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When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

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Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#301

Post by DaSHacka »

nutjob2 wrote: post #190
epolanski wrote: post #53

As an European, I'm kinda pissed we don't retaliate the duties. I'd rather take a financial hit than act so weak and passive. I swear between chat control, selling out EU's privacy to US tech companies (you can check how many times Palantir & others met commission members, it's public), the insanity of the ICE ban and this tariffs passivity I'm very unhappy. Also, it's too convenient to only focus on material goods w…

> As an European, I'm kinda pissed we don't retaliate the duties. "Someone is trying to shoot me so I'll shoot myself in the foot in retaliation" Sometimes, doing nothing is the best move. Doing something self destructive to make yourself feel better makes no sense at all.

> Doing something self destructive to make yourself feel better makes no sense at all.

Yet arguably, perhaps the most European move of all

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#302

Post by lunias »

I live in the US and order a decent amount of things from overseas... I got hit with tariffs once by UPS when ordering some clothes from Germany. They wanted 44% of the total value of goods in government / brokerage charges. It's pretty clear that UPS is scamming people and hoping they don't fight the obscene charges. That being said, I hit pause on ordering from overseas. I don't want to deal with such terrible transparency in what I will be charged.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#304

Post by wqaatwt »

ericd wrote: post #280
wqaatwt wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation like that doesn’t just happen. It can only be the outcome of explicit government policy. Like in post WW1 Germany they wanted to wipe the value of all domestic government debt they accumulated during the war.

Eh my understanding was more that they had to cover fiscal deficits with printing, because they had heavy WW1 war reps (only payable in gold, so they couldn’t inflate it away). There are times when it’s politically infeasible to defend the currency, even if they technically could. See the response in France to trying to raise the retirement age a bit, because their budget is in trouble.

Supposedly Germany was spending around 80% of its tax revenue on interest payments alone. They pretty much had to finance the war through domestic bonds.

So yes, pretty they didn’t have any money to spend on anything else. Of course bonds became worthless well before the peak in inflation.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#305

Post by Teever »

WalterBright wrote: post #261
Teever wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What leads you to believe that the implementation of tariffs under this administration was done for the purposes that you have enumerated? It seems that you're operating under the normally reasonable assumption that these policies were implemented after careful consideration with specific goals in mind. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the people involved in this are doing what they're doing for well-thou…

> What leads you to believe that the implementation of tariffs under this administration was done for the purposes that you have enumerated? That's what the administration has stated as the goals of them. For example, many foreign companies have announced plans to invest in creating factories in the US. How that will eventually work out will take some time to see. > I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the pe…

You're implicitly assuming three things here:

1. That stated goals reflect real motivations

2. That every president and their administration operates with a coherent, disciplined strategy

3. That competence can be assumed by default.

Unfortunately these assumptions simply don't match anything we've seen from this administration.

There's a difference between good intentions, stated intentions, and effective execution of policy and there's nothing to indicate that these things are aligned here.

There's also nothing to indicate that the American democratic process guarantees a President who always has Americas best interests in mind and there's nothing to indicate that every person who has filled that roll has had that as their primary motivation.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#306

Post by ericd »

wqaatwt wrote: post #304
ericd wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh my understanding was more that they had to cover fiscal deficits with printing, because they had heavy WW1 war reps (only payable in gold, so they couldn’t inflate it away). There are times when it’s politically infeasible to defend the currency, even if they technically could. See the response in France to trying to raise the retirement age a bit, because their budget is in trouble.

Supposedly Germany was spending around 80% of its tax revenue on interest payments alone. They pretty much had to finance the war through domestic bonds. So yes, pretty they didn’t have any money to spend on anything else. Of course bonds became worthless well before the peak in inflation.

Eesh thanks for that detail, didn’t realize it was so crushingly high.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#307

Post by trashface »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #23
varispeed wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know one US business that used to make niche electronic product. Most components they used were from China. Got hit by the tariffs that wiped all the operating profit. Guy also had to sell his home and is now couchsurfing. Business is unlikely going to recover. Of course he considered making chips and other components in the US, but he was few billions short to start the fab.

Reminds me of a comment I think by Nancy Teeters the first female Federal Reserve board member. She said the other board members thought they could savage the US manufacturing industry to kill wage inflation and break the unions and it would come right back once they stopped. And it didn't.

FWIW Teeters was apparently one of the more dovish from that era and didn't think the high rates were a great idea: “You are pulling the financial fabric of this country so tight that it’s going to rip...once you tear a piece of fabric, it’s very difficult, almost impossible, to put it back together again.” An analogy which she also said none of the men understood because they had never sewn anything

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#308

Post by like_any_other »

bruce511 wrote: post #99
like_any_other wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad all the competent politicians were dead set against preventing the "free market" from hollowing out American manufacturing.

I understand your sentiment, but I feel like your position is somewhat simplistic, and the actual situation is more complicated. First, overall, the US has increased manufacturing output over the last couple decades. 2019 was the highest year ever, covid interupted a bit, but levels are back there again. However the number of people involved has dropped a lot. US manufacturing prefers automation and prefers to manufa…

> US has increased manufacturing output over the last couple decades. 2019 was the highest year ever, covid interupted a bit, but levels are back there again

Terms like "highest ever" conceal that US industrial production only grew by about 13% in the last 25 years [1]. However, in that same time, the US population increased from 281 to 340 million [2]. Meaning that per capita industrial production decreased by 6.6%.

> So really your point is not about American manufacturing, but rather American labor.

No, my point is about treating markets and the economy as if they have no effect on sovereignty or independence, and about only looking at the consumer, not the worker or the citizen.

> the only real lever they have is to increase the cost of imported goods

That's sure not the only lever that Chinese politicians have, and they took full advantage of that, first to industrialize, and now to take over industries left out to dry by their home governments who think the Free Market can do no wrong. Learned helplessness at its worst.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#309

Post by CPLX »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #279
CPLX wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you understand what the de minimis exception was. That's just factually incorrect. Literally billions of dollars were getting through because they were being shipped one at a time to fulfill e-commerce type orders, which completely circumvented the spirit of the law, if not the letter. It was absolutely a loophole. The word betrays the loophole, since de minimis is a legal term that means something is…

The stated purpose of the exception was to allow individuals who are the "final destination" to import relatively low value items from overseas without the hassle and work of customs duties. Your claim appears to be that this was abused in an organized way that led to a scale of use that was not anticipated when the exception was created. What evidence do you have for this claim?

How about the 600,000 packages daily from just Shein and Temu alone?

This isn't even remotely confusing to anyone who's bothered to look at it.

I assume you haven't done that, because you said this:

> It was only exploitable by lying about the value of a shipment.

That's not true at all. It was made perfectly legal for shipments under $800, and what was supposed to be a personal use type exemption was wildly exploited until it accounted to over 90% of all shipments to the US, and over $60bn in goods, annually. That was a mistake. Correcting it was well overdue.

Re: When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

#310

Post by esalman »

WalterBright wrote: post #294
esalman wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument is so baseless that even a template AI response can refute it. Yes, the DoE has been planting decade-scale workforce seeds since the Carter years—mostly via STEM/CTE programs that outlive administrations. Core idea: build adaptable skills (problem-solving, digital literacy, work-based learning) so kids & adults can pivot when AI/climate/whatever nukes today’s jobs. *Carter-era kickoff* - 1979: Science a…

Test scores haven't improved since 1980. Funding programs is not an accomplishment.

If that’s your only yardstick, American education is a 50-year failure despite spending tripling in real terms. That's common knowledge, and you probably can't change that without having immigrant parents. But literally every completion/access metric has exploded since the Carter admin:

HS graduation: ~75 % → 87 % (94 % including GEDs)

BA or higher, age 25+: 17 % → 38 %

Some college or associate’s: ~30 % → >60 %

Immediate college enrollment: 49 % → ~70 %

Black BA attainment roughly 3×, Hispanic 4–5×

AP/IB exams: 400 k → 5 M+

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