less competitive, but also any last-step value-add manufacturing / productization) in favor of an international just in time supply chain where this new national sales tax is only paid after a consumer has bought the product.
[0] I could see Amazon just moving most operations to customs-bonded warehouses though.
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And nobody is really confused by that. Yet that's not what the administration says about the subject. They're either confused or they're lying (and the people who support them and regurgitate their talking points are confused).
> They're either confused or they're lying The belief that they are confused is a generosity that we should really be disabused of at this point.
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> Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" Everyone? No, only the willfully ignorant.
Right. They're on goods from China. The intent is to make that stuff more expensive so we can compete.
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Yes, and the gamble is that the positives from boosting domestic industry will outweigh the negatives from higher prices. The only people confused about this are NPR-constructed strawmen.
Except Trump himself repeatedly claimed that the exporting country is paying the tariffs and that the US is earning billions of dollars. And many of his followers seem to believe this.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/08/31/trump-say...
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They are a little bit like a sales tax, except only for things not made in this country.
Like, at least 50% of the things you use every day, from phone and laptops to kitchen utensils.
If tariffs are held strong, there will be two possible outcomes:
1) Domestic production will be increased (via American businesses as well as onshoring foreign businesses), providing jobs and ultimately lower-cost products
2) International tariffs will be decreased across the board - resulting in a more level field for American businesses to compete in foreign nations
Few realize American goods have been tariffed internationally for decades, resulting in a difficult-or-impossible business climate for American businesses.
The situation is akin to Wall Street's infamous short-term outcome favorability. Tariffs are a long-term game, and people have to be willing to trade some short-term outcomes for the long-term economic health of America and it's businesses (and jobs, wages, etc).
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Perhaps because the inputs to domestic manufacturing are currently more expensive. Actually increasing manufacturing capacity first requires construction and capital expenditure. I'm not sure how those metrics are doing.
> domestic manufacturing are currently more expensive Because factory machines and raw materials are being tariffed. Also because a source of cheap labor (immigrants) is being excised. > Actually increasing manufacturing capacity first requires construction and capital expenditure. It certainly does. And companies are rightfully hesitant to invest, because the legally dubious basis for the tariffs may not survive thi…
Yet history teaches us that the sort of people this administration consists of never relinquish power without a fight.