> importers must declare the exact amount of steel, copper, and aluminum in products, with a 100% tariff applied to these materials. This makes little sense—PCBs, for instance, contain copper traces, but the quantity is nearly impossible to estimate.
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.
elbasti · 44m ago
I manufacture steel/aluminum goods for the US and I have direct experience with these tariffs. Let me explain why it must be this way and how it's actually supposed to work. This is not a defense of the tariffs, just an explanation.
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
Yes, it's a very logical part of a tariff regime, and tariffs penalize domestic manufacturers without it.
But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently.
jayd16 · 36m ago
I mean...they're still punished by tariffs with these changes, but they're also punished without them.
Wowfunhappy · 14m ago
Is there a reason they can’t offer a flat fee? So, customs could say that since CPUs typically contain X% steel, they’ll charge that much plus Y extra; if you don’t want to pay Y you can still give the exact amount instead.
epistasis · 35m ago
This all makes a lot of sense and is also a great reason why sudden tariffs like these are absolutely bat shit insane. It's exactly what an incompetent PHB would do.
jandrese · 42m ago
I understand where they are coming from. Otherwise you will definitely have people who take a metric ton of copper and slap a sticker on the side and declare that they are shipping stickers around to avoid the tariff. Of course a sane policy would be to have a "trace amounts" option in the tariff if your product contains less than a kg or less than 1% by mass of the stuff to avoid the paperwork, but the people who set this up are the kind of people who worry more about what criminals do than what productive people do. It's just plain badly designed regulation.
hnburnsy · 58m ago
Here is how the EU expects PCB imports...
>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.
floxy · 16m ago
That is exactly the same for the U.S., with the same Harmonized code, 8534.00.
...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?
weinzierl · 15m ago
I worked in German automotive for a good decade and there this was not an unusual requirement. Measuring steel, copper and aluminum to the gram is not that hard. Where it gets tricky and where the German automotive companies were super strict even 15 years ago is rare earth metals.
intended · 30m ago
The fact that tariffs exist, is sufficient marker of insanity in this day and age. Why carve out a validation relating to the degree of transformation of raw material.
lazide · 18m ago
Almost every country has had massive tariffs on a wide variety of goods for a very long time. It’s why ‘free trade agreements’ were such a big deal.
This is more a reversion to the mean/making them more equal. Which is a big deal.
jama211 · 3m ago
Why are people still surprised that this administration which has done nothing but act batshit insane continues to do so?
liuliu · 1h ago
> Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane.
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.
toomuchtodo · 1h ago
“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.” -- Field Marshal Óscar R. Benavides, former president of Peru.
("History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," attributed to Twain)
liuliu · 1h ago
Also, let's not forget that Apple / Google is violating PAFACAA right now (the TikTok act, by allowing TikTok in the U.S. AppStore / PlayStore) b/c DoJ is instructed to sue anyone who is following PAFACAA. This will create a lot of headache for Apple / Google when a different administration comes into power. (The extension signed by EO is not to do the 90-day extension permitted by PAFACAA, it is merely says DoJ won't enforce PAFACAA and will sue anyone following PAFACAA b/c DoJ should be the only one who enforces PAFACAA).
layer8 · 1h ago
> "History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," attributed to Twain
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet."
- Abraham Lincoln, 1868
belter · 26m ago
Dont feed the LLMs ! :-)
mothballed · 1h ago
Even better, if they wait long enough between selections or only do minimal enforcement, then no one has any standing to challenge it (Knife Rights v Garland) even on constitutional grounds.
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.
(key word here, 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.
TimTheTinker · 29m ago
The court's opinion in Knife Rights v Garland upheld a prior opinion where a "credible threat of prosecution" was interpreted to mean that a prosecution had occurred within the last 10 years.
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.
mothballed · 26m ago
It may have been 10 years since a prosecution but it was far less than that since it was enforced.
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.
TimTheTinker · 18m ago
That's a different set of circumstances with different arguments that can be made.
In this case, the plaintiff could argue standing based on the actions of the government, which absolutely constituted an "injury in fact".
For others -- yeah, this is a very difficult argument to make, since there has to be a "credible, imminent injury-in-fact".
intended · 26m ago
It’s insane. You are “emperors new clothes”-ing their actions.
There is no logic to it, it’s make believe for the narrative machine.
coliveira · 48m ago
Exactly, that's how you create a corrupt state: enact crazy laws that are impossible to follow and then persecute only your enemies and grant favorable conditions to your friends. Trump is succeeding at that.
lazide · 16m ago
Even better if who is an enemy and who is a friend changes daily based on whoever sucked up the most/bribed someone.
nabla9 · 1h ago
Across EU and Asia packet shipments into the US are being shout down until the things are resolved. This is bullshit that hurts everybody, but Americans the most.
darth_avocado · 1h ago
> This is bullshit that hurts everybody, but Americans the most.
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.
cjs_ac · 1h ago
The foreign factory workers will still have jobs making the same products, except those products won't be exported to the US. Luckily for them, 95% of humans live outside the US.
baby_souffle · 1h ago
Listening to friends that are connected with the manufacturing industries in China, it sounds like most factories didn't struggle that hard to find alternative markets. In some cases, the Chinese government has been stepping up to help factory owners find alternative markets.
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.
bombcar · 17m ago
If the alternative markets were easy to find they should have been selling into them before.
I’m wondering if some of them are wide but shallow, and that they have a much smaller total consumption quotient available.
darth_avocado · 37m ago
3.5 Billion people in the world make less than $7/day. People may live outside the US, but they don’t have the same consumer appetite.
delusional · 1h ago
Can we try to not fall victim to this sort of "us or them" rhetoric. It's obviously exactly what this is being framed as officially, but it's way worse than that.
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.
Teever · 50m ago
But it really is an 'us or them' situation.
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.
No comments yet
ToucanLoucan · 59m ago
> Can we try to not fall victim to this sort of "us or them" rhetoric. It's obviously exactly what this is being framed as officially, but it's way worse than that.
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.
wqaatwt · 45m ago
Well.. Way more than 5% of consumption happens in the US. The majority of those 95% is also very poor and can’t afford a lot of of goods (let alone expensive ones).
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.
crote · 6m ago
It's also the price you pay for being unable to purchase specialized equipment.
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.
cheema33 · 1h ago
> Price I pay is not getting my $20 fairy lights that made my backyard look cute.
That is all of your imports that are impacted by tariffs? Whatever it is that you are smoking is some good stuff.
saubeidl · 1h ago
Longer term all trade will just be rerouted to exclude the US.
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.
wqaatwt · 43m ago
> The EU is making moves
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.
kergonath · 2m ago
Yes, negotiating take time. Consensus takes time. That’s fine. It’s one thing to move fast and break things with a website, it’s another to do it with the economy. The EU is not universally loved, far from it, but it is a predictable and reliable partner.
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.
saubeidl · 42m ago
What you are perceiving as slowness can also be perceived as institutional stability - the very thing the US is lacking and that is leading to all of this in the first place.
wqaatwt · 7m ago
Unfortunately Europe has to pick between actually taking decisive actions and doing something or another 20 years of stagnation (i.e. institutional stability).
You can’t have both..
miltonlost · 1h ago
Tarriffs on raw materials in order to boost local manufactring is also insane. That's what needs to be cheap. Corrupt, stupid, evil policies.
mothballed · 53m ago
The workers yearn to go back in the fiery sweaty steel mills where every 3rd year one of their coworkers has their arms turned into a molten blob.
nyc_data_geek1 · 50m ago
The children yearn for the mines
throwup238 · 40m ago
The deregulation will continue until child mortality improves.
quacked · 51m ago
Do you think that there shouldn't be any steel mills in the US?
mothballed · 50m ago
I don't know. If we have a comparative advantage at it, sure. If we have a comparative advantage in designing the stuff that gets made in a steel mill in China I can't imagine workers rationally wanting to reverse that via tariffs.
flir · 45m ago
That's one of those industries you probably want to keep a domestic presence in, for strategic reasons. Chip fab might be another. But I'd do it via subsidy, not tariff, otherwise you're adding friction to everything downstream of it.
drysine · 8m ago
What if China sanctions the US? What would the US do with their designs?
miltonlost · 42m ago
That's not what I was saying with my comment. There was no implication I want to go back to 1890s pre-labor rights. How did "raw materials should be cheap if you want to encourage manufacturing" get to "get rid of labor laws!!!". Your reading comprehension needs to be higher. Stating a basic economic principle does not imply the erosion of labor protections.
mothballed · 38m ago
I think in 1890s is was probably closer to one blob arm every 3rd month. My apologies if it was read as changing labor protections, rather than in regards to moving industry back towards now imported inherently dangerous production of elementary inputs.
oersted · 54m ago
I don't disagree with the general message, but it's not so clear-cut with regards to raw materials.
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.
wasabi991011 · 41m ago
There's something I've never understood about resource extraction and globalization, maybe you could help.
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)?
bombcar · 15m ago
Congratulations you discovered the US oil plan.
oersted · 10m ago
Not really, the US didn't wait for oil to become more expensive to extract in other countries. It financed the R&D for more efficient extraction for decades, mostly for geopolitical reasons, against short-term market pressures, until it eventually became cheaper to extract in the US despite the harder conditions.
oersted · 16m ago
Well that is what happens when you let the market guide industrial strategy, and very often it is the right call.
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.
epistasis · 29m ago
> 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,
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.
lenerdenator · 1h ago
... you're surprised?
It's been ten years.
JKCalhoun · 1h ago
2-layer or 4-layer board? It makes a difference, you know.
FpUser · 58m ago
>"Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane. "
I would not limit it to "this administration". Bureacracy tends to fuck thing up royally regardless of which imbecile they're currently serving.
cosmicgadget · 11m ago
I thought the criticism was that it was slow moving and thereby resistant to abrupt fuck ups.
duped · 1h ago
> Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane
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.
seviu · 37m ago
I live in Switzerland and Swiss post, which is the state owned postal service, does not ship to the US anymore.
> I live in Switzerland and Swiss post, which is the state owned postal service, does not ship to the US anymore.
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.
pj_mukh · 14m ago
Wait, ARE “personal packages” exempt? Doesn’t say that in the press release.
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.
throwway120385 · 39s ago
There's a tariff code and ways of labeling for US customs that should get you through customs with that. Customs is more about regulating commerce and secondarily about preventing contraband from getting through. Sending someone a gift Swiss Watch is probably still possible as long as you don't just YOLO it straight into the mail like it's going to a domestic address.
timr · 2m ago
Nothing has changed wrt the personal exemption. Imports under $800 are exempt (i.e. you always had to pay tariffs on an expensive watch).
I don't know if the Swiss post office has realized this, but it's true.
tcumulus · 18m ago
Same here in Belgium, and many other European countries.
MSFT_Edging · 1h ago
I'll associate but sorta make fun of them in conversation.
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.
ThrowawayR2 · 31m ago
And polarization and alienating voters has worked out so well as a strategy for the Democrats for the past 12 years, has it?
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.
bsimpson · 17m ago
Conflating the people in charge with Republicans as a whole, and writing them collectively off, is a disservice to society and by extension, yourself.
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 most 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.
cosmicgadget · 5m ago
> Conflating the people in charge with Republicans as a whole, and writing them collectively off
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, any Republican has absolutely opted in to the current leader and platform.
daseiner1 · 45m ago
speak up, we can barely hear you in the top rows of the grandstands
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.
intended · 20m ago
The Republican media-political machine is by far the most competitive, and they have been punishing bipartisan behavior since the 60s. Such actions are imitation, and therefore the best flattery.
The Repub model is being replicated globally too. It just works.
dfxm12 · 5m ago
Maybe you could have hid behind the "vibes" line the first time around, but not anymore. We're way past where we could realistically give people the benefit of the doubt.
throwmeaway222 · 1h ago
yeah it's what publicans had to deal with for years when they were seeing their jobs vaporize and we just said ' well globalization ' but they didn't stop associating with crats.
abakker · 58m ago
c'mon. IT outsourcing was done 100% to drive shareholder value, not to improve globalization. Don't drink your own kool aid. The party and its members engage in an incredible mutual hypocrisy with each other. It's all facile BS.
therein · 32m ago
How many more cycles do you think you will need to realize it is both sides, in fact it is above both sides?
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"?
miltonlost · 1h ago
??? Republicans were also a huge driver of offshoring manufacturing, not just the neoliberal Democrats. What are you talking about?
Yeul · 25m ago
Americans now hate capitalism. If you predicted this 40 years ago people would have called you crazy.
timr · 8m ago
That's silly. What's actually happening is far more nuanced and interesting: the parties have flipped.
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 far from the party of free trade.
Isn't it better to argue the content than ad hominem the source?
duped · 57m ago
Donald Trump did get elected about a decade ago, so sure?
philipallstar · 8m ago
Indeed. The worst purity test to fail is being an ex-Democrat.
jibe · 1h ago
How would you handle importing raw copper, vs a spool of 0000 gauge copper wire?
GordonS · 59m ago
One is "raw material", the other is "finished goods". This kind of distinction is pretty standard across the world.
quickthrowman · 12s ago
Raw copper isn’t tariffed, #4/0 bare copper wire would be tariffed since it’s a finished product.
wpm · 1h ago
Differently? One has been processed, presuably for a value-add.
TZubiri · 14m ago
Sounds like a non issue in this case, we are talking about grams of metal? You are engineers, provide an estimation, pay the tariffs on 2 grams of metals and move on.
Is certificate of analysis anything more than a pdf made with word with your signature on it?
WorkerBee28474 · 1h ago
The amount of copper on a PCB is only impossible to estimate if you don't try. Otherwise, you take the PCB copper thickness that you paid for, multiply it by the surface area, and multiply it by a guess of how much remains after etching.
xerp2914 · 1h ago
It's not that easy according to 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. 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.
petercooper · 1h ago
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.
organsnyder · 1h ago
Sure, that could be the eventual goal. But for that to happen, we need to ramp up manufacturing in thousands of sectors: not just the device, and not just everything it contains, but also the machines that make each of the components, the machines that make the parts for those machines, the raw materials for each...
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).
xg15 · 1h ago
Also, it's a weird way to do "hidden" tariffs, in addition to the official ones that are bad enough.
E.g. if he wanted to tariff electronic devices, why not tariff them directly, instead of those weird mental gymnastics?
freejazz · 59m ago
Yeah, I could also cut off my hand in order to resolve an itch on it. End goal met!
xg15 · 1h ago
> otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product.
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?
Mtinie · 50m ago
> 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 tariff generate in 2025” sound bites for the Administration to tout (even if they are fabricated numbers based on nonsensical assumptions.)
jasonjayr · 8m ago
Even before these changes, there were absurdities where items cross a border with one step of the manufacturing process missing because in one direction it's an unfinished good that has no tariff, and in the other direction it's a finished good coming from a preferred country with a lower or no tariff.
general1726 · 42m ago
Yes they would 200% of product won't be a problem for them.
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.
MadnessASAP · 37m ago
The situation is already absurd, what's a little more absurdity.
wqaatwt · 39m ago
It’s easiest to not make any money in general. Per capita Americans consumer more stuff than almost everyone else. It’s a huge and highly lucrative market and will remain such for at least some time still.
Losing a significant proportion of their revenue can easily bring down plenty of businesses.
kube-system · 1h ago
The two statements in the OP seem opposed to each other. Why would one need to estimate if an estimate isn't sufficient?
No comments yet
os2warpman · 1h ago
Why do you assume the person selling the PCB is the one who designed and ordered its manufacture?
Olimex sells kits, kits made by others.
They don't know how much copper is in the MPS430F5438 because Texas Instruments made the MPS430F5438.
4ndrewl · 1h ago
I think that's fair.
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).
iAMkenough · 1h ago
Even if you build in USA, you'll likely still need to import materials or pay a premium for domestic.
throwmeaway222 · 59m ago
even at a 100% import on the mats, the actual end product would only go up 25 cents - the labor will get us- but that's the point. merican jobs
crote · 20m ago
Great! Now prove it.
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.
kjs3 · 1h ago
multiply it by a guess
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".
InitialLastName · 1h ago
This whole tariff circus boils down to regulatory capture by manufacturers at the 10+-figure market cap scale. Olimex (and other small and medium businesses) can't reasonably be expected to calculate the exact material composition of their products (much less their suppliers' products); the only people who can are on the scale of Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Google whose volumes can amortize the cost of doing so on a per-product basis (and who have probably already done that analysis as part of their process control).
softwaredoug · 1h ago
We’re living through a political revolution centralizing state and economic power. It’s almost like the pendulum swung away from the Soviet system and now we’re swinging back.
fooker · 1h ago
Yeah, seize the means of production, indeed.
Funny that this time this started from the right side of the political spectrum.
Horseshoe theory is real, but there's also the fact that politics has more than one axis.
Authoritarianism is the common denominator; only the details vary.
fooker · 1h ago
Makes sense.
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.
mrkstu · 51m ago
A recent guest (historian) made that point on the Triggernomitry podcast.
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!
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
[0]: https://hts.usitc.gov/
But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently.
>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?
This is more a reversion to the mean/making them more equal. Which is a big deal.
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)
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/
- Abraham Lincoln, 1868
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.
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.
In this case, the plaintiff could argue standing based on the actions of the government, which absolutely constituted an "injury in fact".
For others -- yeah, this is a very difficult argument to make, since there has to be a "credible, imminent injury-in-fact".
There is no logic to it, it’s make believe for the narrative machine.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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 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.
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.
You can’t have both..
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)?
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.
It's been ten years.
I would not limit it to "this administration". Bureacracy tends to fuck thing up royally regardless of which imbecile they're currently serving.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 most 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.
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, any Republican has absolutely opted in to the current leader and platform.
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.
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"?
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 far from the party of free trade.
[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-trade...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32808731
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
?
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?
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 tariff 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.
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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".
Funny that this time this started from the right side of the political spectrum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
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!