Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

941–950 of 1001 posts

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

#941

Post by CrimsonCape »

ein0p wrote: post #850
svara wrote: post #750

It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US economy as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve currency. The flow of goods is balanced by a flow of US dollars to other countries, which are ultimately cycled back into the US financial system - enabling budget deficits and an abundance of capital to invest in high growth industries. The flip side of this is that it also drives inequality - the…

> lower the cost of high-quality education And how do you propose we do that? By giving schools even more money at taxpayer's expense? > raising taxes at the high end 40.1% of US taxpayers on the low end of income distribution pay no income tax, 16.5% pay neither income nor payroll taxes. Top 1% pays 40.4% of all income tax (while holding about 30.8% of net worth, 13.8% of the total is held by top 0.1%). Top 1% (with…

What people don't discuss about the taxation is that rich people will universally pundit, preach, undermine, subvert, and squirm out of any law to tax themselves more. If you are preaching more taxes thinking it will affect the politically well-connected, it will be unwound and castrated by the politically well-connected. Or just deflected into somebody else's responsibility.

In that case, someone else is going to be holding the bill that you might not have intended.

I hate discussion of percentages, because every percentage seems reasonable by itself. It's the summation of the percentages that politicians have no interest in discussing.

In fact, it should be a requirement of government to sum the percentages of federal,state,medicare,social security, sales, resort, fuel, local levies, internet sales into one effective percentage that a given citizen in a given city has to pay.

Has anyone calculated that number for themselves? I've been collecting all my transactions and taxes to figure out what percentage of my income actually goes to taxes.

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

#942

Post by Marsymars »

coderenegade wrote: post #244
iteratethis wrote: post #75

This won't bring home manufacturing but let's say that it will... The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. I saw a video recently explaining how sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage. Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in…

I don't know that I agree with this. The US is too large a market to ignore, and this is effectively raising the profit margin for local production. Foreign companies will either move some portion of manufacturing to the US (for the domestic market), or cede the market completely, and I don't know that they're prepared to do that (well, maybe Chinese ones are). Factories have a long lead time, so even if this is abol…

There probably isn't enough labour to onshore everything like you're implying.

The US currently consumes about half of its goods from domestic manufacturing. There are about 12 million people currently employed in manufacturing, and 7 million unemployed people. Matching the historical all-time low for unemployment rate would give around 4 million unemployed still.

> There is not, and never will be, a shortage of cleaners, for example, because anyone can do it, so as long as there are unemployed people and the wages are good enough, someone will do the work.

I mean, by that logic there's never a shortage of any profession. But in practice, I've seen what happens with a shortage of cleaners in a popular tourist town (my wife used to run a cleaning business) - it becomes nearly impossible to hire cleaners because everyone's salary in the area is inflated and people would rather work at an easier job. You run into persistent performance issues with your remaining cleaners - they're dishonest, simply stop showing up to work without notice, etc. You can't hire anyone from outside the area because there's no housing available other than dingy, overpriced basements. Holes get blown in the budgets of schools, hospitals, etc. because they have to contend with cleaning rates that are effectively set by the competitive market for cleaning AirBnBs.

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

#943

Post by donatj »

svara wrote: post #750

It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US economy as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve currency. The flow of goods is balanced by a flow of US dollars to other countries, which are ultimately cycled back into the US financial system - enabling budget deficits and an abundance of capital to invest in high growth industries. The flip side of this is that it also drives inequality - the…

> The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education

I'm always skeptical of the idea that we can just educate ourselves out of problems.

As I see it, that would only raise people's wage expectations which would make us even less competitive on a global market?

The need for blue collar workers doesn't just evaporate, and there's frankly only a finite demand for white collar workers. You give everyone expectations of a white collar job, and they end up working blue collar because there's no job for them, you're just setting society up for mass disappointment and resentment.

You give your average blue collar worker today a degree, are they actually more valuable to their current position? Probably not.

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

#944

Post by dughnut »

TaurenHunter wrote: post #599

I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions, by issuing Treasury securities. These securities mature at varying intervals and require continuous "rolling" or refinancing to pay off old debt with new borrowing. Significant rollovers are expected from April through September 2025, with additional short-term maturities due by June. Higher int…

I think what’s happening backstage in this magic show are desperate moves to recapitalize the country. Foreign and domestic investors are pledging to spend trillions, probably under duress. Stocks are being crashed to create a flight to treasuries. Dollars are partially anchored to crypto by so-called stable coins. Federal assets are getting dumped and operating costs cut.

Maybe we will get out of this without having to survive on cat food, but I’m not holding my breath.

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

#945

Post by aibot923 »

ck2 wrote: post #731
TaurenHunter wrote: post #599

I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions, by issuing Treasury securities. These securities mature at varying intervals and require continuous "rolling" or refinancing to pay off old debt with new borrowing. Significant rollovers are expected from April through September 2025, with additional short-term maturities due by June. Higher int…

The F-35 jet will cost over $1.5 Trillion, doesn't work and won't be used Cancel it and stop making everyone's daily life absolute hell by doubling the prices of groceries, car payments, etc. every month National Debt is not a problem for a country that will be around for 1000+ years unless you know of something that is going to greatly shorten that. There are nearly 1,000 BILLIONAIRES in the US, the debt is their pr…

The F-35 does work, and is deployed around the world right now including the middle east for the recent houthi operations.

National debt is absolutely a problem when interest payments crowd out the rest of your budget. Interest payments currently comprise about 17% of the budget, and this is set to grow. Those can only be paid with taxes or inflation, both of which hit joe taxpayer.

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

#947

Post by KETpXDDzR »

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...

Here's the official source for the calculation: [0].

Also, there are some hints this might be from a LLM [1].

And an official statement that it's about trade imbalances and not reciproc tarrifs [2].

And they ask the affected country to "not retaliate" [3].

IMHO Trump tries to lead the US like he managed his businesses. And here I'd like to refer to the three casinos he owned that are now insolvent [4].

[0] https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114272481124239587

[1] https://universeodon.com/@henryk@chaos.social/11427313249281...

[2] https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/02/business/liberation-day-t...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atl...

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

#948

Post by buzzert »

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…

Why do you think it's a good idea to buy olive oil from Tunisia instead of from California? Are you aware of how much CO2 is released to ship a trivial commodity across the atlantic ocean?

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

#949

Post by autoexec »

keithxm23 wrote: post #820
svara wrote: post #750

It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US economy as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve currency. The flow of goods is balanced by a flow of US dollars to other countries, which are ultimately cycled back into the US financial system - enabling budget deficits and an abundance of capital to invest in high growth industries. The flip side of this is that it also drives inequality - the…

> but many on this very site would need to give up a little bit of their privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow citizens. Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most. The pain is felt most by the low-skill workers you mentioned earlier. If the solution was instead along the lines of changing tax-brackets to tax the 'privileged' more, that migh…

> Agreed. However, by imposing tariffs it is not the privileged who are going to be affected the most.

I thought the idea was that the billionaires would buy up all the crashed stocks then suddenly the tariffs would be lifted so that they can sell them off as soon as they recover. If so, the privileged will be affected the most but only in terms of how much money they'll make while everyone else suffers in the meantime.

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

#950

Post by Freedom2 »

buzzert wrote: post #948
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…

Why do you think it's a good idea to buy olive oil from Tunisia instead of from California? Are you aware of how much CO2 is released to ship a trivial commodity across the atlantic ocean?

Help me understand your viewpoint here - is the assumption that an entire ship is dedicated to shipping trivial commodities and the cargo isn't co-mingled with anything else? At the same time, what isn't counted as a "trivial commodity", and should ships _only_ be used for those items?
Post reply on HN