2025 Tariff Impacts at Puget Systems | Hacker News Reader

2025 Tariff Impacts at Puget Systems

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178 pointszdw139 comments

The fact we still have to explain what a tariff is because the president of the United States keeps lying about what a tariff is (and nobody in his circle bothers to call out his lies) pretty much summarizes the current state of the country.

As a former libertarian I used to argue against leftist why tariffs are bad. Funny how things have turned around.

Tariffs are an instrument in a trade flow process that can be used in many ways that can be contextually good or bad.

The deal with these tariffs is the flip flopping, the high rates, the probable corrupt behind doors and under the table deals on where they are applied and where they aren't, etc.

This might be of interest:

Why Trump’s tariffs are better than you think — and much worse

subscribe! https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/03/06/donald-trump-tariffs-im...

or read now, maybe subscribe later: https://archive.md/H46RG

From an outside PoV a disturbing fact of the Trump tariffs is they were put in force by executive order (OK), they were appealed for review (OK), there's a law that requires that appeal for review to be heard within a specific short time frame (OK) ... and recently the US Republicans passed a rider that offically " Stops Time " wrt to the passage of days to review Trump's tariffs ...

~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43358343

That's a bit weird, surely?

MAGA is Maoism. They low-key despise most good things about Western civilisation: freedom of thought, rule of law, presumption of innocence, trial by peers - they want goon squads and struggle sessions against political enemies. They think the sayings of Dear Leader, and the knowledge that you're part of the Revolution are superior to affordability and availability of goods. They prioritize commodities, resource extraction and the nobility of working in agriculture over scientific research and advanced manufacturing.

MAGA is not Maoism. Stop.

Steve Bannon disagrees. He's also wearing an oilcloth jacket symbolically as a Mao suit.

Who cares what Steve Bannon thinks?

He's the ideological founding father of MAGA?

Does that mean he is right or that he knows what Maoism is?

Why are you a 'former libertarian', and - I presume - not one 'now'. And do you own a tesla?

I stopped being a Libertarian around 10 years ago. I could write whole essays about, but it started when I realised that the world was already anarchist and if Libertarian societies were superior then they would naturally outcompete other societies and we would all live in an Libertarian utopia right now.

> [...]if Libertarian societies were superior then they would naturally outcompete other societies[...]

Not for the lack of trying. There have been more than a handful of Libertarian city takeovers and sea-steading projects, and they all end in similar, predictable ways. The sea-steader/new country declarations fail to defend "their" territory against an actual military, and the libertarian towns run out of money and/or people willing to live in a free-for-all society without common services.

Yes, here's an old ad from Canada's Liberal party using NAFTA to attack the Conservative party:

  https://youtube.com/watch?v=eBcRYmk88jw

That said, most people, in any era, on both the left and right, probably agree that 'sudden tariffs for no reason whose details change every few weeks' are a bad thing.

It was a surprise to me that the article claims that tariffs are only on imports. I understand that usually tariffs are imposed on imports, but aren't there also cases where export is hit by a tariff, e.g. to discourage export to improve local availability or to hit a specific country with higher costs.

Isn't that generally called an export tax, not a tariff?

Should we start calling tariffs 'import taxes'?

Probably. It would have made it a lot harder to sell to voters.

Yeah, that's probably smarter.

Normally we presume having a proper word for a thing is more descriptive, but in this case because people aren't used to the idea: maybe being more verbose is the answer.

Lots of countries do call them import taxes, or import duties, or just duties.

That’s where the term “duty free” that you see in airports comes from.

But I guess until a certain influential individual started lying about tariffs, this wasn’t really necessary because no one was really confused about who paid the tariffs, because the people who knew about them clearly knew it was the importers paid for them and the people who didn’t understand how they worked had no reason to be confused because everyone who did would clearly explain that importers paid them.

At least in the US export tariffs are forbidden by the constitution: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C5-1/...

Here in Norway there's export tariffs/duties on exactly one class of items: fish[1].

Gotta earn some bucks on that salmon going to Japan.

[1]: https://www.toll.no/no/varer/fisk/eksport-av-fisk/eksportavg...

> (and nobody in his circle bothers to call out his lies)

Not only that, they double down!

There is this press conference with Karoline Leavitt where she claims that tarriffs are a "tax hike on foreign countries" and the reporter tries to explain to her that tarriffs are paid by the importer. She then acts insulted that he would dare to "test her economic knowledge". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYj9yyo8Tk0

I mean, these people apparently have a university degree. I don't believe they don't know what a tarriff is. But how can you be comfortable saying such stupid shit in front of a world audience?

I find it pretty amazing that so many people are calling Karoline Leavitt a liar. She is the press secretary for the president of the United States.

However, it's possible that mistakes have been made inadvertently. The stock market is down 5 trillion dollars, and the president must be very busy using his business prowess to deal with the situation (just like he did when he turned his casinos around).

> I mean, these people apparently have a university degree. I don't believe they don't know what a tarriff is. But how can you be comfortable saying such stupid shit in front of a world audience?

It's simple. The way democracy works is that if you get 51% of votes (or something like that), you have absolute power. This means that the most effective strategy to "win" is to find some social group that happens to be 51% of the whole society, and focus on them. Actually, you don't need that. You need 51% of votes, not nation-wide support, so if your social group happens to vote more actively than the rest, you can win the election despite having minority support. Or you can use quirks of the voting system (gerrymandering, electoral college, etc.) to your advantage.

And guess what social group is at least 51% of the whole society, easy to control, and won't mind you wrecking the country? Stupid and poor people combined. Stupid people are the majority and can be easily manipulated. Poor people can't lose anything, so they're willing to vote for any change whatsoever. By convincing the majority of stupid and poor people to vote for you, which is easy as long as you forgo your personal honor, you're pretty much guaranteed to win.

The bottom line is, when a politician says something that isn't logical, it's not because they're uneducated, it's because their target audience isn't expecting logical arguments, but rather emotional ones. They're not addressing an intelligent conversation partner, they're addressing an elderly with dementia. There are seven million boomers with Alzheimer's in the US. And 1,5 million college teachers. It makes zero sense to focus on the latter group, if the former group is four times larger. That's an extreme example, but it illustrates the point.

Source: this is how the "gays spread ADHD and 5G" party won election in my country. The good news is that after eight years they lost the majority in the parliament, but they still remain a monument to the monumental collective stupidity of my nation.

To be clear, you don't need 51% of the vote or anything close to it with our current electoral college system. In fact, the system is so broken that you can win the presidency with as little as 21% of the popular vote:

https://maa.org/math-values/how-low-can-the-popular-vote-go/

This nonsense that "I won the election so I have a mandate from the majority of the American people to do as I please" is just not accurate.

That's the way one type of democracy works. There are others.

The president wears no clothes

Biden had six or seven bankruptcies when he was a senator and people didn't say he had no clothes on. I think we can give the current president a little grace.

EDITED:

Trump had six or seven bankruptcies, not Biden.

Do you have a cite for this claim?

Sorry, I just looked and it's Trump who had six or seven bankruptcies.

It seems like a lot of people are saying that Trump is a very chaotic and incompetent person who doesn't know how to manage money. Trump's leadership has already caused the stock market to lose five trillion dollars in value since the start of his term.

Biden doesn't have any bankruptcies or personal scandals. Biden didn't pay off an adult film start before the 2016 election. That was Trump too. And Biden wasn't convicted of 34 felonies either. That was also Trump.

It's weird because Trump promised to bring down prices on day 1, but I it sure doesn't look like he knows what he's doing. Or maybe Trump is a liar and a demagogue. Please take the 'demagogue' bit with a grain of salt, I hate to even seem inflammatory.

Gotta stop taking those red pills

I can't find any source that says this. It's hard to check for sure because there are lots of articles about the student loan bailout. But I was unable to find even a single source saying this.

A single anecdote does not summarize the current state of the country. Assuming that something as complex as the state of a country can be summarized in any rational way.

Very informative post. The author does an excellent job breaking down the costs by subsystem.

I am very surprised there are price increases though. The current administration said prices would start coming down on day 1. Doesn't seem like that's happening.

(If this post is sarcastic, it's unclear. Particularly your statement about being surprised.)

> The current administration said prices would start coming down on day 1.

By which mechanism would that be? Not from the US so haven't picked up on what's been said.

I think the parent is being sarcastic.

Fair point, my sarcasm detector was recharging.

The current administration promised to lower prices immediately. I guess I'm not understanding why it hasn't happened yet.

He wouldn't have promised something that he knew he could never deliver, because that would make him a demagogue.

Prices will be lower just after Ukraine war ends in 1 day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

I do get that we're all looking for different ways to cope or engage with the gremlins destroying the wings of our country, but this really doesn't help.

I never heard of Poe's Law until now.

I have watched YouTubers successfully make psychological inroads with people who support the current administration by saying things like "Trump either meant what he said or he's a demagogue. We'll see how it turns out."

Or by acknowledging their belief that Trump is a successful business man, but by including the truth right after it. I'll say "Yeah he's definitely a very successful businessman, which is why it's so surprising that he managed to wipe 5 trillion dollars worth of value from the stock market, which has hurt a ton of people."

This is exactly how propaganda works. A lie and then truth, or truth and then a lie. It's amazingly effective.

I get where you're coming from, but I would think that relies on having a personal one-on-one connection rather than drive by comments. This forum is also much closer to the true believers who are well aware the goal isn't effective government, but rather to destroy our current society in favor of tech/corpo authoritarianism (which they think will be based on voluntary participation due to having defined away all of the ways in which it isn't).

Shocked that increased costs lead to increased prices. Absolutely floored. No one could have predicted this.

I just looked and quite a few of the world's top economists endorsed Harris/Walz for president.

Will wonders never cease!

Auto tariffs make perfect sense when you realize every car in the market except Tesla are going to cost 25% more starting next week.

''Is there such a thing as a Made in America car anymore?'':

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/made-in-america-cars-1.7494...

And then see this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43511253

I can promise you the cars are not moving right now and the 25% extra cost will not fly and that’s a silly proposition anyhow.

However… as an automotive engineer, Tesla has the best automotive supply chain in the world.

People think that 2008 car-pocalypse was about GM and Chrysler. It wasn’t. It was about Bosch, Johnson Controls, Delphi, Yitzhaki, Omron, Continental Tevis, Reccaro, Ford Honda Toyota Mercedes Tata Geely China Mexico Canada… every single manufacturer was going to have a massive problem if all the suppliers and people involved went under, because everyone runs so goddamn, incredibly lean that no one can handle a single bump in the road. If GM or Chrysler shut down, it would’ve dragged Johnson controls, if that happened, Honda and Toyota aren’t building cars either.

People like to pretend that there’s a big difference between all these cars, and there is some in decision decisions, but as far as something like antilock brake controllers there’s Bosch and continental Tevis. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another one, at least not in 10 years.

You can get all fussy about Elon Musk if you want or Teslas or try and confuse your political ideology for virtue for whatever reason… but Tesla makes enough of their own vehicle that if GM went under, Tesla is still building vehicles.

It took them a long time to figure out that a car wasn’t just a computer with wheels. And when I touch or work on a Tesla, I can tell that they’re made differently.

Short version, cars will not be 25% more expensive next week. The Tesla is in a good position to be an almost entire domestic manufacturer.

> everyone runs so goddamn, incredibly lean

Yeah. This is why major automotive innovations are hard to come by without massive scale. When they started out, no supplier wanted to work with Tesla because they simply did not have the scale. How exactly do you think Tesla still managed to innovate and build the best automotive supply chain in the world?

Answer: it was decades of (Democratic) government subsidies. Tesla was exclusively backed by the US government and it's promise towards climate goals. That's why they didn't go under. Despite all the naysayers and massive short interests.

> Tesla is in a good position to be an almost entire domestic manufacturer

Literally my point.

And also, they are now backed up by the anti-science, anti-climate, anti-ev, pro-coal Republican government. How the tables have turned.

I do not fuss over Elon Musk. I admire him. He is arguably the best, most genius con man of our time.

It is still the case, though, that Consumers Reports ratings are consistent among brands and models. Compared to friends who buy American cars I’ve had 10x fewer problems and kept my cars far longer.

There are differences in how things are designed. Ford trucks for example have a TON of tubes and hoses for their engines, plastic with cheap fittings. I think it’s a bad idea. Compare that to the RAM trucks that are much more basic and lowered featured but should last a lot longer. The electronics and manufactures are all the same.

As far as “customer satisfaction” and “problems” there are hit and misses with all brands. I’ve been in the industry for 25 years and never once had any indications brand was greatly better than another, not with so much inbreeding. When I see people write “American is worse than European” I know that person just doesn’t have enough experience with both.

Which is understandable. What does the average person have real experience with? 5 cars, maybe?

So we have a small business absorbing costs (aka losing money) to postpone the effects of this policy on their customers, to their own detriment. The administration has already shown other industries that the policy will flip as soon as someone they pay attention to complains. If/when that happens here, the business will have sacrificed for nothing. Would it be better for everyone to make the effects immediately obvious all the way down the chain?

As a person with 3 Puget Systems workstations in my house, always good to see our local custom computer gem mentioned. Those guys are excellent in both build and support.

I love the level, reasoned, intelligent tone. It is everything the current ignoramuses are not.

In order to combat inflation, the chocolate ration is being increased to 20 grams.

Note that these are near-term impacts. In the long term the listed prices may be undercut by domestic manufacturers popping up or expanding their product lines. I haven't heard much analysis on that scale, but would be interested to read more if anyone finds some.

Only if we have domestic supply of all the inputs, which we don’t. Domestic manufacturing still relies on imported materials.

Yes, but input materials are always cheaper than finished products (for any reasonably run business). Often below half the price.

Yes that’s the problem. If inputs get more expensive it is harder to build domestically because nobody will build things when the inputs cost more than the output.

Or we might invent Fusion power and energy might become free. Our future could be very bright, lots of maybes.

Or it could play out like this: initially, it doesn't make sense to manufacture locally when the price is $5. So tariffs are raised to artificially inflate the price to $8, making domestic manufacturing viable. But now we're looking at a government protected industry. If or when that artificial price support is removed, we risk losing local manufacturing again. This isn’t a model for lower prices — it’s a model for sustaining industry through artificially high pricing and policy-based constraints.

The only issue here is that companies need certainty the tariffs will be around for a while before they would take on the massive cost of on-shoring manufacturing.

Which is lacking in this current situation.

Not 100% certainty, but if the probability that they stay is p, then if must be that

  p * ROE_if_remain + (1 - p) * ROE_if_reverted >= desired_return.

Is there even an American domestic GPU manufacturer? I can't imagine it's an easy, or quick thing, to build out a factory capable of churning out 5090s, so the best bet would be someone capable of expanding quickly.

I don't think so. That said, the 5090 is a 4nm chip and TSMC Arizona is currently manufacturing other 4nm designs at scale.

First, as people have pointed out you need a high likelihood that tariffs will be high for many years - advanced manufacturing costs a lot to setup and you can’t just build factories and hire skilled workers overnight.

Second, domestic manufacturers are aware of how much their competition charges. If a Taiwanese part costs $100, the domestic provider is going to charge $98, not $80.

when Brazil had factories producing cpus clones that enabled McIntosh and pc xt clones to be sold, apple and others pushed the gov to intervene.

USA put on the table the suggestion of a tarif on Brazilian oranges imports, which was so profitable to the local elites there, they not only closed the two factories but also put an 80% tarif on electronics imports to rebuild them as a gesture of good will (explaining politically it was to foster legitimate innovation locally)

Brazil still have that tarif.

also, it's funny how the usa tariffs today are hurting usa companies, but could be seen as a gesture of good will to other nations if you squint as much as Brazilians would have to then, to see the real picture.

Look, there is only one reason they could have to do this - to prepare for war.

There's no other way to connect anyone's goals with this action, and neither has there been any other route to electoral tolerance of self-imposed austerity.

in the most self-fulfilling prophecy way possible

I don't understand the claim. That the Trump tariffs are preparations for some actual war they intend to wage? Who against?

If the US were expecting a war against e.g. China (e.g. over Taiwan), then reducing dependence on China (e.g. by making imports from China more expensive so it's cheaper to buy from elsewhere and companies switch) would make a lot of sense, wouldn't it?

Do you really think that's what you are seeing? And Canada and Mexico?

He tariffed China in his 1st administration as well, which was a failure (and in terms of war, inconsequential).

The more obvious reason here is that it's part of the bullshit "america-first" campaign, and no further thought went into it.

Oh that explains why the tariffs are focused on China.. Oh wait, that is what Biden did.

Trump? Yeah, no, he is just a moron, and prefers to tariff our allies, which means eventually we don't have allies, which makes your war against China abit more challenging, eh?

On the highest level, the US's action to end global trade with the US would be necessary to threaten war with credibility. On the ground level, going by typical norms, an actual war would be required for an electorate to tolerate such a large price or tax increase for essential goods.

Here are a few options taken from recent headlines:

- A war with Iran that would result in international sanctions, including steep sanctions from their trading partners.

- A direct conflict with China.

- The international sanctions resulting from that forced annexation of Greenland that they won't stop talking about for some reason.

- The same for Canada. (!?)

- Basically any other unilateral military action, since most of the world was a major trading partner of the US in the Obama era.

From my memory, Trump wants actual plans for an invasion of Panama, wants to make Canada a state, and he wants to annex Greenland. All of these claims, are threats of war.

I have it on very good authority (Fox News if you want to know) that Trump just says these things.

With the stock market down 5 or so trillion dollars, I am sure the president is very busy using his renowned financial acumen to get things under control. He doesn't have time for war.

Gosh, can't anyone take a joke these days?

Well, I asked the question and got entirely different answers from all responders, so I guess the claim is baseless.

I don't think the current administration has remotely near the foresight you all seem to.

Well, I'm the original poster. I think all of these responses cover different aspects of the range of possibility - the US is turning away from the benefits of peace.

Well, I can absolutely get behind the statement that the tariffs don't promote peace.

FWIW, this was a real question I had, I wasn't among the downvoters. The part that I disagree with is that this is a deliberate/planned precursor to war. Donald Trump views his life (and presidency) as a series of deals and 'hard' negotiating tactics. War would be a failure of that.

His methods are misguided and a caricature of actual negotiation.

Believe it or not, the US is still a republic with diffuse power. While the president can have a whim to do something, the rest of the system still needs a reason to allow it. I don't think explanations that rely on total alignment with an individual personality are complete.

Preparing for a war and preparing to threaten it with good credibility are exactly the same thing. That is what the US and the USSR were doing when the end of life on Earth (or at least all life in New York or Moscow) was regularly bluffed against. In the modern world deliberate wars are quite rare, at least as the theory goes they are failed attempts at bluffing. Obviously no country would start a war without first trying to threaten it unless their intent was genocidal.

After the 1000th time of threatening the advisors will start to say, "we will look weak if it doesn't happen."

There's no one reason this is being done. Trump has tariffs stuck in his brain because he remembers some discussion from the early 1980s about it. And some of the people around him want to destroy the United States in its current form for various stupid and eventually self-defeating reasons of their own, and inflicting mass misery happens to dovetail with their agendas, or so they think.

By the way, Republican Senators know better, and they should be stopping a lot of what's happening. But they don't want to, because they think it'll end their power. Joke's on them: that's ending anyway under this regime.

Yup, we're going to have to go back to standing National Guard in the Red states.

He also repeatedly claimed that "tarriff" is his favorite word next to "God" and "love". I wouldn't be surprised if that turns out to be the actual reason...

There's no rational explanation,

Reply on news.ycombinator.com