US To Hike Tariffs on $200 Billion Worth of Chinese Imports (reuters.com) 377
The United States will raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from 10 percent effective on Friday, according to a notice posted to the Federal Register on Wednesday. From a report: The U.S. Trade Representative's office will establish a process to seek exclusions for certain products from additional tariffs, the Federal Register notice said. U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet that he would be "very happy with over $100 Billion a year in Tariffs filling U.S. coffers."
"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coffers (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's great except it's the US consumer who will be paying the $100 Billion, and instead of filling U.S. coffers it will be filling the coffers of U.S. multinationals, and the coffers are held overseas.
But President Trump will be very happy about it. Like the rest of the Swamp, he doesn't have to worry about grocery bills, children's clothes and shoes, mortgage payments, health insurance, taxes and healthy food.
This is NOT why so many Americans voted for him. Still, the ol' shell game continues to fool the marks. And Charlie Brown goes on trying to kick the football.
Re:"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coff (Score:4, Funny)
Please stop insulting the term swamp, also known as a wetland.
The swamp was drained and replaced with an open sewer.
Re:"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coff (Score:4, Funny)
But the tariffs will increase the prices those people have to pay for their basic necessities.
And if you think that any of those jobs are coming back to the USA, I have a matched set of transoceanic bridges to sell you.
Re:"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coff (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't understand what those people are supposed to do from your point of view.
Can't try to protect the industry they work for because the jobs will never come back and it will increase the cost of goods for the brief amount of time they still have a job.
Can't fight against importing hundreds of thousands to millions of workers from SA because that's racist and those immigrants contribute to the economy even if it stagnates wages and increases the labor pool those people have to compete with.
What do those people do? Can't stop automation. Can't stop outsourcing to China. Can't stop importing cheap labor. "Welp those jobs are never coming back. Sucks to be you. Learn to code (but not you opinion journalists, you are special).".
I don't know the answer but it seems that your answer is basically a big middle finger. It's better to have more expensive goods with a job than cheap goods with no job.
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But you'll just get more expensive goods and the jobs won't come back, they'll go to cheaper countries. The U.S. has been on an anti-education kick ever since the Me-Generation decided they didn't need no education, love and peace was all they needed.
And the U.S. still produces quite a lot, on par with China right now. The U.S. needs to spend more effort educating for new industries. That will be hard because a good swath of rural America, that is generally quite poor, still expects someone to hand them a j
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>the jobs won't come back,
Ok, the jobs won't come back so might as well speed up the processes of eliminating more jobs as fast as we can because of a lame platitude about automation that hasn't been historically true, ever? If the only thing we can do is slow down the loss then isn't that a thing we should do to help those people to help the transition that you even allude to with "more effort educating for new industries"?. Is your answer really Learn to code?
With the recent unemployment numbers I am n
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It is usually about some other "solution" that is more controversial, partisan, and ideological than it is about wanting investment in industry
Well yeah, that's just the pageantry of politics. I think that's my point here. While playing a point to get the big show feeds the base, perhaps the idea is to speak in more measurable ways? I feel we're both on the same page here in that the gala of ideologues is tiresome and that more tangible presentation of those ideas that speak to the realities is a better path. That said, just because the current trend of politics is to grandstand any and every issue in front of C-SPAN, doesn't mean that we will
Re:"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coff (Score:5, Informative)
Would you rather pay an extra 10% for your once-a-year buy of tennis shoes, if you gain a solid 5% more wages and unemployment below 3%? Most people would take a $2500+ per year increase income for a $100 increase in costs (typical manufacturing sector wages are $25 per hour).
The reality is that any slow-down in purchases from China hurts China MUCH more than any tariff paid in the US. China needs to maintain a ~6% GDP growth to avoid slipping into recession and they are perilously close to that. Their banking system is teetering on collapse because it is so over-leveraged by companies expecting higher GDP growth and income from exports.
A collapse there would be caught by Beijing, but would kill domestic faith in the system (which is already skeptical of the entire thing). As well as strain their own financial coffers, which are heavily dominated by our own Government debt instruments. Capital flight from China is an on-going concern, and any hiccup in the financial sector will increase that by 10 fold...
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Spanky, dumber than a crushed rock (Score:3)
the untrainable fool. a tariff is a tax at import, which is paid by the importer and ultimately the end customers.
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Vietnam is getting so much new investment that factory owners are shutting down their old low margin businesses because they're at full capacity.
Thailand has 100% tariffs outside of the Special Economic Zones, and inside the zones it is 0% as long as you export the products. So the growth is pretty much limited to the existing zones.
I expect a lot more growth in Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia than in Thailand, because Thailand doesn't really want to be like China; they don't long for major changes to the
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What if that isn't actually a deep observation, but an obvious fact?
What if the goal is to raise the prices that the buyers pay, without raising the revenue that the sellers receive? What then, Spanky?!
This is how stupid the average person is: If they disagree with the policy, they can't comprehend that somebody else supports the policy! That is actually how stupid most people are.
If they had to choose between chocolate and strawberry, they'd refuse to believe that anybody could support the Other Side! If t
Re:"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coff (Score:5, Insightful)
The tariffs are a consumption tax that either US companies or consumers will pay. This money will go into the US Treasury to help pay for the big tax cut that the super rich got last year. It won't go directly to overseas multinationals, it will go indirectly to the wealthy political donors.
Re:"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coff (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this opposite day? The wealthy political donors are all globalists! They benefit vastly from the ability to ship production to countries with with no worker protection and no environmental protection. Much cheaper that way.
The very wealthy don't keep their wealth in a Scrooge McDuck vault, you know. They own the very industries benefiting from cheap foreign production. Globalists want 2 things to make themselves richer: the ability to move manufacturing to the cheapest place in the world, and unbounded immigration to drives labor costs here as low as possible.
Moderate tarrifs remove some of the economic incentive to abuse workers and the environment. That's fine. Some of the cost is always passed on to the consumers, so it's a real trade-off without an easy answer. In cases where local production is only a bit more expensive than foreign production, it's a real win, as production will shift back home. But when there's a big gap in costs, a tariff is effectively just another corporate income tax, and those almost always get paid by the consumer.
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Is this opposite day? The wealthy political donors are all globalists! They benefit vastly from the ability to ship production to countries with with no worker protection and no environmental protection. Much cheaper that way.
The very wealthy don't keep their wealth in a Scrooge McDuck vault, you know. They own the very industries benefiting from cheap foreign production......
You might be right in what you say, but the very rich still also want their tax cuts too, and they now have the man to give it to them. At the expense of the average American. And the average Chinese.
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Yeah, it sucks, but it sure is much more fair
In a nation where the general idea is the citizens are the ones who grant power to the government, a tax cut that was demonstrability more favorable to large private companies versus aforementioned citizens, I'm curious as to your definition of "fair". I'm not outright calling you incorrect here, I'm just interested in what the material of bedrock is behind that statement of "fair".
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I make only maybe upper middle class money, and I got a really NICE boost on my tax savings from the tax cut.
Anyone with a small incorporated business did...
There are a lot of contractors out there that have the 'pass through' business set ups with corporations of only 1-2 people, and this really helped a LOT.
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Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. cof (Score:2)
I wonder if the Walmarts and Dollar Generals of the world who depend on cheap Chinese goods will now turn on Trump and become Joe Biden supporters. They can be pretty confident that he's willing to play ball with the status quo, much like Obama was.
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People have been saying this all along but we've had quite a few in effect for some time now and it hasn't happened. The US economy has grown and we do have record low unemployment though.
So to those who still think these tariffs will doom us all contrary to the facts, I have to ask. Why do you think that? What is your reasoning?
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. cof (Score:4, Informative)
All previous examples of countries closing down - even partially as it's the case here - their borders lead to the same outcome: A dramatic drop of GDP. Pretty much nothing else. And as the country becomes poorer, inequalities rise.
This is *not* a good sign at all, short, medium or long term.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. co (Score:3, Insightful)
China has closed borders and tons of import restrictions and seems to be growing just fine.
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You're using closed as an adjective. The GP was using closed as a verb. China has not suddenly decided to impose tariffs in a tantrum when things weren't going their way. The are instead following the general development arc of a 3rd world to a 1st world country which has over the years quite steadily moved towards open boarders. The fact that they are still closed doesn't mean anything in the context of the conversation.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. co (Score:4, Insightful)
Right! There are no significant amounts of poor Chinese!
They have always been quite rural and rather poor. But the proportion of poor has been dropping. Their economic policies have turned the country from an economic nothing to an economic powerhouse, so it's worth studying at least.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. co (Score:3, Insightful)
How old are you? Are you in your 20s? Maybe your 30s? Even if you're in your 40s or 50s you might not remember when America was far more self-sufficient.
America's best times, not just for the rich, but for average Americans, were when America had its lowest imports and relied primarily on its own domestic production. Domestic production to satisfy domestic consumption keeps the wealth within America.
Wealth within America doesn't just sit there doing nothing; it is reinvested domestically to improve producti
Re: /. where the smart comments modded down (Score:2, Insightful)
Naturally some moron modded down the only intelligent comment on this entire thread.
For the clueless: a free country with environmental, safety and worker protection regulations can not compete against a fascist slave state in a truly free market. That is not capitalism. It is fighting with both hands behind your back. Doubly so when they steal your IP and close their borders to incoming trade.
Tariffs are the only answer to restore balance.
But oh wait Trump did it so it is automatically faggot traitor ba
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Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. c (Score:2, Insightful)
In the 1920s we saw globalisation and great growth in wealth in the USA. In the early 1930s we saw tarriffs and contraction. After that things opened up again and the economy was better.
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Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. co (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're remembering that, remember that at that same time the tax on the wealthiest was a lot higher than it currently is.
When lots of things have changed it's disingenuous to select one of them and say "That's the reason!" without a *LOT* of convincing evidence.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. co (Score:5, Insightful)
You cant just flip a switch and end globalization. I mean thats obvious. Increasing tariffs does not do that.
When was that, when they were exporting slaves to do all their work for them? or when they were making money off of rebuilding europe? or maybe it was when they were ripping off all of englands intellectual property and killing all the natives in north america in order to appropriate their land and resources. You are seeing american history through amazingly rose tinted glasses my friend.
The fact is that there is no way to make america "self sufficient" in any sort of non painful way. Your multinational mega corps, most of them previously based in america, sold off your country in the 80s. Blame people like ronald reagan and 80s corporate titans like mitt romney and donald trump for this.
The fact that trump now, 30 years after he made money outsourcing to the lowest common demoniator, should have a magic solution to the problem he and other capitalists created, is beyond ironic. Its almost like they planned it this way, but more likely they were just as stupid and short sighted then, as they are now. And your country pays the price for electing them, then and now and into the future too. Seems like just desserts for americans, they now reap what they have sown.
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No, no, and no. Tariffs are not a closed border.
I mean, fucking duh. Fucking duh.
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No, it's not closing a border. But doing this in the context of a trade war seems extremely stupid. The first step should be enforcing existing laws against dumping. Without any drama.
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It's sad to think that there are now two generations of Americans who never experienced an America that was able to produce much of the goods is consumes.
It's great to think that there are now two generations of Americans (i.e. United States citizens) who don't remember when the Ohio river caught on fire, who don't know what a superfund cleanup site is, who don't have to deal with month long smog alerts. All of this was made possible by exporting our manufacturing and pollution to China.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. cof (Score:4)
" Bringing these industries back means bringing those problems back as well."
Agreed, but it also means bringing back a balanced labor force. I say this as someone who's firmly in the "knowledge worker" camp but grew up in the Rust Belt during the 70s and 80s. Cities losing thousands of manufacturing jobs just decayed over a matter of years. Look at Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown, etc. as examples. There's some revitalization but it's nothing like it was when there was a diverse economy that had good paying jobs for every skill level.
I think it was the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland that caught fire by the way. But honestly I think that's a small price to pay for domestic employment. We need something for the vast majority of middle-skilled people to do. You can't take a factory worker and turn them into a developer or project manager or something like that. We need something like we had in the 70s -- vast factories employing 10,000 or more people three shifts a day doing basic work and allowing those workers to consume. Instead, we take these people and put them in minimum wage jobs where they have no hope of getting ahead.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. cof (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus the cat is out of the bag when it comes to manufacturing. Vast amounts of human labor was necessary in the United States because methods of automation were not sufficient to produce goods without that labor force. We're at a point now where even if the factories return to the United States, the jobs won't. Companies have looked at the cost to produce using employees versus setting up automation and found that despite initial startup costs possibly being higher, the automation method allows for variation in production rate without a flat labor cost and doesn't come with the associated expenses.
On top of that quality is less consistent and arguably lower when humans are simply a meat-part of an assembly line machine. Humans get bored, get mischievous, get lackadaisical, get confused. Boredom, mischief, ennui, and confusion gets worked into the final products. Look at the state of automobiles in the seventies, there you have fine examples of this sort of problem. An automated or nearly-automated manufacturing plant has far fewer employees able to introduce those problems into the manufacturing process, so the quality of a particular product line will be relatively consistent across all units.
I want to see job growth in the United States, but I don't see this kind of punitive action as the way to accomplish it.
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All of this was made possible by exporting our manufacturing and pollution to China.
And that's why China is busy exporting its manufacturing to Africa as fast as they can.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. cof (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's one helluva a non sequitur you've got going there. Manufacturers were polluting the Rust Belt long before unions came along. The problem is that where there are lax environmental laws, companies have no reason to mitigate pollution, and, in fact, every reason to wantonly pollute, seeing as actually dealing with pollution (either prevention or mitigation) costs money.
But hey, never give up a chance to abuse unions. There's a reason union forms, and it's kinda the same reason that environmental laws we
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Yeah, your "unions == pollution" argument is amazingly politically self-serving, did not at all represent reality, and leads to laughable, laughable conclusions that even your libertarian buddies don't believe in, such that all those factories would have been wonderful stewards of the environment if only those damned unions weren't so expensive.
The reality is that those who dump pollutants because it's cheaper to do so will do so regardless of the costs of the rest of the business. They will continue to do
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. cof (Score:4, Insightful)
"In the medium term, we could very well start to see manufacturing come back to the US."
I don't think that will happen. Companies will just move on to the next cheapest labor market and set up shop there. Consumers are addicted to cheap goods and aren't going to pay more to support domestic manufacturing.
The only way manufacturing would come back is if the economy basically switched to war production overnight. Back in the WW2 era, manufacturing was paused for years and nearly every large manufacturer switched to making airplanes, weapons and other military items.
It's a shame because we really do need something for middle-skilled people to do that pays well enough to support the economy. Factory work used to be that something and we see what happens when it's lost. We need a class of work that people with a high school education can do, that's plentiful enough to employ a huge swath of the population and that's stable. You're not going to teach an assembly line worker to be a data scientist or full stack developer.
Re: "Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. cof (Score:5, Informative)
We're already seeing it. Pretty significant gains [tradingeconomics.com] in the last 2 years. Unemployment in the manufacturing sector is below the national unemployment average, down below 3% [stlouisfed.org]. Demand for US-based manufacturing is skyrocketing, mainly because of costs associated with manufacturing in China. China's labor market costs have exploded in the last 10 years, such that for many products it's parity to do it - here and it's less stress.
So, what about Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines? Yes, much lower labor costs, but they simply do not have the infrastructure (nor the Government mandate to build it) that is needed for most heavy manufacturing. The costs of transport, utilities, the times involved, all add up to a significant enough number to offset most of the labor gains.
I see a lot of manufacturing moving back to the US, with small companies really cranking at 100% or more, and looking to expand operations to accommodate the new demand. Capital equipment spending is up another 10% [assemblymag.com], over 2018. Demand is back in the US, and it's also the reason why wage growth is up over 4% [tradingeconomics.com], outpacing inflation and leading to real wage growth.
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There won't be much future in non-knowledge work anywhere in the world within a generation or two. Automation is already reaching a point where the cost of automated manufacturing is going to be lower in many cases than even the cheapest of cheap labor. At that point, I suspect external costs like shipping, tariffs, tax regimes and the like will become the deciding factor in where factories will be built, but by and large since factories will only employ a fraction of the number of people they do now, it wo
No tariffs are going anywhere. Trade talks this we (Score:5, Informative)
Trump made this announcement while Chinese officials were on a plane headed to the US for trade talks. It will be undone in the next few days, in exchange for the Chinese doing something the US wants.
He's merely framing the negotiation, changing the "starting point" for negotiations. Saying "if you don't give us a deal we like, you're going to hage 25% tariff on some of goods, meaning you'll sell less". If China won't agree to a better deal.
In a few days we'll get an idea of what terms his team ended up with, and likely in a few weeks or months we'll have the details.
We shall see. USMCA improved on NAFTA (Score:5, Insightful)
As I said, we'll see how it turns out.
He used a similar tactic on NAFTA. Rather than negotiate changes to NAFTA, which require the US to give up something in exchange for something, he announced the US withdrawal from NAFTA, which was bad for Mexico and Canada. Then they would need to give up something just in order to get NAFTA back.
He then negotiated USMCA, which was essentially NAFTA again with several things changed to make it better for the US. The US didn't really give up anything. It just got better for the US, by changing the starting point of negotiations. There was a side deal in which the US promised not to impose threatened new tariffs on auto parts - tariffs which didn't exist, they were just a threat. Today's announcement about increasing tariffs on certain Chinese exports may well turn out exactly the same as his threat to raise tariffs on Canada and Mexico - we just get something we want in exchange for leaving tariffs at the same level they were at last month.
Re:We shall see. USMCA improved on NAFTA (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet the USMCA has not been ratified and we are still under NAFTA
Lots of hot air blowing around but little real change, you think that China does not realize the current Congress will not ratify ANYTHING that Trump comes up with?
Re:"Over $100 Billion in Tariffs filling U.S. coff (Score:5, Funny)
King Mierdas
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Is your position on tariffs the same as your position on a corporate income tax? Do you believe costs are passed on to customers the same way in both? Seems obvious that's what happens.
I think tariffs are good to the extent they work: if production moves back home, or if China lowers their tariffs to get us to lower ours, then that's an obvious win. If nothing changes except the tax rate, then it's just another tax paid by the consumer.
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Yes, well he does tend to destroy everything he touches. His latest excuse for being a loser in business is that it was all part of a tax dodge. Oh, is this an admission of guilt? And he's proud of it? Why should we be proud of him? The Economy? Well, dumping a trillion a year of deficit spending into the economy will tend to lift it a bit, at least until the debt comes due...after he's left office...I hope they count the silverware.
Why Fill The Coffers Of An Un-Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You might not think of yourself as a libertarian but this is typical libertarian thinking.
According to you the consumers, the majority of whom are on the lower end scale, are supposed to take a "short term loss" in exchange for a "long term gain" for everybody. Sorry I don't buy it.
First of all this policy causes economic suffering by those who can afford it the least. You claim to be not supportive of "repressive regimes" so your solution is to try to take the oppressed people's jobs away. Then th
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China's economic growth has vastly improved the lives of the vast majority of Chinese people living there. In the space of 40 years they have gone from widespread poverty to almost eliminating it.
During that time the CCP has been slowly opening up. It's still a horrible regime, no doubt, but it's also been affected by pressure from the new middle classes and increased scrutiny from the rest of the world.
At the very least, it is better to engage with China and use the economic carrot to lead it where we want
Easy: middle class (Score:2)
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If the average American knew what happened to the members of the Falun Gong (where did they "disappear" to? It isn't unknown, people just don't like to talk about it!) we would probably have a full embargo, we'd have the same trade policy for China that we have for Iran.
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China is a cabalist kleoptocracy in oligarchy. There's nothing about China that even slightly resembles a Republic beyond the surface charade. It's as false as the prima facie suggestion that "the people" support "the people's army" there.
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There's nothing about the USA that even slightly resembles a Republic beyond the surface charade.
FTFY.
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Much like the US, China is a republic, not a democracy.
Uhhh, not this agains. A republic and democracy are not mutually exclusive. The US is a Republic whose people democratically elect representatives to represent them in congress. That makes the US a republic which practices representative democracy, what's more the US is also a constitutional representative democracy. Why is this so hard to understand?
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It isn't "notable" if you use absolute categories in order to fit the data to the categories your politics prefer.
Also, many US States are indeed Democracies. That's why we have legal marijuana now.
You could start a comment the way you did, and have to turn out to be something true, but if you stop where you stopped, it is mostly shit.
Stupid is as stupid does (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess who ends up paying tariffs? You do, the consumer.
If a company pays more due to a tariff, that cost is almost always passed on to the buyer. The country the goods come from does not pay anything towards the tariff unless they reduce the cost of their product, and that almost never happens.
In the end, Joe and Jane Consumer pay- and that's you. Simple-minded people don't understand this complex concept.
In addition, the country that has a tariff put on it usually retaliates by placing tariffs of their own on products coming from the country that put tariffs on them, and so that country sells less of its products, another loss to the selling country.
In the end no one wins and the consumer loses. Everyone loses.
Someone should explain this to Trump.
Re:Stupid is as stupid does (Score:4, Informative)
Google:
- - A tariff is a tax on imports or exports between sovereign states. It is a form of regulation of foreign trade and a policy that taxes foreign products to encourage or safeguard domestic industry. The tariff is historically used to protect infant industries and to allow import substitution industrialization.
The idea is to entice the local economy to provide for itself.
Re:Stupid is as stupid does (Score:5, Insightful)
"The idea is to entice the local economy to provide for itself." You mean as opposed to production shifting to Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, S. Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, India, etc. Hooo boy, the production is going to start coming back to the U.S. now. I cannot wait to welcome them...errr....just as soon as we extract it from these other countries where it will have gone in the meantime. And then there will be the Chinese shell companies owning the production in those other countries.
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If the jobs are moved back to the US most of them will be automated anyway. Or the prices will have to go up to cover the higher wages.
The way to create manufacturing jobs in developed nations is to compete on quality and by being local.
Germany is a great example of this. Germany exports more by value than China does. It's manufacturing base is massive. And it's mostly good quality stuff. Not just the luxury cars, even the stuff you can buy in discount supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi is often made in German
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That production will eventually come back - once the rest of the world's economies have modernized so labor costs are more equal throu
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"historically used to protect infant industries"
Most of these are not infant industries.
Now China isn't really the good guys here. However American Companies should had been smarter to not deal with China knowing China doesn't play by the same rules in IP.
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Google: - - A tariff is a tax on imports or exports between sovereign states. It is a form of regulation of foreign trade and a policy that taxes foreign products to encourage or safeguard domestic industry. The tariff is historically used to protect infant industries and to allow import substitution industrialization.
The idea is to entice the local economy to provide for itself.
It does not work. The only thing tariffs do is to make completely unprofitable US industries artificially profitable/competitive and rob these industries of any incentive they previously had to compete with the Chinese. In essence US industry has discovered that getting 'Tariff Man' to artificially raise prices with tariffs and making the US consumer pay for it is easier than competing with the Chinese (and no, I'm not being snarky, Trump literally tweeted that moniker himself: https://twitter.com/realdonal [twitter.com]
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drama queen, tariff increase is tiny (Score:3)
a family of four will pay $10 a month more because of these taxes.... they don't matter
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Some people like to argue that we should do it in retaliation for Chinese companies engaging in dumping or similar practices, but I disagree there as well. If China and its citizens want to subsidize solar panels (or whatever else may be the specific case) f
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It just means that countries wind up engaging in economic activity that is less efficient than other use of that labor rather than buying from those who can produce those goods or services more cheaply.
Doesn't that assume quite a bit about the level playing field that the competition is supposed to operate on?
If the Chinese government is bankrolling an industry (REM and solar to name a few) to corner the market it doesn't matter how cheaply you make a product if a Chinese company can take a loss until you are out of business.
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It just means that countries wind up engaging in economic activity that is less efficient...
Do you know what another word for "economic inefficiency" is? Jobs
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He understands but does not care.
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He understands but does not care.
I'm not convinced he understands.
Remember, Trump is the guy who says windmills cause cancer and that you need picture ID to buy groceries.
Do you really think he understands global supply chain economics?
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Maybe not, but Lighthiser and Ross kinda do. They know full well what they are doing. I hope the SEC is on the lookout for insider trading.
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Maybe not, but Lighthiser and Ross kinda do. They know full well what they are doing
Yes, and that's what I'm afraid of.
Incompetent crooks are bad enough, the intelligent, competent ones are what we really have to watch out for. Most of Trump's picks for high-level positions are clumsy grifters who step on their own dicks in short order, but some of them are genuinely dangerous.
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How much do you charge to read minds with your crystal ball?
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But I don't have to read his mind. The president's actions and tweets make his intentions clear.
He is keeping his campaign promise to his base to protect US jobs. This will be important for his reelection effort.
From his perspective its win-win; he can claim to be populist while the long term objective will benefit wealthy donors.
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That's not how free markets work, and it's not China's economic strategy. Let's use a television as an example:
A US built TV costs $200
A Chinese TV costs $200 + $40 tariff.
Both have equal craftsmanship, equal features. Consumer has a choice between a $240 TV and a $200 TV. All things being equal, they buy the $200 TV. China begins to lose sales.
So what do they do?
Drop the price by $50 so they can sell the same TV at $190. Chinese producers historic
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Let's use a television as an example:
A US built TV costs $200
A Chinese TV costs $200 + $40 tariff.
1) There are 6 or 7 American TV manufacturers as opposed to hundreds of Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, and other foreign TV manufacturers.
2) No one thinks that American TVs are better or even as good.
3) American TVs use parts that come from....wait for it....China and Taiwan and Korea. Will the cost of getting those parts to use here in America go up or down?
All things being equal, they buy the $200 TV. China begins to lose sales. .... The real question to be asked though is how long could a Chinese manufacturer keep running at a loss?
The Chinese can afford to drop their prices as low as they need to in order to remain competitive as long as they need to. In some cases they're even stat
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Guess who ends up paying tariffs? You do, the consumer.
If you're an old guy, haven't you had time in your life to learn this shit already?
Consumer prices don't work like that. They're not percentage markups from the cost of production. The prices are whatever people are willing to pay.
For manufactured fungible items that are similar to commodities, where there is no price premium, there is no markup; economic theory has the price eventually stabilizing at or slightly below the cost of production. There is no money in generic widgets; you have to make premium wi
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So no, consumer prices do not go up. The consumer does not pay the tariff. The middle-man pays the tariff. Prices don't change.
LOL, oh sweet summer child. Your ignorance is truly adorable.
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So, while on the face the tariffs are a negative, it is also a possible (perhaps likely) outcome this will force China's hand to address some of t
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You can definitely count me in the "prefer tariffs" + "hates Trump" category.
It is well-established in economic theory that it increases trade profits and produces better jobs if each country or region supports a set of strategic industries that they're better positioned for than their trade partners.
It is also well-established that low tariffs on non-strategic industries also stimulates trade.
So overall Trump's trade policy sucks, but the tariffs specifically I think are good. But too low. Most Asians coun
Double tarriffs (Score:3)
Chicken and pork products, raised in the US, sent to China for "processing" then shipped back to the US for consumption.
Goodbye $.79 a pound chicken thighs and $.99 a pound pork shoulders
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Mmmm... Mechanically recovered head meat. Delicious.
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Chicken thighs are basically a waste product; you're not paying markup based on cost of production, you're paying below the cost of production and the price is based on how low it has to be to get people to buy chicken thighs instead of some other cheap food.
They kill a huge number of chickens to produce chicken breasts that are a popular product that is profitable. Now they have that many sets of thighs and wings, and they'll try hard to sell them instead of having to spend a bunch of money disposing of th
Chinese sodomy - We should do nothing then? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Most Americans didn't vote for Trump. They were 3 million additional Americans who didn't vote for Trump.
The problem is the electoral system combined with the current states that are considered swing states made him president by the rules of the US election system. This isn't a good picture on how normal Americans voted, As the average American didn't vote for him.
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Actually, there were well over 100 million people who didn't vote for Trump (or anyone else [duckduckgo.com]).
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Perhaps US manufacturing could get more efficient, but the I don't see any particular barriers to doing that today.
Efficiency means doing more for less. US manufacturing could get much more efficient just by dropping salaries. The median salary in China is $2,708/year. It''s $31,099 in the USA. It needs to drop by an order of magnitude to be competitive.
Re:The left never met a tax it doesn't love (Score:5, Insightful)
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Naw.
I live in a State with Direct Democracy and in fact I have a ballot on my desk right now. There are two taxes to vote on; one I will vote yes, the other I will vote no.
My State is very closely divided left and right; and yet most tax measures either succeed with 60%, or fail with only 40%. We give the local governments about half of what they ask for overall, but it depends on how well they spend the money.
We have high quality schools and below average school spending; and of that, very very low spendin