Was he actually thinking that those $450 were just gifted by the exporter?

  • klay1@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    How does this benefit me?

    …and how would it have benefited you, if the seller had to pay it? They would either increase the price for you or never have made the deal.

    Even the thing you expected would have been stupid for you 🤣

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    The inability to critically think is the first and foremost requirement to be an American conservative.

  • mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de
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    16 hours ago

    The best thing is that even if the tax was paid by the exporter they would just raise the price of their product accordingly for the import region lol

    • banazir@lemmy.ml
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      15 hours ago

      Right? Like, this should be obvious to everyone. Why don’t people immediately see this? It’s crazy.

  • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    The way it is supposed to work is that they would buy the part from a local manufacturer, thus protecting that manufacturer from foreign competitors. Problem is we got rid of most of our manufacturing in order to break unions and for shareholders to get an extra .0000001% out of their investment. So tariffs now just hurt us.

  • glorkon@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    The problem with people like this is NOT the fact that they were dumb enough to believe Trump’s lies about tariffs.

    The real problem is them crying more about having to pay the tariffs themselves than about having been blatantly lied to.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      The propaganda on tariffs is that foreign imports are bad and domestic manufacturing is good. And plenty of the conservative community accepts this, because they aren’t trying to buy direct from overseas. This guy is an outlier - a MAGA dude who is attempting to import a $2000 widget from Spain for whatever reason - and not representative of the average American voter.

      Trump’s statements on tariffs aren’t even strictly false. Businesses can and do shave their margins, eating some percentage of the cost of tariffs, in order to keep their bulk exports competitive. You’re just not going to see that happen on a one-off specialty import, because the guy in Spain isn’t trying to be competitive at scale with a rival US industry.

      We’re already seeing more high value manufacturing happening within the US to evade Trump’s tariffs. US tariffs on Japanese imports during the 1987 trade war brought electronics and auto manufacturing into the country in the same way. That’s why we’ve been building Toyota Cars in Kentucky for decades.

      Now we’re seeing Samsung and LG planning plants in the US. We’re seeing the same from BMW and Volkswagon. Is this smart trade policy? Feel free to inject your own economic orthodoxy below. But to say its not working as intended… No. The US has enormous influence in global trade. What Trump’s doing has absolutely reversed the flow of manufacturer outsourcing.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        15 hours ago

        The propaganda on tariffs is that foreign imports are bad and domestic manufacturing is good.

        Right, but you put the tariffs in place after you have the domestic manufacturing capabilities, not before.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          When you can attract large foreign investments, the order matters less. You’ll experience more pain by imposing tariffs first and building out infrastructure second. But we’re governed by a party that seems to relish in the pain of their constituents. So this might be more of a feature than a bug.

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Businesses can and do shave their margins, eating some percentage of the cost of tariffs, in order to keep their bulk exports competitive. You’re just not going to see that happen on a one-off specialty import,

        Eh no. The simplification that the customer pays is for practical purposes basically correct. There is little will to shave margins when industries and nations are broadly effected, insufficient margins to absorb much, and little reason even bother to do so save to preserve future business with the expectation that tariffs will be dropped.

        What you are seeing sometimes is markets operating on coyote time. Goods are already purchases/imported. Goods are purchased on contracts that don’t account for tariffs screwing the importer. Tariffs are applied then yanked before prices have to adjust. When they haven’t there is suspicion that they will soon be based on prior TACO behavior and future expectation is that much profit at prior margins will be lost if not carefully managed.

        Long term you will absolutely see prices rise to cover 100% of the .

        What Trump’s doing has absolutely reversed the flow of manufacturer outsourcing.

        How much actual work vs future commitments again?

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          There is little will to shave margins when industries and nations are broadly effected, insufficient margins to absorb much, and little reason even bother to do so save to preserve future business with the expectation that tariffs will be dropped.

          There’s plenty of will when a commodity is fungible and margins are high. We can see this in retail prices relative to tariff rates.

          Our observed average price increases — at 5.4% for imported goods and 3% for domestic goods — are moderate relative to the size of announced tariff rates, particularly on Chinese products. We find that roughly 14 to 20 percent of the tariff changes were reflected in retail prices within six months. These rates are higher and materialize faster than those observed during the 2018–2019 U.S.–China trade war, but remain well below full pass-through, reflecting gradual transmission and continuing uncertainty about policy persistence.

          When profit margins on a product are high, the retailer is more comfortable absorbing the tariff rate through lower marginal profit. Its on products with lower margins that we’re seeing the highest inflation rates.

          What’s more, as imports rise in price they raise the clearing rate for all products, which encourages domestically produced products to rise in price to match. So you’re “paying the tariff” on goods that aren’t even being tariffed, because they’re chasing rising prices of low margin imports.

          How much actual work vs future commitments again?

          More actual work with each month these tariffs linger. There’s other factors, of course. The declining value of the dollar is inducing demand for US capital and real estate from overseas, as well as cheapening the cost of US labor. And with three more years of Trump in office (plus the real possibility that we get more MAGA Republicans in years to come) business leadership is inclined to believe a high-tariff / low-tax economy is the future for America.

          This makes the US an ideal tax haven. We’ve been a popular safe-harbor for Chinese, Japanese, English, German, and French billionaires to shield their own wealth from their home countries. And if the EU commits to a uniform income or wealth tax policy, this trend will only continue.

      • xuakzon@lemmings.world
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        17 hours ago

        the logic should be partner with your allies and find trade that is not economic but holistically beneficial, considering all scientific factors. It’s hard and inconvenient but long term deescalating.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          That’s a very materialist approach to international trade. Unfortunately, we don’t have a government run by people with a materialist mindset.

  • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    The fact that the distinction of who the fees actually get connected from matters so much to people is so crazy to me. It doesn’t matter who the fees are collected from, you’re paying them regardless. If the exporter pays them they will just raise the price you pay to cover the cost. It also amazes me that so many people who were in favor of tariffs somehow think they wouldn’t raise prices even though that’s literally the entire fucking point of tariffs. They raise the prices of foreign goods to give domestic goods that cost more an advantage.

    • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      That’s a really big issue, tbh. People don’t get how prices work. You see the same with promotions/sales. A lot of shops/companies will often put their products on sale for 25%, 50% or even more off. And people think they will actually save that amount of money. Instead of realizing that in most cases the sales price is the regular price, and the regular price is inflated by the sales price amount so that if the product is sold the seller still makes the same margins.

      In a former job the company started expanding to Asia, and we got a sales guy from Singapore to represent us in Asia. He said that if we aren’t selling with at least 60% rebate, we have no chance of selling stuff in Asia. So we created a new price list for Asia with all the prices tripled.

      • ebolapie@lemmy.world
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        20 hours ago

        JCPenney tried to move to a more transparent pricing structure in 2012 and it lost them nearly a billion dollars.

      • wabasso@lemmy.ca
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        20 hours ago

        Regardless of whether you call it a sale, regular, or inflated prices aren’t you still saving money by buying when it’s relatively low?

        I’m aware of the psychology of marketing and the trickery of things like Black Friday. But unless the sale price is literally the same as it was when not on sale, then I’m not following.

        Edit: in your Asian rebate example, is the idea that those customers want to see a high price and then get a big rebate when they buy it? That’s fascinating! (And has probably worked on me too)

        • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          If the model is high rebates at some times (e.g. an article costs €50 instead of €100 for part of the time), then you do save money buying when it’s at €50.

          But you have to remember that €50 is the price at which the seller would usually sell the product. That’s the price that their price calculation says that it should be sold at. Otherwise they’d not be making profit.

          So the alternative model is to always sell the article at €50.


          Or to put it differently: The seller does the price calculation and comes up with €50 being the price where they would need to sell it to make profit and the price that the customers would still buy it at. It’s the optimal price, and the price they should be going with.

          Instead, they sell it for €100, so they can discount it to €50 and put a big “-50%” sticker onto it. Hardly anyone who has the choice buys at €100, everyone waits for the sale, when it’s put to €50. And then more people buy, because they think they have made a massive deal, because they have gotten a €100 item for only €50. They are going to tell all their friends about it, it might even make it into news articles or stuff like that, and then more people buy.


          The other option, which is illegal in some countries but legal in others, is to just fake the “full” price all together. The product is always offered at €50, but the sticker says “€100 -50% super sale!”

          You can see stuff like that on Aliexpress. Pick some article that has a 50% rebate during some sales holiday (e.g. Black Friday). Then look at the article a week later, and in almost all cases the non-rebated price next week will be the same as the rebated price during Black Friday.

          People just love being lied to. It’s really sad.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    In my home country, the news always mention “could be passed on to consumers” when it’s about import duties. I don’t know what US news tell to Americans for so many consumers to believe they won’t pay a dime on the cost of tariffs.

    • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
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      17 hours ago

      Oh they announced it loudly that it would be passed down to consumers, but some people prefer to watch opinion channels that played it like tariff and import-tax were different.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        15 hours ago

        If this is their business, I imagine they are aware of the pricing of this stuff, and would know what it costs prior to tariffs

      • Dentzy@sh.itjust.works
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        20 hours ago

        So, one of the few countries in the western world (don’t know enough to generalize more) that never includes the taxes in the prices, but somehow they expected the tariffs to be included in the price…

        PS: This is not a dig at you, it is because surely you are right about their expectation in many cases…

        • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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          18 hours ago

          Everything is confusing, so I don’t really blame people.

          Some platforms you pay tariffs inclusive of price (rare, but I have seen it), most you pay at checkout like a tax line item, others you get a bill from the shipper. And sometimes you think your ordering something from China but it’s actually shipped from a domestic warehouse so the tariffs were already paid.

  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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    19 hours ago

    OP is supposed to take their now even less money and start a business/factory/supply chain in america making those things in america so that OP can be extorted by the Trump administration so that Trump can then take OP’s new business from OP.

    C’mon that OP isn’t even trying to understand what is happening.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    I don’t think I could find a Spanish person, except perhaps a child, who didn’t understand the concept of an import tax. How are Americans so goddamn stupid that they don’t understand something that simple.

    It’s a tax, in the United States, imposed by the president of the United States, why the fuck would a Spanish company pay it?

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      didn’t understand the concept of an import tax

      That’s why the media uses the term “tariffs” and describes them as being “imposed on {country X}”. That lets the people who desperately want their masters to be in the right to imagine foreign countries are being bullied into writing big checks.

      • Dentzy@sh.itjust.works
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        20 hours ago

        Wow, Thanks for that, I had completely missed this piece of Consent Manufacturing and I tend to be aware of them.

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Because that’s what the idiot president told his idiot voters and they were too dumb to know he was wrong. They think he’s smart because he has money

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 day ago

      Because it’s a cult. You believe whatever nonsense the leader tells you to in order to be a member, and you want to stay a member because it fills some psychological need within you.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Because AFAIK the US republicans dismantled education as much as they could and now they have a bunch of absolute dummies running around.

      • ragas@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Just as planned. And just as planned this gave the republicans more power.

      • Drusas@fedia.io
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        1 day ago

        Nah, that’s no excuse here. This is an adult. I don’t know how old they are, but I was taught about taxes and tariffs in school at two or three different ages. They were a big part of the American Revolution.

        • Soggy@lemmy.world
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          There are plenty of places that still talk about “the War of Northern Aggression”, quality of education varies WILDLY between states.

  • ccunning@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    How does this benefit me?

    Is the satisfaction of making dear leader and his rich friends richer not enough for you?

      • Eheran@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Hahaha thank you for the laugh and not only with the golden call back to Zelenskyy!

    • TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      In theory by making him not buy from a Spanish supplier and choosing a cheaper American one (given the tariffs), strengthening America’s industry, creating a stronger economy that leads to prosperity, better education, healthcare, habitation and salaries.

      IN THEORY

    • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      There are plenty of benefits - dei is illegal, trans folks aren’t able to compete in women’s sports, brown people are afraid to go outside. Does that supersede $450? You tell me.

    • Soulphite@reddthat.com
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      1 day ago

      Bro… dear leader is sending everyone $2000 for how rich the tariffs made him, and he doesn’t even need congressional approval to do so… much like blowing up random boats in international waters and attempting to steal Greenland.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      1 day ago

      He must be a domestic terrorist or something if he’s not unequivocally grateful for the opportunity to personally enrich dear leader!

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    This is literally how tariffs work. They don’t benefit you. They fuck you in your anus. We tried to tell you.

    • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      For fairness here, tarrifs can be beneficial and useful when specifically targeted at industries which you can compete globally in with commensurate subsidies. In other words, universal tarrifs is the same as shooting your own nuts off, but targeted tarrifs can be helpful in growing specific industries you can grow.

      All tarrifs are paid by the population of the country doing the tarrifing, but when it’s well thought out and specifically targeted it can be a good thing.

      Lastly, for clarity, fuck trump, what he’s doing is incredibly stupid and will only hurt US citizens.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        It’s also incredibly stupid that they tariff components.

        If a US company wants to build a dishwasher then they’re probably going to have to buy some parts from China, because the US lacks vertical integration, except they’re not going to because those parts are also tariffed. So you might as well just make the dishwasher in China and pay a single tariff on the whole thing.

        Is it possible that the Trump administration is just made up of idiots?

      • BenVimes@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Also: I think it would make more sense for those targeted tariffs to be one of the last steps in creating a home-grown industry, and not one of the first. Rather than slapping down some tariffs and hoping that your captains of industry will build the infrastructure to meet the demand, you’d instead want to subsidize the industry first, and only put the tariffs in place to curb imports once domestic production has ramped up. By applying the tariffs first, you’re just taxing your population with no incentive for change, because the demand doesn’t disappear while waiting for the industry to be built, and the people who might do the building can just pass the import costs on to the consumer anyhow.

        • Red_October@piefed.world
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          21 hours ago

          Don’t forget the damage done by being so wildly inconsistent in maintaining the policy. MAYBE someone would invest in building production to take advantage of the tariff protections. However when you cancel the tariffs a month later, then reinstate them, then lower them, raise them, cancel them, and renew them again like a child mashing buttons, nobody will EVER invest in national production because they can’t expect those tariffs to still be there when the factories are ready. Trump would have to actively try to do more economic damage than he has already.

      • KurtVonnegut@mander.xyz
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        1 day ago

        Aren’t taxes supposed to be paid according to the “tax incidence”, which depends on the elasticity of supply and demand? (Basically, how easy it is for respectively the seller and the buyer to find alternatives?) I guess that since a lot of products dont have domestic alternatives, US buyers have few alternatives, whereas foreign sellers have many (they dont necessarily have to sell to the US). As a result, yes, the US buyer will be paying most of the tariffs?

    • crank0271@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s all those woke economists’ fault (and literally anyone else who understands anything)!

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      If they fucked me in the I’d at least have a good time. They fuck me in the wallet, which hurts a lot and not in a sexy way.