foregoneconclusion

sdw2001 said: I completely disagree.  I realize it's more than fashionable here to trash Trump, the tariffs, etc.  But the reality is that our trade policy has been a nightmare for decades, particularly with China.

You seem to be forgetting that the first Trump administration withdrew from TPP and NAFTA, did new negotiations, then proceeded to proclaim that the result was so much better than what existed before. Then Trump's 2nd administration claimed that their own trade deals that replaced TPP and NAFTA constituted a national emergency. 

How do you reconcile that with your claims that Trump has a strategy in mind? He's already proven that deals he made previously and personally endorsed are meaningless. 

Trump doesn't have the legal authority to levy tariffs under the IEEPA. The statute never mentions tariffs or taxes as powers that Congress intended to give to the executive branch in an emergency. Its intent was for sanctioning foreign countries, not changing trade policy domestically. And the Supreme Court has said in the Major Questions Doctrine that statutes being used by the executive branch for actions that have large scale economic and political impact need to have very specific language that supports the action being taken. 

quakerotis said:

Guilty, predatory, limiting are all ways I would describe Ap[ple and its behavior.

Apple chose to use the video game console model for its commissions. It's not like what they were doing was unprecedented. If anything, that way of doing business had been standardized for companies that made their own operating system and exclusively ran it on their own hardware. 

neoncat said: This is the result of zero competition and zero reason for Apple to do anything but protect its 15/30% moat. 

Apple has said that 17% commission is approximately the break even point for the App Store. So the difference between "supracompetitive" and "break even" is 13% apparently. That's one of the bizarre aspects of the ruling, IMO. 13% markup is treated as being onerous for competition.

bulk001 said:

JMaille said:

I was going to post a comment about this before all the Apple haters jumped in and started spouting nonsense about this being a big win for developers and consumers, but then I decided why bother.  It's obvious we're all screwed anyway.  This isn't even a big enough issue to be a bump in the road.

Patreon has already said it will decrease prices by 30%. I'd call that a big win. Apple has been hiding this from the judge exactly because it IS a big deal to their profits.

Don't expect that decrease to last very long. This was never about lowering prices for consumers. It was about increasing revenue.