Politically-motivated tea tax, what could go wrong?
what would the boston tea party equivalent for america be? dumping an entire mcdonalds worth in the sewers?
The Boston tea party was the American equivalent of the Boston tea party.
I think they meant to say modern American, no?
Then they should’ve
Maybe they a word
The Galveston Coffee Shootout.
That’s just eating at McDonald’s with … less steps.
Nationalizing energy infrastructure
They wouldn’t handle it.
Tbh thats just one step less than how it normally works.
Chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, pepper, tea, bananas, and a fuckload of other things that are completely integrated into our regular diets are almost exclusively imported.
Sugar too. That ain’t healthy and is kinda fancy but… Can you see them losing their shit over sugar prices? I do.
Tomatoes imports were 2.5B in 2023.
Apparently the us imports 15% of it’s food supply.
That can’t be right. Corn can’t be only 85% of our food.
But seriously, there’s so much goddamn corn. Our meat is fed corn. Our processed foods and drinks are pumped full of corn. Even our fucking cars eat corn. We’re up to our fucking ears in ears of corn.
Based on what I find online, the us import about $2B in raw-sugar, while some (about 100M) is exported again.
Source: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-sugar/reporter/usa
How much “processed” sugar leaves the us again? I am not sure. Maybe all of it.
We already use HFCS in everything, it will just get even more extreme.
Gonna have to put a spoonful of HFCS into your ersatz coffee.
W-we gotta get out of here Morty! Everything here is on a fucking cob!
The government subsidizes corn, so there’s an incentive to use that corn. There are tariffs on imported sugar so it’s cheaper to use HFCS
There’s plenty of corn syrup to replace it with unfortunately.
I understand your perspective but I want to ask a question, not to you, but for you to think about it. What motivation causes the imports?
If corn syrup is a replacement for whatever they are doing, why are they importing raw sugar? If raw sugar is cheaper than you would expect them to already use sugar for everything and not corn syrup, and switching to corn syrup would be an increase in cost . If raw sugar costs the same, import is additional paperwork, why import? Raw sugar is more expensive, why would they pay more?
Raw sugar can’t be replaced easily in their use case? Now that makes sense.
Sugar tastes better than HFCS. Ask anyone who drinks Mexican Coke. “Tastes better” doesn’t matter when there’s no other option.
Fact is, HFCS is cheaper. I haven’t checked the entirety of it’s supply chain to figure out why, but it is cheaper.
If sugar was the same cost, they wouldn’t have switched to HFCS in the first place (why mess with your successful product for no gain?). Fact of the matter is that HFCS is saving them money. It might be pennies per bottle, but when you’re moving 10M bottles of soda, those pennies turn into dividends, literally.
Which is why I am almost certain that there is a reason why they import raw sugar
Sugar is fancy now? Man my grandpa would be thrilled were he alive. There’s a colloquial term for the farm-houses of sugar beat farmers in Northern Germany, “beat castles”, as they quickly made a lot of money growing the beats in the late 19th century. When sugar became more accessible due to the processing of the beats to refined sugar. The wealth is long gone now, similarly to how salt used to be a luxury good.
No. That is the point.
Sugar is “fancy” as in “you don’t need sugar for your diet”.
Technically, we don’t need raw sugar for our diet at all. So technically correct?
We also don’t need any sugar substitutes, like HFCS, but you can find that or sugar, in the ingredients list of pretty much all processed foods.
Yay capitalism!
And the rest is farmed here by undocumented workers.
Avocados for your avocado toast. Smh.
not if you live in cali
That’s it, the other states have crossed the line, time for CalExit.
honestly this is more feasible than brexit imo (not advocating for it)
Such a nice opportunity lost. “I’m not avocading for it.”
id rather advocate for is the demolishing of all borders and the guarantee of helping every person on the planet no matter what.
A lot of fruit/veg is grown in places they can get away with slave wages and then shipped here because that’s how little labor costs. Less than our already super low paid fruit/veg pickers that are primarily the people who escaped the countries and situations that put them in those even lower slave wage places.
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Some people have never even looked at a dang banana
It’s one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?
In trump’s economy, maybe?
The joke will take on a new meaning when $10 is the good old days.
Don’t they grow bananas in Hawaii? I know they have coffee out on Kona.
Coffee grows on Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and recently in a little bit in CA (to add to water problems)
But Labor + limited amounts means it won’t be cheaper
You can grow a banana at home. Dwarf banana plants can grow inside. The normal size banana plant is not living room sized, no wonder people think they grow on trees
But how many people drink coffee? And how many bananas can you grow for your self?
Coffee, tea, and everything you’re wearing right now.
A ton of parts of what you are driving, all your maga hats, a ton of stuff that’s in your house
Your mom wears maga hats.
Oh no, but I need to buy a new buttplug every day!
Wait, I’m not American, nvm.
Most buttplugs can be washed. Just a money-saving tip for you there.
Nah, it’s not about single-use, it’s about the collection. You can’t take some og the rare ones out of their original packaging or they lose value!
I hear it’s all about the blind box butt plugs today. That way you have to keep buying them and getting duplicates until you get a rare one.
everything you’re wearing right now
Much of that is cotton. I believe that in the “good” ol’ days the US grew that themselves. Start that industry up again, and you don’t need mass deportations across the border.
You could even run the farms the same way as in the olden days, if you criminalize and incarcarate enough black people.
I mean, that’s how cotton is produced nowadays too, except Uyghurs are the ones doing it.
Well boy howdy, it turns out we already been done doin that there part about criminalizing and incarcerating them black people just out of sheer racism. You’re telling me that there could’ve been a profit motive to it this whole time too?
jk, private contracted prisons were already profiting deeply off of that.
Ah, yes…
All we need to keep that industry running like the good ol’ days is a massive industry of government subsidized illegal immigration of easily identified persons
The US still makes massive amounts of cotton. That all gets exported to other countries before getting turned into garments and things.
Cotton takes a LOT of water to grow. And takes up farmland that could grow food.
Most of your clothes are artificial fabrics these days. Or blended
Yea, and I hear children’s tiny hands are perfect for picking it.
I wanted some foreign goods to get more expensive. To end slavery, not to escalate a trade war!
I should have checked my vicinity for any stray monkey’s paws when I made that wish.
“Fair Trade” is what you’re looking for. I don’t know how legit all instances are or whether they make a real difference, but its an attempt
This may sound pedantic, but you’re looking for Fairtrade (one word) for the organization with the strictest vetting standards. Fair Trade (two words) isn’t regulated and just means they follow some sort of ethical code. It’s not necessarily bad, but it warrants more product specific research.
I’m not American, but tariffs to fix import issues is pretty stupid.
This is the capitalist dream, export all the production of the goods you use daily to third world countries, who will have shit labor practices like the US used to have when slavery was a thing (and bluntly, for quite a while afterwards), so that the boots-on-the-ground laborers that produce everything are either treated like slaves or literally are slaves, then import the raw material to be manufactured into whatever you’re selling in the US, so you can slap a “made in the USA” sticker on your shit to enhance sales and charge more. Meanwhile “made in the USA” doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that there’s no imported goods going into the manufacturing process to make that thing, just that you took raw materials (from wherever) and made this thing in the USA.
Tariffs unduly harm end consumers, pretty much everything we buy and own is, or has components that are, imported shit.
Most microchips, a large amount of the food we eat, most electronics, pretty much everything you’ll find at a dollar general, etc (the list is very very long)… all imported in whole or in part.
Hell, there was a time that it was more economical to have your raw materials, even if they’re mined/harvested/produced in the USA, shipped overseas for assembly by slave labor, then shipped back for sale to the US public, than to have it assembled inside the US. Much of that is still true. The US neither has the manufacturing capacity, nor the desire to build their own shit. The only time that’s not the economical option is for large cost (and scale, either in size or money) items, like housing or vehicles. Assembly generally happens in the country/landmass where the vehicle will be sold and used. Even a company like Toyota, a Japanese brand, will have assembly plants in the USA for cars sold in the USA, because that’s cheaper than importing hundreds of vehicles. For everything else, it’s generally cheaper to assemble it outside of the country and import the final product.
You think process are high now? Wait until the tariff wars really kick off.
No company is going to accept the costs of tariffs and be okay with that eating their profits, they’re passing that cost into consumers, because we’re the saps that are still going to buy it.
When the tariffs come down, and they will eventually, prices will drop, but not to where they were from before the tariffs. Companies will continue to post record profits, justifying not giving raises because tariffs, and wages will remain stagnant. We’ll earn less, while they rob is for more than they already do.
The worst part is that when the tariffs are lifted, we’ll thank them for lowering the prices by buying more of their shit. We’ll be grateful for the opportunity to pay even more into their profit margins.
Congratulations, you’re experiencing late stage capitalism. The system is working as intended. You are poor, you remain poor, barely able to scratch out a living, while your owners profit more and more off of your hard work, and you get to thank them for that opportunity.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
The worst part is that when the tariffs are lifted, we’ll thank them for lowering the prices by buying more of their shit. We’ll be grateful for the opportunity to pay even more into their profit margins.
Prices won’t go down, companies will pocket the difference
I want everyone to be angry enough to do something about this.
How do we get everyone angry.
You spew this every day for the next four years with as wide a firehose as possible. Track every tariff and price it effects, scream it into every tar pit media site out there. Literally just shove this in everyone’s faces for this entire time. Every time.
A proper education would have done it.
How do we get everyone angry.
This is the problem — taking away my coffee makes me angry, but I’ll be too tired to do anything about it.
nor the desire to build their own shit
I would say that we’ve also largely lost the means to afford stuff built here, in large part as a consequence of our endless pursuit of cheap crap while scraping the bottom of the barrel with outsourcing. Even if you want to buy domestically-made goods, since we’ve lost so many of those good union jobs, especially in manufacturing, we no longer have the means to pay what it costs to make such a product with American workers. Especially if people intend to continue with their current consumerist trends.
I’m making $20/hour at the moment. If I want to buy American, union-made shoes, it’ll run me $400 a pair, on the lower end. I think it’s pretty reasonable to have a pair of work boots, a pair of regular shoes for wearing out and about, and a pair of dress shoes, which at that low end will run me 37.5% of my monthly gross pay. Now do the same for domestically produced clothing, and you’ve probably run up a bill of several month’s pay, just to have enough outfits to last you a single week, leaving aside coats, seasonal clothing, or formal attire. We’re either going to have to sharply curtail our purchasing and focus on buying a smaller amount of goods meant to last as long as possibly, or the sadly more likely scenario, we’ll see the establishment of domestic sweatshops to fuel the consumerist impulses of what remains of the middle class and up. Whether we’ll just go even more insane in our treatment of the poor here, or use prison labor and undocumented migrants “pending” deportation in these sweatshops remains to be seen, but Americans have demonstrated we shortsightedly value our ability to accumulate cheap trash over anything else.
I’d love to be proven wrong, and see a growth of strong unions and domestic production leading to a resurgence in American craftsmanship again, but the current environment is less than amenable to this outcome, to put it mildly.
People listing Hawaii like they could meet the total US demand, even if they could scale to maximum production overnight.
Most of the corn we eat is Brazilian. Most of the corn we grow is feed corn for cows and process corn for HFCS and other processed food ingredients.
As an American born and raised in Illinois I can also inform the rest of the populace our corn also gets used to make ethanol, an alternative fuel source.
Ethanol is incredibly inefficient as a fuel source.
If not for the massive subsidies it would not exist.
Still, ethanol is a better fuel additive than lead. (Both reduce knocking)
Still, the far better use is to grow food.
Im guessing they also never seen how much the coffee from there cost. Plus supply and demand you dumb fucks. The cost will skyrocket. Kona coffee ranges from $30 to $100 a bag. Think of a massive increase of demand. Are we going to pay $100 a bag for low end stuff?
It sure would help if Americans weren’t generally ignorant about uh… tons of stuff and especially anything that involves other countries. All sorts of fruits and vegetables are imported - green beans, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, berries, bananas, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant. And then at the same time, the Trump bros want to crack down on groups of people who make up a large portion of the domestic agricultural workforce? It’s difficult to see some conservative policies as intended to do anything other than just fuck people over and cause chaos.
They are going to blame the deep state or some marginalized group other than the one they just deported
It’s those darn liberal environmental and labor regulations
Yep. If you’re rich enough to can profit off the economy tanking
Well, the US turning into a banana republic will at least solve the problem for bananas.
I just remembered that Coca-Cola requires denatured coca leaves from South America.
So enjoy that $8 Coke can, America
Most competent governments think like this goose because their believe in rules based order and systems. Trump doesn’t ascribe to that view and I think he will make a sweeping change and will personally govern exceptions until it suits himself and his base. Hopefully that mangment consumes his time enough to make him less effective.
You think it’s going to be bad when people find out coffee prices are shooting up? Wait until they find out about chocolate.
Good news - chocolate rations have increased from 30 grams to 20 grams
This calls for 50 milliliters of Victory Gin!
It would be interesting to see the first bipartisan riot.
The first bipartisan riot in the US was kinda the whiskey rebellion.
I’d bet they exempt it. The corporate grinder doesn’t really work without stimulants for the workers to purchase so they can work (and consume) more and sleep less.
No, need to keep the peasants to tired to revolt
Who are we kidding? Trump’s going to enforce it selectively to nefarious ends and enrich himself off exemptions that he’s hand picked to be subservient. Free market my ass.
I will literally cry if Trump takes coffee from me
Thankfully they only placed tariffs on covfefe imports.
Thank you for reminding me there is at least some comedy coming in the future
Invest in Hawaiian. Maybe Trump can add a few more islands out there so we can compete and export.
Peter Theil coffee farm ships
