blastdoor

As Orwell said,  “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.”

MAGAhats are now getting bruised 

pulseimages said:

blastdoor said:

Xed said:

blastdoor said:

If Trump really sticks to this it will end up being one of the largest and most regressive tax increases in history. It will feel very much like a big sales tax hike to most people. 

I kind of hope he does stick with it — the people who voted for this should experience the consequences of their vote.

Except that everyone suffers as a result.

Yes, but Trump was going to do his best to make people in blue states suffer anyway. Now he's hurting his own voters. That's a nice surprise. 

Are you really surprised? 

Yes, at least sort of. He's very erratic. It's hard to predict with confidence what he will do. In his first term he talked a ton about building a wall. He built some wall segments, but never really swung for the fences on wall building. He's swinging for the fences now on tariffs in a way that goes beyond what I had expected. He might still get cold feet and reverse course. But I hope he just straps himself in, doubles down, and goes for broke. And ends up with 67 Democratic senators who convict him after this third impeachment. 

I think we're missing the obvious solution here -- move production to Russia or North Korea, Trump's allies. 

Xed said:

blastdoor said:

If Trump really sticks to this it will end up being one of the largest and most regressive tax increases in history. It will feel very much like a big sales tax hike to most people. 

I kind of hope he does stick with it — the people who voted for this should experience the consequences of their vote.

Except that everyone suffers as a result.

Yes, but Trump was going to do his best to make people in blue states suffer anyway. Now he's hurting his own voters. That's a nice surprise. 

nubus said:

32% on TSMC, 34% or 24% on the camera modules, 25% on displays, and assembly is up by 26% to 46%.
There is no way to move production now = the next 5 years everything will be +30% or margins will take a hit.
Will production move to the U.S.? Not likely as U.S. workers are expensive.

It seems the choice stands between expensive and expensive.

The issue that's bigger than US workers being expensive is the massive uncertainty about future policy. Moving production to the US would require a huge investment that cannot easily be reversed. That investment would only make sense if firms could be sure these tariffs would be in place for a very long time. Even if Trump were to become dictator for life, firms cannot assume he will stick with his policy -- he's highly erratic. Also, he's an old man, so if "dictator for life" might not be very long anyway. So companies will conclude that their best bet is to just import and pass the tax on to consumers as best they can.