Originally published at: Trump tariffs could increase laptop prices by $350+, electronics by 40% - Boing Boing
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Honestly, the price of a laptop is not in our top 10 problems if he gets back in.
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The crowd screaming about the Feds increasing interest rate from 0 to any positive number will cause a recession will be surprised. This will put the “economy” to fully stepped on gas, in reverse, off the cliff. At that point, suddenly, it will be Biden and Harris’s fault. I wish I was joking.
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What none of the MAGAts realize about these tariffs is they are indeed a tax. And the revenue goes to our government.
So indeed they’re a tax. Transferring income regressively from consumers to the federal government.
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So indeed they’re a tax. Transferring income regressively from consumers to the federal government.
While your statement is true, it is not complete. Wikipedia has a very good article on it. It is also to help with protecting inductry and maintain trade imbalances. Be sure to look at the graph of the US trade deficits over time.
For reference, I am not a Trump fan, though just because I loath and afraid of his return as president, I do not consider every word out of his mouth to be sourced from the depths of hell.
-joe
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Of course. Influencing trade balance and protecting domestic production are the primary purposes of tariffs. But the point is they aren’t a simple solution. They have obvious and non-obvious side effects and unintended consequences. I don’t pretend to understand it all.
But trade policy requires much greater subtlety than the Orange Man and his MAGA minions possess.
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Trump put out a statement explaining exactly why that won’t happen and how tariffs will grow the economy, it was filled with facts and figures.
Trump: “No it won’t.”
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Didn’t this get tried in the eighties to “protect” American RAM makers? Price of RAM went up to something $1,000 a megabyte (That was a lot of memory then) and PC sales tanked because no one could afford them.
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For example, Bush’s tariffs on steel imposed in 2002 had the side-effect of damaging the British steel industry. Britain was one of the keenest of the “Coalition of the Willing” countries, fighting alongside the US in Afghanistan (and later, Iraq.)
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Tariffs are a legitimate tool of government financial policy, but not in the way Trump proposes them. If you have an industry that you need to protect for matters of national security (high-tech chips, certain agricultures, certain mining, defense, etc.) you have 3 tools: tariffs, subsidies, and import/export bans.
Let’s talk about tariffs: A tariff provides a tax on things made out of the country. It encourages things to be made local. However, while it may encourage the manufacture of things locally (increasing jobs) it also increases the cost of things to be just under the tariff rate. So if a TV costs $1000 before a tariff, and the same TV by an offshore manufacturer now costs $1000 + $200 in tariffs, it will now cost $1200. A local manufacturer not subjected to the tariffs, (assuming there is one, and there won’t be, and it will take 2-3 years to build one), will, if it is efficient, pay their workers very poorly and still try to price their prices as high as they can but under the tariff prices. You will pay $1180 for a TV when you used to pay $1000. And you are still competing with low-wage offshore workers while the people invoking the tariffs don’t care that you are making minimum wage. Your wages will remain the same, and their profits will soar.
Tariffs are a tool of the oligarchy.
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In other words, “CTA report suggests that the government raising prices will lead to a rise in prices.”
There’s a fourth tool, which would never play in the US: supply management.
Industries like dairy tend to have boom-bust cycles of production and pricing. Canada uses supply management to smooth it out. The US uses massive subsidies, which keeps it cheap in the store, but results in huge surpluses that the US dairy lobby is always trying to find places to dump. (e.g. the US is insanely protective of its world-wide baby formula market.)
If Trump got in, He’d try another pork-brain attempt to “open up” the Canadian market.
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