Spyke
lemmy.world

And laptops, and phones, and literally every other electronic thing you might want to buy

209
CaptDustreply
sh.itjust.works

People that can still afford stuff will be so cool. The hippest tech, biggest cars and newest kicks, everything will be uber exclusive. This is good for america because reasons.

73
lemm.ee

This is good for america because reasons.

People with lifted pickup trucks can now go into even more debt, so they can flex on the "poors" (while complaining about their "economic anxiety").

47

Not to worry. If gas is a little cheaper while they fill up their tanks at the pump, they'll be happy to pay [insert car financing company here] exorbitant amounts of money and think they're winning

14

I think car industry regulations (ratio of gas per weight or something) are one of the incentives for production of such trucks. So again - this may eventually get better if "deregulation" stops being a curse. Not with Trump, of course.

1
kautaureply
lemmy.world

Especially because every grift that trump has made, his shoes and the like, were all made internationally. Wonder who will pay for those tarrifs when he does the same?

8
Blackmistreply
feddit.uk

Thing is all that crap can be stitched together by 12 year olds in Alabama instead of 12 year olds in China.

I don't think he can really comprehend a chip fabrication plant costing 10 times his entire net worth. He probably thinks that what they make in "Silicon Valley"...

15
tibireply
lemmy.world

I recently saw gamers nexus' Intel tour. It was like seeing a sci-fi movie, it's incredible how advanced the stuff they do is. I also found it incredible how much it takes to build a chip... It takes about 2-3 months from wafer to chip.

7
kent_ehreply
lemmy.ca

It takes about 2-3 months from wafer to chip.

After spending 3-4 years building the factory and even more time finding and training staff.

But, sure, tarriff the hell out of things that can't be made domestically for (optomistacally) half a decade. That'll certainly make it happen instantly...

/fucking morons.

11
lemmy.world

I'm sorry, but you people talk about making state-of-the-art chips, while in many cases something like year 1990 will do. It'd be a very ambitious endeavor too, but both realistic and useful.

What they are doing will reduce economic competitiveness of the whole USA, but in terms of incentivizing domestic industries it will work. No miracles, but it will give incentives to what can be done quickly enough. And if we consider that electronics already are cheaper in US than in EU or in Eastern Europe, this won't be too bad.

I'm not a Trump fan. Just - what these people want to do is not without rational justification in economics. It's a weird justification, of the kind USSR's strategy of existence had, but then the reasons USSR failed were not in that part about self-reliance in strategic industries. One can argue it collapsed because it didn't really achieve that due to administrative inefficiency, as in "went bankrupt". It was exporting fossil fuels to finance the appearance of domestic heavy industries, which were not profitable. At some point that wasn't enough money.

1

people talk about making state-of-the-art chips, while in many cases something like year 1990 will do

It still takes time to spin up a chip fab, even one with 30 year old capabilities.

And, since nobody domestically makes the machinery needed, that too will be subject to the import tarrifs and probable delays caused by the ensuring trade war restrictions.

2

It won't be paid from his net worth or from even the government's budget.

It will, if it happens, be expected to redeem costs based on the demand of the whole USA, which is, ahem, an obscene amount of money.

Anyway, you don't have to start with something like TSMC. Producing MCs for home appliances is already very cool.

0
WamGamsreply
lemmy.ca

If that is truly their plan, they are dumber than we fucking figured.

If a billionaire wants to buy a swimming pool, he needs a considerable amount of other people to be able to afford swimming pools or it it becomes impossible for him to get one at all eventually.

To have a swimming pool, there needs to be an industry of specialized labororers who can manufacture and install. There has to be electricians who specialize in mixing water and electricity. There has to be people working the factories where the chlorine gets manufactured and bottled.

This is true for every product that billionaires consume. You really gotta think that these people with all this wealth would have people on the payroll pointing this out to them.

6

That is more of a millionaire problem. A billionaire can afford to fly the specialists and the materials in from Europe.

6

Party officials in USSR kinda managed to keep such an industry for their nice things. It's not as complex as computers.

1

Yes, I cannot wait for America to start making Sony and Nintendo consoles. Well done Mr. Trump!!!

4

This is good. Same way forest fires can be good.

But those people thinking they'll be the elite don't quite realize how exactly.

-3
Nougatreply
fedia.io

Leopards will be the same price, though.

31
seaQueuereply
lemmy.world

Faces will be cheap though, there are plenty of those to go around for the next few years

24

Almost everything powered by electricity will have some chinese made components.

16
nexusbandreply
lemmy.world

And now do some basic Google Foo and find out what is manufactured in Taiwan. If China gets it's way, because Trump thinks Xi is cool and he's a good guy, China will just waltz in - TSMC, ASML and Trumpf have some safeguards in place as far as I know to destroy anything valuable. So while you might want to buy shit, you can't because the Cheeto and his cronies collapsed it.

15
lemmy.world

That would in long term be good. I'm serious. Keeping all your eggs in one basket is bad, and other than that - said one basket may, for example, not scale production fast enough so to keep profits, that's basic supply and demand and that's what oil producers do too.

Short term, though, would be similar to a collapse of civilization.

-3
nexusbandreply
lemmy.world

Short term, though, would be similar to a collapse of civilization.

Would it? Civilization doesn't depend on bleeding edge high tech. Sure, it depends on tech, but look around who's making ICs or basic processors that are in machine control panels and all the millions of appliances. AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom do the "heavy lifting" in terms of monetary value, but in overall quantity? Samsung, SK Hynix, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, Sony, Renesas and NXP are the ones that make the world go round. Infineon is German, NXP is Dutch, Renesas is Japanese, STMicroelectronics is Swiss. The thing that's really going to hurt is Foxconn, but they are probably global enough to withstand that. There's also many, many more local players. BOSCH for example has very high capacities for everything up to 80 Nanometers (Pentium 3/4, Athlon 64...)

Civilization would crack, sure - but i don't think it would collapse. Society on the other hand...that's a different paper.

3
lemmy.world

Society on the other hand…that’s a different paper.

I meant that too. But would actually be interesting, if electronics around us would still be a normal thing, but smartphones changing every year and carelessly used computing power will not. I think it would feel like waking up from a fever dream.

2
nexusbandreply
lemmy.world

I mean, "change" per se isn't necessarily something bad. Meaning, stuff needs to last longer (again) in those cases. Planned Obsolescence is a real thing, that's however only economical as long as raw materials are relatively cheap. But it would be nice if companies just did that change, instead of being forced in to it...

1

The issue is - tariffs and regulations already exist and force them the other way in fact. So the matter of purity doesn't suffer here. Relatively.

1
lemmy.ca

From this article

But in the case of the hefty tariffs that Trump put on China during his first term, economic studies found that most of those costs were passed on to American consumers.

Economists believe this could happen again. One study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, for example, calculated that Trump’s current tariff plans would increase costs for a typical American household by $2,600 a year.

Paying more for everything to own the libs! 🤡

119

Cant buy vidya console, got more money for eggs?

5D chess here people!

23
lemmy.world

These tariffs create American jobs and long term boosts American skills and manufacturing abilities.

-13

I'm not sure it's a safe bet. Only if the tariffs last longer than 4 years. Building new factories takes a couple years, then you need to break even all within 4 years? Just seems risky to me

9

Except they don't. They just move them to other countries like Vietnam.

5

Unlikely. In the age of globalism, it's much more likely that manufacturing will leave the US to dodge counter-tariffs. The combined markets of Europe and Asia is for most products larger than the US market, and that trend is only likely to increase in the future as Asia develops. Manufacturers know making stuff in Asia is just cheaper, and that American consumers are more likely to go into debt to buy stuff than other consumers. They also know that these tariffs are unlikely to last for long, because if the US takes the expected economic hit here then it becomes less likely that Trump/the GOP remains in control (eg midterms flip control back to the democrats).

Not much reason to move factories to the US, which is wildly expensive, when taking the hit and waiting it out is ultimately most likely cheaper.

5

That's not the main point where you can assist that. Patent law would be the main point.

3

It's just a stupid way of doing it. Companies should be getting other incentives to bring manufacturing home. The middle and lower class shouldn't burn for that to happen.

2

And fridges, washers, dryers, tvs, vacuums, cars, phones.

Basically anything that has a microcontroller you're going to be fucked.

91
lemmy.world

I'm actually really excited about the smuggling opportunities such a high tariff presents. It's a real job creator. It's been a long time since we've had major smuggling operations on the great lakes. Will be a big boom for Chicago too, since that's the point where the smuggled goods get put on trains. Maybe even get the outfit back together.

84
mlgreply
lemmy.world

Al Capone watching his successors continue his legacy by smuggling PS5s and pirating games lol

32

Maybe we can have speakeasy arcades run by nerds with 3D printed tommy guns.

3
lemmy.zip

I thought Republicans were the anti-tax party?

66
dan1101reply
lemm.ee

People think that foreign countries pay the tariffs and I'm not sure trump doesn't think that as well.

112
lemm.ee

Also, that food magically appears in grocery stores.

Gawd or something

waves hands

52

Not to forget these crazy machines that'll give you free money if you smash in one of those weird plastic thingys from your purse. Absolutely bonkers!

13

Even if they did, they would still be passing that cost down to us.

19

And even if they did, do they think they are just going to swallow those fees?

11
lemmy.zip

I think the "logic" is that if things are too expensive to import then companies will start manufacturing them domestically and create jobs. But that almost never works out. An economist could probably explain why better than I can.

I do know that the better approach is to support those industries here. That's why we recently dumped a bunch of money into the CHIPS and Science act.

14

I am actually in favor of tariffs in a couple of limited situations:

  1. Foreign goods are cheap due to non-existent labor laws

  2. Foreign goods are cheap, but produce more emissions than domestic manufacturing

#2 is also called a carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM, and the EU voted to implement one last year that goes into effect in 2026. The USA desperately needs one IMHO. I'm involved in a nonprofit that's been lobbying Congress to implement our own CBAM.

It's silly though to think that a tariff is anything but a tax. It's not any different than any other way that we use our tax laws to try to regulate "pure" capitalism by encouraging certain behavior and discouraging other behavior.

10

Much like the grifters that they are, the Republican party does not have any convictions.

3

No less than The Economist uses the BMI ("Big Mac Index") to compare economies.

10
lemmy.world

I like how this has "Murrkans dumb" vibes, but this picture is intellectually far better than what average Russian thinks about economy.

That said, 6+ bigmacs for an hour of minimum wage sounds very good. Actually it sounds like some heaven on earth.

9

'Heaven is a place in Earth' was, in fact, released in 1987 by Belinda Carlisle.

Fueled by cheap Big Mac's, no doubt, though the song neglects to mention them.

13
lemmy.world

look closer at everything you own. 99.9% of it will be 40% more expensive if you have to buy it again

28
Merutenreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Hypothetically, if I want to buy the Samsung S25 next year, and Tariffs are in place in America. I live in the UK. Why would my purchase be 40% more expensive? Samsung uses their own nodes, own fabs to manufacture their chips in south korea, they assemble the phones in Vietnam, after which they get shipped to the UK. Why would American tariffs affect literally everything as you have just said?

-27
lemmy.world

Won't products made in the US with parts imported from outside the US that are then exported have the same problem?

4
avattarreply
lemmy.sdf.org

On a US lemmy instance and US sub. Everyone else is here as a guest/visitor, I guess?

-4
lemmy.world

Good work Gamers. Your hardware will be more expensive, but at least Biden won't be suggesting a non-enforceable DEI directive at the HR of those game studios.

26
lemm.ee

One category of people I literally care not for are gamers and their discretional spending.

-10

One category of people i literally care not for are assholes who judge other peoples hobbies like they're the end all be all of how people should act.

8
lemmy.world

meh. I play games, but wont call myself a Gamer. There's like a whole separate culture of people who are obsessed with gaming culture, but don't actually play games or when they do, only ones from AAA studios.

3
lemmy.world

Apparently Google searches for "what is a tariff" skyrocketed after Trump won

Also "can I change my vote"

There are already quite a few regrets it seems, and the right wing are gonna learn how tariffs actually work real soon

I'm guessing the money they raise will also be used to help fund tax cuts for high income

23

I never use Google, so this is from a blank slate search. The top result for "can i c" is "can I change my vote?" Also the top 2 results for "what is" by itself are: "what is the 4b movement" and "what is a tariff". Here come the leopards.

7

And lower wages.

Kamala ("or Kamabla" as the adult children like to call her", because that's normal for a president to make jokes about names) was also going to increase the minimum wage

So, those underpaid children are going to get hit by tariffs and not get a wage increase

2
lemm.ee

Good, gaming is for chud man children and incels.

Turns on Switch and looks at latest sales for jRPGs

Really nothing but anime fans lusting after booba.

Puts Unicorn Overlord in cart

17
prolereply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

Really nothing but anime fans lusting after booba.

Puts Unicorn Overlord in cart

Whoa now, have you played Unicorn Overlord? Garbage name aside, the game is fucking awesome. Much more than anime boobs.

5

And china will be doing the same for all Americans product enter to they country.

10

At least prison business is booming when no one can afford to live even if they get paid. Land of the Free!

3
lemmy.world

Another good reason to have a home grown solution in your own country for game consoles outwith the US.

-10
lemmy.world

Nobody will step up, because manufacturing electronics like this is incredibly expensive, and any new president in 2028 could instantly drop Trump's dumb ass tariffs.

So you'd be going into an expensive, already risky business, with an even bigger risk that one day the competition suddenly drops their prices by ~40% due to a drop in tariffs. Nobody's gonna take that risk.

And even if somebody successfully did take on that risk, they'd charge just under the price of the electronics that have the tariffs baked into the price, so congrats, no matter what we'd esentially be paying a ~40% markup on electronics, and that's before accounting for all the businesses that raise prices even further than the tariffs to account for the drop in demand, and supply chain halt.

14
lemmy.world

Not to mention literally all of the good processors come from Taiwan.

6

We've also already gone through the trouble of bringing TSMC stateside. Initially they weren't able to round up enough skilled workers to be able to produce anything close to the quality of chips made in Taiwan. They've since made improvements, but we can't hope to match the output either quality or quantity-wise due to differences of work culture and trying to replicate Taiwan's processes that make bleeding edge performance possible without binning most of the production line.

2

True. There are also parents buying them for their kids and a couple of other exceptions.

-9

Glad we only buy game consoles from China. Can you imagine what these tariffs would do if a significant portion of our imports came from there?

6
lemm.ee

Maybe lets wait for those tariffs to be actually imposed first before losing our minds over it.

-45
lemm.ee

I've found life to be slightly less stressfull when you stop worrying about this that you 1. can't do anything about and 2. likely wont even happen.

The world was supposed to end in 2016 when he got elected and I bought into that. It didn't. I'll be a bit more sceptical this time around.

-28
Sir_Kevinreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

As a small business owner I will likely have to completely shut down if/when tariffs are imposed, so yeah, this isn't about paying more for a video game for many of us.

29
lemm.ee

I'm still waiting for the wall to be built with Mexican money. Just because Trump says he's going to do something doesn't mean he actually will. I don't care what liars say, I care what they do.

-20

He did it before and he'll do it again. The last round of tariffs was backbreaking and this one will be worse.

I work for a small business and we're still doing okay but all those tariffs get passed directly to consumers. If it costs 7.5% more to import something, it will get sold for 7.5% more.

And that is the low end of tariffs.

14
FatCrabreply
lemmy.one

You mean the wall that had multiple useless sections built with American taxpayers money and he absolutely would have continued with if not for the inherent logistics issues of physical reality and lack of competent enablers that aren't blockers this time around?

Also, the 2016 administrator WAS catastrophic. The hyper consolidation of corporate actors, deregulation and defanging of admin agencies that effectively removed all culpability from corporate actors, and bureaucratic damage that has made recovery a steeple uphill battle all happened not just under his watching but as an explicit intent of his watch.

10
lemm.ee

It almost sounds like you’re trying to argue that he’s actually a man of his word. That guy wants a lot of things. Most of it he cannot get.

-4

I think his intentions are very clear and he very often speaks them. Where Trump is utterly full of shit is where he describes reality, as in migrant crime waves, how tariffs actually work, Haitian pet eating, etc. And most of it he couldn't get before because there were process barriers in play. Much of that has been cleared both in the intervening years and as a direct result of the down ballot of this election.

7

So it's a foregone conclusion that resistance or even discussion is futile?

7
D1G17ALreply
lemmy.world

Fool of a president previously imposes tariffs and you expect him to not do it again? How dumb are you?

22
lemm.ee

How dumb are you?

I could ask you the same thing for expecting me to answer to a question that ends like this. Now you just end on the blocklist with the rest of the incivil jerks.

-30

Not sad about being on your block list. You seem like a stupid person.

4

Maybe lets wait for the leopards to start eating other people's faces before we do anything to stop or prevent it.

That's you.

12
programming.dev

Don't video game consoles all have offices in the US? Why would the US apply tariffs on companies residing in and paying tax the US?

-47
4amreply
lemm.ee

The products are manufactured elsewhere.

73
lemmy.world

Even products "made in the USA", like an automobile, rely on parts from overseas suppliers, especially China.

30

My cats food for example, dewault has similar tags on their power tools.

8
parpolreply
programming.dev

Are tariffs applied when a company produces something in one country and transports them to their own company in another country? I thought they only applied to sales.

-28
D1G17ALreply
lemmy.world

The only thing tariffs do is raise the price of imported and exported goods. The intent behind that is to encourage domestic production of a given good. However, we largely do not have domestic production of many, many, many different goods in the USA. So the primary outcome is going to be a decade or more of much higher prices for literally every single kind of consumer, business or industrial grade electronic device or good. It's terrible for the economy. It will lead to a record recession or even a depression. Tariffs do not punish the target country. They punish Americans attempting to buy from those countries. This means new start-ups and new businesses will not be able to afford things from third-party manufacturers in China.

29

Not only new businesses, this will ABSOLUTELY lead to the extinction of already established businesses as well. The magat cretins have ZERO clue how bad this will be.

18
lemm.ee

This. It’s basically a fucking stupid version of forcing the increased pricing onto us to increase corporate profits or whatever their end goal is. If China is charged 10% more to get their pieces to us. They are not taking that hit over our internal political retardation.

9

China isn't charged shit to send us stuff. The tariffs are paid by the company importing the goods (aka the buyer)

2
ipkpjersireply
lemmy.ml

Tariffs do not punish the target country.

Tariffs punish every country, actually, unfortunately.

6

Tariffs punish every country, actually, unfortunately.

Including the one who started the inevitable trade war.

5
iopqreply
lemmy.world

You can't just import something and put it in a local warehouse to avoid tariffs. Then nobody would pay them ever

28
sh.itjust.works

Some businesses in Russia have loopholes like importing components and making a local assembly, up to just putting their sticker on it. I wonder what % of production process would be enough to count a product as Made in USA.

1
Cheemsreply
lemmy.world

You're still importing the base materials and have to pay tariffs on that. That's not getting around anything. The end consumer still foots the bill.

14
rbnreply
sopuli.xyz

Depends on what the tariffs are about. If there's a tariff on a specific category of finished consumer goods, an import of the materials/ parts in combination with a local assembly might indeed reduce or avoid the taxes you have to pay.

-1
lemm.ee

Each piece brought in is taking the hit from the tariff if its under a tariff. The only way to “avoid” is what we call smuggling.

5

Yep. Yet finished prodiuct for end user is declared pricier thsn individual parts and certified differently.

2
krashmoreply
lemmy.world

I thought they only applied to sales.

What do you suppose these companies might want to do with their products once they transport them to this other branch location?

7