Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know what’s interesting though is I think that a Republican woman would be unbeatable. Many Democrats would be salivating at the historical opportunity.
A woman would never win the Republican primary as long as MAGA dominates the right. And Democrats aren't so broadly driven by identity politics that a Republican candidate merely being a woman would attract significant Democratic defectors. She would still have to be somewhat inspiring/charismatic, fairly centrist, and probably pro-choice. Even in the peak-"woke" Democratic primary of 2020, all the women lost to two…
American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
651–660 of 814 posts
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then it was a big win for Putin and his agent in the White House.
Ive done a lot of analysis on the Trump as Putin agent topic. I found he nearly as often acts agents Russia as with. What's more likely is he treats Putin as an inspiration, wrt to converting the country to an oligarchy and offshoring national funds for himself.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#653I'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…
Like you observed, no one with a grasp of economics thought exporters would absorb the cost of these tariffs. That includes myself, a person who supports tariffs. I don't think it should be necessary to explain why tariffs might be desirable, because they were not invented by idiots, but I will explain briefly. Tariffs make foreign imports more expensive. This dissuades people from buying them. Some of those people w…
The ultimate problem with your first point---that tariffs boost domestic industry---is that the time horizon for reshoring manufacturing and domestic supply chains is longer than the expected lifetime of these tariffs. Trump is a second term president, there isn't broad consensus or even majority support for the tarrifs, and there is a great deal of opposition from business owners: all signs the tariffs are not for long. Who wants to invest in an expensive factory and workforce when the only thing guaranteeing your competitiveness is the remaining years of Trump? It's actually much worse than this, of course, because the tariffs are being used primarily as diplomatic leverage rather than economic policy, so they change frequently and unpredictably.
There are also serious downsides to the Trump tariffs that don't exist for traditional tariffs that are predictable and operate on a long time horizon. These tariffs create price shocks to domestic industry and retailers, which tend to disproportionately hurt smaller businesses and those with slimmer profit margins. They've also damaged the US's reputation with long-term partners, particularly Canada and the EU, which are now exploring competing trade deals with China and are figuring out how to extract themselves from dependence on US arms and tech companies, two major exports.
The effect of these tariffs is not going to be short-term pain for long-term gain. A great deal of US economic competitiveness comes from investments in diplomatic and military partnerships that have now been undermined. These tariffs will spur reciprocal tariffs from other nations and will accelerate the remodeling of the global economy away from US exports, trading competitive US exports for uncompetitive and commodified domestic industry.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#654Earlier quoted context omitted.
3 days ago world's largest free-trade area was created when EU and Mercosur bloc signed free trade deal after 25 years of negotiations. EU + South America start trading more while America shuts itself out.
Also see recent trade deal between Canada and China. And of course Canada and the EU have a trade deal. And Merz was visiting India recently so there are also trade deals between India and the EU coming. In short, everybody is trading with everybody. The US might have an easy to choice to make after Trump. Regardless of who takes over. Simply roll back tariffs and instantly boost the economy. The protection aspect of…
I’m afraid it won’t be so easy. Countries deeply distrust unreliable trading partners. Europe will prefer to keep trading with Mercosur rather than risk trading with the US. If the US wants to trade again, it could; but at a price that justifies the risk.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#655Earlier quoted context omitted.
> pass most of the tariff cost to consumers What do you mean by "pass the cost"? Exporters do not pay tariffs, importers do. The exporter doesn't give a shit because it doesn't affect them at all. This is one of the most fundamental misunderstandings of how tariffs work in the first place. The entity that's picking up the cargo at the port is who literally has to pay CBP for them to release the goods. The middleman (…
It relies on understanding that the person paying the bill for the tariff is not necessarily the person that takes the economic hit. If you read the second half of the sentence you quoted it hints at that. The exporter does "give a shit", because all other things being equal, the net cost of the product has gone up, which will reduce demand (and therefore sales at a given price point) in any market that has the sligh…
It's no different than, say, the state of Oklahoma deciding to increase taxes on new vehicle sales by 10%, and playing it as "we're going to make Toyota pay more to sell vehicles here!" Toyota isn't paying anything, is unlikely to change its global pricelists in response, and won't really care... because it's a state charging its own citizens more tax, nothing more. Just like these tariffs were a country charging its own importers more "tax" to punish them for buying abroad.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#656Some please write a web plugin to use AI to analyze comments so we can filter partisan comments and only read the truly engaging and intelligent comments by more objective people. I will contribute $$$.
tgtweak has a good one in here.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#657Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 'final solution' hadn't been decided on, so no I don't think any Germans voted for that, were the Jews openly being vilified? Yes, but that's like equating ICE rounding up illegals, and Trump sending your neighbour to a death camp, because the imagined 'other' doesn't include your neighbour who technically is an other, but one of the good ones so will be fine. For the rest, you're forgetting how humans work. Do y…
I think that it is you who is ignoring all of the following: how humans work, historical record of Germany right before and after 1933 election and also actually what MAGA is saying they want now. Just for some background, jews were trying to emigrate away from jermany already before fairly violent elections of 1933. It was already bad, dangerous and getting worst. It was not just a rhetoric. > Trump sending your nei…
What I'm trying to say is that illegal immigrants just like the Jews are the 'other' the actual group doesn't necessarily overlap with the boogyman. For example trump voters having their partners deported. Yes they wanted to get rid of the illegal immigrants, but that excluded their partners. They were different. The illegal immigrants they were thinking of are the drug smuggling dog eating pedos.
It's reasonable to want to get rid of the drug smuggling pedos, and that's what they think they're doing.
You're trying to inject too much rationality into this. This is the same species that collected beanie babies, that still argue whether the earth is flat, whether 9/11 is a cover-up, whatever meme is popular this week with the kids. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#658Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is benefitting other countries that don't have Tariffs on Chinese goods since they can buy cheaper as well. What countries are those? As far as I know, most important markets have great tariffs on Chinese goods.
Most have low/no duties on most goods categories from China - aside from a few specific goods categories in developed markets - most goods flow out of China to export countries without tariff/duties. ASEAN markets and most of Africa have zero tariffs. I don't think there are any developed markets (which are China's main export destinations) with double-digit tariff averages except India. Using Germany as an example..…
That is of course paired by the fact that domestic products also have the same VAT to be paid by consumers, but domestic producers are reimbursed their VAT expenses to varying degrees depending on their business model, while there is no such function for foreign imports.
All in all the VAT functions as a tariff as far as the exporter is concerned, in my understanding.
> My point remains that US exerting import pressure on China is benefitting the rest of the world's buying power with China, at its expense.
I agree with that, and can't for my life understand why foreign nationals rage so incessantly against the US tariffs. The expected outcome is that those consumers get to enjoy cheaper imports from China and from each others, as companies need to find new export markets. Or even cheaper domestic goods as domestic companies have to unload produce which isn't getting exported.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#659Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you not from the US? I wasn't accusing you personally of supporting your governments actions, but I think you as in your country is acceptable terminology.
No. I literally said in my original comment that I'm not from the US.
Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imports seeing large tariff changes aren't a particularly large part of the CPI basket, and domestic substitutes exist. Expected responses from US manufacturers putting their own prices up are lagged, and tempered by some of the consumer response being simply buying less stuff. The Fed predicted it added 0.5 points to what inflation could have fallen to with the expected effects only partially visible. https://www.st…
How can it be possible that consumers are paying 96% of tariffs that range from 25-100%. Yet inflation has only risen by 0.5 points? Consumption would have to be less than a fifth of what it was a year ago. And why haven’t there been such equally drastic price changes on shelves if whats functionally the entire cost is being passed to consumer?