Walmart just leveled with Americans: China won’t be paying for Trump’s tariffs, in all likelihood you will

And you don't need a textbook to understand how the very basics of business work. You know, the thing people seem convinced he understands? A fucking toddler has more knowledge than Trump. The United States of America doesn't have two brain cells to rub together

He won it by taking bribes from billionaires, like a true politician

Nobody who voted for Trump read[s] that book homie.

Fixed that for ya

Yeah, the, misguided, idea is that the increase in price from imports will drive domestic production, of those things, as the high prices reduce demand, and cut into profit margins. This used to be something that was a sensible assumption of what would happen. However the contemporary world has far too much infrastructure for tariffs to truly work like that any longer. It will, usually, be cheaper to increase the costs for the tariffs, than to restructure back to domestic production.

Well, the far-right courts made that illegal for publicly-traded companies, so, no.

And this is the absolute brain rot fantasy of tariffs that I keep explaining to these idiots, and keep getting blank stares or awkward silences.

Tariffs are 100% punitive, without a domestic/alternative sourcing strategy. They can work long term to reduce a foreign nation's competitive advantage in an industry while allowing a domestic industry space to exist, but that only works if there’s a domestic industry that already exists (at enough scale to meet demand) or a long term government program to nurture and build those industries - education/vocation training, regulatory concerns, infrastructure development, raw materials availability, etc

Tariffs Chinese steel/electronics/machine tools/etc into oblivion? Either buy the imported at a high price, or buy the domestic at a slightly less high price - but the cost is always carried by the consumer no matter what.

And beyond that, it will incentivize further automation rather than more blue collar jobs.

More like generations IMO

This is largely accurate unfortunately. A good example is Apple. They tried to make a high-end desktop computer manufactured in the US. To do this they needed a specific type of screw. In the area near their factory, they only found one machine shop that could make the screw and they could guarantee an output of 50 screws per day after a 3 week lead time to tool up. And that was the final offer.

When they finally moved to China, they submitted the same request. Multiple vendors appeared offering thousands of screws per day and if they wanted to place a bigger order the company would set up a new factory just to produce those screws and could output tens or hundreds of thousands per day depending on requirements.

Another example is the iPhone and Gorilla Glass. There were a few Chinese companies in the running to manufacture the glass panel that would go on top of the phone. The one that got the contract, in anticipation of getting the contract, had already purchased the machine to form the glass and had samples ready for inspection at the contract signing.

We have allowed our business climate to become so bogged down in red tape and liability and lawyers and insurance, that most American companies are simply unable to execute at the same speed as China when it comes to manufacturing.

I would absolutely love to get more manufacturing back in the US. But the process of outsourcing is not going to get unwound overnight. It took two decades to move everything to China, even if the whole country agreed that was a mistake it would take another two decades to bring it back. Because as the Apple screws demonstrate, it's not just about the factory that produces the widget. It's about everything that goes into that factory, the companies that make the parts and the screws and the plastic. When you deal with China, they are all right there and they are all ready to go. Same can't be said for the US.

Those prices entirely rebounded by the end of 2019. Thats how tariffs work. It became more expensive to import, companies slowly replaced imports with cheaper local goods, the cost settles.

There are surely instances where it didnt rebound entirely but thats not one of them.

I think you guys know.

You had econ in HS? Mine had it but it was only an elective.

Basic economics was not a required class in my high school. Macro and Micro Economics were both electives.

Hmm maybe my highschool was far below average then

They don’t care. The owners of Walmart are some of the richest people in the world. So like all rich people they just figure they’ll hike prices and people will still pay (and they’ll have to, because Walmart tends to drive all its competitors out of town).

They do not care, and the Waltons probably like Trump. They've got their money already. Waltons don't care about America; they've been in bed with China since Sam died & they've been gobbling up the excessive profits for years. Cheap Chinese goods for low-ish American prices.

It's even simpler than that, it's people being told what to think.

I think "people" speaking very generally used to not read a ton of news, heard stuff from the grapevine, and so on. "Elites" and news junkies had somewhat more monolithic sources.

And that's not true anymore. Nearly every "average" person's life is now dominated by a personalized feed, a podcast, TV, radio, chatroom, whatever, and it's having an outsized influence compared to their observations of reality now.

It's my belief that there's basically nothing Biden could have done to alter this (other than regulating algorithms, and it's far too late) and ultimately it's the DNC's fault for "taking the high road" and not playing the propaganda game.

Are you kidding ? This is absolutely going to be blamed on Biden, loudly and repeatedly.

They won't.

What are you talking about? It'll all be Biden's fault.

It will be blamed on Obama's missing long form birth certificate and the bulge in Michelle's skirt. Hillary's true remark on the deplorables. Kamala's cackle. Biden's age.

Funny that we both posted the same concern at the same time.

and without raising the price they sell it at. which is just many millions of sad examples of how 'effective' the republicants war on public education has been.

Shifting to buying more locally can work when there are local businesses that can ramp up production easily to meet demand, it doesn't work when there is no local production that can be easily expanded, or when there aren't enough local resources to supply local manufacturing (for example lithium for battery production)

Also, trade has been our leverage keeping China in check, we need their stuff, and they need our money, so we get along. If suddenly we say "we don't want your stuff anymore, and we're not giving you our money" they're gonna turn around and sell more to India, Russia, and Europe. They'll be fine, but we'll both lose our leverage and toilet our economy for at least a decade while we try to recover from shooting ourselves in the leg.

Buying local is an option to evade paying tariffs on imported goods.
But what do you do if buying local is no real option?
I'm thinking of coffee, chocolate, computers, mobile phones, game consoles, cars, etc.

I just upgraded my GPU even though I wanted to wait until the new stuff drops, but I can't risk getting boned by tariffs and/or scalpers.

Oh I know they have none. I just love that they're saying it at all -- being silent on the matter until said tariffs come to pass would have at least given them the "duhhhh we're dumb too we didn't know that either, oh well" excuse.

Working tariffs make importing goods so expensive that manufacturing them nationally is viable.

The lack of American subcompact trucks is evidence that this is false.

Yah, I mean realistically, I can only really see tariffs working if a nation is trying to enter an industry. That's not the case here, but even so, these tariffs differ from the ones you mentioned because they would be against Chinese imports rather than a specific product, so I can't imagine there's as much risk of that sort of market manipulation from happening again... but then again, I've got no idea.

Thanks OBAMA!

I hate to say it but the NDP need to replace Singh with someone more charismatic.

There’s too much Trudeau hate for the Liberals to have a chance. Too many people will be voting “anything but liberal” this election because they blame Trudeau.

Right now conservatives feel like the only other option because there’s also enough racists to not to vote for Singh.

We need another NDP leader like Jack Layton that people will see as a symbol of change or we’ll be following in the Americans footsteps.

I live in Alberta. Our premier is basically Marjorie Taylor Greene.

We've already lost that battle sadly. Alberta has Smith (think Marjorie Taylor Greene), the Cons, while refusing to admit climate change is real, and with a leader who spent his entire political career trying to repeal abortion rights/gay rights, have locked away the vote of men with 51%+.

In 2022, 41% of Con voters supported Trump. In 2024, it's increased to 44% (higher than Biden or Harris in both, though.)

In addition, the Canadian Right-Wing's favourite Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, heads up a global 'get Right-Wing governments elected' organization.

So I wish you the best of luck as well, though I fear we are on similar Germany-in-the-1930's path).

Help the women and LGBT people in your life, they're going to need it.

Hahaha

Locally made still won't happen.

Say you're an businessman who's been manufacturing in China. Excel shows that you can make the same product in America for less than the post-tariff cost. Sound good?

But you're not stupid. You know the tariffs will end up wildly unpopular and fuck up the economy. A) Why keep producing when people won't be able to afford your goods? And more importantly, you want to be left holding the bag with your shiny new American factory when the tariffs are repealed?

Agreed, but some people don't understand or realize this. We're not going to see this huge manufacturing influx back to the US.

+1 Indeed.

Holy shit, lol And here we all thought dumb funny movies didn't have anything of substance in them

Migros, in Switzerland. Literally a non profit chain of supermarkets. It can happen.

Legally, it's the fiduciary duty of any publicly traded corporation to seek higher returns every year for their shareholders.

So... yeah, that list will effectively stay empty.