Comment by genewitch
5 days ago
The tariffs that were announced during the campaign - the same way Ross Perot did - and the reasoning was to bring us manufacturing back to the US and reduce the tax burden on US citizens? Such as writing off car payments if the car is American?
People wigged out over non-reciprocal tariffs, where we tariff at 50% what they charge the US. People wigged out at 10℅ flat rate tariffs. "Heard island penguins get charged 10%!)
I really have to wonder how important this Chinese junk is. They make so much junk for the US, that the EU, including Von der Lyon, had to make a plan to deal with Chinese companies wanting to, and I quote here, "dump" all their exports on to the EU market.
The EU is very protectionist over their countries' economic outputs and manufacturing. But if the US does that...
> People wigged out over non-reciprocal tariffs, where we tariff at 50% what they charge the US.
The "reciprocal" tariffs are based on not the tariff duties foreign countries imposed on US goods, but the trade deficit the US has with said foreign country. There's a lot of idiocy in the tariffs, but this was one of the loudest complaints people had with them.
> People wigged out at 10℅ flat rate tariffs. "Heard island penguins get charged 10%!)
Because the list of "countries" being charged made it clear that it wasn't being based on a list of countries as people understand them. Uninhabited islands and islands consisting only of US military bases being on the list were strong signs of the lack of competence in the planning for the tariffs.
And really, that's why people are complaining so hard: it is abundantly clear that tariffs are being rolled out in a botched manner by incompetent people for inane reasons, so whatever positive effect they might have is completely ruined and all of their negative effects are intensely amplified.
Its abundantly clear that narrative is being driven. Its much less clear why, or by who.
The Heard and McDonald Islands debacle was poorly reported on.
It does have its own customs zone, it doesn’t fall under Australia.
Some years, the World Bank has reported imports from the island: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/USA/Yea...
I assure you the US did not import $1.3M worth of machinery from an uninhabited island.
It's a data error. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/04/revea...
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The USA and the EU more or less have had even import duties. The USA averaging out at 1.47 % and the EU at 1.39 %. [1]
The EU has been advocating for a free-trade agreement, the TTIP, with the USA from 2013 on. It was buried in 2016 by the 45th president of the USA, who somehow thought it unfair. The EU has proposed a free-trade agreement only a few weeks ago. [2]
You may believe what you want, but at least in dealings with the USA the EU has always promoted free trade. Even Fox News acknowledges that ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff_ra...
[2] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/european-union-ready-neg...
Hold on now. For consumers, the only thing that's mattered as far as we're concerned is the fact the US had de minimis, which effectively meant no duties paid on all relevant goods a US consumer might want.
The EU, on the other hand, has made buying goods from the US, for consumers, horrifically expensive, including reducing the value of non-duty paid goods to essentially zero and leaving it up to EU member countries to decide if they then wanted to charge an additional "inspection fee" often more than the value of the goods themselves. Spoiler: those countries did.
So, your point isn't really relevant from a consumer point of view. The EU and its member states have tried every dirty trick in the book to make it as awful as possible to buy anything from the US.
If readers believe I am making false claims, please engage with me. I live in Denmark, as a Dane, and this is what I and any Dane who has bought goods from the US, has experienced directly.
The actual, lived experience is far different than whatever any bloc or country may claim (such as being in favor of free trade). The EU has always been economically protectionist, since its birth.
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The weird thing about Heard Island is that it was specifically called out in a list that did not even include every country.
It wasn't that a flat 10% tariff implies that even non-populated islands have a 10% tariff.
> reduce the tax burden on US citizens
Do you consider the tariffs to be a (tax) burden on US citizens?
Only on those who buy imports.
This seems to assume that everything can be imported or acquired domestically. But tariffs implemented in other countries are much more specific. It makes sense to use tariffs when you have the capability to meet your domestic demand with domestic supply. Indiscriminate tariffs catch things where demand far exceeds domestic production, whether that's raw materials, specific foods, or things that will take a long time to ramp up production domestically.
Ultimately, lots of things manufactured domestically will still increase in price because of the raw materials they require.
Please do explain how one can purchase coffee beans from anywhere but a country close to the equator?
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well to be fair to parent, the tariffs weren't exactly rolled out in a sane fashion and a lot of credibility was lost along the way, though it certainly was entertaining if you're a sicko like me.
The tariffs were announced with no plan to bolster on-shore manufacturing.
Yes, that's because they are a consumption tax intended to replace income tax. the talk of US manufacturing is not completely on-the-level.
The main purpose of tariffs is to change behavior for both the consumer and the manufacturers.
Auto manufacturers have been doing this for decades when the US started imposing tariffs on Japanese manufacturers back in the 1970's. To get around the tariffs and still get access to the US markets, they would simply assemble the parts of the cars here and bypass the rules of the tariffs. Many companies then started doing the same.
This effectively changed the behavior of the companies to avoid the tariffs. The end result was more manufacturing and assembly plants here - even though most of the big production tasks of the vehicles were still done overseas.
Also, there's already been several announcements of companies moving their manufacturing to the US in order to avoid getting hit with tariffs:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-commits-500-billion-to...
Nvidia (NVDA) on Monday said it will produce up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the US within the next four years as the tech industry looks to bolster its domestic manufacturing footprint in the face of Trump's approach to trade policy and desire to onshore more US heavy industry.
Also, Ford made some moves to avoid both US and European tariffs:
Less than a week after the White House announced its comprehensive set of tariffs, the Dearborn automaker exclusively revealed to Ford Authority its comprehensive plan to relocate all of its assembly plants to Hawaii. The move will be made possible by state of the art 3D printing technology and has the support of the United Auto Workers.
In any event, Ford envisions Hawaii as an export hub for markets outside North America and a key pillar of the company’s domestic production capabilities. Ford will utilize an obscure maritime law from World War II as a way to get completely around European and Asian tariffs, as the original intent of the legislation enabled private companies to avoid punitive trade measures to get badly needed supplies to the Allies at the height of the conflict.
You’re missing a link for the Ford news. Dare I ask when you read about Ford moving production to Hawaii? Was it in early April by chance?
https://fordauthority.com/2025/04/ford-will-avoid-trump-tari...
> We’ll have more on this never, because this was our final April Fools’ article for 2025. We hope you enjoyed all of them!
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The Donald tariffs certainly changed my behavior as a Canadian consumer.
For example, i stopped buying US wine, US orange juice and I keep an eye open for any US made thing I could remove from my environment.
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The tariffs were definitely part of the campaign, described in detail in Project 2025 and will eventually replace higher brackets of the income tax.
This consumption tax is tax policy, not trade policy. That was evident when there was not even any discussion about excepting manufacturing inputs (neither this time nor the 45th administration).
Wouldn't it be fairer to remove the lowest tax bracket, or move all tax brackets higher?