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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

> That's what the american people seem to want to happen

I'm American, and 50.2% of Americans did not vote for this.

Realistically, it will not be that bad. Most companies will just up prices to make up the cost of the tariff and consumers will eat it.

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> I'm American, and 50.2% of Americans did not vote for this.

In all fairness, a good portion of the other 49.8% probably didn't vote for this (or didn't know they were voting for it) either.

Yep! Most likely!

A good chunk of that cohort specifically voted against high inflation.

Trump made it quite clear that he was going to dole out tariffs like Oprah giving away cars. This wasn't hidden, they specifically voted for higher prices.

A surprising number of Trump voters do not understand how tariffs work and believe the exporting country pays. They are intentionally ignorant, so they'll tell you inflation is not the outcome they wanted, even though it's an obvious first order effect of the policies they support (see mass deportation)

If you vote for someone screaming "I'm gonna do X" and then they do X and you claim "I didn't know they were going to do X"

That's WORSE than if you were just stupid or hateful. You chose to be willfully ignorant of something that was utterly trivial to check.

They voted for it.

A lot of people do not understand economics, and think that tariffs are somehow fees charged to foreign countries rather than taxes levied against domestic consumers and businesses. I've had this exact discussion more than once, and have heard people change their tune once they understood what tariffs actually are.

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