Ah, nice to see Lemmy wholeheartedly embracing our friend and source of truth, Walmart.
Tomorrow’s headline: “Amazon says worker conditions will be bad because of Trump”
I honestly don’t understand what this comment is trying to say. Lemmy is embracing something? Walmart is lying? Compared to Trump?
I mean, the headline is presented as, we can know the truth that Trump’s policy is bad, because Walmart says so.
Normally Lemmy would treat Walmart as a big corporation whose modus operandi is exploiting customers and workers for profit of the shareholders, and untrustworthy in practically anything they say. But, because it’s against Trump, suddenly they’re our ally and a reliable source.
“Walmart recorded $169.6 billion in total revenue during the third quarter of 2024, up 5.5% from the previous quarter. It recorded a 7.8% return on assets and had an operating income of $6.7 billion.”
This sounds like a statement to pretend the increase of prices is Trump fault instead of an attempt to maintain their growth.
No, it’s Walmart saying that any costs due to Trump’s tariffs will be paid by the consumer because they’re not going to take a pay cut to offset the costs.
Sounds like both to me. The genuine increase of price to customers due to Trump’s policy, presents an excuse for Walmart to seem good while prices increase, even while their aim is to aggressively maximise profits for themselves.
Like how energy prices in England have skyrocketed with the genuine fallout of the Russian Ukrainian war, but energy companies appear to have taken the opportunity to skim off extra profits for themselves.
In another news: Watch out for rain. From now on, it will be wet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fuck Walmart.
Who did you think was going to pay it? What do you think tariffs are for?
The consumers should pay. And they should be given all their baisc need so they dont need to shop there
How about “fuck the idiot who thinks tariffs are paid for by anyone except the consumer.” Your money is going to be worth a lot less over the next 4 years because a moron doesn’t understand how tariffs work.
Nah, we should be paying tarrifs from goods imported from countries with terrible labor laws.
But we also need social services like UBI to provide free housing and food and clothing.
Let’s not kid itself into thinking blanket 100% tariffs are a remotely smart way to implement tariffs on China. People that knew about Trump’s 100% tariff plan when they voted for him are usually in two camps.
The camp that a) thought the plan was bluster like the wall, or b) they are too uninformed to know that China doesn’t pay these. Americans purchasing from China pay the taxes.
No matter how you slice it, it simply ends in America’s living with a “lowered” quality of life. The reason we buy things from overseas is because it was cheaper and nobody wanted to pay for the expensive American version. Even the current high-end American products we have will find themselves struggling when people have to pick and choose what they can afford going forward.
I’m also a little indifferent about the whole thing. I just think its going to be hilarious if it goes down and people end up struggling even more after voting Trump. I’ll have my schadenfreude-popcorn ready constantly to munch on over the next four years.
Yes. We will pay for the tariffs.
American companies will pay for the tariffs, and then we the consumers who buy their products will pay for the tariffs via price increases.
This is money that we will invest. It is a tax. It is the government causing us to spend more money.
It is not a usual tax in the sense of money paid to the IRS. But it is an economic cost that we will pay in order to support a government policy.
The cost is paid to enact a certain outcome. The outcome is less importing of goods, and more of those goods being provided by sources within our borders. It will cost money to make this change. That cost will be paid by us.
We are being forced to pay money to enact a policy. That’s how it’s essentially a tax.
Except this policy is basically:
- More stuff that American consumers consume, will come from American companies
- There will be more manufacturing capability to meet this demand
- There will be more demand for American labor, improving the lives of American workers
- We will be more militarily capable due to being able to build more things in-house
That is a set of changes being targeted by this policy. We will pay for this policy by paying higher prices. The intention, the hope, is that the policy will pay for itself in terms of the third bullet point: more manufacturing in America means more jobs for Americans. More demand for American stuff means better bargaining position for American workers, means more income.
In the short term it’ll suck. Just like any other heavy tax can suck in the short term, before the benefits can manifest and make it worth it.
This was tried under Trump the first time and it was an abject failure.
Trump’s tariffs raised the price of foreign made dishwashers by 20%. American manufacturers also jacked up the cost of their appliances, in order to match that price that customers were paying. As a result there was no incentive to change consumer behavior and there was no boost in “buying American.”
Economics really isn’t my strong suit so the fact that the outcome is surprising or confusing to me isn’t entirely unexpected but I have to say that outcome is actually kind of surprising. I would have thought the theory for how the tariff was supposed to work was that the 20% increase in price seen on the ground for foreign made washing machines owing to the cost of the tariff being passed on to the consumer would mean that the domestic producer of washing machines could expect to look more attractive on the shelf than the foreign made ones for being cheaper. The domestic manufacturer could also afford to be cheaper in a way that’s easy for them to achieve because they don’t face the artificial increase in the cost of making and selling their washing machines. This would mean they had the opportunity to sell more of them than their foreign competitors resulting in higher profits. If they saw it as an opportunity to raise prices by 20% without being punished by their competitors, wouldn’t that eliminates their natural advantage? Seems they’d be leaving money on the table. I would have thought the more likely outcome you’d see would be the domestic company essentially raise prices by something more like 19% so that they still get to profiteer from the chance to raise prices without penalty in the marketplace and unlike their competitors keep that as profit rather than put it towards paying tarrifs, but still be cheapest on the market meaning increased sales. You’d see a double benefit from their perspective. I mean that would still completely suck, everyone would be paying 19% more than when they started, but you’d think you’d see some of the intended desireable effects of the tariff in this one simple example of the washing machines, ignoring other factors.
What will the incentive be for these supposed new manufacturers, who just spent a whole lot of money building factories, to offer significantly lower prices than what Americans will have already gotten used to paying by the time said manufacturers have been able to build out their production facilities?
Better yet; Why would these manufacturers even invest in building out these supply lines when they can’t be sure that the next administration won’t remove the tariffs? Seems like a risky investment.
Cry more. Americans chose Trump with eyes wide open and deserve everything that’s coming to them.
I hope you die in a painful way
Maybe bleeding out because you can’t get medical care because a bunch of men said you can’t get it cause Jesus
If only his actions didn’t also hurt the half of the country that voted against him and organized to keep him out of office. He won by a sliver.
There are two bright sides to this (and dark sides as well):
-This will decrease demand of Chinese goods in the U.S., hurting a country that is … problematic to say the least. (Anyone remember the Uyghurs? The O.G. Gazens?) It probably won’t shift demand back to the U.S. factories, but maybe it is time for another country to become the slave-labor-ish manufacturing capital of the world.
-When the prices skyrocket, along with food from all the missing immigrant farm hands, Trump will get blamed. I just hope this wasn’t the plan all along and those “fake” inflation hikes back after covid weren’t to cover for the real ones down the road.
When the prices skyrocket, along with food from all the missing immigrant farm hands, Trump will get blamed.
i really hope you’re right, but i think that will most likely get blamed on biden “ruining the economy” in his last term, or something in that vein. a lot of trump voters get their news from fox news or directly from donald trump, and i can’t imagine either of those sources criticizing trumps economic policies.
When the prices skyrocket, along with food from all the missing immigrant farm hands, Trump will get blamed.
In all likelihood, only a small percentage of his voters will actually blame him for the predictable consequences of his tariffs. The rest of them will believe Trump when he blames it on Biden’s economic policies that were put in place before Trump’s second term. Our egos have a funny way of making us do mental gymnastics to avoid having to accept the idea of oneself being wrong.
