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I work in the corporate side of retail for a large company. I promise you not a single vendor is absorbing the tariffs, but a few are getting around it by just moving production for the US market to other factories they already own in Southeast Asia.
These companies were already afraid of the Chinese government absorbing them and moved “headquarters” to Singapore. This isn’t hurting them, it’s hurting us.
I promise you not a single vendor is absorbing the tariffs
I’ve tried to explain this to every person I’ve come across, and they simply don’t understand that corporations with record breaking profits aren’t simply gonna absorb the cost of the tariffs and are going to try to squeeze blood from a stone–aka try to get it out of you. The worst that’s gonna happen is they post a few down quarters and end up absorbing a small percentage of the overall tariff until the buy pressure comes back.
Which is the entire point. All of trump’s actions are designed by his owner to hurt us.
I promise you not a single vendor is absorbing the tariffs, but a few are getting around it by just moving production for the US market to other factories they already own in Southeast Asia.
Often not even moving the production to other factories. The tracking on this stuff is comically underfunded and underserved. You can absolutely make a widget in a tariff country, like China, stamp it “Made in The Philippines” or Indonesia or wherever, and move it into the US without paying the tax.
These companies were already afraid of the Chinese government absorbing them and moved “headquarters” to Singapore.
Given the degree to which Singapore is beholden to Chinese owned and operated businesses and falls within the operating range of the Chinese military, this is more a Hong Kong style bureaucratic loophole than a real escape from China as a sphere of influence. Its like banking out of Bermuda while you work in the United States. A legal fiction that gets you out of a certain degree of taxation/regulation, but does nothing to shield you from the Coast Guard or the FBI.
Doesn’t stop them passing the “tariff charges” on regardless if they actually have to pay or not
Don’t be surprised if these companies suddenly show 10-25% increase in net profits.
That’s the whole point. Raise the price on things and then American producers can compete.
Why tariffs are stupid in three acts
Act 1
American producers: I can’t compete with that $10 foreign product, I have to sell my product at $12 to turn a razor thin profit.
Politician: ok I’ll slap a $5 tariff on the foreign product to protect you.
Act 2
American producer: awesome so now the foreign product costs $15! I can compete
American consumer: oh well I guess I can spend $12 instead of $10… sucks but America first I guess
Act 3
American producer: no need to leave $3 on the table, let’s sell ours for $14.99, I need more profits because everything I want to buy with my profits is now more expensive for some reason.
American consumer: the foreign one used to cost $10 and the domestic one cost $12… now they cost $15 and $14.99. I guess I’ll buy the American one and skip dinner tonight.
To be clear, I think it’s a shit idea and we know (since Elon is running things) the execution will be awful. Tariffs are almost always a shitty idea and will cause nothing but inflation. But that’s the point for Trump. It’s a stealth tax increase.
The only times I think tariffs are good is if:
- Another country is subsidizing an industry with the goal of creating a monopoly on something essential.
- You have an infant industry that’s viable at scale but it needs time and investment to scale up but it’ll be competitive once it does
- Frienemy national security situations with unreliable trade partners (to wildly over-simplify, if you import all your guns and bullets from a frienemy and your exports to them are fancy purses, you probably need a domestic producer of guns and bullets more than they need a fancy purse industry.)
- Something wild like a stupid, unjust war initiated by a madman. But that never happens, right?
But it’s always, in the end, a tax on your citizens and there are almost alway better ways to go about it than tariffs.
They’ll still manufacture overseas as long as they can cause of shareholder value
“Don’t eat ME im a nice billionaire “ Buffet is not a friend of the working class
Never understood how people look at a billionaire and say, “yeah, he’s one of us.” Bitches, he is stealing from you.
Sure, but if someone still believes becoming a billionaire is earned, then they are more prone to listening to a billionaire than me when they say this. So I will always welcome everyone to say the truth.
Fuck Warren Buffet and Trump how bout
Agreed, fuck ‘em both. But if one is angry at the other; the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
You can root for asteroids or a really annoyed goose. No matter how thin you make the pancake there’s always two sides and an angry goose that might eat it.
Nah, if two child molesters are in a fight with eachother I hope they both lose.
Its curious how many politicians out of Nebraska are die-hard Trump supporters, despite accepting enormous sums from Berkshire Hathaway staff and investors.
Buffet and Munger both play this game. Go on TV and say the thing people like to hear. Then go back into the back rooms and
Exactly.
Warren Buffet is woke now.
Dude has been aware, but nonetheless helps himself.
Doesn’t exactly take a business mogul to know that…
No, but I think it’s good when someone with credibility among certain people reiterate something, even if it adds nothing of value to you and me.
Democratic and left-of-center politicians (or “liberal elite economists”) can say this until they’re blue in the face but Trumpers will dismiss it as I dunno, woke butthurtism or something. But when someone like Buffet says it, at least they (maybe) have to think a little bit before coming up with some mental gymnastics to dismiss him. And maybe along the way they’ll question, if only a little bit, the sanity of Trump’s policies.
