this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Yeah IDK.
It's certainly true that everyone, including economists, have been saying that tariffs are going to be terrible. If anything, the implementation has been far less terrible than everyone thought.
However, I don't think that these CEOs necessarily thought that tariffs were going to increase profits. Corporations have a way of socialising the bad and taking advantage of the good. So in some ways they always benefit from change, including chaos.
For example, and this was alluded to in the article, if you could stock up before the tariffs took effect, then you can increase prices and sell the goods you bought with out tariffs at the tariffed price. Even after you run out of pre-tariff stock, it's the consumers who are paying the tariffs, and it can't last forever, and all your competitors have the same context.
The final step isnt buying on an equal footing as your competitors, its paying a bribe to be tariff exempt, then continuing to sell at tariff inclusive pricing.
The whole tariff scheme was designed as a way to price smaller competitors out of the market, allowing consolidation of market share by the wealthy, while providing cover for price hikes against consumers. Just like covid price hikes, If trump abandoned tariffs today, very few products would return to their prior pricings.
Inflation is completely artificial. Ever increasing profits do not tolerate fluctuations.