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Why I hate tariffs

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amirm

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Got an invoice from UPS today. For a product shipped from China that I can't even identify who it is from. The actual duty is $3.75. But the full invoice is for $18.75!!! :( The other two line items are "PGA Disclaim Fee" and "Disbursement Fee." Even though I have an account with UPS, they sent me this written invoice where I now have go manually pay. I hope everyone who thinks tariffs are good idea has thought through the negative impact they have created for everyone.
ed-wexler_reciprocal-tariffs-on-penguins.png

The worse part of my job up to now has been shipping packages. Now I have to add this to it.

EDIT: this is a permanently closed thread where I post relevant news and information about tariffs US is imposing/planning to impose on the rest of the world. Personally I would prefer an interactive thread where members can also post/respond. But I am not sure if it will stay manageable and not get out of hand. So leaving this closed, is the imperfect but only solution I can think of.
 
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And before this, I paid nearly $600 for an item from Canada sent to me for testing on behave of a customer who is in EU. Stupid UPS has sent me a written invoice on that too, demanding payment yet again! The shipper is willing to handle the fees but the aggravation will not be free. This country is not set up to collect duty on hundreds of millions of international packages a year.
 
If there is ever a counterpart to me and ASR, it is Will Prowse and his solar energy/battery site. Avid DIYers have been investing in solar energy and batteries like nobody's business. The new tariffs are liable to destroy that entire hobby. See Will's video on the topic:


Heaven knows how many hobbies are going to be destroyed with 145% tariff against Chinese products with zero ability for US to take over the vacuum anytime soon.

FYI, China has a counter tariff of 125%. This essentially zero outs trade between the two countries, hurting both in the process. Worse news is that China has been preparing for this for some 6 years since Trump put tariff on them. We on the other hand, have no strategy in place. Nor any other friends we could lean on to make up for what China has been sending us. If anything, we are trying our best to make enemies with every alternative to China as well by levying tariffs on them as well.
 
I am assuming that people who are in favor these crazy tariffs can imagine their wives/sisters/mothers doing this kind of work:

gettyimages-2206289599.jpg



Why have them become doctors, lawyers, nurses, home makers, etc. Let's go back to these types of jobs....
 
Scary stuff from University of Michigan survey: https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/

"Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu
Consumer sentiment fell for the fourth straight month, plunging 11% from March.
This decline was, like the last month's, pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region, and political affiliation. Sentiment has now lost more than 30% since December 2024 amid growing worries about trade war developments that have oscillated over the course of the year. Consumers report multiple warning signs that raise the risk of recession: expectations for business conditions, personal finances, incomes, inflation, and labor markets all continued to deteriorate this month. The share of consumers expecting unemployment to rise in the year ahead increased for the fifth consecutive month and is now more than double the November 2024 reading and the highest since 2009. This lack of labor market confidence lies in sharp contrast to the past several years, when robust spending was supported primarily by strong labor markets and incomes. Note that interviews for this release were conducted between March 25 and April 8, closing prior to the April 9 tariff partial reversal."

And this from Bloomberg:

If this happens, the fact that it is self-inflicted will really hurt. :(
 
We are in deep trouble when Ambassador Jamieson Greer who is the top representative in charge of trade has no answer whatsoever on why we are taxing allies such as UK and Australia with whom we have a trade surplus:

 
And it wasn't all democrats that can't figure out what is going on in that hearing. Some republicans did as well as far as tariffs for every country in the world:

 
We like to think we are the smartest cat in this trade battle, underestimating that others are good at such strategies as well:

China Halts U.S. LNG Imports, and Australia Dominates the $1.5 Billion Market Overnight!​


 
I suspect Rattner is right in what can get out of this mess (superficial deals with other/few countries):


The lost trust will cost us more in the long term than any actual loss now...
 
So that you don't think it is all left leaning sites saying these things, here is hard right Fox Business stating how strong China's leverage is: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politic...t-dump-could-cripple-american-economy-defense

"As trade tensions with China escalate, experts warn that Chinese President Xi Jinping could retaliate with moves like cutting rare earth exports or dumping U.S. treasuries — actions that could cripple U.S. defense systems, spike borrowing costs and trigger a global financial shock.

A total ban on rare earth mineral exports, for example, could render American missiles, fighter jets, and even consumer technology like smartphones inoperable. As tensions with Washington rise, Beijing could also retaliate by dumping U.S. treasuries — a threat that has already sent jitters through financial markets.

"There is not one of our jet airplanes in the United States Air Force that does not have rare earths in multiple forms, particularly in magnets," said Mark Smith, CEO of NioCorp and a 40-year veteran of the mineral mining industry. "If China stops exporting rare earths, the effect on U.S. military readiness would be immediate."

"Night vision goggles, hyper-sonic missiles, smart missiles that become dumb missiles — I mean you literally can shoot them, but they’re not going to go wherever they go with a smart missile," he added.

China holds $761 billion in U.S. debt, making it the second-largest foreign holder after Japan. A mass sell-off could drive down the value of U.S. bonds and cause yields to spike, sharply increasing borrowing costs for the federal government. It could also weaken the U.S. dollar and send shock waves through global financial markets.

Beyond treasuries, China could further devalue the yuan — a tactic it has used repeatedly — to make its exports more competitive while pricing American goods out of its domestic market.

[...]

Last week, China placed seven kinds of medium and heavy rare earths on an export control list. While the controls stop short of an outright ban, Beijing can still gum up trade by limiting the number of export licenses it issues.

China dominates 90% of the global rare earths market — a group of 17 elements essential to the defense, energy and electronics industries.

And it wouldn’t be the first time China has used its market dominance to punish an adversary. In 2010, the Chinese Communist Party halted rare earth exports to Japan during a diplomatic dispute. More recently, Beijing has restricted shipments of other critical minerals — including germanium, gallium and graphite — to the U.S. over the past two years.

U.S. companies, meanwhile, would struggle to fill the gap. It takes an average of 29 years to go from mineral discovery to production in the U.S.

In China, where environmental regulations are nearly nonexistent and the state bankrolls such projects, it can take just a few short months
.

But Nikakhtar said the U.S. has more tools in its arsenal as well.

"Are we capable of doing much more than we've done in terms of not only tariffs, export controls, capital flow restriction? Absolutely. Is the Treasury Department potentially willing to go sort of all the way through some serious sanctions that can cripple the Chinese banks? I think they are," she said."

On his last bit, we are talking about the equiv. of nuclear war between two super powers. Heaven help us if this gets that ugly.
 
You want to bring manufacturering back to US? Deal with this:


Don't raise tariff before you have the skill set to do the same work.
 
Looks like latest tariffs have been quietly lifted from computers, networking equipment, semiconductors and TVs: https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/3db9e55

Cargo Systems Messaging Service


CSMS # 64724565 - UPDATED GUIDANCE – Reciprocal Tariff Exclusion for Specified Products; April 5, 2025 Effective Date


The purpose of this message is to provide further guidance on the additional duties due on imported merchandise which were imposed by Executive Order 14257, issued April 2, 2025, and published in the Federal Register Notice, “Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices that Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits,” 90 FR 15041 (Apr. 7, 2025), as amended by Executive Order 14259, issued on April 8, 2025, “Amendment to Reciprocal Tariffs and Updated Duties as Applied to Low-Value Imports from the People’s Republic of China,” and as further amended by the Executive Order dated April 9, 2025, “Modifying Reciprocal Tariff Rates to Reflect Trading Partner Retaliation and Alignment.”

In accordance with the April 11, 2025 Presidential Memorandum “Clarification of Exceptions Under Executive Order 14257 of April 2, 2025, as amended” (the Memorandum), products properly classified in the headings and subheadings of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) listed in the Memorandum, are reproduced below. All products that are properly classified in these listed provisions will be excluded from the reciprocal tariffs imposed under Executive Order 14257, as amended, pursuant to Section 3(b)(iv) of that Order, effective for merchandise entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01AM Eastern Daylight Time on April 5, 2025:

  • 8471
  • 8473.30
  • 8486
  • 8517.13.00
  • 8517.62.00
  • 8523.51.00
  • 8524
  • 8528.52.00
  • 8541.10.00
  • 8541.21.00
  • 8541.29.00
  • 8541.30.00
  • 8541.49.10
  • 8541.49.70
  • 8541.49.80
  • 8541.49.95
  • 8541.51.00
  • 8541.59.00
  • 8541.90.00
  • 8542
For products classified in the above headings and subheadings, importers should report the secondary classification under heading 9903.01.32 to declare the exception from the reciprocal tariff provided in heading 9903.01.25, or in headings 9903.01.43 – 9903.01.62 or 9903.01.64 – 9903.01.76 on April 9, 2025, or in heading 9903.01.63 since April 9, 2025.

For products covered by the above HTSUS provisions entered for consumption or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption on or after April 5, 2025, filers should take action to correct entries as necessary to reflect the exception under heading 9903.01.32, as soon as possible within 10 days of the cargo’s release from CBP custody. Importers may request a refund by filing a post summary correction for unliquidated entries, or by filing a protest for entries that have liquidated but where the liquidation is not final because the protest period has not expired.

CBP will provide additional guidance to the trade community through CSMS messages as appropriate.

If you encounter any errors in filing an entry summary, contact your CBP client representative or the ACE Help Desk.

Questions regarding this message should be directed to the Trade Remedy inbox at [email protected].


Related CSMS: 64701128, 64680374, 64649265

Alas, I quickly looked up the above HTS codes and NONE cover audio equipment. :( I guess Tim Cook is not an audiophile! :)

Even though we didn't get relief on audio, I am partially relieved that the damage to the economy won't be as large with the above exemptions.

This is why it is important to have our voices heard. Change can happen especially when logic and reasoning is on our side.
 
Our government wants us to think that the world is screwing us because we buy more than we export. Well, that is only true of hard goods. In services, we have a surplus: https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.go...growth-in-digitally-enabled-services-exports/

"The United States Has a Services Trade Surplus
Services exports collectively represent the high-value-added activities in which the United States maintains a global comparative advantage. Although the perennial U.S. goods trade deficit overshadows the enduring surplus in U.S. services trade (figure 1), in 2023, exports of services ($1 trillion) were the highest on record[1] and the services trade surplus ($278.4 billion) was the highest since 2019.

2.png

In 2022, while U.S. real GDP grew by 1.9 percent, the U.S. digital economy real value added grew by 6.3 percent driven primarily by growth in software and telecommunication services.
[4]

As you see, the growth is in digitally delivered services. Can we be accused of screwing other countries then on services???

Prudent thing would have been to focus on our strength and keep expanding instead of wanting to go backward 60 years. Worse yet, we are putting this shining light of our trade business in danger as companies can use this lever to retaliate for our tariffs on goods. Travel is already being heavily curtailed, damaging many small American businesses.
 
The message here is consistent: we simply cannot roll back time and starting factories building low value products: https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/12/economy/toy-prices-us-china-tariffs

"145% tariffs on China are clobbering the toy industry

Toys made in China have been exempt from tariffs since President Donald Trump’s first term. That is no longer the case.

Last month, Trump raised tariff rates on China to 20%, dealing a big blow to the toy industry. But he didn’t stop there. Just a few weeks later, Trump was set to tack on an additional 34% “reciprocal” tariff. Then he tacked on another tariff, and another, and another.

Now, goods from China are being tariffed at a whopping 145% rate and that number will likely keep growing as Beijing vows to continue retaliating against new tariffs and Trump threatens to do the same.

For American families, this means relatively inexpensive toys could become luxuries. That’s because nearly 80% of all toys sold in the US are manufactured in China, according to the Toy Association, a leading industry group.

We have no choice but to increase our prices by high double digits,” said Isaac Larian, CEO of California-based MGA Entertainment, which makes Bratz and L.O.L. Surprise! Dolls, among several other toys. “The life of my business, 46 years, is on the line.”

Trump said that one of his main impetuses for enacting higher tariffs is to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. Yet Larian said China’s 125% retaliatory tariffs on US exports are going to force him to lay off American workers at his Hudson, Ohio, factory, which has around 700 employees in total. That’s because many goods manufactured there are shipped to China.

While the majority of MGA’s production remains in China, its Ohio factory produces much of its Little Tikes line of goods, including toy cars and sandboxes. The facility could manufacture more toys, but Americans “do not want to work in factories, he said.

Even if finding more workers weren’t an issue, it would still cost more for the US factory to manufacture the toys that are currently being produced in China, even with the current tariffs in place, he said. Moreover, it’s particularly challenging to source the raw materials needed to make doll hair domestically.

There is no American factory anywhere that can make hair for dolls. What am I supposed to do? Sell bald dolls?” Larian said.

[...]

Furthermore, many toy manufacturers are considered small businesses. It’s much easier for them to tap in to the existing infrastructure in China than to build factories in the US from scratch, he said.

“Our tooling, our factory base, the consistency of production — and how do you just up and leave and go to another market?” Foreman said. “There are things you aren’t able to make (in the US) physically, or produce here, and toys are one of those.”

It’s a situation many toy companies are confronting, especially now when they’d otherwise place holiday season orders. The loss of revenue means several “may not be able to stay in business,” Ahearn told CNN."

-----------
No CEO of a proper company takes action and then figures out what the consequences are. But here, our government decided to do the opposite. Take action and let folks be damned. Our own citizens no less.

No strategy. No thought. No plan. Just upend people's lives and go and brag that they are "bringing manufacturing back to America." I want world peace too but saying it, doesn't make it so.

Why not set up a fund to help these companies invest in factories here?

Why not give tuition assistant for vocational schools to develop these skills? Oh wait, we are shutting down department of education.

Where is all the tariff money going anyway? Why isn't it, as Canada has said, earmarked to help these companies already?

Why didn't they go and interview a few of these companies before taking action? How presumptuous can you be to think you know all the answers?

I said I hate tariffs, didn't I? :)
 
I guess the Friday news around exemption of phones, and semiconductors was too good to last: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-presidency-tariffs-04-13-25/index.html

Trump says semiconductor tariffs will be announced in the "near future”

From CNN’s Kit Maher

President Donald Trump said that semiconductor tariffs will “take place in the very near future,” but expressed some “flexibility” regarding tariffs on products such as iPhones and tablets.​


“The tariffs will be in place in the not-too-distant future,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.​

“Like we did with steel, like we did with automobiles, like we did with aluminum – which are now fully on – we’ll be doing that with semiconductors, with chips and numerous other things. And that’ll take place in the very near future.”​


“We want to make our chips and semiconductors and other things in our country,” he said, later adding he would announce the rate “over the next week.”​

He also said tariffs on pharmaceuticals would be announced “very fast.”​


“We’re going to have our drugs made in the United States, so that in case of war, in case of whatever, we’re not relying on China and various other countries, which is not a good idea,” Trump said.​


Asked by a reporter about tariffs on electronics, such as iPhones and tablets, Trump said:​

“That’s going to be announced very soon, and we’ll be discussing it, but we’ll also talk to companies. You know, you have to show a certain flexibility. Nobody should be so rigid.”​

The president’s remarks come after a tariff exemption for key electronics — such as iPhones and laptops — spurred optimism for US tech companies this weekend. Trump and top officials said earlier Sunday, however, that tech-specific tariffs are still coming and no one is “getting off the hook” in his trade war with China.

----
Looks like folks are just getting warmed up here. As if drugs weren't already expensive in US.

And that tariff on semiconductors? So even if you build your car, electronics, industrial equipment, etc in US, your costs go up due to tariffs you have to pay on the parts. Predictably then, even made in US audio electronics is going to become more expensive.
 
I imagine the safest job in the world right now is to be a lobbyist in Washington DC working on behalf of companies to get tariff exemption:

 
This is why I so strongly believe in posting the news and reality behind tariffs. From the latest YouGov/CBS Survey: https://www.axios.com/2025/04/13/trump-tariffs-new-polling-raise-prices

"One stunning stat: The poll also revealed a broad misunderstanding of how tariffs, work: Overall, only 32% of Americans correctly answered that the statement "[t]ariffs are taxes paid by the country exporting goods" is false."

Incredible how much power misinformation has to spread. Same situation we are dealing with in audio.

That aside, the news is getting out that these policies are not good for Americans:

"Driving the news: 75% of Americans said in a new CBS News/YouGov poll of 2,410 U.S. adults that Trump's new tariffs would increase prices in the short term.
  • In the long term, 48% said prices would be higher, compared to 22% who said there would be no impact or they were unsure and 30% who predicted prices would fall.
  • More Americans (49%) in the poll, taken April 8 to 11, said that Trump's policies were making them financially worse off than they did in March (42%)."

So whether it is short or long term, people are realizing that we are headed for higher prices: exactly what economics of tariffs predicts will happen.
 
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