‘You want to allow drugs to come through our southern border? We’re going to tariff you,’ son of president-elect tells major U.S. trading partner
    • anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      7 days ago

      Well of course not their drugs. Same as how they don’t want to deport their undocumented housekeepers, or ban their mistresses abortions.

  • nucleative@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    7 days ago

    Here’s how tariffs work (I import stuff from china)

    1. I find a Chinese manufacturer of widgets and negotiate with them. One of their first questions is, what incoterms do I require? I tell them EXW which makes their quotation the easiest to provide.

    EXW means that once the goods are ready, I’ll send my shipping agent to go get them and bring them to me in my country.

    1. I call my agent and tell them to get the goods. They ask a lot of questions about the contents of the goods and figure out which HS code to use, which is a classification of what the goods are (such as bicycle tires, or unfinished lumber, or whatever).

    2. The agent prepares an assload of documentation for my shipment. They send a truck to the Chinese warehouse, get the stuff, load it into a container, take it to a shipyard. It’s loaded, boat moves to the US, boat is then unloaded, and my container is put into an inspection queue.

    3. The shipping agent forwards the documents about my container, which has not been released, to US customs. US customers decides if they want to manually inspect it or not, and then issues an invoice for the taxes. My agent calls me and says Mr. Nucleative, your customs bill is $9,845.50.

    I pay them, they pay the US customs office. Customs releases my container.

    1. The truck is cleared to pick up my container and drive it to my warehouse.

    2. Now I unload and sell the goods to my customers.

    Did you notice in step #4 that I paid the import tariffs? Now my cost to get the goods to my customers went way up. My margins are pretty thin, so I can’t do this business unless I charge my customers more or else I’m running a charity. Now, my customers have to pay me more. That money goes straight to the US government.

    Hypothetically now it’s less unattractive to set up a factory in the USA, encouraging more local jobs. But damn, did you know we also need to import rubber, and metal, and machine parts, and cardboard for packaging, and all the other raw supplies either way? The local factories, if there are any, can probably not increase production to meet demand anyways, at least not in a month or two. Does anybody remember what happend when demand outstrips supply?

    There is no rocket science here, just people learning from the wrong people.

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      7 days ago

      This is exactly what happens. I can pay 100% tariff on solar panels that I can’t source locally at all, but we have a tariff to encourage a nonexistent industry to not flourish. And so I buy panels that China routes through SE Asia instead and add 95% extra cost to do that. So panels I sell customers are twice what they need to be and so they buy half as much and make up the difference with coal-fired electricity.

      The wonderfulness that is the invisible hand…

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
    171·
    7 days ago

    No he most likely knows. He’s gaslighting the people who are watching. What’s the simpler answer here? Well educated billionaire doesn’t know how tariffs work, or he’s lying through his teeth to protect his interests?

    • Numenor@lemmy.world
      7·
      7 days ago

      The rich are not better or smarter than the rest of us, and this bad breath in human form exemplifies that.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
        51·
        7 days ago

        They aren’t smarter but they do have access to better teachers. And Tariffs are a very simple concept.

    • Bobmighty@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 days ago

      He knows most likely. Daddy doesn’t. Even if he did at one point, his mashed potato brains forgot it.

  • Jesus@lemmy.world
    15·
    8 days ago

    We are going to cost your countries, your economies, we’re going to cost your businesses billions, hundreds of billions of dollars if you think you’re going to poison Americans

    They realize American manufacturers and consumers pay the tariffs, right? Not the other countries.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      8 days ago

      I don’t think they do. But daddy donvict seems to also think that China is somehow ripping us off because “trade deficit”.

      So I don’t think anyone in this crime family understands much of anything at all.

    • dance_ninja@lemmy.world
      11·
      7 days ago

      Plus it’s not like companies can turn things on a dime and create new facilities/train new people in response to these.

  • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
    14·
    7 days ago

    Eric fails to understand who has the money to create the demand for illegal drugs. Also, a large portion of the illegal drug distribution is in the rural red counties because they lack law enforcement.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    12·
    7 days ago

    There is something deeply ironic about the US accusing China of flooding their country with illegal drugs. The next step is for China to demand reparations to all the fentanyl producers hurt by US law enforcement activity. Then they invade, force us to take the drugs and pay the reparations. OH, and they’re going to administer Hawaii for 99 years.

    • Hazor@lemmy.world
      12·
      7 days ago

      Except China is doing exactly that, and it has been known for years, with multiple US federal agencies taking various steps to counteract it. E.g.:

      https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-role-in-the-fentanyl-crisis/

      https://www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1244964595/fentanyl-china-precursor-overdose

      China, specifically the CCP, has an obvious interest in weakening the US, and has demonstrated that they have no qualms with injuring people to achieve their ends (for further reading, look up Hong Kong, the Uygher people, and Tibet). (And no, before you think it, I’m not saying that getting poor white Americans addicted to opioids is equivalent to genocide of Uyghers.) We have a massive opioid crisis in the US, and it has been fueled in the last few years by fentanyl. Virtually all of the illicit opioids available here now contain fentanyl or are comprised entirely of fentanyl, and it’s routinely found contaminating other drugs.

      It’s a problem that is recognized by both parties. To say “China is flooding the country with illegal drugs” is, yes a gross oversimplification of the problem, but it’s a simple narrative the Republicans can use to try to convince their voter base that tariffs are somehow a sensible course of action. If their voter base was wont to grasp and meaningfully contemplate complex geopolitical issues, they’d never have voted Republican in the first place.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    8 days ago

    I’m not sure anyone in that family understands trade at all?

    Donvict seems to think a trade deficit means China is ripping us off or something. They also seem to think that China is going to be paying tariffs, for example, when it is only going to mean that Americans are going to be paying for it. Not China. Slapping tariffs on goods coming from China, etc…is JUST ANOTHER TAX.

    Do any of the dumbfucks in the Bircher/teabagger/maga/qanon, (whatever the fuck the crazies are calling themselves these days, it’s a constantly rotating set of labels, but it’s all basically the same set of stupid beliefs driven by feels rooted in racism) really understand that a tariff is a TAX? Again, these dipshits tried to start the “Tea party”, saying they were “taxed enough already” and I bet anything that only a very, very small percentage of them have made the connection. I bet most of the teabaggermaga dipshits think it’s gonna “make America great” or some shit because, donvict, their great white hope, is the one doing it to them. And doing it to them hard.

  • batcheck@lemmy.world
    91·
    8 days ago

    Shameless question. At this point I approach this entire presidency as a cash/power grab by the incumbent administration.

    So from an investment perspective how would pleb like me, with my Roth and 401k, game these tariffs? Local industry might get a boost, but for the most part we (the USA) still won’t produce a lot of the goods being tariffed. So, do you just bet high on commodities and U.S reseller/retailers as the big winners 12 months into the administration? Asking for a friend that’s totally not me trying to make the best out of a potentially disastrous 4 years. Thank you,

    • eran_morad@lemmy.world
      14·
      8 days ago
      • hold a diversified portfolio that’s heavy on cash.
      • buy equities when the market tanks.
      • sit tight and hope for the best. Don’t check your port again until the fuckwits are gone.
  • Jesus@lemmy.world
    4·
    8 days ago

    A smart approach would be to slowly dial stuff up so that manufacturers had, ya know, time to build and train for complex manufacturing plants in US.

    But they’re not going to do that. The plants are where they are, they would take years to move, and American consumers will pay the new import taxes in the interim.

    • Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
      3·
      8 days ago

      That’s all assuming Trump and Co wont buy up these factories and industries, and then inject them with federal stimulus money to ‘save america’

      I’m sure in 12 months every major news station will be unhinged talking about one particular niche industry like baby diapers that is too important to let fail from these tariffs and it will be a complete coincidence that musk or kushner owns 90% of the domestic production.

  • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
    111·
    7 days ago

    Yet when you bring up Dem tariffs on solar panels and EV’s, suddenly “that’s different.”

    • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.worldOP
      61·
      7 days ago

      You mean the ones that Trump originally put in and Biden extended?

      And the fact that you don’t understand the difference between a targeted tariff and a blanket tariff on all goods?

      Also the fact that you can’t grasp that you don’t impose tariffs to stop drug trafficking, which btw are done mostly by honest Americans.

      But to your point, however small it may be here, no I don’t think that Biden should have extended Trump’s solar tariffs, it didn’t really help US solar manufacturing since companies did what they always do, moved to other low cost countries that’s not China.

      The inflation reduction act has a better impact on increasing US solar production by offering incentives vs taxes.

      But you just keep on strawmanning and whataboutism while leopards eat your face.

      • surph_ninja@lemmy.world
        15·
        7 days ago

        It’s not “strawmanning” because I didn’t need to make it up. It’s a real thing, which you acknowledge is shit.

        And yes, Trump is also shit.