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Comment by hnburnsy | Hacker News Reader

>25% on South Korea, 32% on Taiwan, 36% on Thailand, 46% on Vietnam

Harley Davidson moved some of its production to Thailand in 2018 to avoid a 31% tariff the EU had on US manufactured motorcycles, announced in 2024 it was moving more production there, and prior to today had plans to sell the Thailand produced bikes back into the US, as the US had a 0% tariff on bikes. Not surprisingly Thailand has a 60% tariff on imported motorcycles.

This tariff jumping is real. I guess we will see how it works out for the US.

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Just think how many companies moved production from China to Vietnam to avoid China tariffs, and now tariffs on Vietnam are larger than on China.

It's just going to be a game of whack-a-mole as production and dumping shift to the less taxed countries. In the end, manufacturing won't shift to the US while labor costs are too high for factory workers. And the only way to remedy that is tanking the currency.

Tanking the currency is literally step 2 in their plan.

https://www.nordea.com/en/news/mar-a-lago-accord-explained-a...

It's obviously the only real end game to this policy. Asia needs to divest itself off US bonds, which China has been slowly doing the background of late. No matter how it plays out, it's looking like higher interest rates, inflation, and foreclosures for everyday citizens and SMEs are going to be on the cards for the US, and it's going to take something akin to religious faith for people to tolerate the hardship on the way to this promised renewed prosperity.

Note that the new 34% China tariffs are on top of the existing 20% blanket tariffs Trump has already imposed on China, so it's really 54%. https://x.com/EamonJavers/status/1907540655871521264

Bessent didn't sound too sure in that interview. Given how many members of the cabinet lie on camera flagrantly multiple times a week and how even the numbers on their little poster were total BS pulled from thin air, I'm not gonna give him benefit of the doubt.

I wonder how much of that was transshipping, just using Vietnam as a passthrough?

This underscores the difficulty companies have trying to navigate through this. Even if Trump doesn't change his mind tomorrow, as he's liable to, he's only around for another four years and for most companies that's not enough time to justify a supply chain overhaul.

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