Tariffs. How are you affected?

I am not sure what product I would purchase from our friends in Germany, but it is the rich people, who are buying BMW's & Benzes. I don't consume any truffles or caviar or Jamon Iberico. If coffee is tariffed; we do one bag of Starbucks 40-OZ per month, the cost of coffee for 2 people is a dollar a day.

In the supermarket, I could buy either expensive or cheap: eggs or milk, or others.

Saw a Mr Scott Bessent on Fox, he said that DC is rolling in the bucks on tariffs, which is good because we have a two trillion current deficit with 30 $ Tril. outstanding.
Gas is cheaper.

Electric cost is burdened by add-ons for offshore turbines that don't turn a profit. Here in South Jersey our state gasoline taxes and sales taxes recently nudged up one eighth (0.125% ) so, if the numbers are showing inflation: it's not all on the tariffs.

We did loose our 55 year old Oyster Creek Nuclear station here in The Pines. We have no turbines in the Ocean yet. Remembering the fish who would gather near the plant, the warm water outflow in the cold winter.

Figuring that its wealthy consumers who are hit by higher costs for that type of life-style. Higher tax and insurance for fine properties. Vacations.

Didn't we all want a consumption tax?

Do tell how tariffs affect you ?

 

Tariffs are a tax on imports. Paid for by the importers and passed on to the USA consumer. Not paid by the company or country selling to the USA. That includes components. So if a component were sold to the US from say UK, for use in making a US product, that US product may increase in retail price.

My step-son in Florida has noticed his weekly shop go from 100 bucks to 170.

So, given that you wrote the following, who do you think is bringing in those bucks on tariffs?! Yeh, you the American consumer.

This may assist people in trying to understand who bears the brunt of tariffs.

Trade: tariffs | Institute for Government

 

Ie….a tax on American consumers. And years of lowering prices on imports has led to Southern Hemisphere citrus, grapes summer fruits in our off-season. And coffee, good look on your cup of morning joe if America has to depend on Hawaiian coffee.

A well established economic concept is comparative advantage. The US is not destined to become a large mango producer, coconut oil, or hearing aid manufacturer, Denmark anyone? Pursuing free trade, and fair trade can benefit everyone. As does maintaining a proficient and educated workforce. Tariffs as we see them today are a ugly concept properly discarded a 100 years ago….a monument to ignorance.

 

Saw a bottle of Highland Scotch Wiskey for one hundred dollars. Imagining that fine wines have taken a hit. If you drink Bud Light , not so much.
A friend is is in residential construction and reports substantial increases for Canadian lumber and other products.
And yes, cup of Joe in a fancy bistro is at heart attack prices.

 

Everything in the Amazon warehouse is imported. The warehouse operates at a break-even while AWS provides the profits. They can't eat tariff costs.
Anybody seen increases at Amazon.

 

I read an article that coconuts have both male and female flowers which makes them liable to be banned from the planet by the USDSGP - US Dept. of Single Gender Preservation.

 

Fortunately when we (UK) left the EU we declined Donalds offers on trade. All he had to offer was chlorinated chicken, beef that was untraceable and corn syrup (the principal and known cause of type 2 diabetes)

 

Only on everything....I've pretty much quit buying stuff, short of essentials and things I need around the estate.

...and it is in everything here...."oh gosh, why is everyone so fat and sick?"

 

If we all boycotted the online stores, the brick and mortar stores, and grew most of our own food, they might just need to lower their prices or go eat dirt (GET).

 

Who bears the cost of tariffs is determined in large part by the elasticity of the demand and the availability of substitutes.

Whether your imported good costs $100 or $200 is irrelevant if you can’t find work that pays a living wage because your job has been sent offshore where they pay 1/10th of your wage to do the same job. Theoretical discussions of efficiency and comparative advantage amounts to academic masturbation.

People are finally waking up to the fact that all the cheap plastic and chinesium crap in the wallmart and the trash bin doesn’t actually improve their life or lifestyle.

 

BUT......what choice do we have? Everything comes from China now. There's no way possible we can even find the money to invest in new factories in the US. The last TV made in the US was made in 1979. I was the TV made to be fixed....Motorola "works in a drawer".... where every module was made to pull out easily to be fixed.....fixed....that's almost funny now.

Steel mills....aluminum smelters....there are no aluminum extruders in the US now. We had an Alcoa aluminum plant here, sitting by a hydro station built for it for power, all still functional. Next to free energy. They closed it, sold the hydro station off to private investors that sell power on the $pot market.

Anybody remember when it was 'Cheap Jap Junk' ? China has class manufacturing capability. Yeah, they make a lot of junk, but they also build a lot of decent technology....like all of it.

 

“There’s no way possible…” That’s fatalism and it is also not true. Anything is possible. You/we may not like the effort or sacrifice it may take to achieve it, but it is certainly not impossible. We did this to ourselves and we can undo it if we truly wish to. - Though lining international financiers up against the wall at dawn wouldn’t hurt either.

Our productive capacity used to be the envy of the world. To be fair, this also caused much pollution. We can have clean production here at home if we are willing to pay for it. Sheltering domestic producers (somewhat) from foreign producers with slave wage costs and little to no environmental regulations will mean higher prices but also more employment and production here.

Free trade/protectionism is akin to the capitalist/communist dichotomy: neither can work in actual practice without inflicting the most inhumane conditions upon the masses. As such, neither one should be allowed to progress towards their extremes. Anyone with a singular view on one side or the other of the issue is likely to be either ignorant or advocating purely in their own interest, at the (direct and indirect) expense of all others. Neither ignorance nor self interest is a sin: they are a normal part of being human. But both should be taken into account when listening to the proselytizers of any ideology.

 

I'd be more for the tariffs if they protected American business and workers, but they don't. Those businesses don't exist. Plus, any American production will raise their prices accordingly to make more money from market price.

It takes ten years and billions to build a semiconductor fab.....while China / Taiwan controls 90% of the capacity, plus you STILL need packaging and test. Now....just think of the chaos that would happen as China invaded Taiwan...Tiawan blows up TSMC, the biggest fab ever rather than give it to China....it would be crippling. But no worries....by 2038 Intel will have their fab up to make heavy duty micros and network processors.....but they still need a thousand other parts from China to complete any product...