Hacker News Reader

Comment by Taniwha | Hacker News Reader

So what's going to happen is:

- each country will impose equivalent taxes on the import of US goods - this is not only expected, but the norm under international trade law. - with the rest of the world, still having free trade agreements between them, will start trading around the US, the US won't be able to compete

The value of the US$ will likely drop by the value of the tariffs. If everyone starts trading around the US we'll probably lose the US$ as a standard currency to trade in, maybe switching to yuan or euros, the US$ is buoyed by it being the currency everyone uses, that's going to drive it even lower.

View on HN

>each country will impose equivalent taxes on the import of US goods

Many of these countries already have tariffs on U.S. goods. The EU has a 25% tariff on US agricultural, chemical, and some manufactured products.

Not just goods, US tech sector will be taxed and tariffed into non-existence.

That's precisely the point right? Devalue the dollar when so you can pay off your debt with a higher value asset.

If the US$ drop 30%, the deficit magically dropped 30% when calculated in something else....

Which is like burning all the houses (including your own) so you can use your houses to buy other people's houses cheap.

This only works if you have superior manufacturing infra. To some extent the FAANGs export tech. But if FAANG is a tiny thing compared to say Toyota.

"Pay with digital dollar, and you don't have to pay tarifs". Problem solved. Demand for digital dollar will grow, but can also be used for normal dollar transactions. Therefore the USD will devalue, and gone is the national debt.

/s/digital dollar/bitcoin or trump coins or doge coins

This make no sense. Tariffs are paid by the supplier who is receiving money from the US customer. Are you saying if they pay the tariff in doge coins the tariff is zero doge coins?

As for other polices that "punish USD" "reward MagicCoins" ... well the market would hopefully see both currencies as crap and use Euros or Yuan. Or maybe new currency baskets will emerge to decentralise power.

No.. the tariffs are paid by the US importer/distributor (Target, Walmart) who is buying from the foreign supplier (Fererro from Nutella). The importer/distributor will charge the extra + margin to the US consumer. The supplier in the EU or China will pay exactly 0 buckazoids.

So basically in the US, Nutella will become only a luxury food!

My point about creating a new currency is that I wouldn't be surprised if they would allow certain transactions to bypass some regulations.

You know the US already pulled a trick on the dollar about 50 years ago, right?

> To some extent the FAANGs export tech.

Speaking of FAANG - EU has been considering proper taxes on the digital economy for some time already[0]. I guess this will speed up the works on this.

[0]https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-taxation...

But the US$ is kept artificially high because it's used as a reserve currency for things like oil/etc - this is IMHO the main reason why the US is in this position, it wont let its currency float down leaving exporters screwed (but cheap imports for the masses). Just increasing the cost of imports but not making export prices higher (lower in fact because other countries will be raising tariffs against the US)

It's very much a case of "you can't have your cake and eat it too" fix an artificially high US$ and you can force everyone to trade in it for oil, but as a side effect you screw your exporters

That's like burning your house down to cook a steak.

Perhaps.. mr Oompa Loompa might as well go out with a bang.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com