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US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

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Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#81

Post by chairmansteve »

swordsmith wrote: post #47

Everyone focusing on consumer prices. But tariffs also function to incentivize domestic reindustrialization, which has huge national security implications. You see this clearly in the venture space as increased investment interest in hardtech and manufacturing. It's great that the federal government is looking long term again.

Most manufacturers rely on a global supply chain. Therefore tariffs raise costs for US manufacturers, actually making them less competitive internationally.

But don't worry, the falling dollar will compensate.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#83

Post by Newlaptop »

swordsmith wrote: post #47

Everyone focusing on consumer prices. But tariffs also function to incentivize domestic reindustrialization, which has huge national security implications. You see this clearly in the venture space as increased investment interest in hardtech and manufacturing. It's great that the federal government is looking long term again.

No one is risking multi-year commitments of millions or billions of dollars to build a factory in America when the tariffs change week to week.

If you want to incentive domestic reindustrialization, you do it with things like the Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS act or the "Green New Deal" where congress lays out clear sets of rules in law with a mixture of tax incentives, loan programs and spending to give investors and corporations confidence to make decade-long commitments of capital to major projects.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#84

Post by bdcravens »

legitster wrote: post #13

A reminder, most tariffs will not be paid because consumers will just shift their spending habits to match or just buy less. Tariffs are a double edged sword because the hurt purchasing power of consumers without really generating much money for the government. The administration is going to focus on the fact that tariffs don't really drive inflation, but are going to miss the forest for the trees: prices won't go up…

The oversimplified (and naive) response has been that prices will go up, but the shift to domestic production and consumption will in turn increase household incomes, and that will (hand-wavingly) balance out.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#85

Post by reactordev »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #55
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which matches the rest of the seeming plutocratic moves afoot in the past 6 months. Taking huge chunks out of American opportunism (defunding science, health care, education, space, and so much else), blowing a huge chunk out of social welfare programs: that's going to cause amazing downgrades for most people. Paths to success closed, cost of getting by vastly higher. (All while walking over all over habeus corpus, w…

You're effectively saying humanity replaced monarchies with a global (often faceless) ruling class.

All hail the AI algorithms

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#87

Post by CGMthrowaway »

xnx wrote: post #28

Crazy that one of the major policy initiatives of the all Republican/Maga government is to impose a huge consumer tax increase. Maybe calling these "import taxes" instead of "tarrifs" would help emphasize that to the average voter?

[flagged]

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#88

Post by dataflow »

xnx wrote: post #28

Crazy that one of the major policy initiatives of the all Republican/Maga government is to impose a huge consumer tax increase. Maybe calling these "import taxes" instead of "tarrifs" would help emphasize that to the average voter?

It's kind of amazing that we forgot they're illegal to begin with.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#89

Post by unclad5968 »

bdcravens wrote: post #84
legitster wrote: post #13

A reminder, most tariffs will not be paid because consumers will just shift their spending habits to match or just buy less. Tariffs are a double edged sword because the hurt purchasing power of consumers without really generating much money for the government. The administration is going to focus on the fact that tariffs don't really drive inflation, but are going to miss the forest for the trees: prices won't go up…

The oversimplified (and naive) response has been that prices will go up, but the shift to domestic production and consumption will in turn increase household incomes, and that will (hand-wavingly) balance out.

Do you have any resources for other solutions for improving American manufacturing capability? I'm ignorant to most of this but I'm interested in what solutions people have proposed.

Re: US companies, consumers are paying for tariffs, not foreign firms

#90

Post by vharuck »

swordsmith wrote: post #47

Everyone focusing on consumer prices. But tariffs also function to incentivize domestic reindustrialization, which has huge national security implications. You see this clearly in the venture space as increased investment interest in hardtech and manufacturing. It's great that the federal government is looking long term again.

I'm not willing to believe this was the plan while the tariffs also apply to crops we can't reasonably grow in the US, like cocoa and coffee. And the tariffs are also single across-the-board numbers for each country. And were originally based on trade deficits with the countries (unless we had a trade surplus with a country, in which case it was 10% anyway).
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