It is very strange to me that the government seems to be going for maximum shock and uncertainty on the US economy. Again, apart from the advisability of the actual tarrifs, they could have been implemented in the usual way to allow people to plan for them (and possibly give feedback on them), but they were not.
According to his own people he doesn't take no for an answer and isn't interested in input from anyone else. He has surrounded himself with opportunists and yes men. His own department heads often will do press conferences and inadvertently contradict Trump, seemingly without realizing it. At one point Trump and his staff couldn't get on the same page about IF they were or were not talking to China about tariffs, they waffled for several days on it.
A few Trump staffers whenever asked about strategy with tariffs or other things just ignore the question an start praising Trump out of the blue. It's a creepy scene.
I've yet to see anyone with an education or domain knowledge explain the existing tariffs strategy / where this should lead with these whipsaw type decisions. There simply is nobody with a clue willing to do that.
At least in Idocracy President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho chose to listen to someone smarter than him. This is very much not the choice of the current President.
Americans call this "separation of powers" for some quaint reason. In practice all three branches of government do what he says in executive orders.
Anytime a judge does something that might result in a confrontation SCOTUS sets it aside while the legal process continues ... this a farce as in the meantime people are fired, tax payer data is handled poorly, budgets are cut and everything falls apart. Effectively the law is ignored and the damage is allowed to happen regardless of the court outcome. It won't matter by the end of it all. It's the same as SCOTUS rubber stamp approving all of it...
IMO they've disqualified themselves for that job by simply refusing to do it.
Every traditional Republican ideology is now upside down / been violated with gusto.
They're a whole new party in many ways.
What's new is someone had the money and platform and good idea to leverage that huge gap between what Republican voters wanted, and the Republican platform, to judo-flip and pin the whole official party apparatus in the span of a couple years. Republicans, the voters, didn't change, or if they did, it was years and years before Trump.
The problem is that the rest of our government is either inept, asleep, or have no will to do anything. Plus the Supreme Court has been stuffed with cronies, so there's really no other legal recourse.
It’s a power/money grab, nothing more, nothing less.
Trump has one ideology - trump first.
EU for example bulged for exactly this reason and accepted 15% one-way tariff for access to US market. Before the deal the uncertainty about the level of coming tariffs was deemed worse for European companies trading to US than the negotiated tariff itself.
European political leaders including the head of NATO have also practically turned to giving rimjobs to Trump's ass wishing he would not throw tantrums at them in important meetings: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17wejpw79qo
Ultimately this all just strengthens US hegemony and makes other countries weaker, which is the explicitly stated goal he keeps repeating..
Throwing away 80+ years of mostly-Republican soft power and foreign policy seems foolish. Making it difficult to ship or sell to the US only makes sense if they want to detach from the world's economic system. They're welcome to try to be Tibet, but folks might find it difficult to get what they want. And losing the reserve-currency status for the USD will hurt. So will being unable to (easily) sell debt.
There is really no downside at all for Trump. If it actually starts hurting US economy at any point, he can easily just signal reversing the policy and everyone will let out a big sigh of relief and markets rebound. If it causes some long-term harm for US, he will be long gone by then. But if he is succesful in establishing a new US-first world order he will be forever remembered as one of the greatest American presidents in history.
I'm not sure where to start with giving you sources for actions being taken because it seems that you want things to have already changed before you believe it. You've surely read any the strengthening of intra-EU defence arrangements? Things like that mean that in the future the US won't be able to bully for leverage like they are today. It's short term versus long term thinking.
Also not sure what "actually starts hurting" the economy means. Is the hurt that's been caused so far not actual hurt? No true Scotsman economics.
Meanwhile, all European stock indices continue to underperform their American counterparts. The return on STOXX Europe 600 index over the past 10 years has been about 58%. The S&P 500 in this same period returned 237%, and more importantly has continued to outperform STOXX Europe 600 throuhgout 2025. Surely investors would be abandoning the US stock market like rats on a sinking ship if Trump was wrecking the US economy?
> Things like that mean that in the future the US won't be able to bully for leverage like they are today.
I would fully applaud this, if it actually does happen. But so far European defence co-operation has been and continues to be weak and incoherent. It is most blatantly apparent in how Hungary and now Slovakia have been able to derail EU-level co-operation in supporting Ukraine.
However I must admit the recent €600 Billion defence package is one rare step to seemingly right direction.
If you presuppose that the markets are both rational and moral then maybe. But when the president of the US is using his personal social media website to tell people when to buy and sell before he rolls the dice it becomes difficult to take this point seriously.
> But so far European defence co-operation has been and continues to be weak and incoherent.
That's exactly the point, there are now more meetings than ever about resolving these issues because the old hegemony can no longer be relied on, Denmark is having to ask repeatedly for clarifications on the constant threats to invade Greenland... Again, you're expecting things to change overnight when policy changes at this level take years to implement.
> It is most blatantly apparent in how Hungary and now Slovakia have been able to derail EU-level co-operation in supporting Ukraine.
Is it? That doesn't seem to have any bearing at all on the topic at hand. Just because Hungary has gone rogue at the behest of mother Russia doesn't in any way suggest the rest of the EU aren't turning away from the US.
> However I must admit the recent €600 Billion defence package is one rare step to seemingly right direction.
Yes, you could even say it's evidence of the move towards more cohesion in the future following events which only took place several months ago...
Trump does have additional leverage in the fact that the dollar is the global reserve currency, but he's actively testing how much friction he can introduce into the global trade system before that changes.
On that note, it's interesting that every country Trump has targeted for higher tariffs (China, Brazil, India) is a member of BRICS.
I haven’t seen an explanation of how this works as far as the current tariff methodology goes.
What's good for America is protecting her people's liberties and increasing their satisfaction in life. The first is clearly going downhill; Trump's plummeting popularity amongst his followers suggests the second is, as well.
Given his history of failed businesses and association with a known pedophile, what seems more likely?
That this even needs saying is mindbogging
It's a gesture that says "I understand I need to give you this because you are in charge, and I need to go through you to get anything done". That's not how America works, and the fact anyone is giving any amount to get favors through Trump rather than maintaining a level playing field is the problem.
The first instance of this came in the form of tech companies renaming the "Gulf of Mexico" to the "Gulf of America." It was a small thing, but it was a gesture that showed they knew what they had to do to play ball in Trump's economy was to live in his constructed reality where it's the Gulf of America.
Then came the legal bribes where companies paid millions to settle the lawsuits he filed against them. Then came the tech bribes where they are literally giving him bars of gold for favored status.
Next will be him directing internal company culture and policy. Watch out to see which companies stop celebrating pride, it will likely be those who paid him bribes first. Then he will ask them to stop selling to certain "undesirable" customers, and they will oblige.
An effective response to that is calibrating ones outrage and asking "Out of all the things I could be fighting, what is the most impactful and important?"
Hence, I think it's a waste of time causing others to think about a token symbolic bribe.
Focus on the $250M+ bribes that are also happening.
Apple's bribe is the crack in the door that lets fascism in to American businesses. Apple, for its part, carries a certain amount of weight in the marketplace. What they do sets a tone, and the tone they've set is they are not above giving obvious bribes to a felonious racist wannabe dictator. If Apple is willing to play ball, most other corporations will as well.
Imagine if things were the other way around and they told POTUS to shove it. Maybe other corporations would do so as well.
Getting a grip on the magnitude of the Trump family profiteering through all the obfuscation and destruction of record keeping practices is an ongoing challenge in reporting.
* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/08/18/the-number
( Summary of the long form article above:
At the end of Trump’s first term, CREW calculated that Trump made more than $1.6 billion in outside revenue and income during his four years as president. Recently, however, The New Yorker staff writer David D. Kirkpatrick tallied up a new number, encompassing ventures from both Trump’s first and second terms: $3.4 billion.
Even if Trump doesn't need to put his hand in the cookie jar so obviously, many around him aren't as disciplined or experienced in obsfuscating policy-based trading.
Anyway, the $2.5M isn't the point, it's bending someone like Tim Cook to your will so that they would just give it to you and thank you while bending over. To some degree, he's now directing Apple Inc, since he can get Tim Cook to act according to his will.
How much is that worth to Trump?
Does $2.5M matter to Apple?
No. They probably lose that much between rows in their spreadsheets.
So, if it's not material to Apple's finances, what does giving it to Trump mean? Symbolic gestures are symbolic, but you haven't bent someone to your will until you've made them give you something that hurts.
In reality, all federal revenue - whether from income taxes, tariffs, or any other source - flows into the U.S. Treasury and becomes part of the general fund. Tariff money doesn't create a separate pool of funds that the president can spend at will. Just like with tax revenue, any spending of tariff proceeds requires congressional appropriation through the normal budget process. The executive branch cannot spend money that Congress hasn't specifically authorized, regardless of the revenue source.
Although I don't think that's the direct reason. But feeling powerful by using his power maybe can be a direct reason for this behavior?
You're looking at the wrong board despite thinking about the same game.
The clearer answer is: the US stock market is denominated in dollars.
If dollars devalue, then the price of real assets and equities in dollars increases (i.e. equivalent value, different number).
It's entirely possible two things happen at once: (1) US companies become less profitable and competitive due to tariffs (thereby decreasing their objective value) & (2) US dollars devalue (thereby increasing assets value in terms of US dollars).
Realistically, persistent inflation, international willingness to buy US government debt, and/or consumer confidence will be the things that collapse everything. (Or not)
You're still likely right as things must always come down but what if it doesn't.
If that isn't a bubble I don't know what is.
Remember, the dotcom bubble didn't mean the internet was a dead technology. It meant that money was being invested into ideas that didn't pan out into profit.
Just imagine the money you could make if you could induce such events on demand, with only you and your friends all being prepared for it!
Just a thought. Purely hypothetical. No one would do that. Surely.
"Trump brags in Oval Office that his billionaire pals made a killing in stocks after he pulled the plug on tariffs"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
It's only strange to you because you don't understand the purpose of government anymore. It's changed -- before, the government was supposed to protect and provide for the citizenry. Provide military defense, manage the economy for everyone's economic benefit, and part of that work was maintaining global order and stability.
That's not its purpose anymore. Now, the purpose of the government is to provide for Trump's security, to provide for Trump's stability, and to maintain a global order where his will rises above all others.
To that end, economic instability is a feature, not a bug. Trump loves it when the world is off kilter, because they perceive that in order to achieve stability, they must assuage him personally with gifts, bribes, and praise. Witness the Qatari jet bribe, Tim Cook's oval office visit where he gave a bribe, and the cabinet meeting yesterday which was 4 hours of everyone praising Trump rather than talking about the business of the country.
America is now a dictatorship, Trump is the dictator, and the country/economy will only be as stable as his ego allows. Which, after watching the guy for 10 years, means nothing will be stable again until he's gone for good.
Wow this administration is f**ing batshit insane. I thought the tariffs would be on raw metals, not anything at all that happens to contain them.
First of all, if you want to use tariffs to boost domestic manufacturing, you must also tax the steel/al content of finished (or intermediate) goods. Otherwise, you put your local producers at a disadvantage, making the tariffs worse.
If you only tariff raw materials, then an american manufacturer has to pay either US steel prices or imported steel + tariff to manufacture, but a company overseas can use the cheaper foreign steel.
So if you want to tax raw materials, then you also want to tax those goods where raw materials are an important part of the cost.
The US has a catalog called the "Harmonized Tariff Schedule" (HTS) which is a catalog of basically everything under the sun [0]. When the steel & AL tariffs were announced, they also published a list of all the HTS codes where the steel/al content would also be taxed.
Last week the US published a revised list of HTS codes to which these tariffs apply, and they added about 400 items to them. For example, the aluminum content of cans is now taxed when it wasn't before.
Flexport has a very cool (and useful!) tariff simulator where you can look up any item and it will tell you if the steel/al content will be subject to these tariffs: https://tariffs.flexport.com
Disadvantaging local producers is how tariffs work! Local producers would then turn to local suppliers who don't have any additional taxes applied. Tariffs are a very blunt instrument, and clumsily attempting to assuage 2nd order pain points will only give rise to 3rd (and higher) order effects.
The lesson here is: don't fuck around with multivariate dynamic systems that have achieved stability: there won't be any one knob you can twist to get a result you want on a single parameter. It'll be worse if you pick one knob and turn it all the way to 11.
It's a known flawless way to evolve code... Never revise, never delete, add enough so the tests pass.
But I don't think your lesson is reasonable. Fucking with multivariate dynamic systems is what governments do. And it's well settled that in the absence of the government doing that, everything goes to hell quite quickly.
I'm with you in expecting government to tweak, adjust and modify policy, but it's usually the experts advising and implementing, but we're in the "My ignorance is as valid as your experience era", and we will witness where that will take us.
But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently.
Domestic manufacturers are still disadvantaged by having to pay tariffs for materials used for the product, but not present in the final product. And foreign manufacturers still don't. If used in machines (and used up), used in mining (and used up), used in transport, used in energy production, ...
These costs are very large, especially because specific materials are often not available worldwide, or have large differences in quality due to availability of tiny amounts of additives for alloys or compounds. These things do lead to very large differences in quality, and thus in value. You can't model that as a government, it's just not going to happen.
There's no way to fully analyze an entire economic chain (especially when almost everyone involved has a financial incentive to sabotage you doing that correctly, and that includes foreign governments). You'd think this wouldn't have to be explained to either Americans or especially a supposed "defender of capitalism", but here we are.
Well, that depends on what you are getting done.
If your objective is solely to get a product done, the most efficient way is probably going to involve terrible salaries plus ample disregard for the environment and human life. Anything else is going to be disruptive to that end.
Because they didn't use the right specificity in the announcement (used an 8 digit HTS vs 10 digit), there was some confusion for a few weeks if Beer in glass bottles was subject to it as well.
There is now an FAQ on CBP's website clarifying it is not [^2]. And they've updated to the right specificity in the new lists.
> Is HTS 2203.00.0030, Beer made from malt, In containers each holding not over 4 liters, In glass containers; subject to Section 232 duties? > No.
But yes, effective 18 August, they broadened the list a whole lot more and added things from condensed milk to deodorant to both steel and aluminum lists. An absolute nightmare for FMCG supply chain to have to figure this out.
You can agree or disagree with the current administration's trade policy but hopefully, even the staunchest proponents will admit that the execution has been sub-par. With u-turns (sometimes leaving partner countries fuming because the final published tariffs were not what were negotiated[^3]), lack of clarity and changes that land on Friday night after work hours and go into effect on Monday midnight.
[^1]: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-05884.pdf
[^2]: https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...
[^3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/business/japan-tariffs-us...
https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...
https://www.dominioncustomsconsultants.com/cbp-updated-guida...
Don't some tariffs motivate people to do processing offshore?
If I import 1kg of copper and machine/etch/whatever it down into products, with some wastage, maybe I should just do everything offshore and only import the final articles with 500g of copper in it.
At some point, higher tariffs on input materials will overtake the higher value of finished goods and you might as well just manufacture the whole thing offshore anyway.
The capricious implementation of the tariffs is another issue. Biden raised tariffs but the implementation involved a months long comment period, then a notice months in advance, and finally implementation. It wasn't ideal in my mind (the specific tariffs) but there was a way to work through the consequences and plan accordingly. This administration does not believe in that. Maybe congress would if they took back responsibility for tariff policy but I don't see that happening right now.
In fact this should be a sales tactic for fedex or whomever "we bullshit the numbers for ya!"
>For PCBs shipped to the EU, a Certificate of Analysis is not typically required for determining tariffs, as tariffs are based on the HS code (e.g., 8534.00 for bare PCBs), country of origin, and customs value. However, a CoA or similar documentation (e.g., material composition report) may be needed for: Regulatory compliance with REACH or RoHS, especially if the PCBs contain restricted substances like lead or cadmium. Customs verification if the product’s classification or materials are questioned.
https://hts.usitc.gov/search?query=8534
...and has been that way for a long time. Only thing that might be different now is that the de-minimus import exemption is going away for (certain?) countries? (and of course the tariff rate changing).
They have no way to do this, because it's normally not done - tarrifs are paid by the importer, and responsibility for correct labeling is by the importer.
UPS can collect tariffs. Source: I've written checks recently to UPS to cover tariffs.
As I understand it, US customs wants foreign carriers to collect tarriffs when packages are shipped, and pay them to the US.
There is no system to do this, nor a system to actually receive payments and associate them with a package. Nor any clarity on what the rules actually are and thus what the import duties will be when things arrive.
The normal course of things is that things get shipped, hit customs and get assessed for duties, and then the importer pays for release. If you've ever experienced differently it's because someone is handling it for you - e.g. Amazon provide this service and absorb the complexity and risk.
This is more a reversion to the mean/making them more equal. Which is a big deal.
We’ve been had and the number of people covering for this grows daily, and will continue to do so until one day we all wake the fuck up.
You are being governed by someone with dementia who has surrounded himself with people who appear unable to say 'no'.
The US just sort of randomly decided to tariff everything from people they don’t like anymore. Because of the randomness of these tariffs, they impact not only consumer goods but production equipment.
The justification for these tariffs is something along the lines of “let’s bring production back to the United States.” That’s likely a good idea (says the Canadian), but when they use that justification while simultaneously tariffing production equipment the same as consumer goods you have to wonder what’s actually going on.
With production equipment, you amortize the cost of that tool over the years of usage. These tariffs are not amortized, meaning they must be paid at import. That takes cash off the balance sheet, puts it into equipment and hits liquidity.
If I was wickedly powerful and really hated Americans, going after SMB liquidity would be the most convenient (and profitable) way to cause generational harm.
Is the purpose of the democratic system to get people like Trump in power? Apparently that's what it does, no?
Look up the history of the phrase "the purpose of a system is what it does". It was adopted as a principle because it made more sense than every other possible alternative. It makes no sense to claim that the purpose of a system is to do something that it never has done and consistently fails to do, because the system would have been replaced in that case.
So which is it?
For example, the US has some of the largest lithium deposits in the world, but it's not being exploited because extraction is dirty and polluting, generally the compliance for opening a new mine is very complex (takes 7-10 years), and catching-up on refinery capacity will take an enormous investment (China does almost all Li refining now).
Similarly, developing the techniques to boost oil extraction (fracking, EOR...) took significant and sustained government support of different kinds until it became competitive, it's unclear if market pressure alone would have done it. This made the US again into the largest exporter rather than the largest importer of oil.
There are many such cases.
Note: I'm not from the US, and I'm not particularly pro-US, I'm not saying that tariffs are a good mechanism to support these industries, and I'm not necessarily in favour of such anti-environmental policies. But those are the facts as I understand them.
If the US has a ton of Lithium but finds it too expensive to extract, why not buy it now while it's cheap, wait for it to become rarer in other countries so more expensive, and only extract it once it's worth it (or close to worth it)?
It's the same reason why all the manufacturing outsourcing was so short-sighted. Sure, you're saving a few bucks on labor, but you are literally giving away all your knowledge about the manufacturing process! Those local factory workers you are firing? They won't be around to train new workers when you want to restart the local factory a decade or three later. Meanwhile, the factories overseas haven't been sitting idle either and have kept developing their manufacturing processes. They will not give you their trade secrets so you're going to have to reinvent the wheel yourself - without experts.
Congratulations, you have created your own competitor, and they are now better than you.
But these things take time and significant capital to develop, you often need to be non-competitive for years, doing things in a more expensive way, until you can catch-up. But then you can overtake everyone else, if nothing else due to the momentum of growth and the higher efficiency you had to maintain to catch-up. Just like it happened with oil in the US, or with Germany, Japan, Korea or China recovering from catastrophe.
If you don't do this, you can get cornered, where in principle you can produce a resource much more efficiently in your country, but you can't quite climb over the hill because you are addicted to depending on others as an economy and you don't anymore have the capital, know-how or culture for such things.
It's important to get news from politically unbiased sources, because the reality is that US lithium sources are being stood up! Especially in that politically incorrect state of California which is supposedly a hellhole that would never approve something of the sort.
As for tariffs being a good way to support these industries citation needed! It's exactly the opposite type of policy for driving the investment that's needed. It's actually drastically collapsing all of the massive investment that was happening under Biden, in a complete disaster for the US. So I totally agree that you are not pro-US, but let's be honest about the disaster of tariffs.
There's really no reason why we shouldn't have steel mills aside from that.
What's more likely, as I stated in another comment, is if you destroy their comparative advantage at a tariffed industry, the Chinese guy that had the steel mill as his best option now has to move to the next even shittier one. Tariffs are usually economically worse than zero-sum.
To answer the broader question, if you believe in markets at all, then demand creates supply, and supply for cheap (and therefore abused) labor is arguably at least in part responsible for economies like China being so shitty to your average worker. If all Western countries would e.g. slap tariffs on goods imported from places with poor labor rights, but they were specifically contingent on that (and not just a list of countries that our Great Leader has a problem with), that would put the pressure on the Chinese government to raise the standards to remain competitive. That would be the kind of tariff I would support, and I don't buy the argument that if we don't allow for such shitty jobs, the alternatives would be even worse - this is exactly the kind of attitude that creates a global race to the bottom that is the major driver for enshittification all around.
It is consistently frustrating to me to read so many analyses mentioning "comparative advantage" when what they mean is "minute labor protections compared to American standards". Americans can't freely compete when others who sell labor and goods in their marketplaces don't have to follow any of the same rules.
1) We will tariff the Chinese to make it unprofitable to sell to America anything built using anything other than our self-imposed regulations.
2) When more American steel plants etc are built, assuming investors even believe the tariffs will exist through enough administration to make it profitable, they magically will somehow be safer than working in the other industries these workers were pulled from, and magically not continue to be one of the more dangerous occupations in the USA that for mysterious reasons we want more people risking their hides in.
Reality:
1) Chinese do the same thing as always, and sell to the other 95% of the world, with no labor condition changes for the chinese.
2) More Americans get their arms turned into molten lava instead of Chinese (see recent Clairton plant explosion, yay for building more of that?). So labor conditions degrade for Americans.
3) Other Chinese figure out how to game the system enough to pretend they've followed the same rules, because lets be real, "the king is far away and the mountains are large."
4) The few Chinese not manufacturing for the other 95% of earth and haven't figured out how to game the system, are fired and work at the next even shittier job they passed on the way to the steel mill.
Closest I can think of is the Romans required a constant influx of cheap labour from outside their empire for their economy. When the flow stopped (diminished conquering meant diminished number of slaves coming in) that was a major factor in economic decline.
If you want tariff that option away from a bunch of China-men, have them do the next even shittier dangerous job that they bypassed on the way to the steel mill, and then save them while you instead work next to molten iron, that's the proposition you're moving towards.
Of course if you want a little taste of being that hero, there are domestic steel mills currently hiring, you can take that job so the next guy in line won't get maimed. But somehow I think you won't, so you must be "all cool" they are "instead maimed."
I'm not sure what you're arguing for here, but you come off as morally bankrupt. Worker safety can certainly be improved but people like you happily shrug it off and are fine with hazardous cost cutting which allows people to continue to be maimed as long as you're steel or whatever is super cheap.
Price I pay is not getting my $20 fairy lights that made my backyard look cute. The price foreign factory workers pay is that they’re out of a job. I don’t think Americans pay the most, but they do pay.
Edit: Clearly people are missing the point Im trying to make here. I’m trying to address the viewpoint that Americans will somehow lose the most, which i don’t think is the case. This isn’t a pro tariff argument. American consumer is the biggest market there is on the planet. Pretending we can just find other buyers is ludicrous. Yes, there will be some jobs affected domestically, but that number will be much higher elsewhere.
In this case, though, I would imagine that lightly waterproofed decorative outdoor lighting would sell about equally well to any first or second world market.
I’m wondering if some of them are wide but shallow, and that they have a much smaller total consumption quotient available.
America's average net salary is $53,000 and Portugal's is US$19,000.
If your TV factory can't ship to America for the time being, you might need to retool and make more 43" screens and fewer 85" screens. You'd prefer to be making the higher margin products, but at least you keep work coming in and keep your workers fed.
The US was a unique money-making machine... Although the gears seem to be getting looser and the machine is being broken. Personally I think the US economy is flexible enough to mitigate much of the damage, however I worry about the future impact of political changes.
I'm in New Zealand which is quite wealthy although the demographic timebomb will go off in next decades: and our economy is also fucked because our voters hate businesses and business people.
One strong signal of how fucked a country is economically, is how well small businesses can survive.
If the US starts screwing its businesses more, that is the time to worry.
Yes, the the cost of (at least) some foreign workers is that the jobs they had creating good exported to America will go away. That's true. The trade-off though isn't just that the Americans don't get their stuff. The real trade off is that the good those factory workers buy (whether they be physical or immaterial, cultural or financial services) will not get bought. Americans making those good will therefore ALSO be out of a job.
In the end, nobody gets what they want and everybody loses employment. It's a lose/lose for everybody involved.
I read it more as decentering the United States, which frankly I'm completely, 100% for. America's (lack of) culture has been our biggest export. We've sanitized vast swathes of the globe into our hollow consumerist self image at great cost to interesting and beautiful places. All products are designed with Americans in mind, because Americans were the center of global trade. If you wanted to make money, you had to sell your thing to Americans.
And, worse, Americans have grown accustomed to this deference and preferential treatment. It's time we got a reality check: that the world doesn't need us anymore. That we've become as old, dumb and worthless as the shitty president that so perfectly embodies our culture of consumption, waste, and useless greed.
The US is treating everyone else like shit and isolating themselves from the world.
The world is slowly esponding accordingly and reconfiguring to the new reality where the US is unreliable and unfriendly.
While it's a lose/lose this will ultimately hurt the US more than everyone else.
The world isn't going to come to the aid of the US and prop them back up to their place of hegemony when this all goes to shit. The rest of the world is going to pick at the carcass of what was once an inspirational empire.
What I don't like is when we start using the terminology if "winning" a trade war. A trade war, like an actual war, has no winners. We are all going to be poorer, both materially and culturally, from hurting each other.
So yes, the current American administration (which is currently a legitimate democratic representation of the American people) has started a trade war meant to inflict pain on everybody that doesn't align with them. The answer to that isn't "well actually the trade war is going to backfire and the whole world is going to be stronger than you" its "you're going to pay for this too. However much you hurt us, and it is non-zero, you are also going to hurt yourself. Not because I'm going to hurt you, but because we are all part of one system of trade".
Yes, I've read that inspiration in the Mein Kamph. Hitler cited the US's hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow for how Germany responded to the Jewish problem.
If you were a WASP - white anglo-saxon protestant, you were fine. Elsewise, yeah, not so much.
Meaning that for a lot of businesses, especially those that manufacture goods US is often a very important and hard to replace market.
e.g. What do you think will happen to the profit margins of EU drug companies if Trump actually imposed his tariffs on pharmaceuticals? Besides the size of the US market they also generally charge much higher prices there.
That tiny German company making lab equipment which happens to be absolutely essential for your company? Their shipments aren't getting through customs anymore, and dealing with the additional paperwork is way more than the two-and-a-half people in charge of shipping can handle on top of their regular duties. The US is only 5% of their market, so rather than drown in an attempt to serve the US they'll just suspend shipping until the US fixes itself, and serve the other 95% of the world instead.
Can't do your job without a replacement MacGuffin? Oh well, sucks to be you! Not our problem that your company is going to lose millions, take it up with your government.
I highly doubt these kinds of companies will reduce their prices once the tariff is gone resulting in a permanent higher cost of products made with these machines in the US.
That is all of your imports that are impacted by tariffs? Whatever it is that you are smoking is some good stuff.
The EU is the top trading partner for 80 countries. By comparison, the US is the top trading partner for a little over 20 countries. The EU is the world’s largest trader of manufactured goods and services.
The EU is making moves right now to position itself as the preeminent center of world trade.
Losing that position will hurt Americans more than anyone else.
The EU being what it is considering to start planning to make a plan to take moves to plan these moves.
Then it will have to align those plans with all its members etc.
I can’t wait to see what will happen when German auto industry crashes. It will be a very very interesting domino fall. Unfortunately I’ll watch it from inside, so it won’t be fun, but it will be interesting nonetheless.
Export markets will of course collapse outside of the very high-end. But that has been slowly occurring over the last few years anyway.
I think there will be even stronger trend of european brands put on Chinese made cars. Like Renault is already doing with Dacia Spring. Brands themselves will survive, even companies themselves may survive, but many of them may be just headquarters. Moving production means supply chain follows. And that's where most of the jobs are. Over time R&D will follow factories. So for the job market it could be pretty close to full-on crash.
Because they believed the actually had a chance of remaining competitive in the Chinese market.
Turns out that was highly delusional in hindsight.
You can’t have both..
Once that's complete and the dependence on the US is broken, expect more dramatic moves.
It generally punches below its geopolitical weight, but that’s because it was happy to follow the US when American policies were decent (not great, but good for trade and mostly good for stability). But that’s not a law of nature, things do change, even if it is slow compared to the modern news cycle.
At the same time, there are things to keep in mind:
- this is asking member-states to delegate some of their sovereignty, which is never all easy and always involves quite a bit of horse-trading
- the member-states are perfectly happy to fuck things up on their own and things like growth figures for the eurozone actually mask very different realities depending on the country and its government
- stagnation is a very western point of view, things are still changing quite a lot on the eastern side
- the reference point should be the same situation without the EU. I am not sure, for example, that things would be improved with a trade war between Germany and France, the baltics fending off for themselves, or each country having its own import requirements and sets of tariffs.
I do also strongly believe that the Eurozone or a rather a monetary union without a fiscal union hasn’t been the best idea as far as south-north goes.
And then you have countries which are doing quite well despite retaining their free-floating currency.
They existed long before the EU was called the EU, but that is misleading.
Both the customs union and the common market were created in 1957 with the European economic community, which got a new name and a coat of paint to become the EU in 1993. Both are fundamental parts of the European project. They would not exist without the EU and the EU would not exist without them.
Poland is an interesting case in that you can retain a free floating currency and your own monetary policy and still do quite well.
It's reasons why this that I refuse to associate with Republicans in my daily life anymore. They are undeserving of respect or decency for how they continue to make our lives worse.
If we have that in common, then I find the difference in politics is mostly implementation and method. I'm happy to debate civic policy on the merits all day at that point.
The people who are drawn to the performatively cruel side are not rational actors and can't be reasoned with. I've tried.
You have my admiration for trying, especially in this political climate. I've had younger folk straight up not believe me when I say this is exactly the same playbook they ran against gay men in the 90s.
Here is the official link:
https://www.post.ch/en/about-us/media/press-releases/2025/us...
Pretty crazy if you ask me
That is not what the link says. It says that goods consignments are not accepted -- which is not at all the same thing as "does not ship to the US anymore". The link explicitly says that they're continuing to ship letters, will continue to ship goods via another service, and (I can only presume) will continue to accept personal packages, since those aren't affected at all by these tariff changes.
The discussion on this topic on HN is far more heat than light.
If I buy a Swiss watch (<$800) I’ll have to use DHL or UPS (though AFAIK, they also use national post in places) so I’m SOL.
But if my Swiss friend mails me a watch they can use Swiss Post still? Unclear.
I don't know if the Swiss post office has realized this, but it's true.
Edit: one bit of nuance (see my comment downthread with some of the actual laws and the EO) is that if you buy a watch from Chrono24 or something then it's more like the Temu use-case, and I think the personal exemption probably doesn't apply? But if you go to Switzerland and pick up a $799 watch and post it back or carry it on a plane, then there's no problem.
What exactly distinguishes a commercial import from a personal gift? How on Earth would the USPS adjudicate the difference?
In particular, if I walk into a random post office and send a one-off shipment internationally, the paperwork, origin, packaging, manifest, etc. is vastly different than what, say, Temu was doing to ship a $10 widget to US consumers at scale.
The rule you're talking about is not new, so presumably they've figured it out.
You asked me what distinguishes a commercial package from a personal gift.
Presumably for things like import restrictions (I could imagine somebody sending homemade cookies is treated differently than a large-scale food importer), but not for a decision on whether to charge or not levy duties though, right?
The postal union treaty also externalized shipping costs.
I have to actually deal with the former.
There's multiple countries that are now suspending shipments over $100 to the US. So either there is a huge fuckup in communications from the US to every other country or there's a fuckup in the process itself.
...or you could read the actual changes? Accusing people of lying is not cool when you clearly haven't even read the source material.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/susp...
Here's a summary by a law firm:
https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/united-states-suspen...
Specifically:
> The executive order declares that “[t]he duty-free de minimis exemption provided under 19 U.S.C. § 1321(a)(2)(C) shall no longer apply to any shipment of articles not covered by 50 U.S.C. § 1702(b) [enumerating narrow exceptions, such as for donations, informational materials and transactions ordinarily incident to travel] regardless of value, country of origin, mode of transportation, or method of entry.”
50 USC 1702(b)(4) lays it out explicitly:
> (4) any transactions ordinarily incident to travel to or from any country, including importation of accompanied baggage for personal use, maintenance within any country including payment of living expenses and acquisition of goods or services for personal use, and arrangement or facilitation of such travel including nonscheduled air, sea, or land voyages.
You don't need to go into this much detail, of course -- you could just Google it or ask an LLM -- Google's AI summary currently returns the correct answer.
https://www.google.com/search?q=does+trump+de+minimis+tariff...
Here's a summary by a law firm:
Normally that would be sufficient, but now we have an executive branch that tries strategies like personally suing all the federal judges in a district because it dislikes some of their rulings on one of the president's signature issues. CEOs of major corporations are literally giving the president lumps of gold to decorate the oval office. So you'll have to forgive me for discounting the value of legal opinions in general nowadays.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-pr...
> Som privatperson kan du fortsat toldfrit sende gaver med en maksimal værdi á $100
You can see the number and read the obvious words, it's not even necessary to translate it
I'm not saying that post offices around the world don't make mistakes, or even make decisions that have nothing to do with the actual rules. I'm telling you what the rules are, right now.
Several people have explained that you are incorrect — Swiss and others are not accepting gift parcels over $100.
You then changed tack and said Swiss Post etc have the law wrong.
So what to you? It doesn't matter what details and uncertainties are in the law, it's resulted in most European countries setting a $100 limit, and at least Finland has suspended delivery entirely (even letters).
I literally just quoted the statement, which was explicit that the change involved “goods consignments”. They are continuing to accept mail, in general, and are continuing to accept goods consignments via another service.
In other posts I showed you that there’s no change to US policy for personal exemption.
Neither fact is in tension with the other.
Well, I don't keep track of what post offices around the world are doing, but if they're not following the rules that I just showed you, then yeah, they're wrong.
It wouldn't be the first time that bureaucratic organizations get things wrong.
> The EO doesn't mean shit as much as how things are enforced.
You really need to step back from the keyboard.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017265
> I'd suggest something like: "Japan Post stops accepting US shipments over $100."
I doubt they’re conspiring to leave money on the table just to make Trump look bad.
This won’t work. Just look at any country that dealt with a fascist regime. The ideology gets shunned, but you don’t just cancel even 30% of a country’s population, otherwise you just create a permanent state of tension. You need a combination of very harsh punishments for the leaders and the most harmful people, but you also need a way to reintegrate most of them into the democratic process.
I suspect that quite a lot of Trump supporters will not be interested in doing this, and will instead maintain a permanent state of tension by declaring their continued support of a regime that hated me. That's not great, I agree, but if there's one thing the 2024 election taught me it's that pretending it's OK doesn't defuse the tension. The Republican party had a clear opportunity to let the past go and win with a candidate who doesn't hate me - a candidate I would have voted for! - but they decided they prefer not to.
These people have lost all sense. The only remaining option is to make their party electorally impotent. Dominate through any available dirty trick. Redistricting. Impeachment. Ignoring judges. Endless executive orders. Shock and awe. Whatever they've done, return straight back to them. (Except the really grotesque parts like sending innocent people to a foreign torture prison.)
It seems that many people still haven't gotten the memo that we're not really living in a democracy anymore.
It's not the most productive but for all the pain their "opinions" create, the least I can do is make them feel the group believes their opinions to be ridiculous as the group all laughs.
I don't think they should get civility outside of the voters booth if they're uncivil within the booth.
I understand
I urge you to reconsider
The purpose of the policies are to create division that can then be exploited.
So fight them by building bridges and maintaining relationships
It is hard work, but it is the most effective way to fight these people who would sacrifice general peace and prosperity for the sake of their personal greed
The tl;dr of the current conundrum is that we have two corrupt political parties, and a system that's so rigged that it's nearly impossible to elect someone outside of them. Modern society's problems are complex to reason about and nearly intractable to solve. The people in power are not capable of even trying to reason about, let alone solve them.
I grew up in Nevada. Most of the people I grew up with are lowercase-L libertatian: they believe the government exists to arbitrate between the conflicting rights of individuals; that it should be as small as possible and let them do what they like unless they're harming someone else. Because of the aforementioned duopoly, these people tend to count as Republicans (in the style of Reagan). (This is true generally - the more geographically isolated a place is, the more it skews libertarian. The more urban, the more it skews liberal.)
The national Republican party was weak after Bush and got taken over by the Trump personality cult. The people I grew up with don't believe in instituting tariffs and arresting immigrants; yet if you force them to choose an R or D label, most of them are still going to count as R.
The world is a nuanced place. If you ignore that nuance and force everyone you're willing to converse with to pass your litmus test, you end up with two tribes ostriching themselves into bubbles of partisan-approved groupthink. That begets more yelling, less mutual understanding, and makes it even harder to solve problems. All of this empowers the extremists who control the major parties to continue making the world a worse place in service of their own power.
Yes, everything about politics sucks, and the people in charge are unfathomably awful. But if you refuse to share ideas with people you might disagree with, you're contributing to making that even more true.
It's like saying that both antarctica and oregon are 'cold'. Fucking stop already.
Maybe not "as a whole" but the majority of Republicans voted for this so at least those need to be written off. The rest have an opportunity to claim that they oppose the takeover by the personality cult. A great way to do it is to change their voter registration to anything else.
At this point, ever Republican has absolutely opted in to the current leader and platform.
My argument here isn't moral. It's that this class of strategy simply cannot be effective. I'm not claiming a better one, only that it's on all of us to look.
Are you willing to write off so many people? That is what the "fascists" want. Division is a core technique of erasing liberty
He told them what he wanted to do, over and over and over again. Now that he's doing what he told them he was going to do (again over and over and over again) they want some respect for their objections? They voted for him knowing what he was going to do. Exactly what is there about these fucking morons that I shouldn't write off?
> Division is a core technique of erasing liberty
Seems like embracing a self-coup is also a core technique of erasing liberty? Maybe both of these statements are so broad that they are meaningless.
You chose your lesser of 2 evils, and others chose theirs. There is no acceptable choice in American presidential politics.
1. Biden was old and everyone knew it. He still got shit done. The idea that everyone thought he was great and fine is not true. That's what Republicans claimed people thought.
2. Primaries are not an official part of the election process. They are a party matter. The whole weird Republican meltdown over it is not based in fact or history.
3. Russia did interfere with the 2016 elections. There's a whole congressional report on it, by a majority Republican committee. [0]
4. I don't even know what this means. If someone did crimes, they should be held responsible. The idea that we don't want that is, frankly propaganda.
[0] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/...
You need to build bridges with people that you disagree with
Casting somebody out of "the big tent" because of how they voted works towards increasing division. Increasing division, especially between majorities and minorities, is a time worn and effective tactic to create the conditions for authoritarianism.
If you favour authoritarianism over liberty then I am not talking to you.
If you favour liberty, support it, do not work against it
2. I'm not a Republican and I like the idea of the people getting to have a say in their leadership.
3. The claim I mentioned was that Trump was a Russian agent. Where's the evidence for that one?
4. This means the blue team had plenty of time to do something about the Epstein files and didn't. We'll never know what kamala would have done about it, but my money is on jack and squat.
Again, I'm not a republican. The red team sucks, and still the blue team wasn't good enough to beat them.
Hahaha so instead of voting for 60 year old you voted for the almost-octogenarian who thinks there were airports in the revolutionary war, representing the party that has absolutely never hidden the neurological decline of a sitting president. My guy.
Also, is anyone claiming that Trump isn't steering the ship? The people elected him and he seems to be the one at the wheel. The people elected Biden, who may have been steering the ship in his good hours of the day, but who knows who made the decisions the rest of the time.
2. It doesn't matter if you are or not, you're parroting the propaganda lines. Primaries have always worked like this. Anyone who passed high school civics should know that. I did and I do.
3. "Russia, if you're listening..." lol
Anyways, people don't think Trump is an "agent" like a spy. The issue is his campaign and office are compromised and Russia has leverage on him. That's the real issue.
4. I still don't know exactly what you're talking about.
Y'all do know the "Epstein files" are mostly imaginary, right? I mean, obviously he existed, he trafficked teenagers for sex, and he kept records and such. And yeah, we already knew famous people tagged along with him.
But the idea that they're this spooky secret special trove of famous pedophiles that everyone in power is desperate to hide is straight out of QAnon baby eating fantasies.
Nobody did anything about it because there was nothing to do. Basically everything was mostly released years ago. Trump flogged it because it got a reaction and now he has nothing to show. It's honestly hilarious to watch it bite him.
-----
i think people pick by name recognition rather than by lesser evil. if folks think trump is less evil than harris, theyre probably far beyond any conversation i could have. as south park puts it, not even satan wants to have sex with him.
If, in their minds, Harris and Trump are somehow equally implicated in the Epstein scandal, all I can say is "lol, have a good one".
I'm not talking about Harris specifically re Epstein, no idea what her involvement is. I'm saying the blue team in general. And is it really a good defense to say "my team was less involved with Epstein"? I'd humbly submit that it's not.
This is why we live in different realities.
Different realities indeed. The dems didn't even do that first part of promising to release things before "failing" to. Nobody in charge wants this stuff out.
This is why our system is fucked. You just have to convince people you're not as bad as the other guy, and you get carte blanch to do pretty much whatever.
Once again, because being in a political party that has rapists is not the same as committing rape. Do I need to explain this further?
> The dems didn't even do that first part of promising to release things before "failing" to.
So then don't vote for them? Though if you are voting based on this issue and have a choice between a man who is in the files and has a documented history with Epstein or a woman who is a former state AG and didn't run in the east coast Trump/Epstein circles, please tell me you aren't as naive as Joe Rogan.
this is to say they have a glowing endorsement of the trump agenda of authoritarian intervention in both social and economic issues. they could have stayed home, or voted for democrats who were pushing a more traditional conservative policy.
they also could have voted for local politicians who are against trump policies, but the local republicans are lockstep with trump too.
you need to reevaluate what the people in your community believe in. they mught say theyre libertarians, but their actions say theyre very favourable to criminal dictators. if they werent, they would have acted dofferently in elections, and the votes speak louder than words
All those traditional conservatives and "lowercase-L libertatians" could speak up now, and do something about the ongoing fascist takeover, but they are not. American democracy is probably doomed, we will find out in 2026 whether we can have fair mid-term elections.
I'm not defending people who voted for Trump. I'm saying if your response is "then I'm going to pretend you don't exist," this is only going to get worse.
Normal people need to be able to work together to find common ground for us to have anything resembling a healthy society.
It makes me sad that Hacker News, the place that emphasizes thoughtful curiosity in its post/comment guidelines, has lately often devolved into an echochamber indistinguishable from Reddit when anything remotely political comes up. Anything more nuanced then "Trump is evil and Republicans are stupid" gets downvoted, which is a microcosm of the whole problem that put them in power.
It is time 60% of the country decided to stop wasting effort on people who do not participate honestly.
And please stop with the "oh no, Reddit" garbage.
Obama pointed straight at call-out culture as a losing strategy 5 years ago; NYT article: https://archive.is/Di4uG . The Democrats need to start divorcing themselves from "allies" like the parent poster immediately and loudly if they want to build a voter coalition strong enough to win the midterms.
Zohran Mamdani is doing so well for a reason: a decent part of the voter base is getting increasingly fed up by the center-right politics the Democrats have been selling. Young left-wing voters really don't like the fossils currently leading the Democratic party. If the Democrats don't start selling something better than "we aren't the Republicans", they are at risk of losing yet another generation to the next right-wing populist who claims he's going to "drain the swamp".
So no, call-out culture isn't the problem: the complete lack of left-wing values is.
Its not that you have to appeal to them. Feel free to have policy positions and to stand on those. You might even get some people on the other side to agree with you on policy.
Instead, the losing strategy is doing what the OP is apparently doing, which is preemptively dismissing half the population, wholesale. Defining yourself as nothing, exempt as a hating half of the country is neither a real policy position, nor does it gain much.
> Zohran Mamdani is doing so well
He is doing well because he is standing on values. Not because he spends his time saying that he hates half of America. I'm sure he would be happy to get republican voters who move over to his side and agree with his policy positions.
As if activist conservatives won't simply lie about them. Yes, in an ideal world everything would be evaluated on the basis of policy by rational actors using objective criteria. In the world we live in bad faith abounds, and voters aren't very attracted to candidates who are long on integrity but allow themselves to used as a punching bag in some sort performative political martyrdom.
It's worked really well for the Republicans for decades. The Democrats just need to try harder.
Obama was wrong. Look at your own article, which quotes Tulsi Gabbard gushing about the need for a little more of that 'aloha spirit', and compare it with her actual behavior now that she's Director of National Intelligence in the current administration.
https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html <- a 1995 strategy document from former GOP speaker Newt Gingrich's GOPAC.
Democrats were nice and polite, always letting themselves be guilted into treating Republicans nicely. It was loosing strategy.
voters have essentially zero influence over policy and overwhelmingly vote on "vibes". also most people don't care about policy at any level of detail until it directly affects them. is this good? no. true nonetheless. much of why i'm not much of a fan of democracy and i think it's a sham.
i don't think contributing to increased polarization, especially at the level of your neighbors, is something to be proud of.
The Repub model is being replicated globally too. It just works.
The "vibes" that attract conservative voters are fucking disgusting.
the dems gave up fighting against it, but its still a republican idea to wreck the manufacturing base and put the publicans into unemployment
Do you think it will finally click after 2 more cycles, that's 8 years or so?
You will be your current age + 8, maybe you can then start saying "yeah man both sides suck, it is as if there is something above it that controls them both and we are made to support them as if we're supporting our favorite soccer team"?
In regards to my ability to "realize" I suppose I'll keep myself to the facts. At present, I don't see a set of functional equivalency in each party's extravagances.
It is that they create problems, they pitch suboptimal solutions that will create the next crisis, and then they frame the crisis in a way that appeals to your emotions.
So no, it is not a tiresome both sides argument. It is that you are being led by people that don't care about you, that don't have your best interests in mind; they have their own agenda and you're just being swayed left and right as the zeitgeist allows.
And you're left cheering for your team because you think your team is better. But hey, the other team really bothched something up recently, so yay your team. And then we will get your team in power, they'll do some things you like while creating other problems and then pendulum will swing the other way, some will cheer for the other team and then swing back. And then before you know it, oops you're 64 years old now.
You are definitely right that the parties/political system does not make decisions in my favor (or really make decisions at all). Beyond just the crises, it's pretty clear that the "vested interests" in our economy have substantial sway in the outcomes regardless of how much of the discourse they try to avoid.
to be clear, I'm not in favor of the expansion of the executive power through executive orders under Obama, nor am I in favor of Trump using it. I think the democrats were short sighted in allowing the precedent and not expecting it to backfire. IMO, democracy is strongest when the motivation is to close loopholes as an exercise in disarmament, rather than the pyrrhic victories of escalation.
All that said, the recent escalations are alarming, and I hope that when I'm 64, the pendulum is still attached to swing. I understand the realpolitik of the situation, but I don't agree that I need to adopt such a fatalistic view of the whole situation that I won't care that people are making mistakes at all.
For years, Democrats were generally aligned with labor, and broadly opposed to trade agreements -- remember that Hillary Clinton campaigned on rejecting the TPP [1], and it was unusual that Trump agreed with her, taking the issue away. Now, suddenly, the left is on the other side of the issue, because the current executive wants to restrict trade. It's nothing but realpolitik.
Also, not that long ago, it was the left that was advocating tariffs. For example, Obama in 2009 [2]. Admittedly nothing as sweeping or rushed as what is going on now, but still far from the party of free trade.
[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-trade...
It makes complete sense for the left to oppose this. And it is completely consistent with position of "i want these smart selective predictable tariffs". It would not be consistent with what is happening now
You might want to tell labor. I just listened to an hour-long podcast with the Teamsters leader, where he revealed that over half of their members supported Trump in the most recent election:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-unions-went-for-tr...
That being said, actual labor as in worked did not went for Republicans all that hard. It appears that way only if you restrict labor meaning to males of specific demographics.
It is not labor thing. It is gender resentment over not being on top of hierarchy thing.
The most virtuous of us do not vote their own interest first, but rather the interest of justice and morality. The assumption that people should or will vote their own interest first & always is what the kids these days seem to call "mid" and "basic".
The infantilizing thing is constantly project positive motivations on people who do the opposite.
They were literally looking forward to cause harm, they just thought it will harm only liberals, trans, stupid feminists and well ... anyone not them.
Democrats still broadly align themselves with labor (the many people getting the stuff done)
Republicans still broadly align themselves with rich CEOs (the few people profiting off the backs of the labor).
It has been this way for at least 40 years.
Labor vs. Trade ≠ Tariffs vs. Free Trade — Democrats’ historic opposition to trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP was about protecting workers from job outsourcing and race-to-the-bottom standards. That’s not the same thing as imposing blanket tariffs as a blunt weapon in foreign policy. Conflating the two is lazy at best, dishonest at worst.
Obama’s 2009 tire tariffs were a narrow safeguard against China dumping, consistent with WTO rules, and widely viewed as a targeted response to an actual violation. That’s worlds apart from sweeping, across-the-board tariffs used as political theater.
And if it’s all “realpolitik” like you say, then your whole point collapses: by your logic, both parties shift based on circumstance — so stop pretending there’s some tidy ideological flip when the reality is far messier.
OK, so we agree on the facts -- historically, the Democrats were aligned with labor, and opposed to trade. They had absolutely no qualms about opposing trade when they felt it was in their political interests to do so.
> Obama’s 2009 tire tariffs were a narrow safeguard against China dumping
I mean...you can attempt to diminish it in scale if you like, but the fact is that the left has historically been pro-labor and anti-trade, and the right has been pro-trade and anti-labor. Now the right controls the government, and they're clearly anti-trade.
They've flipped.
Clinton was VOCIFEROUSLY pro-TPP for quite a while, and "changed" her stance as the race with Trump tightened. I believe she was a bald-faced liar.
The Clintons were ur-Third Way democrats. Financialization of the economy and globalization were the stock-in-trade (puns intended) of 1990s-2010s Democrats (at the Federal level) until Bernie came along.
Biden, who actually walked a picket line, is probably among the most proworker presidents in American history (certainly in my lifetime) and that's sad because the bar is so low. Trump, and his litany of judges, are all very much anti-worker and pro big business. He is trying to dismantle the NLRB at their behest!
As far as Biden goes, you do realize that he didn't roll back the tariffs that Trump 1 put on China, right?
> Biden, who actually walked a picket line, is probably among the most proworker presidents in American history (certainly in my lifetime) and that's sad because the bar is so low.
I said, at the very top, that the Democrats were historically aligned with labor. They had no qualms about enacting trade barriers or opposing trade agreements in order to appease that constituency. It is only since -- well, this year, basically -- that they have become free trade evangelists.
It's realpolitik. Democrats see a wedge issue, and they're riling up the base to exploit it, regardless of the party's own historical actions.
I'm not sure who is arguing against ever using tariffs in general. Obama's, like Trump's tariffs against China, they were at least planned and somewhat targeted for a specific purpose. The argument against Trump's tariffs this time around has always been they are capricious.
I guess I missed the part where you "countered" them. Saying "that's not true" is not an argument.
> You even gave up the point when admit Obama's tariffs were "nothing as sweeping or rushed as what is going on now".
I didn't "give up the point" -- I can admit when something is different in scale while still nothing the fundamental shift in historical stance.
Some more examples for you:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/politics/china-tariffs-biden-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/business/energy-environme...
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-steel-dumping-2014071...
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2017/0...
Maybe you realize that neither do something for the working class but the big corporations and billionaires.
The ones who try are labeled socialists.
- new regulation changing trade in a way that companies are struggling to follow
is child's play compared to
- a memo from a think-tank suggesting a particular choice of words
?
Would you agree that Third Way’s positions and suggestions should be weighted differently than official federal government stances and actions?
Tabloid trash publications like the NY Post are not honest messengers, but rather seek to amplify things like this using synecdoche to suggest that they're representative of the median Democrat. If the poster above wanted to showcase the underlying ideas, they could have just linked to the Third way website and paraphrased their argument directly, but instead they decided to share the gutter press version. I discount tabloid newspapers the same way I discount left-leaning outlets like Democracy Now! or Truthout - they might be right some of the time but the general level of bias outweighs their utility as providers of factual information, which is readily available from less biased sources.
These are not the only two options. Considering the source is always relevant and worthy of comment.
you want to pay more in taxes for everything because you dont like the high standards democrats have for themselves?
some democrats also want to raise taxes? why not support them if you eant to raise taxes?
It does seem like these tariffs haven't really been thought through though, so I wouldn't be surprised if "hacks" existed.
And also, letting new batshit insane things slide is just complying in advance. If we're ever going to get back to a sane society (a big "if"), we can't accept the insanity until then, or it'll stick.
No, it is not insane. This creates perfect "everyone violates the law, we can selectively enforce it" scenario. That's how 10% Intel-like condition can be created for other companies.
("History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," attributed to Twain)
Plaintiffs plainly lack standing when they fail to provide evidence that the statutory provision has ever been enforced against them or regularly enforced against others.
So if you think the law is bullshit the judge can just say you probably won't be prosecuted so you have no imminent fear of prosecution and you can't challenge it.
So if a single prosecution (including your own) under the relevant section occurred at any time in the decade prior, that's likely enough to argue standing to challenge that section, provided the other tests of standing are met.
On Oct. 1, 2020, federal agents raided the home of an Adams County man.
They threw flash grenades, handcuffed the homeowner, used a Taser on his dog, confiscated hard drives — and seized $5 million of switchblade knives from locked cabinets in the man’s spacious garage, according to court documents.
Two and a half years later, government representatives returned the switchblades with the message that they did not intend to pursue the matter further.
Lumsden on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit against the United States, alleging the government ruined his online switchblade business by taking his inventory, damaged his property and reputation, injured his dog, and caused him pain, suffering and severe emotional distress.
So as long as they only taser your dogs, flashbang your family home, take millions in inventory it's all good as long as there wasn't a successful prosecution and thus there is no standing?
They don't need to actually toss people in prison to get compliance. Tasing their dogs and destroying their business is enough, using an unchallengeable law.
This stuff is not so shocking any more!!!
There is no logic to it, it’s make believe for the narrative machine.
You're allowed to say "fucking".
It's been ten years.
"Tarrifs" are paid by the importer.
These are being charged to the exporter
These are not tarries. But novel arbitrary taxes
Batshit crazy does not come close
Ultimately, that's always the case.
But just like VAT or sales taxes are usually paid by the seller on behalf of the buyer, so could customs duties be levied by the exporter.
I would not limit it to "this administration". Bureacracy tends to fuck thing up royally regardless of which imbecile they're currently serving.
bureaucracy tends to make processes that are complicated but still straightforward to complete, even if they take decades for skmethjng that shiuld only be a couple minutes
Is certificate of analysis anything more than a pdf made with word with your signature on it?
> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product. This is a prime example of unnecessary complexity in international trade.
Also why would they go through all that trouble? Easier to not sell there anymore.
I don't agree with it, but isn't that ostensibly the end goal? That is, to force/encourage the manufacturing of goods in the US, rather than importing them. Of course, the metal itself still needs to enter the US either way.
If this was a serious economic policy, it would have started small—perhaps a 5% tariff, to take effect in six months. Then, promise to ramp it up (say an additional 5% every year).
E.g. if he wanted to tariff electronic devices, why not tariff them directly, instead of those weird mental gymnastics?
There are two mutually exclusive stated goals. One is, as you said, onshoring tech manufacturing to the USA [1]. The other stated goal is to eliminate income tax and replace it with income from tariffs [2][3]. To play these out on their own terms: if the first goal succeeds, then import volume would drop, and total tariff income would be too low to replace income taxes. If the first goal fails, then tariff income would be high enough to replace income taxes. IDK I haven't done the napkin math and I suspect neither have they.
[1]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-says-his-tariffs-...
[2]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/trump-proposes-abolishment...
[3]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6371514396112
Going with Fox Business links to avoid accusations of bias.
This seems like it could also lead to absurd situations. If a device contained both, would customs pretend it was simultaneously 100% made out of copper and 100% made out of steel and apply both tariffs?
Yes, because it benefits the “here’s how much extra revenue our copper tariffs generate in 2025” sound bites for the Administration to tout (even if they are fabricated numbers based on nonsensical assumptions.)
Furthermore as I know customs, the moment you will start making stuff up in a too brazen way, they will just use Google, search some average price of products and use that instead what you are declaring.
Sometimes it looks like they are getting a cut from amount of tariff they successfully scalp from you.
Losing a significant proportion of their revenue can easily bring down plenty of businesses.
Olimex sells kits, kits made by others.
They don't know how much copper is in the MPS430F5438 because Texas Instruments made the MPS430F5438.
It's also fair for a company to say 'f- that, even just doing that eats away at our bottom line, we'll concentrate on more profitable markets' (which is the intention I guess. Go and build it in USA,USA,USA).
The problem isn't creating a reasonable estimate, anyone can do that. Most cheap consumer PCBs are going to be 2-layer FR4 with 1oz/sq. ft. of copper, minus some etched away, with negligible copper in parts like chips. That indeed should get you fairly close.
But there are also 32-layer PCBs, and even PCBs with a solid copper core. And your PCB could be filled with copper inductors! Similarly, it could also be a solid aluminum-core PCB. If I were a malicious customs officer, I would insist that the only valid upper bound is a 100% copper PCB, which is also 100% aluminum, and 100% whatever else. Don't want to pay that? No problem, just provide a certified lab analysis report!
Simple things rapidly get complicated when the goal is to frustrate the process as much as possible. You don't live in a modern economy focused on global trade anymore, you are now living in a Kafka book.
There's your problem. It enables selective enforcement, because the authorities can decide at any time "if you're off by 0.1% we'll consider you in violation".
Your only option now is to use FedEx or UPS which cost a significant amount more.
[1] https://www.post.ch/en/about-us/media/press-releases/2025/us...
What do you use to ship money overseas then?
[1] https://www.nrk.no/urix/posten-stopper-sendinger-til-usa-1.1...
(For government agents: The above is a "joke", you surely have been introduced to this concept before they gave you the government brain chip, if not, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke)
I ordered a lock and some keys valued at about $400, and paid an extra $400 in duties because of this. It's insane.
There is a lot more direct consumer ordering from international vendors now than there was 20 years ago of course, for obvious reasons.
Note Aug 29th is also the end of the "de minimus" rules for import duties, where a shipment worth less than $800 was exempt from import taxes and duties. Some tariffs and other import taxes have always existed, but that's why you rarely saw them when ordering consumer goods internationally to the USA, if it was worth less than $800 they were skipped. That's going away, you'll be paying import taxes on every international shipment you order directly as a consumer, even if it's a $25 t-shirt -- exactly how you pay these, at what point they are calculated by who (even how to calculate them?), and who invoices you how and when as a consumer -- well that's what nobody including international shippers have figured out yet, which is what the OP is saying means they can't really ship internationally to consumers in the USA for the time being. it's gonna be a clusterfuck.
Turns out maybe there's a reason there aren't usually major changes to whole structure of import taxes made with only months notice, and tweaks and changes to them still being made only weeks/days before implementation, with no real implementation guidance provided?
The “only” difference now is that the $800 limit no longer applies, so every shipment must include this information.
Which basically means end of Temu, Alibaba express, majority of Etsy sellers, etc.
I believe there are other models now (e.g. where shipping companies bulk-import and customs clear shipments and then hand them off to USPS inside the US as domestic shipments), but the "direct parcel" USPS route going away for all formerly de-minimis-exempt parcels is still going to have a huge impact, without even considering import tariffs directly.
But the congress passed the bill to permanently repeals the legal basis for the de minimis exemption so no more TACOs. And I love TACOs…
Historically I buy a lot of high-end goods from the US on an annual basis, but after this incident I'll be actively avoiding doing so and the surprises that entails, until things get sane again.
In the latter two cases, it’s up to the domestic supply chain to decide how and and how much of those costs get passed on to consumers.
Yes I technically paid the tariff.... Except really China lost money, the US gained money, and I paid the same because that's the price difference required for me to buy Chinese.
Will it always work out like this? Idk. But this is what they are referring to when saying the exporter will pay it in the end.
Unfortunately the US bolts will not be plentiful enough. They'll also have to import steel to meet new demand, increasing their price. So ultimately you'll still buy the Chinese product but it will now cost double the price -- $1.00 after tarrifs. Hence the price of everything that has a bolt will increase.
There's a video on YouTube now of a manufacturer that tried to onshore his grill scrubber product. Couldn't find the components, no matter how he tried, and ended up subsisting with Indian parts, probably laundered from China, with a complementary markup of course.
The way Americans talk about these tariffs show you don't know what it takes to build a strong manufacturing economy. For decades, China has suppressed their workers' wages, diluting their wealth to transfer it to Western buyers as cheap good. They've invested in scale, building factories worth hundreds of billions, which often don't make profits for years on end.
In America, every CEO has to show a stock bump by the end of the quarter of get tossed.
If you take the logic of tariffs to their natural conclusion, why not farm your own corn, raise your own beef, pick your cotton, etc. Specialization is the reason why we can enjoy abundance because things get made where it's cheapest and then get shipped to you. The average American waiting tables at a restaurant makes more than the Chinese working the manufacturing jobs you're trying to get back, and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them?
In summary, America doesn't know what it's doing. Those of us who come from countries who put excessive tariffs on everything, know that it never leads to local production, but serves as just another government revenue channel. But what do I know?
If only this specialization was focused on making good products instead of making 3% more money.
Why would you want that?
And any time they spend growing their own food is time they don't spend on some other economic activity they're obviously better at.
And the time? We do this in our spare time outside of full time jobs. But you're right, it does cut into our Netflix, tv, YouTube, Facebook time.
Does the US make the machines that make the bolts any more?
And what if you needed metric bolts?
"I Tried To Make Something In America (The Smarter Scrubber Experiment)" https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY talks about the trouble he had finding US made bolts and I seem to remember he found out he'd been scammed and was sold Chinese bolts anyway? (Edit: Skip to around 17m35s)
I feel the same way about the US which is why I won’t spend money on media or software, and encourage others to follow a similar path.
As you insinuate, it’s just logical because the US has had enough money, way beyond my country you see.
Nope. Bolt price goes up. I can't afford it, and don't buy anyone's bolt. Both the American dude I'd buy it from and the Chinese dude that makes it lose money.
1: You don't add up and pay the tax board every month right? In fact this is the central theme to successfully collecting taxes, never collect them directly from the public if possable. That is a hard thankless task. It is much easier to steal them from the much more easily policed companies, before the public sees the money in the form of income tax or when they buy in the form of a sales tax. As a specific example remember the "use" tax, you were supposed to do just that, add up and pay the sales tax for things you bought out of your sales tax jurisdiction, this proved impossible to collect so with the massive increase in sales out of the tax jurisdiction(cough, amazon, cough) the courts ordered that each company had to now keep track of and pay the sales tax for every infernal piddling little sales tax area, a huge hassle for them, but that's not the states problem and it is much easier to enforce than having each person do it.
So yes, I will pay for my country's tariffs and you will pay for yours.
It's a bad scenario where things are more expensive and both manufacturers and customers get harmed. The only ones winning are, as always, intermediaries.
I'll repeat this for those in the back:
TARIFFS ARE PAID BY THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY DOING THE TARIFFS.
TARRIFFS ARE NOT PAID BY OTHER COUNTRIES.
This is excessive and illegal taxation without representation. Congratulations, party of low taxes, you now have socialist-like taxes without any of the socialist benefits.
Here's what gets me...
EVEN IF the exporter paid the tariff, do people really think they'd just eat that cost? Of course not. They'd raise the price on the importer who would then raise the price for the end consumer. In the end, it's the consumer who pays the tariff, whether it's nominally paid by the exporter or importer.
The Trump tariffs are the biggest tax increase in the lower and middle classes ever.
Do I understand this correctly that if I have a 1kg product that costs $1000... the US is trying to charge me a $1000 tariff on at most $10 [1] worth of metal?
[1] Copper is the most expensive of those metals at roughly $10/kg
In a country where people were ready to riot when service was slow at Chili's in the summer of '20, policy aimed at reducing restaurant employment seems risky.
Funny that this time this started from the right side of the political spectrum.
Authoritarianism is the common denominator; only the details vary.
If you think you have the best idea, the natural next move is to force everyone to follow that best idea, no room for disagreement or alternatives.
This pops up everywhere, everywhere ideology is involved in decisions.
Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hitler- they were all 'idealists.'
They were in it to improve the human (or some subset thereof) condition. And they weren't going to let anyone get in their way of making things better!
It is worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-bSAnW_E0 but it itself is a somewhat simplistic take.
You can't make an omellete without breaking a few eggs, after all. That was Lenin, supposedly.
edit: spelling of "one"
Which is why they all failed.
I bet it's related to the tendency for narcissism where you believe that you alone have all the right answers.
The "political compass" has two dimensions: left/right horizontally and authoritarian/libertarian vertically.
Unfortunately "political compass" is also for the quadrant memes: https://en.meming.world/wiki/Political_Compass (which has some good commentary on the compass and great examples).
And there's the Nolan Chart: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart which is even more confusing. The word "liberal" is not used in New Zealand much, although perhaps the US meaning is taking hold. Also centrist here is unclear so the Nolan Chart makes no sense to me.
You can follow citations from these citations to find primary search that shows quite a bit of support for it in academic political science.
I’d go so far as to say I think anyone peddling horseshoe theory is a politically illiterate fool regardless of their supposed qualifications.
It’s funny that you want me to read the imitation though.
“ Several political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists have criticized the horseshoe theory.[3][4][5] Proponents point to a number of perceived similarities between extremes and allege that both tend to support authoritarianism or totalitarianism; political scientists do not appear to support this notion, and instances of peer-reviewed research on the subject are scarce. Existing studies and comprehensive reviews often find only limited support and only under certain conditions; they generally contradict the theory's central premises.”
I don't know what to tell you except that the term "red-brown" became popular for a good reason.
(And I'm far left myself, by the way.)
It’s not an argument at all IMO, but good for you.
> I'm far left myself, by the way
So you would, logically, describe yourself as a fascist then?
Good to remember that pretty much all leftist governments had to pivot toward authoritarianism 'for the greater good'.
AfD is objectively far more popular in the former east Germany. Look at a map of votes, it’s clear as day. The borders are exact. They are not a left wing party, not at all. They are a far right party.
It makes sense that the the economically struggling former communist areas would be both more drawn to extreme parties and have a distaste for the left.
That: "have a distaste for the left" is extremely wrong, because before the AfD, the far-left parties which traced their history back to the SED (the socialist party of the GDR (East Germany)) were very popular there, much more so than in West Germany.
They are a populist semi big tent party as well. They are not particularly coherent but there is some overlap between some of their policies and what some in the far-left might support (Euroscepticism, the Euro and such)
No, hence horseshoe theory.
You are the one arguing for 'erases' here. Given the horseshoe theory is valid, it seems completely on point for these assholes to have some far left ideas. Doesn't make them not nazis.
You keep repeating that yet on certain axis like authoritarianism, free speech etc. there is a massive overlap to the extent that there is based almost no difference in some of the policies supported by far left/right.
If you say so. Seems like a rather incoherent view though…
Fact is that there is a lot of overlap between far and far right voters in ex-socialist parts of Eastern Europe. Just compare the supporters of BSW and AFD in Germany..
If you want the most absurd example this was a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevik_Party
East Germany was economically crippled for the latter half of the 20th century under Soviet rule. It's started to recover, a bit, but it's slow going. That makes the people there more willing to listen to anyone who will lie to them about a) who's responsible, and b) how easy it is to solve their problems.
No, fascist consolidation of state and businesses has little to do with communism and "seizing the means of production".
Yeah sure they are very different except for the consolidation of state and business that every fascist and every communist state has attempted :)
The mechanisms behind both ideologies are different, and the outcomes are different too.
One of the first things the Socialist government did was violently put down a communist coup. The communists would have abolished democracy ASAP and purged the socialists if they ever took power.
Fact is that extremist movements will crack down on anyone that tries competing with them for power. Ideological affinity hardly matters.
Ofcourse it was all built on economic quicksand.
Everyone else gets to be exploited, deported, or just plain murdered.
Everything goes fine when you have enough resources.
When you don't, you suddenly always need to create this division between 'real citizens' and 'others' to maintain (1) your hold on power through votes or force, and (2) expected standard of living.
This is why promising free stuff to everyone is a bad idea, not because people shouldn't have stuff, but because once you can not, things get ugly.
2) From my understanding, the only times a country has ever claimed itself to be "fully socialist", or attempting to be so (rather than democratic socialism, like various northern European countries), the countries have actually been authoritarian dictatorships with a few superficial trappings of socialism-for-the-few.
3) The common counterargument I have seen to #2 is "but that's just a No True Scotsman fallacy!" It is not. No True Scotsman applies when there is some potential fuzziness to the definition of the term that the person committing it is exploiting to try to argue that the thing is not what is being claimed. The USSR, for instance, was no more Socialist than the DPRK is Democratic; it was so in name only, in an attempt to claim that it was a genuine step on the road toward Marxist communism, when in fact it was just an authoritarian state. The term "Socialism" does not stretch to cover "any state that declares itself to be Socialist, no matter what its actual policies are."
4) As a global—and especially Western—society, we have more abundance today than we have ever had before. We have vastly more capability to produce food, medicine, housing, and all the other necessities of life, as well as modern conveniences like internet, computers, and smartphones, and even luxuries, than we did during the periods in the 20th century when various countries were attempting to convert to communism or socialism (and being, almost universally, co-opted by dictators). Even if we grant your premise in full, that we have, as a collective, been unable to sustain socialism in the past due to a failure to actually provide for all people does not mean that such conditions are still in effect. It certainly does not mean that they will hold forever.
5) Really kinda suspect that you post this as a snide response to a post very specifically explaining what Nazism was. Though somewhat less surprising looking just a little bit into your comment history.
Hitler was an O.G. troll, taking over the Workers' Party and renaming it with the word Socialism purely to aggravate his political opponents. He hated socialists, communists, and anarchists.
Government control over transportation, newspapers, and other industries that should ideally not choose profits over quality of service. Communalized non-profit grocery stores. Sounds familiar?
Strict measures to ban or nationalize war profiteering, high interest rates, capital heavy business models allowing rent seeking. Explicit profit sharing required by large companies.
Welfare state with free healthcare and expanded pension funds.
Sometimes 'bad' people have the same 'good' ideas you have. Now sure why this is so difficult to grasp.
No idea what you mean. Public transportation? If that's socialist, then any functional, modern society is going to be socialist on your book. If you mean control over private transportation, then I guess America was socialist during WWII.
newspapers
There's nothing socialist about that.
Welfare state with free healthcare and expanded pension funds.
I really don't think that you can call a "welfare" program Socialist when it excludes Jews, non-Germans, and even anyone who was against the regime.
Sometimes 'bad' people have the same 'good' ideas you have.
You have absolutely no idea what ideas I have.
Now sure why this is so difficult to grasp.
Not sure why you choose to be rude.
I friggin love that podcast, and keep recommending it to friends. The only problem I have with it is that I like to listen to it while driving, but I can't stop to take notes every five minutes.
I had no idea who Byung-Chul_Han was before listening to this podcast- he has a lot of interesting things to say about the current state of our capitalist society. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung-Chul_Han )
As for communism -- if you think the Dems are communists I recommend you research what communism really means.
Disclaimer: I'm non-partisan and abhor partisan politics, but I do think the Constitution is a worthy document to try to adhere to as best possible.
I thought that was kind of a definition, or at least broad explanation, of fascism.
Today's pseudo-fascism in the form of Trumpism is something else. More of a reaction to a) climate crisis and the potential/growing crisis in the energy sector and b) and identity politics/culture-wars stuff.
Makes perfect sense to make ordinary Americans pay tariff/taxes on imports in return. Sucks to be them.
Not just manufacturers but retailers/distributors too.
Want to be a small time importer/retailer and do international sales online? Good luck!
This is something this manufacturer should already be doing, otherwise it’s unclear how they’re complying with RoHS or REACH.
> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product.
The main difference is that with self-certification they will accept reports from your own in-house laboratory, rather than demanding reports from an independent pre-vetted testing lab.
Same with paperwork: you can make your own rather than having it made by an independent auditor - but you better still be able to back it up!
And
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/...
And you use the ACE system to set everything up and report origins of melting, etc and it computes the fees for you:
> Does CBP require an aluminum certificate of analysis to be filed at the time of entry? > > At this time, CBP does not require an aluminum certificate of analysis to be filed at the time of entry. CBP, however, >>> can <<< request the importer to provide an aluminum certificate of analysis if CBP needs one to ensure compliance with the entry requirements pertinent to the item being imported.
In other words: they usually trust people to file their paperwork correctly, but reserve the right to demand lab reports when they suspected foul play. Filing lab paperwork in advance is not needed, however.
As mentioned in Olimex's blog post: US customs is now starting to ask everyone for a Certificate of Analysis. Paperwork isn't enough anymore, even when it is an obviously harmless product which has been imported many times in the past without any issues. If you can't hand over a lab report, it's not getting in.
protectionists tariffs are an interesting gun with which to shoot one’s own foot off. Good for China though. They get to take over as the central trading entity, and they didn’t have to do anything! We shot our own foot off.
Both stable and genius
Sometimes it doesn't make any difference because it's the same action.
How can you get more stable than that?
Dimensions: 85 mm x 56 mm
Area: 4760 mm^2 or 7.38 in^2
Copper: 4 x 1oz layers
Copper Weight: 0.205 oz = 0.013lb
Copper price: 0.013 * $4.50/lb = $0.0585
And that doesn't include the copper removed by etching. So if they paid a 6c tariff on each raspberry pi board, they'd be overpaying.
Can they generate a certificate claiming each board contains no more than this amount of copper, overpay the tariff by a few pennies, and carry on?
Governments ask for something like a metal spectrometer analysis of components. They might even say each batch needs to be analyzed and we trust analysis from spectrometers manufactured and/or operated in US. Each condition raising the price for certificate/analysis even more.
Or directly from the post
> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product.
In later comments on their blog they admitted they didn't even file the paperwork and left it up to the customer, who obviously wouldn't know how, causing the part to get stuck in customs.
It's a frustrating situation for them but there's no way CBP is making people break out lab equipment to import a PCB.
Now prove that your math is correct. Can you hand over paperwork proving that it is indeed a 4-layer PCB and not a 32-layer one? Can you prove the 1oz copper isn't secretly 2oz? Can you prove it isn't a copper-core PCB? For all we know that PCB is a 1.6mm-thick solid chunk of copper!
And what about all the parts on it? Do the manufacturers of all the components on top of that PCB provide an exact per-element writeup? How many grams of copper are in that power inductor, or the ethernet jack's magnetics?
We're still not entirely convinced your paperwork checks out. Could you please have a testing lab run it through a mass spectrometer, just to remove any doubt?
Yes, we know it's a $1.50 board. No, we don't care. Yes, you really have to do it again for the next one-off shipment - you didn't go through the proper year-long type approval process, after all.
I suspect this is more about politics than it is about international trade. If you've ever done imports you know that there's a substantial amount of paperwork and compliance, demanding that products state their composition doesn't seem extraordinary at all. Maybe OP should try consulting what regulations food exporters must follow.
Sure, paying on the order of the goods value in shipping isn't cheap, but that's niche imports for you. Now, paying 5x? That's no longer reasonably.
Is this a situation where if you abide by the letter of the law without tech it doesn’t work, where if you use software and/or route through nations that already have no tariff deals with US you get your items through?
I just bought (last week) an EEG kit from Europe to US for personal sleep studies. It has similar metals that you indicate. There was no issue in my shipper getting it through. There was no tariff added. There was no certificate of analysis.
> Mouser and Digikey have the same issues, but have professional import customs brokers and do these import procedures and handle all these charges by themselves. The average small US customer have no clue how to do import, they wait someone to deliver their parcel to their door. Which now do not happens, and after several weeks of this parcel hanging at US customs they ask the seller “where is my parcel? I ordered this way many times and every time the parcel arrived to my door” meantime they have to pay import taxes, storage fees etc etc and they simple refuse the parcel and return it back. This is why DHL and UPS refuse to take parcels to USA now until they figure out how to calculate these import tariffs correctly so they can be pre-paid in advance i.e. the US customer knows what he have to pay $$$ tariffs in advance and all these returns stop.
I seriously wonder if Digikey lost money on that order, shipping alone must have cost 20-30€, and on top come all the antistatic bags, handling costs, payment costs.
Digi-key never offerred free shipping for US customers and now we will have to pay these high tariffs too.
Combine that with a stupidly efficient order picking process, and I wouldn't be surprised if they basically break even on small orders.
You've got to remember that those small one-off orders are almost always for industrial prototyping. You don't need to make a lot of money selling 5 units for a hand-assembled prototype when you know you will be selling them 500 units for the initial automated run, or even 50.000 units for the final production run.
Additionally, there's a lot of value in being a one-stop-shop: they might not make a lot of money on small-quantity low-volume items, but if an engineer can purchase their entire BOM from you at once, she is unlikely to go looking for a competitor to save a few bucks on the higher-margin items.
Or...they have a warehouse in Germany?
all these single-piece mini packages
Automated pick-and-package.
Boats. They're still dealing with tariffs, but it's a lot easier to declare an entire container than individual airmail packets.
But having a US presence that can then receive the containers and ship domestically, is kindof reserved for the big boys.
It will be interesting to see if they also apply more customs scrutiny to checked luggage for air travel when returning to the United States. Right now they are not. But, if you go to places like Costa Rica, which has had high tariffs on many imports for years, they make you scan all of your luggage when you enter the country and will stop and scrutinize what you are bringing in. CR will also periodically have raids on retailers who obtained goods that circumvented customers via things like clandestine border crossings.
There will be some secondary challenges with enforcement of this as some decide to roll the dice, import illegally and hope to not get caught. If there is enough of a price difference between buying something with a high tariff in the US vs locally I can also see some people travelling to Mexico or Canada to buy some higher dollar smaller items if the cost savings offsets the trip.
It’s really frustrating if you need to ship stuff around as an individual.
The problem now is that nobody - including retailers and shipping companies - really knows how returns will be handled if the drives need servicing under warranty. The transport companies here are saying everything has to be declared down to the molecular level, and no matter what it is - even a return - tariffs and broker fees still have to be paid.
So it looks like I’ll have to halt importing from the US anything that comes with a warranty. The funny thing is, with all the crazy taxation the EU already has, US tariffs make importing from the EU actually cheaper once you factor in potential returns.
Granted, I live in a tiny country, and for the US economy this is probably just a drop in the bucket. But I can’t help wondering how much unforeseen collateral damage this will cause - it has to add up.
If companies didn't leave the userbase of the EU over their (arguably) restrictive fines and regulations, no way they'll let some tarriffs interrupt their business opportunities.
Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45016517 - Aug 2025 (351 comments)
Australia Post halts transit shipping to US as 'chaotic' tariff deadline looms - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44970269 - Aug 2025 (173 comments)
Tariffs.flexport.com
It’s free even for non Flexport customers.
Just as the real effect of a vaccine ban will be to damage US health, and the real effect of dismantling government funded R&D will be to damage US education and competitiveness.
I have no doubt some people believe patriotism is involved, and some large companies will get exemptions.
But I also have no doubt these decisions aren't being made for the long-term benefit of the US as a whole. Or even most of it. Or even those parts of it which are currently exempt.
This is Brexit++, sponsored by the same people, with similar - but much worse - lasting effects.
American own Cultural Revolution.
Then why are they being made? That is the real question that in my opinion is not being discussed enough. A lot of reacting to what's happening in the US, but not enough pondering about what the real goals are here.
I have my own views about this, which I used to think were somewhat conspiratorial and hyperbolic, but no more.
The mega-wealthy individuals will not suffer from any economic downturn, so it doesn't matter if their policies harm the economy.
I'm pretty sure that if the curtains are pulled to the side, the people who are behind these policies are not seeking wealth and power. They are instead religious zealots seeking transformation.
I think it does, those are all efforts to destroy trust in qualified experts. It's impossible for everyone to understand everything, so we have to trust experts. But the experts correctly point out that Republican policies are actually harmful to their own voters. So, Republican media bought into a ton of conspiracy theories, which are centered around exploiting difficult-to-understand systems and promoting "do your own research" type conspiratorial thinking. Once your voters no longer trust the experts, you can sell them anything you want, namely policies that move wealth from the poor to the wealthy.
https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...
>At this time, CBP does not require an aluminum certificate of analysis to be filed at the time of entry.
This does not read as a demand.
"Suspensions including from Australia and Europe come after Donald Trump removed a rule exempting parcels worth less than US$800 from his tariffs."
(For some reason this isn't showing the full article to me in Firefox with uBlock Origin. There's more info here that works with that setup - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/25/postal-serv...).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_comp...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries
There must be some other reason Temu is able to sell goods at lower prices, especially now that China is not a particularly low-wage country.
(FWIW I assume this was a language barrier issue leading to a misunderstanding, perhaps with a customer service rep that didn't review my past messages. I don't think DeepComputing intended to trick me.)
In theory, importers have been required to provide a Certificate of Analysis (COA) since around 2003. This comes from federal TSCA regulations as well as California’s RoHS requirements (bill SB 20).
But in practice, nobody really followed those rules because they could claim the “de minimis” import exemption.
The problem now is that Trump issued Executive Order 14324, “Suspending Duty-Free De Minimis Treatment for All Countries.” This means that shipments valued at $800 or less from any country are no longer eligible for de minimis treatment. So in order to properly calculate taxes you need CoA.
Just a few months ago, the European Commission put on new, massive tariffs on Asian steel manufacturers.
So I guess I invite all hackers here to freak out, scream about "Bat shit insane fascist!", tear their own hair, etc. Especially since an eight of the EU budget comes from tariffs.
Or quietly ignore the facts and wait to jump onto the next outrage bandwagon.
Most border towns have shops that will receive and hold orders for pickup for a small fee.
I wonder if this will reverse where Americans send to their Canadian friend to pickup.
Canadian retail has been pretty dumb/expensive. Much Cheaper to buy from US for auto parts than buy local, even though virtually none is made in USA. I wonder if tariffs will eliminate that price advantage.
I got bit by this one - ordered a few days ago, thinking there might not be much time left - guess I was more right than I realized. (they're offering refunds but I'll probably let them keep the money - not like it's their fault)
Pay me 20$ i will tell you the upper limit and then bobs your uncle, you can change your customers the added cost.
Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States (Japan Post)
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45020661
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44970269
There's an announcement today on the PiHut WWW site, for example.
* https://thepihut.com/pages/delivery
Just a random Bing search turns up loads of these from the past week.
* https://crooked-dice.co.uk/blogs/news/temporary-suspension-o...
* https://www.elgrecominiatures.co.uk/pages/temp-suspension-us...
* https://coscraft.co.uk/blogs/three-nerds-in-a-shed/tariffs-o...
and so on. I suspect that dang and tomhow might have to apply the "It's in the mainstream news and we have umpteen dupes." rule soon. (-:
But drop-shipping into the U.S. has been absurdly one-sided for years. Americans have been subsidizing it through taxes and mailing rates our own government negotiated, and that basically fucked over American small businesses for decades.
It’s been dramatically cheaper to ship items from Shenzhen to Anytown, USA than to mail something across town. That killed domestic mail-order growth and flooded us with mountains of plastic Temu junk instead.
It's obvious that it should be more expensive to ship from China to the US than from the US to the US. It no longer makes sense to subsidize these rates and the entire system needs to be rethought.
So what we are left with is pure ideological pseudo fascist BS that boils down to
"real men work in factories"
For them, "success" involves feeling that a particular social arrangement has been solidified. It involves an exploitative hierarchy (which they believe is both inevitable and required) where they aren't obviously on the bottom and where "the right people" are on top.
They simply do not care how much it costs to raid people's attics looking for Anne Franco, or even the odds of finding her family, as long as The Authority is taking Firm Steps and people like Anne Franco are afraid.
We have laws on the books and they have to be enforced equally, whether you're shipping in entire containers or thousands of small direct mail packages.
De minimis had nothing to do with draining out manufacturing; that's been happening for decades. Before 1993 the rate was $10.
And who cares about the "base that built America"? US unemployment was low! The US doesn't need these terrible jobs or look to the past for opportunity. There is plenty of opportunity available by looking forward.
Flipping this around: this is a limit on the rights of American citizens to purchase things from around the world. My argument is it's best for policy to center the rights of American citizens vs trying to curtail the rights of people who do not even live here.
The irony is this comes from the conservative movement, who are purportedly neoliberal economists.. but then completely disregard a central plank of neoliberal theory.
consistency is low on the MAGA priority list
Again, I'm not a Trump voter and I think this is the clumsiest, most dangerous way to bring manufacturing back to the US, but that's my understanding of what their goal is. I'm not even going to touch the Christian nationalist side of the plan.
For example, the split between:
1. The willfully-culpable Republican party.
2. The inept/uninspiring Democratic party.
3. The lazy/clueless non-voters.
I'm not sure how to solve that problem... maybe arguing over prioritization is necessary.
________
P.S.: For something more-actionable, how about this: Many problems exist, individual humans aren't built to consider them all simultaneously and coequally, be kind to well-meaning allies that are focusing on a particular piece.
Even Liz Cheney was supporting Harris. This wasn't about "charm", it was about saving democracy. And now we are fucked...
Being a US citizen used to be a perk, not a liability.
What about the aluminized foil-sealed bottles for pills, powders, etc.?
Is there even a dog?
Stuff like flea medication and rabies vaccine comes to mind.
It’s on the whole product not just micrograms of aluminum, which could break the bank based on how much you order.
Well over a million people died from a communicable disease. Whatever issues you have with policy surrounding the pandemic, the nomenclature isn't controversial.
What are you talking about?
I seem to recall Trump doing the press conferences about covid response. Is he the deep state now?
I think if the shipper can't determine the amount of copper in their products, then neither can customs.
From TFA: "U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product. "
They WANT you to pay the full 100% in taxes.
> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product
Customs doesn't have to. They can simply decide you haven't followed the rules, and it'll be up to you to prove you haven't or face paying fines/losing a shipment/possible prosecution. And they can decide the playing field: can you be wrong by 10% on that copper estimate? 1%? 0.001%? Good luck.
