Yup. I am the international buyer at my Made in America company. We pay the tariffs. We do not absorb them it gets added into the price. And when China is 50-75% lower than American made, another 30% tariff isn’t going to bring the business back here. I kept posting that on my Facebook for weeks before the election. No one listens.
Even worse, China has already begun moving their Chinese-owned production to Malaysia, circumventing the tariffs on Chinese imported finished goods.
I heard about this a few months back on a podcast about auto parts. China just shipped the fan belts they were making to a warehouse in Vietnam, rebranded them, and shipped them to the US, tariff free.
They did some sort of chemical analysis on the Made in China and Made in Vietnam belts and the formulation of the rubbers was identical.
Enforcement to counter this would likely eat up too much of the tariff money, so it just won’t be done. China will still get paid the same, and at minimum we’ll eat China’s additional shipping costs.
That is really interesting, what is the name of the podcast?
I was able to find it!
It is Planet Money - The Trade Fraud Protective 23 AUG 2024
Audio and transcript at that link, or you should be able to find it on your podcast app of choice.
It’s also power steering hoses in Thailand, not fan belts in Vietnam, so I hope that’s still ok. 😉
Thank you
My pleasure!
Everyone seems to be wringing hands about policy, but this is just another datapoint that propaganda won this election.
One possible silver lining:
By removing dirt-cheap goods from the market, this could make it more difficult to ignore the underlying problem: People are not being paid enough for their labor to afford the things they need at home. Instead, they are expected to depend on subsidized/sketchy foreign manufacturing, while corporations and the super-rich are being allowed to extract a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth from everyone else, hoard it, buy favorable legislation and policies, and avoid paying their fair share in taxes. This is already unsustainable; tariffs will make it more obvious.
(I don’t imagine this is why Trump wants tariffs, but perhaps he’ll accidentally place the straw that breaks the camel’s back, leading lawmakers to face either reform or revolution. Unfortunately, I think it’s likely to make things worse for the rest of us before it makes things better.)
That is not an issue, that’s how billions of people rose out of poverty.
Oof. Dorian Gray just looked at the portrait.
Obviously. The point is, that if you make the product in the United States, you won’t pay the tariffs.
Who would have thought that importing a product from China is when the 30% tariffs would apply?
Biden never rolled back Trump’s 2017 Tariffs. Why didn’t he?
Oooooooooo
The problem is that it makes everything more expensive. With the alternatives costing 30% more all the domestic just raise their prices by 30% to match. Of course that gives some wiggle room for domestic to be like maybe 1% lower but basically everything shoots up because capitalism and extracting as much value as possible.
Like when the steel and aluminum tarrifs went into effect the domestic prices jumped up with it.
I think once China slapped on retaliatory tariffs om farmers and the US had to drop a new wave of subsidies it locks in the tariffs a bit until a new wave of negotiations can be made. I suspect China stalled those negotiations in hopes they could dupe trump into a better deal.
Given Trump is saying that the trade deal with Mexico is bad (the deal he negotiated) and is threatening tariffs on Mexico its clear he is just using tariffs as a scare tool. Unfortunately every world leader saw him get dog walked in the debates and knows he’s a moron so now its unlikely he’ll be taken seriously.
We need more tariffs and subsidies not less.
Major costs for most people are housing, transport and groceries - mostly domestic products already. We’d be far better off reducing those prices first.
Realistically the US would need to import raw materials for things like electronics so for a lot of things it would just raise prices and domestic infrastructure/manufacturing would remain unchanged.
Yes, anyone reasonable knew that this would lead to higher costs. Americans are expensive to employ. The point of the tariff package is to bring back manufacturing and production to the USA. Stop importing so much crap from China and other places, and things will balance out. That increase in costs should be compensated for by jobs for American citizens across all sectors if people respect the purpose of the tariffs - to disincentivize imports whenever and however possible.
This is one of those things that Trump never actually said, his supporters have just been saying for him for months now. Another one of those “what he really meant was…” Because that’s what won’t happen, even if it did it would take decades to move production back.
I buy parts internationally for a domestic manufacturer. The parts are as good if not better than us made. They are also 50-75% less than US WITH the current 25% tariff. Another 20-30% increase isn’t going to bring it back to the US, it will just increase costs.
All that says is that we need to increase import costs 80-85% and instate a labor tariff so that the company has to pay taxes equal to a US citizen for every offshore employee.
Sure ok. Things cost 4x more. Are they going to pay us 4x more? Musk said we need to buckle down and quit spending. Spending money is the one thing keeping the economy out of a recession or depression. Can’t have it both ways.
Except, this measure won’t result in that at all. Punishing companies for importing is only going to punish consumers. The company wants it for as cheap as possible, and that will often be importing. Even ifbit becomes expensive to import, it will be cheaper than the capital needed to set up the infrastructure for manufacturing domestically. Rewarding companies for sourcing materials and labor domestically will incentivize them to bring jobs here. At least more so than making them pay more to bring it in.
That’s never going to happen. What will happen is that companies will raise their prices slightly higher than the tariffs cost them, fire more of their workforce, and then brag to investors about their most profitable quarter ever. Plus, that would require the tariffs to be on finished products only. I’ve already heard of several companies announcing no Christmas bonuses this year because they need to stock up on materials in anticipation of the incoming tariffs.
And most of the people supporting tariffs thought that they were going to make things cheaper AND that China was going to pay them.
The point of the tariff package is to bring back manufacturing and production to the USA.
That was the claim.
But in reality, American businesses will do whatever is more profitable for them.
And even if it becomes more profitable to build a factory (including paying the tarrifs on the machinery needed 'cause that factory hasn’t been built in the US yet) and hire (and train) a workforce, that will take years to do, and even more years before the capitol cost is recovered and it starts being profitable.
By which point Trump will be dead and gone and maybe a more sane government will have eliminated some of Trump’s more stupid impacts. And then the owner of the new factory may not be able to compete with overseas factories at a level of extreme profit they want…
It’s amazing we’re having this conversation given that the pinnacle of conservative thought is that you can’t make the rich pay for anything because they’ll just pass the costs down to you, and yet that seems to go out the window when you can be racist about it.
Yeah, no shit. How the fuck do people think tariffs work?
If they knew how tariffs worked, fewer of them might have voted for the dumbass proposing to make things cheaper by raising them.
In their minds, they literally think of them as some sort of “cover charge” that foreign manufacturers pay to get their goods into the US, and that they will do so gladly and neither seek other places to sell nor raise their prices. They think that these companies will eat the losses until they decide to build factories in the US, or they will simply wither away and American factories will sprout up like dandelions in a sidewalk.
The fact that all of it is completely wrong doesn’t matter, because the people telling them otherwise don’t have on a red hat and an ill-fitting suit.
They are also super easy to explain. It is a tax. That is increasing yet another tax - vat.
USA doesn’t have VAT
Cool. Sales tax then. Almost the same thing. Consumer pays it.
“Think”?
The same way they thought “Mexico will pay for the wall” was gonna work - they didn’t think about it at all.
They just blindly trusted the habitual liar, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Once again, corporate america will use this as an excuse to raise prices more than necessary, gouging the people and stuffing the pockets of CEOs.
Correct. Trump’s 2017 tariffs raised the price of foreign made dishwashers by 20%. American manufacturers also jacked up the cost of their appliances, in order to match that price that customers were paying for the other brands, pocketing the difference.
That’s the point
The average American is already stretched to the breaking point with what overinflated goods they can afford. We’ll soon see people either buy just the bare essentials or start stealing at a much higher rate than we already have. Food riots might very well be a thing in the world’s richest country soon.
The genius part is now that Republicans are in charge of the government here, deficits no longer matter, and they will push through huge tax cuts on the rich. These massive tax cuts will only trickle down to working folks in the form of direct rebate checks, just to give Trump an excuse to have his signature all over them. Trump will convince these people that the additional money is to help offset rising prices, and his voters will believe it.
Deficits will no longer matter until after the midterms, and then if Democrats can gain back control of either house of Congress, the deficit will become a big problem again, that can only be solved by slashing more programs. The checks will stop, and Trump will blame Democrats.
Yep, and the prices will stay high even after the tariffs are gone.
Grocery stores are the worst about this too. Prices are still absurdly high despite there being no more supply issues from covid.
Glad they said this after the election
/s
They don’t give a shit that the customers will be paying more. In fact, if anything, they probably love the excuse to jack up prices further - or further cut their workforce to the bone, or whatever the latest fad in padding executive compensation packages is.
I’m sure they probably do - shit as Walmart is a depression in consumer spending is overall bad for them.
What are the customers going to do? Buy from someone else? Wal-Mart is already often the cheapest option around.
It’s already often the only option around. So many small businesses like local supermarkets and hardware stores got closed down in small towns by Walmart moving in and now there’s no alternative. I see it all over in central Indiana and Illinois.
No but they’ll buy less overall even from Walmart.
Buying less, but they’ll be spending the same amount of money, barring rises in other expenses not directly related to tariffs (rent, utilities, etc). Their quality of life will simply go down. Wal-Mart doesn’t care about that. We could all be medieval peasants for all they care.
Less sales but more expensive, so same income, less costs.
Also less regulations, so they can sell crappier and cheaper alternatives for the same price.
Also, lower taxes on big corporations.
And they’ll probably be able to use the private prison system to turn shoplifters into very cheap slave labour, saving on wages.Seems like a win-win situation for Walmart, though not so much for its customers.
This is why Trump wants immigrant labor camps
Tariffs make companies able to compete better within the walled garden, but weakens their competitiveness worldwide. It creates a race to the bottom inside the garden, but makes them weak outside the border. They also makes prices increasefor the local buyers. Costs get passed along, it’s not as if manufacturers are going to absorb increases, they don’t need to. GM, Ford, Chrysler are all going to pass them on (as any domestic manufacturer)
Where does the money raised by the tariffs go?
They are effectively a tax and are collected by the federal government. One of Trump’s yapping points is to get rid of income tax and use the money from tariffs to replace that lost tax income. This will hurt 90% of people in the US because the amount they will pay in higher product costs due to tariffs will be higher than the cost of the taxes they pay. The wealthy on the other hand won’t have to pay their fair share.
Mar-a-Lago
inb4 products that have absolutely no supply chain dependence to China ‘somehow’ increase in price.
Hey now, the Waltons need some extra cash. Who could even get by on a measly four million dollars a hour in this economy?
Gotta prepare just in case one of them gets drunk and murders a person with a car again.
- It’s Walmart: what item they sell has no connection to China?
- It’s important tariffs actually the board not just China
I think a lot of their food items aren’t from China, and a few random things are even domestic. I think they sell Lodge cast iron pans, which are fully made in America.
I think his “plan” is a really big tariff on China and a moderate one on every other country?
That’s my understanding as well.
But, as the original comment suggested, it doesn’t really matter.
If every other cast iron pan goes up 15% in price, what do you think Lodge will do?
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keep their price the same, see modest relative increase in market share with a demand for investment in additional production, knowing full well the tariffs aren’t going to be permanent leaving them over-invested in production whenever they drop the tariffs.
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Also raise their prices by 15%, immediately show increased revenue at no additional cost to shareholders next quarter. CEO gets massive bonus.
I would imagine production cost for lodge could go up since they source the material from scrap yards and if the cost of iron in general goes up because a percentage of it is imported than the cost of scrap should increase as well.
Mexico is already threatening a reverse tariff.
Lodge doesn’t have shareholders, they’re family owned.
That comes with its own caveats, but they’re not the same ones you get with publicly traded companies.
I agree with you. In addition to what you are saying, if Lodge exports to other countries and these countries fire back with tariffs of their own, there will be increased pressure to raise prices in the US to make up for the loss of revenue abroad. I’m not from the US and don’t know if that is the case for Lodge specifically, but it will surely be the case for a lot of US brands
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I didn’t know Lodge only used American iron - do you have a link to that somewhere? I tried finding it on Google but couldn’t. It’d be useful to have handy when talking to the “America doesn’t manufacture anything anymore” crowd
Trying to speak sense to Americans. You are in for a rude awakening. They will blame the high prices on space lasers.
And immigrants, “wokeism,” and Obama, Joe Biden.
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It would have been helpful if they made this statement before the election.
