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Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

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Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#371

Post by donkeybeer »

ericmay wrote: post #369
donkeybeer wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive? Its the same inferior product still, except you artificially forced the better stuff to be more expensive. Its absolutely hilarious seeing USA adopt policies of communist countries of the Latin America. Wrong, as I said just ask countries like Brazil what happens when you tariff everything to shit and beyond. Brazil doesn't have chip fabs stil…

> And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive? I disagree with this characterization on at least two points: The first is that you're assuming the product is crappy. Maybe it's actually quite good but just slightly more expensive for whatever reason, maybe that's unionization or something. Many people may opt to pay $6 less for a cheaper "thing" because they're not thinking about quality…

>Other countries subsidize manufacturing or have lower wages or have other factors that lead to the product being cheaper than it should be.

Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier.

Its not just about the buyer choosing a quality-price tradeoff. Let us be honest, the USA (or any other country) isn't the best in every sector. Artificial tariffs just mean your people will have to buy worse product. Again, its a slide to Latam style communism, absolutely hilarious.

I will even agree that a careful and targeted application of tariffs can help grow certain industries and can be a beneficial thing, but again careful and targeted is key, its a teat that they should be removed from in time. But what Trump is doing isn't remotely targeted or thought out.

The fact that you somehow are pegging me as a leftist and reacting emotionally to simple statements of fact show how incredibly stupid people who love tariffs are. Absolute comedy.

Tariffs are essentially a signal you are a loser, you can't do better so you force barriers on others. And I will maintain this for all countries that do it, whether its USA, Brazil or China. You are not showing strength by tariffs you are showing how weak you are. If I were thinking of investing in a weakening country, I might think otherwise now.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#372

Post by 0xffff2 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #280
solardev wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone who wants more data, Virginia Tech runs a helmet impact testing lab and publishes results and rankings: https://www.helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicycle-helmet-ratings.html

If we used a similar methodology for testing cars, we’d be blasting watermelon heads from a cannon against windshields and sacks of potatoes against steering wheels. We’d benefit from more realistic models. But I guess our helmets would then cost $500.

What does a good motorcycle helmet cost these days? I paid $500 for my then top of the line helmet circa 2010. Haven't ridden in over a decade but I'm surprised by the implication that helmets _don't_ cost $500.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#373

Post by slipperydippery »

ericmay wrote: post #370
slipperydippery wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be. This won't work for clothes. We'd need Wal-mart shoppers to be spending like $400/outfit (incl. shoes) to even maybe bring those jobs back to the US. For clothes specifically, short of raising prices so much that the poorest few tens of a percent of the popul…

> This won't work for clothes Says who? Also you're forgetting if we as a country decide hey this really doesn't work for clothing we can just lower the tariffs on clothing.

> Says who?

Uh, labor costs? I guess we could work to lower those, though. Like, a lot lower.

Meanwhile if the $2 wholesale-in-China shirt costs $30 on the shelf due to tariffs and the identical-quality US-made one costs $40 because that's just what it costs, the latter won't even be made, zero factories will start up to manufacture them. You'd have to raise prices a lot for it to make sense to even try, clothes are (relatively—still far less than once-upon-a-time, which is why the poor can afford to wear clothes that aren't third-hand and much-mended) labor-intensive despite lots of automation because machines remain terrible at manipulating cloth, despite decades of effort at solving that problem.

It's really expensive to make clothes in the US, and skimping on quality doesn't save all that much, percentage-wise. Being that they're also a necessity, we'd truly have to drive quality of life way down for a large chunk of the population to get that industry making low-end clothes.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#374

Post by mlyle »

tsunamifury wrote: post #366
mlyle wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the opposite of how tax incidence works. Elasticity means you can change your amount produced in response to changes in price. Producers can’t easily change output, so they bear more of the tax burden themselves. But in the long run, producers can reallocate or exit until they’re producing at minimum(average total cost), which makes supply more elastic and shifts most of the burden onto consumers. This is stuf…

Sure ok. You’re being weirdly belligerent.

You came here in your first comment blindly disagreeing with "This is your missing analysis."

Then you seemed determined to misunderstand, e.g.

> > But it's hard to escape your consumers paying most or all of the costs of those tariffs.

> I think we agree if I'm understanding you correctly, yes the Suppliers have more elasticity and must ultimately absorb this.

This is really simple fundamental microeconomics stuff. If you want to understand it, there's plenty of sources online. If you want to argue it, you should learn the basics first.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#375

Post by hdgvhicv »

ActorNightly wrote: post #329
hdgvhicv wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. You can support these exact tarrifs and not support trump in general If you have to be against everything Trump does to be against Trump that’s a problem, and you’d be a hypocrite (like Trump)

Yall missing the point. If your manager at work acted like a legit insane person, but said one true thing, you wouldn't be there saying that he/she is smart in that particular area. If by some chance in hell tarrifs actually work, its due to pure luck, not due to any strategy. Which is what the original person I am replying to made it seem.

I believe the phrase is “even a broken clock is right twice a day”.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#376

Post by timr »

Symbiote wrote: post #341
timr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So execute it for China alone. The issue is that these blanket actions are lazy at best and exclusively populist. Same argument. If there's a country that doesn't get tariffs, that country will very quickly become the leading global exporter to the US. It's the same thing for the "penguin island" that everyone mocked: if you put high tariffs on every place but penguin island, it will soon be Penguin Island Logistic…

Exports have a country of origin declared. If I post something from Denmark to Canada, they want to know the origin of the goods. If it's China, the China tariffs (if any) apply rather than the Denmark/EU ones. If the declaration is incorrect, the goods can be siezed or returned. Penguin Island is a nature preserve (the whole thing), no one is building anything.

The words you're looking for are "substantial transformation" [1].

Exporters in country A (with high tariffs on exports to USA) ship partially completed products to country B (with no/lower tariffs to USA), and then do some manufacturing step. Country B then exports completed products to USA.

China was doing this extensively via Mexico under the USMCA [2]. It's not a matter of debate.

[1] https://www.trade.gov/rules-origin-substantial-transformatio...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i3Y14TNqCI

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#377

Post by trimethylpurine »

donkeybeer wrote: post #371
ericmay wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive? I disagree with this characterization on at least two points: The first is that you're assuming the product is crappy. Maybe it's actually quite good but just slightly more expensive for whatever reason, maybe that's unionization or something. Many people may opt to pay $6 less for a cheaper "thing" because they're not thinking about quality…

>Other countries subsidize manufacturing or have lower wages or have other factors that lead to the product being cheaper than it should be. Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier. Its not just about the buyer choosing a quality-price tradeoff. Let us be honest, the USA (or any other country) isn't the best in every sector. Artificial tariffs just mean your people will…

>You are not showing strength by tariffs you are showing how weak you are.

Why does that matter?

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#378

Post by dehugger »

bsimpson wrote: post #198

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries…

I work for a company that owns three different helmet brands. All of them sell MIPS helmets on our US ecomm websites and have for years. In fact, one saved from what could have been a severe injury this spring (a car pulled in front of me while I was riding an electric scooter at speed).

You dont need to do anything special to get a MIPS helmet in the US.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#379

Post by ericmay »

donkeybeer wrote: post #371
ericmay wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive? I disagree with this characterization on at least two points: The first is that you're assuming the product is crappy. Maybe it's actually quite good but just slightly more expensive for whatever reason, maybe that's unionization or something. Many people may opt to pay $6 less for a cheaper "thing" because they're not thinking about quality…

>Other countries subsidize manufacturing or have lower wages or have other factors that lead to the product being cheaper than it should be. Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier. Its not just about the buyer choosing a quality-price tradeoff. Let us be honest, the USA (or any other country) isn't the best in every sector. Artificial tariffs just mean your people will…

> The fact that you somehow are pegging me as a leftist

I didn't mean to do that, and I apologize for that. I just meant that to the extent that you are associating tariffs with communism that those on the left will applaud Trump's tariffs and trade policies as they align with that ideology.

Though as an aside, you mention that we're sliding toward LATAM style communism (again I think it's mercantilism and not communism but whatever) but it seems to me that it's more so happening in the political sphere via Trump and his cronyism, not so much because of trade barriers.

> Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier.

A t-shirt is a t-shirt. At some point we're not really talking about making a better product, but we're instead talking about the costs associated with making that product. Instead of phrasing this as "buy the cheaper product" or "buy the better product" it should instead be looked at as "buy the product that is more environmentally friendly (shipping, environmental standards, etc.)" or "buy the product that supports higher American wages and 40 hour work weeks".

These are all just trade-offs and policy decisions. If you gave me the choice between buy American made t-shirt for $20 [1] or buy the made in (insert country) shirt for $5 - I would buy the American one every time because the price isn't the only factor.

For a long time we've focused on price only, but the prices on the shelves are not necessarily the only consideration, they're just the easiest one for people to make and we don't have other clear and obvious incentives right at the point of sale to help someone make a decision - was the (insert country here) product made by a despotic regime hellbent on assaulting your way of life - is that on the sticker? Or is it some harmless text hidden away that says "Made in Country X".

Efficient markets are great, but they're not the point of society, just another thing we decide how much or how little we want of.

[1] https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/shirts/produ...

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#380

Post by [deleted] »

arghwhat wrote: post #284
Gud wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "level playing field" when you are competing with literal sweatshops though. Frankly tariffs get a bad rep because of from who and how they are implemented but can absolutely serve a purpose.

The shops you're thinking of are less of a sweat shop than, say, Amazon in the US. Theres no good wages, but factory jobs don't really pay well anywhere. They're mostly just a lot more efficient at scale, with a few plants managing close to the whole worlds supply of random shit. Almost all microwaves by all international brands are made by the same Chinese company, all prismatic LiFePo battery cells come out of one…

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