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Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

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Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#531

Post by lazide »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #430
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

insurance is best for individually unlikely but societally likely items. otherwise pricing it is really hard.

Fire burns your house down, insurance is easy. Asteroid hits New York, insurance won’t pay out.

Or in many of these scenarios, can’t pay out, because they’re bankrupt. The biggest issue with black swan events (in the proper usage) is everyone is screwed because no one saw it coming and/or it’s so widespread no one can do anything about it for individuals.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#532

Post by DrewADesign »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #221
MiscCompFacts wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won’t people be willing when the cost of living goes up so much and all the tech jobs are gone to foreign labor that they have to work factory jobs?

Most people don't work in tech. IIRC the most common jobs are retail, food service, healthcare, and education.

In my experience, most US tech workers see the non-tech US like most of the US sees the rest of the world: they intellectually understand that they’re a small piece of the pie, but living within an attention and influence bubble subconsciously makes people feel like the center of the universe. This can make average people feel superior and above average people feel exceptional.

Like in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegone, where all of the children are above average.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#533

Post by carefulfungi »

hippo22 wrote: post #99
kristjansson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cogent, long range tariff and industrial policy might accomplish something like this over a period of years. Does that describe the last 6 months?

Sure, a cogent policy would be ideal. But you can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. America was getting their lunch eaten well before Trump. At least the tariff policy is an attempt at rectifying the situation.

Your argument ignores that Trump is using tariffs for non-economic reasons. You are arguing a weird straw man that isn't reality.

Trump has used tariffs as leverage against India for buying Russian oil, as leverage against Brazil for domestic politics he dislikes, against Mexico to pressure actions against drug cartels, and against Canada and others for recognizing a Palestinian state.

There is no sound economic logic to these schemes. The rates change as Trump likes or dislikes the praise he hears; deals are announced without signed agreements or details; rates, justified by "returning manufacturing" are changed faster than you could dig a foundation for a new factory, let alone actually make anything; industries are targeted for political reasons (like climate change denialism) and not economic reasons; deals are reached to exchange dollars for US-based manufacturing (like the china chip buying kickbacks).

The only logical consistent aspect of the tariff scheme is as unrestrained (and likely illegal) power play for Trump to get what Trump wants.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#535

Post by SR2Z »

charlie90 wrote: post #335
SR2Z wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for one little thing: countries have comparative advantage in the production of different goods and services. Boeing is great at turning aluminum and steel (low in the value chain) into jetliners (at the top of the value chain). Because of this, Boeing gets to make thousands of jetliners and sell them all across the world and America gets to be one of very few places that can do this. I think you'll find that…

>China will ALWAYS be better than us Comparative advantage is not innate. China was a rural country and didn't have a comparative advantage in manufacturing, they developed it and are now a powerhouse. Nothing worth doing is easy. I don't know why Americans think that if its not easy, it's not worth doing. Americans 80 years ago would hate us for what we have become today.

China had a comparative advantage in labor costs that they have turned into an advantage in manufacturing.

Plenty of Americans want factory jobs to exist - almost no Americans want to work them. Sure, nothing worth doing is easy, but not everything hard is a good use of time and resources.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#536

Post by hypeatei »

lvl155 wrote: post #522

Think about the fact that inflation was effectively killed and rates were set to come down by 2%. Then this clown comes in and does this. Inexcusable. Biggest economic policy blunder in history. Don’t let sky high stock market fool you.

> Don’t let sky high stock market fool you

The simplest explanation for higher stock prices is that the dollar has lost ~9% of its value this year (see: DXY)

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#537

Post by mindslight »

macintux wrote: post #497
verzali wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on Earth not? Didn't people pay attention during his first term? This was 100% predictable.

The key difference seems to be that this time: * Groups like Project 2025 spent years preparing an assault on our legal system * This time Trump populated his administration with sycophants from day 1, instead of starting out with establishment figures * The GOP has spent the last 8 years reconfiguring themselves into supplication This time, Trump is fully unhinged and unfettered, and he knows the legal peril he face…

[dead]

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#538

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

yubblegum wrote: post #452
lazarus01 wrote: post #69

In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created. Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in. NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html

New York is teeming with what appear to be newly arrived "immigrants" who do no speak a word of English (and frankly are rather aggressive about their refusal to do so) yet are employed in various crafts. We had fairly substantial renovation recently in our building. Every single worker was clearly a recent arrival. How do we know how many jobs were actually created if so many of them are not "officially recorded"? (…

You can be an immigrant and xenophobic, they aren’t mutually exclusive.

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#539

Post by Agraillo »

analog31 wrote: post #46
furyofantares wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decimation was way worse than reduction by a tenth. It was a punishment in the Roman army where the offending unit was divided into groups of 10 and each group had to draw straws. Whoever drew the short straw must be stoned or clubbed to death by the other 9. If you threatened me with death if I didn't cut off my feet, I wouldn't consider that "reduction by 10%" even if mathematically it might be.

Look on the bright side, it would have been much more harsh, had they worked in binary.

Hmm.. Is this my brain inference or the parent comment author' too: "Bright side of life" -> "Always look at the bright side of life" from "Monty Python's Life of Brian" -> plot was taking place during Roman times (mentioned in the GP comment)

Re: Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

#540

Post by toasterlovin »

johnnienaked wrote: post #227

Haven't tariffs been paused since they've been announced?

The originally announced tariff rates have been “paused” (in reality they were never implemented), but in their place has been a 10% global tariff. China already had tariffs of 25% from the 1st Trump admin, plus 20% from February, so tariffs on goods from China are currently at 55%. But the rest of the world is at 10% right now (only the UK has actually signed a trade deal).
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