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US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

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Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#251

Post by LastTrain »

JungleGymSam wrote: post #140
LastTrain wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very, very few people believe that. This is how it works: Republicans willfully lie to their supporters, who know it is lie, and they then knowingly pass on the lie to you. This could be your conservative friends, family, co-workers. They are all knowingly lying to you. This is a pretty simple form of debasement and a loyalty test - will you repeat this lie for me? The bigger the lie, the more loyal.

you don't actually believe that is a one sided thing do you?

Predominately, yes. It has been weaponized by the current Republican party. I'm not saying Democrats never ever do it, just that it isn't part of their MO like it is in the current Republican party.

Let me propose a game. You name a bald-face lie told by the last administration. A bald-face lie is one where the person telling the lie knows its a lie, and knows that the people they saying the lie to knows that it is a lie. Got it? Bald face lies are generally only told by sociopaths. So, you do that, and I will give you 5 told by this admin. I will include at least one from the last month. We'll keep going back and forth and keep a tally. With you getting a 5x handicap.

Now, do you think you will win that game? Do you think it will even be close? Be honest with your answer.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#252

Post by nullocator »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #188
jleyank wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without coercion today, why would anybody try to give the US a break at the cost of its other trading partners...?

Because a corporation doesn't have trading partners, it has a mission to sell to customers. If customers are disproportionately in the US, which happens quite often, then you can entirely rationally decide that pissing them off with a big price hike is worse for the bottom line than pissing everyone off a little. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/global-reta...

Why would they be pissed off at the business for not absorbing the tariff? The business didn't arbitrarily enact them, Donald Trump and ipso facto his supports did.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#253

Post by Alupis »

mindslight wrote: post #245
Alupis wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Brokerage fees are a business decision 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), whil…

There's an old saying:

The best time to take action was yesterday. The second best time is today.

Tariffs are a long-term economic policy. It will take longer than 365 days to change consumer spending habits and onshore foreign businesses/production and rebuild domestic businesses/production.

Most countries have tariffed US goods for decades. The US tariffs on foreign goods will, over the long term, convince foreign nations to reduce or eliminate their tariffs on US goods (creating a more fair business climate for US businesses), and/or increase domestic production (creating jobs, salaries, taxes, etc).

We can't act like it's just too late to do anything about the lop-sided economic policies of decades-past, and we can't act like changing those policies today is nothing but doom. There will be a restructuring - a period of time to adjust - and then things will be fine over the long term. It just takes time and the political will-power to do so.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#254

Post by nullocator »

xnx wrote: post #22

Tariffs are import taxes. The pre-Maga republican party used to be against taxes.

I think this is a misunderstanding the party used to be against taxes for wealthy people and corporations, they never cared about taxes on consumers.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#255

Post by rlpb »

amiga386 wrote: post #204
taeric wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Destroying demand for sugary drinks was exactly the intent, though.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#256

Post by nullocator »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #215
yoyohello13 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people are generally for higher taxes on the rich. Tariff are a flat tax that dis-proportionally affects the poor.

Every tax ever implemented by government has been initially sold as a tax on the rich. The people voting for it assume they will never be taxed because they aren't currently rich. But, there is never enough of other peoples money to spend. So, taxes expand and/or increase to include more people. The original income tax was sold as 1% on mid income and 2% on high income. At the time more than half the country was not…

Maybe because the rich consistently lobby and weasel their way out of paying their fair share so the burden on everyone else continues to rise?

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#257

Post by nixosbestos »

amelius wrote: post #19
SunshineTheCat wrote: post #13

Everyone has been getting sold that these tariffs are on "China" or fill-in-the-blank on what country we're "getting" with them. The reality is that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what a tariff is. There is a reason you will find tariffs drop off after the great depression. They make everything more expensive for businesses and in turn, the end consumer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_Un…

It could work if you put the couch in your neighbor's yard first.

I'd prefer to not give JD Vance any reason to visit my neighbor.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#258

Post by nixosbestos »

JungleGymSam wrote: post #140
LastTrain wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very, very few people believe that. This is how it works: Republicans willfully lie to their supporters, who know it is lie, and they then knowingly pass on the lie to you. This could be your conservative friends, family, co-workers. They are all knowingly lying to you. This is a pretty simple form of debasement and a loyalty test - will you repeat this lie for me? The bigger the lie, the more loyal.

you don't actually believe that is a one sided thing do you?

What, on Earth, do you mean? lmfao.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#259

Post by mindslight »

Alupis wrote: post #253
mindslight wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brokerage fees are a business decision 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), whil…

There's an old saying: The best time to take action was yesterday. The second best time is today. Tariffs are a long-term economic policy. It will take longer than 365 days to change consumer spending habits and onshore foreign businesses/production and rebuild domestic businesses/production. Most countries have tariffed US goods for decades. The US tariffs on foreign goods will, over the long term, convince foreign…

So then,

The best time to close the barn door was before the horses ran off. The second best time is today.

Does this make sense? Especially as a plan for getting the horses back?

Markets are not computationally smooth, rather they have structure. China recognized this, which is why they've been using government policy to keep their prices low to make industries get over the activation energy of moving there. Now that those industries are there, the structure then gives China leverage which "we" (ie our leadership class) are only now waking up to. Adding some tariff friction that would have kept industry here is nowhere near the level of incentive required to bring industry back.

> We can't act like it's just too late to do anything about the lop-sided economic policies of decades-past

I'm not. There is another comment of mine in this thread pointing out how Americans have been getting fleeced for decades by not spending the proceeds of having the world reserve currency on mitigating the problems of having the world reserve currency. What I am saying is that tariffs, especially as being championed right now, are more like hopium rather than actually confronting the problem.

> we can't act like changing those policies today is nothing but

The doom part comes from having an incompetent dictator-wannabe President who is at best applying a cookie-cutter approach that is decades out of date, but more seemingly just using these levers as threats to personally enrich himself as our country burns. Which is why he is also using tariffs against longstanding allies, thus prompting them to revisit why they are harming their own economies by tariffing China.

> the political will-power to do so.

What I see is the political willpower on this topic (and other longstanding problems) being abused to not actually address those problems, but rather just to facilitate the next con job on the American people.

Re: US businesses and consumers pay 90% of tariff costs, New York Fed says

#260

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

dalyons wrote: post #150
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a manufacturing supplier (packaging and logistics) and our business has been on fire since the trade war kicked off. Pre-COVID we were at ~$25MM yearly and now we are $150MM+ and growing steadily. We just bought a million sq ft building (that was an old RCA plant) and millions in new machinery to keep up. We are only a regional player, too.

It’s not entirely clear to me why tariffs would help your local logistics businesses? Doesn’t the same amount of stuff get moved around , just changes origin? I believe you I just would like to understand

Because it made it possible for domestic production to increase.
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