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

kielinstitut.de

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

#251

Post by giardini »

BFD. The reason for tariffs is NOT to reduce prices but to bring production (jobs, capacity) home. (Don't take some British newspapers' word for it - most of them are extremely anti-Trump - and they're really, really good at tabloid journalism.

Our economy remains robust (down jackets moving like mad in Minneapolis) and the number of native-born Americans and legal aliens working is higher than ever. Illegal aliens are either heading for the door or being pushed out the door.

USA increased payroll employment (+584,000 jobs in 2025). Unemployment rate has decreased to 4.4%. We show gains in food services, healthcare, and social assistance, but retail trade has declined (necessarily). The labor market is stabilizing and expanding more slowly than before. Private payrolls have risen an average of 43,000 jobs/month over the past six months. Wage growth eased and average hourly earnings are up 3.8% over the past year.

We're much better off and it is showing: the US economy grew by 4.3% in the 3rd quarter of 2025, while Germany's GDP grew by 0.2% for the year. The German economy is so far down, some websites quit updating website statistics years ago, e.g.:

https://georank.org/economy/germany/united-states

The Kiel Institute may be trying to draw German voters' eyes away from their government's poor economic policies, e.g.,

"Germany’s economy is so bad even sausage factories are closing"

https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/01/15/germanys-economy...

Of course that is another "tabloid" journal of the British strain. Told you they're really, really good at feeding the flames with their journalism.

[Strains of Carly Simon's "Nobody does it better,... makes you feel sad for all the rest..."]

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=nobody+...

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

#252

Post by tw04 »

nathan_compton wrote: post #228
tw04 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think she could have won if she had offered voters anything. But she did offer voters lots of things if you spent 30 seconds listening to her and stepped out of the faux news and Twitter echo chambers. And basically every last bit of it would’ve helped the average American. She just didn’t lie and claim she had a magic wand to fix price gouging her first week in office. https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep…

Politicians should not preemptively give in to political resistance and tell their voters they can't solve their problems because its "unrealistic." You'd think we would have figured this out in the Clinton campaign. Politicians should have a set of goals they fight for rabidly and when political resistance manifests they should point their fingers at it and say "Those assholes over there kept me from forgiving stude…

I thought you said she didn’t have a platform?

Now you’re criticizing her for “giving in to political resistance” - and by that you mean not getting up on stage and just knowingly and blatantly lying to the American public by claiming she would single handedly drop the price of groceries and gasoline in her first week in office while also ending the war in Ukraine?

I think you’re both moving the goal posts and claiming that the rest of us are looking for a presidential candidate that has no moral compass. I’m good.

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

#253

Post by oulipo2 »

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.

So you're confirming that EVERYTHING about politics in the US is just... spectacle? a show?

Ideas and modeling no longer matters? What matters is that you're doing a TikTok eating a southern specialty?

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

#254

Post by sciencejerk »

embedding-shape wrote: post #179
MonkeyClub wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. Exactly: tariffs are taxes in another guise. They only serve to create an (artificial) price advantage of local over imported goods for as long as they're levied. > What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN s…

> I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN subset) that was clamoring for tariffs thought it'd be anyone other than them shouldering the increase. Perhaps their influencers didn't spell it out for them? Now I'm neither in the US, American nor Democrat/Republican, but as far as I understand their argument, is that they know it means higher costs for those products for them, and it'll eventually lead to compani…

Thank you for offering an additional perspective. The article reads like the tariffs were a complete and total failure. You are saying it is too soon to tell, correct?

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

#255

Post by nathan_compton »

BanAntiVaxxers wrote: post #209
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…

You know what’s interesting though is I think that a Republican woman would be unbeatable. Many Democrats would be salivating at the historical opportunity.

I think you're right in the sense that people, when given some kind of muscular policy or attitude, don't really care about gender per se.

Only when nothing else is on the line will they say "I won't vote for a woman."

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

#256

Post by estearum »

kryogen1c wrote: post #242
id34 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because it's a layer too rudimentary. You also don't see people commentating that "taxation is when the government takes a cut of a transaction or of property."

The only people who need to back up to "industrial policy requires consistency and transparency" are those who are either incapable of or willfully deciding not to understand what's going on around them.

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

#257

Post by sowbug »

eudamoniac wrote: post #156
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…

Like you observed, no one with a grasp of economics thought exporters would absorb the cost of these tariffs. That includes myself, a person who supports tariffs. I don't think it should be necessary to explain why tariffs might be desirable, because they were not invented by idiots, but I will explain briefly. Tariffs make foreign imports more expensive. This dissuades people from buying them. Some of those people w…

How do you reconcile attitudes about climate change with your generalization about short/long-term pain?

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

#258

Post by IgorPartola »

Here is the thing that makes me really pissed off about these tariffs: if SCOTUS finds that they were imposed improperly (and I suspect they will), then companies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. get to sue the government to get the tariffs refunded. The consumers to whom the costs were passed on will never see any of that money.

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

#259

Post by j16sdiz »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #52
sensanaty wrote: post #13

Isn't this literally economics 101? How did we ever even end up imagining that tariffs are somehow paid by the exporter??

Kind of. Econ 101 normally covers tax incidence (which side bears the burden of a tax). It has a lot to do with elasticity of both demand and supply. If foreign exporters can easily shift to other markets or adjust production (elastic supply), they'll pass most of the tariff cost to consumers through higher prices. If American consumers have few substitute products (inelastic demand), they'll end up absorbing most of…

For that to work, the tariff should be targeted and selective. A tariff on everything can hardly be justified

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

#260

Post by BanAntiVaxxers »

nathan_compton wrote: post #247
BanAntiVaxxers wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

She can articulate the policy at the shooting range while eating some grits. And drinking some Keystone Light. That is when they will be receptive to the ideas.
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