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.
Everyone seems to be wringing hands about policy, but this is just another datapoint that propaganda won this election.
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!
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.
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.
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 fact that they’re sending this message now means they will use this as an excuse go raise the prices even higher than nessesary to increase their profit margin. If they really cared about consumers then they should have been yelling from the treetops BEFORE the election.
They said this the last time it happened… During his last presidency.
Walmart Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said in an interview that higher tariffs will result in increased prices for consumers.
If only someone else said something about how bad these tariffs would be…
https://amp.miamiherald.com/opinion/article292867514.html
https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/11/04/how-much-could-trumps-tariffs-damage-europes-economy
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4938752-trump-economic-policies-impact/amp/
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/16/politics/trump-fact-check-john-deere-economy
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/18/2024/what-are-the-consequences-of-trumps-tariffs
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-tariff-threat-john-deere-economists-baffled-2024-9
https://fortune.com/2024/08/16/trump-tariffs-trade-war-inflation-economic-policies-joachim-klement/
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/yellen-speech-tariffs-will-increase-inflation-risk-trump/
I’m not saying no one was warning us against tarrifs, just pointing out that Walmart specifically waited until after trump was elected (apparently twice now) to announce their warning about tarrifs.
Ah, well let’s hope voters don’t need a third warning just from Walmart to realize the danger the next time this pops up.
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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.
No shit.
Tariffs alone will not revive domestic manufacturing, the demise of which has numerous causes, but two in particular.
1.) Corporations maximising profits. I don’t think this needs much of an explanation.
2.) Consumer apathy. By which I mean consumers not giving a shit and consistently buying the cheapest garbage possible without regard for the long term cost. Quality products cost more money up front and ideally have a lower total cost of ownership. But, the average consumer only cares about the price tag on the shelf. The long term costs of this behavior and the related disposable culture are enormous.
Unfortunately, one of those costs are the loss of middle class jobs cranking out products at a plant in Ohio because now the plant is an empty field and the jobs got shipped overseas.
Reminds me of this Jib Jab video from like 2005.
2.) Consumer apathy. By which I mean consumers not giving a shit and consistently buying the cheapest garbage possible without regard for the long term cost.
This has some validity, but it is not as simple as just saying, “American consumers are stupid” and having done with it.
Quite a few shoppers, possibly even the majority, are living paycheck-to-paycheck and cannot afford anything other than whatever the cheapest thing on the shelf is. They are barred from making sound long-term purchasing decisions because they don’t bring in enough income to afford the superior product, even if they wanted to. It’s a case of, buy what they can afford regardless of low quality, or nothing. This is the real life version of the Vimes’ Boots Economic Theory.
I will also point out that a huge portion of spending by individual Americans is on perishable commodity goods with largely inelastic demand, the purchasing of which cannot be put off. In plain English, that’s food and fuel. I will also point out that these are two categories that are to many decimal places absolutely not tied to Chinese importation in any way whatsoever (in fact, the vast majority of food sold in America is grown and packed in America, and when you take prepared foods into account that number rises to near as makes no difference to 100%) so we automatically know that any supposed “tariff” increases on these products are in reality just a bullshit profit grab by retailers and/or Kraft-Heinz or Nabisco or whoever the fuck.
It’s also impossible to know if the 30$ item will actually last twice as long as the 15$ item. What is clear is the price tag.
Yeah, people act like there are all of these high quality substitutes available. There isn’t, and they aren’t coming back.
Just take a gander at the buy it for life subreddit. Every comment on each post is “Yeah this product was high quality, but since then they have cut x, y and z corner and the quality is now trash”. A lot of those products are American made, and now they are crap.
So no, I don’t care anymore because it’s a crap shoot. Nothing is indicative of quality, not even price anymore. I have dirt cheap Chinesieum items that have far outlasted their USA made counter parts, some already almost by a decade.
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You should reduce your tax amount that your company is paying for you to the IRS. You can calculate it yourself and tell your company to modify it.
Form W-4 is the paper you’re supposed to use, they may have a digital version they prefer, but that’s the thing to look for. You can adjust your withholdings that way.
Withholding. That’s the word I was looking for. I shouldn’t be on the internet seconds after I wake up.
I would check with your local laws but it’s very rare those kinds of policy are enforceable. If you need to pay them 5k to quit, it’s akin to slavery.
No, they’re actually pretty common in certain industries, and definitely enforceable, at least for sure within the state of California. If you sign a contract that says you get a certain amount of money for starting a job, contingent on working for them a certain length of time, that’s typically paid out on day 1, but you have to pay it back if you leave early.
Ya for sure, my point is more that compagnies will use it even in place where it isn’t enforceable. Although it’s an anecdote, it did happen to my sister in a place where it wasn’t allowed. They didn’t even ask again after the first time she told them to pound sand.
I also really doubt if it’s enforceable in California if there is a valid reason. I can’t imagine a company going after someone if they quit because of a toxic environment, lax safety standards, sexual harassment or something similar. But I’m just making an educated guess tbh.
I knew about it in California but it always surprises me with its reputation.
I wouldn’t doubt companies would use it any place it’s not enforceable, and at least attempt to collect.
I’m not sure the nuances of it, other than having talked to a couple of people who were in that situation, talked to an attorney, and ended up paying. I would suspect having a valid reason like sexual harassment wouldn’t affect if it’s enforceable per se, but give you a lot of leverage to convince a company it isn’t worth pressing the issue.
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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.
Oof. Dorian Gray just looked at the portrait.
