American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by bilbo0s » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

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.

>You know what’s interesting though is I think that a Republican woman would be unbeatable

Not anymore.

Three more years to climb out of the dumpster fire though. Then, maybe?

But right now? No.

In this moment, the political reality in the US is that Democrats would have to lose. Republicans, male or female, can't really win without that help. Especially in light of MAGA.

I would have thought Wisconsin would have been a wake up call for Republicans. But it hasn't happened yet.

So far both of these parties are sleepwalking into disaster and the world outside the US will pay a portion of that cost. Which is sad.

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

#312

Post by mylifeandtimes » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

One thing that is interesting to me:

In Europe, prices show the price INCLUDING sales tax (VAT, typically 20%). What you see is what you pay at the register.

In the US, prices show the price BEFORE sales tax (national average circa 7%). You pay 7% more at the register than what you saw.

I wonder if we could update US pricing so that the tariff was collected at the cash register, just like sales tax is, so that people could see that they were the one paying the tax.

yes, I see the obvious practical difficulties with this. It is a though experiment, nothing more.

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

#313

Post by Muromec » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

bparsons wrote: post #212

PaulRobinson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in. You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/cont…

Things aren't perfect in a lot of countries, but what is happening in the US right now is absolutely unique. Things are careening out of control, and the political system seems completely incapable of getting a handle on it. Most people I speak to in Canada, Europe and Central America seem perplexed why Americans they know do not seem more alarmed.

>Things aren't perfect in a lot of countries, but what is happening in the US right now is absolutely unique

It's not unique. If anything, it's inevitable regression to the mean. Entropy rises eventually and does this

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

#314

Post by Glyptodon » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

BanAntiVaxxers wrote: post #121

PaulRobinson wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Americans believed the guy they wanted to believe in, because they didn't want to believe the people they didn't want to believe in. You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/cont…

[flagged]

Much like I think if any Dem other than Hillary Clinton ran against Trump for his winning term 1, I think if the Dems had a proper primary process for this last election they'd probably have picked somebody who'd also have won.

That said, I'm not sure being a woman was worse than being from CA or black with a solid chunk of the electorate. (I'm reminded of how some of my own relatives seemed to want to avoid visiting us in CA growing up because they had such a strong notion of how "communist," "liberal," and dangerous it ostensibly was.)

In some ways this also illustrates that propaganda likely had a significant role, too, IMO.

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

#315

Post by LtWorf » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

nathan_compton wrote: post #235

Marazan wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that the democrats don't actually have popular policies. Democrat policies polled better than Republican policies at the last election.

Its more accurate to say that leftist policies polled well, which they always do. I think the main issue is that people don't really trust democrats to do anything they say they want to do.

Remember that one guy who promised to close guantanamo prison?

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

#316

Post by benj111 » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #174

benj111 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brit who studied history, the parallels to 1930s Germany are too strong for comfort. So I would suggest reading up on that for some answers. Although as the comparison hopefully makes clear, you worrying about tariffs is missing the point, it's more a question of basic democracy at this point. I'm also somewhat concerned about your (edit: as in the USs) new found lust for Lebensraum, because again, that went wel…

> I'm also somewhat concerned about your new found lust for Lebensraum I beg your pardon?!? Who the hell do you think you're talking to? Read my comment again.

Are you not from the US?

I wasn't accusing you personally of supporting your governments actions, but I think you as in your country is acceptable terminology.

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

#317

Post by sowbug » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

dfadsadsf wrote: post #293

Given the relatively low inflation in 2025, I’m skeptical of the claim that consumers bore 96% of the tariff burden. With CPI inflation at 2.7% and roughly $18,000 in goods consumption per person in US, total price increase in goods work out to ~160B. A $200 billion increase in customs revenues would exceed the total price increases attributable to inflation - which makes little sense if 96% of that was paid by consu…

NPR says the figure is more like 5 percent. As far as we know, they haven't fired employees who produced numbers they didn't like.

https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5638908/walmart-prices-...

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

#318

Post by throw101010 » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

floren wrote: post #83

throw101010 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FOX News, after their scandal with Dominion, should have been broken down or even shutdown. They deliberately disinformed the public, there is blatant evidence that the news anchors were aware that they were lying. Not just bending facts a little or opining, but knowingly and purposefully lying. The pretext of freedom of expression, and more narrowly freedom of press should not *continue* to apply to businesses/indiv…

Can you stretch your imagination to a scenario in which a hostile administration, eager to shut down critical reporting, might declare that various outlets are engaging in fake news and must thus be shut down? Let's be glad a precedent wasn't set.

I can, and I've specifically said "guilty/liable", meaning that people will go to the highest court available to them to defend their rights. If in the last instance they are still found guilty/liable, they should suffer the consequences I've mentioned. These legal decisions, by multiple courts/juries, if you can't trust them anymore you have already lost in terms of democracy/republic.

I still believe the SCOTUS is trying to uphold the principles in the Constitution, for now. And there are already limits on what one can say in public, yelling fire in a theater when there's no fire is not far from what FOX is doing. Lying at this scale to cause panic based on such lies has demonstrable deleterious effects on society. The effect is delayed due to the scale of the target groups, but the principle is the same and courts/juries are able to observe this when it happens.

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

#319

Post by yalogin » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

Yeah but the average cult voter doesn’t care. Let alone the cult voter, most voters won’t see it as they may not tie the price increases directly to tariffs. We are already in an inflationary cycle when the tariffs are put so the administration will just claim the issue is not tariffs and that the tariffs are helping somehow and the base will believe it. We are in a world where the administration has fully doubled down on “never accept failure, never apologize and always double down” strategy and unfortunately it’s working

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

#320

Post by RandomTisk » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

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…

Who ultimately pays the tariffs is missing the forest for the trees, their primary function is to tax, and taxation virtually always reduces spending. Don't want to pay tariffs? Buy domestic. Tariffs are the single reason (or one of very few) that the US isn't flooded with BYD electric cars from China. China's dirt cheap labor could decimate the US auto industry, but for tariffs and trade regulation, but I repeat myself.