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Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are.
There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries have invented sunscreens that feel better on your skin than the old styles, but aren't yet approved in the US. Motorcycle helmets are another. You may have seen the MIPS system - the yellow slipliner that's become popular in bicycle helmets. Scientists have realized that rotational impact leads to concussions and similar brain damage, but prior helmets only protected against naive impacts. Europe now requires helmets to protect against rotational damage. The US requires that manufacturers self-assert that they meet a very old standard that ignores rotational impact. They do not recognize Europe's new standard.
Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now. Protectionists are going to see this as a win.
More background on helmet standards:
ECE 22.06 is the standard to look for for rotational protection in 2025.
The current best standard for consumers is ECE 22.06.
Maybe some have valid concerns for certain products that we don't make ourselves (e.g. semiconductors) but Trump and his cronies are not the solution to that at all.
I suppose an immediate counterpoint is that the US Consumer seems unwilling to clamor for high-quality products. :/
It's a relatively small constituency. Most politicians don't want to upset the status quo to advocate for them. A lot of non-riders have enough negative experience (hearing scary stories or being startled by delivery drivers working within the current system) to actively add friction to the conversation.
For instance, NYC's current chief-of-police is a nepobaby. Her mom is a high society type who is afraid of bicycles, so the police have been actively abd specifically harassing cyclists this year.
Thought-provoking for sure. I'm glad I ride in a filtering-legal state :)
Many grey-market imported sunscreens apply in like 1/4 the time of US ones, feel like nothing at all once rubbed in, don't leave your hands feeling oily and like you need to scrub hard with soap and water right after applying, and have almost no odor. We're like decades behind on that tech, for reasons that I don't understand.
Stylevana, where I go for my Japanese/Korean sunscreen and skincare, is still shipping to the US as far as I can tell.
I get it from a selfish point of view, as in I want a particular helmet and I think the design is safer, so I'm upset when I can't have it at the price I want it. I don't understand it as a political argument. If our government isn't meant to do anything, shut it down entirely. Don't have processes and subvert them so everybody can do what they want when they want.
Who would you vote for to get rules broken whenever they stop you from doing what you want, and why would anybody else vote for that person?
That being said, I deeply understand that the science and regulation around any sort of helmeting in the US (also in the case of motorcycles) is completely compromised by the people who sell helmets. The way you fix that is by fixing regulatory processes, not making rules easier to break for connected, smart, wealthy people. If you think fixing regulatory processes is an absurd, naïve impossibility, shut the government down and stop complaining about trivialities.
> The way you fix that is by fixing regulatory processes
Well, that kinda hand waves away a lot of the roadblocks you run into with government and elected officials. In an ideal world, yes, we have regulatory and legislative bodies that can react quickly and do the right thing everytime but that isn't reality.
On the one hand, government is broken writ large. It's been dominated by politicians who care more about power than improvement for as long as I've been alive. The problem becomes worse and feels more intractable every year. I'm not convinced there's anything individuals can practically do to help resolve it. (Those in power would ruin your life if you actually did a good job at making the world better in a way that impinged on their power.)
On the other hand, technology is enabling rules to be enforced in a more automated way. You see this with speed cameras, and now also with these stricter shipping requirements.
These rules were written to have an exhaust valve: for speed limits, that's police discretion. For imports, that's the de minimus exemption. Nobody cares what individuals do; they care what markets do (which is part of why bans are usually bans on selling, not on owning).
I touched on this a little bit about self-driving cars the other day too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44987516
The ratcheting of rules into automated policy is dystopian.
We generally refer to the latter option as "communism"
Throwing away your non-MIPS helmet and replacing it with a MIPS may be a safety-reducing decision, unless you’re buying the exact same model.
We’d benefit from more realistic models. But I guess our helmets would then cost $500.
From their test protocol (https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/5e7...), it looks like they simulate a fall (with a model head inside it) against a target at an oblique angle, at six different impact locations and two speeds each. They go through 4 of each helmet model for the rest.
It seems a lot better than nothing (which is what we had before them, at least outside of manufacturers own private tests). Their research was initially funded by the IIHS, the group that does the highway crash tests.
How would you like to see it improved?
Hair gives you considerable slip area making the inner rotational liners redundant or maybe even too much.
Not on a motorcycle helmet! The double D ring system forces you to cinch it tight, and it does not restrict your jaw or make it hard to talk.
If you are experiencing this your helmet may be the wrong size. Most riders are picking helmets that are far too large.
The days of having to shell out $600 for an Arai or Shoei for superior protection are past us.
Everything has a trade-off.
On the other hand, it also prevents companies from dumping artificially cheap and crappy goods (TEMU) on US markets and making it nearly impossible for others to compete.
Unsuspecting consumers buy a super cheap (subsidized) crap product on Amazon or Temu or Shien or wherever - probably a knock-off of an American product, have it shipped to the US, then it disintegrates after a couple of uses or stops working, and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country all so we can help a certain country whose name starts with a C keep the lights on and keep factories running so that they don't see unemployment numbers tick up.
Legitimate businesses selling higher quality products where they exist will be able to figure it out. Or not. It's not a big deal if your sunscreen is slightly worse than the Korean version (which I use). Maybe it just hasn't been approved because they haven't done the work to apply because they can get around working with our government and making sure their product meets our safety standards because of the de minimus loophole?
There's also safety concerns, which I think the CBP did a good job of overviewing here: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploi... . Send drugs or guns or illegal animal products to the US, get caught, who cares you live in (not the US) so you can just spin up another sham company and do it again.
But that happens regardless of whether or not you import manufactured goods, doesn't it?
As others in this thread point out, though, there are other casualties of this change.
Unless they’re sending it all via China Post and US CBP is letting it pass through anyway. Anecdotally, most of their stuff in major cities is arriving by Gig couriers or from US warehouses (ie: not postal imports) = tariffs applied.
Where Temu and big retailers win the game is that they can structure it to exclude last-mile delivery/logistic cost in their tariff calculations, and that’s a lot of the price.
There’s about a 0% chance of Shimano or Campagnolo bringing that production to the US because they haven’t made this stuff in several decades.
I’ve now jacked my US shipping prices to account for tariffs. I’ll probably lose all US sales.
US buyers probably won’t realize that ~5-10% of its supply has disappeared for these parts. They also may not recognize that US sellers can/will raise their prices accordingly but they will have that increase in price.
Heck, I know some Canadian sellers that set up their supply chain well enough that they put down a US location and buyers think they’re buying domestic. Those will be toast (or have to vastly inflate their pricing).
This is hard to tell from the discussion, but are you defending this practice?
Beauty of Joseon?
Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing.
If we are going to outsource production in order to save on consumer goods costs, the consumer should be the one reaping the surplus - not capital. Properly informed buyers were quite capable of getting quality product out of China for a tenth of the cost of exactly the same thing stocked on major retailer shelves here.
While there are certainly abuses of the current system, it would be best to close those loopholes vs. just give a bunch of profits to giant companies for effectively doing nothing more than having scale and volume. If you’re lucky they may do some curation too.
Not everything was Temu or Shein. Plenty of smaller factories basically going direct to consumer in a win win sort of scenario. They get paid more, and the customer doesn’t pay any middlemen.
Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be.
I mean this is kind of the price of putting what we say first. Want higher minimum wages, higher environmental standards, unionized labor, benefits/healthcare, lunch breaks, etc.? We will have to pay more, and we should, for those things.
> the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180
Lowering prices isn't the goal, otherwise we could just export everything to (insert low-cost country here) and have products made as cheaply as possible regardless of working conditions or other considerations. The goal in part with tariffs would be to make it so that domestic products or products from friendly countries are cost competitive, not necessarily cheaper. Some folks just want the cheapest possible products and they don't care about any other issue. But that's just one factor among many for the nation. Some think that we should have lunch breaks and 40 hour work weeks and different environmental standards - that costs money and makes labor more expensive in countries like the United States.
I would disagree that there isn't an incentive to improve your local products, at least in the United States. The market here is big enough that we generally have competition regardless of whether or not competitors from other countries are participating in the market. But even so, it's not like competitors aren't participating in the market even with tariffs, it just changes the pricing calculations.
Wrong, as I said just ask countries like Brazil what happens when you tariff everything to shit and beyond. Brazil doesn't have chip fabs still and still has to pay a huge amount for phones and computers.
The answer to local industry being shit isn't to coddle it further, it is to scare the living shit out of them. Clearly in-country competition isn't enough, otherwise it'd already have been better than foreign goods. That's how capitalism succeeds, coddling them will only lead to overall crappy product and crappy life everywhere. I find it quite amusing this anti China rhetoric suddenly jumped up after in some areas Chinese getting superior to Americans. Hilarious really how much of a sore loser America is.
Enjoy and suffer shit goods at shittier prices. The tradeoff is you get fucked in both, in any countries that do tariffs. If one of the goals was to make life better for the lower classes, what will happen is that it won't, they'd be fucked even more being forced to pay more for the same stuff.
I disagree with this characterization on at least two points:
The first is that you're assuming the product is crappy. Maybe it's actually quite good but just slightly more expensive for whatever reason, maybe that's unionization or something. Many people may opt to pay $6 less for a cheaper "thing" because they're not thinking about quality or wages or other factors. I know plenty of people who opt for buy-and-replace strategies because of "cheaper" products.
Second you're assuming that the cheap product isn't also artificially competitive. Other countries subsidize manufacturing or have lower wages or have other factors that lead to the product being cheaper than it should be.
> Its absolutely hilarious seeing USA adopt policies of communist countries of the Latin America.
I'm not sure protectionist policies are inherently communist, but to the extent they are I expect leftists to cheer these policies on.
> Enjoy and suffer shit goods at shittier prices.
Sounds good - stop bothering us about our crappy decisions then?
Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier.
Its not just about the buyer choosing a quality-price tradeoff. Let us be honest, the USA (or any other country) isn't the best in every sector. Artificial tariffs just mean your people will have to buy worse product. Again, its a slide to Latam style communism, absolutely hilarious.
I will even agree that a careful and targeted application of tariffs can help grow certain industries and can be a beneficial thing, but again careful and targeted is key, its a teat that they should be removed from in time. But what Trump is doing isn't remotely targeted or thought out.
The fact that you somehow are pegging me as a leftist and reacting emotionally to simple statements of fact show how incredibly stupid people who love tariffs are. Absolute comedy.
Tariffs are essentially a signal you are a loser, you can't do better so you force barriers on others. And I will maintain this for all countries that do it, whether its USA, Brazil or China. You are not showing strength by tariffs you are showing how weak you are. If I were thinking of investing in a weakening country, I might think otherwise now.
Why does that matter?
I'd guess that most Americans don't care much if Europe perceives a strong posture. That's not a very American ideology. Many Americans would ask if Spain is in the UK. That's not an exaggeration. Americans couldn't care less about what Europe thinks.
I didn't mean to do that, and I apologize for that. I just meant that to the extent that you are associating tariffs with communism that those on the left will applaud Trump's tariffs and trade policies as they align with that ideology.
Though as an aside, you mention that we're sliding toward LATAM style communism (again I think it's mercantilism and not communism but whatever) but it seems to me that it's more so happening in the political sphere via Trump and his cronyism, not so much because of trade barriers.
> Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier.
A t-shirt is a t-shirt. At some point we're not really talking about making a better product, but we're instead talking about the costs associated with making that product. Instead of phrasing this as "buy the cheaper product" or "buy the better product" it should instead be looked at as "buy the product that is more environmentally friendly (shipping, environmental standards, etc.)" or "buy the product that supports higher American wages and 40 hour work weeks".
These are all just trade-offs and policy decisions. If you gave me the choice between buy American made t-shirt for $20 [1] or buy the made in (insert country) shirt for $5 - I would buy the American one every time because the price isn't the only factor.
For a long time we've focused on price only, but the prices on the shelves are not necessarily the only consideration, they're just the easiest one for people to make and we don't have other clear and obvious incentives right at the point of sale to help someone make a decision - was the (insert country here) product made by a despotic regime hellbent on assaulting your way of life - is that on the sticker? Or is it some harmless text hidden away that says "Made in Country X".
Efficient markets are great, but they're not the point of society, just another thing we decide how much or how little we want of.
[1] https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/shirts/produ...
You should also not discount price. You can afford to, I can afford to buy something more expensive because we consider some other aspects of the item more important. Again, if you had said this in terms of simply propping up a local even if less efficient industry alive, it makes sense, redundancy is a concept I can understand of course, I could have accepted it even if I don't agree fully. But I feel if it is presented as making the life of lower and middle classes easier, it is a total lie since they will be impacted most by these price increases. Some T-shirt firm in America will start earning more, but then where do the people of that firm spend it on? The other firms are also now higher priced if we fully commit to such extreme and wide ranging tariff programs. I am sorry if I come across as a bit vigorous in this, but I have seen how it is in high tariff countries so I have a strong feeling on this matter.
This won't work for clothes. We'd need Wal-mart shoppers to be spending like $400/outfit (incl. shoes) to even maybe bring those jobs back to the US. For clothes specifically, short of raising prices so much that the poorest few tens of a percent of the population are reduced to wearing shit-tier disposable clothes covered in also-cheap patches and often worn threadbare, shoes fully wrapped in duct-tape because the soles are practically gone, et c, there's no way you're bringing those jobs back. We'll just pay more for the exact same stuff, with few or no extra jobs as a trade-off.
Meanwhile, goods partially manufactured here (materials made here, finished elsewhere; materials foreign, construction domestic) will see price increases due to tariffs, which may harm sales, which may reduce employment. Between that and any broader economic down-turn resulting from these policies (can't buy as many things if prices are up, can't spend more on expensive US goods if your basics go up in price) I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of the remaining US clothing manufacturers go out of business in the next few years. I have several brands I like that are already showing visible signs of distress (things like products lines being reduced, no new models showing up) and am worried I'll soon have almost no US clothes to choose from, due to these "protectionist" policies.
Says who? Also you're forgetting if we as a country decide hey this really doesn't work for clothing we can just lower the tariffs on clothing.
Uh, labor costs? I guess we could work to lower those, though. Like, a lot lower.
Meanwhile if the $2 wholesale-in-China shirt costs $30 on the shelf due to tariffs and the identical-quality US-made one costs $40 because that's just what it costs, the latter won't even be made, zero factories will start up to manufacture them. You'd have to raise prices a lot for it to make sense to even try, clothes are (relatively—still far less than once-upon-a-time, which is why the poor can afford to wear clothes that aren't third-hand and much-mended) labor-intensive despite lots of automation because machines remain terrible at manipulating cloth, despite decades of effort at solving that problem.
It's really expensive to make clothes in the US, and skimping on quality doesn't save all that much, percentage-wise. Being that they're also a necessity, we'd truly have to drive quality of life way down for a large chunk of the population to get that industry making low-end clothes.
According to the website it’s compliant with the Berry Amendment, made in California, $15. From what I understand Berry Amendment “compliance” means all raw material and manufacturing is exclusively US sourced and US manufactured.
A quick comparison I saw was this:
A “Made in USA” jacket could have fabric from China but still be assembled in the U.S.
A Berry Compliant jacket must have U.S.-made fabric, thread, zippers, and even labels!
No. US labor costs are high and working conditions are better, in large part, because US labor is worth it and US productivity is high. That labor is spent in high value industries and is often highly skilled.
We should accept we're better at some things and trade according to the principle of comparative advantage.
And most of the products we're talking about that are coming in via de minimis are not exactly competing with US "artisans."
Indeed, I'm helping train future US artisans, and we depend upon being able to get input components cheaply and consistently, which is becoming more and more of a problem and endangering my programs being able to do as much.
> And most of the products we're talking about that are coming in via de minimis are not exactly competing with US "artisans."
Sure they are - they're much cheaper, mass manufactured goods which people default to because they are only exposed to the price of the product. Raising the prices of those goods makes artisan products more cost competitive.
I think this has more to do with the effective abandonment of antitrust mechanisms.
> Raising the prices of those goods makes artisan products more cost competitive.
Look, I don't want an artisan UART board, and I don't think that my programs can ever afford "artisan UARTs." I'll just give up teaching this stuff to students instead.
Today that's much more difficult because a bar of soap at Wal-Mart is $1 or something and entrepreneurs can't make stuff that cheap when they're making it by hand using real ingredients or honing a specific craft - and it doesn't even end up with shelf space. The suburban, 1-stop-shop big box retailer, drive your SUV down the highway to buy cheap stuff from not America model drives down entrepreneurship and closes off small competitors and artisans.
> I think this has more to do with the effective abandonment of antitrust mechanisms.
That's a factor but not the primary one.
The US will not build a supply chain for these at any reasonable price. And shouldn't. These should be commodities and US labor should focus on higher value things.
(Not to mention that US suppliers don't really like selling at low quantities and most don't really love selling to education or hobbyists).
Tariffs just directly make my programs less feasible.
Note that de minimis-- which we're talking about here-- has something to do with what's at Amazon because of drop shippers, but basically nothing that is sold somewhere like Walmart.
I don't buy the general consensus that the US can't or won't build supply chains for these products - we can and will if the tariffs are high enough, it'll just be highly automated which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In your specific case yea you are probably just looking at higher prices, but I don't think that your general argument is necessarily applicable across the entire economy. That's not to say in your specific case yea maybe the tariffs are just a net negative.
> Note that de minimis-- which we're talking about here-- has something to do with what's at Amazon because of drop shippers, but basically nothing that is sold somewhere like Walmart.
Well yes and no. The availability of drop-shipped products en masse, whether it's through Amazon or Wal-Mart's own drop-ship marketplaces still enable cheap consumerism and generate lots of waste and poor quality products at cheap prices (along with some good products at cheap prices to be fair). But I think the point about Amazon just strengthens my argument (for the sake of argument) which is you get these artificially cheap products shipped in, sometimes with stolen designs, and we can't spin up mom-and-pop shops or cottage industries because everybody just looks at the price of the cheapest bullshit thing they find on Amazon and they don't care about any number of issues that factor in to that price.
And I don't even know whats his deal with "artisan" bs, technology is technology. It doesn't stop being tech just because it was invented ten thousand years ago. Artisan crap is a luxury for financially comfortable people. Automation is somehow this weird magical "magitech" to this guy I don't know what. Automation isn't a nice to have, its the essence to have something available and affordable to the masses at all. I seriously don't understand this hunger for economic regression.
Making higher quality items cheaper is literally the fundamental basis of capitalism, or even technological progress in the first place. I really don't understand these bizarre economic theories at all.
I don’t think this really requires clarification but I’m happy to indulge you on a product by product basis. Do you really think that loaf of bread you make at home is made with the same chemical process as the bread coming from Wonderbread on the shelves at Wal-Mart? It’s sure as hell not using the same ingredients and it definitely costs quite a bit of $.
You can apply this to furniture too. Do you think the furniture you buy at IKEA is made of actual wood with the same chemical process as the wood furniture you spend more money on that’s made by hand? (It’s not)
Are IKEA’s (or whoever) suppliers paying workers good wages? Are their practices sustainable? Are they clear cutting forests and mixing plastic and literal trash into the furniture you buy and throw away after it starts to degrade?
Even pharmaceuticals - are you sure generic drugs are just as good? I generally think so, but just because you cook with the same ingredients doesn’t mean Anthony Bourdain RIP isn’t using those same ingredients and making a better dish (drug).
If there’s confusion about concepts I would say it’s mostly confusion on behalf of the public whom goes to the store, sees price tag + brand, and thinks that’s all they are comparing when they buy things.
And yes, its the exact same chemical processes. How on earth would it not be? The fermentation of sugar is not a chemical process that suddenly changes based on weather its done at home or in a factory. The rest is just choice of grains, sugars and additives.
Here's the ingredients list for Wonderbread from Wal-Mart.com
Ingredients Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Nonfat Milk, Enriched Semolina (Durum Wheat, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Soybean Oil, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Cultured Wheat Flour, Sunflower Lecithin, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid, Soy Lecithin.
Active Ingredient Name Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Enriched Semolina (Durum Wheat, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Soybean Oil, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Vinegar, Cultured Wheat Flour, Sunflower Lecithin, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid, Soy Lecithin.
Here's my ingredients list for bread: salt, water, flour, yeast.
Are you really going to sit here and argue that these are the same products and they are made in the same chemical process?
This applies to other goods too, including manufactured goods. It's why Apple has historically had such great products. Sure the Windows PC specs were better, but the computer was always more than the sum of its parts and Apple continued to win out.
> Artisanal is a perfectly fine luxury hobby.
I think you are getting hung up on this word artisanal but it's not really relevant.
"Artisinal" products today are mostly marketed that way because in order for the product to compete on the market at a price the producer can afford to make it at and still live on, the product has to tell a story or have a clever marketing scheme or something like that because they can't achieve the volume of production that they need at a low enough cost to compete with mass-market supply chains and artificially cheap labor from other countries.
But these products don't have to be "artisanal", they can just be regular products that you buy at the store or a local market or something. Introducing tariffs to offset actions by other states that cause their products to be artificially cheap, keeping American entrepreneurs from starting their own soap [1] companies or whatever might raise prices in a sense, but overall it is better for the economy since there are less economic outflows, less gig workers and people on government handouts, and more entrepreneurial activities and product innovation.
Software engineers already know this is true, which is why they always complain about outsourcing of jobs to cheaper countries. It's cheaper! That's all that matters, right?
[1] I don't know that soap is the best commodity product to use, it's just an example.
>"Artisinal" products today are mostly marketed that way because in order for the product to compete on the market at a price the producer can afford to make it at and still live on, the product has to tell a story or have a clever marketing scheme or something like that because they can't achieve the volume of production that they need at a low enough cost to compete with mass-market supply chains and artificially cheap labor from other countries.
Correct, its no longer a sustainable business. How far do you want to go? Would you make nails by hand too? How about mining the steel for the nails? Artisanal today (not 400 years ago) is a luxury product born out of free time and our basic needs having already been met by industrial processes. The way to make it sustainable source of income is to do what the factories are doing, automate and scale up.
And why this over focus on producers? What about consumers? Why kill consumers to artificially enrich producers? I care deeply about the middle and lower class. I don't want their expenses to suddenly rise several times because government turned what was a free choice and forced them into an artificially propped up expensive hobby market pretending to be a real market.
But let us not get too lost from the question. Let us first decide what is the meaningful distinction to our purposes between these two breads in relation to the matter of tariffs.
Ok unfortunately I don’t think we really have much to discuss here if you think that. Our world views on products and economics are too different.
You still failed to explain btw precisely in what manner the differences between the production of bread at home and at a factory are relevant to tariffs?
It's not the same item, that's why. You're still not understanding how products are priced, nor are you accounting for negative externalities (or positive ones) that factor into that price.
Prices aren't being artificially inflated because of tariffs any more than they are artificially lower because of a certain country's monetary policy or wage gaps or whatever.
Sometimes, there is no deeper explanation for this nonsense than being a sore loser at someone else being better than you at something.
China for example doesn’t allow US social media companies. There you go. There’s one item which is all we need, therefore tariffs against China are justified until they open their markets to free competition from the US. Hell, just this week the CCP banned Chinese companies from buying Nvidia chips.
(I’m picking on China here because it’s the east example, but it is not the only one)
> Sometimes, there is no deeper explanation for this nonsense than being a sore loser at someone else being better than you at something.
Ok let us be sore losers by ourselves with our tariffs. What concern is it if any other country?
And you seem to be forgetting I am equally in opposition of tariffs and consider it fucking shit when China or anyone else does it.
Be sore losers, nobody is stopping you, I just truly and earnestly hope for the sake of your country that I am wrong.
> And you seem to be forgetting I am equally in opposition of tariffs and consider it fucking shit when China or anyone else does it.
You asked and I delivered. I wasn’t accusing you of being in favor of trade barriers.
I am also calling you sore losers because its, objectively minus any value judgments, a truth. Tariffs on a sector mean you are a loser in that sector. Not a big deal when said country never claimed to be a proponent of free trade before. But when its a country that ruins the board whose rules themselves setup, then yes? Idk what else to call them.
I take that as you admitting you are a complete liar who puts words into others mouths and unable to answer not just one but several very easy questions.
Old school helmets use the philosophy that in a crash, you want your head to be harder than its opponent.
New school helmet use the philosophy that a helmet should absorb or deflect as much energy as possible, so that energy doesn't get translated to your brain.
They are actually diametrically opposed. Fortnine (the same channel I linked earlier) has a video on the SNELL standard. Its origins are as a beefier version of the DOT standard. They recently found themselves at a crossroads where it's impossible to both meet SNELL and meet ECE 22.06 (today's state-of-the-art standard). They ended up bifurcating SNELL into two standards: one that meets old DOT-based SNELL, and another that basically says "if it's 22.06, they can call it SNELL variant B." It was the only way they could keep the SNELL brand alive across both halves of the transition.
As another example, visiting the Netherlands, it would take a week to get a decent child car seat delivered last year.
Comparing with the US, it's night and day. I can order something at 6AM and it's at my doorstep by 10AM. And the number of goods that are offered at that speed is absolutely astonishing.
As a side note, what the US has done to the shopping experience may not be preferable when considering all related effects on the market, happiness, etc. But it certainly sets a very high bar if you are comparing to Europe.
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that all of this magical instant delivery is free!
You're conflating tax with tariffs here. EU does not have a de minimis rule for tax - you always pay tax on import - but it does have a 150 Euro de minimis rule for tariffs.
Short animation of how it works for anyone else who's unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvyoSzAPIBE
It's not like ECE vs SNELL where the standards are incompatible.
You dont need to do anything special to get a MIPS helmet in the US.
Business can plan for low tax or high tax regimes. Not so much when it's just "unknown".
Similar across Europe https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/25/postal-serv...
In every country in the world, you could send a package by post and the receiving country’s customs will assess duty/taxes/admin fees and charge the recipient as the default procedure.
As of later this week, the US will not do that procedure (or allegedly charge some absurd flat rate, like $50-$200 on even a $1 package).
Sending postal systems don’t want to deal with the aftermath of rejected/refused packages. And it’s unknown if US Customs and US Postal Service is even capable of charging that flat rate anyway.
The difference is that it was communicated well in advance without any uncertainty.
When I sent an unpaid item, I think I paid 5 EUR/pkg for processing to France customs on top of VAT because I paid online after France assessed it, but before delivery.
US is saying any parcel arriving without duty paid would be charged $80-$200 flat fee solely depending on which tariff rate applies. IE, from a “bad” country, a $1 item could have a $200 fee. Or as low as a bargain or $80.
They’re basically treating every parcel like it’s work $800 item.
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/trump-ends-de-minimis-exe...
Anecdotally, many Canadian shippers have reported that China item containing parcels have just been getting returned to sender. No American has received a bill at the door for postal imports.
https://www.business-standard.com/immigration/india-post-sus...
"Temporary restrictions on postal goods shipping to the U.S. for private and business customers"
https://group.dhl.com/en/media-relations/press-releases/2025...
These are the sort of things the poor and middle class voted for. To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.
In the case of cigarettes and alcohol they are partially “sin taxes” to discourage negative behavior.
In the case of the Trump emergency tariffs, they are seeking to pivot the entire economy.
So there’s a nuance and multiple ways to look at it. If you’re GM, the ability to make better margins on shitty cars is a net positive. If you’re in the technology or medical field, well, you’re fucked.
> The communication intent is often to distract from the content of a topic (red herring). The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified.
Whataboutism would be something like someone from the US arguing that China’s treatment of Uyghurs is bad, and someone from China countering with “well, what about America’s treatment of Native Americans?” The Native American argument isn’t a counter example of the Uyghur argument. Both positions can be true. It’s unrelated. That’s not the case here. You can’t be anti-tariff purely because it’s a regressive tax and also be pro-cigarette tax.
Expecting people to be consistent, and treat similar situations similarly, is not a "gotcha". Challenges like this are raised exactly to hold people to their own standards and question whether they are really okay with the consequences of what they just said.
The topic described is not at all "entirely unrelated". There is a clear natural category which encompasses both tariffs and cigarette taxes.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/09/uk-...
At least tariffs tax consumption rather than production. Taxing production/income is horribly evil and in better times (such as when the country was founded) people who insisted on it would have been shot.
Not true. Producing almost anything in the material world requires raw materials. If any of them are imported, they suffer from tariffs.
IMO, if a consumption tax is what you're looking for, then value added tax (VAT) is a more suitable solution.
Corporate taxes have the problem of small business paying much more proportionally than large ones and a flat tax on businesses that rely on cheap foreign labor and goods is deserved.
Trump doesn't get to define all of my opinions by me needing to oppose exactly everything he's done.
The problem with the current political situation is the establishment in both parties w were too cowardly or useless to address real problems which are now actually being addressed by objectively stupid fascists.
And that is the lesson to everyone, get stuff done or get replaced by awful people doing awful things.
In the short run, this isn't true: firms have goods they need to move.
But tariff incidence is a micro question. Elasticity analysis doesn’t care whether the world has a demand shortfall or a supply glut. It asks: when a tax raises transaction costs, which side is less able to change behavior? In the long run, suppliers usually have more flexibility than consumers.
The market 'offering' the most demand to the global economy right now is America, by far and away, with a distant second of Europe and Middle East. America has chosen to use tariffs in an attempt to 'tax the demand offered' to the global economy in order to stop the localize debt accumulation of that demand, along with other justifications (rightly or wrongly) of stabilizing global trade and currency.
This is at least the THEORY on Tariffs. Its makes a bit more sense than the 'grrr 1950's trade imbalance' story media keeps spinning, but whatever I'm not going to defend it any more than that.
You can possibly improve trade imbalance with tariffs (though retaliation makes it hard). But it's hard to escape your consumers paying most or all of the costs of those tariffs.
I'd say the remaining problem left in our analysis is massive inequality in America leading to enormous consumer elasticity in a small ultra-wealth portion. This I can't figure out
Elasticity means you can change your amount produced in response to changes in price.
Producers can’t easily change output, so they bear more of the tax burden themselves. But in the long run, producers can reallocate or exit until they’re producing at minimum(average total cost), which makes supply more elastic and shifts most of the burden onto consumers.
This is stuff that's covered in week 4 of a basic microeconomics class. It gets a little fancier with imperfect competition or heterogenous agents, etc, but predicting tax incidence is basically dominated by this even in advanced microeconomics.
Then you seemed determined to misunderstand, e.g.
> > But it's hard to escape your consumers paying most or all of the costs of those tariffs.
> I think we agree if I'm understanding you correctly, yes the Suppliers have more elasticity and must ultimately absorb this.
This is really simple fundamental microeconomics stuff. If you want to understand it, there's plenty of sources online. If you want to argue it, you should learn the basics first.
If your intention was to be curious about it, your comments don't convey that.
> Consider if you see everyone around you as the asshole who the asshole might be...
And now you're just effectively calling names.
If you want to talk about economic concepts in a forum like this, you should either ask questions or fill yourself in on the foundational knowledge.
Take a moment a think about yourself here. Really. “Shut up and don’t ask questions” is a very toxic behavior.
Really. Think. About. This.
It's hard to read emotions via text. I'm reading that -you- seem to be, with periods between each word, short phrases, &c.
> “Shut up and don’t ask questions” is a very toxic behavior.
c.f.
> > If you want to talk about economic concepts in a forum like this, you should either ask questions or...
It just seems like you're not reading the things I say.
Food is messy because it's a commodity with a whole lot of substitution-- consumers have a high elasticity as a result.
We are talking about elasticity's prediction for the share producers and consumers each pay when there is a cost structure or tax change. Incidence theory is well validated and fits observed evidence remarkably well, including in 2019 studies of the effects of the 2018 trade war.
And applying tariffs to tools and raw materials when you're supposed to be trying to bring manufacturing back to your country is... well, let's just say any government stupid enough to do that isn't likely to improve things in any other respect.
If tarrifs on imported goods are high then people choose non imported goods (which might be substitutes for goods which can’t be made in America) as there are no tarrifs.
They are dangerous though. If country A stops selling to US it sells cheaper to other countries. It also stops importing from the US (and chooses subsidies).
Overall everyone loses out - at least in theory, as everyone uses worse substitutes.
All tarrifs do is remove foreign competition who have lower costs for a variety of reasons, some which benefit the country imposing the tariff, some not.
Neoliberal approach is to always require the cheapest goods, no matter the cost. That’s not the only approach.
Which is hard to do when the idiots in charge place tariffs on the raw materials that both manufacturers rely on.
That wasn't my first clue that a rational and charitable interpretation of the Trump tariffs doesn't exist, but it was a big one.
The OP said tariffs are not progressive taxes. You are agreeing with them while believing you are disagreeing.
Further tariffs are not specific to corporations. Individuals pay them. Small business pay them. Large businesses pay them.
(I'm not committing myself to the idea, only that it isn't obviously outside the norms of economic thought)
> And that is the lesson to everyone, get stuff done or get replaced by awful people doing awful things.
I don't think that the establishment who benefitted from the status quo actually cares nearly as much as they pretend to while the poor and eroding middle class bear the brunt of the suffering. I doubt rich reagonites and clintonites who made a killing off of deregulation and cheap overseas labour have many regrets.
- Allows claiming various benefits like onshoring production, or reduced taxes. This is for the voters.
- Allows threatening other countries' industries with tariffs unless they invest in his friends' enterprises. This is for him.
“Trump calmly reminds nation that desire is the truth of all suffering” - Onion
Just… stop.
It doesn't "benefit the wealthy" because it's not progressive, it benefits the wealthy that have investments in the tariffed industry by distorting the market to their advantage instead of having to be competitive on a level playing field.
The rest of the wealthy are equally annoyed by the tariffs as everyone else, possibly more so as they see their investments tank.
Frankly tariffs get a bad rep because of from who and how they are implemented but can absolutely serve a purpose.
What’s missing from these discussions is the idea of competitive advantage. It is inherently more efficient to grow crops in climates where they thrive, tacking a tariff to protect domestic production means intentionally lowering the standard of living of everyone both domestically and abroad to favor some tiny group doing something wasteful.
So all that's happened is an exponential increase in the output volume of sweatshops :/
Pepsi can’t get glass bottles from 3rd world sweatshops at anything competitive with a highly automated factory. In the vast majority of industries it’s just a question of levels of automation and climate control inherently makes automation easier by reducing variability in temperature and humidity. Of course the original distinction around climate control that created the term sweatshops is dying as such operations are largely dying out, but that only reinforces the notion of automation killing off the inherent advantages of unskilled cheap labor.
1. To preserve strategically important domestic industries (historically: food production and mechanization industry)
2. To shield domestic industries while they're growing to take on already efficient and scaled global competitors
Benefiting labor or saving jobs is probably the stupidest use of tariffs, if one of the above isn't also in play, because it'd be more efficient just to offshore it to low COL countries and instead refocus internal labor.
The slippery slope, of course, is that industries will claim to be included in one of the above, but instead sink their tariff-protected excess profitability into shareholder/self-enrichment instead of business investment.
It'd make more sense to require domestic industries in tariff-protected sectors to invest {near tariff} percentages of their revenue in R&D and/or capital expenses (or be heavily taxed).
Otherwise the government is simply artificially inflating their profitability, at the cost of any consumers of the product.
Similarly, military procurement can subsidize relevant industries without impacting the wider economy. In other words you can maintain some domestic steel production etc without impacting the cost of goods.
Without explicitly and financially tying subsidy-fueled gains to modernization efforts, market participants begin to consider the subsidies as business as usual, plan around them, and get lazy.*
It removes a primary incentive to maintain pace with global technology improvements. Domestic industry whispers in politicians' ears that their global competitors are unfair for reasons X, Y, and Z, and they really need more subsidies to protect them.
{Benefit from politically driving new tariffs / subsidies} must never be higher than {benefit from investing in efficiency increases}.
* Lazy as measured by peak international efficiency, not work. E.g. a farmer who works their ass off manually farming is economically inefficient compared to one who mechanizes most of their work
That helps explain why chips, cars, airlines, banking etc get subsidized but PVC pipes don’t.
Tariffs are a populist thing, and people seem to think it's just a Trump thing.
They're mostly just a lot more efficient at scale, with a few plants managing close to the whole worlds supply of random shit. Almost all microwaves by all international brands are made by the same Chinese company, all prismatic LiFePo battery cells come out of one of two factories in China, and so forth. Economy of scale on turbo steroids.
Imagine having to compete with Ford by making cars in a garage. Now imagine Ford as the garage shop vs. these factories.
The sweat shops you're thinking of is stuff like clothes manufacturing in other third world countries than the usual suspect. That shit is nasty - breathing and handling acid with naked skin nasty.
Billionaire wealthy pretty much manage to avoid all taxation, progressive or not, so the comparison is moot. They just trample on everyone else.
You can be damn sure they're paying at most a tiny fraction if not zero of any tax rate you'd be paying for that asset as they'd much rather pay very good lawyers, accountants, and most importantly, politicians to not have to pay tax.
You don't need progressive taxes. You just need everyone to pay it equally, without loopholes. Fewer less complicated tax rates are harder to work around.
Regular people also commit fraud which can make some differences here. But in general it’s the state who decides what something is worth for tax purposes not the individual.
> they own it through some other legal entity that is all negative
Unpaid property taxes result in forfeiture, so again the state’s getting paid here. It’s financial voodoo around other taxes which causes such structures.
> they own it in countries that don't to property taxes
So do regular people, the important bit is where such property is located not who owns it.
Yeah, but it's hard for a regular person to under/overreport a property by, say, 200 million USD, and most people do not have the power to negotiate with or bribe municipalities to get different tax treatment like big companies and the rich people owning them do.
> Unpaid property taxes result in forfeiture
Avoided taxes are not unpaid taxes - we're not speaking of people on the run from debt collectors, but people who cheat their way out of having to pay anything.
> So do regular people
What regular people own properties in foreign countries selected for their tax benefits, for investment or recreational uses?
Most regular people own between zero and one property. Granted, they could move, but it takes extra riches to be able to casually straddle multiple borders.
Expats often chose their location based on such factors.
> people who cheat their way out of having to pay anything.
Good luck finding someone who actually pays zero property tax on US land they own. You’re assuming loopholes exist that don’t.
> it's hard for a regular person to under/overreport a property by, say, 200 million USD
Comparing wealthy taxation is only meaningful based on percentages. There’s definitely people who avoid property taxes by failing to disclose they built a house on undeveloped land thus avoiding 50+% of their tax bill.
You're not answering the question I wrote. Recreational or investment properties in foreign countries, i.e. not a peron's only property in their home country.
Expats pick a country to live and work in. They don't get to pick different countries for income tax, for property tax, for company tax, etc., like a billionaire being a US citizen with a swiss bank account, luxemburg company, luxury vacation homes in e.g., gated communities in Morocco.
(Also note that this isn't a discussion of just property tax, but billionaires avoiding tax in general.)
> Good luck finding someone who actually pays zero property tax on US land they own
Observe the point above - US citizens owning land in foreign countries.
Also, US citizens paying way less by severely misreporting and paying people to look the other way, like the earlier example.
> Comparing wealthy taxation is only meaningful based on percentages.
All taxes should be fixed, unavoidable percentages yes, that is my original argument. Progressive tax doesn't fix things because it doesn't hit the ultra wealthy like people think, as those evade the flippin' thing anyway. Deal with the corruption and evasion, get some proper (and fixed) rates to apply to their business, and you won't need complex progressive tax systems.
If only they invested in venture-backed mass surveillance apps instead
In any case, it is rare that Americans face consequences for bad behavior of American foreign policy. Hopefully Americans get more engaged and introspective this time around.
It won't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
We have already observed that the opposite does not hold - in 2017 we slashed corporate income tax by 14% across the board, roughly the same as the tariffs but with far more surface area, and yet prices did not react and the benefits were not passed along to the consumer.
All we _know_ right now is that this is going to negatively impact economic growth by hitting corporations, the same way slashing corporate income tax positively impacted economic growth by benefitting corporations.
Fixed prices are a bet on TACO and hoping to avoid the orange rage: see what happens when you blame price increases on tariffs.
Lots and lots of bribes have been paid. This is yet another.
> Fixed prices are a bet on TACO
Having been part of some of these conversations it's mostly a bet that democrats will win back control sometime in the next decade and do a full reversal. When that happens, you don't want to be caught out with less market share because you adjusted your prices to maintain your bottom line. Same logic as startups burning VC cash on offering free compute, 80% discounts on tokens, etc. to grab market share.
If you're in an elastic market, your priority is not to maximize profit, it's to make the market inelastic.
What they're trying to decide is (a) do they eat the cost of tariffs in margin or (b) do they raise prices?
That's a decision that doesn't need to be made until they burn through warehoused inventory, but for high-volume businesses (read: retail) it's measured in months at most.
Once that hits, either (a) or (b) will be chosen, and neither is great for equities markets / the economy.
Moreover, there's no "hiding this under the rug" once publicly traded companies begin to report quarterly financial results AFTER burning through their pre-tariff inventory. They can't not explain to their shareholders why they've taken a hit to profitability.
Best possible case is retail prices rise, once, by the amount of tariffs, and that's that.
But a 15%+ price hike is going to be an uncomfortable narrative for those in power who insist tariffs won't raise prices... so I'm not betting that conversation goes logically.*
* See the reaction part of Amazon got when they "accidentally" line-itemed tariff charges as evidence on how dangerous the administration sees transparency around tariff costs
As someone selling on eBay from notUSA, the cost increases won’t just be the tariff, but some additional fixed and variable fee for the privilege of determining the tariff and potential loss of the cheapest shipping options.
Friction begets friction!
The noise about inflation is very likely propaganda trying to focus people on something that the government can control. (Yet, it looks like the US government is giving up on controlling it.)
Instead, tariffs have complex effects on the real economy. Universal tariffs do cause the concentration of wealth the GP was talking about (but it's way worse than the GP's claim) and deindustrialization. Inflation may or may not happen, it's not a given.
Experts show saving 7.1337% at Walmart is worth losing your job to offshoring!
I haven't seen meaningful change for poor or workers with a decade of Democrat policy, so pardon me while I ignore that and vote for some tariffs.
No, people need to stop repeating it, because it's an extremely stupid anti-tax argument. Tariffs are meant to onshore production and raise wages. Telling half the story is simply lying. You might as well complain about buying food because it costs money. You might as well complain about all consumption because consumption is regressive.
The problem isn't tariffs, you can send that money to poor people. The problem is that nobody cares about poor people, including Trump. A lack of tariffs isn't going to make America moral.
One of the only things Trump is doing unbelievably well on is trade. Tariffs haven't been damaging at all. They should be more damaging, but the US is so dependent on foreign poverty that we have to leave any tariff scheme as filled with holes as swiss cheese. The fact is our manufacturing is so based in the exploitation of low-rights and low paid workers from other countries that entire industries would immediately start failing if we ended up in a real trade war with e.g. China.
> To make the rich, richer. And then turn around and complain that rich are getting richer and they are getting poorer.
These are Koch brothers policies you're advocating as if they're social justice. The reason why every capitalist you know is complaining about tariffs isn't because they make the rich richer (by some method yet to be explained.)
Consequence of that is protection by product group for key products one wants to have locally and not per origin on all kinds of goods.
This can lead to short term wins, but backfire after a while.
Both of which would still lead to higher prices on the consumer.
> One of the only things Trump is doing unbelievably well on is trade. Tariffs haven't been damaging at all.
I don't know whether to laugh at the absurdity of this statement or to cry because someone could actually say it with a straight face.
1. Targeted specific tariffs aimed at industries we want to protect. Not a flat across the board tariffs on all / most things coming in. The latter IS just a tax on the consumer.
2. Other policies aimed at promoting the said industries. e.g. CHIPS act.
3. Consistency, predictability and stability of policies. No one is going to move manufacturing to the US if they aren't sure if tariffs are going up or down or will get removed entirely on short notice at a whim.
We have none of the above.
…which capitalist is complaining? These tariffs are a regressive tax that rewards political proximity and power. They are also a massive subsidy to our services sector, which is dominated in compensation by finance, insurance, real estate and tech.
If
So he can order people to be detained and deported, knowing that the legal system can't handle the appeals of that many people.
Furthermore, the only way he will leave office is if his disease gets bad enough to where he can't function. And then the assumption is that the crazies he has hired aren't going to basically take over the government completely. If he is able to function in 2026 and 2028, US won't have real elections.
Trump has the power to do anything that people (especially Congress) does not push back against.
> 1. Do not obey in advance.
> Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
Elections are run at the state level, so it's not like Trump can direct state agencies to stop counting mail-in ballots. That said, the fact that elections are run at the state level, and the fact that only a handful of swing states matter means it only takes a few pliant election officials to change the outcome of the election. eg. if Georgia's governor caved in 2020.
Trump asked Texas to redistrict that they were all for it.
>it only takes a few pliant election officials to change the outcome of the election. eg. if Georgia's governor caved in 2020.
At most he can convince some friendly state legislatures to ban mail-in voting, but even that may not be an automatic process (e.g., maybe some states have requirements to change the constitutional or put the item up on a ballot measure).
Every Trump policy to this point has involved some kind of lever that the executive branch has had power over: tariffs, national guard deployments, and even in the case of ICE enforcement, Trump had to go to Congress to appropriate additional funding to make that viable long-term.
As an aside, I’m not personally too worried about the mail in voting as a hot button issue. I don’t think Republicans will touch it significantly because they need turnout, too, and they need it from key demographics that use absentee ballots like older voters and military members.
Some research seems to show that mail-in voting doesn’t really benefit a specific party.
https://www.dw.com/en/us-election-mail-in-voting-biden-trump...
Talk it up. If it keeps him in the headlines, great.
Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. If he gets sued, fine, there's a decade of suits piled up in the queue, no problem. If there's an injunction, maybe ignore it and try anyway (queue full). If he's truly blocked, it's the commie judges and he'll make that better soon. OTOH if he gets away with that, more outrage and more PR for him, success.
Early stage fascism thrives on outrage fatigue to slim opposition. Do three more outrages today. Repeat tomorrow.
Nevertheless, Trump has started process for all of those, and has been successful at many due to the slowness of the courts.
What rock have you been living under for the past eight months?
[0] https://www.posti.fi/en/latest-news-at-posti/%20/news/trump-...
It sounds like JP doesn't want to deal with the customs paperwork at scale (edit: also the deposits).
I'd suggest something like: "Japan Post stops accepting US shipments over $100."
To emphasize that it's not in effect yet and that it's to, not from.
edit: Someone went and reverted it to something less clear than everything else
But I suppose I'll just check a bag or use a different carrier...
The changes are to the commercial de minimis rule, so AFAIK, the personal $800 exemption when you bring something with you still applies, and you might not have anything to worry about at all. Also, when you declare something as "American goods returned", they are not subject to either de minimis rule, even if you send them by mail.
Things you purchased outside the US could qualify as well, if you can prove that you owned them for more than a year while living abroad. But realistically, nobody is going to make a federal case about a box full of old books and underwear...a box full of Louis Vuitton bags and Moncler jackets with tags, on the other hand...
(Also, don't get your hopes up about the Federal Reserve in the current climate. Just like the Supreme Court or the FBI or the EPA or the NIH, the Federal Reserve is only as good as the people in charge, and Trump is doing what he can to seize control and abuse its powers for personal gain.)
I tried to read up on their “rules” on this topic and it’s a bunch of wishy-washy hot air other than some standardization of customs declaration forms, and I guess HS codes.
Otherwise the only way you get everyone to agree on something: by getting them to agree on nothing during their junket meetings.
It's a shame that the ending of the De Minimis Exemption and other tariff-related stuff from the current administration is going to basically kill off Amazon Japan deliveries to the US.
From my understanding, once De Minimis ends, the delivery guy may ask you to pay import duties when he drops the goods off at your house. This is impractical for so many different reasons - what if I'm not home? How do I verify the import taxes? If I miss the carrier and don't pay, what happens to my order?
Otherwise, you'll get a notice from USPS/UPS/FedEx in advance to pay the import tax online (or at post office), and then they'll deliver it.
You pay the bill, the item is released, and you get it a few days later. FedEx, for example, does the whole thing online.
They don't want shipments stuck in port because storage there is expensive.
It's only temporary, due to the uncertainty. What a waste of resources this whole thing has been.
I had to redo the headline a bit to fit and accurately represent the overall picture.
Some key details copied from the post:
>> "Therefore, starting August 27 (Wed.), in line with other national postal operators, we will temporarily suspend the acceptance of postal items (small packets, parcels, and EMS (goods)) to the United States that contain the following items:"
>> "Individual gifts with a content value exceeding 100 US dollars
>> "Goods intended for sale for consumption"*
>> "In addition, we will continue to accept letters, postcards, printed matter, EMS (documents), and postal items (small packets, parcels, and EMS (goods)) containing gifts between individuals with a value of less than US$100."
>> "As an alternative to the above suspension of acceptance, our international courier service, UGX (U-Global Express), can handle shipments in compliance with U.S. customs regulations: UGX (U-Global Express)" [1]
And that's not even accounting for the fact that there is little reason to believe that many of these changes might never actually take effect or be rolled back soon. So much cost that could have been avoided!
Anyone who spend 30 seconds thinking would understand that spinning up the logistics to collect hundreds of millions if not billions of payments would take some real doing. Instead, we're gifted mr "it's obvious and easy".
The US government moves slow and the US is big. Big-and-slow can be planned for. Big-and-fast cannot be planned for and is, in fact, hugely disruptive.
Apart from all other parameters, the US does poorly with tyrannical-style rule because it's bad for business.
But when previous administrations did this, they (usually, as far as I know) consulted with domain experts on predictable consequences and set timelines to factor that in. This administration seems to have "effective immediately" as the only timeframe it's aware of.
I don't think anyone is cheering. At least most of the people cheering are starting to realize it's actually their face planting into the cement.
Same argument. If there's a country that doesn't get tariffs, that country will very quickly become the leading global exporter to the US. It's the same thing for the "penguin island" that everyone mocked: if you put high tariffs on every place but penguin island, it will soon be Penguin Island Logistics Center.
Setting aside judgment of the tariff policy and the chaotic implementation, it does make sense to make them blanket actions. Much of the byzantine nature of our existing supply chains is due to gaming of international tariff policy.
No it won't lol, that's not how international logistics work. You don't just flick a switch overnight. Maybe measured in the order of years... in which case the policies can be adjusted. They clearly think this works for taxing Americans given how huge the tax code is.
> same thing for the "penguin island" that everyone mocked: if you put high tariffs on every place but penguin island, it will soon be Penguin Island Logistics Center
Penguin island was stupid because it reflected how lazy the policies they applied are. It clearly showed that the Trump administration doesn't fundamentally understand what trade deficits are nor does it have an actual, well thought out plan. The only thing Penguin island has in common with this is that both actions are incredibly lazy and superficial. The Trump admin needs to get serious.
I didn't say "overnight". But if you don't think it would happen, you haven't been paying attention: it has been happening for decades. It's not a crazy thing to consider when establishing a tariff policy.
> Penguin island was stupid because it reflected how lazy the policies they applied are. It clearly showed that the Trump administration doesn't fundamentally understand what trade deficits are nor does it have an actual, well thought out plan. The only thing Penguin island has in common with this is that both actions are incredibly lazy and superficial. The Trump admin needs to get serious.
Flinging names ("lazy", "superficial") is not an argument. You've obviously decided that these actions are stupid -- maybe they are! [1] -- and nobody is going to convince you otherwise, but I just gave you a plausible reason that you'd choose to do it this way.
[1] I don't personally like these policies, but I'm willing to admit when something I don't like as a whole makes sense in part.
If I post something from Denmark to Canada, they want to know the origin of the goods. If it's China, the China tariffs (if any) apply rather than the Denmark/EU ones.
If the declaration is incorrect, the goods can be siezed or returned.
Penguin Island is a nature preserve (the whole thing), no one is building anything.
Exporters in country A (with high tariffs on exports to USA) ship partially completed products to country B (with no/lower tariffs to USA), and then do some manufacturing step. Country B then exports completed products to USA.
China was doing this extensively via Mexico under the USMCA [2]. It's not a matter of debate.
[1] https://www.trade.gov/rules-origin-substantial-transformatio...
Tariffs aren't even justified, as they're anti-free-market, anti-capitalistic, and the government provides no extra services. It's equivalent to an illegal federal sales tax. If anything, the government has been cutting major services.
- H. L. Mencken
- Winston Churchill [disputed]
I'm serious.
(Mine is multi-member ranked voting (NOT IRV)).
The difference is that some things get hammered into a Constitution and are indisputable without a significant process. That counterweights the populist "half of everyone is below average" effect.
Someone convinces a whole bunch of people that maybe slavery is actually super useful sometimes? Thirteenth amendment. A city wants to yank guns from people because everyone is panicking about shootings? Second amendment. Disney wants copyright to last forever because they're Disney? "securing for limited Times" phrasing in the Constitution. And so on.
It has its own weaknesses but one advantage is that change comes slower. This can be a problem when the past is on the wrong side of history, but it's a nice-to-have feature when the political temperature turns up and the odds of moving fast (and breaking things) increase.
It's probably a good thing that no matter how dumb any given American is, they can't legally sell themselves into slavery (even if they can get damn close).
Actually the thirteenth amendment explicitely allows slavery to exist in a case a whole bunch of people (maybe even yourself) think is super useful.
(One can also make some interesting arguments around the notion of the draft).
Yes, but there's an alternative 'significant process' which is to simply have a political party capture the body which interprets the constitution, and then an elite group of powerful insiders captures the political party, and then you're just an oligopoly but with additional steps.
Certainly not impossible though.
The positive thing about having a king is that there was only one head to cut when things got out of hand.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44887634
I’m no monarchist, but it’s about time to have a serious discussion about political philosophy instead of hiding behind the “Western representative democracy is the best we can do” cliché.
History has been showing time and again that it's an illusion. Bad governance structures and corruption get entrenched, and gladly plead allegiance to a new king.
The USA today will probably (and hopefully) not be considered a democracy by some future standard. Disqualifications may include:
* limited suffrage,
* limited or unequal access to health care and education for a significant portion of the population,
* convoluted voting system where certain demographics have little to no chance to pursue public office,
* large constituencies,
* non-state territories/districts with little to no representation at the national level,
* unincorporated populated areas, with little to no representation at the local level,
* a lack of clear separation of power between the different democratic institution,
* failure to enact popular policies,
* police violence,
* the death penalty,
* a large wealth gap,
* a lack of consumer protection,
* a lack of worker rights,
* failure to prosecute the rich and powerful for their crimes,
* a large nuclear armed military which constantly engages in imperialist actions,
* failure to respect the sovereignty of other states,
* etc.
I think describing this system as a Democratic Republic offers no insight into whether it is democratic or not (or how democratic it is on this spectrum). Republic just means that there is a president which holds some the executive power.
There is far more insight into calling the USA a capitalistic aristocracy, a two party state, a militaristic imperial superpower, a flawed, unequal, and underrepresented democracy, a police state, etc.
I don't see why; many of those have nothing to do with what I would understand the concept of "democracy" to entail.
Just like how we don’t view pre-civil rights USA as democratic by modern standards. For example, we would never consider a country with legalized slavery to be democratic today. Similarly a future concept of democracy is unlikely to consider a country which practices the death penalty to be democratic by that hypothetical future standard.
This twisting of definitions is the same thing happening to "racist". Some people only consider what was previously called "systemic racism" to be the singular definition of "racism" and pretend the old definition does not exist.
In the 1970s people were debating whether Apartheid South Africa was democratic or not (it obviously wasn’t; not even by the standards of the time) and today people are debating whether Israel is a democracy (again; it obviously isn’t) but if we apply the standards of the 1940s to both Apartheid South Africa, and today’s Israel, they would both be considered democratic.
And just to clarify, the concept of racism is equally evolving. Much of what we consider racist today would not have been considered racist in the 1980s. The (then considered non-racist) behavior of the 1980s was equally harmful as the same behavior today. But humanity has simply learned, and updated the concept of racism to include this behavior. This is the nature of knowledge and the human experience, we learn more things, and adjust our concepts to fit with our ever increasing knowledge.
Voters are bound to a make serious mistake time to time, and make conclusions from the outcome. This negative feedback is vital, as long as it's not fatal. (That latter seems to be needing serious attention lately.)
For centuries the theory was mercantilism which is the highest imbalance of trade in your favor is good.
The last century was Keynesian “deficits don’t matter” where taken to its conclusion, the worst possible imbalance is good, because that means they have to reinvest their dollars which supports the US, blah blah.
I’m open to the experiment where targeting a balanced trade with all countries as the goal. Using tariffs where imbalances exist, especially when countries arbitrarily lock your goods out of their markets, is a tool for fixing this.
One reason the US is so fucked up for the lower and middle classes is our global reserve currency and how it provides increasing pressure on the dollar and slowly deindustrializes our society. This has been pushing us towards ever more radical politics
How we redirect money to the medical system is so completely insane it must be the #1 place politicians get their graft from. It’s just so insane
Then you don't actually see an argument for tax cuts everywhere. What you want is a tax that you agree with, that disproportionately affects people you don't care about.
I get to hear my Rep ask questions. There is a Congressional research office that acts as a kind of neutral arbiter of truth allowing for evidenced based instructions. Then, after weeks or months, a consensus builds and Congress passes a law and tells the President what to do (hence Congress=Article ONE -> two).
Now, I get to watch a single person dictating tax rates and dumb twitter threads doing a horrific job replacing what I described above.
I could debate you on the merits of your comment, but my real point is that before you wreck the lives of millions of people, you should make sure most people are onboard with all the consequences (1st order and 2nd order effects).
A prior historical US example would be FDR, who my teachers growing up simply adored, who strong armed many aggressive executive policies through and radically reshaped America for a century.
Do you mean balanced trade as a whole, so it would be OK to have deficits or surpluses with individual countries as long as the total surpluses match the total deficits? Or do you mean trade with each individual country should be balanced?
Tariffs artificially increase costs of goods with another country. That should incentivize purchasing the goods from other countries, with the cheapest being our own. Of course we have very high labor costs, and lack a huge supply chain, and on and on. But China only 50 years ago had very little of the same, and America systematically de-industrialized, teaching other countries, moving the kit, and so on, until we lost the ability to make things at scale cheaply ourselves. But the same thing can happen in reverse, there is nothing inherently impossible about having Americans build and run factories, with the benefit of robots and AI and all the latest tools.
Suppose for example the US needs to buy some natural resource from country X, which the US uses to build something that it sells to country Y at a very large profit. Suppose that the US doesn't export anything that country X needs or wants.
Balancing trade with X would mean cutting back on importing that natural resource, which would cut back on how much the US can build to sell to Y.
There will almost certainly also be loops in the graph of imports and exports. Things like A exports to B exports to C exports to A, with A, B, and C all having net balanced trade, but with each have a trade surplus with one of the others and a trade deficit with one.
If they all tried to force balanced trade with tariffs they just all end up paying more with no actual change in trade except possibly a reduction all around in the volume of trade.
You're blaming the wrong economist. Keynes believed that trade deficits are a big problem and tariffs are an effective policy to remediate them.
Tariffs are happening because it's an idea he came up with 40 years ago when he was in his prime and it stuck to him.
And no one is doing anything to stop the tariffs, despite everyone knowing better, because the people in power can't tell him "no", because that would hurt his ego. You see what he does to people who hurt his ego? They get mocked on social media, deported to a foreign gulag, they and/or their spouse gets fired, their company gets investigated or loses grants, or their house gets raided by the FBI.
So everyone has to go along with it no matter how dumb it is.
Notice the date -- 2016. This has been brewing for a long time, and I will never forgive / forget that the people who recognized it and called it out early [1] were mocked and ridiculed to no end. They were shunned in their professions, called alarmists, and liars. But they were right the whole time, they were just ahead of the curve. If we had just listened to them, this could have all been avoided.
[1] https://medium.com/@Elamika/the-unbearable-lightness-of-bein... (also from 2016, as far as I know the first person to make the connection between Trump's narcissism and his inevitable attempt to become a dictator. She predicted January 6 five years before it happened just by pattern matching his personality disorder to dictators of the past).
They planned to support the new regulations before, but pulled the plug last Friday.
Technically, it's not tariffs on the records. But DHL isn't caring about that at all. To just staff up essentially overnight, the records are going from ~$20 shipping to ~$80 shipping. 4x! And I have to pay them, not the company. No telling how long it's on the docks either.
The potter in the UK that I like is just plain not dealing with it as it's a 1 man shop. Can't get it no matter how much I want to pay.
Just so disappointed.
A lot of HNers are gonna disagree with you on this, Paul Graham is one of those people very concerned about the "woke mind virus".
This goes for importers as well. Pay your taxes.
The real substance of these complainers is that they can no longer dodge import fees thru de minimis exemptions. Tough luck. Pay your fair share.
So no, "mail" is not suspended. More accurate headline please.
Think of Brexit. Commerce still happens between the UK and Europe, but there is a massive show-stopping level of friction now because people need to do Customs. That is a lot of paperwork. Millions of people are not used to this and many small businesses will get wiped out.
The de minimis treatment has been abused beyond original intent. Specifically by China, but you can't fix that without fixing the general case.
Fast fashion and other low-value drop air shipping across oceans is ecologically insane: as a planet we literally can't afford to keep doing this. And the US, by virtue of population + relative consumer wealth, is the biggest customer for this.
Furthermore, the inability to reliably screen low-value packages is a problem. To wit, I should not be able to order illegal drugs on the internet and have them delivered by the federal postal system to my door without inspection.
Unfortunately, the way to actually address this requires thoughtful regulation (Congress+customs), modernization and funding of enforcement at scale (Congress+customs), and doesn't produce a quick win... so isn't going to be done.
More likely, it's used as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, then the problem is declared "won", then it's back to business as usual.
If we want to argue the former, I'd say we need to start with non-negotiable 100%-biodegradable, 0%-plastic packaging.
from mitochondrial gradients pushing ions through a hole to make a protein complex spin so to chain double phosphate groups in ADP molecules into triple ATP molecules thereby storing energy.
all the way up to an international entities controlling flows of goods and people across borders with the goal of maximizing corporate and government profits (storing/collecting energy)
i.e. utilizing the energetic gradient caused by citizens and people and families trying to meet each other across the border including sending each other goods, flavors, candies, etcs