Politically-motivated tea tax, what could go wrong?
what would the boston tea party equivalent for america be? dumping an entire mcdonalds worth in the sewers?
Tbh thats just one step less than how it normally works.
AYO is that what they’re doing‽
Who’s doing this‽
“No tariffs without Harris”
I’m not American, but tariffs to fix import issues is pretty stupid.
This is the capitalist dream, export all the production of the goods you use daily to third world countries, who will have shit labor practices like the US used to have when slavery was a thing (and bluntly, for quite a while afterwards), so that the boots-on-the-ground laborers that produce everything are either treated like slaves or literally are slaves, then import the raw material to be manufactured into whatever you’re selling in the US, so you can slap a “made in the USA” sticker on your shit to enhance sales and charge more. Meanwhile “made in the USA” doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that there’s no imported goods going into the manufacturing process to make that thing, just that you took raw materials (from wherever) and made this thing in the USA.
Tariffs unduly harm end consumers, pretty much everything we buy and own is, or has components that are, imported shit.
Most microchips, a large amount of the food we eat, most electronics, pretty much everything you’ll find at a dollar general, etc (the list is very very long)… all imported in whole or in part.
Hell, there was a time that it was more economical to have your raw materials, even if they’re mined/harvested/produced in the USA, shipped overseas for assembly by slave labor, then shipped back for sale to the US public, than to have it assembled inside the US. Much of that is still true. The US neither has the manufacturing capacity, nor the desire to build their own shit. The only time that’s not the economical option is for large cost (and scale, either in size or money) items, like housing or vehicles. Assembly generally happens in the country/landmass where the vehicle will be sold and used. Even a company like Toyota, a Japanese brand, will have assembly plants in the USA for cars sold in the USA, because that’s cheaper than importing hundreds of vehicles. For everything else, it’s generally cheaper to assemble it outside of the country and import the final product.
You think process are high now? Wait until the tariff wars really kick off.
No company is going to accept the costs of tariffs and be okay with that eating their profits, they’re passing that cost into consumers, because we’re the saps that are still going to buy it.
When the tariffs come down, and they will eventually, prices will drop, but not to where they were from before the tariffs. Companies will continue to post record profits, justifying not giving raises because tariffs, and wages will remain stagnant. We’ll earn less, while they rob is for more than they already do.
The worst part is that when the tariffs are lifted, we’ll thank them for lowering the prices by buying more of their shit. We’ll be grateful for the opportunity to pay even more into their profit margins.
Congratulations, you’re experiencing late stage capitalism. The system is working as intended. You are poor, you remain poor, barely able to scratch out a living, while your owners profit more and more off of your hard work, and you get to thank them for that opportunity.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
I want everyone to be angry enough to do something about this.
How do we get everyone angry.
A proper education would have done it.
Let’s be reasonable here.
How do we get everyone angry.
This is the problem — taking away my coffee makes me angry, but I’ll be too tired to do anything about it.
nor the desire to build their own shit
I would say that we’ve also largely lost the means to afford stuff built here, in large part as a consequence of our endless pursuit of cheap crap while scraping the bottom of the barrel with outsourcing. Even if you want to buy domestically-made goods, since we’ve lost so many of those good union jobs, especially in manufacturing, we no longer have the means to pay what it costs to make such a product with American workers. Especially if people intend to continue with their current consumerist trends.
I’m making $20/hour at the moment. If I want to buy American, union-made shoes, it’ll run me $400 a pair, on the lower end. I think it’s pretty reasonable to have a pair of work boots, a pair of regular shoes for wearing out and about, and a pair of dress shoes, which at that low end will run me 37.5% of my monthly gross pay. Now do the same for domestically produced clothing, and you’ve probably run up a bill of several month’s pay, just to have enough outfits to last you a single week, leaving aside coats, seasonal clothing, or formal attire. We’re either going to have to sharply curtail our purchasing and focus on buying a smaller amount of goods meant to last as long as possibly, or the sadly more likely scenario, we’ll see the establishment of domestic sweatshops to fuel the consumerist impulses of what remains of the middle class and up. Whether we’ll just go even more insane in our treatment of the poor here, or use prison labor and undocumented migrants “pending” deportation in these sweatshops remains to be seen, but Americans have demonstrated we shortsightedly value our ability to accumulate cheap trash over anything else.
I’d love to be proven wrong, and see a growth of strong unions and domestic production leading to a resurgence in American craftsmanship again, but the current environment is less than amenable to this outcome, to put it mildly.
I don’t mean to imply the US should go back to manufacturing their own goods like they had to before global trade was economical.
I hope the point I’m making is that the people like Trump, mostly aggressive capitalists, are significantly in favor of these trends, and adding tariffs to imported goods will harm the businesses that the tariff is intended to protect.
Sales will drop because most goods are simply more price elastic than that. Cost goes up, sales drop, and overall you lose profits. When costs go up, alternative products are supposed to take up the business you lost by raising prices.
Though, to be fair, that price elasticity model is broken. Most product types have been agglutinated into a couple of large companies in an oligopoly, so all brands of that kind of product raise prices to match all the other brands. With no other competition in the market, consumers have the “choice” of paying more for the same thing, or not buying it.
In any case, the entire economy has been so thoroughly fucked by corporations that is just a money printing machine for the ultra rich to get richer.
I’ve depressed myself now. I’m gonna go.
I didn’t think you were, I was more saying that the loss of many of those jobs that had been outsourced in the pursuit of cheap stuff means that, even if Trump’s proposed tariffs were effective at bringing those jobs back, it might not matter because they would still cost more than most residents of the US would be able to afford. At least, with current working conditions, many of these goods would simply cost more than people would be willing to pay, as we’ve been collectively conditioned to want as much stuff as possible, as cheap as possible. Domestic production of so many goods would require a drastic shift in consumer habits to even have a chance at being viable in the long term, but they absolutely couldn’t do the sort of volume that places like China has and be able to sell at a profit, barring the implementation of Chinese-style working conditions.
Who are we kidding? Trump’s going to enforce it selectively to nefarious ends and enrich himself off exemptions that he’s hand picked to be subservient. Free market my ass.
100% this. I see tariffs on foreign cars coming quick.
Most competent governments think like this goose because their believe in rules based order and systems. Trump doesn’t ascribe to that view and I think he will make a sweeping change and will personally govern exceptions until it suits himself and his base. Hopefully that mangment consumes his time enough to make him less effective.
It sure would help if Americans weren’t generally ignorant about uh… tons of stuff and especially anything that involves other countries. All sorts of fruits and vegetables are imported - green beans, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, berries, bananas, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant. And then at the same time, the Trump bros want to crack down on groups of people who make up a large portion of the domestic agricultural workforce? It’s difficult to see some conservative policies as intended to do anything other than just fuck people over and cause chaos.
They are going to blame the deep state or some marginalized group other than the one they just deported
It’s those darn liberal environmental and labor regulations
Yep. If you’re rich enough to can profit off the economy tanking
There is also seasonal trade to US even when it grows in US.
New FDA head will just change the food pyramid to Coca Cola is a vegetable.
Right, if all you eat is meat, wheat, corn syrup and potatoes, no problem!
Well, the US turning into a banana republic will at least solve the problem for bananas.
No more avocado toast
Yay! I can finally afford a hous-… and Blackrock just bought it out from underneath me…
Coffee :(
Honestly though the coffee industry is really awful and I should probably stop drinking it
Just about all of the food industry is abhorrent
Drink your brown go-water, slave. You need to output at least 10% more than the last quarter, every quarter.
I work at a small, premium pet food manufacturer. People already complain about our prices. While most of our ingredients are sourced domestically, specialty meats are not. Lamb, duck, venison, goose, etc. going up will dramatically raise our prices.
Many of our products are chicken, pork, or beef-based, and these ingredients are sourced domestically. The fun twist is the rise in popularity of breeds and designer mixes that are predisposed to ingredient sensitivities or allergies. Many of these breeders advise against chicken or beef in these dogs’ foods.
You’d think people spending 3-9 thousand dollars on puppies would be in a position to afford special diets, but my experience says otherwise. It’s about to get a lot worse.
We’re lucky, in that we’re one of the few brands who utilizes mostly domestically sourced ingredients. I would expect pet food to jump generally, which doesn’t bode well for the increased pressure shelters and rescues are already facing.
A LOT of food sold in the US are imported.
It would be interesting to see the first bipartisan riot.
The first bipartisan riot in the US was kinda the whiskey rebellion.
They can’t get out of bed for it without their coffee.
Beans?
The things at the bottom of some paws?
On slave plantations for the most part
Foreign slave plantations.
… Not that slave plantations anywhere makes it better, but the fact that it’s foreign will mean that not only is the labor mainly performed by slaves, but we’re also paying a premium because it’s imported goods. Double jeopardy.
Yay capitalism!
No more coffee but plenty of PRIME™ for all!
inb4 ersatz coffee revival
My chicory plantation will finally turn a profit! Wait till Dandelion Dan hears about this!
Chicory makes my teeth hurt, and it tastes like ass. Just seeing the word makes me want to explode vomit out of my eye sockets. It’s horrible what the fuck is wrong with you people
