Wow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.
disclaimer: I personally don't agree with that, so no need to argue against me. Just answering OP's question, because I feel that it is important to understand the other side.
"Is it possible to step off the hedonic treadmill? The best approach involves silencing our desires, restraining the insatiable appetite of our dopamine neurons. This is what the Amish have done. They have learned to live without modern consumerism. They don't use cars, reject the Internet, avoid the mall, and prefer a quite permanence to heady growth. The end result is a happiness boom. The Amish turn out to be as satisfied with their lives as members of the Forbes 400. Furthermore, their rates of depression are more than ten fold lower than the rest of the American population. The Amish are content because they have learned to ignore their dopaminergic pleas for more." https://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/03/16/happiness-wealth-...
One wonders if this is simply due to under-diagnosis.
Telling the Amish they're depressed sounds like a wonderful business oppportunity! Think of all the follow up products and services!
I suspect for many imported items there is no local manufacturing and there won't be one. Oh well we'll see soon how the voters react to that.
I have a bunch of white oak from a tree I cut down and had milled into lumber.
I wanted to make a bunch of benches for friends/family, etc. I have the lumber so all I needed was the bench ends/legs.
I looked at the domestic options and it was going to cost. I couldn't find anyone that would sell a set of legs for under $300 a piece or wanted me to "contact them for pricing." and that's all BEFORE shipping.
Keep in mind that your local bigbox store sells an almost exact replica of the made in China bench legs with crap lumber for $99. It'd be cheaper for me to buy those, junk the lumber and use my own.
I then checked alibaba and walked through the process of getting RFQ. The competent sellers who knew what I wanted and what to do were easy to work with and quick to check the various shipping costs - the per unit price would be pretty low($20ish even with my low volume order) but shipping would be $50-$70 a per set of legs due to the weight of the cast iron. BUT, now, even with tariffs, that leg would go from $~90 to $180ish AND I'd still be well below what the domestic cost is.
If I go forward at all, I'll still probably go with the Alibaba folks. I don't see how USA manufacturers will suddenly start producing these sort of bulky intermediary consumer products anytime soon.
https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam
They send all sorts of things but there was a big wave of seeds that got a lot of news coverage because of biosecurity fears.
That said the overwhelmingly majority are shocked but believe it's all just a negotiating tactic:
Though, I haven't seen any analysis on how common this is, so the effect might be negligible in terms of how much "the Chinese" are paying for these tariffs.
Prices go down when demand goes down, right? Why's that, don't sellers need to make a certain margin?
The other end of the spectrum is stuff people cannot do without, in which case the seller has no incentive to lower their margins because their customers don’t have a choice. Then, tariffs are entirely paid by the buyer.
In reality, everything is in between and accurately estimating how much everyone will be paying is very difficult. What we can predict with certainty is that prices can only go up, and that some businesses will fold because they cannot absorb the loss.
The tariffs are not paid for by the foreign producer and domestic consumer alone unless PED=0 or PES is extremely large.
Also, check out this link[0] some people actually don't have many alternatives either.
It's hard reporting on the current administration, it's the classic Russian flood style messaging, where you just flood as much (mis)information as you can, and people just can't follow.
https://www.ft.com/content/876bc3ec-aadb-11e8-8253-48106866c...