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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

#271

Post by jimmydddd »

martin8412 wrote: post #221
munk-a wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a case in process that'll likely resolve in the next two months. Quite a few companies have filed suite banking on getting their fees reimbursed. In the current political climate nothing is certain - but this will likely come to a resolution in the near term.

Okay, so if they lose that case, Trump will just pass a new executive order that once again takes months to resolve.

Just wanted to point out that this is the first instance of a correct spelling of "lose" I've seen on the Internet in the last three years.

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

#272

Post by thatfrenchguy »

munk-a wrote: post #205
tialaramex wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and sugar taxes are an example of a tax where there's a clear objective. To avoid the tax, don't put sugar in things if you can help it. Result: Products which had sugar because it was cheaper don't any more because of the tax, it's not cheaper now. These tariffs have a huge red flag because there's no objective. Onshoring? No, wait, we got a new deal the tariffs are removed. New trade deals? No, wait, somebod…

Tariffs to produce market effects (like onshoring) only work if those tariffs are observed to be durable (in four years all these tariffs will evaporate) and are strengthened by being paired with other encouragement (i.e. industry development subsidies). These tariffs are arbitrary and capricious and no business would rationally respond to them with any kind of long term investment. People just want to weather the st…

You still have to be way more strategic so the inputs of your new factories don’t get tariffed as well, otherwise your higher labor costs will kill any desire to actually do onshoring.

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

#273

Post by nielsbot »

xnx wrote: post #93
nielsbot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no hypocrisy because deep down they never had any principles. Principles they did profess were just marketing. (This applies to Dems as well, while we're at it.)

> This applies to Dems as well, while we're at it. I disagree with this both-sideism. Democrats are much more in following with norms, where MAGA-era FKA-republicans will through anything aside for their benefit (e.g. Merrick Garland).

Assuming the Dems can get power again we need them to aggressively pursue leftist economic populism. As you can see from the present moment, once principles become inconvenient, they abandon them. So, yes, “both sides”. Being clear-eyed about this can save our democracy.

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

#274

Post by spacechild1 »

jleyank wrote: post #227
spacechild1 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might be collecting lots of money as tariffs but they’re acting as a national sales tax. Defrays the cost of the tax cuts to some degree I guess.

Right, someone has to pay for these tax cuts eventually. The rich certainly won't.

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

#275

Post by tencentshill »

pembrook wrote: post #37
estearum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's astonishing is, whether you like him or not, the Orange man actually got the American public to accept what is defacto the largest tax increase in decades. What does it mean "got the public to accept it?" The public had no say and these are probably illegal. On top of that, he probably literally does not know that these are effectively taxes on consumers (i.e. he believe his own bullshit). No credit is due h…

This was a huge part of the platform that the US overwhelmingly voted for in the last election. People wanted this. Yes, I'm sure he believes his own bullshit, but ironically, its bullshit that the US actually needed to pull (tax increases). Modern democracy has proven totally incapable of not stealing the future from its children.

They voted thinking tariffs are a fee charged to other countries for the privilege of selling to us.

But I also agree that getting an advanced electronic device landed to my door for $5 was an unnatural economic state and something should have been done. Not unilateral 100%+ tariffs, changing weekly, with bonus rampant insider trading. We elected the worst possible person for that important job.

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

#276

Post by matwood »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #80
bootsmann wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does get hard to math out when you have to weigh the money the average consumer would save over the 10 million auto jobs in the US. Not that hard to math out, the deadweight loss of tariffs is always non-zero. IIRC there was a pretty good paper that mathed out the impact of Obamas tire tariffs and concluded that it cost the economy significantly more jobs than it saved.

That's pretty much impossible. If it costs a company 1% less to make a widget that takes 1000 hours of labor to make it overseas instead, the company is incentivized to move overseas. The thousand of hours labor, the material to source the widget, the real estate for the factory, the transportation now all occurs overseas. At the very least, you can't spew something like that then not even bother to link a source.

The problem is that it's all connected. Sure, the widget company may have local jobs saved, but what about the downstream companies that buy the widget to make something else? They can't hire as much because they are paying the higher price. Look at the steel tariffs. Sure they saved some steel jobs, but were a much larger net loss for jobs impacted by the higher prices.

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

#277

Post by treetalker »

munk-a wrote: post #207
Anonbrit wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found to be illegal when? 3 decades after they've done their damage?

There's a case in process that'll likely resolve in the next two months. Quite a few companies have filed suite banking on getting their fees reimbursed. In the current political climate nothing is certain - but this will likely come to a resolution in the near term.

And, if Treasury must refund to the companies that "paid" the tariffs, the companies will keep the refunds despite consumers' having actually carried the burden by paying higher prices and suffering attendant inflation. A win–win for the Epstein class!

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

#278

Post by Aloisius »

bobthepanda wrote: post #232
SoftTalker wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much every tax is ultimately paid by the consumer, because all the suppliers have to make a profit or they won't stay in business. The point of an import tariff isn't to make anything cheaper, it's to level the market in the presence of a foreign supplier who has much lower costs (e.g. sweatshop labor, state-supported industry, etc.) that are not available to domestic suppliers.

The problem is that the tariffs are so broad in ways that don’t help US industry; and there are few supply chains wholly within the US so you end up hurting US manufacturing as well. It doesn’t really make sense, for example, that we slapped tariffs on Madagascar, when the primary reason we run a trade deficit with them is that they grow vanilla which cannot be grown in the US.

Several species of vanilla are indigenous to Puerto Rico. Indeed, Puerto Rico used to be the ninth largest vanilla producer in the world.

Vanilla will happily grow in parts of Florida and the USVI as well.

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

#279

Post by bigbadfeline »

munk-a wrote: post #205
tialaramex wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and sugar taxes are an example of a tax where there's a clear objective. To avoid the tax, don't put sugar in things if you can help it. Result: Products which had sugar because it was cheaper don't any more because of the tax, it's not cheaper now. These tariffs have a huge red flag because there's no objective. Onshoring? No, wait, we got a new deal the tariffs are removed. New trade deals? No, wait, somebod…

Tariffs to produce market effects (like onshoring) only work if those tariffs are observed to be durable (in four years all these tariffs will evaporate) and are strengthened by being paired with other encouragement (i.e. industry development subsidies). These tariffs are arbitrary and capricious and no business would rationally respond to them with any kind of long term investment. People just want to weather the st…

> Tariffs to produce market effects (like onshoring) only work if those tariffs are observed to be durable

Tariffs do produce immediate market effects - inflation and shortages, which we do observe.

In order to produce positive market effects tariffs must be gradual, differentiated, measured, negotiated and communicated well in advance.

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

#280

Post by matwood »

hackyhacky wrote: post #94
heratyian wrote: post #78

If tariffs are bad, why does every country tariff US-made products so heavily?

> If tariffs are bad, why does every country tariff US-made products so heavily? That's an easy question. The answer is "they don't." USMCA/NAFTA guaranteed free trade with Mexico and Canada. Pre-2025, there was no blanket tariff on US goods in Europe. They tariffed some agricultural goods at 11%. Industrial goods were in single digits. The tariff numbers that Trump purports (e.g. blanket 30% tariffs on Switzerland)…

> The tariff numbers that Trump purports

Trump also either purposely or stupidly considers the VAT a tariff instead of a sales tax.

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