Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs
theverge.com
theverge.com
Or are Wall Street actors gaming the volatility for further profit?
Or both?
Just learned from Twitter tariffs will be rolled back in a day or two.
I remember seeing that on SNL in the 80s; it has always stuck with me.
For 1/3 of eligible voters, it's "I don't care about voting".
1) They can't vote, either because of local politicians meddling in their election process/with their polling places, being convicted of bullshit non-crimes, or simply being unable to get to a polling place. Shock of shocks, majority of political fuckery involved in taking away people's right to vote is brought about by conservatives. Even more shocking, the groups that tend to be disenfranchised trend progressive in their voting habits, wow, such a weird coincidence.
2) They have no desire to vote, because as much as I understand voting for the lesser of two evils (and doing it with regularity) that just isn't motivating, and neither is choosing which party you want to join that's going to leave you for dead the second the election is over. To be clear: this is not "both sides are bad." Both sides are bad, but one is just useless bad, and the other is actively tearing down the state to sow chaos that it can use to consolidate power and bring about a theocracy. And while both of those are bad, they are not even remotely comparable.
Nope, that's just more uninformed "both sides are the same" nonsense.
The Democrat and Republican voting record proves you wrong.
And one side is only "useless" because the other side are obstructionists, and that side can only obstruct because too many people with low IQs believed lies and voted against their best interests.
Like it’s not doing him any favors, I tend to feel it’s some kind of personality defect.
Though it did get him a lot of attention in the past, which substantially led to him becoming president.
Either he can’t turn it off, or the decade plus of increasingly internet centric media exposure among the general population just selected for a guy who had obvious populist but not too radical views and also makes ridiculous statements to get attention.
Greenland will not be taken by force. The reminder of a possibility of force may be used as leverage in the negotiation. The messaging is kind of whacky, but it would make sense to broadcast the threat widely to achieve credibility. Like “he’s so crazy he might just pull the trigger”.
In my experience, the ‘personality defect’ you are thinking of is what many folks would call ‘malignant narcissistic personality disorder’. He only wants Greenland because someone once told him he couldn’t have it, and it gets him attention every time he brings it up.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he has no actual idea what Greenland actually is like, and has never visited it. He might even be confused between Iceland and Greenland, if you asked him to point to Greenland on an unlabeled map.
Plenty of other people though would benefit from the strife created by him actually taking it, or from him being happy with them by actually getting it for him, so I expect there are active plans in motion right now to invade Greenland.
He’s telling everyone what he wants to do, no one is delivering real consequences to stop him, and he is in charge. Listen to what he’s saying.
Refusing to take him ‘seriously’ and actually act against him, is exactly what normalizes his actions when he later does the thing that seemed crazy a month or a year ago.
Look at what he was saying that seemed crazy and hyperbolic a year or two ago. Look at what he is doing now, and no one is stopping him.
I think, though, that the narcissism mechanism acts a bit differently than you say.
I think he sees himself as a great man, a man who can see further than others, a man who gets things done and above all a man who makes deals. I’m not saying his is any those things, he’s not, just that this is how he narcissistically sees himself.
Interestingly, I think this disordered thinking is probably what makes him not give any shits about what other people think. Like, from his perspective he’s going to do a thing that will be unpopular because people are myopic, but eventually his results will be too obvious to ignore. Picture a narcissistic software engineer, they do the same thing. He does this very clumsily, because he is not actually a great man in the way he sees himself, and he has never made any attempt to work on his personality shortcomings, because narcissism.
To be absolutely clear, this is what I think is occurring in his mind, I am not personally saying that he is a great man etc. His self perception as that is just what drives how he acts.
Anyway, he does want Greenland. Taking Greenland would make him a major historical figure, from the perspective of a man (himself) who developed his sense of historical significance from literal school history books, not from any deep thinking. Physics phds want to be the guy in the physics textbook. He wants to be the guy in the history textbook. Annexing Greenland would give him that.
However, he will not use physical force to achieve that. I would put big money on that prediction. It doesn’t fit with his m/o. He is bluffing about using physical force, in order to strong arm Denmark into a purchase deal. Because, you know, he sees himself as a master deal maker. Doing a deal on Greenland would be a massive win for that aspect of his persona, in terms of that self belief being supported in the narcissistic sense.
Using physical force on Greenland would be literally insane, and if you listen to the man talk for a long enough time, as I have, he has shown signs of being many, many things, but being literally insane is not one of them. Nothing he has done so far has surprised me (with the exception of the Gulf of America, he did catch me off guard with that one).
His supporters don’t really care about Greenland. I think from their perspective, Trump does some pretty goofy stuff, but if he’s the guy who will do something about 1) the Mexicans and 2) the trade policies that created the rust belt, then he’s their guy.
That answer is why he’ll almost certainly end up ‘taking’ Greenland.
Personally, I figure a month or less.
I guess the disconnect comes from the fact that for many people including myself, the perception has always been of the exact opposite.
I don’t think he is clinically insane, or incompetent in a court of law insane. Deep down he knows what the truth is, or he couldn’t do what he is doing. You can’t go in the opposite direction of something if part of you doesn’t know where it actually is.
NPD is a disorder, which isn’t the psychological definition of insanity either.
He just refuses to believe or acknowledge anything that doesn’t reinforce his world view, regularly preferring (and enforcing on others) his delusional world view instead, which has him as a strong man, excellent deal maker, etc.
He also goes out of his way to destroy anyone who disagrees with his delusional world view, to the point of committing what appears to be clear criminal acts to do so, and prefers coercive control over any sort of mutually beneficial bargaining.
It all fits.
Look at the consistent outcome for people who are around or under the control of malignant narcissists, and you’ll see why this is a big problem. He is going to end up destroying everything valuable or real in everything he has control over in his attempt to make it fit his world view, and destroy anyone he can who attempts to stop it.
If economic means don’t work, he has assassinated folks before, and while yes it doesn’t fit his MO to start wars directly - at some point it’s going to happen.
All it takes is for someone to stand up to him in the right circumstances.
If he can take Greenland, and sees no real consequences (he certainly didn’t get any for taking out the Iranian general, despite hundreds of service member injuries), even if it involves force - seriously, why wouldn’t he in your world view?
And do you think the cowards currently in power elsewhere are going to risk starting WW3 for a bunch of ice? Greenland only has 56k people in the whole country, and most of them are rural farmers who will never have to care what gov’t is actually running the country.
Oh, and here it is again today - he’s going to ‘make them rich’ [https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-people-greenland-we-will...].
Or wanting to create "camps" to hold immigrants, and then sending them to Guantanamo?
Things like threatening retaliations against perceived enemies?
Withdrawing support from Ukraine and groveling to Putin?
I'm pretty tired of people dismissing his crazy outbursts as something he just says because he's not just all talk, he (too) often does the crazy things.
I mean, you can trace various seemingly random effects today to Reagan policies.
Essentially, yes those other comments are linked to politics. All things could be extrapolated to politics. That doesn't mean we should directly talk about the political aspects, otherwise it drowns out curious discussion
Over the past few months I doubt there have even been 10 discussions total with some non-circular, credible, arguments along with some coherent logic backing them…
There is nothing to discuss. What we are witnessing is, to be crass, an exercise of pure idiocy.
There’s not a widely agreed upon definition of intelligence last time I checked. So it seems impossible for “idiocy” to be any better defined.
There’s not even such an agreement that all human adults are even sentient in the first place, or what the critical threshold is.
That trump's narrative of what tariffs are is a lie and that these do not in fact help the economy. They can help, but not the way trump is using the tools.
>There’s not a widely agreed upon definition of intelligence last time I checked.
>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It’s clearly possible for people to have ulterior goals and motives… so assessments based on outward usages, of anything, seem irrelevant to determining intelligence, or the lack of it.
I'm not interested in this tangent here that you keep trying to veer on. Point it many economists know this trade war is not good for the economy. The history of this is as recent as Trump 45.
I'm thinking at first it'll be 'playing hardball negotiating tactic' and when it looks like the tariffs are here to stay 'paying more is patriotic'.
Basically no point in even having a conversation about it. The same way you don't discuss evolution with someone who thinks the universe is 6000 years old.
And if they eliminated the IRS because the ERS covers all our expenses, that would effectively mean that we have shifted all of our income tax revenue away from relatively wealthy high-earners to the poor (who currently pay little to no income tax), since the poor have to buy items at the price they're listed.
Profit margins in most industries simply aren't high enough to cover it. A business can't absorb 20-25% tariffs if its profit margin is only 5%.
And manufacturing is particularly known for its low profit margins.
So no. I mean, in theory you are technically correct. But the way elasticity works in practice is that the buyer is who pays the tariffs in virtually all circumstances.
If they had that much margin headroom available to cut prices by 20% and remain profitable, wouldn't that basically prove that they weren't dumping product in the first place?
For suppliers with fixed costs there are strong incentives to lower prices to stimulate demand sufficient to maintain utilization where possible. The commodity NAND market is an example of this. The fabs are extremely sensitive to utilization which leads to wild profit and loss swings.
>To influence companies to produce their goods domestically instead of internationally. What is so hard to understand about this?
So they are stuck in Just World Land.
another top comment linked this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-pr...
So they more or less buy into "The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl"
P.S. more than happy to take suggestions of a better forum representing conservative opinion
We need to stop reaching for the easiest data source just because we're desperate for a data source. There's a reason great research is hard - mostly because it requires stupendous effort (and funding!) to get reliable results.
I agree. Pretty much all internet sources are inherently biased due to response bias, so there's no fixing that without talking to such people face to face (which is a bit hard in my area).
But if you aggregate enough data you can at least start to see some sort of prevailing trends and sentiments. So I am open to better sources and some biased/compromised forums are still better that choosing to be trapped in an echo chamber. I have browsed around on other comments sections from news sources and the results unfortunately make Reddit look like a think-tank.
Sure, the average American who identifies as conservative just shows up every 4 years and hits the R without giving it much though. Thinking about them doesn't really give us much either.
I think /r/conservative tells us a lot, even if it's not representative of the constituency. The President is driven by memes and is extremely online. The "vibes" in /r/conservative (and on X, The Everything App) are extremely relevant, because these are the audiences Trump plays to.
"A Trump never keeps his word"
"A Trump never pays his debts"
I don't know if it's dementia or if Putin has compromising info on him, but he seems intent on speed running the tearing apart of the west.
Pre-Trump the 2nd, it seemed to me that conservative view-points were being “shouted down.”
Anecdotally I recall even on HN conservative views weren’t looked too kindly.
Remember that Google engineer who had an odd-take about less qualified Googlers, and getting ostracized for it?
It has been a rising tide that lifts all boats on our blue marble
The 88 election debate in Canada is famous for the confrontations around this topic. I was in my early teens it was the first election debate I remember watching and having strong opinions about.
In particular it was a major political controversy in the UK for most of the 19th century.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a forum that's accessible and with lots of conservatives. You have some on X and you have YouTube channels. Both are harder to engage with.
Which I'm sure if this happens, will be accompanied by some bullshit claims of some concessions he supposedly obtained.
And a lot of people in-the-know who made easy coin on the stock market today.
And his followers will eat it up. Last month there was all sorts of blather on social media about how "Trudeau caved" because "Trump strong" etc. despite Canada simply re-iterating the same position it had had since December.
We live in a post-fact world. There are no principles in play. The key organizing principle of this society is cruelty. Truth is simply what powerful people say it is.
And there's no opposition to any of it. Our supposed political opposition is way more interested in crushing progressive sentiment and voices within their party. They are completely complicit in what's now going on.
I think support is ambivalent, at best.
A few people are going to short hard and make out like bandits. But all-party social unrest on a huge scale is going to kick off long before they can fulfil their dream of buying up the entire country for pennies.
Cooler heads understand this.
My irl interactions make it seem like they're not even aware of what's been happening
If you charge Canada a 25% tariff then products sold in the U.S. and shipped from Canada should cost U.S. consumers about 25% more. That, in turn, makes U.S. products look more attractive. A U.S. business pays taxes at the federal and state levels. A U.S. business also hires U.S. employees, who pay taxes as well and spend into the economy.
I’m sure I’m way over simplifying this, to the point of stupidity, but tariffs raise prices on foreign goods to encourage the sale and/or development of local goods, don’t they?
This is, to an extent, the problem, yes.
There are plenty of problems, but here's one very obvious one; your own industry almost certainly depends heavily on imports, particularly if you're a developed country. If you basically only have primary industry, then this sort of protectionism can _theoretically_ work and allow development of secondary industry (though in practice there aren't many examples of this), but for a developed country it really makes very little sense.
You're also assuming that local industry _will_ compete on price, versus just accepting the newly-set tariff-induced base price. That will happen in some cases, but not all; in particular for near-monopolistic industries (cars, a lot of heavy consumer goods like kitchen appliances), really, it makes a lot of sense for them to raise their prices under such circumstances.
What about all the businesses that export products or the ones that rely on imports. Businesses go bankrupt, prices go up for everyone and less people have jobs.
A study was done on washing machine prices during tariffs of the previous Trump administration. Rather than undercutting foreign goods on price, local manufacturing raised their prices to absorb extra profit. As a kicker, the price of dryers also went up even though they were not subject to tariffs.
The US and Canadian economies have become deeply intermingled over generations. Many materials cross the border multiple times on the way to becoming finished goods and will be subject to tariff each time. There will be 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects for a long time even if these tariffs go away quickly, not to mention the poisoning of the closest relationship between nations the world has ever seen.
My fellow Canadians are horrified and enraged at the tariffs that amount to economic warfare and the continuous violations of our sovereignty. I have never seen the whole country this united on anything before. Canadians are furious and every grocery store has American produce rotting on shelves. We will not forgive and forget quickly.
For another source on this point quoted above- (and for people that prefer video explainers) the wall street journal covered how domestically produced washers/dryers went up in price after those tariffs: https://youtu.be/_-eHOSq3oqI?t=102
Also encouraging people to produce the stuff locally only works if they can rely on the stability of the market.
Plus there's an intrinsic advantage that exporters in lower wage zones have over the domestic market. US workers are paid more than Canadian, and certainly paid a hell of a lot more than Chinese ones. So whatever is made domestically is just intrinsically more expensive.
You can make an argument for protectionism and self-sufficiency on various basis. But you can't make a good argument for erratic and sudden and unreliable protectionism.
These markets produced actually competitive businesses that thrived and outcompeted the market leaders (US and European companies) in multiple industries. So if you keep tariffs forever you end up with Russia or some other backwater where people are forced to buy shitty goods because you have no access to external markets.
The computer market in Brazil, for instance, was like that. Most of what we had were pirated hardware, because there was never an effort to create a real industry in the country, they would just copy and paste whatever was available out there and "launch" in the local market, so even with years of tariffs and protectionism the country did not produce any player in the computer manufacturing market.
From "Donald Trump’s tariffs will bring ‘nothing but pain’ to rural America, farmers say - " https://www.ft.com/content/ba4569d3-3c54-47d9-90af-125751434...
"Trump’s last trade war, with China in 2018...led to $27bn in losses for US agriculture, according to estimates by farming groups..farms received as much as $23bn in compensation from the federal government"
Unless they raise prices to get better margins since their competition has higher prices now. This is exactly what happened with Trump 1.0 tariffs: foreign product prices went up and so did domestic ones.
> A U.S. business also hires U.S. employees, who pay taxes as well and spend into the economy.
It takes time to on-shore, and until that happens the public is paying higher prices, potentially for a few years. So you take the total higher prices, and divide by the number of jobs created, and you can get the price per job. For washing machines it was $800K/job:
* https://www.nber.org/papers/w25767
There is an argument to be made that production capacity is strategic asset of course:
People believe what they want to believe.
> Any bets on how this will be justified by Trump voters?
This is not what I believe
> Any bets on how this will be justified by Trump voters?
This is not what I believe
If I was directing investment at a large business, onshoring manufacturing would be a no brainer in many businesses. Mexico might be the happy medium, but I’d really push for US manufacturing facilities with high automation levels to hedge against labor cost.
No, I picked it because of hardware too. You can't just say "your sandwich was made in america because the bread was made here". I didn't order bread, I ordered a whole sandwich.
And honestly, the sentiment of the software being American made is also more suspect by the day.
Creating startups will be easier as more Americans will be looking for work, leading to depressed salaries.
As for the rest of the population, it's the usual FAFO, not much to do.
I'm not necessarily against tariffs, but I think it's idiotic to think that raising the price is going to somehow lower grocery prices.
It'd be one thing if we were combining tariffs with a UBI - that can balance out most of the regressive effects of it, but we're not doing that.
Unless, of course, the US has some sort of monopoly on an export that others have no choice but to take. I dont think the US has such a resource.
These don't strike you as themes they're interested in? They're kneecapping or eliminating regulators and driving up unemployment. Their deportation drives, it's true, are a bit contradictory here, but those have other motivations.
I do think they want to create more manufacturing jobs, which in general are a better quality than service ones however.
manufacturing jobs outsourced to low cost countries begs to differ.
Now of course, you'd argue that those are the bad ones, and the good ones are what you'd want to keep (like semiconductor manufacturing).
I suppose you have in mind jobs like home health aides. But 1) we really do need a lot of them with an aging population 2) I’m not sure their lives would be improved by working in a textile mill instead.
Do you see a case for tariffs otherwise?
You use tariffs to equalize actual costs plus a little (environmental/climate rules, labor costs, regulatory environment, human rights, etc) between the US and a foreign country. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of increase either, 5-12% - and probably wouldn't apply to most developed countries, because it is based on that matrix of total cost of doing business.
As far as rationale here - I personally want to onshore as much production as I can - but you can't start with finished goods necessarily, you often have to start with the base supportive industries needed - but even I acknowledge that may not be practical for everything.
But, to do what I want to do is a decades long process and must be done strategically and carefully - blanket tariffs dont do that, and are just a blowtorch to the delicate interconnections of a modern economy. Like targeting agricultural goods is absurd, for example - and will just raise prices for no tangible good.
What's the rationale for this? Like if you're already close to full employment, this isn't even zero-sum, you're throwing away your comparative advantage and spending part of your economy on production rather than higher-value services.
I'm willing to spend part of my country's wealth to counteract, say, other countries' lack of environmental protections, but if you're spending that wealth on counteracting lower offshore labour costs... in effect, the net impact is that you're just reducing the value of your own labour to match the offshore labour. (ergo, tariffs are a real clunky way to support local labour that isn't competitive with offshore labour costs... you could achieve the same ends more efficiently via income taxes and UBI.)
Like walmart is the largest private employer in the US, the working conditions, pay and benefits one gets from working at walmart isnt comparable to what we used to give what was the largest private employer 50 years ago (which was AT&T) - nor can the margins that walmart generates support those kinds of generous pay and benefits either.
This story is repeated a 100 times over thruout the US - while yes we have full employment, its in service jobs (retail, food service, hospitality) and not in manufacturing or other high paying jobs.
The second thing I'm trying to deal with, for lack of a more polite way (without lapsing too far into euphemism) to put it is "jobs for stupid people" (edit, in hindsight the best way to put this is "good jobs for everyone") - for a significant portion of the population, the best job they can hope for in terms of wages and benefits is working on a production line in a factory, while you and I (presumably) work in some sort of information job - thats just not an option for a significant portion of the population, and until we solve that we're going to keep having an issue with a K-shaped economy.
If you move Walmart employees to building widgets at a somewhat higher wage and that shrinks your economy, you'd have better overall results if you just raised taxes and gave the money to Walmart employees directly.
Also flatly, people cannot pay their rent, or eat GDP, its possible to have lower GDP growth and still be more prosperous country, most of the GDP loss will be to upper income earners.
Right, but then you’re working with a smaller pie than if you just skipped tariffs, taxed the upper income earners, and redistributed that.
And tariffs are particularly regressive - mostly resulting in higher costs for your low income earners, since tariffed goods are a relatively higher part of their expenses than they are for the wealthy.
Tariffs are an economically inefficient way to get a bigger pie slice for the median earner.
I'm a big fan of UBI - love it, make all my librarian bits very happy! - but I also acknowledge the political reality of it.
I also do see the value in work, people derive significant mental health benefits from meaningful work too, that shouldn't be discounted.
The One, The Original, The Prophetic (July 1990), The Authentic “Evil Empires: One down, one to go…” bumper sticker, anticipating the obsolescence of railroad era continental-scale empires in the information age.
Too soon?
https://apnews.com/article/tariffs-cars-automakers-trump-can...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/04/business/econ...
In many cases, the U.S. no longer has manufacturing capacity in certain markets so the most likely outcome is simply that prices go up or manufacturing shifts to other countries like Vietnam, especially in an uncertain economic climate where companies aren’t jumping to take on debt chasing demand which could disappear at any time.
One other area where we don’t have alternatives: Mexican agriculture - their growing season is longer and that means American consumers either aren’t getting things out of season or are paying more for things like greenhouse crops.
You cannot go into a large org and understand what is and is not working in a few weeks. DOGE has been sloppy and largely more political theater this far
I mean, depends on the industry, but for instance take Target. Its profit margin is 3-4%, and that was in 2024, which was, really, pretty good times, all things considered. It doesn't have much room to absorb source price increases. Few industries dependent on imports do.
If you want that, you need deflation. And I'm not sure at this point if that's a better move than what's going on now.
If consumer spending was dropping as prices were going up, then sure, greed. But prices were rising and consumers were relentless. Which is totally logical. Even more logical when the "spending class" was getting massive raises/offers and rock bottom credit.
The only thing I can kind of think of is maybe some land or housing in Europe or New Zealand or somewhere kind of out of the way; perhaps something that you can rent out. Might not make you a ton of money, but it would hopefully hold its value over time?
The best time to have a plan is before you need it. If you wait until you need it, you’re too late.
(n=1, ymmv)
I was thinking out loud about this on a reddit thread, kind of going through my idea of different scenarios. "Maslow's hierarchy of GTFO".
As in... if you're in 1930ies Germany, you get out with whatever you can take, but you get out ASAP.
If you're in, say, Hungary... you don't really need to rush your exit. You might find the politics unpleasant, but you can leave whenever and take the time to take your stuff with you.
I guess my point is that most people aren't in imminent physical danger in Hungary right now and could just leave and that'd be fine for them and the regime.
That's a better situation to be in than "leave in 72 hours" for most people.
Also, did you go for a big bank (Santander BBVA etc) or smaller one?
Gracias!
https://old.reddit.com/r/GoingToSpain/ helped me, I hope it helps you. Safe travels, wishing you the best.
All these stupid sky-is-falling headlines that become forgotten in a couple days when it's on to the next outrage moment.
Like the whole Zelensky/Trump white house blow up is like sitting in on couples therapy. The deal is off! No, it's back on! It's tiresome.
Edit: I'm not pro Trump or trying to defend the fuckery. I'm just sick of Trump headlines every day. But pls, do continue the down votes.
Now that I think about it, if he had told me about these things in advance, I could probably make a LOT of money. I mean sure, it's illegal, but we could always gut the SEC[1]!
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/doge-targets-sec-next-for-...
On that much, we agree. Perhaps he should stop attempting to govern like the tragic parody of a business man he is and just be a normal fucking president then, with the added benefit of not being a worldwide embarrassment every.. what, 4 hours?
"He's just trolling"
etc
> All these stupid sky-is-falling headlines
I mean, what can be done here really? They're reporting on things Trump is doing. They can't not do that.
Price gouging COVID style is going to happen as well. The White House has screwed us.