Live data from Hacker News

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

kielinstitut.de

461–470 of 814 posts

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

#461

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…

The founders were skeptical of direct democracy because it assumes people have time and expertise they mostly don’t. People should not be voting based on their understanding of tariffs. It’s why we ended up with a republic.

But social media changes the equation entirely. It gives us the speed of direct democracy without any of the structure or responsibility. It pushes people to judge candidates issue-by-issue, often on topics they don’t understand well, while eroding the deliberative layers a republic is supposed to have.

The problem isn’t people or education — America didn’t get this far because Americans are any smarter or dumber than anyone else. It’s the design of the systems. The founding fathers built a system that has so far lasted almost 250 years.

You cannot expect people to change — safety protocols, procedures, govenments — it’s about the systems.

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the intersection of Americans who won't vote for a woman presidential candidate and Americans who support MAGA? I imagine it's fairly high. That said, I don't believe there's a single factor that determined the election. A flip in any of a dozen or more factors could have resulted in a different outcome.

I’m sure it’s only a small percentage of voters who would have voted for a male Democrat. But that’s all it would take to flip that election. Our elections have been so close that there are numerous single factors determining the outcomes, if that makes sense.

> Our elections have been so close that there are numerous single factors determining the outcomes, if that makes sense.

Not sure if that's specifically directed at me, but that's exactly what I said.

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

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I have spent my whole life intimately involved with southern Republicans. They will never ever not vote Republican, let alone vote Democrat. It is an identity marker. It doesn’t even really matter what the policies are. They’ll complain for a while, but they will always internalize a Republican policy shift no matter what it is. They used to treat “free market economics” as a religion just 10 years ago. Secondarily,…

I don’t really know how we’d get there, but the US would be better structured as an EU of regions, IMO. The states are too small, but we’ve got regions with definite noticeable cultural differences (Northeast vs Southeast, etc etc). These areas have more similar values than the country as a whole, and are big enough to handle 99% of their issues. Like, we should not have done the ACA, just merged all the various already successful Northeastern healthcare systems. Then the South could decide to copy it if they wanted, after they saw it working. Or not. What can you do? Trying to impose it seems to have drastically backfired.

Since these regional governments would be picked from the inside, hopefully there wouldn’t be as much of a contrarian reflex to oppose everything they do.

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

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is populism in a nutshell. It is anti-rationalism at its heart. There's no real ideology - that's how it applies to both Chávez and Trump, Corbyn and Orbán. People want to believe what feels "instinctively" correct, because the intellectual overhead of modern society leaves the majority of the population unable to deal with the reality that political and economic systems are incredibly difficult to understand wi…

It's so exhausting having the same conversation every time. A friend reads something on reddit, flips out about it. Asks in our signal chat "can anyone explain this" as bait. Occasionally I take the bait and explain the extreme thing through a centrist lens. Now I'm instantly on the side of whoever did the bad thing and spend the next 90 minutes explaining rationality until we arrive at the center. Things calm down.…

You have a funny idea of what friend means.

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

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you feel the need to use an LLM to compose this comment?

We honest users of the emdash are sad at LLMs making it unwelcome.

Controversial suggestion - can I propose a move to the visually superior endash?

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

#466

"The 2025 US tariffs are an own goal" Without an opinion on the actual claim here (although I'm skeptical of a claim of 96%, given the relatively moderate inflation in the US in 2025), I think this quote by itself (first bullet point of the abstract) should disqualify this as a serious analysis - no academic paper uses this language, only biased think tanks, and the fact that it's a German think tank doesn't change t…

Comments from throwaway accounts carry the same weight as AI slop.

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

#467
A full analysis needs to look at the downstream effects as well. e.g. Exports and retail.

As a Canadian, I now avoid American products and retailers as much as possible. This isn't just political (Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada). This is about filthy lucre too.

Anything manufactured in the U.S. with tariffed inputs (e.g. Steel, Aluminum, softwood) is more expensive now. Foreign goods that merely pass through the U.S. on their way to Canada are not supposed to be tariffed, but many U.S. retailers simply don't do the paper work necessary to make that happen, no doubt because the Trump administration has made that paperwork so chaotic and difficult to do.

The upside is that Americans aren't just paying for 95% of these tariffs, they're losing export business from the rest of the world too. On top of this is the additional cost of unpredictability. Is the U.S. about to slap additional tariff's on the EU because of Trump's Greenland ambitions? If you're planning a project in Canada, you'd be wise to avoid any U.S. products that use EU inputs for the foreseeable future too.

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

#468
post #288

The point of taxing goods made elsewhere is to make building equivalent goods in your local economy competitive for locals to purchase. I am pretty sure they are not putting a tax on EUV Lithography machines from ASML or at least you can have an exception if you bow down to the king... How did the US become this insane this fast - I'm not even against tariffs but you need to decide which industries to use them on e.g…

They are funding alternatives to ASML. ASML has hit a wall and it co-insides with a new innovation based policy, to bring America back to a tech leadership role. This is a critical economic and security policy, they are pouring billions into this tech as we speak. To think that ASML will continue to have a monopoly would be the actual insane thing.

I did some research and you are right there is some interesting stuff being developed but to say the whole stack will be available in the US soon - even 3-5 years is ridiculous. ASML is still going to be producing the best lithography machines in said timeframe I suspect.

It's also extremely hard to pick winners which is why the Chinese just fund everyone and let the winners cannibalise their less successful competitors. I'd be more confident of Chinese semiconductors being ahead over the medium term than US without ASML.

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

#469

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…

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious

Many people were thinking Joe Biden was looking old... Until 2 months before the election when a faceless political elite replaced him with a candidate who had repeatedly lied about Joe Biden looking old. The American public might be stupid, but they don't like being treated as though they are stupid - which is exactly what the DNC did.

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

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We usually critique the movie after the end titles roll.

The titles have rolled. The prediction in Q1 last year was specifically that by this time, the US would be in a deep recession due to tariffs. I can understand that most people do not actually stay with these forecasts. The story hits NBC, you are completely outraged about this forecast made by these economists, the thing never happens, NBC has moved onto next disaster coming round the corner, next outrage. If you wo…

That's a really nice comment but does not bear in any way on what I wrote. The Trump administration has now completed its first year. There are three to go.
Post reply on HN