Tariff Isn't Tax on Other Countries?🤪

Or, we can hold the fucking media accountable for telling blatant lies about the impacts of tariffs.

Ignorance is not an excuse. Fire all MAGAs for taxifs.
Fox News got around that by claiming they're entertainment, not news.
- Per their own arguments in court, no reasonable person would consider Fox News to be factual.

The OP is battling against what Faux Newz, Dipshit Donnie, and other right-wing propagandist shitrags are telling his employee, all which the employee takes as indesputable truth. If he can override that much brainwashing he can convince anyone of anything.

"The Big Lie" is what Sanders is calling it.
But the guys in OP, they don't turn on daddy Trump. It can't be that they were lied to, then they'd have to do something alien to them like introspection. No, it must be...an honest mistake? Honestly have no idea how they'd justify it internally.
- Because to these people, being ‘bad’ isn’t something you do, it’s something you are. You may thank certain types of Christianity for this nonsense.
  So the thinking goes something like: ‘I’m a Good Person. And as a Good Person, I only vote for/support Good People, because I am Good. So the people I voted for are Good, because only a Bad Person would vote for Bad People, and I’m not Bad, I’m Good. So Trump can’t be Bad; he must have just made a mistake.’
  This is also why they favor punitive jailing instead of trying to reform criminals; criminals are Bad, and so they will always do Bad Things. It’s also why they do stuff like try to get rid of abortion. If a woman got pregnant from ‘sleeping around’ then she’s a Bad Person and deserves to be punished by carrying the child to term.
How does the saying about selling a lie go?
- Well, a lie can be half around the world before the truth even has its boots on.
- Three liars makes a tiger

didn't understand why he was told the other countries pay the tariffs

that's easy: you were willing to vote for a guy who lied over 30 thousand times in his first term so he realized you're a fucking idiot and he could say anything without you thinking even half a second about it.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF EXPORTING SHIT YOU IDIOT WHY WOULD A COUNTRY DO IT IF THEY HAD TO PAY FOR IT

The real Russian plot we've all missed completely has far, far less to do with paying Trump to sell them documents. That's the 2-dimensional public face of a cold-war that never ended and has been devastatingly effective against the USA.
The real Russian attack that we may never fully comprehend is exactly what they've done in other countries that they've subsequently annexed, which is making the general population stop caring about what's true or not. It's frighteningly easy to poison the well of public knowledge. You simply pour funding into efforts to boost BOTH SIDES of every social issue. When social debates and your nation's interests are ramped up and the rhetoric gets more and more extreme on both sides of an issue, when every story on both sides becomes suspect, people simply tune out or stop caring about what's true or not, and this is exactly where we are. Most people are more willing to just throw their arms up and go find a distraction than try to sift through what's real or not.
It was even easier to pull off in the USA than anywhere else because we have a built-in policy of fierce independence and individuality. We don't have communities around us, we don't have social circles that will make us want to step up our game, we don't have groups of people we care about telling us we're wrong, we don't have help from anywhere but inside our own heads. And if you've never been taught how your own thoughts can be wrong, if you've been fed the "special birthday boy" narrative for so long that you think highly of yourself, truth will seem toxic and poison because it will tell you things about yourself that will hurt. We don't seek out pain as a species, we use pain a signal to avoid a thing.
You can google "KGB tactics for destabilizing nations" and spend weeks reading about what's being done to us right now. But most people who read my message here will immediately feel that sneaking doubt or words of caution because "how do we even know what's real anymore."
They willing pay the extra funbucks tariff monies for the privilege and honor of shipping it to America (at cost) on a chance some red-hatted half-wit will waste it.
WHAT’S THE POINT OF EXPORTING SHIT YOU IDIOT WHY WOULD A COUNTRY DO IT IF THEY HAD TO PAY FOR IT
Yeah this is grade school level reasoning telling you that it obviously doesn't work that way.
A country's aluminum exports for example aren't extra aluminum they want to get rid of because it's junking up their basements and America is 1800-got-junk taking it off their hands at cost. It's a fucking series of material production companies in a different country. They too are based on capitalism and they too require profits in order to function.
Especially when tariffs go above 100%!
Like, do you believe French companies would be paying the shipping costs to give you free Champagne?

Delete Elon and Trump from existence and nothing will get better.

Why?

Because Americans are dumb as fuck and they'll still be dumb as fuck when and if those two are gone.

I'm old enough to have seen the same pattern multiple times. Republican leadership fails spectacularly, even pissing off many conservatives in the process. But as soon as the next cycle begins, those conservatives are back onboard voting for the absolute shittiest candidates.

Because to them an actual, literal dictator is better than a Democrat as president.

Our society is circling the toilet and it almost certainly won't get better within our lifetimes. Prepare yourselves for that.

I actually don't consider this an issue of being dumb. It IS an issue with being under-educated (often deliberately in R states) and fed a ton of propaganda
- There's ignorance and there's stupidity. Stupidity will stubbornly resist any attempt to correct its ignorance.
  Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.
  Against stupidity we are defenseless.
  Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.
  For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.
  ...
  If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.
  Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It took Rome 1000 years to collapse. I expect instability in the us for the rest of my lifetime. I’m struggling to balance that reality and also living my life.
Also- I think COVID is to blame too. More people started living from the survival mindset and actually getting sick impacted their brain. Dictatorships help people feel safe.
- It took Rome 1000 years to collapse.
  I mean, if you want to get extra snarky, Rome's still there. Still one of the wealthiest cities on earth, to this day. The infrastructure is what makes the city and that can be repaired or rebuilt, improved even, as generations come to their senses.
  More people started living from the survival mindset and actually getting sick impacted their brain. Dictatorships help people feel safe.
  I pin this far more on the toxic media atmosphere than COVID, although the pandemic definitely took its toll. That said, the current hysteria around migrants and Woke feels a lot more like the post-9/11 moment than COVID. Democrats rolling over sheepishly while a Republican wields unitary executive power to disappear dissidents and intimidate
  What folks on here don't want to accept is that this isn't the first time we've had a President behave like this. Its not even the first time in our lifetimes (for the most part - sorry teenagers). This is more normal than not, in fact. Reagan's War on Drugs, Nixon's War on Crime, Eisenhower's Red Scare, and FDR/Truman's Japanese Internment echoed all the same fascist tendencies.
  What's really changed in 2025 is the abysmal long term economic outlook. Liberals in 1984 could duck their heads and glare at the rampant poverty around them and mutter "If those hippie slackers had earned an education rather than smoking dope and fucking around, they wouldn't get picked on by the police". But now... fucking kids at Columbia University are being targeted. Surgeons are getting targeted. Judges are getting targeted.
  Literally the only thing you can do to avoid these purges is Be MAGA. And "Just be MAGA, you won't get hurt" isn't something liberals can quite bring themselves to do yet (although keep an eye on Gavin Newsom and Richie Torries and Andrew Cuomo, because its coming).
  Dictatorship isn't making people feel safe. It's making them feel terrified and helpless.
They're symptoms, not the problem. Even if they were vanished from existing by will of a djinni or something, another would just take their place.

and every one of the millions who ~~were~~are just as dumb, will forget the lessons learned well before the next election and vote for it all over again.

...next election?
- You know, the one Trump wins with 106% of the totaled votes.
nice of you to assume there's gonna be a NEXT election.

I wrote a comment explaining Tariffs on a Fox News YouTube video a few weeks back, and the entire reply chain was people arguing with eachother about how tariffs work because "Trump said it's a tax on other countries, so that's how they work"

You’re doing god’s work in the hellish trenches
- That's front line in "Trench Crusade" level of trenches.

Im still surprised by that , the quality of education in my country is low but holly fuck im stunned by the lack of education in the states
- It is highly regional, too.
  Despite the existence of the Department of Education (which Trump is trying to dismantle), there is no national standard for education in the US. In general, each state is free to decide upon its own policies and standards.
  Some states, such as those in the northeast, have very high-performing school systems. So when that "1 in 5 are illiterate" statistic is mentioned (I actually have not verified that number, just quoting the prior claim as an example), it would be caused by low-performing states where the situation is much more dire dragging down the national average.
  Here's a general look at quality of education in the US by state, though recommend folks look up their own numbers because I haven't validated the numbers pulled in the article I grabbed this from.
  It's not a perfect divide between red states and blue states (Florida appears good, California less so, as an example), but in general we see the lower performing states located mainly in the South where the Republicans have more support. Basically, a less educated populace is easier to manipulate.
- It's by design.
Important note - literacy isn’t simply about being able to recognize and pronounce letters and words. A person can sound out every word in English, and understand what each word says, and still be illiterate if they cannot comprehend the message the words express together.
That’s where this illiteracy arises - it’s a failure of reading comprehension. In this light, I imagine many of us have attempted conversation online with somebody functionally illiterate.
- Literacy is also about English (at least as commonly reported in the US). About 1/3 of functionally illiterate adults in the US are foreign born. I have never seen literacy stats that measure "literate in any language".
"Are you saying 1 fouth of Americans are removed?" "Yeah at least 1 fourth."

Not necessarily: the company can choose to absorb part or all the tariff, since the demand would drop at the higher price anyway, and they might make more overall profit at a lower margin per item. But generally yes, most of the cost will be passed on to the consumer and prices will increase on average.
Example:
- found the economics student
the end consumer always foots the bill.
Or the consumer can't/won't take on the extra burden of cost, and the business loses enough sales to go under.
The only difference would be that money we spent would be going to the companies instead of the government. Tarrifs are a government putting taxes on their people to strangle industries in other countries. In both scenarios we pay the same, but the flow of money is different
The difference is that this way it's much easier to calculate prices.
If the tax were 20%, the exporter would have to do the inverse calculation. That is, "which price will result in me gaining $1000?" Which is not 1200, since 20% of 1200 is 240. x = 0.8y -> y = (1/0.8)*x -> y = 1.25x. so the exporter would have to price it at 1.25x the price, $1250. 20% of 1250 is 250.
So it's unintuitive that a 20% tax would result in a 25% price increase. That's my guess why tariffs are applied to the importer instead of exporter.
Wouldn't refunding the amount of the tariff to the customer fix this? Ignoring the very important diplomatic and retaliation tariffs which makes the whole post unusable for real life
Canada sells a product A $100.
Tariffs makes it $120 when you buy it
so Canada gets $100, USA gets $20, USA customer pays $120.
USA has now $20, they can directly refund the customer for $20 via a policy to reduce the price of the category of A.
So customer gets $20 reduction of the product A via tax something, so USA now has $0 and USA customer actually paid only $100.
Except now if USA company make the product A they can sell it for like $100 and customer pays $80.
There is a slight increase of imported goods price here because tariffs cannot actually refund $20, it will be a % of the local vs imported production.
Over time you can expect to get a local advantage because of this price inequality, so local companies will be subsidized by imports until imports are no longer significant.
Where am I wrong here ?
- In your scenario how is the local made $100 item bought at $80? Where is a $20 refund paid from? You are double spending it on both imported and local goods

Dumbasses go from not believing everything a politician tells them to believing everything a politician tells them because he's dRaInInG the SwAmP. Zero sympathy for anyone still buying their lies.

It's not an issue of believing/not-believing politicians nearly so much as it is a media environment that's fully saturated with right-wing propaganda.
What do you tell a person who has been listening to AM Radio for 30 years? What do you tell a person that was taught Ayn-Rand-o-nomics in High School while the teacher clutched a copy of Atlas Shrugged alongside her Bible? What do you tell a person who has never actually been involved in the higher levels of business management, because our economic model is so subdivided and the commodities so fetishized?
You can't get mad at the loyal acolyte of a cargo cult for praying to the cargo gods if that's all they've ever known. Neither can you simply ignore the Cult Leader, who has been blaring the message from a megaphone into everyone's ears, for their entire adult lives.
I have immense sympathy for people who are pre-programmed to get hoodwinked by this shit and I count my lucky stars every day that I only get hoodwinked some of the time and mostly on things that don't obliterate my quality of life when they come due.
But more than them, I feel awful for the people who come after us, because we at least got to enjoy that World's Greatest Middle Class Life while it was on offer. The next generation is going to be fed all the same propaganda, but they're going to be doing it from in the pod while eating the bugs.
- You can't get mad at the loyal acolyte of a cargo cult
  Yeah, I can. It's probably not productive or helpful or change inducing, but boy, can I. And some days I don't have energy to waste on regulating my feelings towards intentful idiots and then I do get mad. It doesn't change shit but at least I don't have to bottle all that up.
- I think comparing this to a cargo cult is a bit misguided. These people live in a world with unlimited information right at their fingertips. I get finding factual information is incredibly difficult these days, but that's just all the more reason to not blindly accept the bias of one source. The propoganda machines are to blame for a lot of our problems, but that doesn't let the assholes gobbling it up off the accountability hook.

"He was told the other countries pay the tariffs", by a bunch of liars and he believed the liars.

The real hard part is it's a partial truth.
The sellers do pay the tariffs, they just don't talk about what that does to the prices.
The other problem is it cuts both ways, and a number of the idiots will say as long as you're hurting them too, fine.
And then we have retaliatory tariffs, which also cut both ways.
IMHO, our biggest issue is we've been using cheap Chinese products and labor as a crutch instead of increasing wages. They've been able to cut down wages because Amazon, Temu and Shein have been providing products WAY WAY under marketable US made prices.

Man, this isn't even "doing your research" it's just knowing what very basic words mean.

I bet a coworker $20 that "tariff" and "tax" were synonyms. Motherfucker refused to pay up, calling merriam-webster.com, thesauraus.com, wikipedia etc. "fake news".
- Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.
- I would've made you pay him. Every tariff is a tax but not every tax is a tariff. Of course your actual point still stands.
- A tariff is a tax or custom duty on an imported good.
  Tariffs can lead to a reduction and higher prices on foreign imported goods.[1] Like the corporate income tax, domestic consumers ultimately pay the tax in higher prices.
  https://www.conservapedia.com/Tariff
- Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyway.
It's anti-intellectualism.
You don't need to understand any of it, you can just ask people who spend their lives researching this stuff.
That’s actually a huge problem I’ve had with a right winger.
Even though he was relatively reasonable, we got stuck because we could not agree on what fascism means.
I was good to use a dictionary or better yet Wikipedia. He said it can only mean what Mussolini meant when he came up with the term.
What was annoying is that all I wanted to do was say, group X does Y things, Y things are fascism and fascism is bad.
It’s just mental gymnastics because it doesn’t matter what we call it, group X is still doing bad things, but instead we got stuck on details.
Imo this is pretty much all right wing’s only play, dismantle the tools of logic so the conversation doesn’t even happen in the first place.
- Mussolini also said that fascism was whatever it needed to be in the nation it was in, for future reference. There is only the pragmatic consolidation of power.
  It does not even matter if is the state consolidating power, or the church, or corporations, only that the process is aimed at merging their powers in the end.

To be fair, economics is not intuitive. Half of it is built out of unicorn dust and human imagination. How else would bitcoin even exist? For those of you who are economists and love the money side, vs the behavioral side, that’s great, we need people like you to explain it to the rest of us.

I work with a real system that will still exist no matter what happens with politics or money, so it takes work, for me. That said, tariffs and inflation are not difficult concepts provided you simply take the time to learn.

I know someone who lost their job in December due to tariffs anticipation, and they were not alone in that group of layoffs. The effects are there even if you fail to learn the reasons.

I'm of average intelligence so if I can understand it, so can they.
- Honestly I'm dumb as hell, and when I didn't understand something I just trust my friends who I know share my values. MAGAs seem to have decided they trust Trump over their children, for the most part.
Half of it is built out of unicorn dust and human imagination.
Economics is applied psychology at scale hiding behind the idea of math and using "businesses" and "markets" to depersonalize their findings and play pretend at describing natural laws. All it's really describing is the behavior of people, and a wildly nonrepresentative subset of people at that.
It's not that complicated that when a company with thin margins has to pay a tax, they have to pay it on to consumers.
Your finance department doesn't care about the difference between a more expensive part due to scarcity vs a more expensive part due to a tax.
For extra sad - what is economical is more intuitive bcs it's not just a human skill, it's a skill nature forces all species into in one way or the other.
\ 'Economics' (the human science) however adds so many extra steps, scales, and logistics that is def not immediately intuitive (even in the simple cases when it is).
In both cases there is a certain element of future uncertainty so risk management is essential.

Real answer is in the last line there. If 60% of people we're capable of doing their own research (and arriving at the correct answer) then we wouldn't have anti-vaxers, flat-earthers and non-billionaire/non-bigot/non-christian nationalist republicans.

The problem lies where they "find" their "research" when they see the answer they want to see on social media rather than an actual study or any factual references.
- They also seem unaware that google deliberately serves them, specifically, tin foil results based on their watch history.

I would like to ask them what happens when taffis are increased to 100%? Does that mean producers are giving stuff for free?

And then what happen when the tarris are at 200%? Do they have to send stuff for free and pay on top of that?

One more thing - don't tell them they are wrong. Tell them they were lied to

Personally if I had to cut someone's hours, all else being equal, the one who took 50 attempts to figure out tariffs would go before the one who took 2.

Trump & Co do love the uneducated.

This may be "unpopular opinion" stuff, but I frequently see highly upvoted populist pitches on Lemmy that are just the same; a supposed way of sticking it to the man that will quite obviously be borne by the little guy.

"Doing your own research" means watching one or two YouTube videos or Facebook posts as far as these people are concerned. No thought for themselves, just parrot what you hear.

- Hey, you have to factor in things like market capture! They could be operating entirely at a loss just to ensure no other competitor can operate in the same market.
  (/s because duh more cost = more price)
- I think what you're missing might be that you're assuming that the producers stay the same over time. I.e. if it costs more to get that product to you from China, then an US company would produce it instead in the future to circumvent the tariffs. That brings labor/jobs to the US. I think that is the idea behind the tariffs. Any questions left?
What do you tell the people who are in fact thinking themselves and concluding that:
adding tariffs is a good thing for the US workers. for one, it ensures that resources (like aluminum) are being sourced from within the US, adding extra mining jobs. For two, it means that complex goods tend to be manufactured/assembled within the US, again adding labor/assembly jobs. For three, why should the product become more expensive to the end user if it's the same production process being employed?

Why else do Republicans love to defund education? Conservatism requires people to be ignorant about reality in order to have any chance at succeeding.

Isn't this the same debate as to how one country can (or cannot) force another country to pay for a random construction project that isn't in anyones interest (that wall)?

It's not like the concept is beyond (basically, 99.9+%) anyones cognitive abilities. It's just how ads (the science behind it is plentiful, it's a giant business sector) work on human brains.

I might be wrong here, but tariffs can be very effective tools, but as a slow burn. The way they're being wielded here is asinine.

If you want to affect behavior, tariffs are a long game. They're passed by Congress so they aren't tied to the whims of one man. If you don't want US chicken or EU trucks, make a law and let decades of implementation change behavior.

If you just want them to hurt, you do them the way we are now. The unpredictability hurts businesses and individuals, inside and outside the US. It makes prices and markets volatile and sows distrust. It hurts the vast majority of people, but benefits people who have the stability and assets to buy low and sell high. Each tariff implementation and retraction is just a mini market manipulation giving people with advance knowledge of what is affected to profit.

They're a tool for correcting price alterations on the seller side. If China is subsidizing the manufacturing of Fidgets, a matching tarrif on the import of Fidgets protects domestic manufacturing from artificially cheap competition by preventing consumers from seeing those low prices.
The subsidies don't even need to be hostile. The US subsidizes food to lower domestic costs, ensure a stockpile, and keep farmers happy. The side effect of driving down world grain prices is incidental.
Additionally, they strike me as the stick that pairs best with a carrot to spur domestic production of whatever you've put tarrifs on, along the lines of the CHIPS act.
- This administration doesn't believe in carrots, only sticks.

Of course the employee is wrong, but the OOP isn't tackling the argument in a really productive way. There's an opportunity to meet the employee where they are.

People caught in the right wing noise machine always seem to understand that businesses pass on business taxes to the consumer. So, if other countries were paying the tariffs, why wouldn't they pass those costs on?

Did you read the post? It sounds like they explained it thoroughly to them prior to the tariffs going into effect and it went in one ear and out the other.
- I read the post. I understood the post. Did you understand what I said?
  You can be perfectly correct, or you can reach people who reject reality. You gotta decide on your goals, and understand that peacocking on the Internet isn't useful.
Yeah, whenever people say "the other country pays" (well, before this election cycle) what they meant was that the higher price would encourage shoppers to buy domestic this the other country "pays" because they get less revenue. Prices would go up either way though because of the domestic goods were cheaper they would've already been the first pick. The thing about taxes is that it doesn't really matter if it's placed on the supply or demand side, the end effect is the same. Sure, it will feel different and there might be different short term effects, but it's the same regardless. The price is higher and government gets a cut.
So I don't really understand why people believe that even if the foreign country/company was paying the tariff why people would think prices stay the same. As if other countries are just going to get a 25% fee and not increase prices by ~25% to cover that.
- The most charitable argument for Trump would be that foreign businesses reduce their prices such that the price paid by their US customers is the same as before the tariffs to remain competitive in the US market, but I think most MAGAs literally just never thought about it.
I get what you're saying but you're reinforcing the belief that other countries are paying the tariffs. They're not paying anything. A tariff is a direct tax on anyone importing products into the country.
- I'm not reinforcing anything. I'm saying bypass that part entirely, and use the conservative talking points against taxes to discuss this. That the end consumer is ultimately the one that pays, no matter what.

This was explained to people all over the internet. I remember people posting the dailyshow shirt guy interview where they explain to him how tariffs will impact his business. Some people didn't care as long as it also hurt everybody they don't like.

So ask yourself we someone who voted for Trump whines about tariffs. Is this person just dumb or a total piece of shit?.

So ask yourself we someone who voted for Trump whines about tariffs. Is this person just dumb or a total piece of shit?.
I say both. They are stupid racist homophobic assholes and deserve any pain they get for their choices. And though we should do everything we can to help those who will be hurt by Trump's policies, I sincerely hope that every single person who voted for that POS experiences an absolute fuck ton of pain and suffering in the coming months and years.
- The most unfortunate thing is that the pain and suffering will not only be limited to the people who supported Trump and his policies. Everyone is going to pay for their poor choices.

I don't understand how they think this works

A lot of them think that the country with the tarrifs levied against them needs to pay the country they are exporting to to sell the goods there like a "If you want to do business here" tax on the country exporting.
But in all honesty even if it did work that way, the exporting country would just jack the prices up to cover it. The end result for US citizens would be the same.
- But in all honesty even if it did work that way, the exporting country would just jack the prices up to cover it. The end result for US citizens would be the same.
  This. It doesn't matter whether the exporter or importer is payign the tariff, the result is the same - it increases the cost of goods, and that cost is going to get passed down the line, plus margin.
- I think it actually can't work that way at all if he does that. Theoretically, it'll work upto 100% tarrifs but it's way worse.
  Imagine mr T says 100% tarrifs on product X, that costs $20.
  If consumers pay it then it just costs $40 and it's over. If the original country pays it then they have to pay $20 to sell $20 product, which is not profitable at all. But if they jack the price to $40, then they have to pay $40, again not profitable. So this system only works for smaller % tarrifs so that they can raise the price to cover that.
  Suppose you have $2 profit (10%) on $20 item, and 20% ($4) tariffs. You can't pay more than your profit, so you increase the price from 20 to 26, now you have 30% ($8) profit, you pay 20% ($5) tarrifs and get total 10% profit. So you see with 20% tariff you get 30% increase in cost. So this would work worse than consumers directly paying 20% tariffs.

He's a sucker. And his news media knows it.

The whole thing was very purposefully talked about using the word "tariff" and never ever its synonym "import tax" exactly so that the traditional Fascist technique of redefining the meaning of words could be easily used: if all the Fascists' speech had been about "import taxes" they would not have been able to leverage most people's ignorance anywhere near this level because the very words "import" and "tax" were already reasonably well understood by most - unlike "tariff" - so the opinion makers would not have been able to miseducate their targets anywhere as easily.

I'm not saying that the people who fell for this are to be excused - if there is something important enough for you to put the effort into educating yourself, it's Politics - I'm saying it's understandable how so many were so easy to swindle.

Omg. We’ve come full circle now that smart people are telling idiots to do your own research…

I distinctly remember learning about tariffs in Social Studies. That was back in elementary / middle school. I understood it then and so did my classmates.

Hire smarter employees.

Those cost more, and with the tariffs I doubt he can afford it

Simple answers to complex questions is fast, and helps people quickly move into the phase where they're expending energy on "solutions" rather than debating the issue.

We're lazy. People are lazy - I know I am.

Something that's sufficiently removed from our everyday experience is mysterious, and (someone we trust) tells us that it will work? No questions, here we go!

- Even worse. The company selling it needs to meet percentage profit margins. So before when they paid $5 and charge 50% markup, it was 7.50. Now that it is $7.50 cost, they don't charge $10, they charge $11.25.

Plot twist: the person writing this is President Musk and the employee he's referring to is Trump.

literally googling tariffs, brings you to a government page that lists tariffs, duties, and taxes under the same fucking definition.

How people like this DO NOT understand this shit, is beyond me. I can respect the humility in changing your position after being that stupid though, please, due your due diligence before mindlessly repeating the shit other people tell you, so you don't look stupid.

What, visit a website, read it, then comprehend it? What, like a book?! May as well ask them to make a phone call.
- yeah, otherwise you're a dumbass, and will look like one to everyone around you, unfortunately.
  This is normal behavior. Ironically they would probably be more than willing to make a phone call.

And the people who voted for the orangetard will still be shafted by him and his mafia yet will continue to blame "obiden" for their economic woes. 🥱

My job has been impacted by Trumpas well. Stock prices falling and tariffs have caused them to do layoff of 2500 people. I fucking hate this so much. I work with many international customers and Trump/Musk has been brought up constantly and in my line of work people typically avoid political discussions but it's kinda nice to hear our allies don't actually hate Americans and know what the real problem is.

So bring on the downvotes, but can anyone tell me what the alternative plan was to bring manufacturing back to the states? And wasn’t that always going to make things more expensive?

Granted, this is being done with complete reckless regard, and the effects could’ve been spread out, but what’s the alternative?

- You’re singing my song. Everything you’re saying is spot on.
  I think the eventual solve will be small batch manufacturing capability, progressively complex according to population density. But those means of production will need to be nationalized for planning & control, and it’s simply not possible under capitalism.
  But the current power structure is built on “market solutions” by using collective punishment to force capitalists to make concessions without directly regulating them. It’s the whole reason the fed manipulates interest rates.
People will tell you subsidies and positive reinforcement but honestly that is just more government spending to make a few rich. The answer is, there isn't an alternative. All options aren't great.
Manufacturing working conditions are horrible. As a country develops workers rights, unions, safety regulations, etc, it becomes almost impossible to compete on a global scale for manufacturing. Naturally the manufacturers in countries where those things don't exist do very well.
In certain countries, the labor is just a few steps off of slave labor, which we all know is highly profitable and highly unethical. In other countries their dollar is so weak that net exports are the obvious choice for profitable businesses. Manufacturing thrives in these conditions and attracts a great deal of foreign investment - because hey, if the shipping costs are outweighed by the operational savings - it's a sound business plan!!
Tariffs upset that equilibrium and guess who pays American tariffs? AMERICAN COMPANIES. The government gets a benefit, US becomes less likely of an export destination for countries to trade with, the dollar gets messed with in funky ways, and there is some amount of global loss of productivity due to this forced shift.
Basically, I view tariffs as a tax on the benefits of cheap overseas labor.
- I think you’re right. And I think the unspoken policy off anti-tariff politicians is, ‘We’re never bringing those jobs back.’
Where did you get the idea that tariffs are supposed to increase domestic production in any way?
- That’s the openly stated goal of tariffs from both parties.
I can tell you! It's just not a quick, easy, single bill that we can pass. It takes a fundamental change in the way Americans think, it's gonna take at least 2 generations to make this move.
Here's the plan: we're gonna promote cooperation. We're gonna get people to notice the systematic problems in the way they are treated by their authorities. We need to aggressively be better than our enemies, both in practice and knowledge.
Here's the method: (Essay ahead).
We need to disrupt almost every single system that currently exists. They're basically all fucked. Start with the ones that get the most people motivated - their basic needs first, entertainment second, their wellbeing third. That feels wrong and it is, we need 2 generations to fix this because we've been beat down by this system so bad the priorities aren't even correct anymore. I've been using this tagline recently "People in homes, food in bellies, minds entertained and health maintained."
You as an individual can and, if you want to have an impact of saving literally the world and not just America, probably should start doing your part for this plan. Give away what you can, but never what you need. And be careful, because you might need that later. Never let that get in the way, though, of giving what you can. Bring your neighbors grocery money when you have a bit of extra cash, and offer to start a food co-op to make sure they never go hungry. It sucks, because I know damn well I wanna go spend that extra 20 bucks to treat myself and you probably do too. But if you go give it away instead, it'll come back to you. Not immediately, and not always symmetrically. But it will come back to benefit you in some way. We need to shift the focus towards the community instead of the individual. I have plans for the other steps, if you'd like I can go into them. But the food co-ops are the best first step IMO
- Why would it take generations to fix an issue that only started a few decades ago? What a load of shit.
It's a dead industry to an economy that doesn't need it anymore. The same way you don't kill your chicken, produce your own oil, make your own shoes, shoelaces, clothes...etc. That's how the imbalance of economies work.
What you don't understand is that Trump knows this, and he cultivated both hope AND fear in enough people to get him into office. His end goal is to force you into buying dumb shit that is made better elsewhere because him and his cronies can't sell it elsewhere for profit, and they own all of it. He's literally trying to force you into paying money to people who own dead resources.
Trump is the guy walking up to you on the street asking you to buy the watches he just "found in a dumpster". I'm sorry you had to find out this way.
- Democrats have been selling the promise of bringing back manufacturing jobs for just as long. The difference is they never had any intent on following through. Granted, the GOP didn’t intent to keep those promises either, but Trump works outside of that dynamic. So regardless of how badly this goes, to the common voter, this is going to look like Trump is the only one willing to follow through on his promised policy goals. By doing what both party’s always promised to do, he’s forced them to openly admit it was always a lie.
  They may snag a few wins here and there, but I don’t see the Democratic Party ever making a full recovery from this. It’s a capitalist party, and they will always be subservient to capitalists. They’ll never be in a position where they can deliver on their promises to voters.
  If a socialist and/or pro worker party manages to gain a foothold in our country’s electoral politics, they will peel off so many people from the base of both parties that they would completely dominate American politics. Both parties know this, and that’s why both of them are working to ban ranked choice voting and suing leftist candidates off of the ballots.

By the way, if tariffs are directly sent back to the customer through tax reduction on the tariffed category of products, wouldn't it be painless for the company/customers (if you forget the retaliation tariffs) while increasing you local insensitive to production? (all things equal if you imagine companies reduce the cost of the products properly etc which is not realistic)

I don't see how that would help. In the ideal case of a finished product, tariffs artificially raise the effective price for the buyer; they don't change the math on the cost of production. Usually, they hurt the producing/exporting firm by forcing it to increase the asking price, which reduces sales. It reduces sales because the buying/importing firm has to pay higher prices. If the buying/importing firm gets tax reductions that are directly tied to the tariff, then its out-of-pocket expense hasn't changed, and it can just keep buying the imported product with no effect on its profits. That means that the producing/exporting firm can still sell exactly the same volume of product at the higher price, covering the tariff cost, with no effect on its profits. Nothing much has changed, except a bunch of extra paperwork and transactions.
There's only incentive to move production locally if the buying/importing firm can switch to a cheaper, local product, but retain the tax benefits, allowing it to keep more money. But that means the tariff money is no longer being collected, so somebody else is paying the taxes while not getting the benefits. In short, tariffs can only work by causing pain to somebody locally.
That's 2 if's. Sure, IF both of those things were true, maybe it would net out, but still be a paperwork and cashflow delay for the company (pay the duty today, get the money back at some point in the future) which sucks liquidity out of the market and generally holds back growth and investment.
But that isn't particularly relevant since neither of those two things will ever happen. The tax cuts will go to the top earners, and retaliatory tariffs are very much a thing and cannot be ignored.
- Ah yeah I see I forgot this part, more bureaucracy and delay might hurt cash flow. Thanks that's a good thinking.
  It's just a though experiment, in real life it's not a nice math problem to solve like you said.

Some people genuinely are fucking dumber than a rock

Your telling me the US government can't just demand other countries pay them money for no reason?

/j

Where was this posted?

https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1j9c3an/does_anybody_else_have_that_employee_or_those/
- Oh, Reddit! Thanks.

I tell people that if they think other countries pay the tariffs they probably believe Mexico is paying for a wall

Okay so, continuity error.

In the beginning his hours are being cut almost entirely, and at the end they're in no danger of being cut?

It's not good story but this is either a weird grammatical error or this is one those "things that didn't happen" stories.

Not that I doubt people think that other countries pay for tarrifs because Daddy Trump has been saying that for months and months but .......

Man, I wonder how basic reading comprehension played a role in the last election.
- Actually the blame on this is his lack of paragraphs .
  Thoughts should be separated!
- Or dyslexia/ADHD
Read again - it was two different people he was talking about. It's implied that they have different job positions so their hours were impacted differently.
- Ahh okay so that makes sense.

There are people who don't know how tariffs work?

If America is the sole buyer, then the tax would be shared between both countries. (Lower demand will lower the price that the foreign supplier can ask for, making up some of the extra tax cost). But since USA is doing these tariffs on so many countries, other countries will just lay new trading routes.

So yeah, USA will feel it.

Next try telling him there's no God with an EKG. The same part of his brain will be activated, guaranteed. Not to dock religion. But US conservatism is a religious cult basically.