• Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Everyone needs a lesson in how tarrifs work. Tarrifs are a tax on thing that US companies buy. They are intended to make foreign products more expensive to protect domestic producers. So, the American company pays the tariff. They then pass that tariff on to their customer, either another company or an American consumer. Then, the country that the tariff had been applied to applies offsetting tarrifs on American goods.

    When the product that the tariff is applied to can’t be produced in the US, think advanced microchips or Canadian softwood lumber, Americans pay more but still have to buy the foreign product. With the softwood lumber tarrifs the cost of building a home with Canadian softwood lumber went up by tens of thousands of dollars and Canadian companies laughed all the way to the bank. American consumers paid more and Canadian companies made record profits because the US can’t produce enough softwood lumber to meet its needs.

    So, the price to American companies and consumers goes up and the cost of American goods overseas goes up. Americans pay the tarrifs and American companies sell less goods overseas.

    America loses.

      • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        Oh I have no doubt that the Blackrocks and Birkshire Hathaway’s of the nation are absolutely throbbing at the prospect. Literally diamonds. Those dusty old corpses won’t need their hourly viagra until 2030.

        • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
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          6 days ago

          Lol the stock market went up by like 15% since he won or something like that. The big banks and holdings groups are wayyy up, same for tesla which just broke 1 trillion.

          • RangerJosie@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            As it always does. In case you missed it all those things were hitting records all the way through Biden’s 4 years.

            It’s a giant casino. And the only time real people feel it is when it crashes and suddenly shit costs way more than it did last week. It doesn’t matter to anyone worth less than 8 or 9 figures.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 days ago

        Hadn’t heard of this one, thanks. Americans are pros at not learning from history.

        I thought this part was particularly funny/familiar:

        It was a bill designed to fail in Congress because it was seen by free trade supporters as hurting both industry and farming, but it passed anyway.

        Edit: That article lead me to this one, which gave me a good chuckle. How quaint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petticoat_affair

        these women, dubbed the “Petticoats”, socially ostracized Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife, Peggy Eaton, over disapproval of the circumstances surrounding the Eatons’ marriage and what they deemed her failure to meet the “moral standards of a Cabinet Wife”.

        After further reading about Peggy Eaton’s childhood, kind of a bummer. Also, John Eaton pulled a King David/Bethsheba on her first husband, quite literally… That’s wild.

        Once Timberlake told Eaton of his financial troubles, Eaton unsuccessfully attempted to have the Senate pass legislation that would authorize payment of the debts Timberlake had accrued during his Naval service. Eventually, Eaton paid Timberlake’s debts and procured him a lucrative posting to the U.S. Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron; many rumormongers asserted that Eaton aided Timberlake as a means to remove him from Washington, in order for Eaton to socialize with Peggy.

        What a shithead. Literally sent him to fight pirates so he could bang the dude’s wife hahah

    • Oaksey@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      So in your example, I guess the tariffs don’t apply to Canada? Because the proceeds of tariffs go to the government of the country charging them.

      • Maple Engineer@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I’m not sure what you’re asking. If you’re referring to softwood lumber the profits of Canadian lumber companies were at record levels because the US needs Canadian softwood lumber with or without tarrifs. The tarrifs didn’t affect sales at all so with the increased demand despite the tarrifs Canadian companies didn’t suffer at all. US consumers spent more and the money went to the US government which presumably gave some of the money to uncompetitive US softwood lumber companies to subsides their unprofitable operations. It’s a tax on US consumers.

        Canadian softwood lumber companies pay a stumpage fee to sustainably harvest softwood on public land. US softwood lumber companies pay much higher prices to harvest lumber mostly on private land. It’s all about extracting the highest profit for the most wealthy people. Canada has a better system and the US is salty about it. The US has lost at the WTO every time but refuses to accept the result so it ignores its treaty obligations and just forges ahead with the illegal tarrifs which hurt US consumers.

  • Furbag@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Good. I hope he does it. Don’t let any of his yes-men or cronies tell him what a horrible idea it is. Let the whole fucking country burn.

  • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Where so you think American farmers buy their fertilizer? Where they sell most of their soy and corn sell to? Maaaaany companies are either buying or selling to/from China. Many will go bankrupt, bany will struggle.

    • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      China is strengthening ties with Russia to replace u.s trade, and it shows that Putin is laughing his ass off at how he played a whole country, other than his I mean

  • cordlesslamp6891@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    TIL, lots of Trumps voters don’t even know how tariffs work and thought the foreign companies are the one who paid those instead of the domestic buyers themselves.

    • Randelung@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Even if, did they think prices would just stay the same? Tariffs only work if production is moved back home, which for many industries won’t happen, which means costs will be passed on to consumers.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 days ago

        Also, the costs would still be passed on to consumers even if the production was moved back home, because it will cost more in general. And gotta keep those profit margins up.

    • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      Doesn’t matter who the tax is levied against. All costs will be passed on to the buyer. They should be familiar with this idea. It’s the Republican’s key talking point against business taxes.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    Fuck.

    It hasn’t even started yet and I know that I have 4 more years of this stupidity news ever single day

    Oh wait

    Since Trump will install himself as a dictator, then die, we have a few decades of couche fucker Vance to look forward to, yeeeiii

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I’m not convinced we’ll go even a single decade of this regime without total socioeconomic collapse.

      • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        The Hitler lasted from July 1932, and Hitler killed himself in April 1945 - 13 years.

        Mussolini lasted from 1922 to his execution in 1945 - 23 years.

        Stalin lasted 1924-1953 - 29 years.

        Fascism inevitably implodes and crates untold suffering along the way, but you might have longer than you think.

          • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            Fascism and idiots - I couldn’t name a more iconic duo - though I do agree with you point… Trump is exceptionally stupid, and has surrounded himself with gibbering idiots like Musk and RFK.

            …that said, when Trump’s heart inevitably explodes, Vance will almost certainly have competent (evil) advisors, and they’ll get (horrible) shit done.

  • Juigi@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    Rich get richer, poor people suffer. Americans are so f dumb i cant take it

  • DevopsPalmer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    As someone who works for a large US-based company, we are locking in large contracts ASAP for compute power to hopefully keep us sated and avoid these from being an extinction event. We were already discussing some vendors not offering supply contracts already because they see the writing on the wall for their own profit margins

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      That’s the point of tariffs…to give domestic supply a shot.

      It’s stupid and short-sighted in a modern economy. It’s not worth it for any manufacturer to shut down existing mega factories and build new ones here. They won’t find enough people to do the jobs (especially if we deport/denaturalize a ton of people) and the costs and re-investments are huge.

      Plus the only places that are left to build giant factories are distant from population centers. And I doubt there will be mass transit into them. So more pollution from personal transportation. And more pollution from local factories. Ripping the EPA to shreds will help with that, and that’s a part of agenda 47.

      And you just know the ones that choose to come and build here are gonna get really nice tax breaks to do so, so there won’t be any real return for the community for a long time, if ever.

      The end result is either they pass the costs into consumers, or they cut costs by laying off their expensive state-side employees and moving their positions abroad. American middle-class loses bigly either way.

      • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        Plus the only places that are left to build giant factories are distant from population centers.

        You’re forgetting about eminent domain. Clearly, giant factory on American soil is a public good, even if it’s privately owned. Hence, the government will seize the homes and give the land to the corp. The prices of the houses will fall first, because who wants to buy a house that’s going to get bulldozed, reducing the compensation the government has to pay to the homeowners, potentially causing them to be upside down on their mortgages. This will leave them with nothing, or potentially even debt, when their homes get sized.

        • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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          That’s exactly the problem. We don’t, and in many places can’t, make things here.

          A lot has to do with access to resources. China is dominating in electronics in part because they essentially (but not really) colonized most the world that has good silicon.

          But moving manufacturing around the world, to a place where literally everything is more expensive, is an costly endeavor that simply won’t be worth it for most businesses.

  • kaugman@lemmy.today
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    7 days ago

    Isn’t thwre a single one RISC-V capable production line in the US? Imagine if Apple starts their own chip production.

    • cheesepotatoes@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      There’s a reason TSMC does most of the world’s chip fabrication.

      It’s complex and extremely expensive. Standing up a fab, in America no less, capable of handling Apple’s demand would be an astronomically expensive feat. Apple would never do this while TSMC is still an option. Even after the tariffs it would still probably be cheaper to use TSMC.

      • Fillicia@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        Also let’s be honest, unless the tariff is applied to everyone it’s gonna be cheaper to use another country as a middleman to trade with with China.