They all thought the foreign company paid the tariff.
This is probably what Trump thinks, too. I can easily believe he is that stupid.
I’m also wondering just what the fuck Trump and co. are going to do with all the money obtained from these tariffs. Just, like, spend it all on hookers and blow or what? Remember how you all believed this was the party of “low taxes?” Yeah, guess what a tariff is, fuckers.
This is probably what Trump thinks, too.
100%. If he isn’t reading it from a script that someone else wrote, he knows nothing about the topics he’s talking about.
He even boasts about “knowing more than anyone about XYZ”, yet, it can’t expand on the subject, can’t answer questions about it, is vague, and reminds me of how really bad LLMs answer questions.
I found some additional articles on what he said about this, and he did indeed flat out say he expects the “other countries” to pay the tariffs. For instance, this.
A sweeping tariff policy will kill two birds with one stone, Trump says: It could find a new source of revenue for the U.S. government, which could offset losses from lowering or eliminating certain forms of income tax, while extracting money from rival governments.
That’s not how tariffs have worked at any point in history.
Yup. He does a great job “selling” ideas that simply aren’t grounded in reality.
Like that wall that Mexico was going to pay for. What an idiot. Did his base think the United States would just send Mexico a bill for work completed and expect them to pay it? You couldn’t make this buffoonery up!
Just, like, spend it all on hookers and blow or what?
Would this honestly surprise you?
Considering the stories that came out about how they used the White House pharmacy as a drug dealer, no, it would not surprise me in the least.
To be honest, this kind of feels to me like the boss was just looking for an excuse to not have to pay workers.
I don’t know if this post is true or not. However, a lot of people don’t know history, civics, & economics. (This is the result of the Reagan & Bushes dismantling of the education system.) I’ve told a lot of people to look up the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and the impact it had on our and the global economy. Tariffs will start a trade war. That’s what happened to our farmers the last time Trump was in office. He ended up having to bail out farmers which cost more than the tariff brought into the government. The Chinese simply bought their soy beans from other countries instead of paying for ours. There were a lot of farmers that lost their farms then.
I have been told many times to feel bad for those farmers, that they aren’t idiots, etc.
I thought I ran of fucks for them but a few more just flew out like butterflies from a dusty chest.
I hope ever single one that put up those massive Trump signs loses their family farms to big corporations.
We need fewer corporate farms, which are dirty as fuck now let alone after they gut the USDA. I hope that they lose their family farm to two gay dudes from Vermont who got really into organic gardening and decided to cash in their b&b for corgis to start growing high quality produce right here in America’s heartland.
Anyone? Anyone? Raised or lowered? Anyone? Anyone know what this is?
I mean the whole point is paying a tariff so American companies make the goods instead for less.
But if paying Chinese poverty wages and tariffs is still less than paying Americans to do it, then guess what they’re going to do?
It’s also dumb to just assume that foreign companies can just flip a switch and start building/assembling whatever they sell in America. You need facilities, you need to hire employees, you need to train employees. You can’t just pick up your factory, drop it in Kansas, and just slot people into the building to work it right away.
Also, unless your plan is to exclusively export to the US, then it’s less cost effective to open up new facilities in the US. You just raise prices and and have the consumers take the hit for the tariff. There’s also the problem of logistics for raw materials for whatever products your manufacturing. Those also tend to cost more to acquire stateside.
The worst part is that policy is only a single bullet in the policy foot gun Trump has loaded. It gets even more expensive when the low cost labor is suddenly deported and/or put in camps. Which I realize isn’t even the worst thing about the immigration policy, but just pointing out that it too has consequences to these same people.
Global trade drove the cost of supplies and goods down to the lowest available prices, so while setting tariffs may encourage local production because it makes overseas less attractive, the price of goods still goes up on both scenarios.
If moved locally, there will be more local labor required for production but it’s not clear if that is a net benefit.
Hypothetically under globalism more developed countries shed their “dirty manufacturing labor jobs” and move more people upmarket. Of course this is matter of nonstop debate among economists because as we all know the whole population of a country can’t move upmarket together and a lot of people were/are screwed because of lack of education and opportunity to develop themselves.
In an ideal implemention of this, more people would be moving to the arts, self expression, and technology, while fewer are involved in survival activities like shelter and food.
I think the unsolved problem now is that average people believe way too much of that wealth went to the top while the middle class is working harder than ever and getting less.
Is the owner of the company purchasing a year’s worth in order to keep the price they charge down, or in order to raise prices in February when their customers expect it because of the new tariffs, and pocket the difference? While having avoided paying bonuses?
Obviously I don’t know the business in question, but it’s quite possible that the company has a bunch of longer running contracts that would become a loss if the inputs become much more expensive.
Of course, businesses will use the opportunity to charge more, but sudden price hikes are a very real problem.
This is almost certainly what’s happening. The proposed tariffs will be very hard on American businesses and devastating for the consumer. It’s quite literally a fairly severe tax on domestic companies and the American people. But, honestly, we could do with a less consumerism in this country. Unfortunately, it’s likely to cause a tough economic downturn that will hurt poor people the most.
Be hilarious if Trump simultaneously collapses the economy and starts a green movement built around an inherent need for a second hand economy.
Large and small manufacturing companies have contracts for orders for months to years out with set prices, some of which might have wiggle room for costs but not to this extent. Plus manufacturing already tries to balance out costs across projects due to fluctuating prices for materials. If their materials double (or more) in price they will be screwed by the contracts and guaranteed to lose money on all of them.
Buying at the current prices means they will have to pay to have the materials stored in a warehouse, which will cut into their planned profits for those existing contracts. Hell, they might be buying at a higher cost than they normally would when fulfilling the contracts.
The company is getting screwed, not trying to fleece customers or their employees.
Without having more detail I can’t speak with certainty, but, general principles of inventory management and cash flow discourage having a surplus of stock, as that ties up a significant amount of working capital in the costs of storing and handling it all - you risk not being able to pay your liabilities because you’ve sunk all your funds into inventory that hasn’t yet sold and generated more revenue.
Companies often have longer term contracts with specific prices agreed that can’t always be easily changed. Those contacts could quite easily become unprofitable if there are sudden increases to the direct costs of fulfilling them. So, rather than trying to fuck customers, this company is likely trying to stock-up at current market prices to ride-out the first year of tariffs, but in doing so, needs a large injection of working capital to cover the expenditure (hence cancelling bonuses), and also puts itself in a very vulnerable position where cash flow is concerned by tying up that capital in inventory - any further sudden and unexpected costs could lead to the business folding.
If they’re reputable enough and tend to operate in good faith, they could be giving their customers time to prepare for the incoming price hike. They’ll probably lose customers that can’t afford to operate with the new price later on but the transparency would go a long way towards maintaining healthy business relations with the remaining customers.
they’ll pocket the difference, jack up prices, refuse bonuses next year, business slows, lay off half the staff, buy material on credit–maybe siphoning some of that off, bonuses are now a distant memory, jack prices up again. business slows to a crawl, lay off more. business falters. file bankruptcy with millions of outstanding debt to write off.
just like their diaper-wearing idol would.
Does it matter? This wouldn’t have happened without Trump being elected and the looking threat of tariffs. Whether the owner is using that as cover for jacking up the prices or not, it’s still a LAMF moment.
