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Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

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Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#561

Post by jiggawatts »

jijijijij wrote: post #375
owenversteeg wrote: post #247

I’m not seeing anyone discuss this here, so I figured I’d raise an important point: this style of tariffs is crushing for US manufacturing. While a universal tariff with no exceptions incentivizes domestic manufacturing, a selective tariff with specific industry exceptions is absolute poison. You might think, as the authors of this exemption did, “well then we will exempt computer parts.” Then people will simply impo…

> Your computer parts factory likely runs using a large amount of imported raw materials, imported machines, and imported tooling, and there are no tariff exemptions for those broad categories… so you’re screwed. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local 24/7 news feed for more than eight years, so there’s no point in acting surprised about it. You’ve had plenty of time to lodge…

> crypto scam on his supporters

It absolutely blow my mind that that was just "Friday", and not the biggest scandal in Western political history.

"It's just Trump being Trump, move on, move on, nothing to see here, no consequences for anyone..."

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#562

Post by wahern »

alextingle wrote: post #551
tirant wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t count Europe as a reference of a free market at all. Regulations and bureaucracy are rampant.

A free market requires regulations in order to operate. Regulations require a bureaucracy in order to be effective.

> Regulations require a bureaucracy in order to be effective.

That's a very European point of view (though not uniquely European, it's also shared across many other cultures, e.g. in East Asia). The US has done pretty well with private rights of action. In fact, because our culture is so conservative and anti-authoritarian, centralized bureaucracies are rather quickly defanged or grossly underfunded. The most recent example is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and more quietly the FTC. Democrats would have done much better to roll back judicial expansion of the Federal Arbitration Act and devolve "regulation" back to states and private class actions, rather than to create the CFPB and elsewhere double-down on anemic, extremely inconsistent, and often highly partisan agency regulators.

Where private rights of action tend to fail is when they concern inchoate or non-individualized harms, like you often see in environmental protection law. Then what you get is complete paralysis, such as with real estate development; largely because its the process, not the end-state determination of rights, that private actors weaponize. But when they're firmly anchored to property rights, personal injury or loss (including fraud), etc, they seem to do as well as centralized regulation. And in the US, they arguably do better, because of our political dynamics.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#563

Post by jiggawatts »

XorNot wrote: post #481
throw0101d wrote: post #125

There are valid reasons for tariffs: * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good Especially when it comes to certain areas of the economy: > Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you alloca…

Except tarrifs rarely help any of that: there's already extensive regulations in place to require local sourcing for defence critical components, all the way down the supply chain. And tarriffing imports doesn't make a difference in the case of something like shipbuilding where the real problem is the government hasn't got a consistent order-book to keep factories staffed, operating and training - nor a plan to allow…

> You basically go to war with the military you have.

The war in Ukraine shows what a current-day war looks like: You rapidly expend stockpiled traditional weapons, and then rapidly ramp up low-cost drone manufacturing.

Currently, the #1 drone manufacturer in the world is probably Ukraine, with Russia and China somewhere in the #2 and #3 spots. The United States is somewhere on the bottom of that list.

Subsidising civilian drone manufacturing alone would catch up the United States dual-use manufacturing capability for any potential future war for the next half-a-decade or so. After that...? Something-something-AI-murder-bots.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#564

Post by lawn »

YZF wrote: post #554
jpster wrote: post #542

I suspect it would be a good idea if the US abolished the presidency and moved to a parliamentary system. Turns out that concentrating so much power in a single position is a bad idea.

You still often have one man with all the power in a parliamentary system. The Prime Minister. Take Canada as an example. JT had basically complete power over government. It's as rate for the prime minister party or coalition to go against him as it is for a president in the US to be impeached. I think the trick has to be to just get better people into those positions. Which means better people need to have some ince…

In Sweden our "prime minister" does not have all the power, not even close.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#565

Post by safgasCVS »

May I propose a tinfoil hat perspective on tariffing China: America is prepping the ground for a full war with China. That's the only position that make sense to me other than the obvious "these guys are all corrupt idiots". I don't know which is which but at least the war perspective makes more sense to me. I believe we are at the propaganda stage where allies will be 'encouraged' into adopting similar positions and portraying China as a global threat. Nations such as India, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea and Australia are already encouraged to act highly aggressively towards China whenever possible. Given most of those countries political elite worship America and long to send their kids to Harvard they will comply and willingly allow their countries to be used as cannon fodder to maintain Western hegemony. The sweet-talking of Russia is an attempt to recreate the Sino-Russian split during the cold war and at least ensure Russia doesn't fight alongside China in a war. None of this is related to bringing jobs back, nation building or caring one bit about blue collar workers. its an attempt to maintain the American global hegemony that China very clearly threatens. If Trump and his close supporters can get filthy rich from this then all the better.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#566

Post by furyofantares »

belter wrote: post #359
prng2021 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing these explanations of “4D chess”. It’s Donald Trump. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing when it comes to economic policies. Unless you believe he can see into the future of how other world leaders would react and consistently outsmart everyone else, there’s no 4D chess being played.

How can somebody even entertain the idea is able the hold the concept of Chess, much less 4D, while at the same time being aware he nominated Matt Gaetz for Attorney General...Let that sink in for a while... "In 2020, Gaetz was accused of child sex trafficking and statutory rape. After an investigation, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) decided not to charge him. In December 2024, the House Ethics Committ…

The worse they are, the worse their other prospects are, and so the less power they have that wasn't granted by Donald Trump. It looks to me like this is about loyalty, which is about Donald Trump gaining more personal power.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#567

Post by grey-area »

safgasCVS wrote: post #565

May I propose a tinfoil hat perspective on tariffing China: America is prepping the ground for a full war with China. That's the only position that make sense to me other than the obvious "these guys are all corrupt idiots". I don't know which is which but at least the war perspective makes more sense to me. I believe we are at the propaganda stage where allies will be 'encouraged' into adopting similar positions and…

There is no grand geopolitical strategy here. Trump and his advisors really are this stupid and think that huge worldwide tariffs are a good idea. That they have kept 10% worldwide tariffs (also insane) shows they still think they are a good idea that will bring back manufacturing to the US. The damage to US soft power is irreversible unfortunately and the trust of former allies will never return. I suspect you’ll find as the empire declines people no longer aspire to send their kids - would you if they might be detained for weeks in inhumane conditions and deported for having opinions or a skin colour the regime doesn’t like?

Yes China is the current rival and thus was hit hardest, but they’ve already had to retract a lot of tariffs days after introduction simply because they had no idea what impact it would cause on borrowing costs.

Yes if Trump sees an opportunity to demand fealty from anyone with power or money he will take it, and enjoy it, but he genuinely thinks that is his due anyway.

You could say they have a plan in project 2025, but that’s more about destroying the US government and retaining power. If it were a functioning democracy he’d be removed after the damage he’s done.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#568

Post by raffraffraff »

cinbun8 wrote: post #30

From an outsider’s perspective, it’s difficult to discern any coherent U.S. strategy—assuming one even exists. One day it’s a 145% tariff on China. The next, it’s “Well, it’s still 145%, but Apple and Nvidia are exempted because their stock prices might take a hit.” Then comes a 90-day pause, adding to the confusion. It’s not clear whether Jamieson Greer is actually steering this, or if any of it was thoroughly thoug…

It feels like we just hired a recent graduate, who is an egotistical know-nothing, to manage our databases. And he just decided to migrate all of the DBs to the cloud in the middle of the day without testing it, or checking any metrics. Now he wants to fail some of them back and thinks that should be "a cinch" but doesn't actually understand how anything works under the hood.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#569

Post by realusername »

jeswin wrote: post #166

I am among the few who think it might eventually prove itself a good idea. To start with, Europe has no good cards to play. Ultimately, Europe will side with the United States while it builds self-sufficiency on several fronts, especially defense. Europe also recognizes that the complete relocation of production capacity into China wasn't good in the long run; it's just that they had no ability to act on their own. T…

I have the complete opposite opinion. The US has no cards to play in the EU and is screwed in the medium and long term.

The only reason the EU was tolerating those massive tech companies which contribute close to nothing in the EU was because the US was pulling its weight in EU defense.

Now that Trump openly sided with Putin, that's gone. Trump has no card to play in the EU anymore. He could even insult EU leaders publicly if he wanted to but pushing out Zelensky like he did was the only thing he could not afford to do.

Then on the investment side, the EU will now seen as a more stable and better environment than the US which changes policies every Tuesdays. The US will be experiencing a similar effect to brexit but longer and more severe.

The status of the dollar is clearly questioned as well. Will the US remain the top economic power with those tech companies atrophied and a local recession? I'm not so sure.

Re: Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

#570

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

jmole wrote: post #513
numpad0 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't want incentivization of American domestic manufacturing. That's where the fundamental disagreement is, after all. People don't have confidence in American products built on US soil by upper middle class Americans. It's going to take long to (re?)build trust to reverse that.

That’s ridiculous, there is plenty of confidence in US manufactured goods, the problem is that US manufacturers have impossible economics for anything that isn’t boutique or super high margin. Need an impedance controlled 16 layer board for your fancy new military radar? No problem. Need a basic 2 layer PCB for mass manufacture? No one in the US will make it at the price you need to be competitive.

"No problem"? It's not just that the prices are high; I can hardly get those guys to even answer the phone and give me a quote. I can get that board from China before I've gotten through to a local sales rep. Then when they do finally check their messages they want to fly out, meet me at my office, size up my operation and my budget, have a nice chat over dinner, and spend a few weeks pestering me with phone calls without ever getting down to business.
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