Absolutely right.
So, Donny Joe wants to buy a TV. He sees a Samsung for $300, or a domestic Magnavox for $600.
He buys the Samsung and Magnavox loses out.
A 100% tariff is introduced. The Samsung is now $600, just like the Magnavox.
Donny Joe buys American… All is good and Magnavox survives.
Seems like a good thing right?
Except that Donny Joe has paid $300 extra…
And… Magnavox, like almost every domestic manufacturer, no longer makes anything in the US. The name was sold to the Japanese via Philips, decades ago.
So, what ‘domestic’ manufacturing is still there to protect?…The EV car industry, yes, That is true, if Donny Joe wants a $80,000 new car, those tariffs ensure he can get a Tesla or an Escalade.
But, if he wants a $30,000 EV , or a small tough truck like a $35,000 Toyota Hilux, because he doesn’t HAVE the income to afford an $80,000 finance package … he’s fucked, because…Tariffs.
Donny Joe, and you, and me, we PAY out of our wages for tariffs. Now you might have a 6 figure income, and the difference between $300 and $600 is neither here nor there, but it matters to Donny Joe…New TV or health insurance… Yep, so no TV then…..
OK, Trumpian, riddle me this;
You need a new T.V.
However, Trump has slapped a 50% tariff on imported Chinese televisions.
What used to cost $500.00 now costs $750.00.
You say, “Fuck this, I’m buying an American-made T.V.”
So you go looking for one.
Of all the American-made T.V.’s out there, which one do you buy?
Also, your cellphone dies.
Or becomes obsolete.
You decide to replace it with a really nice iPhone
You looked at some last month, and the model you want costs about $1,000.
This month after Trump’s tariffs take effect, it’s now $1,500.
Once again, you say, “Fuck this, I’m buying an American-made phone.”
You go down and look at all the available American-made cell phones.
Which one do you buy?
Something that the most upvoted answer didn’t clearly explain is a tariff isn’t imposed on the exporter. It’s imposed on the importer. Meaning that if you’re car has a single part in it manufactured outside the US you’re going to see a price increase of 20–60 percent AT minimum for that part added to the cost to you at sale. Most companies aren’t going to be Happy just making their money back, they’re going to want to somehow turn that tariff into profit.
Second do you have any idea how long it takes to build a manufacturing facility? Well it took 2 years to build a hospital here, without production lines, etc. It takes 6–12 months to build and stock a Walmart. So imagine the time it’s going to take to build clothing plants, car plants, computer manufacturing facilities, etc. For the foreseeable future, the American people will be stuck paying for that tariff without an alternative.
am perfectly capable of understanding your opposition to Capitalism, I’m just against it.
What? Did you think only Communists had theories?
One of Donald Trump’s campaign promises was to impose tariffs on foreign goods, especially from China. Trump himself was always a little vague on what tariffs actually were, claiming that China would shoulder this cost. So your guess is as a good as mine whether he thought the other country pays for tariffs, or knew better and just lied to people.
But tariffs are a tax that Americans would have to pay for buying imports. And they would, in theory, make domestic products more competitive.
The only question is why?
Tariffs don’t actually make domestic products cheaper, they just make foreign products more expensive. This might benefit American businesses, but not the American consumer. And with unemployment at 4%, it’s not like we even need to protect domestic manufacturing or agriculture. People already have jobs.
Rather than helping American companies innovate and outcompete foreign ones, perhaps by giving them grants or small business loans, or even just removing unnecessary bureaucracy, Trump is trying to make their products look more affordable by making everyone else’s more expensive.
Which doesn’t help consumers in the slightest.
And if we go back to his first term, when he almost got us into a trade war with China, a favorite buzzword of his was the “Trade Deficit”. The fact that China sells more products to the US than the other way around.
Nevermind that our GDP is 1.5 times larger. Never mind that our GDP per capita is almost 6 times larger. Nevermind that China literally can’t afford our products. For some reason the fact that they’re selling to us and we’re not selling to them is a problem.
Which isn’t even Capitalism. That’s Mercantilism. It’s a theory of economics that fell out of fashion 300 years ago because it just made everyone poor.
