• @[email protected]
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    201 hour ago

    inb4 products that have absolutely no supply chain dependence to China ‘somehow’ increase in price.

    • @[email protected]
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      247 minutes ago

      Hey now, the Waltons need some extra cash. Who could even get by on a measly four million dollars a hour in this economy?

  • @[email protected]
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    292 hours ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 hours ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]M
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    784 hours ago

    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.

    • kn0wmad1c
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      61 hour ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      133 hours ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 hour ago

        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.

  • Zerlyna
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    4 hours ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      454 hours ago

      Everyone seems to be wringing hands about policy, but this is just another datapoint that propaganda won this election.

    • @[email protected]
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      254 hours ago

      Even worse, China has already begun moving their Chinese-owned production to Malaysia, circumventing the tariffs on Chinese imported finished goods.

      • anon6789
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        112 hours ago

        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.

    • @[email protected]
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      444 hours ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        84 hours ago

        I’m sure they probably do - shit as Walmart is a depression in consumer spending is overall bad for them.

        • @[email protected]
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          154 hours ago

          What are the customers going to do? Buy from someone else? Wal-Mart is already often the cheapest option around.

          • Flying Squid
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            224 hours ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]
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              134 hours ago

              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.

  • Chozo
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    184 hours ago

    Yeah, no shit. How the fuck do people think tariffs work?

    • @[email protected]
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      257 minutes ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      244 hours ago

      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.

    • Flying Squid
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      144 hours ago

      If they knew how tariffs worked, fewer of them might have voted for the dumbass proposing to make things cheaper by raising them.

  • @[email protected]
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    274 hours ago

    Trying to speak sense to Americans. You are in for a rude awakening. They will blame the high prices on space lasers.

  • @[email protected]
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    4 hours ago

    My new job came with a 10k sign on bonus and I just got the first half 3 months in. I have to pay the whole thing back if I leave within 2 years. I was planning on keeping all of it in high yield savings in case I need to slap it back down on the table and run, and best case scenario at the end I have a house downpayment.

    Y’all. I got taxed more on this check than I made in working hours. I got the 5k bonus and 3k of working hours. I paid over 3k in taxes and didn’t even net 5k this check. It was 4900 something.

    I understand that I’m not “poor” anymore but I’m still paycheck to paycheck (I wound up just paying off some credit card debt; I’ll get a loan if I need to run). More importantly I have a real job. I’m not some marketing desk jockey or a landlord or an MLM “entrepreneur,” I’m an inpatient bedside nurse. I don’t want to sound full of myself but how does Jeff Bezos not pay any taxes and I’m over here paying 37%???

    • @[email protected]
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      124 hours ago

      Taxes are usually taken out using the monthly amount like a yearly amount. You’ll probably get a lot of it back when you pay taxes for the year.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 hours ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      13 hours ago

      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.

  • Endymion_Mallorn
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    44 hours ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 hours ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      149 minutes ago

      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 hasnt 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…

    • @[email protected]
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      113 hours ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      83 hours ago

      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.