The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending (theatlantic.com) 258
The century-old duty-free import exemption that transformed American online shopping has ended, The Atlantic argues, closing a loophole that allowed packages valued under $800 to enter the United States without tariffs. The de minimis threshold, raised from $200 in 2016, processed millions of daily shipments directly from overseas sellers to American consumers.
China lost access earlier this year; the exemption now terminates for all countries. Platforms including Shein, Temu, and marketplace sellers on Amazon, Etsy, and eBay built business models around direct shipping from manufacturing hubs in Asia and elsewhere. Import duties will apply to all international packages regardless of value, with tariffs reaching 50% for some countries. The policy shift affects everything from $30 specialty faucet parts shipped from Britain to handmade crafts from India, fundamentally altering the economics of cross-border e-commerce that emerged over the past decade.
China lost access earlier this year; the exemption now terminates for all countries. Platforms including Shein, Temu, and marketplace sellers on Amazon, Etsy, and eBay built business models around direct shipping from manufacturing hubs in Asia and elsewhere. Import duties will apply to all international packages regardless of value, with tariffs reaching 50% for some countries. The policy shift affects everything from $30 specialty faucet parts shipped from Britain to handmade crafts from India, fundamentally altering the economics of cross-border e-commerce that emerged over the past decade.
October the fist of God hits (Score:2, Informative)
It's safe to say we are going to see an almost immediate jump in prices. They have been trying to raise prices consistently to sort of boil the frog a bit here and there but it's not enough.
This is and always will be on national sales tax so that the wealthy can transfer their tax burden on to you personally.
I think the older baby
Re: October the fist of God hits (Score:4, Insightful)
Where do you think all the cheap shit on QVC comes from?
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It's amazing people still use QVC and other shopping channels. I mean, what the hell for??
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Loneliness can really screw with your brain. Especially if you're not a nerd or an introvert.
Homeware (Score:4, Insightful)
But honestly I just said that to get your attention.
Read what I wrote. Again. Slowly this time.
Everything is going up in october. Food, medicine, gasoline, everything.
Those old people could probably sustain the hit from the specific costs involved in this article if that was the only thing going on.
As usual the right wing can't walk and chew gum at the same time and can't think about more than one thing at once. Everything has to be all or nothing, black and white and simply laid out. As soon as nuance gets involved you've lost the right wing.
Re: Homeware (Score:2)
The USA is a total food export country we do not import any bulk food stuffs
Really? Orange, orange juice, bananas, beef⦠the list goes on. The country I was born in exports all of these to the USA.
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Bacon is expensive now, too. Apparently, China used to buy lots of American pork, but Chinese consumers had little interest in bacon (or other products made from pork bellies)... so the result of Chinese consumers buying more and more American pork was a relative surplus of pork bellies available to sell in the US. Pork in general was more expensive (because American consumers were competing with Chinese consumers to buy American pork), but bacon was cheaper relative to pork in general than it had ever been
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Not sure about that particular detail. I met a farmer last year (sitting next to me on a cross-country flight). At one point, after I realized he was a pig farmer, I asked him about bacon... specifically, if there was an objective reason why bacon seemed to be so WILDLY "hit or miss", especially compared to what I (vaguely) remember from childhood.
He said most commercial pig farms in the US lean VERY heavily on a half-dozen commoditized breeds. I didn't remember the names, but I went and looked them up just
Re: Homeware (Score:4, Informative)
They're all named after the same county in England, it's just that some have more levels of indirection.
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I forget where Brazil fits into the tariff rate swiss cheese numbers, but from what I understand they are already diverting their cattle to other countries.
Trump is imposing a 40% tariff on imports from Brazil [whitehouse.gov], partly because they're prosecuting his boyfriend Bolsonaro. Which is a threat to the national security of the US for some reason. Plus a lot of other stuff I don't understand, free speech and suchlike. A lot of it sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.
"Brazilian officials are also persecuting former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro. The Government of Brazil has unjustly charged Bolsonaro with multiple crimes related to Bolsonaro’s 2022
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Re: Homeware (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's still just as true today as it was then, and more so if you include the other branches of the US Military.
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The USA is a total food export country we do not import any bulk food stuffs
Really? Orange, orange juice, bananas, beef⦠the list goes on. The country I was born in exports all of these to the USA.
The US did indeed have an agricultural trade surplus [usda.gov] from 1960 to 2018. The peak of the surplus was 2011 with a $40 billion surplus. The current deficit is now $37 billion. There are many things that the US just doesn't grow, like cocoa and coffee. Other items like fruits, vegetables, and nuts have to come from overseas to stock them in stores year-round. Some items like beverages and alcohol are imported because of specific brands.
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Sure was a "greener" way to do things back then....much less fuel for transport, etc.
I"m surprised our greenies today aren't pushing for more of this?
You haven't heard of the "Locavore [wikipedia.org]" movement?
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What the fuck do you think is used to grow those American food items? Tariffed items, that’s what. From fuel pumps to irrigation lines to medicines to packing trays to tractor parts, and on and on, everything is either imported or has components that are imported. You are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Re:Homeware (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA is a total food export country we do not import any bulk food stuffs
I'm pretty certain you've never looked at the labels in a grocery store's produce section during the winter and spring.
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but how many dolls does an 11-year-old baby girl need?
At least two (Score:3, Funny)
It's ending... (Score:5, Insightful)
...but only for Americans.
Re:It's ending... (Score:5, Informative)
EU is going in the exact same direction, for exact same reasons. Even methodology is mostly the same, such as cancelling de minimis loophole for imports (happened some time ago notably, before US), increasing import tariffs, changing postal payment rules, etc.
Re:It's ending... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of those have always been in place for decades. The de minimis for most places is usually some trivial amount like $20 or so. This has been true for ages and the customs of the country expects it.
The US was unique in that they don't have many of those taxes - the de minimis being $800 dates to 1934, when you could probably buy a complete *house* from Sears for that price. US customs never had to process much in the way because for the most part, most shipments fell below the value.
What's doubly confusing is the way the taxes are being applied - you could declare the items contents and pay 36% of the value, or you could do the "flat rate". Additionally, the US is requiring all countries "pre pay" the tariffs - they have to be paid ahead of time.
In other countries, what happens is the item arrives, and Customs then assesses the duties and taxes and bills the recipient for them. The US is insisting on the amounts to be pre-paid before it enters the US, which is causing huge confusion because of the added paperwork.
Basically the US implemented a policy, the groundwork of which was not actually set up in time so now there's confusion on the whole thing.
That's the problem. It can be done - prepaying taxes and duties is soemthing Canada has had when buying from the US from many retailers who set up their systems to be able to prepay them. But it took years for it to happen. These days so many sites support it - Amazon and their "import fees", eBay with its "International Shipping" and stuff all supporting prepayment of the taxes and duties. But go back 10 or 15 years and we dealt with having to pay at the door, having to stay home to wait for packages to arrive (because they won't deliver without payment), etc.
The US is attempting to accomplish that in weeks what normally takes years. Fine if Trump 1.0 announced it, terrible because Trump gave basically no notice - he made noises, TACO, and the final policy wasn't written until literally the day before (well, a few weeks before, but big policy shifts take time).
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You appear to be arguing against specifics of implementation, rather than the principle. I expressed no opinion on that.
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Additionally, the US is requiring all countries "pre pay" the tariffs - they have to be paid ahead of time. In other countries, what happens is the item arrives, and Customs then assesses the duties and taxes and bills the recipient for them. The US is insisting on the amounts to be pre-paid before it enters the US, which is causing huge confusion because of the added paperwork.
This confuses me, tariffs aren't paid by countries, they are paid by the importer. How can the USA know a parcel is subject to tariffs before it has arrived? It's literally needs to land at the port first before it can be assessed. It's not like there are USA customs agents at ports all over the world checking to see if items have been approved before they get on the plane or a boat.
I feel like this may be technicality where a port is technically not considered "in the USA". Otherwise I fail to understand h
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the de minimis being $800 dates to 1934, when you could probably buy a complete *house* from Sears for that price.
You're either mistaken or a fucking liar. The article summary at the top of this page even states it was raised from $200 in 2016.
The de minimis exception was $1 in 1938. It was raised to $5 in the 1970s and $200 in the 1990s.
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EU is going in the exact same direction,
How does it work there? Australia has changed the postage and tax rules, but I still can buy cheap stuff.
Australia requires big marketplaces like Aliexpress and Ebay to collect 10% GST (sales tax) for sales to Australia.
In the past, they could post small items from China, so I paid as little as $1 including delivery.
Now they normally have to ship to Australia in bulk, and pay postage or courier here, so there is a minimum order for "free" delivery, but still only $15 (us$10) +10% tax for Aliexpress. An
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...but only for Americans.
What, no more cheap, disposable, and unreliable crap?! Stop the presses!
Re:It's ending... (Score:5, Insightful)
VAT is like a sales tax, not a tariff. It applies to locally produced goods as well as foreign ones. Maybe this is your definition of worse, but is at least fair in the sense of it applies to everyone.
So there is exactly one context (Score:3)
Sales tax makes sense when you have a lot of people coming into your region or purchasing things from your region who don't live in your region.
Basically you have a lot of people who are making use of the services in your region but who don't pay any income tax because they don't live in your region.
When that happens you're going to need a sales tax because you need to be able to tax those people so that you can pay for the upkeep on the civi
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I didn't say it wasn't. I was responding to the parent post that said that VAT was like a tariff. Aside from the fact that it is a tax on goods, it is very different. VAT taxes all goods (I'm sure there are always some exceptions), tariffs just tax foreign ones. This is a major difference.
Re:It's ending... (Score:5, Informative)
A tariff is a tax. It's paid by consumers.
A tariff is a tax, but not all taxes are tariffs. A VAT is not a tariff, because it is not specific to imported goods.
Tariffs are generally understood by economists to be worse than sales taxes, because they distort the market in consumer-harmful ways, such as reducing competition and reducing the benefits of economies of scale.
Consider two companies that each build silicon chips. One has a manufacturing line that produces CPUs and a line that produces RAM chips. The CPU line is in one country, the RAM line is in another country. Both lines operate at 100% capacity and produce the number of components needed for both countries.
The second company has a similar setup, but because of high tariffs, determines that they need to build RAM and CPUs in both countries. Now you have redundant manufacturing capacity, and that capacity is being used at half capacity. The fixed costs of manufacturing are now double. It is still less than the tariffs would cost, but it does substantially increase the price of goods.
In both of these scenarios, the same amount of manufacturing work is being done in both countries. No country is "winning" with these tariffs. But because there's redundant capacity that is not being used efficiently, the costs for consumers are significantly higher.
This is what tariffs do. Tariffs are madness. They are using a nuclear weapon when what you need is a sniper rifle.
Re:It's ending... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also another mechanism where tariffs hurt the consumer. When you applly a tariff to protect local production you should take care of balancing it so that the cost of the imported item plus tariff is only slightly higher than that of the homegrown variety, assuming they have the same approximate value. If you overtariff your imports the local producers no longer need to keep their prices low to compete, especially if local production is small or there are only few manufacturers that don't need to compete against each other. So the prices gravitate automatically towards the maximum the buyers will pay. Tariffs are intrinsically inflactionary.
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A tariff is an import tax, paid by the importer.
The importer passes on the higher costs to wholesalers/retailers
They then pass on the higher cost.
And each time it gets passed, there is an admin cost, + % profit, so it goes up more than you think.
BUT the what happens in the end is that sales taxes are applied to the higher price, so consumers get hit twice.
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So that's what you pay in places like Denmark, in other countries it might be something like 6 or 19%.
It's a sales tax on end users.
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If only... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If only... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're expecting this to lead to a surge of American manufacturing, don't. That would require long term investment, which requires being able to make long term plans. You can't do that when the rules change from one week to the next based on Trump's latest whim.
So your international competitors have to pay a 50% tariff, giving you a big advantage. Time to start building a factory, right? Oops, he just dropped the tariff on that country to 10%. There goes your big advantage. Now he's raising the tariff on the country you get your raw materials from, making your whole business no longer viable. Now other countries are creating retaliatory tariffs on American goods, destroying your international business. Are you really sure you should be building that factory right now?
When faced with uncertainty like this, businesses go into survival mode. They cut investment and try to conserve cash to get through whatever comes.
A healthy economy requires stability and certainty. Businesses need to know what the rules are so they can make long term plans based on them.
Let's pretend it does (Score:3)
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Even if manufacturing in America shoots up you're not going to see any jobs come from it because new factories are built fully automated.
And it may take longer to stand up (some) factories than Trump has left in office.
Regardless of who's next, many/most tariffs probably won't survive -- if any do, now that most of them have been declared illegal by a district and full appellate court -- and assuming SCOTUS doesn't just make things up to support Trump (as tariffs aren't even mentioned in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) Trump used to impose them) ... Trump *could* get Congress to impose these, as the Constitution g
Re:If only... (Score:5, Insightful)
You see Trump supports a thing so the reality distortion field must go into effect. You heard form the admin itself "We need to listen to experts less" so folks like Rothbard, Friedman, Adam Smith etc, you don't have to consider their ideas valid.
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Since you talked about economic understanding, please tell us, what are the difference between today and the 1930's that will make the current attempt with tariffs not merely do better than that one did, but in fact have the diametrically opposite result?
Dementia patient fucks up mail (Score:5, Informative)
Don't know why this isn't on the front page of news sites but a good chunk of the world has suspended parcel shipments to the USA. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsweek.com%2Fmap-s... [newsweek.com]
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To be clear the dementia here is not putting systems in place of how this will work post scrapping the de minimis exception. Removing the exception is a good thing. Most countries have already done so. The difference is when other countries did so the usually left well over a year for new procedures and policies to come in to play and when it was scrapped it had no impact on the post.
But when your government is staffed by DUI hires and professional arsehole lickers that's what you get.
Not so simple... (Score:2)
Keep in mind that my Ali Express packages came by the US Post Office. They have no capability to collect tariffs, so will no longer be doing international shipments.
See:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.varusteleka.com%2Fen... [varusteleka.com]
Also, keep in mind that it isn't just the tariffs. The cost and contents of the package have to be declared. Someone has to do that paperwork. It won't be just the 15% tariff that you have to pay. There are other costs.
stop calling it a loophole (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop calling things loopholes that aren't loopholes. The de minimis exception is explicit law, designed with the express purpose of protecting small retailers. Getting rid of de minimis only helps Amazon and Walmart and the Billionaire class, while hurting small retailers and the working class.
Re:stop calling it a loophole (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern definition of "loophole": when something works in a way that I don't like.
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Modern definition of "loophole": when something works in a way that I don't like.
I thought that was "weaponize"
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Amazon has flooded DC with lobbyists trying to get De Minimus repealed. Analysts estimate ending De Minimus will increase Amazon sales by $22-25B. It is also generates instant profit for Amazon since Amazon charges a blanket 15% finder fee. It the a vendors pays $100 in tariffs Amazon adds their 15% right on top of that taking an addition $15 for doing absolutely nothing. Analyst estimate for that markup effect is an increase in $1.5B/yr in Amazon profits.
In the larger picture most economist are predicting
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Have you got any actual links to articles about most economists predicting this? Because your assertion that only trinkets are bought under the de minimus exemption is just a fact-free assertion at this point
When "de minimis" isn't. (Score:2)
packages valued under $800 ... The de minimis threshold, raised from $200 in 2016 ...
I don't know about getting rid of this completely, as it seems silly to tariff the types of things for which this was intended, but Google says "de minimis" means "of minimal things" and a $200 value limit seems closer to more appropriate than $800.
Arguing against this exception... what's to keep sellers from splitting up expensive things into multiple packages valued at under the limit? Guessing there's some sort of language prohibiting that in the statute, but how would that be detected/enforced?
Re:When "de minimis" isn't. (Score:5, Informative)
We had this exact problem in EU, and our de minimis was way lower than that in US.
We ended up eliminating it before you did. For exact same reason. What happened is that PRC sellers now ship wholesale to ports they already own (Piraus is big for this), fake low value on the whole container (and since receiving port is Chinese-owned, locals don't look too closely at what's in the actual container in terms of value) and then ship to large scale storage across EU. Then sales are officially made "from EU", so they're de facto exempt on tariffs even without de minimis.
There's now a crackdown on this. Port of Piraeus is in fact singled out by authorities for this last I checked, and there's now additional scrutiny on containers coming from PRC there to prevent this specific circumvention technique.
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Fast forward 10 years and _de minimis_ will be reinstated, as the gov't discovers that it costs $25 to collect a $0.75 import duty on a $25 purchase from overseas.
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Not a loophole (Score:5, Informative)
This was intentionally put in the regulations to avoid the excessive paperwork and delay for small purchases. It was originally $200 then raised to $800.
Trump has to raise revenue to pay for his tax cuts for the rich so he came up with this solution which raises taxes on average folks (about $2400/year by some estimates).
Re:Not a loophole (Score:5, Interesting)
This was intentionally put in the regulations to avoid the excessive paperwork and delay for small purchases. It was originally $200 then raised to $800. Trump has to raise revenue to pay for his tax cuts for the rich so he came up with this solution which raises taxes on average folks (about $2400/year by some estimates).
Yea, I've given up trying to explain tariffs are a hidden tax to some of my MAGA friends, they're convinced the exporting countries pay it and it is free money to the US. They also think this will stop the flow of drugs into the US because now they can't mail them to end users; and that their are Americans lining up for jobs now done by immigrants, except of course them and their kids. The sad part is they are not dumb, just fully bought into what Trump sold.
Re:Not a loophole (Score:5, Insightful)
They are dumb.
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When your friends think one billionaire can fix everything, they are dumb. Worse, their messiah having a billionaire dollars, is a big part of the problem: Your friends not recognizing that, makes them more dumb.
If they don't blame the current president for the cost of eggs and 'high' rate of crime, they are dumb hypocrites.
It already ended (Score:2)
As far as I am concerned, it already ended. The end came when Amazon started charging sales tax.
The "old" economy (Score:3)
Can anyone from the MAGA camp explain what exactly was wrong with the economy from one year ago?
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Negative balance of trade.
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So almost exactly the same Trump wants the FED doing?
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Man you are funny.
Or deranged.
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Wasn't this type of economy great when it Trump's economy in the first term?
"...the Federal Reserve had spent the previous few years engaging in reckless monetary expansion..."
Due to COVID? How thoughtless of the Federal Reserve to contribute to the best post-COVID economic recovery in the world.
"This is why inflation surged"
Is it? Because inflation surged worldwide.
"While they tried to blame “supply chains” or “geopolitical shocks,” the deeper truth is that when the central bank h
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The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending???? (Score:2)
Re:The Age of Cheap Online Shopping is Ending???? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The big issue is the Chines economy falling apart. They never recovered from the Evergrande collapse and if they do under the world economy will be hit hard.
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And the end of the end of an Age ends in 3.5 years (Score:2)
Don't like it, can't make ends meet (Score:2)
You could always expatriate yourself.
It might be tricky to find a country with low taxes on imports.
I suppose you could try living in a southern Asian country, if they'll take you.
Then you have the long arm of Uncle Sam with his palm extended and tatooed with "Pay up sucker" due to the US taxing world wide income. Not to mention the difficulty in getting a foreign bank to give you a bank account in your name.
Still cheap (Score:3)
Look at the AliExpress prices. They are often so cheap that even with +50%, it is still worth it.
I commonly see stuff that sell for about $5 on AliExpress or Temu, $10 on Amazon, and $50 retail. Having to pay $7.50 instead of $5 is not "the end of cheap online shopping" to me. It will have an effect for sure, but I guess people will just pay the extra tax than go elsewhere.
Burying the Lede (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire American way of life is collapsing because millionaires and billionaires are the parasites that killed the host.
Good gravy (Score:3)
It's amazing how many of you are responding out of emotional vitriol without even understanding import tariffs work in this case. The article rage baited you all.
This isn't going to put prices through the roof on anything but temu and similar direct-ship sites. Even most amazon-associated warehousers will be unimpacted: they were already shipping in such volumes the 'free' shipping was almost meaningless. It was an exception for - mostly - small trinkets. Raising the amount to $800 didn't matter much - items that really cost $500 were just having a declared value of much less (likely closer to the foreign purchase price).
You'll still be able to buy cheap trinkets and electronics. Amazon has competitively extinguished all but about 20% of online commerce outside their site.
More importantly... this will also impact all the illicit pharma people have figured out they could buy from eg. India at a drastically lower price than is available domestically. That's the bigger problem, as there's no other viable alternative for many people.
Though wasn't there something else crazy going on about pharma prices being globally leveled under threat of Trump? I know there was some sort of insane cutback in... Medicaid? Or Medicare? Hard to keep track of it all.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gets to decide what is junk and what isn't?
If this was the goal why are the tariffs across the board on every good to nearly every nation and not targeted to specific sectors and bad actors?
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If this was the goal why are the tariffs across the board on every good to nearly every nation and not targeted to specific sectors and bad actors?
This story isn't about tariffs it's about de minimis. And that should answer your question. The exemption of de minimis makes it less viable to bypass importers since it raises the efficiency of importing products in bulk and distributing them locally. This specifically allows you to target those bad actors who are now responsible for ensuring what they import meets the requirement of specific sectors. You now have someone who has legal liability.
Pre-de minimis removal - your house burns down thanks to a fa
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So why do we have different rates at all? At that point it's just shuffling the rules of the game.
The point of the tariffs under Trump and Biden was specifically to get companies to move to more friendly, free trade US aligned nations. Vietnam is one of those so why tariff them at all? Pretty clear we can just circle the drain on this forever.
And to be clear Vietnam nor any nation has any actual trade deal, this is all stiff executive whims stuff. 90 deals in 90 deals is still batting 0.000%, nothing but
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That can all be true but none of that makes the tariffs make sense. Is the primary goal of Trumps global tariff scheme focused on China? None of the tariffs cut any other markets off from China and as we've seen their exports to those markets increase.
This is incoherent.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
You have yet to demonstrate the negative effects of China's position, what our long term goal on China is and how the tariffs are going to accomplish that goal. You're speaking to me as if we agree your scenario is such one that can be solved by tariffs. China was happy to make cheap shit for us while we went and made trillion dollar tech enterprises.
What tariffs are designed to do is to at least partially mitigate damage to outside markets that this PRC policy has causing
Ok so what's places like Canada, Mexico, EU, Japan, Vietnam got to do with that? Why make ourselves hostile to trade with literally everyone else? By all accounts the USA is the one damaging outside markets.
EU has done similar things to US, and many of them before US for exact same reason
Nothing remotely similar to what Trump is doing.
This sounds incoherent, you have not moved me off that idea. If this was a structured rollout of tariffs with the specific goal of addressing China's "damages" that'd be one thing but we have global indiscriminate import taxes and the justification given is "trade deficits constitute a national emergency".
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Yup!
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fart... [bbc.co.uk]
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Oh I know it but considering your blatant selective quote farming I have no reason to consider you good faith so as one bad faith-er to another doesn't hurt to check you actually understand the idea beyond "dumping bad"
And it's still incoherent to say global, indiscriminate tariffs are an appropriate response to dumping is incoherent and justifying that with "well supply chains move around" is weak sauce and tells me you're just spouting media talking points.
Re:Good (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah let's start buying all that coffee and tea domestically...
Re:Good (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah let's start buying all that coffee and tea domestically...
Don't forget bananas [yahoo.com] could easily be grown in the U.S.
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And scotch. And mezcal. And ...
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Just have your servants bring you a Diet Coke when you push the red button.
Making America Great Again, one transition to Trump's vices at a time.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Constitution has been for some time and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a read-only document. The US has become too politically polarized to meet the requirements of a Constitutional Amendment.
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The Constitution has been for some time and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a read-only document. The US has become too politically polarized to meet the requirements of a Constitutional Amendment.
Honestly, right now, I'm fine with that. I dislike current Republicans far more than I dislike current Democrats, but I wouldn't trust either side to not do really wonky things at this point in time.
Re: Repeal the 16th Amendment! (Score:2)
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Don't worry if you stack the courts enough then the constitution can mean whatever you like. Don't forget to tip your judge!
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Re: Repeal the 16th Amendment! (Score:2)
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At least they managed to suspend her. How do you get rid of a belligerent supreme?
Re: Repeal the 16th Amendment! (Score:2)
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LOL. I just read wikipedia on the 17th...
There was a sense that senatorial elections were "bought and sold", changing hands for favors and sums of money rather than because of the competence of the candidate
Hmm... plus ça change...
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Specifically the wealth of rich people. Relatively speaking, it's ethically worse to steal from a poor person, that's why stealing another man's horse was often a capital offense.
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