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US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

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Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#661

Post by cloverich »

lumb63 wrote: post #625

Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don’t disagree that there are downsides to the approach, but there is a set of very real national problems that this might address. For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well…

> Globalization has played a big role in creating the massive income inequality in our country; it seems like we should fix that.

Wouldn't restoring the prior taxes to those with highest incomes, and adding a proper capital gains tax, address this directly? As I've started to accumulate small amounts of wealth I've realized, my capital gains are taxed lower than my income; when I sell my house, I get up to 500k of gains tax free. If I backdoor a Roth IRA, I get tax free gains there too. etc. Add additional taxes to investment properties, in the form of property taxes could be one approach as well - I personally know of one investor that owns at least 20 (SFH) properties for example. So I'd propose starting there, as it targets both the wealth gap as well as hits those who can most afford it directly.

> Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.

If tariffs significantly reduce demand, or worse cause a recession, they will have the opposite effect. It would take time to sort out the full impact. But AFAIK, the tax cuts are proposed to be pushed through immediately, without firm corresponding spending reductions nor time to sort out the impact of the tariffs; similarly the tariffs are being implemented in what seems like a haphazard way, with everyone unsure of what they would / will be, how much, etc.

In general, I think if the plan were modest tax increases, esp. around capital gains policy and targeting SFH as investments, (very) modest tariffs, and well executed spending cuts, nobody would be in uproar. I will be pleasantly surprised if the current plan ends well, but it certainly feels as though only those steeped deeply in ideology are supportive of them at the present moment, and I think that is probably telling.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#662

Post by llm_nerd »

commandlinefan wrote: post #611
TrackerFF wrote: post #62

From what I understand, de minimis exemption has also been removed. That is a huge, huge deal. It effectively means that all goods imported from China will be slapped with a 30% import tax, as soon as said goods arrive the US border / customs. Usually what happens then, is that the courier will pay that tax, and then bill the recipient later on - as well as charge some fee/fees for the work done. This is why in some…

> This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from China with free shipping can end up costing $10 This is what strikes me about these new tariffs... for all the concern about how it's going to impact the US economy (and I don't doubt it will), this is STILL far, far, less protectionism than literally every other country in the entire world. Donald Trump's justification for all this is that the U.S. is propp…

Based upon someone's imaginary example?

"less protectionism than literally every other country in the entire world"

I ordered from Temu and it's shipped from China and arrives at my door with my local sales tax applied -- because Temu abides by Canadian law -- but otherwise with no additional fees. Got a pair of headphones and a three timer device yesterday for $10 CAD.

Or you know, Trump's constant yapping about Canada's diary tariff. In reality the US ships 4x more dairy to Canada tariff free than the reverse, and we, by design, do not target sending dairy to the US. But Trump takes advantage of the poorly informed and/or stupid, and it works amazingly.

>U.S. is propping up the entire world economy to it's own detriment

If you're sitting in the richest large country in the world, literally at the height of its economic accomplishment, and you really buy it when someone tells you that you're the victim, you might be profoundly misinformed and with literally zero context of reality.

The US has an amazing amount to fall, and it's going to happen. And when you're working on the assembly line doing extremely low value work, having been ostracized by the entire planet, enjoy how you made the libs pay.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#664

Post by fancyfredbot »

jorge-d wrote: post #358
mcoliver wrote: post #92

Here's a csv and google sheet of the data. Turns out they aren't tariffs countries charge us. They are trade imbalance percentages. Unreal: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xK0OQ5VGl8JHmDSIgbXh... https://gist.github.com/mcoliver/69fe48d03c12388e29cc0cd87eb...

It's even worse, they literally got their formula from a llm model (probably Grok?) => https://bsky.app/profile/dansinker.com/post/3llunnyfeoj2v "To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for ε and φ were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4. Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long run (Boehm et al.,…

Wow. So they came up with zero-effort estimates of the tariff rate which would balance the trade deficit. The method is like something you'd be asked to criticise in A level economics.

Then they incorrectly labelled these numbers as reciprocal tarrifs implying this is what other countries charge the US.

The worst of it is that all of this misinformation will be happily accepted as truth by so many people. It's now going to be almost impossible to have people realise the truth, especially those people who support Trump. Ugh.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#665

Post by corry »

lumb63 wrote: post #625

Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don’t disagree that there are downsides to the approach, but there is a set of very real national problems that this might address. For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well…

There are two different questions here: (1) is Trump's strategy a good one to accomplish his goals? and (2) what are other good ideas to do so?

Just because there aren't many ideas in bucket #2 doesn't mean you should do #1.

For a trivial example, consider steel and aluminum tariffs (Larry Summers gave this example on Bloomberg yesterday):

There are 60x more jobs in industries that rely on steel/aluminum inputs than there are in the US steel/aluminium producers. 60x!

Steel/aluminum tariffs increase the cost of inputs to the companies that employ those 60x more people; their businesses suffer; those jobs are more at risk.

Meanwhile, it will take a decade for steel/aluminum production to be fully done within the US, and even then it will be a higher cost (i.e. the reason the US imports a big share of aluminium from Canada is that Canada uses cheap hydro energy to produce it - something that the US can't do).

Through that decade, every single item that uses imported steel/aluminum as an input will be more expensive for average Americans.

So you risk 60x the jobs, for a slow and ultimately non-competitive local industry rebuild, and meanwhile average Americans pay higher costs.

Now multiply that across every category of good in the economy?

#1 is bad. I don't have a great idea for #2, but #1 is bad.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#666

Post by inerte »

brabel wrote: post #158
phillipseamore wrote: post #90

A blanket 10% minimum tariff is a great excuse for any local US manufacturing to increase their prices. I used to live in a country with heavy tariffs, every time tariffs were raised the local producers increased prices to be just below the imports. Even after the tariffs were abolished the prices (on local and imports) never really lowered in any significant way.

That always seems to happen with this sort of protections. It's like when the government tries to incentivize people to buy electric cars by paying 25% of it (example from the climate bonus in Sweden, which was given for years), but what happens is that buyers actually end up paying just maybe 5% less as the car companies now can increase their prices and still sell the cars they produce while making more money.

This also happens when a certain price range gets different benefits.

For example lower mortgage rates if the house costs below $X. Now houses that could sell for far lower than $X actually list close to $X.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#667

Post by belter »

lumb63 wrote: post #625

Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don’t disagree that there are downsides to the approach, but there is a set of very real national problems that this might address. For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well…

> So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you propose?

The solution is clear, let the tax cuts expire, and increase the taxes on corporations. Make special tax incentives on real investment and innovation.

Make a special tax for the four individuals behind Trump at the inauguration, who own more health than 60% of the US population.

Stop allowing billionaires and corporations cheat the tax code to have lower effective rates than the majority of US citizens.

I am sure the 14 billionaires on Trump cabinet will be working on this right away... \s

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#668

Post by woah »

srj wrote: post #630
roxolotl wrote: post #479

Aside from everything else one thing what strikes me as particularly insane is how it’s not even defensible as a protective measure. My favorite everyday olive oil comes from Tunisia. They now have a 38% tariff on them. There are no out of work olive farmers in the US. The orange man wanted tariffs, the orange man is going to get tariffs. Now we have to hope the American people aren’t so dumb as to still be convinced…

>> There are no out of work olive farmers in the US. I'm not sure this is true. I buy olive oil specifically from California. It's niche but could be larger if they weren't competing with lower overseas labor costs.

Don't olive trees take decades to reach maturity?

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#669

Post by uoaei »

I like to ask, "What would a Russian agent do to try to dethrone the USA as a global power?"

* remove support from historic trading partners

* break up NATO and similar military alliances

* convince the world to distrust USD as default reserve currency

* specifically make it harder to trade with China who makes a lot of our junk

* remove a lot of the federal government workforce from their positions

* convince those involved in Ukraine to back out so that the mineral-rich regions in the east can be appropriated

* destroy the image of "democracy" and "free speech" by flaunting legal processes and crushing dissent

I could list and think of more, but these are most illustrative IMO.

Re: US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU

#670

Post by wayeq »

roxolotl wrote: post #479

Aside from everything else one thing what strikes me as particularly insane is how it’s not even defensible as a protective measure. My favorite everyday olive oil comes from Tunisia. They now have a 38% tariff on them. There are no out of work olive farmers in the US. The orange man wanted tariffs, the orange man is going to get tariffs. Now we have to hope the American people aren’t so dumb as to still be convinced…

If Jan 6th didn't dissuade people, I don't think anything will.

Additionally, his base will not blame him, they will swallow whichever of the many narratives the propagandists are currently cooking up that suites their fancy.

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