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

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

#82
post #68
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.

[deleted]

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

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So what you want is extortion, not trade. It's a worldwide version of the mafia.

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

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Their workers and vendors only suffer if their owners and executives decide to pass the buck of 1) poor management (not being able to set prices adequately), and 2) being in the socioeconomic class with the most influence on the most recent election. That class has expanded their wealth ludicrously during the last 3 presidential administrations, while most Americans have suffered. Any hits they take now are completel…

"The workers only suffer if the owners deliberately act against their own interest" is "the workers will suffer" with more words tacked on the end.

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

#85
I’d like to lay out an argument about why tariffs are good.

The only businesses that are derailing with tariffs issues are those that import goods to sell. The argument against tariffs is that they make goods more expensive.

Of course, this argument is true. But that’s not the end of the story.

Because prices are higher for imported goods, demand for domestically produced goods increases. This increase in demand leads to increased demand for labor, which can increase wages. Additionally, the money multiplier effect is higher when money is kept domestically vs paid to offshore parties.

Finally, I think it’s ridiculous to expect that this nation can maintain its wealth without producing anything. We act as if the producers of food are fungible cogs that businesses can swap out. But I think we’ll find that management is the fungible part. Anyone can sell a quality good. Knowing how to make it is what’s important. I’m surprised that mindset doesn’t resonate more with software engineers.

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

#86
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So more middlemen to make the cunsumer pay even more, joy.

Consumers will pay more regardless in this type of circumstance. But they will pay less if businesses don’t suddenly start going out of business, eliminating competition and jobs

Doesn't insurance normally work by protecting rare instances whose cost is amortized over the base?

This would be a claim by a large amount of insurance clients at once

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

#87
post #3

This is how you know most economic theory is a total lie, if it wasn't they would just "price what people are willing to pay" and be forced to eat the loss. Is that cause copper bathtubs are a special item or are you just making up more rules after the fact to patch holes in your leaky theory.

Most economic theory is good, but most theory salespeople are flogging a simplistic version of it. 'Pure' price theory demands perfect market information and zero costs to enter/exit the market - that's why it's easiest to study on extremely fungible commodities.

In real world markets economics considers elasticity, arbitrage, and distribution of market information between producers, wholesalers, retailers, buyers etc. But very little of that finds its way into op-eds or blogs aimed at a non-academic audience.

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

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> farmers can’t sell anything because retaliation has destroyed international demand Not true. At least not yet. Q2 agricultural exports were roughly flat to Q1 [1]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B181RC1Q027SBEA

Is that normal? It seems to me like we’d expect Q2 agricultural exports to usually be much higher than Q1.

Seasonally adjusted and annualised.

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

#89
post #68
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.

That's true. Now it is most likely Ccjaas2025.

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

#90
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.

You'd be surprised (or probably not) how much incredibly critical infrastructure has one ancient lynchpin PC doing some weird essential thing with a post-it note password like NameOfCompanyYear! where it's clear based on the year that the password hasn't been reset in a quarter century
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