Kickstarter Introduces 'Tariff Manager Tool' To Add Charges To Already Fully Funded Projects (404media.co) 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Here's an easy to understand example of how Donald Trump's tariffs on imported products have completely screwed small U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs: the crowdfunding site Kickstarter is introducing a "Tariff Manager tool" that will allow creators to add extra charges to projects that were already fully funded in order to deal with the higher and unexpected costs of the president's global trade war. "Over the past few weeks, we've been hard at work developing tariff-relevant resources to support our community. From guidance to help creators navigate rapidly changing policies, to tips on shipping logistics, and even information to help backers better understand the challenges creators are facing. Our focus has been supporting you through uncertain times, but we also know that information alone isn't always enough," Kickstarter said in a blog post published last week announcing the Tariff Manager tool. "Built specifically to address the financial challenges posed by U.S. import tariffs, Kickstarter's Tariff Manager is designed to give creators more control, flexibility, and transparency at one of the most critical phases of your journey: fulfillment."
Kickstarter's Tariff Manager will allow some creators to apply per-item surcharges which will appear as a separate line item on the payment page for people who backed their project. "We understand that asking backers to pay an additional fee -- especially after a campaign has ended -- can be sensitive," Kickstarter said. "If a backer chooses not to pay the tariff cost during the pledge manager process, they'll need to reach out to you directly." Backers can pay the additional fee to get the item they had already backed in order to still get it when it's ready. If they decline, the creator can issue them a refund, or find "another resolution," the blog post says. "While this tool helps offset rising costs, we recognize that every project and backer relationship is unique," Kickstarter said. "Our goal is to provide you with the flexibility and transparency necessary to navigate those conversations with clarity and care." "Creators continue to launch, adapt, and find success on Kickstarter, even as the external landscape shifts," a Kickstarter spokesperson told 404 Media. "We know creators are navigating a lot right now, and we're focused on giving them the tools and support to adjust as needed. Our role at Kickstarter is to help creators bring their projects to life, and that includes supporting them through moments of uncertainty. That's why we're doubling down on tools that help creators stay flexible and responsive: from our Tariff Manager within our integrated pledge manager -- which we're rolling out to all of our creators soon -- to offering 24-hour support and expanding educational resources."
Kickstarter's Tariff Manager will allow some creators to apply per-item surcharges which will appear as a separate line item on the payment page for people who backed their project. "We understand that asking backers to pay an additional fee -- especially after a campaign has ended -- can be sensitive," Kickstarter said. "If a backer chooses not to pay the tariff cost during the pledge manager process, they'll need to reach out to you directly." Backers can pay the additional fee to get the item they had already backed in order to still get it when it's ready. If they decline, the creator can issue them a refund, or find "another resolution," the blog post says. "While this tool helps offset rising costs, we recognize that every project and backer relationship is unique," Kickstarter said. "Our goal is to provide you with the flexibility and transparency necessary to navigate those conversations with clarity and care." "Creators continue to launch, adapt, and find success on Kickstarter, even as the external landscape shifts," a Kickstarter spokesperson told 404 Media. "We know creators are navigating a lot right now, and we're focused on giving them the tools and support to adjust as needed. Our role at Kickstarter is to help creators bring their projects to life, and that includes supporting them through moments of uncertainty. That's why we're doubling down on tools that help creators stay flexible and responsive: from our Tariff Manager within our integrated pledge manager -- which we're rolling out to all of our creators soon -- to offering 24-hour support and expanding educational resources."
Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
The tariffs are announced at random intervals, through unofficial channels, and may or may not be collected at customs depending on whether they've received the official word or not.
The random intervals are more frequent than common shipping times, so good luck committing to a price with an unknown future surcharge.
Trump's tariffs are only good for absolutely destroying the ability of Americans to import anything. And for destroying long-standing trade agreements. They aren't going to replace income tax because that would require imports to continue so there's something to tariff.
The businesses will collect the money (Score:1)
Win win I suppose except for the massive decline in demand for their products, the fact that it's going to crash the entire US economy and the fact that it's painfully obvious this is just a national sales tax so they can cut taxes on the ultra wealthy.
And I want to emphasize that ultra-wealthy. If you've got a couple million bucks to your name your taxes are going up. And if you have less than that your taxe
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Trump's tariffs are only good for absolutely destroying the ability of Americans to import anything.
They don't do much for exporting either.
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That's generally a secondary effect though - as trading partners retaliate. The import tariffs themselves theoretically improve a nation's ability to export as they encourage domestic production.
You know, as wages drop to match those of the countries who have been doing your manufacturing to date. Which ALSO makes your newfound production more competitive for export, right up until those retaliatory tariffs are accounted for.
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That's generally a secondary effect though - as trading partners retaliate. The import tariffs themselves theoretically improve a nation's ability to export as they encourage domestic production.
You know, as wages drop to match those of the countries who have been doing your manufacturing to date. Which ALSO makes your newfound production more competitive for export, right up until those retaliatory tariffs are accounted for.
Now, one of the effects that people claim is that taxes are going to go way up for rank and file workers. But how are they going to pay more taxes when they are paid 3rd world wages?
The average salary in urban areas of China is 120,698 yuan per year ($16,600 USD) which is a little bit above the US minimum wage of $15,080 per year.
US Average salary is $61,984 per year. So it should be interesting, the results of all this on voters.
I would suggest to the Democrats that they come back to normalcy, resp
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>Now, one of the effects that people claim is that taxes are going to go way up for rank and file workers. But how are they going to pay more taxes when they are paid 3rd world wages?
They will pay more as a percentage of their income. Overall, the economy is going to go into freefall. Too many disruptions too quickly is very bad for something so large and complex. So the poor will have less, pay more of it, and government will be unable to provide even the services it still provides after all the DOGE
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Pushing "they're not perfect, so vote for Trump" is one of the dumbest things to come out of modern American politics. Given the current state of the US and its obvious trajectory, it's wild to see someone still pushing it.
Overreach. Overreach has cost Republicans in the past, and Democrats were happy to say it was, and what it was, as they took advantage of it.
Is it unreasonable or just simply wrong to make a suggestion that it is possible to happen to Democrats?
Now granted, I haven't voted for any Republicans since 2000, and that was for a Senator I knew personally Because I believe they are just wrong on so many issues.
But the concept that this is voting for the devil because Jesus isn't perfect, is oversimplified, an
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"we've already had a "black" president"
why the quotes around black
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"we've already had a "black" president" why the quotes around black
Race is the ultimate social construct. That isn't to say there aren't racists - if a person believes that there are races, they are by definition racist.
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Elon will build a tariff.ai linked directly to Trump's smartphone that will adjust to every pooptweet.
Every business will be required to sign up with a DOGEcoin wallet and be charged for every interaction and will be required to pay in real-time for all adjustments except those in their favor.
Those will be settled quarterly, 1 week after the Tesla earnings call, unless there's a conflict with a gaming tournament.
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Oh, ya know, you could try getting your new product manufactured somewhere else instead. Why do new businesses feel the need to further increase our dependence on China for manufacturing?
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Where else? Trump is tariffing the entire world. The US isn't capable of building up the required industry quickly enough to avoid massive economic disruption, and the reason that manufacturing was offshored in the first place is that others were willing to do it for less.
If Americans are OK working for the wages and under the conditions of the countries where things are currently being manufactured, sure it'll work. That's going to involve a significant decrease in standard of living.
Why are cooperation
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There was one country not included on his list of tariffs. Guess which one.
Hmmm, was it Rwanda? No, wait, Romania? No that's not right either. Damn, it's just not coming to me.
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Why do new businesses feel the need to further increase our dependence on China for manufacturing?
Because *YOU* feel the need to shop primarily with low cost in mind. America has been leading a race to the bottom for a long time. There's a reason why New York has an almost order of magnitude higher per/vehicle fire incident rate for electric bicycles and mobility scooters than the Netherlands (which has far more of the things).
If USA starts manufacturing at home, people will bypass the home and simply shop more directly at AliExpress. Companies didn't opt to depend on China, the people did by voting wit
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You sound better when you actually know what you're talking about.
The tariffs are mentioned on social media (you know a lot of people read those, yeah?) but are formally announced the same way they've been for a while: on the https://www.whitehouse.gov/pre... [whitehouse.gov] sit.
Apr 2: https://www.whitehouse.gov/pre... [whitehouse.gov]
Apr 9: https://www.whitehouse.gov/pre... [whitehouse.gov]
They are absolutely 100% collected by customs, as DOHS/USC immediately implemented the policies. Our firm who imports almost exclusively from Europe, has just started
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Trump's tariffs are only good for absolutely destroying the ability of Americans to import anything
The problem is that Americans destroyed our own local economies by importing everything. That party is over.
Tariff Manager tool (Score:2, Insightful)
Call it what it is.
Trump Tax tool.
Congrats on everyone paying higher taxes!
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What services am I getting in return for paying these taxes?
Re:Tariff Manager tool (Score:5, Funny)
It helps pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
It'll be so great when it trickles down!
Lefty here & no there are plenty of taxes we h (Score:5, Insightful)
Any tax the targets the point of purchase instead of income and wealth is a regressive tax. There are cases when you're just stuck doing it like some of the European vat taxes because you've got a complex web of countries. Similar to how the United States has some sales taxes specifically for the purpose of managing taxes between states.
But overall the majority of taxes should come from income, corporate and wealth taxes which are what we call a progressive taxation system. This way as people make less money they pay less in taxes so that when you get towards the bottom end of the tax bracket people who are just getting by aren't paying any taxes whereas when you get to the top end people are paying 90 to 95%.
This is also a good way to prevent the concentration of wealth. So for example you see a guy like Elon musk who can casually drop 280 million on a election and then sees control of the entire United States government by threatening to fund primary elections against members of the Republican party in the House of representatives.
There is no sane world where somebody should have that much power. And it is power it's not money. When you take wealth and money away from people at that high a income bracket you're not taking money away anymore you're taking away their unlimited power.
If you oppose that it's your right, but understand you're basically crowning a king when you give them that much money. I'm not going to argue with you whether that's good or bad at this point I just want you to understand what you're doing.
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Marginal utility of money is in fact a thing so flat taxes from an economic and societal point of view are extremely regressive.
The wealthy can pay a higher percentage since the utility of their money at the high end of the brackets is less, quite substantially less in fact.
If you want to make a more "fair" tax system look at VAT or Land Value Tax or layering on more Pigouvian taxes.
It's the first time I've heard the phrase (Score:2)
It's not a bad idea but you've got to be careful that it doesn't become regressive. If for example you've made it basically impossible to use public transportation then a tax on car driving is just a tax on the poor for something they required to do.
On the other hand preventing large corporations from externalizing their costs is a great idea. Companies should not be allowed to pollute or cause crime or all sorts of other nasty things that they make you and me
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"preventing large corporations from externalizing their costs is a great idea"
the fact that this was ever allowed anywhere is a failure of our species
Re:Lefty here & no there are plenty of taxes w (Score:4, Interesting)
And what do you do about someone who only takes stock options as their compensation with a pittance of a salary, and borrows money against that equity as a secured loan? Your "flat tax" would completely ignore paper wealth until it's actually realized by selling, which means that person would pay a pittance on their pittance of a salary while still having effectively millions of dollars tax free until they die.
Welcome to how the rich avoid income tax, which gets the leftys all fired up about making them pay their fair share - because they aren't.
Wealth tax (Score:4, Interesting)
The most horrific part about it is, at least in america, the inner cities are subsidizing the wealthy suburbs. That's because the suburbs simply do not have the population density to pay for their services. So poor people getting shook down for taxes by right wing governments and up covering for the taxes Rich suburbanites don't want to pay.
Leaving poor people, particularly poor minorities, trapped and dying cities while forcing them to pay a good chunk of what little kittens are allowed to make as taxes for well to do suburban homeowners is probably one of the more fucked up things we've done in this country, right up there with refusing to give kids food and then claiming it builds character
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And yet, leftists and democrats continue voting for regressive taxes. My city, which is in a major metro area and always votes pretty strongly 'D', also just recently passed a new local sales tax, with 79% voting 'for'. I'm one of the few conservatives, and I voted against this regressive tax.
Re:Tariff Manager tool (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to check, are we now all in agreement that tariffs are in fact a tax?
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Dear leader is not. https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09... [cnn.com]
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Call it what it is.
Trump Tax tool.
Congrats on everyone paying higher taxes!
I wonder how that is supposed to work? Seems that the Trumpian genius concept is that these tariffs won't alter either imports or exports. oh yes, it surely will.
Trumpian tariffs make as much sense as screen doors on submarines. And once upon a time, both parties agreed that blanket tariffs are counterproductive.
Kickstarter, ugh (Score:3)
You're already wasting your money if you're funding Kickstarter projects.
The Red State Idiot Interviews (Score:5, Insightful)
Who can do anything but roll their eyes at the ever growing collection of news interviews of avid Trump voters who are now bewildered and saying things like "we didn't vote for this!"
Yes you effing did. You totally backed and elected a convicted felon on 30-something counts who would have likely had 60 more felony counts by now had you not. Before that he was a known con-man, tax cheat, national security threat and party to almost 4,000 lawsuits. WTF did you guys expect?
Scratch that. I know what you did expect. There was no way you were going to let a San Francisco liberal un-white b!tch into office. No matter what record she had. So be happy you got what you wanted.
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Obama won 2 elections in a row. Clinton lost. Biden won. Harris lost.
There's a line that can be drawn between the winners and losers there, and it isn't "liberal" or "race".
I think a large swath of the midwest see a woman in charge as an existential crisis, or something.
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Biden won. Harris lost.
The way I recall it Harris polled significantly better than Biden in the past election. The stupidity here is that anyone anywhere is distilling things down to white/brown, vagina/penis, woke/non-woke.
The reality is many people voted for different people for different reasons. Some for racial, some for sexual, some for wokeness, some because they bought into the lies of the economy, some because they were afraid of Mexicans, some because they were afraid of fentanyl, some because they wanted to make America
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The way I recall it Harris polled significantly better than Biden in the past election.
She polled better than Trump, too.
The stupidity here is that anyone anywhere is distilling things down to white/brown, vagina/penis, woke/non-woke.
The reality is many people voted for different people for different reasons. Some for racial, some for sexual, some for wokeness, some because they bought into the lies of the economy, some because they were afraid of Mexicans, some because they were afraid of fentanyl, some because they wanted to make American great again ...
The same factors existed in 2016 and 2020.
again without ever defining what that meant, some because they thought Harris wasn't presidential
Funny how people tend to say female Presidential candidates are unpresidential, unlikeable. Perhaps they know better than to say hysterical, or uppity.
some because they thought Trump is a genius.
I don't think any new people were convinced of that, lol.
The reasons for people to do the things they do vary greatly. It's easy to blame an election on one thing, but in doing so you only succeed in falling into the trap of alienating a large portion of the population who didn't think that at all.
Absurd.
Nobody ever said, "Everyone who voted for Trump did so because of X".
We're looking at the deltas. Pretending like the delta doesn't exist will not bring you closer to the right answer.
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So rather than give a woman a fair shot when saying things that make sense, they'll instead vote to bankrupt their farms under the stupidest of tariff regimes, all the while watching as core constitutional rights are trampled and the economy cakes it's pants under the chaos and uncertainty that can be dropped at the feet of a singular person.
That's some quality decision making on display. But hey, at least the guy ruining the country has a penis!
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Re:The Red State Idiot Interviews (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if Trump called off all the tariff bullshit and reset everything to what it was on January 19, 2025 we are still going to see empty shelves and product shortages. Major retailers cancelled orders. You can't just wish that shit out of a factory and across the Pacific Ocean in a day - it takes weeks just to get the ship here. And then more time to unload the ship, get your containers onto a train or trucks, and then time for that train / trucks to get your containers to your distribution centers, where you put them onto different trucks to get them to the stores.
We're two weeks into this, and major ports are already seeing far less cargo ship traffic. Which means this week we're going to see far less trucks on the highways. And next week we'll see far less products in stores. And that won't fix itself until 3 weeks after this stupidity is finally stamped out, if it ever is.
That's why China isn't talking. They know what's going to happen, and they want it to happen in order to make sure Trump is dipped in as much shit as possible. That's why they are denying any talks are happening, and going out of their way to shit on him publicly. The longer this goes, the weaker his position will be, and the stronger their own position becomes.
Leave it to "the art of the deal" guy to completely misunderstand leverage. What a fucking moron.
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All my life, I've aspired to screw together consumer gadgets in a factory, and now Trump is finally making that possible.
For that, I'm so grateful.
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At the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Please stop I can only take so much greatness!
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There is no way any job is worth 10x more than any other job. Yes there are a few exceptions since some jobs need years of training. But most desk jobs are much easier than manual labor jobs, and both are priced inverse of what it should be. Everyone has a brain but not everyone can or is willing to wear out their body.
But since those with the desk jobs also set
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Tell us you have essentially zero understanding of economics but use more words.
Oh. You already did.
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You're right. I'll start a chip fab and make semiconductors. First step is buying lithography machines from the sole supplier. Oh wait those billion dollar machines are now subject to tariffs because ASML is a Dutch company.