This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in comparison.
There are of course quite a few large US businesses being affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate into shifts in political donations. Which, I'm sure is something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term elections get closer. That's a stick that can be (and probably already is) wielded that might produce results soonish.
At least, I imagine the CEOs of GM, Ford, Boeing, etc. might have a thing or two to say about seeing China disappear as a market where they can do business to sell stuff or to source key components that they require for their own products. China was not being subtle rejecting delivery of a couple of new Boeing planes. And reductions in container traffic from China (which are the life blood of the US economy) are of course a very visible thing. And since container deliveries are critical for supply chains of most manufacturing that actually still happens in the US, that could get ugly really quickly.
Worst case all this triggers a recession. Those are rarely predicted accurately until after they've happened. But the signs aren't great and wall street is definitely nervous. A few stocks crashing because investors start panic selling could do the job. We're not there yet, but it got close a few weeks ago.
I sincerely hope you’re right, but all initial evidence is the oligarchs kissing the ring, not pulling the strings. Maybe when it becomes obvious that they’re not getting anything for all that abasement they change tacks, but nothing in the Trump era has suggested to me that these folks have the tiger by anything but the tail.
It was comical how quickly amazon back pedaled on showing tariffs transparently in pricing as soon as the whitehouse complained.
There’s a whole generation of neoliberals learning Littlefinger’s lesson these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifaRhL95HUM - it’s a shame the rest of us are stuck on this ride with them.
Which is why you have to occasionally knock the people willing to exploit the peaceful order, off.
H.R.3040 - To prohibit the use of ranked choice voting in elections for Federal office.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3040
You need to present it as a choice: you either bring about ranked-choice voting and a wider range of political parties so that issues can be dealt with peacefully, or, face real consequences for attempts to block the efforts at peace.
But the others will have their peace.
Is it controversial to say that if you really wanted to "fight the oligarchy", your policy positions would be pretty similar to the America first agenda (sans social issues)?
This is what I mean when I say the oligarchs have the tiger by the tail - from the time of the Moral Majority through the evangelicals of Bush's era through the Tea Party through MAGA, the business wing of the republican party has been cultivating the populist wing as an electoral strategy. They've managed to muddy the water with enough "government bad, immigrant criminals, trans athletes" rhetoric that what you've got now is a party and a movement that can _feel_ that there's something wrong - stagnant wages, inaccessible health care, deaths of despair, and Jeff Bezos - but the right wing message machine still has enough of a hand on the wheel that they can't actually get their way to things like labor rights and social security and all the other stuff we came up with last time this kind of thing happened.
Then you get Donald Trump, who well and truly does not give a shit about anything at all, and so he's absolutely fine to grab the wheel here and yank it hard into populism land, and now the oligarchs have a problem, because they've got a mafia boss at the head of an angry mob, and no part of that has any coherent ideology except Trump's crystal clear vision of people paying him a lot of money and treating him like a king, and now you've got tantrum as policy and no actual adults left in the room.
So, yes, America First and the MAGA movement are, depending on the day and time, anti-oligarch, but they're anti-oligarch like a dog is anti-car - there's not really a _plan_ there, just a lot of noise and motion and probably some teeth marks, but I don't really think it's gonna work out great for the dog either.
If you're "kissing the ring", you're not in control. The people with the ring are.
To spell it out, the US is not governed by a billionaire oligarchy.
Maybe. It is possible, though, that we are now in a situation like in the third Nolan Batman movie where Tom hardy puts his hand on the rich guy’s neck and says “do you feel in charge?”
In a sane world, that's what targeted tariffs are. You don't want to tariffs across the whole board because you might affect exporting manufactures whose prices will go through the roof and might experience disruption. It is kind of what is happening with auto tariffs now that there is a huge blow back but one wonder how many industries out there can't voice their concerns or are not aware of this.
How do we compare the pain (and yes, some destruction) that we have to endure today against the devastation that is clearly in the horizon for both regions within a decade or two?
To be sure, what's going on today should have been done twenty to thirty years ago. Doing this today is far more difficult and painful.
I think Kevin O'Leary put it best: What we want a reasonably free markets. It isn't just about tariffs. It's about regulatory lockout, intellectual property and more.
For example, India imposes as much as a 110% tariff on US cars and trucks. The list of such actions --which also included non-tariff rules-based restrictions-- is long. From China imposing up to 25% on our cars, autos, chemicals and food to the EU, Canada, Mexico and others following suit. Brazil collected over $800 million in retaliatory tariffs blocking US pharmaceuticals, autos and textiles.
In other words, the relationship with hundreds of countries has been very one-sided for a long time. US industry needs to export to thrive, but if countries like Turkey impose 140% tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets are de-facto shut down.
How long can any country survive this kind of inequity?
So, yeah, this is a rough moment. I hope it is for the best. Everyone benefits from a more open and balanced market.
And then, of course, there's one of the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft.
Going back to Kevin O'Learly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkdor6_rw4
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=567065763062114
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFWWqbDwuw
https://www.tmz.com/watch/kevin-o-leary-china-tariffs-04-09-...
Which is not being discussed enough.
And that the current situation can go on a long time but not forever.
Yup. China has been systematically stealing the IP of anything made in their country since forever. Companies kept falling for it because the potential market looked so big. Now BYD makes cars as good as Tesla and it's all #ShockedPikachuFace
Not that is matters. Cars, including electric cars have been around for 100 years. There are very little important patents he could have. Sure there is a lot you can patent, but the vast majority is details that are trivial for any competent engineer to work around just using known prior art.
The important patents are likely in batteries which Tesla doesn't develop. Or chargers, but again the important details come with the battery.
TESLA might have some patents on the NACS connector and similar things. Those are easy to work around, but you wouldn't want to.
I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening.
“Plenty” but still less overall than 10-20 years ago, 30, 40, 50 years ago. There’s a quite clear trend to zero here.
If you could explain why it’s trending to zero when the dollar value of American manufacturing outputs keeps rising, I’d appreciate it.
There are plenty of other charts that contradict you on the St Louis Fed FRED website.
So, not inflation adjusted. Also doesn't capture the mix of what's being produced, i.e., a shift towards only manufacturing high value items versus being more broadly diversified and manufacturing things along a range of price points. In other words, a complete hollowing out of our manufacturing base.
Your same link shows $1.38T in 1997. Which is $2.77T today. In other words, DOWN in inflation adjusted terms from nearly 30 years ago.
The percent of GDP has been dropping but that is just that GDP has been growing faster. Which means that the US has been doing more valuable things than making stuff.
All dollar values on that chart are adjusted for inflation.
> Also doesn't capture the mix of what's being produced, i.e., a shift towards only manufacturing high value items versus being more broadly diversified and manufacturing things along a range of price points.
The chart does not capture the trend you speak of, assuming it exists.
> In other words, a complete hollowing out of our manufacturing base.
That’s not how I would put it, if you want to look at it through that lens, it’s your right.
I would say we manufacture things higher up the value chain and use the dollars we earn from making that stuff to import cheaper foreign commodities instead of manufacturing them here and using dollars to buy American made clothes and shoes and other commodity items at a much higher price than we can buy them from other countries.
We also export services and receive dollars in return, this is much more lucrative that manufacturing imo.
Why would any foreign nation even want to manufacture goods to ship here, if there's nothing much to buy with our currency? If our currency does devalue, we run the risk of not being able to import what we need, and not being able to afford to tool up to manufacture it domestically. And yet trends are clear that in many industrial sectors US manufacturing has already fallen to what might as well be zero.
Is it your impression that spa management and pet care are the only working-class service jobs available?
Most of the trades are categorized as service professions in the statistics. So is construction.
I think we both agree that one of us has unrealistic impressions of the big picture here. When we regularly here of layoffs that affect hundreds and thousands of jobs, welders and electricians can't absorb those unemployed to any great degree. Nor all of the trades put together.
There are plenty of jobs. Every person who isn't manufacturing is a person who can do something else. A modern car uses a lot more engineers. While we don't need many spa mangers, it is nice that spas exist and so some of those spa managers are needed.
> How long can any country survive this kind of inequity?
What worries me more is that the US has been funding global military security through deficit spending funded by foreign investors (who got their dollars from US trade). We're cutting legs off that stool, so we might see more wars and a declining dollar, never mind fewer cheap imports.
Because if they can't make thing you can win a war - just stop all their trade and then invade. When they are limited to stick and stone while you have guns war is easy to win.
Of course in reality the US and EU are not in danger of losing all manufacturing, and their military leaders are will aware of this and so put extra effort into keeping some important manufacturing in the country. Politicians are generally (but not always!) aware of this and try to be friends with others who can make things you don't make locally.
These comparisons (and conclusions of one-sidedness) always leave the greatest benefit the US has enjoyed: access to a massive labor force willing to do work most Americans aren't[1] at wages lower than are Legal in the US.
[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-empl...
Let's look at what an actual domestic manufacturer has to say about tariffs[1]?
Oh, looks bad! Turns out, manufacturers import stuff, add value to it, and sell it for more money!
Hopefully we'll get more cast iron plants in Cape Cod. I'm off to the mill!
[1]https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump-tar...
Long term, manufacturers will come back or be created to grab all those customers. But for the rest of the world, it's much harder for suppliers who lost a massive chunk of their customers to suddenly find new customers beyond what's already existing. Creating demand is notoriously harder than increasing supply. And it dosen't help that the majority of other major economies are also export-based, so unless if some are willing to run deficits (and they won't), there's literally nowhere else to go other than a global recession. Developing countries are far too poor and would essentially be turned into captive markets bereft of industrialization.
I don't agree with the implementation of Trump's policies, but this is going right back to Keynes' concerns about limitations of global trade balancing, it's a long time coming, and much of the blame does come back to the surplus economies that doubled down on manufacturing rather than transitioning to consumer based economies.
If you read that article about Haas automation, they say that they import cast iron and PCBs, presumably they import some chips and use some domestic chips, they put these all together and sell machine tools (big machines used to make machines, the exact sort of thing that trump et all are banging on about needing to be made in the usa, which last I checked, Oxnard california counts as "USA").
Nobody in the USA makes cast iron in the volume needed by haas; nobody in the USA makes PCBs at the price point needed by haas. Nobody's going to be able to start domestic production of either now, because they'd need to import all the materials from elsewhere to make the cast iron foundry, and nobody's going to take the chance that their multi million dollar investment isn't going to be ruined by trump changing his mind in a month.
So whatever you think you're arguing for, the world's way more complex than you think it is. And this execution of whatever the plans are, has been so far beyond inept as to land in a different scale altogether.
By definition, global exports must be matched with global imports to sum to zero, unless if you are trading with aliens. This is basic double-entry accounting and mainstream economics.
>Nobody in the USA makes cast iron in the volume needed by haas; nobody in the USA makes PCBs at the price point needed by haas. Nobody's going to be able to start domestic production of either now
On the long term, factories can be built, workers can be trained. If the price point of manufacturing is more profitable domestically than through outsourcing via tariffs, then investment will naturally flow to account for those opportunities.
But like I said, what you fail to see is that firms like Haas Automation are not reflective of the larger US economy, the majority of the US economy is supported by consumption, not manufacturing, and actually it's the top 10% that accounts for almost 50% of domestic consumption, meaning a whopping 10% of US consumers account for 15% of global consumption. Counter-Tariffs aren't going to mean as much to Investment Bankers, Lawyers, Doctors, Senior SWE etc. People will come to and build production if China is not available because they will want to grab the lucrative opportunities of the largest consumer base in the world.
On the other hand for surplus exporters, bereft of such a consumer base, unless if they find a way to make up for that consumer base (which is very difficult), all those factories are going to close down very quickly, and mass unemployment ensues. It's not just China, it's possibly Vietnam, most of SEA, Germany, Japan, etc. And that matters for the negotiating table, hence why many did not pursue counter-tariffs. But they've been doubling down on manufacturing rather than shoring up domestic consumption, the US reaction is by definition the Beggar-Thy-Neighbour as a consequence of their greedy actions.
The larger argument really is for a more balanced global trade, where countries current account balances would be near 0. It's true that US consumption rate will probably need to go down for it, but that also means that the rest of the world would be increasing their consumption (and their living standards) rather than suppressing domestic demand for the sake of manufacturing fetishism. It would be an all around more resilient to trade shocks than the status quo today.
Let's go back to a real world example -- a successful machine tool manufacturer in the united states, theoretically the very thing we want (which in fact, I totally agree with -- such companies are important in a huge number of ways).
They import raw or partially finished materials (cast iron, blank or partially assembled PCBs); haas does a bunch of work on these materials, puts it all together and sells the finished product for more than all the raw materials cost to lots of other (typically different) people.
Now, because of blanket tariffs -- on things the US has no interest, capacity, or foundation to build, like cast iron. Nobody's going to make a PCB assembly company or cast iron foundry in the USA to meet this need, it'd take years, the products would be way too expensive, and the only possible market is ... haas automation? Never going to happen. Instead, haas will just raise prices and lose market.
The blanket tariff negotiation (I tariff all your stuff, or else!) is "Do what I want or I'll kill your daughter, eat your dog, and burn your farm!" -- but in this case, because trump's said the same thing to everyone, he's actually saying "Do what I want or I'll kill my daughter, eat my dog, and burn my farm!"
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bop.asp#:~:text=The%20s...
I'm talking about global trade balance, your example is examining trade relations from a individual perspective that ignores the activities of other actors, when you need to be looking at the global sum of all exports and imports of all the actors involved. Namely put, in a closed economy, the sum of all the credits and debits between you, the gas station, dentist, etc will sum to zero. The economy of Earth in a similar manner is a closed system, we're not trading with aliens here. This is mainstream economics, you're going to woo-land if you're trying to deny this.
>and the only possible market is ... haas automation? Never going to happen. Instead, haas will just raise prices and lose market.
If the only possible market is Haas Automation then it's economically insignificant and not reflective of larger structural changes in the US economy. But that's a highly dubious assumption. Like I said, the US economy dosen't run on exports, the vast majority is consumption. The incentives are there to raise up entire supply chain given the massive profits involved here.
The thing about the blanket tariff negotiation tactic is that on the flipside, it is true that many of these nations very much were pursuing their own forms of economic nationalism with heavy protectionism and tariffs. For as much as American economists like to say that deficits don't matter, China, Vietnam, Germany, Japan all seem quite intent on maintaining a persistent surplus, whether through buying bonds to weaken their currency, heavy subsidies, or demand suppression at home to bring down wages. It's a bit absurd to expect American to uphold the principles of free trade while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the mercantalism of other nations. What Trump is doing is highly destructive, and there are better ways to negotiate, but it's a problem really that these surplus nations have created from the last few decades. And it's a problem not just for America, but for much of the developing world that will find to increasingly hard to climb up the value chain so long as China is dominating global exports.
No doubt there will be a recession, but on the long term, it will work. But for other countries, the situation will much worse because you cannot increase demand in the same way you can raise supply chains. That's why it's more likely that negotiated settlement similar to the Plaza Accords will occur, really in the question of whether we all seriously adhere to the principles of a free trade, or we collapse in a mercantalist free for all. In the world of a former, trade balances would close to zero because of the self-balancing currency effects of imbalances.
If you actually read the literature before Trump, this is something that has been talked about by Keynes, by Bernanke, by Stiglitz, by Katherine Tao, even admitted to a certain extent by Krugman. The hysterics of modern politics is that notion that "trade deficits aren't necessairly bad" has shifted to "trade deficits are never bad", when there are specific conditions when trade deficits are symptomatic of larger problems, and those conditions may be apparent right now for USA.
https://www.wita.org/blogs/keynes-support-tariffs/#:~:text=K...
This isn't about my hopes and dreams, it's about reality. I gave up years ago. I manufacture in China and other places. My take, after suffering the consequences for years, was simple: If my own government does not help me with such things as IP protection, control of currency manipulation, etc., screw it, I'll look after myself and my family. No choice.
So, I sold my manufacturing equipment and got the fuck out. We work with two factories in China and, well, I don't give a shit any more. Sounds horrible, I know, but, as the movie line goes "Mongo small fish in pond of life". This is something for the next generation to figure out...or not...and suffer whatever the consequences might be.
What is always notable is that almost nobody commenting on these kinds of threads know what the fuck they are talking about. A bunch of software engineers playing business person. Not a clue. Go talk to real manufacturing entrepreneurs and see what they say. Until then, you are not at all equipped to understand what's in front of us at all.
If I had a specific domestic product to protect and foster, I imagine I'd probably be somewhat more nuanced than whatever this process has been.
Over my life, I've seen car assembly leave the Los Angeles area, I've worked in machine tool manufacturing plants, I've seen modest electronic manufacturing companies fail in Massachusetts, I've seen C Beams glitter off the shoulder of Orion, etc. Now I work a bland service sector job managing kafka clusters.
The infrastructure elsewhere was developed by thoughtful and focused government effort to foster the industry domestically. I don't see what's going on now, in any way, focused or thoughtful. I don't see a plan, just arson.
So, I won't speak for you, but I can't imagine anyone looking at the current US Governments' policies and thinking "I'm going to pull assets from elsewhere and build there because that looks really stable and thoughtful and they've got my back."
One of my career highlights was having him explain how much it will do for my career to do his project at a discount (I was helping a friend as a favor) and I told Kevin that it was just as likely to have the opposite effect.
That's an unreasonable position to take. What matters isn't who says something at all. It's if what the person says is true. And, in Kevin's case, what he is saying is 100% on point and correct.
Aside from personal experience, I have met many entrepreneurs who got shafted by China's approach to business and intellectual property. One of them had to shutter his company barely six months after introducing their first product. The product was successful enough that it got cloned very quickly. They introduced a cloned product at half his price. Orders evaporated. He had to let go of his employees and close the business.
Whether you like it or not, what O'Leary says in his videos is 100% accurate and true. Your experience with him is absolutely irrelevant and not worth discussing.
It's my genuine belief that the vast majority of intellectual property ownership is purely to draw a moat around a country's oligarchs. Copyright does not protect creators and patents do not protect inventors[0].
Trump's thinking is:
- America used to have lots of tariffs in the 70s, and lots of jobs in the 70s,
- But we got rid of the tariffs and the jobs moved,
- So if I put the tariffs back the jobs will come back!
Problem is, we're not in the same market we were in the 70s, and all those tariffs risk turning us into Brazil. More specifically the reason why the intellectual property system we have is fucked is because it's designed to let corporations move jobs to foreign countries while still maintaining maximum control over the end result. It's designed to facilitate neocolonialism.
The "open and balanced" global market you're decrying was, until recently, heavily tilted to favor American ownership over everything. China and Mexico are there to castrate the unions: if you don't work for peanuts, we move the work to another country that will, and we don't worry about any of the business risk that entails because WIPO and Berne ensure none of the goods the other country makes get to compete with us unless we put our stamp on it.
You know what would really break this system? If China, Canada, or some other country were to junk WIPO and DMCA 1201 and start up a national lab to develop and distribute jailbreaks for shitty disposable American tech. Practically speaking, America can't stop knowledge from entering the country, and it would spur a huge explosion of new American businesses to fix the shit our own oligarchs broke.
In a world where you can't rely on intellectual property bullshit, outsourcing becomes a crapshoot, and it makes a lot more sense to pay workers what they're worth and focus on automation instead.
[0] Yes, they can and have been used by creators in the past, but that's not what the system does today.
Objection, your Honor! Assuming facts not in evidence!
Recession is probably the best case scenario. If only we get through this with just a recession!
The world's economic inter-dependence is one of the things that have kept World War 3 at bay for decades. Nobody's going to start a hot war with their neighbor when they rely on each other through trading. Russia shows what happens when you economically isolate a country with sanctions and force them to rely on themselves economically: It reduces one of the downsides of warfighting. Do we really want an isolated, independent and self-sufficient China?
The lesson from Russia invading Ukraine is that the presence of authoritarians anywhere is a threat to democracies everywhere.
The kind of people who crush freedom aren't content to just do so within their own borders and will eventually do so to others around them.
As such it should be the priority of all democracies to extinguish authoritarians whenever possible.
However, the parent poster paints a different picture. If people in Moscow were economically threatened by reduced trade caused by an invasion, the elite appetite for such a move would be reduced.
Something that has become apparent to me is that in our years of somewhat peaceful economic growth, we seem to have forgotten that there are haves and have-nots and that the economic system that was created to hopefully replace war with peaceful competition only works so much as the large powers decide that it works well enough. Those who are have-nots tend to not have the proportional military leverage to do something about their position.
Our rejection of colonialism, mercantilism, and imperialism in favor of a "rules based international order" has blinded us a bit through abstraction and legalese to the reality of how the world works and the limits of resource availability given the size of the planet and the population numbers.
> As such it should be the priority of all democracies to extinguish authoritarians whenever possible.
I used to think this as well, but I recently re-read George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address [1] and it aided me in coming to the conclusion that such a moral crusade is neither wise, nor moral, and least of all practical.
There will always be some nations that have governments, authoritarian in our eyes or otherwise, that we disagree with from a political perspective. But we simply do not have the time, resources, or motivation to do something about all of them, and even as we try to do something about one or more of them we wind up with others popping up. Instead we should seek to treat fairly where possible, and treat not at all where necessary due to immoral behavior and stop trying to control the entire world. That doesn't mean we should never intervene or do anything, as in the case of Nazi Germany or perhaps other atrocities, but a national policy of extinguishing authoritarians seems to me to be one that isn't in our best interest.
It is simply in our best interest to starve cancer whenever we find it and excise it if possible.
If the goal of buying Russian hydrocarbons was to increase the economic stability of Russia and to foster capitalistic market systems in the country to prevent the rise of authoritarianism then the second they invaded Georgia should have resulted in the cutting of those economic ties.
If the goal of opening trade up to China was to prevent a Chinese-Soviet alliance and to weaken the USSR then the second the USSR fell we should have pivoted to defeating Chinese authoritarianism instead of strengthening economic ties to them which has ultimately provided fuel for an authoritarian economic machine that has grown to surpass the capacity of the US and made the US dependent on it.
We didn't do those things and now we're facing existential economic and military threats.
It's not a very fair question to ask, I know, but I think we really need to make sure we are honest about what we're asking people to do.
Cutting economic ties in these specific cases isn't enough to actually stop the bloodshed and bring about stability.
There are practical limits to our willpower and resources and we can't just stamp out every dictatorship in the world, remember Iraq and Afghanistan? I fully support our actions in Ukraine, by the way, and in terms of picking fights that's probably one of our better ones to help stop authoritarianism.
Not necessarily, as I’m not directly threatened, but I’m more than happy to carve out a piece of my paycheck to give Ukrainians any and every piece of equipment they need to do it for me.
From the Russian perspective, the US promised not to expand NATO eastwards in return for allowing German unification. While Russia was weak, NATO ignored the promise, but miscalculated after Russia strengthened.
Ultimately, you need to understand the Russia reasons, and they had been threatening war since 2008 when Bush announced Ukraine could become a NATO member.
If you rely on Western sources to interpreted Eastern motives, you end up with rubbish like "they hate us for our freedoms".
Great point. Also "because of our love of jesus christ" has been thrown at me a few times when I'm trying to provide more nuanced arguments for why people in other countries might not favor us.
Myth, refuted by many Russians from different backgrounds, including by Gorbachev himself on multiple occasions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43149963
It is a willful distortion of the so-called 2+4 Treaty from 1990, in which the two German states and the four occupying powers negotiated the terms of reunification. Ultimately, they agreed that only West German military forces would enter East Germany until the withdrawal of Soviet troops, which was to be completed by the end of 1994 at the latest. This is stipulated in Article 4 and Article 5 of the treaty: https://web.archive.org/web/20050222182358/https://usa.usemb...
World War 1 begs to differ, hell even the Russian invasion of Crimea back in 2014 begs to differ. Economic interdependence dosen't stop authoritarians, it only threatens democracies with a larger margin for dissent.
One of the lessons from the prelude to WWII is to be careful about trade imbalances, as they can breed instability and radicalism. During the 1920s the US enjoyed huge trade surpluses with Europe, which caused all manner of monetary and labor dislocation in Europe. Worse, the US wasn't content with this surplus, so similar to modern China they erected additional barriers to imports to try to have their cake and eat it, too. These effects were amplified by the gold standard, which accelerated deflation and unemployment in Europe, and accelerated (stock market) inflation in the US. And of course all these ill effects were amplified again for Germany.
Toward the end of the 1920s and during the 1930s, the whole system was disassembled as every country, understandably, retreated to lick its wounds. Economic interdependence is critical to maintaining global security, but that interdependence itself isn't self-sustaining. It can fall apart if dislocations aren't managed well across the system. For example, the lessons from the 1990s and early 2000s is, "just go back to college or trade school" is an absolutely horrible approach to dealing with labor dislocation. Significant changes in labor structure need to happen inter-generationally, not intra-generationally.
Common misconception that trade prevents war and war prevents trade. Turns out that it is wrong: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501782466/trad...
If
A -> B
not A -> B
B -> not AChina hasn't invaded anyone. USA is conducting an active genocide in Gaza and the Iraq War wasn't that long ago. I could name so many other incidents of unbridled aggression it boggles the mind.
https://www.dw.com/en/the-history-of-nord-stream/a-58618313
"In the early 2000s, however, German politicians had developed a contrary, more liberal theory — that more economic interdependence between Russia and western Europe would create peace in the long run. As trade increased, democracy would inevitably prevail."
>Do we really want an isolated, independent and self-sufficient China?
China being cut off from ~15%? of their market does not mean China isolation, it means US rewriting Child labor laws to fill Walmart shelves.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/31/us-child-...
https://www.newsweek.com/child-labor-laws-changed-five-state...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-la...
They largely weren't doing this anyway due to Chinese economic policy. For example:
> Ford's market share in China has declined significantly.In 2024, Ford's market share was 1.6%, down from a peak of 4.7% in 2015. Over the past three years, Ford's average market share in China has been a modest 1.8%.
[0]: https://www.carscoops.com/2024/07/china-gives-its-automakers... [1]: https://www.imd.org/ibyimd/innovation/chinas-automotive-odys... [2]: https://harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/china-joint-venture...
Pharmaceuticals would be a slightly better example.
It was some semi private line, who would have to pay twice the usual price in a unfavorable market.
The part apparatchiks didnt need to order them. They just dont want to overpay.
If they call out the active duty military against middle-aged, white, protestors, they'll have a problem. If it's against students and minorities,...
Illumina is a special edge case as they've been a victim of souring China-US relations before the tariffs even started: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/illumina-aims-cut-100m...
That hasn't been the case since the mid-90s when the PC revolution started pushing out supply chain management software. If I recall correctly, Walmart was the innovator in this space in one of their key ways to gain economic advantage over other retailers was low back stock demand tracking
On top of that the '90s was when free trade agreements came into Vogue and the supply lines and outsourcing of manufacturing cranked up into high gear.
So as we saw with covid, any disruption to this a highly extended optimized supply chain results in massive disruption.
I can't see how any massive new tariffs isn't going to essentially be a covid level or worse disruption to this entire supply chain
I worked on PC software for optimizing warehouse inventory in the mid-1980s. The system was designed by an applied mathematician and used by large national companies. Customers made substantial savings - double digit percentages of inventory cost.
In the 1970's, when Nixon launched his recession after an equivalent lead-up, I worked at the University for one semester in a work-study job. They only paid minimum wage, and these were easy jobs like library assistants where you were expected to be able to study about half the time.
But you were working for the State just like all other State employees.
You know, the maintenance people, the professors, highway patrol, capitol admin staff, etc. Career employees.
Like everyone else, you had to wait two weeks after starting work before you would receive your first paycheck.
About halfway through the semester it got so bad they decided to hold paychecks for two more weeks.
:\
You mean everybody who worked for the State just didn't get anything for two weeks until it picked back up again?
Yup.
At the end of the semester I was made whole because my checks still kept coming in for a couple more weeks after I was no longer employed there.
"Just like" the career employees who would be collecting for a couple extra weeks themselves decades later after they retire.
Well, it was a recession, what do you want, prosperity? That ship sailed a long time ago :\
The source of prosperity done receded.
“I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on the additional costs in place. And for that one blue shirt that’s still left, you’ll see a price hike,” Seroka said.
If you were going to buy 1 of X normally if you think X may be out for sometime you may end up buying 2-4 of X which will run the shelves out very quickly when 10-15% of purchasers do that unexpectedly. Other people see the shelves emptying and buy more too.
Going to be messy.
All I have to say is imagine if Biden did this, what the news would be saying.
Give it a few years. They'll say he did it.
"Why do you think Barack Obama wasn't in the Oval Office on 9/11?" "That, I don't know. Would like to get to the bottom of that." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPfRGJRMbN8
Surely you don’t mean to imply the media treated Biden less favorably than Trump?
As a concrete example a great deal of left leaning media was very critical of Biden running for reelection and especially waiting that long to pull out. You almost never see that kind of thing from right leaning media outlets.
So, yes overall media bias favors Trump not because more outlets favor him but because the ones that do heavily favor him. Far left media is simply a more niche market than far right media. Mother Jones for example is well known but only pulls in ~16 million$ / year and even they where critical of Biden.
It’s undeserved praise vs undeserved damnation that signifies a non neutral position.
Objectively FOX isn’t pure propaganda they do include some coverage critical of R politicians and policies. It’s just far less than say CNN spends on coverage critical of D politicians and policies.
There’s simply more left leaning Americans vs the stance of the Republican Party who’s specifically engineered their message to appeal to voters with more political power. Ex: Losing the popular vote when winning the presidential election only happens to Republicans.
However, simply counting the number of companies leaning left or right doesn’t tell you much. A local newspaper with 5k readers just doesn’t move the needle. Neither does an outlet that’s 0.1% left or right leaning.
So the only accurate measurement is level of lean * number of viewers, and when you do that calculation (as I have) you find the overall media landscape leans Republican.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ Fox: FOX: 6.7, CNN -3.7, another site giving them 4 vs -2 etc.
Then used numbers from sites like https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/first-quarter-2025-cable-new...
So for most watched cable news show you get FOX 4,552k viewers vs CNN 558k viewers. Multiply and you get a rather shockingly different impact.
It makes some sense!
Is that bias? Or sensible?
CNN and Fox don’t come close to canceling each other out because Fox is way to the right and CNN is more subtle. -2 + 4 is not zero.
Similarity Fox viewership is 3 million viewers in primetime vs CNN at 1/6th those numbers.
There are enough people who buy 0 of X normally, but if they think there might be stockouts, will visit every store in their area and buy 100 of X so they can scalp them and make a buck off their neighbors.
It doesn't violate market dynamics that I can see, though I'm far from an expert.
So I wonder how that plays out? My guess is that retailers take fewer risks when ordering, sticking with products that they know they can sell, even if prices are higher.
But they will still guess wrong sometimes.
Currency Manipulation to relatively increase Chinese manufacturing income
Relocating manufacturing based on tariffs
Retail margin
US based design & engineering of products
Advertising and other marketing activities
Depending on the product some will be passed onto consumers. But for something like Nike's it's probably more like fewer shoe designers, Footlockers, less advertising, smaller contracts to athletes, more manufacturing in non-China countries, and so on. Everyone is going to take a bit of a bit and it's probably not going to be super noticable to any one part.
No reason to expect empty shelves. Higher prices for stuff that can't be moved out of China. Sure. But it's a tariff, not an embargo.
Relocation of mfg - years long process won't help the shelves or the prices.
Retail margin - yeah... retail will balance price hikes to avoid hitting profits with not pricing too high to further reduce demand. This is just one of the reasons prices will go up. It will reduce the demand to less efficient and profitable levels, but won't increase the supply. Shelves will be sparsely filled with more expensive items.
US based engineering and design -- analogous to mfg. Not a near term solution.
Advertising -- it doesn't matter how much you tell people to go buy shit if they don't have money and/or the prices are too high.
Why are you still apologizing for Trump's absolutely incompetent policies?
In fact it doesn't take much of a change in regular buying habits to cause that it it's all aligned in the same direction.
i.e. a chunk of the toilet paper "shortage" can just be every customer suddenly buying one more pack that day "just to be on the safe side". Your local supermarket isn't expecting that, so the shelves still clear out that day - then the last person snaps a pic for social media....
Not an empty shelf in the literal way but empty on my demand
And depending on how much you’ve thought ahead, a significant supply chain issue for you.
Notably, this is really going to screw everyone using JIT supply chains.
I guess these US manufacturers will need to step it up: Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble, and Georgia-Pacific
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-tariffs-on-canadian-lumber...
We source chips from Canada because it's marginally cheaper to source it from there. It's not like the US doesn't have a ton of sources of wood pulp. Canada just has bigger cheaper sources (comparing like for like quality).
We also burn a lot of "less than ideal for paper" chips for energy rather than feed them into a paper mill, also for marginal cost per result reasons.
Wood chips suitable for paper pulp are also hugely elastic in the same way that recycled metal is. Huge volume is either directed into the supply chain or not based on marginal price. The people making every wood product are choosing what do with their waste based on chip prices and energy prices. Even your local tree service is choosing what to chip and where to dump based on economic conditions and balancing act between relative prices.
If you wanna be worried about something be worried about stuff we don't make much of in the US. Super high volume commodity widgets made from metal, all manner of electronics, etc, basically the kind of stuff where our only domestic capacity is super high dollar stuff to serve defense and aerospace.
The threat to lumber for building is a much greater concern because there aren't ready and price-comparable alternatives.
An antifragile solution would be learning to use a bidet.
And those are heavily concentrated in certain industries like basic electronics, toys, etc.
in anycase, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
I work for an org that does packaging (boxes, pallets, etc) for a whole bunch of manufacturing, ag, and retail firms (Tesla, Thyssenkrup, Target, etc.) and we are booming right now.
Almost all of the food on the shelves is locally produced or, in the very least, not produced in China. Some foods may disappear or become more expensive but there'll really be no disruption in food supply.
This will however affect markets dominated by Chinese goods, particularly clothing. Even here the effects will be somewhat mitigated by existing strategies to avoid China tariffs eg selling through Vietnam.
Certain businesses will be hit hard. And that's really the biggest problem: cascading effects leading to an inevitable recession. Already, truckers who ship goods from ports are sitting around idle. We've cut tens of thousands from the government. More layoffs are to come.
As far as I can tell, literally nothing that I buy regularly is directly sourced from China. Or anywhere other than the US & neighboring countries. The vast majority of my groceries are locally sourced. And the vast majority of the rest come from expected regions, for instance San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. I do not regularly buy clothes, children's supplies, electronics, etc. Sure, I'll buy them once in a while but not with any regularity. My understanding is that the classic paper products famous from COVID shortages are made in the US.
So with that in mind what you say is 100% true, at least for me. But I'm not so sure. Who makes the containers that my local milk is put into? Who makes the cans that my canned goods are using? What meta-products are being consumed by the local industries, such as the ones making my TP? I have a feeling the answer is scarier than it'd seem on the surface. But I don't know.
In other words, the threat model people should be worrying about isn't "bare shelves due to no goods from China to stock them" but rather "bare shelves because the entities who make the goods to stock them are missing critical components". And that's much harder for someone to predict what impact it'll have.
I imagine that my daily life is very skewed away from direct impact from a Chinese embargo relative to other US citizens. And even still, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a problem.
It's one reason why this is happening at all. People not only don't know what makes a lightbulb turn on, they can't imagine the complexity of a power grid and how it's stabilised.
They don't have the first idea how a phone works, or how much science, engineering, and fundamental research went into making it work.
When they don't know any of this, they can't imagine any of it having a serious problem.
That means the prices of your tomatoes are going to go up!
No one is going to be immune from these pricing increases from the tariffs.
For your specific example though, I'm not so sure. As a counterexample, I buy my eggs direct from a local farm, not in a store. Neither the ease of availability nor the price of the eggs I buy have changed one iota over the last several months. And yet I see local friends posting pictures of empty egg shelves here and there on Facebook. My takeaway has been that the average person has no idea they can buy goods outside of a grocery store.
So back to your point, I buy most of my tomatoes direct from local farmers. Unless people start buying from *them* it is fine.
HOWEVER, if those local farmers can't get parts for their farm equipment or something like that, I'm just as screwed.
I’m sorry, but most people live in cities or towns with their only reasonable access to food being via stores. It is one of the wonderful things that civilization has produced and I’m here for it.
When it comes to eggs and vegetables there are opportunities for city farms. So there might be some of that.
But meat animals are much harder to "grow".
First, it has a command economy. It's much more equipped to handle this in keeping factories afloat and people employed and housed.
Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of those exports will continue even with tariffs. Some by diversified supply chains (eg "laundering" Chinese made goods through Vietnam) or the Chinese goods are so low cost that the tariffs will be paid (eg a milk carton represents a small percentage of the cost of a carton of milk).
Third, the US will feel the inflationary effects. China will not.
Fourth, if China needs to raise funds they can and will sell US treasuries, spiking yields, hitting the ability of the US to issue further debt as well as borrowing costs for homeowners and businesses.
Lastly, the rest of the world is on China's side. This whole tariff fiasco may be the largest self-own in American history. Additionally, it's undoing generations of American soft power globally.
The economic outlook in China isn’t great right now. The US and China are playing a game a chicken, not sure who blinks first.
Nobody said that it would be painless for China. Just that
1- it will be less painful for China than the US
2- China is more resilient against this particular kind of stress because they have a command economy and have more control on the population.
If the US blinks and caves, it does not matter whether China got a scratch, it’s still going to win the war. And Covid taught us that something would need to be quite dire for China to blink.
Also, it got lost in the noise, but right now there is still a blanket 10% tariff on anything that enters the US, and presumably these 10% can turn to much more when Trumps feels like it. It’s not the US against China, it’s the US against the world.
> Second, the US is ~15% of China's exports and a lot of those exports will continue even with tariffs. Some by diversified supply chains (eg "laundering" Chinese made goods through Vietnam)
Sure. 15% of their economy either just disappears, gets dramatically more expensive (laundering goods cost money too) or they have to reduce the prices so they can sell their extra 15% of goods to the people that are already buying them.
Keep in mind that China is also only around 15% of US imports too so if 15% is negligible, it's negligible for the US too.
> or the Chinese goods are so low cost that the tariffs will be paid (eg a milk carton represents a small percentage of the cost of a carton of milk).
The tariffs are a percent. Just because the cost of a single item is low doesn't mean the cost of the tariffs paid by the company is going to be low. Low cost goods are profitable because they sell in bulk. It's going to hit their bottom line in the same way it hits everyone else. You've obviously not given much thought into that point.
> Third, the US will feel the inflationary effects. China will not.
China isn't immune to 15% of their economy disappearing. Selling of an extra 15% of the goods in your warehouse at discounted rates while you scale down your factory production 15% is bad.
> Fourth, if China needs to raise funds they can and will sell US treasuries, spiking yields, hitting the ability of the US to issue further debt as well as borrowing costs for homeowners and businesses.
That's a good way to permanently remove 15% of their economy.
> Lastly, the rest of the world is on China's side. This whole tariff fiasco may be the largest self-own in American history. Additionally, it's undoing generations of American soft power globally.
That's not relevant at all. What's relevant is who the American people are on the side of. I'm not saying Trump has unanimous support or anything but he doesn't care at all what Switzerland thinks of tariffs on the Chinese.
Your #4 doomsday scenario is bad for the EU given the role that the US plays in their defense and as trade partners. WTO countries will be urging both sides to come to an agreement.
In the case of a hypothetical trade embargo or at least punitive tariffs, who would you rather be: the buyer of insulin or the seller of insulin? The seller can be propped up by the government or loans. The buyer? Well, they need insulin. There's a natural imbalance here.
Us not buying Chinese goods has a ton of downstream effects like what if you need parts to repair trucks and those trucks are then out of service so can't haul stuff around?
> China isn't immune to 15% of their economy disappearing.
It won't disappear. It'll diminish. It'll get diverted through third countries. In some cases, the tariffs will be paid. China will have a reduction in exports. The US will have increased inflation, shortages and supply chain issues.
> That's not relevant at all.
It's 100% relevant. Everything is sentiment based. If the world is on China's side, then they'll look the other way when China buys oil and gas from sanctioned countries, for example.
> Goldman Sachs in its latest China forecast, reports China's GDP is about to fall off a cliff: the bank now expects China's Q2 GDP growth to crater to just 0.8% QoQ from 4.9% in Q1.
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/view-chinas-q2-gdp-grow...
But I was told the ports were empty and the shelves would be bare. That implies almost all of that 15% being shut down, doesn’t it?
Cut the bull. Generally you get what you pay for. China does both. You can get crap for a penny but you can also get high quality stuff which costs more. Both made in China.
I think there will be a lot of unintuitive effects from things like packaging.
What makes lots of money is not exactly having so many different choices stocked, instead having a good proportion of items "fly off the shelf" can be the focus.
The high-performance store will have numerous shelves completely clear every day, sometimes more than once per day, and they are perfectly geared to accommodate that when it happens without waiting until the more-organized nightly re-stocking.
The store is huge, and if a big shelf stays clear for any length of time it's quite noticeable. But can still represent the tip of the iceberg if that also means that quite a big multiple of inventory is also absent from "behind the curtain" in the warehouses and upstream.
The media doesn't seem to be doing a good job articulating what the (likely) real world impact is going to be. I keep hearing how other countries are negotiating but when you look into the details, there is nothing of substance actually happening.
We will see!
The big outlets are terrified to get on this admin's bad side because their current business wants to do a lot of mergers which have to be approved and the administration can tie those up for years on a whim so they're already lying down.
But yes, whatever the reason, the situation could change too quickly for safe predictions. In 2020, the US economy had recovered from the massive disruptions of the Covid lockdowns by Q4. There were shortages of toilet paper and eggs for a while, then there were surpluses and sales for a while, and then it smoothed out.
That is just one of the many, often conflicting, goals cited by the administration, and doesn’t make sense on its face: the reason we have a trade deficit with most countries has nothing to do with them tariffing our goods or taking other protectionist measures.
If that is the goal, then it’s a terrible way of doing it. And also inflationary.
Ryan runs Flexport which is a supply chain company so its from the "source" if you will.
Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, said just yesterday that he doesn't believe any shelves will be empty due to retailers planning ahead for the supply disruption—directly contradicting what the CEOs of those retailers had warned Trump just a few days earlier.
I have serious concerns about the competency of this administration. The CEOs of major retailers have a vested interest in understanding supply and demand and have intimate knowledge of supply chains and retail channels. If they say shelves are going to be empty, then you can take it to the bank that shelves are going to be empty.
Everything is pointing to shelves being empty. What happens after the shelves start going empty is what has me concerned. It could be a minor issue, or it could lead to mass panic. My concern is that I have no confidence in this administration's ability to resolve any issues that may arise due to their actions. They're making the mess and are expecting us to clean it up after them.
As for toys, most kids don't play with a plastic toy for more than like, 3-10 hours of its existence and then it rots on a shelf or in a drawer until is eventually ends up in a landfill. I'm not going to miss that. I'm sure that someone will point out important things that china makes dirt cheap and I'm sure they'll be right. I personally don't care if clothing options are limited or plastic toys are scarce. The US will not implode.
It really seems like china has more to lose than we do, but because they're a communist country they can just deploy troops to quell uprisings. Tiananmen Square comes to mind. So we play this game of chicken and the media screams that they sky is falling.
Of course the Walmarts and Amazons of the world care, most of what they sell is plastic shit and clothes. I have little sympathy for them.
However, it is worth noting that CEOs also have a vested interest in trying to reduce tariffs. And they would absolutely fearmonger if they thought it would help them.
Even worse is that depending on the product, you might not even be able to place an order from the importer because they are completely unable to actually price the things with all of the uncertainty right now. A friend of mine is a hearing device retailer/distributor. He tried to order way more than he usually does a month ago to get ahead of this. The order was denied because they said they have no idea how to price any of it. So he's just going to have to wait an indeterminate amount of time which then makes it impossible for him to plan. He has to jack up his prices to cover future potential price increases and to be able to keep the lights on if they run out of stock.
> Almost guaranteed.
> There are some categories (toys, pet stuff,computer accessories) where HUGE percentages of goods are made in china. Those shelves will be empty as soon as inventory runs out, which will be soon.
> Shelves would get re-stocked once tariffs are removed and the ships start sailing again.
> If it takes longer than 60 days from now, we're looking at 10s of thousands of bankruptcies. This will make covid look like a weekend at the ritz carlton. Biggest financial crisis since the great depression.
My takeaway: People are not taking this NEARLY seriously enough.
My tinfoil hat interpretation: The US govt knows how serious this is, and they know that if people panic (which honestly, they fucking should) it increases China's leverage substantially.
what does that mean
I agree with your points btw. My friend is a retail director specializing in this area and has been at pains to educate me (and anyone else willing to listen) on the depth and severity of the impending supply dislocation.
Cost: 10-30$
Installation: 20min with basic tools on your existing toilet.
Usage: tons and tons of online tutorials because 1/3 of the world already use that daily. But you can also figure it out yourself easely, it’s way easier than managing node_modules on a shared project.
Even cheaper alternative: a simple plastic bottle half-full and half bend. Many cheap labours in my city (Paris, fr) use one at work (cook, night cleaners, construction…). While the bourgeoisie fight for pooping clean during a world crisis, their Pakistani labor do they shit as usual. We should be inspired.
I'm going to remain with my traditional toilet until I move into my "forever home" at which point I will install bidets.
Should have gotten three.
If it's war due to decreased economic interdependence, well yes that would be much worse.
And I imagine this strategy will be more effective than one would first think, since it's nuts. I imagine it will change business behavior, maybe even to the point that business act against their own economic interests, the question is how much? The crazy thing is that will the Trump effect last long enough to negatively impact the next president or the Democratic congress assuming they win in 2026? The presidents numbers wouldn't suggest that it could go that long, but the world is upside down right now.
> The United States primarily sources its toilet paper domestically, with about 90% being manufactured within the country.However, a significant portion of imports come from Canada and Mexico.
In fact, the United States does not depend on China for any essential consumer goods from what I can find.
American parents would probably put car seats and strollers in that bucket.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/business/strollers-car-seats-...
> The U.S. imports a significant portion of its softwood lumber from Canada, with roughly 30% of its softwood lumber needs being met by Canadian exports.Specifically, in 2023, Canada exported 28.1 million cubic meters of softwood lumber to the U.S. This accounts for a large percentage of the total softwood lumber imported by the U.S., with Canada being the primary supplier.
> The United States can potentially supply up to 95% of its own softwood lumber consumption through domestic production.While the U.S. is a net importer of lumber, its domestic industry has the capacity to meet most of its needs.
That or he’ll make so many deals with CEOs for political support and financial contributions that we won’t even notice that a few smaller companies went out of business or pulled out of the US.
Even if they attempt to switch suppliers to avoid tariffs they'll be at the back of the line behind the bigger fish.
Retailers Fear Toy Shortages at Christmas as Tariffs Freeze Supply Chain: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/business/trump-tariffs-ch...
In a Toy Association survey of 410 toy manufacturers with annual sales of less than $100 million, more than 60 percent said they had canceled orders, and around 50 percent said they would go out of business within weeks or months if the tariffs remained. … She had placed a large order of scooters to arrive for the summer. But the importer rerouted the shipment to Canada because it did not want to pay the tariff.
I can see more problems with high tech stuff from China like the rare earths.
Things that wouldn't otherwise be a problem will become a problem. Potentially that includes bottles, tins, plastic food packaging, niche carboard boxes.
Imports from China are ~40% of all US imports. Even a 10% drop would be difficult, and at current levels it's going to be more than that.
You mean 14%?
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports-by-countr...
So I suspect 40% figure is how many items in a typical household are from China.
Edit: in case that's not clear, here's an example:
I have one item from the USA that costs $80. I have four items from China that cost $5 each.
My imports from China are 20% of my spending. My imports from China are 80% of my goods.
If I buy a bottle of wine, a chicken, a cake, and a pint of blueberries, is it correct to say that my diet is 99% fruits? There are more than a 100 of blueberries in the pint after all.
Or one could use a bidet, but I think most of these are imported from China. Oops.