de minimis trade exemption for China is delayed | Hacker News Reader

de minimis trade exemption for China is delayed

cnbc.com

Whatever you think about the de minimis trade exemption, (I support removing it since it’s clearly become a loophole that can be exploited in a way that wasn’t imaginable in the past when a random American couldn’t order a $2 item from a random factory in China), the approach has just been ridiculous.

The administration made a decision with absolutely no thought about what it would entail, and then realized (fortunately) that it would fuck up the entire US economy because the customs system was totally not prepared to inspect every package that was making it to US shores and even attempting to enforce this would gum um all the ports and lead to skyrocketing prices and the destruction of trade and economic activity within the U.S., and then “paused” an order they passed barely a few days ago.

It’s just a ridiculous way to run a government.

And it raises severe concerns about the other decisions they’re making which may not have as stark and as immediate a feedback loop, but may be far more consequential and detrimental over the longer run.

It's not much of a loophole, and it most benefits the poor.

This is far better than the first term where decisions were made with absolutely no thought, then continually doubled down on the bad decisions consequences be damned - it's just like the flu, encouraging police riots, federal shock troops teargassing a church, stop the steal, etc.

Your comment is like when everyone jumped on Trump for talking about injecting bleach and getting light inside the body - "what a dumb idea, blah blah." No, throwing out random thoughts to see if they might spark some viable idea is called brainstorming - that was literally the guy behaving at his most intelligent. This is him actually accepting some sort of feedback. We should encourage these things since we're stuck with him, at least until the dementia finishes its job.

But, This objectively causes people to buy the same item but for more money. Shouldn't the market economy be market-driven?

Trade wars would make sense if it were two well-armed manufacturing powers, but the US showed up at a knife fight with a tuba.

The problem isn't that people are saying "I'll buy the $2.50 Chinese widget over the $4.00 American one", which you might be able to steer by taxing the import highly enough.

It's that there is nobody domestic manufacturing the $4.00 widget in the first place. Nobody's going to wait three years for you to build the factory.

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