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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> can’t just move the factory and avoid tariffs because the parts still come from other places

Trump has already started blinking on the China tariffs. It would be madness to move operations in the midst of this chaos—you’d immediately be undercut by cheaper competition.

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He’s already said they will reduce the tariffs on China. He insisted there will be some tariffs but 145% is too high and it will come down.

A company moving their production anywhere based on what the policy is right now would be foolish because the policy could change in the next 5 mins, but will almost certainly change within minutes if there are empty shelves.

In a way it's worse since, you can't make plan to move if they become obsolete in 2 months but can you afford/survive waiting ...

Hah, so Trump II is comparable to the start of the Covid pandemic: "we'll just have to hunker down and wait".

Oh, yeah, that is _very_ much how the markets are treating it. The idea that these tariffs might be _permanent_, is very much not priced in, at least not for the moment.

I'm looking more at the amusing angle of "Sir, the markets are comparing your reign as president to the pandemic.".

Even if they are permanent it'll be smarter for many companies to move manufacturing out of the US rather than in. If they're permanent the retaliatory tariffs other countries instituted in response to US tariffs mean that it'll be cheaper to build outside the US if selling outside the US. And the market of "not the US" is much bigger than the US market, so investing in the not-US market is more likely to lead to growth than investing in the US market.

In the same sense any company still operating in a environment like this and not moving their operation to a stable country is foolish to begin with

This is why you won't hear many reports of companies paying these huge tariffs. Wyze is big enough to eat the high costs on some of their imports. Most companies will redirect their shipments to Europe and Africa and pause sales in the US until the situation becomes more stable.

In another reply Wyze said they too paused most of their shipments but decided to eat the cost of this one because it was for a commitment to a retailer.

Are you suggesting moving operations to the US with this comment? It's the US adding all the uncertainty and instability to this environment. Having your operation based in the US makes this worse. You still have tariffs being applied to most of the components you need to assemble your product. You're now subject to more laws and rules changing overnight without the ability to plan ahead for them. If you're a company selling this product worldwide, you now have 100% of your operations subject to uncertainty vs. say 30% that was destined for the US market to begin with.

Absolutely. To be fair I don't am in this situation (gladly) but I would assume the best way is to focus on other markets and wait this out.

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