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Comment by palmfacehn | Hacker News Reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWjpDxvqSSE

Here's an even handed approach and overview of some of the tariff related stats. The presenter is a critic of tariffs, but concedes that the results thus far are not as simple as some here would suggest.

6:22

> This is just a matter of acknowledging the data on the graph and saying this is quite a difference from the way it was a year ago. And so, people who said this wouldn't happen, that's wrong. It did happen. There it is. And I think it's important to acknowledge that. Um, not only that, but a lot of people said, "Well, this is going to lead to the price of goods, especially automobiles, coming into the United States, is going to skyrocket." Well, so far that hasn't been the case.

>In fact, prices have come down. And you can go to Google and you can look it up and there's many articles discussing the fact that the Chinese automakers have largely been eating the tariffs so far.

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Very interesting perspective in the video, thanks for sharing.

In the first quote the video presenter is referring to the tariff percentages from 2024 to now, not prices. He never presents any data to back up his price claims, just a couple of news articles about automakers announcemens.

Everything in the video up until 20:30 is making supporting the claim that tariffs are higher now than they were in 2024 which I'd be surprised if anyone disagrees with.

After 20:30 is where I think the real meat of the video is:

"Um, now I know some people will say you can't win in a trade war. So even though Trump has gotten, you know, these good uh better levels than he had a year ago, it's basically attacks. It's going to lead to less efficiency and it's going to cause growth to fall and nobody wins a trade war. Now, if that's your argument, I tend to agree with you. But that's a different subject, right? If you want to say that nobody wins in a war and that's going to hurt everybody, fine. I'll go down that road. I think it's a relative game and if everybody falls but the United States falls the least, then on a relative basis, the United States has maintained its hegemony."

That's the larger point here. We should be able to hold two different concepts in our minds when we describe the outcome. Yes, all things being equal tariffs and interventions create economic inefficiency. That is in my view, a rational first principle. We would prescribe actions based on that belief.

*As a redundant disclaimer for HN, that belief would put me in opposition to Trump's policies.

However when describing the outcome all things are not equal. We shouldn't fall into the trap of an appeal to utopia.

Selling into the US presents advantages on economies of scale. Overseas dollar denominated debt drives dollar demand. These factors affect decisions for producers selling into the US market.

The specific pricing data is subject to cherry picking and politicalization. Generally it is a bit strange to see the illiberal left taking exception with Trump's illiberal interventionism. You get the sense that if the interventions were rationalized by a different actor or for a different reason, the statistics would be spun in the other direction. This feels inconsistent and hypocritical.

The other key point is that the tariff doom prophesies haven't yet come to pass. Perhaps the doomsaying was merely more political bloviation? It would fit with the pattern of inconsistency.

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