In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created.
Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in.
NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country.
I’m curious whether it’s more the tariffs, or the uncertainty. No one knows what will happen on a day-to-day basis: the chaotic (and illegal) decision-making leaves everyone wondering what’s next.
nnurmanov · 41m ago
I live in such country, local currency volatile, laws are changing. There is no long term planning, projects should span 1-2 years and if they bring income, then you are lucky. In long term the situation is no good
YZF · 13h ago
The hiring slowdown predates tariffs. For various reasons CEOs either believe they can do more with less people, or that they can hire cheaper people in other geographies, or both. Businesses (tech or financials) don't seem to be telegraphing uncertainty, S&P 500 revenue is at all times high and trending up, earnings/profit all time highs and trending up, valuations all times high and trending up.
epistasis · 10h ago
That was the entire point of hiking interest rates, to slow down the economy and stop inflation. Tariffs are universally acknowledged to cause inflation, and we would be in a recovery path if it weren't for the delays that tariffs are causing right now.
It is rather interesting to see the difference in standards of accountability for different presidents. Some are responsible for the economy even if its behavior is not sure to their actions. Others are not responsible for poor economic performance even when taking actions universally agreed to harm the economy.
jibal · 7h ago
Let's be clear on who has these different standards: primarily Republicans, members of the party whose lifeblood is hypocrisy.
Before tariffs, in the post-pandemic recovery, we also didn't see hiring go back to pre-pandemic levels. There are other forces like AI adoption.
I don't have good intuition around the connection between tariffs and jobs. Yes, higher inflation may require cooling down the economy. But right now it looks like rates will be going down and anyways rates haven't really slowed down the economy that much. Inflation did come down. Inflation can have some benefits too for employers, it erodes the employee's salaries (and potentially other costs). If companies can raise prices and not pass that on to employees or to their suppliers (as they've seemingly done during this last inflation cycle) then it can be a win for them. A weaker dollar can also help US companies compete globally.
If companies are doing well and growing, and they seem to be, why aren't they hiring more? The largest US tech companies are sitting on piles of cash and making huge profits, for some time now. Is it just that they've become more productive and need less people? Maybe they don't have anywhere to put more people towards? Maybe they're hiring outside the US (this one is not a maybe- they are). Is the uncertainty related to progress in AI? to other macro factors?
esseph · 4h ago
Because they're terrified of the uncertainty of the long tail of the tariffs. It takes months and months to see the products of those.
heisenbit · 1h ago
Looking at the 30 year chart YTD there is no indication that rates come down. The short side may be under control of Trump - who's bullying of the Fed raises the prospect of them coming down but the long end of the curve is under the control of market forces and it does not look like going down at all. Real estate market effectively frozen with sales down and for sale up in the realm of decade highs.
Nobody mentioned yet the drop of the dollar making every single import 10% more expensive since the start of the year. That is on top of every tariff and is inflationary.
Government spending went up by a surprising amount while tariff revenue rolls in. I suspect one reason there is no detailed budget is to create the space to move things around without much notice. If a large swath of the tariffs would be ruled illegal (already happened twice, one step to final) the situation could become interesting.
mattmaroon · 11h ago
There are other options, it’s not that simple. They may foresee an economic slowdown (they certainly say they do at every opportunity), they feel they are currently overstaffed, the ETF and hedge fund managers who own most of their stock are pressuring them to save money because they don’t like what they’re reading in the tea leaves, etc.
NooneAtAll3 · 4h ago
S&P 500 or S&P 10, tho?
vkou · 11h ago
> The hiring slowdown predates tariffs.
That's true, but it didn't predate the election of a man who has made his understanding of tariffs and economics crystal clear in the months and years leading up to January 2025.
mattmaroon · 11h ago
The tariffs this time are far in excess of anything he did previously or promised to do while running for office again and took nearly everyone by surprise though.
> Trump has made tariffs a central campaign pledge in order to protect US industry. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most imported foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.
esseph · 4h ago
That is not the 40-60-200% tariffs he has placed on things, depending on the day of the week.
That uncertainty makes it very hard to manufacture goods or buy raw materials.
donalhunt · 2h ago
It also disrupts JIT supply chains. Companies make decisions with certain variables not being volatile.
You now have a situation where one week the cost of a commodity is X and the following week it could be 2X. The butterfly effect across industries also cannot be predicted.
Many industries also seem to be still recovering from the pandemic period with supply of spare parts still being de-prioritised over making parts available for new units. :/
trebligdivad · 10h ago
I don't think there's that much surprise at the tariffs on China; it's the tariffs on the rest of the world, especially friendly countries like Canada that are the big surprises.
Also, who believes politicians campaign pledges?
burnerthrow008 · 6h ago
> Also, who believes politicians campaign pledges?
Only all the people who voted for them and all the people who voted against them?
rusk · 2h ago
US elections have a shockingly low turnout compared to other countries so not the affirmative you were hoping for
verzali · 4h ago
Why on Earth not? Didn't people pay attention during his first term? This was 100% predictable.
jibal · 7h ago
It didn't take informed people by surprise. We still see people denying that Trump had anything to do with Project 2025, whereas honest informed people knew that he very much did.
mattmaroon · 2h ago
Nobody informed saw massive tariffs on India, Brazil, etc. If you were right the stock market wouldn’t have tanked because the smart money would have priced it in.
PeterStuer · 4h ago
It is more the volatility for sure. Tarrifs have existed forever and business has always coped with them.
whatevaa · 49m ago
They didn't change monthly.
ldoughty · 36m ago
You can't write a business plans/proposals and get loans/management approval on these kinds of tariffs.
Imagine trying to get a loan from a bank to make a USA manufacturing plant, pointing to the 150% Chinese tariff. A week later the tariff is 25%. Does your math still work? Probably not. Will that bank continue the loan? Nope. Will the bank even entertain a similar proposal from someone else right now? Nope.
If you want to grow USA manufacturing you need to subsidize it, or give private industry confidence it's not going to lose them money. If you can't do that, your relying on charity / non-profit / philanthropy... And I don't see many of those in manufacturing.
pstuart · 4h ago
This is different -- the tariffs are being applied and changed chaotically, with no direction on actually serving the point of protecting native industry. The goal of the tariffs is to replace income tax, everything else is a smokescreen.
Would note that the data the New York Times cited are seasonally adjusted [1]. The assumptions of those adjustment models may not currently apply.
It’s going to be difficult to suss out a signal from employment data until October or November, by when we should have about half a year of post-tariff data [2] to compare with ‘24. (We may not know anything surely for a year.)
Both the NYC Employment Data the New York Times cites [1] and these Fed data [2] are seasonally adjusted. Would take them with a shaker of salt given the assumptions in those adjustment models are likely currently under assault. (Hehe.)
New York is teeming with what appear to be newly arrived "immigrants" who do no speak a word of English (and frankly are rather aggressive about their refusal to do so) yet are employed in various crafts. We had fairly substantial renovation recently in our building. Every single worker was clearly a recent arrival. How do we know how many jobs were actually created if so many of them are not "officially recorded"?
(I am an immigrant myself (via the legal means) lest you take my observation as a xenophobic expression.)
No comments yet
RhysU · 7h ago
I do not trust NY job numbers. Their unemployment system remains a disaster from the Covid years.
Source: Me trying to use it and encountering prior fraud. Light reading suggests many have experienced it.
anecdatas · 7h ago
Normally I'd be quippy about the plural of anecdote not being "data", but this isn't even plural. This is a single anecdote. The claim you have made is "I have encountered fraud, personally, so the system is a disaster."
Well run systems experience fraud. It's something you generally want to minimize, but like, it's not necessarily an indicator that the system is broken. Like... AWS has tons of fraud. AWS is still very much not a disaster. (Well, it kind of is a disaster, but mostly because it's a machine that chews up humans via oncall, which is unrelated to their fraud.)
margalabargala · 7h ago
Shouldn't that be roughly constant across the year though? We don't need to trust the numbers to be exact, to observe a precipitous drop.
andy_ppp · 8h ago
Don’t worry, Trump can just keep firing the people who make the statistics until he’s proven right :-/
phkahler · 6h ago
That has me shaking my head. He fired the BLS person claiming they were reporting inaccurate stats to make him look bad. A claim of partisan bias - could maybe be some truth to that. But to fire them and replace them? Then it will certainly be biased reporting. I suppose that makes sense if all you care about is image and not actually making things better.
neuroelectron · 5h ago
Real jobs or government jobs?
PeterStuer · 4h ago
If you are looking at tarrifs to explain NY small business market collapse, you clearly have not followed Louis Rossmann's struggles to keep his business in NY over the years.
And yet the rent in NYC just seems to go up and up.
hunglee2 · 4h ago
rental prices are driven by P/E redirecting funds to the purchase of housing stock, which they then use to jack up the rent. Fuedalism is returning by stealth.
hdgvhicv · 3h ago
If there’s demand for 5 million units and supply of 6 million prices will go down as 1 million units will be empty
If there’s demand for 5 million units and supply of 4 million, prices will go up and 1 million will move out of the city
georgemcbay · 1h ago
You conveniently left out the part where many large corporate landlords collude by using software like RealPage to enable widescale price fixing.
timr · 13h ago
Even assuming that there were no other federal, state or local YoY differences [1] that could explain this change (and that the numbers are right as presented in the first place), New York City private sector employment is nothing like most other parts of the US: it's the largest city in the US by a large margin, it has a concentration of employment in a few major industries (finance, fashion, publishing, software) that aren't represented elsewhere, and...it hasn't been a manufacturing center since the victorian era.
You can't wave this away with "NYC is a leading indicator for the US economy". To the extent that it's true at all, you could say it about any large city in the US.
[1] Like, say: interest rates, the business cycle, AI, the slowdown in software hiring, or the minimum wage increase that NYC implemented on January 1, 2025.
fn-mote · 13h ago
This dismissal of a massive drop in hiring (literally 1.5% of the previous half year’s reported hiring) is wishful thinking.
“Ignore this data point, NYC is special.” Color me skeptical.
timr · 13h ago
I'm not ignoring it, but I’m not falling into a post hoc fallacy, either.
I'll put it this way: if I were ignoring it, I'd be ignoring one more data point than you are in cherry-picking a single example.
lovemenot · 12h ago
I'd be ignoring one more data point
timr · 12h ago
whoops. fixed.
apical_dendrite · 12h ago
It's true that NYC private sector employment is different from the US labor market as a whole, but NYC private sector employment is better representative of what readers of this site care about than overall US employment. Readers are much more likely to be affected by changes in the professional services and information sectors than, say, agriculture.
epistasis · 10h ago
The agricultural section indicators are that there's about to be a big, expensive bailout for ag:
> “Right now, we have zero bushels of soybeans on the books with China for this fall harvest that has begun in the Deep South,” Ragland said. “Normally by this time, close to 40% of our sales for the marketing year are on the books. And with zero on the books right now, it is alarming for American soybean farmers.”
The first time that Trump screwed over with tariffs, they got tons of bailout money that we all paid for.
Not all sectors of the economy are so lucky. The big man at the top must be paid with either bribes or allegiance or both.
enaaem · 3h ago
ICE raids are freeing up a lot of spots in the agri sector.
timr · 11h ago
And again, even if you assume that all of that is true, you're still making a leap of logic that these changes are because of the tariffs.
immibis · 9h ago
What else changed?
timr · 6h ago
I named several in my original comment.
The big, blinking, obvious YoY change for anyone here is tech employment.
atoav · 12h ago
Yes, a tariff can be a good measure. But for that the tariffed goods need to be selected carefully and rationally und not whatever the heck the Trump administration is doing.
For example you can tariff bananas all you like, that won't spark widespread banana production in a climate that can't grow them.
m348e912 · 1h ago
Hawaii produces 6.3 million lbs per year of bananas which is a tiny fraction of the 8 million metric tons per year Ecuador produces. Labor and land cost is the primary reason Hawaii can't compete with Latin America, but long-standing tariffs could change that.
simonh · 12m ago
About 2m people are employed directly or indirectly in the Ecuadorean banana industry. The total population of Hawaii is only 1.5m. Also you could fit Hawaii in a corner of Ecuador.
californical · 4h ago
No but it could shift consumer demand a bit to favor apples, for example, which largely come from domestic sources.
Not arguing one way or another, but your reduction isn’t quite accurate with the affects tariffs can have
toasterlovin · 9h ago
FWIW, we’ve been affected by the tariffs (10% for now; we import mainly from Vietnam and Thailand at this point). Did our second price increase a few weeks ago. We’ll probably test out how much the market will bear because operating in this market really demands a risk premium. So far it’s not as crazy as the pandemic supply chain crisis, but it’s close. The most insane ending to all of this that I can imagine is that the tariffs get conclusively ruled unconstitutional and all the tariffs payed get returned. Would be a huge wealth transfer from consumers to businesses.
lm28469 · 1h ago
> The most insane ending to all of this that I can imagine
The most insane ending is that tarrifs are reverted but most of the price hike will stay for good.
MiscIdeaMaker99 · 35m ago
Market forces will prevail.
542458 · 9h ago
Super minor FYI, but on your website all the images in your portfolio show as broken to me.
toasterlovin · 9h ago
Thanks for the reminder; website is super out of date.
IAmGraydon · 8h ago
>FWIW, we’ve been affected by the tariffs (10% for now; we import mainly from Vietnam and Thailand at this point).
The import tariff from Vietnam is 20% and Thailand is 19%.
toasterlovin · 7h ago
The 20% tariff from Vietnam has been announced by Trump, but unless I’ve missed something in the past week or so, it’s not official. There was a news piece I read a few days after he announced the 20% number that said the Vietnamese side had actually agreed to 11% and were surprised when he injected himself into the process at the end and announced a different number. So it sounds like it’s a WIP. I believe the only country that actually has a signed deal at this point is the UK.
That being said, the copper, steel, and aluminum tariffs announced recently are real and have been assigned import classification codes by US Customs (which is when new tariffs to become real).
BartjeD · 1h ago
So much useless vitriol about China.
40 years from now people will wonder why folk threw away all common sense to go on a lunatic rampage with a sledgehammer.
Instead of facing problems and solving them with due patience.
If the trend keeps on the next stage is political violence. And then it's a short fuse to a second civil war.
This is the point in time the US declined.
polonbike · 1h ago
My point of view , from Europe, is that political violence is already there in the US. As well as state violence (not just on political opponents, but also on all minorities and "people who have a different opinion").
The next step is indeed a second civil war, with 21st century characteristics (hybrid war, etc...)
I am not enthusiastic about the near future for the US nor for the world.
typeofhuman · 7m ago
Europe has its own problems and is teetering towards civil unrest. You can't fly your native country's flag, your children are being kidnapped and gang raped, your social programs are kicking off citizens in favor of immigrants and nearing insolvency, you're being conquered by Muslims, you've lost free speech, and you're gaslit into believing it's for the greater good.
enaaem · 1h ago
Ironically, if a civil war was going to happen it will be because Trump's overuse of the military. It is such an newbie African dictator mistake. Every time you use the military to put down civil unrest you give them an inch of your power and before you know it, they figure they don't need the regime anymore.
You will never see Putin outsourcing civilian tasks to the military.
typeofhuman · 4m ago
Don't believe the media pundits. People on the ground especially in DC are cheering Trump for bringing law and order. People in Chicago are asking for it to come there.
Progressive policies have failed every where they're applied. It's time for law and order to restore this great land and free people from the tyranny of unabated criminal activity.
typeofhuman · 10m ago
> 40 years from now people will wonder why folk threw away all common sense to go on a lunatic rampage with a sledgehammer.
I doubt the subject will be about tariffs. It'll more than likely be why we let children castrate themselves, men abolish female athletics, and the consequences of an open border.
haunter · 13h ago
In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever:
China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries ask for their help. That's why China's growth must be curbed, fast > tariff them to their death or so. But I really don't think it will work at all. And personally I don't even think it's a good idea at all to begin with.
platevoltage · 13h ago
See this is what I don't understand. Everything you just said about China is a positive. Everything you said about China is achievable in the USA, and we at least HAD a head start on soft-power influence.
Instead we should just have tariffs instead of actually making the lives of Americans better while FIGHTING affordable housing, high speed rail, and EVs.
We've got an entire team of goons who would rather rack up penalty minutes than score goals. These freaks think we are competing with China in an MMA fight instead of a Hockey game.
ehnto · 5h ago
I do think the state of progress in China is vastly underestimated by the west. It has been fast and messy, not evenly distributed, but it is staggering. The rhetoric around them is changing too, I think they are making significant soft power gains. I could easily see them filling the voids that US policy chaos is currently creating.
remus · 1h ago
> I could easily see them filling the voids that US policy chaos is currently creating.
More than that, I think China would be mad not to step into the vacuum the US is creating with it's isolationist policies. For years US aid has been extremely influential around the world, doing a huge amount of good (e.g. USAID) and buying relatively cheap influence in many countries. Countries that were reliant on that aid are going to be understandably jaded by their experience with the US and looking for more reliable allies.
generic92034 · 3h ago
> The rhetoric around them is changing too, I think they are making significant soft power gains. I could easily see them filling the voids that US policy chaos is currently creating.
As long as they are cooperating with Russia at least European countries will have a hard time to accept China's advances.
kimixa · 12h ago
I feel it's more they're not actually playing for the scoreline. They want to be the team #1, even if that causes the team to lose in the end.
sneak · 12h ago
When people see everything as an ego-based competition, they lose track entirely of the fact that trade is not zero-sum: both parties (or nations) benefit from increased trade.
It’s the zero-sum mindset of leadership that only ever learned to excel by cheating and stealing, not cooperating, building, or synergizing.
niek_pas · 4h ago
And unfortunately, it is exactly the Gorilla chest-pounding politicians “we are #1” that attract particular large swaths of the voting population who tend to see everything as a “me first” zero-sum competition.
lm28469 · 3h ago
It's the whole "benevolent" dictatorship VS flawed democracy debate.
AlecSchueler · 3h ago
It might be an authoritarian one party state but China isn't a dictatorship right?
wood_spirit · 3h ago
Technically China is a dictatorship.
The constitution of the People's Republic of China and the CCP constitution state that its form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship".
The current president has done much to make his appointment for life, so it is a dictatorship that is on the road towards having a dictator.
Cue comparisons to what is currently happening in the US.
AlecSchueler · 3h ago
Yes, 人民民主专政.
A socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.
I think you're ignoring some of the poetic intention of those words, the idea is that the Marxist collective is the dictator. It's turning the concept on its head to put the people at the forefront.
In other contexts such as casual conversation here in the West the term dictatorship means something quite different and you seem to understand that too because you say they're "on the road towards having a dictator" which is surely an admission that they currently do not have a dictator and are ergo but currently a dictatorship.
I'll certainly grant you that Xi has made moves to consolidate power in the individual but that's a separate discussion.
Propelloni · 2h ago
So it is a tyranny of the majority? That's not the vibe I get from China at all.
pydry · 12h ago
The ironic thing is that tariffs are the right tool to reindustrialize America (over the period of ~a decade) but theyre being wielded with the skill and grace of a crack addled ferret by somebody who thinks it's a magic wand.
mahirsaid · 10h ago
I never thought America was this fragile, or should i say the governmental mindset was, to just change things are essentially the backbone of what made America "America" in the first place. Changing policies that otherwise should not be changed is dangerous. When in doubt and there needs to be change then make the changes around the preexisting guidelines/settings, not change those first. Whether we like it or not enemies and competitive economies are reliant on our policies and , therefor vice versa. Changing big things first will make you the outcast, especially to our rich economy--relatively moderate population. Vs other economies of much larger population. There is fragile silver lining there to pay attention too IMO.
fblp · 6h ago
There was the pre-existing constitutional authority that congress had to regulate trade, and that was only supposed to be usurped by the president in limited circumstances...
selectodude · 10h ago
Reindustrializing America requires people that are actually willing to work in a factory.
Even that's not enough, because the tariffs are hitting raw goods as well as finished products!
NooneAtAll3 · 4h ago
that requires giving advantage to such people - and stripping advantages from the rest
AngryData · 6h ago
Pay them a decent wage and they will.
9dev · 5h ago
But why compete on factories if that isn’t competitive with foreign factories?
AngryData · 5h ago
Because the immediate profits of capitalists shouldn't be the sole dictator of our economic activities and policies.
9dev · 5h ago
Im with you on that. But strategically retargeting the economy towards manual labor when you're big on services and digital innovation? That makes no sense. Being entirely self-sufficient is just not a good strategy in a highly competitive world connected by trade relations. Instead, tending to alliances and partnerships, assuring mutual interests and interlinked dependencies would be a lot smarter.
It all comes down to a lot of people in other parts of the world being willing to work for far less, for far longer hours, under far worse conditions, than Americans. Anything you can make in the USA will thus be more expensive, and until you’ve re-acquired all the domain knowledge lost to other nations, these quality will also be worse. As most people don’t want to buy something worse for more, you’ll need to force them to by making it unreasonable to import foreign goods (which is already happening), but that also means you limit the market to domestic. I fail to see how that is a viable strategy, unless you aim to wage war on the rest of the world and can’t trust anyone.
aurareturn · 3h ago
That's how you become a poor country. Every country that closed itself off to the rest of the world becomes poor.
donalhunt · 2h ago
How many of them have MAGA-style slogans though? /s
MiscCompFacts · 10h ago
Won’t people be willing when the cost of living goes up so much and all the tech jobs are gone to foreign labor that they have to work factory jobs?
platevoltage · 7h ago
So you think going backwards and becoming a developing nation is a good thing?
amrocha · 7h ago
What do you think happens when all the “developing” nations develop and refuse to get paid peanuts to make your phones?
platevoltage · 5h ago
The Vulcans come visit Earth and the Federation gets formed. How the heck should I know?
immibis · 9h ago
There won't be any factories since all the capital will be overseas.
giraffe_lady · 9h ago
Most people don't work in tech. IIRC the most common jobs are retail, food service, healthcare, and education.
esseph · 4h ago
And we're decimating retail through tariffs, we're cutting as many people as we can out of food service, and we're ending much federal funding around education. Doesn't seem great.
jennyholzer · 12h ago
i don't see any indication that either republicans or democrats intend to reindustrialize america
estearum · 9h ago
Here's private construction of manufacturing facilities in the US.
Biden was inaugurated in January 2021 and Trump won the election in November 2024.
jibal · 7h ago
Biden's major bills were very much indications of that ... even more so for the version before Manchin took a hatchet to it.
pydry · 1h ago
There is evidence they are trying it just isnt particularly effective.
Part of the problem is that it runs up against the corporate lobbies who would rather take a higher short term profit margin, let American industry hollow out and buy gold + a luxury bunker in New Zealand to prep for the worst case scenario.
bediger4000 · 12h ago
Agreed. This is hermeneutics for Trump's self enriching or just plain dumb actions.
seadan83 · 6h ago
Tariffs are protectionist, does not boost competitiveness. Tends to be the wrong tool, there are better.
Tax breaks, grants, physical infrastructure, creation of entire markets - those are better tools.
The issue with tariffs is non-competetive companies aren't required to become more competitive.
I mean consider it, a tariff is a tax on those buying a specific competitors goods. Even if tariffs were done surgically, still it seams like a tax benefit is a better tool
9dev · 5h ago
I doubt explaining economic basics to an administration that seems incapable of understanding what a value-added tax is will be very fruitful
anon291 · 9h ago
Yeah it's a crab mentality. I'm ideologically opposed to communism, but I'm happy for the Chinese people. I don't understand why our response is to tear them down, instead of building ourselves up. Seems backwards.
When you even mention building ourself, you are accused of being anti American simply because you point out a deficiency in our current development.
amrocha · 7h ago
China is the most capitalist country in the world.
platevoltage · 5h ago
I've never been to china, but I've seen pictures. It doesn't look like a stateless, classless, moneyless society at all. To me anyways.
pillefitz · 5h ago
And of the more communist ones
decimalenough · 11h ago
The craziest thing about all this is that Chinese exports to the US aren't even that big a part of the Chinese economy (3% or so). Sure, it'll hurt and there's multiplier effects, but the entire rest of the world is more than happy to take up the slack. So the tariffs really are the US cutting its own nose off to spite its face.
bruce511 · 7h ago
You're assuming US citizens stop buying Chinese goods, just because they got more expensive.
That's unlikely to be true. They might buy less, but the numbers won't fall to zero.
It also overlooks the detail that the component parts of items "made in the usa" also come from other places. Clothing made in the US, doesn't necessarily use fabric made in the US.
In the short to medium term, the increased cash-flow requirements (tarrifs are paid before sales) will favor large importers with access to abundant cash over smaller importers.
Yes, the purchasing power of US consumers will go down as retail prices of goods go up. Yes global producers will seek out alternate markets.
The current uncertainty causes US purchasing to prefer not to commit to long-term orders. Global suppliers will prefer orders from stable customers, even at somewhat lower prices. Once those long-term contracts are in place, it may be hard to reenter the global marketplace, especially on the currently favorable terms.
In other words tarifs are doing long-term reputational damage that will not be easily undone in a few years time.
On the up side the world is about to observe, for the first time in a couple generations, the effects of an isolationist policy. It is a valuable lesson that needs to be reinforced from time to time.
decimalenough · 6h ago
We're on the same side of the argument here? Obviously that 3% is not going to go down to 0%, which means that the US has even less leverage against the Chinese than it looks.
bruce511 · 5h ago
I agree. Plus, as alternate markets are developed, so that leverage drops even more.
The US has made friends with a lot of countries based on the goodwill generated by strong trade ties. That goodwill is being eroded in the short term, and will linger as a reputation for "unreliability". 80 years of work is being undone in months.
And unfortunately it won't be as simple as "in 4 years we can go back to normal ". It's obvious that congress supports this, and the American people voted for it, so it's not just one man's policy.
enaaem · 3h ago
Besides, I don't see how a $20 shirt becoming a $30 shirt is going to make a difference for American manufacturing. It's simply a sales tax (maybe even the greatest in the world). And on top of that you have all inputs for American manufactures getting more expensive.
buyucu · 3h ago
If China stops exporting to the US, and instead exports to somewhere else, this will crash American living standards. It will lift the living standards of the new recipient.
refurb · 11h ago
What do you mean “the rest of the world will take up the slack”?
Is the rest of the world suddenly going to start buying something they haven’t in the past? Why?
And the US consumer market is 2x the size of the next biggest (EU).
How exactly is the the rest of the world going to replace the demand of something several times its size?
foxylad · 6h ago
As an example, I'm pretty sure I just took up some of the slack here in NZ. I've been looking at installing solar for a while, and a particularly good quote for a Chinese system (Sigen) recently made me go ahead. I strongly suspect the unusually good price and fast delivery were due to cancelled US demand.
OT: Solar is awesome! 18 panels are generating 2/3 of our load, despite it being late winter. And a 16kWh battery means the grid power we import is all off-peak. In summer we're going to be exporting enough that we may even cover our winter grid import. Plus it gives us the best UPS system we've ever had, including zero-second cut-over (c.f. Tesla's half-second glitch).
9dev · 5h ago
> OT: Solar is awesome!
Don’t tell that to the Americans, they hate renewables now.
seadan83 · 6h ago
When demand is reduced, you lower prices. Rest of the world suddenly are buyers. Governments can throw subsidies at impacted sectors too to cover the price difference while supply chains adjust. With growing trade relations, economies of scale and transition costs become factors. The cost of trade with the new trade relationships become cheaper and so does the reluctance to change (for example with a 3 year production pipeline baked, you don't walk away easily).
nemomarx · 10h ago
It seems plausible to me that growing markets like India could fill that hole over time, yeah.
jandrewrogers · 9h ago
The “over time” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It won’t happen on anything remotely resembling a time horizon that matters for these purposes. Factories will be closed and gone by then.
decimalenough · 9h ago
If the US buys less, there will be unsold inventory and a temporary glut in supply, which will lead to the Chinese dropping prices and exporting elsewhere. This is already happening in SE Asia:
Obviously the profit margin will be less than selling to the US, but it does mean that the 3% of GDP mentioned above is not going away entirely, just shrinking to (say) 2 or 2.5%.
The article also mentions transshipment, where Chinese goods get routed to the US via a third country. Although Trump's strategy of "tariff everybody for all the things" is putting a damper on this too.
csomar · 5h ago
China exported something like 525 billion worth of goods last year to the US. Not all good can be replaced but let’s say something like 350 billion worth of goods are unmarketable because of the tariffs. Do you really think the whole world can’t swallow 350 billion of imports?
trasirinc · 12h ago
What numbers are you seeing for the surpassing living standards? Their gpd per capita flatlined in 2024 at $13k. That's with only 80M of their citizens making above $2000/month. The bulk of their citizens make less than $100/month, and there's a declining middle class of around 200M that makes around $800/month. But they have high youth unemployment rate (>40%), there's a massive layoff wave coming in September with the mandatory social security payment from companies, and their recent factory wages have plummeted to $2/hour, barely survivable in first tier cities.
Before everyone jumps in with GDP per capital with PPP, what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility).
JumpCrisscross · 12h ago
> GDP per capital with PPP
China’s ‘25 GDP per capita on a purchasing-power parity basis is $29k to America’s $90k [1]. American real GDP per capita grew at 1.7% a year from 2015 to 2025 [2]. (American PPP GDP/c grew 4.5% a year from 2014 to 2024 [3].)
From 2004 to 2024, Chinese PPP GDP/c grew 7.4% a year [4]. If China and America keep growing at their respective rates, we wouldn’t expect convergence for 20+ (40, using America’s PPP GDP/c) years. That’s too long for our if condition to be expected to hold.
There is not a strong argument for Chinese GDP/capita, PPP-adjusted or not, approaching America’s within a generation. There is a risk China’s economy becomes bigger than ours in aggregate.
> what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility)
American real GDP per capita grew at 1.7% a year from 2015 to 2025 [2]
From 2004 to 2024, Chinese PPP GDP/c grew 7.4% a year [4].
What an incredibly dishonest comparison!
AnimalMuppet · 10h ago
What about it makes it dishonest? What do you think would be an honest comparison? And, if you do it, what numbers do you get?
refurb · 9h ago
Where to start? Comparing a 10 year US period to a 20 year period? Seems awfully selective.
Let's do a side by side comparison? 2018 to 2023? 2023 is the last year with solid numbers.
US: 12% real GDP growth
China: 26% real GDP growth
Sounds impressive, until you account for the base.
US: +$2.4T USD
China: +$3.64T USD
Yikes! 4x the number of people, but 0.5x the GDP growth.
JumpCrisscross · 4h ago
> Comparing a 10 year US period to a 20 year period? Seems awfully selective
Yes, I chose the strongest form of the other side’s argument to show that even then, it’s difficult to argue that Chinese PPP GDP/c is approaching American levels within a generation. (Though China’s numbers don’t vary much between 10 and 20 years, America’s do since we had a lot of war and then economic stimulus in the 2000s.)
> 2018 to 2023?
You want to make multi-decade projections off a pandemic baseline?
> 4x the number of people, but 0.5x the GDP growth
Per capita means per person. Purchasing power means real production. The question was about potential living standards, not aggregate might.
adgjlsfhk1 · 6h ago
do you not know how percentages work? I think Kahan academy covers 4th grade math...
jennyholzer · 12h ago
Why are you so well-versed in these anti-Chinese narratives? Your message reads like you're a victim of anti-Chinese propaganda.
trasirinc · 12h ago
I'm from China. I know what real numbers and news come out of China.
HAL3000 · 10h ago
Sure, you are. You created this account 2 hours ago, all comments anti China, perfect english and you write about China as "their" country in one of the comments.
y-curious · 12m ago
Rare to see "you're a bot" be invoked for anti-Chinese sentiment. Thanks for the tickle today!
jandrewrogers · 9h ago
FWIW, I do the same thing when referring to the US if my being American is immaterial to the point or observation. It is a way of intentionally not privileging your opinion.
csomar · 5h ago
Propaganda can only work for so much. At some point, what you see and experience with your own eyes beats what you can convince me of what the truth is. If China is “collapsing” while producing all these EVs, Solar and high tech stuff then what would it do in a “healthy” economy? Colonize the moon?
collingreen · 11h ago
I'm from the US. I have no idea what numbers or news are real anymore (if I ever did). I'm impressed by either your ability to discern this for China or by your confidence that you can.
AngryData · 6h ago
Why does China's growth need to be curbed or opposed in any way? What does that accomplish? The only thing we need to be doing is ensuring our own stability, be decently self reliant, and improve the lives of our citizens. It is in inevitable fact that China will eventually surpass us economically, they have far more people, fighting that is just crabs in a bucket fighting over who gets to stand on top of the others.
ehnto · 5h ago
The US has been working with China for decades economically. The rhetoric around them being an enemy is very peculiar, since the US and China have been tightly coupled economic partners for decades now.
That said however, the US economy relies quite heavily on the international USD hegemony, and China being a bigger economy does threaten that quite directly. It would be surprising for them to drop the USD, but it is a significant risk.
buyucu · 3h ago
Western Elites can not stomach a non-Western country prospering. It goes against everything they believe in.
ricardobeat · 2h ago
> tariff them to their death
You’re not “tariffing them to death”, you’re hurting yourself. This would only work if the USA was the main importer of goods from China, which it is not - only about 14%.
whimsicalism · 3h ago
actually, i think it is okay if other countries become rich and i absolutely reject this foolish zero sum way of thinking.
refurb · 11h ago
It’s statements like these that remind me to not take social media so seriously.
China does not have “very high grow momentum”, in fact growth has been seriously slowing since Covid
I’m not sure sure what “growth momentum” is what it has to do with living standards.
China’s PPP is not more comfortable than the US because it’s still 1/4th that of the US.
China has very serious growth problems, a massive debt overhang from real estate (that is still slowing the economy), a supply planning model that is leaving it with an oversupply of things like cars and batteries.
9dev · 5h ago
Well, at least Trump is working hard on implementing an American supply planning model as well, so the damn Chinese won’t be leading on oversupply much longer!
XorNot · 10h ago
"Growth momentum" isn't a thing, and more over China's growth is slowing. This would be wholly expected under normal circumstances because it's no longer a developing economy, it's a developed economy - the absurd GDP growth rates it had are won off the fact that industrialization is an enormous, enormous change in productivity but you only get to do it once.
ekianjo · 11h ago
When you look at things per Capita in China things look very different from what you describe. Sure, you have pockets of very affluent societies (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and more) but the majority of the country is not there.
anon291 · 9h ago
Take a trip to the flyover states or rural oregon.
sirnonw · 14h ago
Funny how there is a post-it with a password glued to the screen of the computer in the lede image, now in plain sight for thousands of readers.
ashton314 · 14h ago
Looks like there's a year at the end; might be to facilitate suckurity requirements such as yearly password rotation.
ronsor · 14h ago
Some places do 3 months! It's amazing
Izkata · 10h ago
I keep a list of every time I change one of my work passwords with the date it would have expired, and it seems to fluctuate between 2.5 and 3.5 months with little consistency. Some of us used to have it locked so we didn't need to keep changing it, but they reenabled it some time ago and we got confirmation it was for some sort of external security requirements.
mystraline · 13h ago
PasswordAugust2025!
bongodongobob · 9h ago
That was best practice until maybe 10 years ago. Point the people in charge of that to the NIST standards.
hdgvhicv · 2h ago
I hear cyber insurance companies (ransomware cover etc) still require outdated standards.
IncRnd · 13h ago
I think this is Ccjaas2004. I'm not 100% sure on the letters, but the year is easy to see. Hopefully, they've changed their password sometime in the past 21 years.
Ah thanks for that. I've been meaning to change my password for a while, looks like this is a strong choice then.
netsharc · 12h ago
The image URL contains a parameter for size in pixel, and it's modifiable...
jchw · 13h ago
That's true. Now it is most likely Ccjaas2025.
IncRnd · 12h ago
I think you're correct. They probably use it as the password "format" and haven't updated the post-it in order to trick anyone trying to steal the password! What could go wrong?
pmontra · 13h ago
That's CCJ who married AAS in 2004. The password is still the same. But what's the username and what's the service?
IncRnd · 12h ago
Everybody logs-in with the same username into the only app. It's a kiosk computer without a surviving vendor to support it.
idiotsecant · 13h ago
You'd be surprised (or probably not) how much incredibly critical infrastructure has one ancient lynchpin PC doing some weird essential thing with a post-it note password like NameOfCompanyYear! where it's clear based on the year that the password hasn't been reset in a quarter century
downrightmike · 13h ago
My guess:
Ccjacs 2004
Odds are it hasn't been updated for 20+ years
alephnerd · 13h ago
@Dang can you please delete this comment
OP might not be wrong, but let's at least follow SOP for disclosing security failures (30 days pre-disclosure)
tomhow · 11h ago
We don't delete things unless the poster asks us to, and really I doubt this comment is creating any more risk than the picture itself on the WSJ.
alephnerd · 10h ago
Fair enough!
greatgib · 39m ago
I don't understand why there isn't a market or company that develop already to move all items to low tariff area before sending to US.
I know that manufacturing things here in Europe, there already used to be round trip by airplane and co to try to lower VAT paid on purchases to the maximum.
y-curious · 7m ago
This is the intuition for tariffs for countries like Vietnam (where China used to send a lot of goods to for repackaging). Not a new idea, and one that customs will aggressively police.
flakeoil · 36m ago
Because it is not allowed and it does not count. It is the origin country that counts, even if you ship via another 3rd party country.
hunglee2 · 5h ago
Clutching at straws but one silver lining from the accelerationist perspective is that the global economic damage of US Tariff War 2.0. will speed up the adoption of AI / automation. Payroll is one of the most expensive, high risk and illiquid commitments to the organisational budget, so the idea of replacing it with dial up / dial down Saas subscriptions will move from 'good idea' to 'business critical'
The effect will probably be similar to Covid / Remote Work - marginal idea until an externality made it essential. Does mean sh1t tons more unemployment though, so like I said, straws being clutched
KeplerBoy · 4h ago
Too bad most people are on a payroll and the economy relies on those people being able to have spare money to spend.
idiomat9000 · 1h ago
So rise up the prices to build a buffer war chest and strangle the economy
jameslk · 14h ago
> Repricing, though, isn’t as easy as changing a tag—in part because suppliers and big-box stores are engaged in an epic tussle over who will pay what.
> Retailers, including Lowe’s and Home Depot, buy Thompson Traders’ wares and set the retail price themselves. And they have been reluctant to pay Thompson Traders more.
It seems like this sort of scenario would benefit from some kind of risk protection, like insurance, or a futures market
brutal_chaos_ · 14h ago
So more middlemen to make the cunsumer pay even more, joy.
jameslk · 14h ago
Consumers will pay more regardless in this type of circumstance. But they will pay less if businesses don’t suddenly start going out of business, eliminating competition and jobs
Braxton1980 · 13h ago
Doesn't insurance normally work by protecting rare instances whose cost is amortized over the base?
This would be a claim by a large amount of insurance clients at once
jameslk · 12h ago
A sudden claim against many should be priced into the cost of the insurance, offset by some risk adjustment. The goal is ultimately price stability, if the price is not too high (that’s the unknown)
lazide · 11h ago
Insurance tends to do really badly in ‘black swan’ type situations. Which pretty much are what Trump is doing.
jameslk · 10h ago
Isn’t the point of insurance to provide protection against black swan events? If it’s more likely to happen then it’s not really a black swan?
adgjlsfhk1 · 6h ago
insurance is best for individually unlikely but societally likely items. otherwise pricing it is really hard.
It’s the difference between getting cancer (calculable, but perhaps not high probability), and getting hit by a meteorite (not actually calculable, very severe consequence).
JumpCrisscross · 11h ago
> would be a claim by a large amount of insurance clients at once
You’d insure against a specific product from a specific country being hit with a tariff. Tariffs are going up and down, sometimes in a way that may as well be random. (India not recommending Trump for a Nobel prize.) On its face, this doesn’t seem uninsurable.
eCa · 13h ago
In the current situation wouldn’t that just mean one more layer that don’t know how to price their product?
jameslk · 13h ago
My assumption is that businesses that are negotiating their prices between retailers are not experts in geopolitics and what the next move will be from the government and courts. Someone may study this more or have connections to know that better, and therefore are more willing to take bets
foxylad · 6h ago
I'd be suspicious as hell of any insurer offering cover in the current chaos.
SpicyLemonZest · 13h ago
I don't think it's an insurable risk. If you were trying to underwrite some "adverse effects of government regulation" policy in 2024, would a surprise 50% tariff on Indian exports have even entered your calculation?
estearum · 9h ago
Maybe not insurable, but there are firms buying and selling tariff and affiliated refund risk. Howard Lutnick's former firm is brokering such deals, in fact.
Perhaps in the short term but I wonder if that calculus changes as more time goes on with erratic tariff changes (which has technically been going on for years, just to a much lesser degree).
Is there a market need great enough for price stability to offset the risk? It seems tariff whiplash will be an ongoing problem
breadwinner · 13h ago
Trump is even using Tariff threats to strong-arm other countries to retreat on their climate goals [1]. If the Supreme Court agrees that the Trump can do this then that means we have a dictator — one that will do way more harm than the one in North Korea.
Don't forget tariffs in response to countries enforcing their own laws against an attempted military coup. We're paying higher prices on coffee because President Trump's friend is being charged with trying to overthrow the Brazilian government.
How can you possibly do more harm than the one in NK, literally starving your population?
breadwinner · 12h ago
The one in NK is doing that only to his own country. Trump is destroying the whole planet by withdrawing from the Paris agreement and then by strong-arming other countries to do the same. If we haven't already passed the tipping point Trump's actions will make sure we do, destroying all hope.
No comments yet
vkou · 11h ago
Nobody outside of SK, NK, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Of The People's Republic of China seriously two figs about anything that happens in NK.
The country could get hit by a meteor tomorrow, and nobody else would notice.
alex1138 · 10h ago
I give two figs about it, the guy should be arrested
FridayoLeary · 12h ago
Also trumps a fascist and NK is communist so the logic is inconsistent.
ronsor · 8h ago
No one cares about "fascism" or "communism"; these labels distract from the root of the problem: authoritarianism. Mind you, without excessive power and authority, neither hardcore fascists nor hardcore communists can do that much.
AngryData · 6h ago
So NK workers own or control the means of production?
FridayoLeary · 2h ago
That's not communism. They are all oppressed, impoverished and dehumanised by the mechanism of the state. Like China and the Soviet union.
kragen · 9h ago
The Paris agreement was very important when renewable energy required state subsidies, but it is no longer necessary. Fossil-fuel power is no longer economically competitive without subsidies thanks to (largely Chinese) improvements in the costs of solar panels and the necessary power electronics. Over a few decades, solar-powered energy superabundance will reduce the costs of atmospheric carbon capture to the point where even private charity can handle it.
On https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... you can see that mainstream solar panels have returned to their all-time low price of €0.100 per peak watt from November, while low-cost solar panels have fallen to a new all-time low of €0.055 per peak watt, an all-time low first achieved last month, and a 21% decline from a year ago. The "mainstream" category price is down 17% from a year ago. This is driving down the prices of complementary products and enabling new low-cost installation methods that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
This is one of the most historically important things happening in the world today, but it's surprisingly little known even among people who are otherwise well informed.
Even if Trump could strong-arm other rich countries into imposing US-style prohibitive tariffs on Chinese solar panels, he certainly won't strong-arm China, so the cat is out of the bag; that would just make those countries economically uncompetitive with Chinese products produced with superabundant solar energy. And panels are already being mass-produced overseas with Chinese technology at prices fossil fuels can't compete with.
DocTomoe · 3h ago
Ironically, the Chinese seem to disagree, as they bring online new Coal-powered power plants every other week, with 94.5 GW of new capacity having started construction in the first half of 2024 and another 66.7 GW approved. And that's 'permanently available', not (p) = peak.
"Solar is cheaper than fossil" does not look at the whole picture, it completely ignores that solar is not scalable quickly enough to meet rising energy demands. It also is a dark laugh towards consumers, who do not see prices lowering, but exponentially rising, ironically while the so-called cheap power sources are being rolled out.
boulos · 3h ago
To put it in perspective, China installed 277 GW of new solar capacity in 2024.
> Note: In 2024, 66.7 GW of new coal power capacity was permitted, a decline from previous years but still above the subdued pace seen earlier in the year. New and revived coal power proposals totaled 68.9 GW, down from 117 GW in 2023 and 146 GW in 2022, indicating a potential slowdown in project initiation. Meanwhile, construction started on 94.5 GW of new coal capacity — the highest since 2015 — suggesting continued momentum in project development. However, the pace of new coal plants entering operation has been more moderate, with 30.5 GW commissioned so far in 2024, down from 49.8 GW last year but in line with 2021 and 2022 levels.
China is well positioned to do solar + storage, but a lot of that coal is probably (a) for base load, (b) for steel production and (c) to keep the coal miners in business. From the same write up:
> In 2024, more than 75% of newly approved coal power capacity was backed by coal mining companies or energy groups with coal mining operations, artificially driving up coal demand even when market fundamentals do not justify it.
hereme888 · 7h ago
It's crazy how political bias causes such blindness on either side. You are literally skipping over the entire white house's reason for "strong-arming" other countries (aka demanding trade fairness). A dictator for protecting the interests of his own people... the insanity of the extreme left.
LeafItAlone · 7h ago
>for protecting the interests of his own people
I assume by “his own people” you mean him, his family, and his friends, right? That’s the only context this sentence would be true.
hereme888 · 7h ago
You're proving my point. Such extremist, black/white, and blind thinking.
AngryData · 6h ago
Seeing reality as it is doesn't make it black and white or blind. The dude hocked beans out of the White House for personal profit.
As well as big business, this is just shutting down or radically altering many small industries. FIlmmakers, authors/book publishers, musicians etc. are negatively incentivized to ship product to the US, so good luck if you are an American consumer with niche cultural hobbies or a specialized importer who does a lot of small-batch orders.
charcircuit · 11h ago
Books aren't tarrifed.
anigbrowl · 10h ago
That's good, but do you think you'll be able to ship to the US without restriction? I don't see post office counter workers working their way through the official list of exemptions published by the WH
>but do you think you'll be able to ship to the US without restriction?
Whenever I import goods the HS codes are provided for each item, so it shouldn't be hard to collect the correct amount of money for tariffs.
johnnienaked · 9h ago
Haven't tariffs been paused since they've been announced?
estearum · 9h ago
Some of them yes, some of them no. There are now several thousand different "tax brackets" for imported items and the apparent rates on them fluctuate by the day.
Gigachad · 9h ago
Most global post offices are just suspending packages to the US because they don’t know what the price is or how to pay it.
johnnienaked · 7h ago
Makes it hard to believe the administration's claims of hundreds of billions in revenue
georgeecollins · 5h ago
The best data I could find* was that tariffs Jan - Jun raised 93b in revenue (or 180b / year if it were constant- unlikely but who knows). For comparison, the 2025 deficit is $1865b, so tariffs could take a bite out of the deficit, but never come close to balancing the budget.
The most positive argument I have heard is that it would be a small consumption tax that is regressive. Small because the US doesn't really import that much compared to most global economies. It's just things we fixate on like cars or steel, which actually aren't that economically important anymore. Maybe strategically? I feel like people are trying to make economic sense of an emotional / populist policy.
this isn't true, tariffs are assessed within the US by the receiving firm, not on the sender's side. We run a business with a foreign supply chain and our suppliers have changed nothing, we just get an extra bill to pay to the government when our inventory arrives.
cbcoutinho · 4h ago
This is related to the removal of 'de minimis' rule that exempts parcels under $800 to ship duty free. This has caused some European postal services to stop/delay shipping some packages to the US [0]. The Dutch postal service for instance has stopped shipping to the US [1]
>"Specifically, the requirement for duties and taxes to be prepaid on all shipments prior to their arrival in the US,"
mallets · 5h ago
It's more the public postal services with very cheap international shipping, they typically can't or won't handle import customs/tariffs and operate under the assumption that the packages aren't valuable enough. Many of them don't even have tracking.
georgeecollins · 5h ago
Some have been paused, some have been raised (India for example). It seems to be pretty chaotic.
buyucu · 2h ago
It changes every week :)
Which is also very destructive because such instability is very bad for long-term business planning.
jmyeet · 8h ago
If you listen to any oil and gas experts and ask them which president was the best for the oil and gas industry, do you know who they'll say? Trump? Absolutely not. Bush? No. It's Obama.
Why? Because policy was stable during Obama. Whatever the policy is, if it's predictable, businesses can work around that. This was a real problem during the Biden term when there was constant policy shifts.
We're seeing that now with the tariffs. The problem isn't the tariffs so much as it is the uncertainty. They change from day to day.
One might be tempted to think the administration is intentionally trying to crash the economy. No, they just have absolutely no idea what they're doing and there's a dementia patient in charge nobody can so no to.
stinkbeetle · 5h ago
> If you listen to any oil and gas experts and ask them which president was the best for the oil and gas industry, do you know who they'll say? Trump? Absolutely not. Bush? No. It's Obama.
Hmm, it's not that I couldn't believe it was Obama, but this is like a 2nd-hand appeal to authority. I would be interested in a bit more data to see why this is.
> Why? Because policy was stable during Obama.
Now of course we can see there was a record period of near all-time high high oil prices from 2011 to 2014 which corresponds to US employment boom in the sector. Was that the Obama good times that oil and gas experts would refer to? That started to crash in 2015 though, and petroleum industry employment with it. Was that crash due to Obama policy or just global drop in oil prices behind taht?
Some might argue the high oil prices of 2011-2014 years are related to Obama's presidency, but it would probably be less about stable trade policy and more like references to the Arab Spring, peak of ISIS, capitulation to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
more_corn · 14h ago
Because the cost of goods continues to fluctuate wildly due to ongoing tariff wrangling that nobody asked for or needed.
Also farmers can’t sell anything because retaliation has destroyed international demand (I’d say decimated but it’s way worse than reduction by a tenth)
unnamed76ri · 14h ago
I don’t know if you can factually back up your claims but I applaud your proper use of decimate. It is a rare thing. One might even say it happens less than 10% of the time.
furyofantares · 14h ago
Decimation was way worse than reduction by a tenth. It was a punishment in the Roman army where the offending unit was divided into groups of 10 and each group had to draw straws. Whoever drew the short straw must be stoned or clubbed to death by the other 9.
If you threatened me with death if I didn't cut off my feet, I wouldn't consider that "reduction by 10%" even if mathematically it might be.
analog31 · 13h ago
Look on the bright side, it would have been much more harsh, had they worked in binary.
djoldman · 13h ago
Yep. 10 times worse.
underlipton · 13h ago
Would you say it's half as bad as the worst-case scenario?
nickpeterson · 13h ago
Could be worse, you could be stabbed.
mwcremer · 6h ago
At least it gets you out in the fresh air.
CorrectHorseBat · 14h ago
It's not proper use, it's archaic use. Do you also claim bread is meat? A cat is a deer?
dahart · 14h ago
I wouldn’t say archaic or historical definitions are improper, but you’re right - the primary meaning of decimate in English changed and now means to destroy the majority of. Maybe this is because decimate was always very damaging; threat of death is very serious, regardless of the numbers.
That said, I had sweet breads recently. And a cat being a deer sounds strange in English now, but deer is still the word for animal in other Germanic languages today, even if it faded in English, so it doesn’t sound completely archaic.
downrightmike · 13h ago
I split the hair where chickens were men
JumpCrisscross · 14h ago
> farmers can’t sell anything because retaliation has destroyed international demand
Not true. At least not yet.
Q2 agricultural exports were roughly flat to Q1 [1].
South America doesn't produce enough soy beans for them to replace America even if China bought every single ounce of soy.
When it comes to soy, America has enormous leverage and China already accepted they're negotiating from a position of weakness.
0cf8612b2e1e · 13h ago
Leverage? Soybeans are the number one US food export (historically mostly to China). To date, China has purchased zero bushels this year. This is with US soy being cheaper than the competition. Maybe China cannot replace 100% of their demand today, but they are showing a united front that their import numbers will be kept as low as possible.
…Basse says soybean importers aren’t just snubbing U.S. soybeans. They are specifically being told by the Chinese government to not buy U.S. beans.
“So, if you’re a Chinese importer or a Chinese crusher, you’ve been told by the government not to buy U.S. soybeans until they tell you to. This is how China works. Today the Chinese have a stronghold on buying United States soybeans, even though our prices are nearly $1 a bushel cheaper than what they’re buying in Brazil. This is the pressure that I believe the Chinese government is trying to apply on the Trump administration during a trade negotiation,”…
China may elect not to replace the whole shortfall. They may value the message it sends more.
0cf8612b2e1e · 10h ago
80% of soy is destined for animal feed. While there is undoubtedly some reason why chicken and pigs have historically been fed soy meal ($/kg, nutritional profile, speed of animal growth, etc) -animal feed seems very fungible. If there is a soybean deficit, seems plausible to swap to some other abundant crop.
jandrewrogers · 8h ago
Those crops would need to have been planted at scale months ago, with the full supply chain build-out leading up to that beforehand. The history of agricultural supply chains demonstrates that it is not nearly as agile as laypeople assume due to a long chain of sequential dependencies.
You either have to find a way to consume what is already in the pipeline or go without. Governments are very sensitive to the food security implications because there isn’t much slack politically to “go without”.
brazukadev · 13h ago
The worst scenario for China is inflation. They are fighting deflation so that would actually help them solve the issue.
LPisGood · 14h ago
Is that normal? It seems to me like we’d expect Q2 agricultural exports to usually be much higher than Q1.
I'm trying to imagine Trump playing any sort of musical instrument.
patchtopic · 9h ago
something good for small hands, some kind of russian flute?
mesk · 14h ago
Spending nights figuring out which tariffs apply to which imported goods is surely a well spent time for any business owner.
Yeah, complicated, costly and always changing regulations are great for doing business...
/s
vkou · 14h ago
Complicated, costly, and, as it turns out, illegal.
0cf8612b2e1e · 14h ago
Let’s see if the Supreme Court agrees. Dear Leader must be able to do as he pleases.
lazide · 14h ago
We’ll see what the Supreme Court says, or what happens after he shuffles the deck a few times and yells at people more. :s
The underlying issue is complete chaos and confusion caused by this situation, not just any specific actual Tariff or not.
underlipton · 13h ago
I kind of welcome this. Corporations panicking and being afraid to raise prices too much, and perhaps having to take a loss because they're essentially giving away product, is the LEAST that could happen to them after their naked and abusive COVID-era gouging.
EDIT: You had years of corporate stimulus and ZIRP expanding M2, but the inflation floodgates only opened after a paltry return of a small fraction of the real wage losses the middle class and lower sustained over that period? Live by the macro grift, die by the macro grift. And I wrote-in Bernie both times.
habinero · 13h ago
"Companies" aren't going to suffer. Their workers and vendors will, and the whole thing cascades.
underlipton · 13h ago
Their workers and vendors only suffer if their owners and executives decide to pass the buck of 1) poor management (not being able to set prices adequately), and 2) being in the socioeconomic class with the most influence on the most recent election. That class has expanded their wealth ludicrously during the last 3 presidential administrations, while most Americans have suffered. Any hits they take now are completely deserved, and nobly so if accepted willingly, in order to spare those lower on the ladder even more pain. (I am, of course, not holding my breath.)
habinero · 13h ago
"The workers only suffer if the owners deliberately act against their own interest" is "the workers will suffer" with more words tacked on the end.
underlipton · 13h ago
"The workers only suffer if the owners deliberately act against their own short-term self-interest in order to secure their workforce, their industry, and, ultimately, the economy, over the long term," is the more correct characterization, and accurately portrays the behavior as misanthropic and illogical for anyone expecting to live beyond the next handful of quarters.
Iwata took a paycut. The least our guys could do is take responsibility.
Guarantee that even if all tariffs were struck down they would price everything higher
mesk · 14h ago
No, why should they, there are many concurents out there.
But! Once the prices go up because of some taxes, they never go as low as they were before. Thats no theory, thats life.
Say good bye, to the prices you see now, you will never see them again ;-)
WalterBright · 12h ago
> Thats no theory, thats life.
It's inflation, which is caused by deficit spending.
The US didn't have inflation before 1914.
tombert · 12h ago
That is measurably untrue and it took me about ten seconds of searching to find it. https://www.billmeridian.com/articles-files/inflation.htm and many others. Historically I know you tend to argue pretty dishonestly but this was pretty easy to find and so either you're lying or didn't bother doing any research past reading Ayn Rand.
Also, prices spiking up from incompetent threats of tariffs and not coming down are categorically different than regular inflation. This is obvious and shouldn't need to be explained to you.
I think you might have been a little harsh on Walter. Perhaps the answer is more of a "yes and no" depending on your point of view. It does seem like inflation/deflation kind of canceled each other out before moving off the gold standard.
> It is probable that in 1913, while financial panics were not uncommon, high inflation was still largely seen by the founders of the Fed as a relatively rare phenomenon associated with wars and their immediate aftermath. Figure 1 plots the US price level from 1775 (set equal to one) until 2012. In 1913 prices were only about 20 percent higher than in 1775 and around 40 percent lower than in 1813, during the War of 1812. Whatever the mandates of the Federal Reserve, it is clear that the evolution of the price level in the United States is dominated by the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933 and the adoption of fiat money subsequently. One hundred years after its creation, consumer prices are about 30 times higher than what they were in 1913. This pattern, in varying orders of magnitudes, repeats itself across nearly all countries.
Not my area of expertise and no skin in the game, just wanted to point this out.
tombert · 8h ago
I am harsh on Walter because he tends to argue in bad faith in order to support some weird pro-business libertarian world view. He's super active on HN (as am I) so I have argued with him and there are multiple times he has said things that are outright dishonest (like once claiming that incompetent workers immediately get fired from corporations, a post I can't find quickly but is in my history somewhere, or trying to paint me as some alien-believing UFO fanboy which I am not).
So when he makes absolutist statements like "there was no inflation in the US before 1914", which is a typical springboard for libertarians to start complaining about the federal reserve and propose some idiotic Ayn Rand nonsense, I have trouble not being literal here.
WalterBright · 3h ago
The Fed is the cause of endemic inflation. Look at the chart I linked to.
By the way, I have never read Rand nor quoted her.
Visualizing Economics cites this source [1]. VE seem to lie about what it says.
Measuring Worth shows 1774 CPI at 7.8; by 1912 it is 9.4 [2]. That’s a low, low inflation rate of 0.1% per year, 20% over 138 years. But it’s not zero and it’s certainly not negative.
If we take 1790 (8.86) to 1914 (9.69), MW shows 0.07% annual inflation. That is the statistic you should be pointing to.
But! Within the 1790 to 1914 era we see inflation from 1790 to 1814 (2.75% annually; prices doubled over 20 years). During the Civil War, prices doubled in just five years; inflation 1860 to 1865 was over 14% annually. (CPI inflation goes to 2% annually between 1914 and 1944, 3.7% ‘44 to ‘76, 4.2% ‘76 to ‘08 and 2.4% from ‘08 to ‘24.)
We had inflation in America before the Federal Reserve. It was lower, long term, than it has been post Fed. But the common factor to our inflation is war. To the extent there is a link in these data, and I’m saying this having not noticed this before, it’s between inflation and war.
> That’s a low, low inflation rate of 0.1% per year,
See where I quoted: "-0.2% Average Annual Inflation 1774-1912"
BTW, inflation measurements before 1900 are a bit difficult, as how does one compare prices from 1774 with 1912? Not only are records poor, but the goods being compared are wildly different.
I.e. I don't know what the error bars are on the aggregate statistics, and neither do you. 0.1% and -0.2% are realistically well within the error bars. In fact, even today, 0.1% is likely within the error bars, as measuring inflation is fairly difficult, and there's always going to be noise as market prices are a chaotic system.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> where I quoted: "-0.2% Average Annual Inflation 1774-1912"
You quoted VE. They misquoted MW. If VE is adding error bars to MW’s data, they—one—should not. But if they do, they should show how they manipulated the data.
There is no legitimate source showing negative annual inflation between 1774 and 1912; your source’s own sole citation disagrees with its claim.
> 0.1% and -0.2% are realistically well within the error bars
What error bars?! They’re the same data!
Your chart on VE says it is showing data from MW. I took those same data and calculated the same number your chart claims to calculate with the same data they link to. The answer is different. And this isn’t, like, I used CAGR and they did simple growth because the sign flipped!
> inflation measurements before 1900 are a bit difficult, as how does one compare prices from 1774 with 1912?
You really can’t. Not meaningfully. You’re integrating data covering the pound sterling, Continental Congress, eras with no federal currency, eras with state and wildcat currency, and a civil war to boot. You’re also trying to compare a basket of wooden teeth and suet with one holding smartphones, gasoline and antibiotics.
But you brought the data and made the claim, and while VE is lying about what their source says, the actual data at MW is actually a legitimate attempt at the problem.
WalterBright · 1h ago
You're hanging your hat on a minute difference and ignoring the elephant on the graph.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
I’m saying the data the graph cites says something different from what the graph says it does. The graph is lying about what its source says.
JumpCrisscross · 11h ago
We’ve also been running deficits since the birth of our nation [1]. Perpetual deficits are a post-WWII thing, not post-Fed.
Yeah but that doesn't align at all with the "1914 Federal Reserve is Evil Boogeyman".
A lot of libertarian "bad guys" tend to be pretty reductive, or just outright lies.
WalterBright · 3h ago
Inflation started the year after the Fed was created.
See "Monetary History of the United States" by Milton Friedman.
JumpCrisscross · 3h ago
Can you quote where Friedman says “inflation [in America] started the year after the Fed was created”?
What you may be trying to say is until about 1900 there was little secular (i.e. fundamental long-term) inflation, given price levels oscillated more than they moved [1]. But the change to steady inflation pre-dates the Fed. And the secular shift to constant inflation starts in WWII, not 1914 or 1976.
The chart I showed did not show "steady inflation" before the Fed. The Depression is a bit of a special case, the deflation there was also caused by the Fed and their misunderstanding of how to adapt to changing conditions.
"The Federal Reserve System therefore began operations with no
effectiye legislative criterion for determining the total stock of money.
The discretionary judgment of a group of men was inevitably substituted
for the quasi-automatic discipline of the gold Standard." pg 193
"The stock of money, which had been rising at a moderaterate through-out 1914, started to rise at an increasing rate in early 1915, rose
most rapidly, as prices did, from late 1915 to mid-1917, and then resumed
its rapid rise before the end of 1918, rather sooner than prices did.
At its peak, in June 1920, the stock of money was roughly double its
September 1915 level and more than double the level of November 1914,
when the Federal Reserve Banks opened for business." pg 198
"The Reserve System was thus in an asymmetrical position. It had the
power to create high-powered money and to put it in the hands of the
public or the banks by rediscounting paper or by purchasing bonds or
other financial assets. It could therefore exert an expansionary influence
on the money stock." pg 213
"The large federal government deficits, totaling in all some $23 billion,
or nearly three-quarters of total expenditures of $32 billion from April
1917 to June 1919, were financed by explicit borrowing and by money
creation.30 The Federal Reserve became to all intents and purposes the
bond-selling window of the Treasury, using its monetary powers almost
exclusively to that end. Although no "greenbacks" were printed, the
same result was achieved by more indirect methods using Federal Re
serve notes and Federal Reserve deposits. At the beginning of U.S.
participation in the war, Federal Reserve notes accounted for 7 per cent
of high-powered money and bank deposits at Federal Reserve Banks for 14
per cent" pg 217
"The Reserve Board was aware that Bank discount rates were below
current market rates throughout 1919, that this was contributing to
monetary expansion, and that monetary expansion was contributing to
the inflation." pg 222
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
I’m not seeing anything in these quotes claiming there wasn’t inflation in America before the Fed.
WalterBright · 1h ago
The Friedman quotes attributed inflation to the actions of the Fed.
As for inflation through the history of the US, see:
> Friedman quotes attributed inflation to the actions of the Fed
Then this is a lie:
“Inflation started the year after the Fed was created.
See ‘Monetary History of the United States’ by Milton Friedman” [1].
> for inflation through the history of the US, see
I’ve already pointed out how that source lies about the data it cites [2].
I will assume you’re misunderstanding what you’re reading. But it’s too close to willful dishonesty for me to continue to engage if you’re just going to double down.
There are many concurrents? How do you figure? There has never been as little choice and alternatives, let alone actual competition than today.
A few corporations control most of the food you eat, even less control the food you eat in restaurants. Very few media companies control the "content" you can consume and you cannot even own it, let alone sell or even trade it, and it seems everyone just pays more whether they keep raising their prices.
You own very little, are you getting happier?
jameslk · 13h ago
Historically this would be a good bet, due to inflation:
Not really a question of that. More so how much will prices go up
rsynnott · 3h ago
While there are industries where that might be the case (and, if and when the Trump tariffs are removed, companies will absolutely take advantage for a bit), most industries are actually pretty low-margin, due to competition. If you're a supermarket chain, say, your net profit margin is probably under 5%.
Retric · 14h ago
How do you come to that conclusion? It seems wildly inaccurate.
hopelite · 13h ago
Because it's market/human psychology.
Reality is simply that industries are locking in tariff increase price expectations because they can (Wal Mart is even already increasing prices and the tariffs may not and have not yet even started impacting prices).
It's just like how everyone started expecting a tip everywhere at all times at 25%, 35% rates during COVID and that not only has not disappear, it got even worse for a while before leveling off and the tip expectation is now north of 20% on average.
It's a common human behavior, a kind of ladder, the realization that "wow, I got away with all the previous increase rates, let's keep up the price increase rates since everyone has come to expect them".
Another example, car dealership premiums; they're still trying to push those and there is clearly a limited market and an unspoken agreement to keep them going across the dealerships. If people expect certain price increase rates, they have normalized those increases in their minds.
It's also why the fed has always "targeted 2% inflation" because it's a small amount that can be normalized over 12 months and you don't even notice it. But it's a steady rate that can be siphoned off the whole economy without people noticing the theft by fraud. You didn't complain about the fed stealing 2% of your wealth every single year, compounded all your life before they started stealing 5-12% for the last 5 years, did you? Sure, they can't get away with increased rates forever, lest the whole system collapse, but without someone/something forcing the hand, why should they stop. We are STILL hearing how the consumer is strong, while various revolving credit balances are increasing and people are just squandering future/other people's money, why would they care if they have to pay more, so why would sellers care not to increase prices if people are just willing and able to charge more.
tuatoru · 10h ago
80 percent plus of economic activity is domestic: all its inputs are entirely unaffected by tariffs.
This is a Premier Cru Red Herring.
throwawaysleep · 10h ago
> all its inputs are entirely unaffected by tariffs.
80% of economic activity imports nothing? 80% of economic activity doesn’t involve on oil, cars/trucks, or computers?
edaemon · 6h ago
20% of the economy is a massive portion.
estearum · 9h ago
Do you have a source on this?
nemo44x · 9h ago
Trump has been the greatest success to the USA in 40 years. He’s exposed that the world is swimming naked. If you can’t see how his admin bent the EU over the barrel then you’re beyond hope. China and India have recently realized they’re just supporting actors.
This is a rebalancing so of course it’s uncomfortable for some that have been too comfortable. So much opportunity out there right now.
padjo · 2h ago
A perfect example of the simple-minded zero-sum thinking that’s going to make the world much worse the more it takes hold.
rexpop · 9h ago
"Swimming naked," "bent... over the barrel," "supporting actors."
Do you always speak in grotesque metaphor, or are you capable of referring to concrete phenomena? Congratulations, there is a part of my mind that finds your vague idiom disconcerting. Moreso I am resigned to take your entire cadre less seriously—if such a downgrade is possible.
No that you care; I am "beyond hope!"
estearum · 9h ago
> In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him.
This is how you know most economic theory is a total lie, if it wasn't they would just "price what people are willing to pay" and be forced to eat the loss. Is that cause copper bathtubs are a special item or are you just making up more rules after the fact to patch holes in your leaky theory.
thayne · 14h ago
It's because basic economic theory makes some really bad assumptions. It assumes everyone has the information they need, and sellers can instantaneously change prices in response to changes in demand or cost of production.
Neither of which is true in the real world.
wtallis · 14h ago
I don't think you've successfully demonstrated that those assumptions are bad. They're simplifying assumptions that are necessary to have a "basic" economic theory in the first place—one with tractable and understandable mathematics that can produce an answer without immediately dumping you into partial differential equations or requiring impossibly detailed input data.
The assumptions are only bad if they prevent the simple models from being useful, and the existence of a scenario where a model's simplifying assumptions prevent it from being useful does not prove that the model is worthless.
thayne · 13h ago
I don't think the model is worthless. But there also going to be many real world scenarios where they aren't good enough.
It's like doing physics where you assume perfectly uniform spherical objects in a vacuum. It isn't worthless just because that isn't how the real world works, but depending on the circumstance it can also give you incorrect results, and sometimes even be way off.
WalterBright · 12h ago
> It assumes everyone has the information they need
This is incorrect. Lack of information is priced in as "risk".
sethammons · 4h ago
This is satisfying similar to the ai response in Hyperion as (spoilers) the entire system collapses.
anigbrowl · 13h ago
It's not so much that theory makes these assumptions, as that they describe the simplest economic models. You can make your models as detailed or not as you'd like, but the more work to construct/operate/understand them, the lower your likely return on that effort. It's just like how some people want simplistic games like Candy Crush, others want high investment ones like Dwarf Fortress.
JumpCrisscross · 14h ago
> basic economic theory makes some really bad assumptions. It assumes everyone has the information they need, and sellers can instantaneously change prices in response to changes in demand or cost of production
This…is not true. What theory are you referring to?
Its a long time known flaw in economics. Im sure there are better models but i still agree with GP, the scientific field of economics is still a joke on par with psychology.
SpicyLemonZest · 13h ago
There's nothing in this article about an assumption of perfect information or of instantaneous price changes.
trehans · 14h ago
Or... there is some elasticity with price and supply/demand, which falls totally within microeconomics
coliveira · 13h ago
Economic theory makes some unsubstantiated assumptions, like consumers have information needed to make decisions, and those decisions are rational. In the real world the market is determined by external events that consumers have no way to know.
WalterBright · 12h ago
"Risk" is the term for unknown information, and is priced in.
anigbrowl · 13h ago
Most economic theory is good, but most theory salespeople are flogging a simplistic version of it. 'Pure' price theory demands perfect market information and zero costs to enter/exit the market - that's why it's easiest to study on extremely fungible commodities.
In real world markets economics considers elasticity, arbitrage, and distribution of market information between producers, wholesalers, retailers, buyers etc. But very little of that finds its way into op-eds or blogs aimed at a non-academic audience.
detourdog · 14h ago
.I’m not sure about economics Our complex supply chain has created an environment where the cost of something is tied to externalities. I think not knowing the cost of the various steps of production is a problem.
rsynnott · 3h ago
> This is how you know most economic theory is a total lie, if it wasn't they would just "price what people are willing to pay" and be forced to eat the loss
... Wait, why on earth would businesses do that? "Yeah, we're in the business of buying X for a dollar and selling it for 90 cents". What economic theory are you referring to that makes that in any way plausible?
When input prices go up, output prices go up, and usually consumption falls.
watwut · 14h ago
> if it wasn't they would just "price what people are willing to pay" and be forced to eat the loss
Classical economic theory predicts literally the opposite. It predicts the prices will go up exactly as if the base materials became more expensive. Classical economic theory predicts that free market produces lowest possible prices and thus any tarif means price up.
more_corn · 14h ago
Economic theory covers what happens when the cost of goods goes up for suppliers. Prices go up for consumers. But the costs haven’t stopped fluctuating.
s1mplicissimus · 14h ago
Now that I think about it, creating confusion and uncertainty is actually a pretty effective move if you want to play protectionism.
Any "known" tariff would just be paid as far as still profitable.
jonplackett · 14h ago
Don’t really buy this logic.
If you want companies to invest in your country, the tariff has to make doing so make financial sense, and for the long term.
A lot of these tariffs are going on things that would require a whole factory to be built in the USA which doesn’t currently exist at all, and has no supporting infrastructure or workforce.
Companies can’t just decide right now, “oh shit there’s a tariff. Better but it in the USA right away!”
anigbrowl · 13h ago
Right, and if you're a non-American producer do you want to make massive forced investments to sell into the US market, or put less money into developing your presence in other markets that are not as hostile/unpredictable.
downrightmike · 13h ago
Probably some of the uncertainty, and the fact that these tariffs are illegal, so they wouldn't stand long
thayne · 14h ago
Maybe. But if your goal is to incentivize more domestic manufacturing, putting tariffs on the raw materials to do that manufacturing and build new factories is pretty counterproductive.
No comments yet
JumpCrisscross · 14h ago
> if you want to play protectionism
It’s great if you want to grant yourself the power to exempt those who please or pay you.
declan_roberts · 13h ago
The most important target in negotiations is still China.
I will not accept that every American company must partner with a Chinese company and allow China to steal every bit of our IP and US citizen data from that relationship.
Tariff them to 10,000% until that changes.
apimade · 13h ago
I just realised for the first time in my life I’ve decided to delete my comment/reply because I’m concerned with how it’ll be used.
I will say this; different countries wield different powers at their disposal.
It’s unfair how China conducts business, but other countries can be equally exploitative.
sethammons · 4h ago
Trump is killing freedom of speech.
I don't understand how any supporter can claim to love our country.
That’s kind of the sad thing with this tariffs stuff, isn’t it? That it can actually be a sharp and effective weapon to set some things straight that badly need to be set straight, but this whole execution feels… suboptimal.
SpicyLemonZest · 13h ago
I don't understand the point of this comment. If you consider the most important target to be China, so important that it's worth a 10,000% tariff unless certain demands are met, shouldn't you be furious that the tariffs the source article describes on copper and India and Turkey are distracting from the important things?
declan_roberts · 13h ago
No because it's obvious those countries don't have the leverage to negotiate. Trump hasn't even started discussing h1b with India.
coliveira · 13h ago
So what you want is extortion, not trade. It's a worldwide version of the mafia.
declan_roberts · 9h ago
Maybe we should just lay down and let the world do whatever they want. I would hate to be accused of negotiating from a position of power.
henrikschroder · 53m ago
The entire post-WWII world order was deliberately designed by clever Americans who knew how to use the situation to its full advantage. Enshrining the USD as the world's reserve currency, a network of military bases around the world to protect trade lanes, a combination of propaganda and economic incentive to bring the best and brightest to work in the US, while deliberately transforming the economy from a manufacturing economy to a service and finance economy, always putting itself in a position to be able to extract rent from everyone else.
The last vestiges of this world order was the TPP. The US negotiated a trade deal that would cement its top position in the Pacific region, while curbing China's growing economy and influence.
And then Trump axed it, because he didn't understand it.
China understood perfectly what an opportunity that was for them, and they have been quietly become less and less reliant on trade with the US since.
The current US regime is now hell-bent on dismantling the remaining alliances, relationships, and trade agreements that actually kept the US on top, the ones that actually kept the US powerful.
...while baselessly claiming that the existing world order was somehow "unfair" or "a bad deal", and that whatever the hell they're doing now is restoring some kind of lost power. They clearly have no clue what the source of America's power really is.
And here you are repeating their talking points.
What do you mean, exactly, when you're saying that the US shouldn't "let the world do whatever they want" ? What specific trade policies do you think are unfavourable to the US?
mindslight · 8h ago
Chest thumping false bravado will mislead you every time.
If I go to a restaurant, wait an hour for a table, get very hungry, and then see on the menu that the restaurant has tripled prices, is the restaurant "negotiating from a position of power" ? Sure, once.
What exactly do you think happens to our power after Trump squanders it to extract one-time concessions that mostly flow into his own pockets?
platevoltage · 13h ago
Trump has all of his grifty garbage made in china. Trump uses H1Bs. None of this is to make you or anyone you know's life better.
SpicyLemonZest · 12h ago
Sorry, I'm imposing my personal tariff on this conversation. You obviously don't have enough leverage to be worth my time, you'll need to pay me $100 or accept my general boycott of Trump supporters.
habinero · 13h ago
Putting aside the idea that American companies can hold their own and China doesn't pay the tariffs, it really wasn't necessary to tank the entire economy and kick off a depression to do this.
I guess they can't steal IP if we have no IP to steal, so there is that.
hippo22 · 13h ago
I’d like to lay out an argument about why tariffs are good.
The only businesses that are derailing with tariffs issues are those that import goods to sell. The argument against tariffs is that they make goods more expensive.
Of course, this argument is true. But that’s not the end of the story.
Because prices are higher for imported goods, demand for domestically produced goods increases. This increase in demand leads to increased demand for labor, which can increase wages. Additionally, the money multiplier effect is higher when money is kept domestically vs paid to offshore parties.
Finally, I think it’s ridiculous to expect that this nation can maintain its wealth without producing anything. We act as if the producers of food are fungible cogs that businesses can swap out. But I think we’ll find that management is the fungible part. Anyone can sell a quality good. Knowing how to make it is what’s important. I’m surprised that mindset doesn’t resonate more with software engineers.
SR2Z · 12h ago
Except for one little thing: countries have comparative advantage in the production of different goods and services. Boeing is great at turning aluminum and steel (low in the value chain) into jetliners (at the top of the value chain).
Because of this, Boeing gets to make thousands of jetliners and sell them all across the world and America gets to be one of very few places that can do this.
I think you'll find that steel and aluminum are a lot more fungible than jetliner factories. Why are we kneecapping what we're good at for the sake of things that China will ALWAYS be better than us at?
> Finally, I think it’s ridiculous to expect that this nation can maintain its wealth without producing anything.
The total value of US exports has only ever gone up (see above).
I do get the argument for moving manufacturing expertise back onshore, I really do. But tariffs are not gonna lower the minimum wage and if manufacturing is gonna come back to the US, it'll come back in a highly automated form with a boatload of government support.
charlie90 · 6h ago
>China will ALWAYS be better than us
Comparative advantage is not innate. China was a rural country and didn't have a comparative advantage in manufacturing, they developed it and are now a powerhouse.
Nothing worth doing is easy. I don't know why Americans think that if its not easy, it's not worth doing. Americans 80 years ago would hate us for what we have become today.
SirHumphrey · 3h ago
In some sense of the word “manufacturing” china has several thousand years of experience in silk production. It also has - and had for much of it’s history - a stable government overseeing a high order society. The situation makes a lot more sense if we stop thinking about “the rise” of china and more “return to the historical norm”. There are a lot of other countries with cheap labour and governments desiring to industrialise that have achieved nothing like china did.
SanjayMehta · 10h ago
Boeing is going to be the first company to feel the pain of Trump’s tariffs.
The govt of India has already put one small order on hold and the word in aviation circles is to switch to Airbus as far as possible.
Military purchases now also won’t happen.
Peter Navarro in one of his rants inadvertently leaked this out on TV: his specific issue was a demand for mandatory tech transfer and manufacturing in India.
dalyons · 13h ago
Perhaps if tariffs were implemented in a somewhat sane way, your argument might have more merit. Today, we are also tariffing the raw materials needed for domestic production, including many that have zero or insufficient local production. so it actually makes it harder and more expensive to meet demand domestically.
Plus, with the fickle and chaotic application of trumps tariffs, you’d be insane to invest in domestic production.
kristjansson · 13h ago
A cogent, long range tariff and industrial policy might accomplish something like this over a period of years. Does that describe the last 6 months?
hippo22 · 13h ago
Sure, a cogent policy would be ideal. But you can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. America was getting their lunch eaten well before Trump. At least the tariff policy is an attempt at rectifying the situation.
JumpCrisscross · 12h ago
> you can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good
You can let bad be the enemy of both good and perfect.
Investment in manufacturing structures is down in ‘25 [1]. Manufacturing activity in the northeast is down, with “the new orders index dip[ping] into negative territory” [2].
Tariffs can reduce trade imbalances and incentivize domestic production. We’re not doing that. Our tariffs are too volatile. They tax manufacturing inputs. Tweets grasping for the straws of a Nobel prize cede prized export markets like India to China [3]. Cancelled licenses for nearly-complete projects add risk [4].
The policies of a degrowth leftist who wanted to reduce our industrial output and pivot to manufacturing would be virtually identical.
From your first link, investment in manufacturing is lower than in 2024 (by like 3%), but both 2024 and 2025 (Trump’s presidency) are the highest datapoints in that dataset.
Also, your second link generally paints a mixed picture, not an outright negative one:
> On balance, the firms indicated an increase in employment, and the price indexes rose further above their long-run averages. The survey’s broad indicators for future activity suggest that firms continue to expect growth over the next six months.
I think it’s misguided to interpret current data as evidence either for or against the current policies. This is something that’s going to take a decade plus to play out. Trying to use data to call winners 6 months in isn’t really possible.
goosedragons · 12h ago
Lunch eaten by whom? Who was eating the world's richest country's lunch? The only lunch eating going on is the American rich eating the poors', something that's only accelerated under Trump. The tariffs are a tax that is most disproportionate on the poor. And they are in no way, shape or form actually intelligently designed to help them. It's just stupid madness.
henrikschroder · 40m ago
It's actually pretty amazing that the current regime has managed to get people to believe that the current world order, where the US has been sitting on top for decades and managed to extract the largest piece of the growing world trade cake, somehow means that the US is being taken advantage of.
There's more than one commenter in this post that talks about "other countries walking all over the US", or claiming that capitalist free trade allowing American consumers to purchase ridiculous amounts of stuff is somehow a scam?
It's as infuriating as it is mindboggling how people can fall for it. It's completely baseless.
mrstone · 8h ago
This is one of the most surface-level understandings of national economics that I have seen. Sure, all of that would be great, if not for two things a) these tariffs are not targeted and b) your country could produce everything that it is tariffing. What is the plan for cocoa beans? bananas? aluminum and steel?
These thinly veiled pro-trump people are much too common the internet and I'm getting tired of it.
macintux · 13h ago
How do businesses hire local labor for non-existent manufacturing facilities? Why would anyone spend the massive amounts of money over years required to make new factories when people expect that eventually sanity and rule of law will return to the White House?
blargey · 12h ago
"Demand for domestic goods" includes a lot of exports. And when the foreign policy is explicitly "the US vs everyone else", it's obviously the US businesses that will have nowhere else to go as the retaliatory tariffs hit the businesses/industries that were previously strong.
jameslk · 13h ago
Incentives work better than tariffs. Tariffs are less effective due to their uncertainty (why would I build a factory if the next admin removes the tariffs?)
toasterlovin · 10h ago
The problem with incentives is that they need to be ongoing. It doesn’t matter how cheap it is to build a factory in the US if foreign competition can still bring comparable products to market for cheaper. Because then you won’t sell anything, so your ROI is zero.
hippo22 · 13h ago
The fact that X is more effective than Y is not an argument against Y if X and Y are not mutually exclusive.
adgjlsfhk1 · 6h ago
the real problem is that sudden tariff changes are one of the worst tools imaginable. building large scale factories requires spending billions that will only pay off over decades. if the tariff changes every month that's one of the worst things you can do to build confidence in long term bets.
jameslk · 12h ago
Sure, I get your point. It all comes down to the pros and cons of each on the rest of the economic system. The goal isn’t to get industry onshore at the expense of the economy. If you have a better tool, use that instead
esseph · 13h ago
Both raw materials and finished goods are tariffed.
So if the idea is to be more self sustaining: we cannot.
Is the argument here what we should forgo important things because they’re difficult? As far as I can tell, the difficulty will only increase as time goes on.
adgjlsfhk1 · 5h ago
no. the argument is that show deliberate policy is how you fix long term systematic problems. flash grenades thrown by toddlers just make everything worse.
esseph · 12h ago
It is neither in our best interests to continue this, because I can't give you the level of detail this can. It would be a pale imitation of the reasons in front of you.
Basically, there is no way we "win" this economically through tariffs. Nor can we power through it by trying to throw labor at the problem, because the labor cost is cheaper everywhere else.
mcdoogal · 11h ago
How about direct orders from retailers in foreign countries of products that aren’t made domestically (and are so specialized and small market in the US that there’s no world where they manufacture here)? I’ve already been burned on specialty products just suspending shipping here due to tariff uncertainty in addition to the various postal services suspending to the US, like JP Post.
apical_dendrite · 12h ago
How does this argument apply to a good like coffee? We drink a lot of coffee, and it makes us more productive, but we produce very little of it. Maybe we could increase coffee production in Hawaii, but since we can use the land and the labor for more high-value purposes, it would cost a lot more than importing it from Brazil or Colombia. So when we slap a 50% tariff on Brazil, the average American ends up consuming less of something that they enjoy and find valuable, or paying more to consume the same amount. Maybe some land owners and agricultural workers in Hawaii benefit. Doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade-off.
I think there are some categories of goods where protectionism makes sense for national security reasons, but for most goods, I don't really see the value of propping up less productive domestic production and causing increased prices for consumers. Do we need to make underwear in America? Or toys?
And of course tariffs are not one-sided, so retaliatory tariffs hurt the domestic industries where our exports are competitive, which tend to be high-value.
abtinf · 13h ago
Mercantilism is evil.
sneak · 13h ago
This would make sense if there were a single labor market. There isn’t, so this simply increases prices (even for domestic goods, as raw materials are frequently imported).
There is no meaningful path to restoring much of the US’s lost manufacturing capacity. The rent is too damn high, and the cost of goods is rising quickly as well. Labor is expensive and becoming moreso daily. Manufacturing in the US can never compete with SE asia even with 50% tariffs due to the gigantic disparity in the cost of labor.
It’s not going to increase wages, it may even result in even more offshoring due to the increases in cost for raw materials.
hippo22 · 13h ago
Low labor costs are not why goods are produced in China. That viewpoint is outdated. Goods are produced in China because they have the most capacity and expertise. Don’t believe me. Believe Tim Cook: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2wacXUrONUY
He’s giving that speech in China. It’s impossible to know if he’s glazing or not. Either way, I would want to hear him commit to building those factories in the US if education was not a factor. I suspect real estate costs, unions, OSHA, and US wages are bigger factors than he’s letting on. Still, I’m not going to fault the man for complimenting China while speaking to a Chinese audience.
sneak · 12h ago
Oh, that too. China is the best place to manufacture most precision goods today, period, independent of labor costs.
But even if you could wave a magic wand and put the USA on equal footing in terms of skills and experience and capability, it would still cost several times more to
make the same goods in the USA due to the labor costs (and labor-adjacent overhead costs like workplace safety).
Both would need to be solved, and I think that solving either one alone is already basically impossible on any short- or medium-term timescale. A tiny bandaid like tariffs isn’t going to move the needle.
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Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in.
NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html
It is rather interesting to see the difference in standards of accountability for different presidents. Some are responsible for the economy even if its behavior is not sure to their actions. Others are not responsible for poor economic performance even when taking actions universally agreed to harm the economy.
Before tariffs, in the post-pandemic recovery, we also didn't see hiring go back to pre-pandemic levels. There are other forces like AI adoption.
I don't have good intuition around the connection between tariffs and jobs. Yes, higher inflation may require cooling down the economy. But right now it looks like rates will be going down and anyways rates haven't really slowed down the economy that much. Inflation did come down. Inflation can have some benefits too for employers, it erodes the employee's salaries (and potentially other costs). If companies can raise prices and not pass that on to employees or to their suppliers (as they've seemingly done during this last inflation cycle) then it can be a win for them. A weaker dollar can also help US companies compete globally.
If companies are doing well and growing, and they seem to be, why aren't they hiring more? The largest US tech companies are sitting on piles of cash and making huge profits, for some time now. Is it just that they've become more productive and need less people? Maybe they don't have anywhere to put more people towards? Maybe they're hiring outside the US (this one is not a maybe- they are). Is the uncertainty related to progress in AI? to other macro factors?
Nobody mentioned yet the drop of the dollar making every single import 10% more expensive since the start of the year. That is on top of every tariff and is inflationary.
Government spending went up by a surprising amount while tariff revenue rolls in. I suspect one reason there is no detailed budget is to create the space to move things around without much notice. If a large swath of the tariffs would be ruled illegal (already happened twice, one step to final) the situation could become interesting.
That's true, but it didn't predate the election of a man who has made his understanding of tariffs and economics crystal clear in the months and years leading up to January 2025.
> Trump has made tariffs a central campaign pledge in order to protect US industry. He has proposed new 10-20% tariffs on most imported foreign goods, and much higher ones on those from China.
That uncertainty makes it very hard to manufacture goods or buy raw materials.
You now have a situation where one week the cost of a commodity is X and the following week it could be 2X. The butterfly effect across industries also cannot be predicted.
Many industries also seem to be still recovering from the pandemic period with supply of spare parts still being de-prioritised over making parts available for new units. :/
Only all the people who voted for them and all the people who voted against them?
Imagine trying to get a loan from a bank to make a USA manufacturing plant, pointing to the 150% Chinese tariff. A week later the tariff is 25%. Does your math still work? Probably not. Will that bank continue the loan? Nope. Will the bank even entertain a similar proposal from someone else right now? Nope.
If you want to grow USA manufacturing you need to subsidize it, or give private industry confidence it's not going to lose them money. If you can't do that, your relying on charity / non-profit / philanthropy... And I don't see many of those in manufacturing.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/22/trump-tariffs-replace-income...
It’s going to be difficult to suss out a signal from employment data until October or November, by when we should have about half a year of post-tariff data [2] to compare with ‘24. (We may not know anything surely for a year.)
[1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/sa-methodology-...
[2] https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2025/trumps-tariff...
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[1] https://www.nyc.gov/assets/omb/downloads/pdf/sa-methodology-...
[2] https://www.census.gov/data/software/x13as.html
(I am an immigrant myself (via the legal means) lest you take my observation as a xenophobic expression.)
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Source: Me trying to use it and encountering prior fraud. Light reading suggests many have experienced it.
Well run systems experience fraud. It's something you generally want to minimize, but like, it's not necessarily an indicator that the system is broken. Like... AWS has tons of fraud. AWS is still very much not a disaster. (Well, it kind of is a disaster, but mostly because it's a machine that chews up humans via oncall, which is unrelated to their fraud.)
https://youtube.com/@rossmanngroup
If there’s demand for 5 million units and supply of 4 million, prices will go up and 1 million will move out of the city
You can't wave this away with "NYC is a leading indicator for the US economy". To the extent that it's true at all, you could say it about any large city in the US.
[1] Like, say: interest rates, the business cycle, AI, the slowdown in software hiring, or the minimum wage increase that NYC implemented on January 1, 2025.
“Ignore this data point, NYC is special.” Color me skeptical.
I'll put it this way: if I were ignoring it, I'd be ignoring one more data point than you are in cherry-picking a single example.
> “Right now, we have zero bushels of soybeans on the books with China for this fall harvest that has begun in the Deep South,” Ragland said. “Normally by this time, close to 40% of our sales for the marketing year are on the books. And with zero on the books right now, it is alarming for American soybean farmers.”
https://www.farmprogress.com/soybean/us-soybean-exports-to-c...
The first time that Trump screwed over with tariffs, they got tons of bailout money that we all paid for.
Not all sectors of the economy are so lucky. The big man at the top must be paid with either bribes or allegiance or both.
The big, blinking, obvious YoY change for anyone here is tech employment.
For example you can tariff bananas all you like, that won't spark widespread banana production in a climate that can't grow them.
Not arguing one way or another, but your reduction isn’t quite accurate with the affects tariffs can have
The most insane ending is that tarrifs are reverted but most of the price hike will stay for good.
The import tariff from Vietnam is 20% and Thailand is 19%.
That being said, the copper, steel, and aluminum tariffs announced recently are real and have been assigned import classification codes by US Customs (which is when new tariffs to become real).
40 years from now people will wonder why folk threw away all common sense to go on a lunatic rampage with a sledgehammer.
Instead of facing problems and solving them with due patience.
If the trend keeps on the next stage is political violence. And then it's a short fuse to a second civil war.
This is the point in time the US declined.
You will never see Putin outsourcing civilian tasks to the military.
Progressive policies have failed every where they're applied. It's time for law and order to restore this great land and free people from the tyranny of unabated criminal activity.
I doubt the subject will be about tariffs. It'll more than likely be why we let children castrate themselves, men abolish female athletics, and the consequences of an open border.
China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries ask for their help. That's why China's growth must be curbed, fast > tariff them to their death or so. But I really don't think it will work at all. And personally I don't even think it's a good idea at all to begin with.
Instead we should just have tariffs instead of actually making the lives of Americans better while FIGHTING affordable housing, high speed rail, and EVs.
We've got an entire team of goons who would rather rack up penalty minutes than score goals. These freaks think we are competing with China in an MMA fight instead of a Hockey game.
More than that, I think China would be mad not to step into the vacuum the US is creating with it's isolationist policies. For years US aid has been extremely influential around the world, doing a huge amount of good (e.g. USAID) and buying relatively cheap influence in many countries. Countries that were reliant on that aid are going to be understandably jaded by their experience with the US and looking for more reliable allies.
As long as they are cooperating with Russia at least European countries will have a hard time to accept China's advances.
It’s the zero-sum mindset of leadership that only ever learned to excel by cheating and stealing, not cooperating, building, or synergizing.
The constitution of the People's Republic of China and the CCP constitution state that its form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship".
The current president has done much to make his appointment for life, so it is a dictatorship that is on the road towards having a dictator.
Cue comparisons to what is currently happening in the US.
A socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.
I think you're ignoring some of the poetic intention of those words, the idea is that the Marxist collective is the dictator. It's turning the concept on its head to put the people at the forefront.
In other contexts such as casual conversation here in the West the term dictatorship means something quite different and you seem to understand that too because you say they're "on the road towards having a dictator" which is surely an admission that they currently do not have a dictator and are ergo but currently a dictatorship.
I'll certainly grant you that Xi has made moves to consolidate power in the individual but that's a separate discussion.
It all comes down to a lot of people in other parts of the world being willing to work for far less, for far longer hours, under far worse conditions, than Americans. Anything you can make in the USA will thus be more expensive, and until you’ve re-acquired all the domain knowledge lost to other nations, these quality will also be worse. As most people don’t want to buy something worse for more, you’ll need to force them to by making it unreasonable to import foreign goods (which is already happening), but that also means you limit the market to domestic. I fail to see how that is a viable strategy, unless you aim to wage war on the rest of the world and can’t trust anyone.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON
Biden was inaugurated in January 2021 and Trump won the election in November 2024.
Part of the problem is that it runs up against the corporate lobbies who would rather take a higher short term profit margin, let American industry hollow out and buy gold + a luxury bunker in New Zealand to prep for the worst case scenario.
Tax breaks, grants, physical infrastructure, creation of entire markets - those are better tools.
The issue with tariffs is non-competetive companies aren't required to become more competitive.
I mean consider it, a tariff is a tax on those buying a specific competitors goods. Even if tariffs were done surgically, still it seams like a tax benefit is a better tool
When you even mention building ourself, you are accused of being anti American simply because you point out a deficiency in our current development.
That's unlikely to be true. They might buy less, but the numbers won't fall to zero.
It also overlooks the detail that the component parts of items "made in the usa" also come from other places. Clothing made in the US, doesn't necessarily use fabric made in the US.
In the short to medium term, the increased cash-flow requirements (tarrifs are paid before sales) will favor large importers with access to abundant cash over smaller importers.
Yes, the purchasing power of US consumers will go down as retail prices of goods go up. Yes global producers will seek out alternate markets.
The current uncertainty causes US purchasing to prefer not to commit to long-term orders. Global suppliers will prefer orders from stable customers, even at somewhat lower prices. Once those long-term contracts are in place, it may be hard to reenter the global marketplace, especially on the currently favorable terms.
In other words tarifs are doing long-term reputational damage that will not be easily undone in a few years time.
On the up side the world is about to observe, for the first time in a couple generations, the effects of an isolationist policy. It is a valuable lesson that needs to be reinforced from time to time.
The US has made friends with a lot of countries based on the goodwill generated by strong trade ties. That goodwill is being eroded in the short term, and will linger as a reputation for "unreliability". 80 years of work is being undone in months.
And unfortunately it won't be as simple as "in 4 years we can go back to normal ". It's obvious that congress supports this, and the American people voted for it, so it's not just one man's policy.
Is the rest of the world suddenly going to start buying something they haven’t in the past? Why?
And the US consumer market is 2x the size of the next biggest (EU).
How exactly is the the rest of the world going to replace the demand of something several times its size?
OT: Solar is awesome! 18 panels are generating 2/3 of our load, despite it being late winter. And a 16kWh battery means the grid power we import is all off-peak. In summer we're going to be exporting enough that we may even cover our winter grid import. Plus it gives us the best UPS system we've ever had, including zero-second cut-over (c.f. Tesla's half-second glitch).
Don’t tell that to the Americans, they hate renewables now.
https://www.chiangraitimes.com/china/china-export-dumping/
Obviously the profit margin will be less than selling to the US, but it does mean that the 3% of GDP mentioned above is not going away entirely, just shrinking to (say) 2 or 2.5%.
The article also mentions transshipment, where Chinese goods get routed to the US via a third country. Although Trump's strategy of "tariff everybody for all the things" is putting a damper on this too.
Before everyone jumps in with GDP per capital with PPP, what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility).
China’s ‘25 GDP per capita on a purchasing-power parity basis is $29k to America’s $90k [1]. American real GDP per capita grew at 1.7% a year from 2015 to 2025 [2]. (American PPP GDP/c grew 4.5% a year from 2014 to 2024 [3].)
From 2004 to 2024, Chinese PPP GDP/c grew 7.4% a year [4]. If China and America keep growing at their respective rates, we wouldn’t expect convergence for 20+ (40, using America’s PPP GDP/c) years. That’s too long for our if condition to be expected to hold.
There is not a strong argument for Chinese GDP/capita, PPP-adjusted or not, approaching America’s within a generation. There is a risk China’s economy becomes bigger than ours in aggregate.
> what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility)
Your comment loses credibility with this rant.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PP...
[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA/
[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
[4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locat...
From 2004 to 2024, Chinese PPP GDP/c grew 7.4% a year [4].
What an incredibly dishonest comparison!
Let's do a side by side comparison? 2018 to 2023? 2023 is the last year with solid numbers.
US: 12% real GDP growth
China: 26% real GDP growth
Sounds impressive, until you account for the base.
US: +$2.4T USD
China: +$3.64T USD
Yikes! 4x the number of people, but 0.5x the GDP growth.
Yes, I chose the strongest form of the other side’s argument to show that even then, it’s difficult to argue that Chinese PPP GDP/c is approaching American levels within a generation. (Though China’s numbers don’t vary much between 10 and 20 years, America’s do since we had a lot of war and then economic stimulus in the 2000s.)
> 2018 to 2023?
You want to make multi-decade projections off a pandemic baseline?
> 4x the number of people, but 0.5x the GDP growth
Per capita means per person. Purchasing power means real production. The question was about potential living standards, not aggregate might.
That said however, the US economy relies quite heavily on the international USD hegemony, and China being a bigger economy does threaten that quite directly. It would be surprising for them to drop the USD, but it is a significant risk.
You’re not “tariffing them to death”, you’re hurting yourself. This would only work if the USA was the main importer of goods from China, which it is not - only about 14%.
China does not have “very high grow momentum”, in fact growth has been seriously slowing since Covid
I’m not sure sure what “growth momentum” is what it has to do with living standards.
China’s PPP is not more comfortable than the US because it’s still 1/4th that of the US.
China has very serious growth problems, a massive debt overhang from real estate (that is still slowing the economy), a supply planning model that is leaving it with an oversupply of things like cars and batteries.
Odds are it hasn't been updated for 20+ years
OP might not be wrong, but let's at least follow SOP for disclosing security failures (30 days pre-disclosure)
I know that manufacturing things here in Europe, there already used to be round trip by airplane and co to try to lower VAT paid on purchases to the maximum.
The effect will probably be similar to Covid / Remote Work - marginal idea until an externality made it essential. Does mean sh1t tons more unemployment though, so like I said, straws being clutched
> Retailers, including Lowe’s and Home Depot, buy Thompson Traders’ wares and set the retail price themselves. And they have been reluctant to pay Thompson Traders more.
It seems like this sort of scenario would benefit from some kind of risk protection, like insurance, or a futures market
This would be a claim by a large amount of insurance clients at once
Asteroid hits New York, insurance won’t pay out.
It’s the difference between getting cancer (calculable, but perhaps not high probability), and getting hit by a meteorite (not actually calculable, very severe consequence).
You’d insure against a specific product from a specific country being hit with a tariff. Tariffs are going up and down, sometimes in a way that may as well be random. (India not recommending Trump for a Nobel prize.) On its face, this doesn’t seem uninsurable.
https://www.wired.com/story/senators-probe-cantor-fitzgerald...
Is there a market need great enough for price stability to offset the risk? It seems tariff whiplash will be an ongoing problem
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/climate/trump-internation...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-...
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The country could get hit by a meteor tomorrow, and nobody else would notice.
On https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis... you can see that mainstream solar panels have returned to their all-time low price of €0.100 per peak watt from November, while low-cost solar panels have fallen to a new all-time low of €0.055 per peak watt, an all-time low first achieved last month, and a 21% decline from a year ago. The "mainstream" category price is down 17% from a year ago. This is driving down the prices of complementary products and enabling new low-cost installation methods that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Because it's so astoundingly cheap, last year China installed 277 GW(p) of solar power generation capacity: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65064. This compares to a total electrical generation capacity in the US of 1189 GW, albeit with a higher capacity factor: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-.... This year the projection is that China will have installed another 380 GW of solar capacity, giving it more solar electrical generation capacity than the US has total electrical generation capacity from all sources: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/07/10/china-on-track-to-dep...
Consequently we're seeing reports that, for Chinese AI startups, energy is a "solved problem", while US companies worry they'll be unable to get enough energy to compete: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell....
This is one of the most historically important things happening in the world today, but it's surprisingly little known even among people who are otherwise well informed.
Even if Trump could strong-arm other rich countries into imposing US-style prohibitive tariffs on Chinese solar panels, he certainly won't strong-arm China, so the cat is out of the bag; that would just make those countries economically uncompetitive with Chinese products produced with superabundant solar energy. And panels are already being mass-produced overseas with Chinese technology at prices fossil fuels can't compete with.
"Solar is cheaper than fossil" does not look at the whole picture, it completely ignores that solar is not scalable quickly enough to meet rising energy demands. It also is a dark laugh towards consumers, who do not see prices lowering, but exponentially rising, ironically while the so-called cheap power sources are being rolled out.
For coal, the "started construction" number there isn't the same metric as began operation. You want to look for "commissioned" and you get 30 GW. From https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/when-coal-wont-ste...
> Note: In 2024, 66.7 GW of new coal power capacity was permitted, a decline from previous years but still above the subdued pace seen earlier in the year. New and revived coal power proposals totaled 68.9 GW, down from 117 GW in 2023 and 146 GW in 2022, indicating a potential slowdown in project initiation. Meanwhile, construction started on 94.5 GW of new coal capacity — the highest since 2015 — suggesting continued momentum in project development. However, the pace of new coal plants entering operation has been more moderate, with 30.5 GW commissioned so far in 2024, down from 49.8 GW last year but in line with 2021 and 2022 levels.
China is well positioned to do solar + storage, but a lot of that coal is probably (a) for base load, (b) for steel production and (c) to keep the coal miners in business. From the same write up:
> In 2024, more than 75% of newly approved coal power capacity was backed by coal mining companies or energy groups with coal mining operations, artificially driving up coal demand even when market fundamentals do not justify it.
I assume by “his own people” you mean him, his family, and his friends, right? That’s the only context this sentence would be true.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Annex-...
Whenever I import goods the HS codes are provided for each item, so it shouldn't be hard to collect the correct amount of money for tariffs.
The most positive argument I have heard is that it would be a small consumption tax that is regressive. Small because the US doesn't really import that much compared to most global economies. It's just things we fixate on like cars or steel, which actually aren't that economically important anymore. Maybe strategically? I feel like people are trying to make economic sense of an emotional / populist policy.
* https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2025/trumps-tariff...
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/us-tariffs-goods-services-suspens...
[1]: https://www.postnl.nl/campagnes/online-frankeren-vs/
>"Specifically, the requirement for duties and taxes to be prepaid on all shipments prior to their arrival in the US,"
Which is also very destructive because such instability is very bad for long-term business planning.
Why? Because policy was stable during Obama. Whatever the policy is, if it's predictable, businesses can work around that. This was a real problem during the Biden term when there was constant policy shifts.
We're seeing that now with the tariffs. The problem isn't the tariffs so much as it is the uncertainty. They change from day to day.
One might be tempted to think the administration is intentionally trying to crash the economy. No, they just have absolutely no idea what they're doing and there's a dementia patient in charge nobody can so no to.
Hmm, it's not that I couldn't believe it was Obama, but this is like a 2nd-hand appeal to authority. I would be interested in a bit more data to see why this is.
> Why? Because policy was stable during Obama.
Now of course we can see there was a record period of near all-time high high oil prices from 2011 to 2014 which corresponds to US employment boom in the sector. Was that the Obama good times that oil and gas experts would refer to? That started to crash in 2015 though, and petroleum industry employment with it. Was that crash due to Obama policy or just global drop in oil prices behind taht?
Some might argue the high oil prices of 2011-2014 years are related to Obama's presidency, but it would probably be less about stable trade policy and more like references to the Arab Spring, peak of ISIS, capitulation to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Also farmers can’t sell anything because retaliation has destroyed international demand (I’d say decimated but it’s way worse than reduction by a tenth)
If you threatened me with death if I didn't cut off my feet, I wouldn't consider that "reduction by 10%" even if mathematically it might be.
That said, I had sweet breads recently. And a cat being a deer sounds strange in English now, but deer is still the word for animal in other Germanic languages today, even if it faded in English, so it doesn’t sound completely archaic.
Not true. At least not yet.
Q2 agricultural exports were roughly flat to Q1 [1].
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B181RC1Q027SBEA
When it comes to soy, America has enormous leverage and China already accepted they're negotiating from a position of weakness.
You either have to find a way to consume what is already in the pipeline or go without. Governments are very sensitive to the food security implications because there isn’t much slack politically to “go without”.
Yeah, complicated, costly and always changing regulations are great for doing business... /s
The underlying issue is complete chaos and confusion caused by this situation, not just any specific actual Tariff or not.
EDIT: You had years of corporate stimulus and ZIRP expanding M2, but the inflation floodgates only opened after a paltry return of a small fraction of the real wage losses the middle class and lower sustained over that period? Live by the macro grift, die by the macro grift. And I wrote-in Bernie both times.
Iwata took a paycut. The least our guys could do is take responsibility.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/13/nintendo-ceo-once-halved-sal...
But! Once the prices go up because of some taxes, they never go as low as they were before. Thats no theory, thats life.
Say good bye, to the prices you see now, you will never see them again ;-)
It's inflation, which is caused by deficit spending.
The US didn't have inflation before 1914.
Also, prices spiking up from incompetent threats of tariffs and not coming down are categorically different than regular inflation. This is obvious and shouldn't need to be explained to you.
ETA:
Just realized that the source for the one I posted was pretty dubious (Bill Meridian is apparently a "financial astrologer", whatever that means), so here's a more reputable one: https://northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/the-war-of-1812/
https://www.businessinsider.com/chart-inflation-since-1775-2...
> It is probable that in 1913, while financial panics were not uncommon, high inflation was still largely seen by the founders of the Fed as a relatively rare phenomenon associated with wars and their immediate aftermath. Figure 1 plots the US price level from 1775 (set equal to one) until 2012. In 1913 prices were only about 20 percent higher than in 1775 and around 40 percent lower than in 1813, during the War of 1812. Whatever the mandates of the Federal Reserve, it is clear that the evolution of the price level in the United States is dominated by the abandonment of the gold standard in 1933 and the adoption of fiat money subsequently. One hundred years after its creation, consumer prices are about 30 times higher than what they were in 1913. This pattern, in varying orders of magnitudes, repeats itself across nearly all countries.
Not my area of expertise and no skin in the game, just wanted to point this out.
So when he makes absolutist statements like "there was no inflation in the US before 1914", which is a typical springboard for libertarians to start complaining about the federal reserve and propose some idiotic Ayn Rand nonsense, I have trouble not being literal here.
By the way, I have never read Rand nor quoted her.
https://www.visualizingeconomics.com/blog?tag=Inflation
Scroll down to "US Inflation 1790-2015".
"-0.2% Average Annual Inflation 1774-1912"
Visualizing Economics cites this source [1]. VE seem to lie about what it says.
Measuring Worth shows 1774 CPI at 7.8; by 1912 it is 9.4 [2]. That’s a low, low inflation rate of 0.1% per year, 20% over 138 years. But it’s not zero and it’s certainly not negative.
If we take 1790 (8.86) to 1914 (9.69), MW shows 0.07% annual inflation. That is the statistic you should be pointing to.
But! Within the 1790 to 1914 era we see inflation from 1790 to 1814 (2.75% annually; prices doubled over 20 years). During the Civil War, prices doubled in just five years; inflation 1860 to 1865 was over 14% annually. (CPI inflation goes to 2% annually between 1914 and 1944, 3.7% ‘44 to ‘76, 4.2% ‘76 to ‘08 and 2.4% from ‘08 to ‘24.)
We had inflation in America before the Federal Reserve. It was lower, long term, than it has been post Fed. But the common factor to our inflation is war. To the extent there is a link in these data, and I’m saying this having not noticed this before, it’s between inflation and war.
[1] https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/uscpi/#
[2] https://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/uscpi/result.php
See where I quoted: "-0.2% Average Annual Inflation 1774-1912"
BTW, inflation measurements before 1900 are a bit difficult, as how does one compare prices from 1774 with 1912? Not only are records poor, but the goods being compared are wildly different.
I.e. I don't know what the error bars are on the aggregate statistics, and neither do you. 0.1% and -0.2% are realistically well within the error bars. In fact, even today, 0.1% is likely within the error bars, as measuring inflation is fairly difficult, and there's always going to be noise as market prices are a chaotic system.
You quoted VE. They misquoted MW. If VE is adding error bars to MW’s data, they—one—should not. But if they do, they should show how they manipulated the data.
There is no legitimate source showing negative annual inflation between 1774 and 1912; your source’s own sole citation disagrees with its claim.
> 0.1% and -0.2% are realistically well within the error bars
What error bars?! They’re the same data!
Your chart on VE says it is showing data from MW. I took those same data and calculated the same number your chart claims to calculate with the same data they link to. The answer is different. And this isn’t, like, I used CAGR and they did simple growth because the sign flipped!
> inflation measurements before 1900 are a bit difficult, as how does one compare prices from 1774 with 1912?
You really can’t. Not meaningfully. You’re integrating data covering the pound sterling, Continental Congress, eras with no federal currency, eras with state and wildcat currency, and a civil war to boot. You’re also trying to compare a basket of wooden teeth and suet with one holding smartphones, gasoline and antibiotics.
But you brought the data and made the claim, and while VE is lying about what their source says, the actual data at MW is actually a legitimate attempt at the problem.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/021115/how-long-has...
A lot of libertarian "bad guys" tend to be pretty reductive, or just outright lies.
See "Monetary History of the United States" by Milton Friedman.
What you may be trying to say is until about 1900 there was little secular (i.e. fundamental long-term) inflation, given price levels oscillated more than they moved [1]. But the change to steady inflation pre-dates the Fed. And the secular shift to constant inflation starts in WWII, not 1914 or 1976.
[1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s...
"The Federal Reserve System therefore began operations with no effectiye legislative criterion for determining the total stock of money. The discretionary judgment of a group of men was inevitably substituted for the quasi-automatic discipline of the gold Standard." pg 193
"The stock of money, which had been rising at a moderaterate through-out 1914, started to rise at an increasing rate in early 1915, rose most rapidly, as prices did, from late 1915 to mid-1917, and then resumed its rapid rise before the end of 1918, rather sooner than prices did. At its peak, in June 1920, the stock of money was roughly double its September 1915 level and more than double the level of November 1914, when the Federal Reserve Banks opened for business." pg 198
"The Reserve System was thus in an asymmetrical position. It had the power to create high-powered money and to put it in the hands of the public or the banks by rediscounting paper or by purchasing bonds or other financial assets. It could therefore exert an expansionary influence on the money stock." pg 213
"The large federal government deficits, totaling in all some $23 billion, or nearly three-quarters of total expenditures of $32 billion from April 1917 to June 1919, were financed by explicit borrowing and by money creation.30 The Federal Reserve became to all intents and purposes the bond-selling window of the Treasury, using its monetary powers almost exclusively to that end. Although no "greenbacks" were printed, the same result was achieved by more indirect methods using Federal Re serve notes and Federal Reserve deposits. At the beginning of U.S. participation in the war, Federal Reserve notes accounted for 7 per cent of high-powered money and bank deposits at Federal Reserve Banks for 14 per cent" pg 217
"The Reserve Board was aware that Bank discount rates were below current market rates throughout 1919, that this was contributing to monetary expansion, and that monetary expansion was contributing to the inflation." pg 222
As for inflation through the history of the US, see:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081346
Then this is a lie: “Inflation started the year after the Fed was created. See ‘Monetary History of the United States’ by Milton Friedman” [1].
> for inflation through the history of the US, see
I’ve already pointed out how that source lies about the data it cites [2].
I will assume you’re misunderstanding what you’re reading. But it’s too close to willful dishonesty for me to continue to engage if you’re just going to double down.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081413
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45081346
A few corporations control most of the food you eat, even less control the food you eat in restaurants. Very few media companies control the "content" you can consume and you cannot even own it, let alone sell or even trade it, and it seems everyone just pays more whether they keep raising their prices.
You own very little, are you getting happier?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
Not really a question of that. More so how much will prices go up
Reality is simply that industries are locking in tariff increase price expectations because they can (Wal Mart is even already increasing prices and the tariffs may not and have not yet even started impacting prices). It's just like how everyone started expecting a tip everywhere at all times at 25%, 35% rates during COVID and that not only has not disappear, it got even worse for a while before leveling off and the tip expectation is now north of 20% on average.
It's a common human behavior, a kind of ladder, the realization that "wow, I got away with all the previous increase rates, let's keep up the price increase rates since everyone has come to expect them".
Another example, car dealership premiums; they're still trying to push those and there is clearly a limited market and an unspoken agreement to keep them going across the dealerships. If people expect certain price increase rates, they have normalized those increases in their minds.
It's also why the fed has always "targeted 2% inflation" because it's a small amount that can be normalized over 12 months and you don't even notice it. But it's a steady rate that can be siphoned off the whole economy without people noticing the theft by fraud. You didn't complain about the fed stealing 2% of your wealth every single year, compounded all your life before they started stealing 5-12% for the last 5 years, did you? Sure, they can't get away with increased rates forever, lest the whole system collapse, but without someone/something forcing the hand, why should they stop. We are STILL hearing how the consumer is strong, while various revolving credit balances are increasing and people are just squandering future/other people's money, why would they care if they have to pay more, so why would sellers care not to increase prices if people are just willing and able to charge more.
This is a Premier Cru Red Herring.
80% of economic activity imports nothing? 80% of economic activity doesn’t involve on oil, cars/trucks, or computers?
This is a rebalancing so of course it’s uncomfortable for some that have been too comfortable. So much opportunity out there right now.
Do you always speak in grotesque metaphor, or are you capable of referring to concrete phenomena? Congratulations, there is a part of my mind that finds your vague idiom disconcerting. Moreso I am resigned to take your entire cadre less seriously—if such a downgrade is possible.
No that you care; I am "beyond hope!"
https://www.onthewing.org/user/Bonhoeffer%20-%20Theory%20of%...
Neither of which is true in the real world.
The assumptions are only bad if they prevent the simple models from being useful, and the existence of a scenario where a model's simplifying assumptions prevent it from being useful does not prove that the model is worthless.
It's like doing physics where you assume perfectly uniform spherical objects in a vacuum. It isn't worthless just because that isn't how the real world works, but depending on the circumstance it can also give you incorrect results, and sometimes even be way off.
This is incorrect. Lack of information is priced in as "risk".
This…is not true. What theory are you referring to?
Its a long time known flaw in economics. Im sure there are better models but i still agree with GP, the scientific field of economics is still a joke on par with psychology.
In real world markets economics considers elasticity, arbitrage, and distribution of market information between producers, wholesalers, retailers, buyers etc. But very little of that finds its way into op-eds or blogs aimed at a non-academic audience.
... Wait, why on earth would businesses do that? "Yeah, we're in the business of buying X for a dollar and selling it for 90 cents". What economic theory are you referring to that makes that in any way plausible?
When input prices go up, output prices go up, and usually consumption falls.
Classical economic theory predicts literally the opposite. It predicts the prices will go up exactly as if the base materials became more expensive. Classical economic theory predicts that free market produces lowest possible prices and thus any tarif means price up.
If you want companies to invest in your country, the tariff has to make doing so make financial sense, and for the long term.
A lot of these tariffs are going on things that would require a whole factory to be built in the USA which doesn’t currently exist at all, and has no supporting infrastructure or workforce.
Companies can’t just decide right now, “oh shit there’s a tariff. Better but it in the USA right away!”
No comments yet
It’s great if you want to grant yourself the power to exempt those who please or pay you.
I will not accept that every American company must partner with a Chinese company and allow China to steal every bit of our IP and US citizen data from that relationship.
Tariff them to 10,000% until that changes.
I will say this; different countries wield different powers at their disposal.
It’s unfair how China conducts business, but other countries can be equally exploitative.
I don't understand how any supporter can claim to love our country.
It is a global market. https://www.molsonhart.com/blog/america-underestimates-the-d...
The last vestiges of this world order was the TPP. The US negotiated a trade deal that would cement its top position in the Pacific region, while curbing China's growing economy and influence.
And then Trump axed it, because he didn't understand it.
China understood perfectly what an opportunity that was for them, and they have been quietly become less and less reliant on trade with the US since.
The current US regime is now hell-bent on dismantling the remaining alliances, relationships, and trade agreements that actually kept the US on top, the ones that actually kept the US powerful.
...while baselessly claiming that the existing world order was somehow "unfair" or "a bad deal", and that whatever the hell they're doing now is restoring some kind of lost power. They clearly have no clue what the source of America's power really is.
And here you are repeating their talking points.
What do you mean, exactly, when you're saying that the US shouldn't "let the world do whatever they want" ? What specific trade policies do you think are unfavourable to the US?
If I go to a restaurant, wait an hour for a table, get very hungry, and then see on the menu that the restaurant has tripled prices, is the restaurant "negotiating from a position of power" ? Sure, once.
What exactly do you think happens to our power after Trump squanders it to extract one-time concessions that mostly flow into his own pockets?
I guess they can't steal IP if we have no IP to steal, so there is that.
The only businesses that are derailing with tariffs issues are those that import goods to sell. The argument against tariffs is that they make goods more expensive.
Of course, this argument is true. But that’s not the end of the story.
Because prices are higher for imported goods, demand for domestically produced goods increases. This increase in demand leads to increased demand for labor, which can increase wages. Additionally, the money multiplier effect is higher when money is kept domestically vs paid to offshore parties.
Finally, I think it’s ridiculous to expect that this nation can maintain its wealth without producing anything. We act as if the producers of food are fungible cogs that businesses can swap out. But I think we’ll find that management is the fungible part. Anyone can sell a quality good. Knowing how to make it is what’s important. I’m surprised that mindset doesn’t resonate more with software engineers.
Because of this, Boeing gets to make thousands of jetliners and sell them all across the world and America gets to be one of very few places that can do this.
I think you'll find that steel and aluminum are a lot more fungible than jetliner factories. Why are we kneecapping what we're good at for the sake of things that China will ALWAYS be better than us at?
> Finally, I think it’s ridiculous to expect that this nation can maintain its wealth without producing anything.
The total value of US exports has only ever gone up (see above).
I do get the argument for moving manufacturing expertise back onshore, I really do. But tariffs are not gonna lower the minimum wage and if manufacturing is gonna come back to the US, it'll come back in a highly automated form with a boatload of government support.
Comparative advantage is not innate. China was a rural country and didn't have a comparative advantage in manufacturing, they developed it and are now a powerhouse.
Nothing worth doing is easy. I don't know why Americans think that if its not easy, it's not worth doing. Americans 80 years ago would hate us for what we have become today.
The govt of India has already put one small order on hold and the word in aviation circles is to switch to Airbus as far as possible.
Military purchases now also won’t happen.
Peter Navarro in one of his rants inadvertently leaked this out on TV: his specific issue was a demand for mandatory tech transfer and manufacturing in India.
Plus, with the fickle and chaotic application of trumps tariffs, you’d be insane to invest in domestic production.
You can let bad be the enemy of both good and perfect.
Investment in manufacturing structures is down in ‘25 [1]. Manufacturing activity in the northeast is down, with “the new orders index dip[ping] into negative territory” [2].
Tariffs can reduce trade imbalances and incentivize domestic production. We’re not doing that. Our tariffs are too volatile. They tax manufacturing inputs. Tweets grasping for the straws of a Nobel prize cede prized export markets like India to China [3]. Cancelled licenses for nearly-complete projects add risk [4].
The policies of a degrowth leftist who wanted to reduce our industrial output and pivot to manufacturing would be virtually identical.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RX1Q020SBEA
[2] https://www.philadelphiafed.org/surveys-and-data/regional-ec...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/us/politics/trump-modi-in...
[4] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-orders-orsted-ha...
Also, your second link generally paints a mixed picture, not an outright negative one:
> On balance, the firms indicated an increase in employment, and the price indexes rose further above their long-run averages. The survey’s broad indicators for future activity suggest that firms continue to expect growth over the next six months.
I think it’s misguided to interpret current data as evidence either for or against the current policies. This is something that’s going to take a decade plus to play out. Trying to use data to call winners 6 months in isn’t really possible.
There's more than one commenter in this post that talks about "other countries walking all over the US", or claiming that capitalist free trade allowing American consumers to purchase ridiculous amounts of stuff is somehow a scam?
It's as infuriating as it is mindboggling how people can fall for it. It's completely baseless.
These thinly veiled pro-trump people are much too common the internet and I'm getting tired of it.
So if the idea is to be more self sustaining: we cannot.
Also, read this: https://www.molsonhart.com/blog/america-underestimates-the-d...
Basically, there is no way we "win" this economically through tariffs. Nor can we power through it by trying to throw labor at the problem, because the labor cost is cheaper everywhere else.
I think there are some categories of goods where protectionism makes sense for national security reasons, but for most goods, I don't really see the value of propping up less productive domestic production and causing increased prices for consumers. Do we need to make underwear in America? Or toys?
And of course tariffs are not one-sided, so retaliatory tariffs hurt the domestic industries where our exports are competitive, which tend to be high-value.
There is no meaningful path to restoring much of the US’s lost manufacturing capacity. The rent is too damn high, and the cost of goods is rising quickly as well. Labor is expensive and becoming moreso daily. Manufacturing in the US can never compete with SE asia even with 50% tariffs due to the gigantic disparity in the cost of labor.
It’s not going to increase wages, it may even result in even more offshoring due to the increases in cost for raw materials.
But even if you could wave a magic wand and put the USA on equal footing in terms of skills and experience and capability, it would still cost several times more to make the same goods in the USA due to the labor costs (and labor-adjacent overhead costs like workplace safety).
Both would need to be solved, and I think that solving either one alone is already basically impossible on any short- or medium-term timescale. A tiny bandaid like tariffs isn’t going to move the needle.