American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis • Hacker News Board

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#801

Post by neop1x » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #271

bartread wrote: post #56

I'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…

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I’m adamantly against all forms of illegal immigration. There are plenty of people around the world that want to come here and are willing to wait in line. I’m perfectly fine with the intentions and methods of the current administration. I’m in favor of doing whatever we can to increase our manufacturing base for the future. I’m perfe…

>> Paying 95% for crap from China that I have no intention of purchasing does not impact me.

I highly doubt you are not purchasing "made in china" or "made in taiwan" products. You likely just don't know. Even your Macbook or GPU card is made in China or Taiwan as are lots of components used inside "made in US" products. Same goes for clothing and shoes, american "brands" made in China, Bangladesh, etc.

Moreover: - you don't have fully-local alternatives for everything - it takes a long time and a lot fo money to build factories for local alternatives - cost of labor is much higher in your country

The end result must be higher prices for everything on your side, and it's starting to show.

>> There are plenty of people around the world that want to come here and are willing to wait in line. I’m perfectly fine with the intentions and methods of the current administration

In the past, I was considering moving to US. I think it would be relatively easy for me (EU citizen, good IT work history). And I visited US couple of times as a visitor. But since Trump and recent ICE "methods", I am honesly scared to even visit US again near-term. I am glad I live in EU.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#802

Post by immibis » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 1:51 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #796

LexiMax wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, because I had been feeling this in my gut - the idea that they do have oversight over flagging and downvoting, and they just pick and choose who they go after based on biases. To that end, I've actually been avoiding the downvote and flag button entirely. It's handy to close off an avenue of admin retaliation, but on a deeper level I feel like the reflexive race to downvote people you disagree with is the…

There's no aspect of this that we haven't publicly explained over and over again. Here's one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818 . Here are countless others: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If you read some of those explanations and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. What you shouldn't do is take commenters' claims ab…

You don't explain the aspect where a certain political group generates way more flaggable content, and then you flag-ban those who flag it, which promotes that content because it is no longer flagged.

You also don't explain how 2 posts per 3 hours constitutes a "ban".

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#803

Post by LexiMax » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #796

LexiMax wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, because I had been feeling this in my gut - the idea that they do have oversight over flagging and downvoting, and they just pick and choose who they go after based on biases. To that end, I've actually been avoiding the downvote and flag button entirely. It's handy to close off an avenue of admin retaliation, but on a deeper level I feel like the reflexive race to downvote people you disagree with is the…

There's no aspect of this that we haven't publicly explained over and over again. Here's one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818 . Here are countless others: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If you read some of those explanations and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. What you shouldn't do is take commenters' claims ab…

I do not take their claims un-skeptically. I've been lied to one too many times by users who claim, "Oh I totally didn't do anything to get banned, bro."

But I don't trust you either, and my reasons for being reluctant to flag and downvote are genuine. This is because I've also seen moderation teams who swear up and down that they're not biased, but who later get caught out when they put their finger on the scale through action or deliberate inaction.

But there's another dimension to the unfrustworthiness, because I have also seen moderation teams who don't put their finger on the scale per se, but are so invested in their own rules that they let their community rot beneath their feet from people who have figured out how to manipulate them.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#804

Post by dang » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

LexiMax wrote: post #803

dang wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no aspect of this that we haven't publicly explained over and over again. Here's one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818 . Here are countless others: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If you read some of those explanations and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. What you shouldn't do is take commenters' claims ab…

I do not take their claims un-skeptically. I've been lied to one too many times by users who claim, "Oh I totally didn't do anything to get banned, bro." But I don't trust you either, and my reasons for being reluctant to flag and downvote are genuine. This is because I've also seen moderation teams who swear up and down that they're not biased, but who later get caught out when they put their finger on the scale thr…

If you can find an instance of me saying we're not biased, I'd love to see it, because I'm pretty sure I've never said that.

What I've said, and believe, is that of course we're biased, because it's impossible not to be and because unconscious bias is a thing, but that we at least try to mitigate the effects of it, and have a lot of practice at doing so. Are those efforts negligible? I doubt it. I think HN would be a different place if we weren't trying to do that.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#805

Post by dang » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

immibis wrote: post #802

dang wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no aspect of this that we haven't publicly explained over and over again. Here's one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46378818 . Here are countless others: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... If you read some of those explanations and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. What you shouldn't do is take commenters' claims ab…

You don't explain the aspect where a certain political group generates way more flaggable content, and then you flag-ban those who flag it, which promotes that content because it is no longer flagged. You also don't explain how 2 posts per 3 hours constitutes a "ban".

Re your first statement: certainly I've addressed that issue many times, but I can do it again: I don't believe that claim is true. It merely feels true to people with strong political passions, because everyone always over-weights the contributions of their enemies and under-weights the contributions of their own side. The significant thing—I was going to say "the ironic thing", but it isn't ironic—is that this class of politically passionate users all have the same perception even though they may have entirely opposing beliefs. In this they resemble each other more than they do anyone else.

I don't understand your second statement.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#806

Post by benj111 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

igogq425 wrote: post #799

benj111 wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trump sending your neighbour to a death camp 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…

> For example trump voters having their partners deported. I think there were similar surprises for some people back then. Social reality is complex, as can be seen, for example, in the case of J.D. Vance's wife. Every ICE officer would surely like to drag her out of her Porsche Cayenne by her hair and press their knee into her neck. Here in Germany, the shift to the right is being driven by Alice Weidel, among other…

To me, the psychology is the same. I'm not going to say history will repeat, but to me, as a voter, my main responsibility is to elect someone who respects the process. Trump, like Hitler, fundamentally doesn't, which means there's nothing to stop him.

I just don't think it's helpful to think of these people or their supporters as 'evil'. They are 3 dimensional people. It isn't the skinheads that are the issue, it's your neighbours, it's you.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#807

Post by DoctorOetker » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 8:01 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #179

MonkeyClub wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. Exactly: tariffs are taxes in another guise. They only serve to create an (artificial) price advantage of local over imported goods for as long as they're levied. > What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN s…

> I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN subset) that was clamoring for tariffs thought it'd be anyone other than them shouldering the increase. Perhaps their influencers didn't spell it out for them? Now I'm neither in the US, American nor Democrat/Republican, but as far as I understand their argument, is that they know it means higher costs for those products for them, and it'll eventually lead to compani…

What I don't understand about this type of argument: wouldn't it have been more cost-effective policy BEFORE out-sourcing and offshoring jobs, to condition off-shoring etc on full documentation of all the workflows, all the trade secrets, paying for reverse engineering of tools they did not make themselves, ... after spending that cost they are free to offshore jobs, BUT all of this information is available to any citizen and free of charge, through say normal or university libraries. If another national sees how to automate parts of the offshored company they can have at it, they can gang together to figure out how to reimport the jobs profitably.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#808

Post by tt24 » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 8:50 PM UTC

reducesuffering wrote: post #630

tt24 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally it would be Medicare, Medicaid, and social security.

Good luck getting the US' elderly anti-socialists to vote away their own socialist benefits.

Yeah I’m not expecting it to happen. Just a dream for now.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#809

Post by Shocka1 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

DangitBobby wrote: post #794

Shocka1 wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very sad, but this applies to what seems like everyone now. Required reading for internet users should be The Anatomy of Peace by the Harbinger Institute. I suppose you'd have to peel people away from their social algorithms though, which might be an impossibility due to the decreasing attention span. The more I live in this world, the more I realize that this seems like the new norm, and hate it. I grew up arou…

I am still surrounded by people with big hearts, but I think they have separated themselves into a family/friends/acquaintances persona and a "political entity" persona which is increasingly hostile and more frequently exercised due to social media bubbles. People who are openly hostile (and sometimes outright homicidal) on social media are still cuddly teddy bears in person, but the more they access that anger and h…

This is very well said. I've also noticed the jekyll and hyde thing - for several years now and I've seen people that act basically like extremists online be some of my favorite people in person. Both right and left leaning. Very bizarre and sad stuff. I'm fairly conservative, but we need to be able to call a spade a spade when it comes down to it.

Re: American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis

#810

Post by mdnahas » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

fatherwavelet wrote: post #758

atoav wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics are hated because economical arguments are used to justify why we cannot do the necessary things all while doing things that bail out the rich for the tenth time. You don't need to be an economist to realize who is getting fucked over. I am not from the US, but a vote for Trump for many was just a vote to burn it all down, especially because the other candidate was perceived to standing for perpetuating the…

I have an interest in econophysics and what people think of as "economics" is mostly bullshit. David Ruelle put it best in 1991 when he summed up economics as "We don't currently have the tools to properly study this subject". 35 years later we only have slightly better tools.

Economist here. (Started as programmer, worked in finance, got Masters in Econ.) Econ is a big field. I think it knows a lot at the microeconomics level. There are impressive mathematical tools and economists have found “natural experiments” which test causality.

Macroeconomists don’t know much at all. We can’t even create artificial economies - the agent-based simulations have dozens of parameters and our tools are bad at studying those imperfect fake economies.

I’ve looked a bit into econophysics. They seem more on the path to getting somewhere. But it’s still a long road.