Post tariff world

Status
Not open for further replies.
Lineslinger said:
I do know the only great depressions in the US were caused by Wall Street, not by trade wars or tariff issuance as so many of the big dollar fund managers howl about an oncoming depression. Methinks not.

.
Click to expand...
If you believe that, you should look up "Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act. Even though it finally passed thru congress in 1930, just having it proposed caused the panic which precipitated the crash in 1929.
 
There is a " Canadian Tariff" list floating around on the internet that shows some very high existing CDN Tariffs, such as 200% on Dairy.
That list has been used by the White House and others to justify the new US tariffs.
Unfortunately that list is not a CDN tariff list. Well it sort of is and isn't.
It's an anti dumping penalty tariff list. These are penalty tariffs that would be charges on certain items if the quotas were reached.
The US has a similar list for CDN exports to US, except the US list has a couple more items on it, sugar and rice.
None of those penalty tariffs have ever been paid by either side as they have both honored the quotas.
For example, the US exported 877 million USD of Dairy to Canada last year at zero Tariff. That was only about 50% of the amount they could have exported tariff free.
Canada exported 377 million USD of Dairy tariff free to the US and could have gone much higher as we both have the same trade quota on that item.

I've seen that list shown about 50 times on various forums and do my best to explain what it is. I don't always get through.
If you think about it, if a country really was charging a 200% Tariff on things, would they get all upset about a little 25% Tariff? Of course not.

The speed analogy I sometimes use is-
Lets say Canada has a speed limit of 50 mph on rural roads.
If you go thru radar at 70 mph you might get a $200 fine.
If you go thru radar at 100 mph you will definitely get a $1000 fine.

We can now say Canada is very unfair, they charge drivers $1000 just to drive on their roads.
Well leave out the 100 mph part and people will get the idea that Canada is a very nasty unfair country:)

Glen
 
Last edited:
worntorn said:
What Canadian Tariffs are you referring to?
I've been importing motorcycles, parts, farm machinery, and household items from the US to Canada for 45 years now. I have paid noTariff on any item after Free Trade came into being in the late 80s. Over the years this amounts to thousands of importations of hundreds of different items.
There are barriers in place now, but those are retaliatory from March 4 this year.

Glen
Click to expand...
Glen, you are clearly tuned into the numbers on this. I can state my research sources but it would change nothing.
NickZ, I am actually familiar with the Smoot-Hawley act. My professor from so long ago had a different interpretation than your internet search.

Opinions and info abound on the manipulation of economics and there are plenty of other sites one can continually beat on each other regarding that subject.

I stated in an earlier post, just my humble opinion. No interest in the personal/snarky digs about my computers spelling.
Clearly starting to smell of politics.

I'm outta' here, time to catch up with some longtime friends for a week of chasing Bonefish with a flyrod and a bottle of Kalik.
 
Last edited:
When talking about taxes of any kind it is important to look at the overall picture. Countries with high VAT sound terrible to us in the US and that those countries often charge duties which sounds even worse. But that seems to be a large part of the country's income.

In the US, the Federal Govt only directly gets income taxes from people and companies plus a lot of other taxes such are highway taxes on trucking. Then most states charge income taxes and most counties charge sales tax and many charge personal property tax. We also pay Medicare and Social Security tax to the Federal Govt. This year, 32.6% of my income when to Federal and State taxes. Most things I buy have 6% Sales Tax. Then my county charged my just over 9,000 in Real Estate tax and just over $1100 in personal Property tax. I maxed out my Medicare prescription copay at $8000 - my total medical expense was just over $21k.

It's hard to judge against countries with good social services, free medical, and good public transportation.

The problem with this tariff is that on certain items, such as our vintage parts, if we had 100% tariffs on them it would not all of the sudden make AN-USA come to be or some US company all of the sudden start producing even a small subset of the parts from the UK.

In the early days of home PCs, I had a thriving business building, selling, and servicing computers mostly to large corporations. There were no memory chips made in the US. President Reagon imposed 100% tariffs on Japan's chip trying to get US manufacturers to start making memory chips. That ended my business within a month - I needed a lot of chips per computer and they went from about $3 each to about $6 each so I got no more orders when my price when up $96 per machine to just cover the increased cost. No US companies started producing memory chips.
 
Last edited:
The H-D tariff of the 80's for bikes over 700cc was 45% the first year, and decreased over 5 years downward. I wonder what effect it had. I would never have considered a H-D and saw prices rise, but there was a glut of lightly used or even leftover bikes on the market. I paid $2700 for an '82 KZ1000 leftover at the dealer, and my pal got a 3K mile '82 GS1100E for $2400, which smoked the KZ BTW. Prices go up, and choices and consumption go down. Producers export less, consumers buy less for more $. Who loses more, and who wins? You do the math. Even such a targeted tariff as my example had no discernable effect that I know of. It's a complex subject because many countries built their industries with the help of protectionism. And some watched them die anyway, like the Australian car industry.
 
Lineslinger said:
The OP stated without "getting into politics", but I figured that wouldn't last long.
A closer look would reveal another observation involving analysis and foresight.
If viewed as "dumping", well, it's a bit more involved.

The US is parting with the asymmetrical tariff system of the last 50+ years pursuing a greater parody of trade globally.
China, Mexico, Viet Nam, Europe, Canada, India and many others all impose prohibitive tariffs. Now the world is pissed at the US while the tariffs imposed by these countries have resulted in bolstered, even thriving economies for so many of them.
If tariffs are so devastating to an economy as some in here imply why have these other nations thrived while imposing them? An now those that impose the tariffs are angry said tariffs are no longer asymmetrical. You mean equal application? Really?
Huh, why would that be?

Why do those who inaugurated the tariff get angry at the US for mirroring accordingly? Now the US is taking a beating globally because they seek a level playing field? In some countries a tariff as high as 250% is imposed on some imports from the US.
Those who originally implemented these tariffs are as culpable if not more so than than any matching tariffs the US designates.

If Russia invades Ukraine do we blame Ukraine for trying to reciprocate with the same methods?
Of course not.
This so called new tariff system is simply a reaction to what the importers of US products have been doing for so long.
The us didn't institute this system, but it is reacting to it.
I do know the only great depressions in the US were caused by Wall Street, not by trade wars or tariff issuance as so many of the big dollar fund managers howl about an oncoming depression. Methinks not.

My reasoning on not paying an exporter up front to cover undetermined costs for a part (and maybe getting a small percentage back?) while they have taken advantage of (I would too) said imbalance make me wince. I worked hard for my earnings.
Bottom line is sooner of later what goes around comes around.
Click to expand...
But the US has grown large, rich and powerful precisely because you have had an open economy, while countries which practice a very restrictive import policy generally do not do well.
While there is undoubtably a problem in the US of uneven distribution of the wealth created by the open economy, that is very much an internal issue which cannot be solved by regressive economic policies.
It does rather remind me of the saying that for any highly complex problem, there is always at least one simple, easy to understand solution which is completely wrong.

I'm afraid that your last paragraph simply does not make any sense at all. In this specific case, you are accusing AN of profitering from a UK customs fee - how? As far as I remember, duty on motorcycle spares into the UK is something like 4 or 5%. The VAT at 20% is charged on all sales, regardless of the origin of the goods.
 
SteveBorland said:
The devil is always in the detail, and it seems no-one in the current US administration bothered to work out the how's and when's before dumping this on the rest of the world.
Despite what the administration claims, these tariffs are going to end up at the US customer, not the exporter.
Click to expand...
I don't believe there was any need to "work out the how's and when's", it has been in the "books" for many decades.

I just didn't know exactly HOW it was done (collected).

Yes, the 10% will typically be borne by the customer, thus encouraging citizens to buy more domestic ("un-tariffed") product(s). THAT is what tariffs are designed to do (typically).
 
grandpaul said:
I don't believe there was any need to "work out the how's and when's", it has been in the "books" for many decades.

I just didn't know exactly HOW it was done (collected).

Yes, the 10% will typically be borne by the customer, thus encouraging citizens to buy more domestic ("un-tariffed") product(s). THAT is what tariffs are designed to do (typically).
Click to expand...
There does seem to be a lot of confusion and lack of clear answers on the details of what will be taxed, how it will be collected and even conflicting reports of the rates, as explained in the posts from AN.
When you are chucking a bomb under the whole international trading system, it's usually a good idea to actually clarify these details first. I'm just really glad that I don't work in the export branch - there's an awful lot of hard work ahead to get this to function.
 
grandpaul said:
The PRICE of that wealth and power is a THIRTY-SEVEN TRILLION DOLLAR national debt.

That's $37,000,000,000.00 ...and those zeros add up to a heck of a LOT of moolah...
Click to expand...
Its mind bogglingly (is that even a word?) large. I just hope that the countries holding the debt don’t start having doubts about the security of it. Instability in financial systems is never a good thing.
Perhaps we should all return to a barter system :-)
 
All governmental policies pick winners and losers.......... it's true in more than just the economics

I don't assume that because the wall streeters are crying about the stock prices drop that normal americans are going to lose in the long run. In the short term, prices may go up for american consumers, and if the loss of revenue to these foreign countries from declining sales hurts them more than it hurts us, maybe there will be a negotiation to drop their tariffs on us, so that we will do the same..... ;)

The idea that tariffs protect a nation's domestically manufactured products within their home market seems to be clearly obvious or else why would all these countries that are exporting so much stuff to our market all have tariffs on our imports into their country??.... Is that too simple to understand? Economic protectionism protects labor jobs in the home country at the expense of the consumers. Do you think the wall streeters really give a shit about protecting domestic labor forces?.... They are the purest consumers in our nation. The make a phone call for everything. They don't clean their gutters, mow their lawn, change the oil in their porsche or mercedes. Some poor slob does all that for them for peanuts......

Now, I have worked for a few billionaires in my life. I only cared that I got paid for my work, but when it comes to policy, I would chose policy that benefits american manufacturing before anyone's financial portfolio. If the tariffs create manufacturing jobs that's good. If they cause a renegotiation of the tariffs our manufacturers have to add to their price in other countries that's good too. If it causes foreign manufacturers to lose a lot of money and jobs in their country to the point where they want to negotiate some fair trade arrangements...... that sounds like the long term plan to me...
 
This is one of my favorite quotes about the magnitude of numbers that people don't see often enough to have a sense of how big a number is...


*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

You can't possibly believe that printing money and adding 3.5 trillion dollars to our debt is a good economic plan...


You don't realize how big a trillion is...


1 million seconds is 11.5 days ago. You were less than 2 weeks younger


1 billion seconds is 32 years ago. You were a much younger person


1 trillion seconds is 32,000 years ago. Human writing still had 25,000 years before it would be invented. Primitive twisted rope will be invented in 4,000. years. We still have 20,000 years until the "younger dryas" where the earth suddenly cools and returns to a glacial wasteland for 1000 years.


So,... 3.5 trillion isn't like a few million dollars, or even a billion dollars, which is at least a somewhat understandable large number. 1 trillion is so large that it's a tipping point for economic optimism so things will begin to fall apart rather than evolve to absorb new debt... You just watch... but you will blame someone other than the idiots who propose the ideology that you fervently believe in... unto your end.


If you refuse to learn, no one can make you learn.
 
SteveBorland said:
Its mind bogglingly (is that even a word?) large. I just hope that the countries holding the debt don’t start having doubts about the security of it. Instability in financial systems is never a good thing.
Perhaps we should all return to a barter system :-)
Click to expand...
The sick part is that foreign countries own about 22% - we, the US Govt and People own the rest! So were are borrowing from ourselves.

Want a real shock, study this: https://www.usdebtclock.org/ and then https://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html The second one will dispel any thought you have about the US Economy being the best!
 
That's US National Debt. The National Debt is how much more money the government has spent than it has collected from the US taxpayers. The taxpayer pays less than the cost of government services and the government borrows the shortfall.

Either cut spending or raise direct taxes, like income tax. Not very popular. The new tariffs will pay the government at least 10% on everything the US taxpayer buys from outside US. If produced in the US, government will still earn nicely on any non-US components in that US product.

I thought President Trump's reasons for the tariffs were to reduce the trade defecit. The US imports more than you export. Unless the US government is also a major source of trade imbalance(?), it is private citizens wealth and borrowing that is funding the trade imbalance, not the National Debt.
 
NPeteN said:
Can't wait to get me a job making sneakers in the new Nike factory! Yeehaw!
Click to expand...
I worked in the 6th largest cabinet factory in the USA when I was a young man. I walked in the door on my first day as an employee with 100 guys ahead of me, and plenty of them were 20 year plus men. In 3 years the head of the prototype group asked me to work as a head mechanic with his group. 2 years later I quit my union job and went on my own with very little money. Maybe you can learn something at the new Nike factory and eventually start "Pete's Sneekers" 😏
 
I'm going to try and get my head around "Magneto for a 90degree Crank". May be simpler...
 
o0norton0o said:
I worked in the 6th largest cabinet factory in the USA when I was a young man. I walked in the door on my first day as an employee with 100 guys ahead of me, and plenty of them were 20 year plus men. In 3 years the head of the prototype group asked me to work as a head mechanic with his group. 2 years later I quit my union job and went on my own with very little money. Maybe you can learn something at the new Nike factory and eventually start "Pete's Sneekers" 😏
Click to expand...
Maybe change your name to 'Mike' first :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top