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

wsj.com

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

#61

Post by downrightmike »

jonplackett wrote: post #22
s1mplicissimus wrote: post #6

Now that I think about it, creating confusion and uncertainty is actually a pretty effective move if you want to play protectionism. Any "known" tariff would just be paid as far as still profitable.

Don’t really buy this logic. If you want companies to invest in your country, the tariff has to make doing so make financial sense, and for the long term. A lot of these tariffs are going on things that would require a whole factory to be built in the USA which doesn’t currently exist at all, and has no supporting infrastructure or workforce. Companies can’t just decide right now, “oh shit there’s a tariff. Better bu…

Probably some of the uncertainty, and the fact that these tariffs are illegal, so they wouldn't stand long

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

#62

Post by djoldman »

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.

Yep. 10 times worse.

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

#63

Post by habinero »

underlipton wrote: post #54

I kind of welcome this. Corporations panicking and being afraid to raise prices too much, and perhaps having to take a loss because they're essentially giving away product, is the LEAST that could happen to them after their naked and abusive COVID-era gouging. EDIT: You had years of corporate stimulus and ZIRP expanding M2, but the inflation floodgates only opened after a paltry return of a small fraction of the real…

"Companies" aren't going to suffer. Their workers and vendors will, and the whole thing cascades.

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

#64

Post by underlipton »

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.

Would you say it's half as bad as the worst-case scenario?

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

#65

Post by declan_roberts »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #53
declan_roberts wrote: post #52

[flagged]

I don't understand the point of this comment. If you consider the most important target to be China, so important that it's worth a 10,000% tariff unless certain demands are met, shouldn't you be furious that the tariffs the source article describes on copper and India and Turkey are distracting from the important things?

No because it's obvious those countries don't have the leverage to negotiate. Trump hasn't even started discussing h1b with India.

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

#66

Post by jameslk »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #58
jameslk wrote: post #26

> Repricing, though, isn’t as easy as changing a tag—in part because suppliers and big-box stores are engaged in an epic tussle over who will pay what. > Retailers, including Lowe’s and Home Depot, buy Thompson Traders’ wares and set the retail price themselves. And they have been reluctant to pay Thompson Traders more. It seems like this sort of scenario would benefit from some kind of risk protection, like insuranc…

I don't think it's an insurable risk. If you were trying to underwrite some "adverse effects of government regulation" policy in 2024, would a surprise 50% tariff on Indian exports have even entered your calculation?

Perhaps in the short term but I wonder if that calculus changes as more time goes on with erratic tariff changes (which has technically been going on for years, just to a much lesser degree).

Is there a market need great enough for price stability to offset the risk? It seems tariff whiplash will be an ongoing problem

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

#67

Post by brazukadev »

declan_roberts wrote: post #50
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soybean farmers are predicting a world of hurt as China continues to acquire from South America instead. “Overall, export sales of this fall’s (U.S.) soybean crop are down 81% from the five-year average,” Brasher reported. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/08/20/soybean-farme...

South America doesn't produce enough soy beans for them to replace America even if China bought every single ounce of soy. When it comes to soy, America has enormous leverage and China already accepted they're negotiating from a position of weakness.

The worst scenario for China is inflation. They are fighting deflation so that would actually help them solve the issue.

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

#68

Post by IncRnd »

sirnonw wrote: post #12

Funny how there is a post-it with a password glued to the screen of the computer in the lede image, now in plain sight for thousands of readers.

I think this is Ccjaas2004. I'm not 100% sure on the letters, but the year is easy to see. Hopefully, they've changed their password sometime in the past 21 years.

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

#69

Post by lazarus01 »

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

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

#70

Post by alephnerd »

sirnonw wrote: post #12

Funny how there is a post-it with a password glued to the screen of the computer in the lede image, now in plain sight for thousands of readers.

@Dang can you please delete this comment

OP might not be wrong, but let's at least follow SOP for disclosing security failures (30 days pre-disclosure)

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