Fascism has come to America, wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
Documenting the crimes and corruption of the 47th president of the United States and his fascist minions.
Here we go again.
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Liberalism, noun - "A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority."
I swear these fucking assholes....
"The left": Raise taxes on corporations!
MAGA: they'll just pass the tax on to the consumer!!! Nooooo!!!
Trump/MAGA: Raise taxes on corporations through tarrifs!
MAGA: Why are WE paying for this!? The corporations should eat the cost!
I guess there is a difference between an increase in tax on profits, and an increase in tax on raw materiels.
If the tax can be directly attributed to the cost of making something and everyone is hit then same, then of course the tax cost will be passed onto the consumer.
If the tax was only on profits, and in a progressive way, then companies making too much money (ie exploiting) will get taxed more than those running a sensible company
Exactly. The tax on profit is supposed to add an incentive to reinvest in the company. The tax on raw materials absolutely just gets passed on to the consumer :/
You’re being too reasonable.
Prices are going up everywhere. For anyone that pays attention to prices, there has been approximately a 30% increase on several products since November.
When it comes to tariffs Trump is as decisive as a squirrel crossing the street. I've given up trying to keep up with it all. He announces tariffs, delays tariffs, lowers tariffs. I've wondered if it's not a ploy to increase spending to pump up GDP numbers. Big businesses may consider big purchases now if it could save them millions in the long run.
It is pure madness and shows this administration is a total shit show. I guess at least the US can make all the countries laugh.
GDP, the D means Domestic. Imports are not counted and any stuff you're importing that becomes a component of some domestic product is eventually backed out in the accounting.
So no, pumping imports shouldn't increase GDP one iota. Imports count AGAINST the GDP.
You're oversimplifying things.
GDP = C + I + G + ((X − M))
M = Imports. Note the negative sign.
The GDP is specifically designed to not count any imports in any estimated domestic production.
But given that goods produced domestically often use materials that are imported won't that raise the cost of those goods?
Yes, of course prices will go up. GDP (as a specific measure) takes the imported materials and removes them from GDP.
Example: let's say you have a chocolate factory in Poland. When you're calculating the Polish GDP, you can't count sugar and cocoa that you import as ingredients. You can only count the things that Poles add domestically, so labor and other value you create inside your own country.
In this example, you would take the price of the chocolate bar and subtract the costs of the imports.
Now let's say sugar and cocoa went up in cost. You have to charge more for the chocolate bar but you also subtract more for the imports in the GDP calculation. GDP could stay the exact same. Also, if the price goes up, maybe people will buy less chocolate, so GDP might even fall.
Ok let's say for example a car rental agency in a year normally buys 1,000 cars from GM and these cars are 25% foreign parts and 75% domestic parts. Seeing Trump is threatening 100% tariffs on the foreign made portion, the rental agency anticipates the price of GM cars going up substantially. To save money they may buy 2,000 cars now before the tariffs are enacted. I understand your point that the 25% foreign portion of the car doesn't affect GDP but the domestic 75% sure does. Doubling the number of cars bought this year would raise GDP.
If I understand the numbers correctly, autos and auto parts made outside north america will get a 25% tariff. Presumably this is 25% of the wholesale costs as listed on the invoice when they come over the border.
I am not sure what the markup is on cars, but let's ignore this for now and just assume that we are paying a tariff on 25% of the MSRP that the consumer pays.
So 25% of 25% would be the final tariff extra charge, which is 6.25% of the total pricetag of the car.
For a rental agency, my guess is that a lot of the car fleet they run, they don't buy for outright cash but they more than likely finance the vehicles, rent them for a while and then sell them on for their residual value and pay off the loans.
I'm not sure that most car rental agencies would consider the 6.25% enough of a price jump to go out and double their car fleet purchase UNLESS they think they have a good shot at renting those vehicles.
Because of the way that vehicles depreciate, having aging vehicles that are costing you insurance, storage, cleaning, capital depreciation etc is a huge liability.
Also, consider that they need to resell these cars in a year or two. The resale market has to be able to absorb the vehicles so that the car company is able to liquidate and reduce their liabilities.
Putting this in simple terms, a car company shopping ahead of the tariffs would be getting 20 cars today for the price of 19 tomorrow.
I suspect the fundamental rental business will be the largest factor. Sure companies may pull orders forward a few months, but in this example I doubt they will buy an entire double annual allotment of vehicles... There is not enough "savings" there to make borrowing that much money (and paying interest) make any sense. They are going to optimize around having the vehicles they do run being fully rented as much of the time as possible
And so at the end of the year, you'll take your GDP calculator and figure out what the economy did.
Perhaps all the orders that would have happened in July were paid in March, but it could work out to be the same size economy.
I tried to use a simple example to make my point. You've ignored my point and are debating the imaginary example.
You're arguing that business will order more supplies, inventory, services, goods this year than their business fundamentals would be able to use to "stockpile" items and avoid a tariff.
Like they won't shift their orders forward in time, they will double their orders.
Make the case. How would that work?
I feel like discussions around tariffs are bizarre. I have read dozens of articles and comment sections and never see people bring up 2017.
Many companies passed the costs of the Trump tariffs on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Following impositions of the tariffs on Chinese goods, the prices of U.S. intermediate goods rose by 10% to 30%, an amount generally equivalent to the size of the tariffs.
A study published in fall 2019 in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that by December 2018, Trump's tariffs resulted in a reduction in aggregate U.S. real income of $1.4 billion per month in deadweight losses, and cost U.S. consumers an additional $3.2 billion per month in added tax.
It's not like I don't value expert opinions or appreciate a consensus. I'm just confused why when Trump says tariffs will bring back jobs, nobody points to 75,000 manufacturing jobs disappearing due to his first tariffs. Are the tariffs fundamentally different or something? That would explain why everyone ignores the first tariffs.
The problem is the Media, who not only don't do their jobs, they don't even know what their jobs are. They seem to think they exist to be a platform for MAGA to spew their nonsensical propaganda without challenge.
For instance, HitlerPig has been saying in EVERY interview that he has brought gas prices down to $1.98. That is an absolute lie, there is not a single place in America selling gas for $1.98, but not one journalist has pushed back on that - Where? Which state? Which oil company? If it's $2 in some places, why isn't it $2 everywhere?
That's just one obvious one. When he and the El Salvador dictator were in the Oval office, both blaming the other for not being able to return the innocent deportee, not one journalist said ”EVERYBODY in the world who could make this decision is sitting in this room, literally next to each other. Why can't you look at each other and commit to returning him, instead of just emptily blaming the other?”
When Ron Navarro was on Meet The Press the week following the revelation that the sole source for trade info in his books was an anagram of his own name, she never asked him about it a single time. It would have the ONLY thing I would have talked about.
I see it over and over and over. The media simply refuse to ask the hard-hitting questions about their self-serving deals or destructive policies. I constantly yell at journalists to ask specific questions, follow up on obvious bullshit answers, demand sources for lies, etc., but they don't seem to hear me through the TV.
If they make baby Trump feel uncomfortable they aren't allowed to interview him again or get kicked out of the White House so they lose out on the sweet sweet ratings they get if they spread his lies far and wide.
There was supposed to be this Biden era analysis that showed that the tariffs were not broadly inflationary, and Biden kept a lot of the tariffs in place. One point that tariff proponents took from this was that tariffs COULDN'T be inflationary and wouldn't drive up consumer prices.
Meanwhile, what happened was that many Chinese companies shifted parts of their production to non tariff countries and sidestepped the tariff costs. (Hence, prices were kept low, no taroffs due to that major loophole.)
Then, to keep that from happening again, Trump put the China tariff on every nation at once. No more loophole. But amazingly, they maintained a near religious belief that prices could be the same.
If you think in terms of complex systems, the first round of tariffs had all these self organizing details that defused the impact.
Round two is playing out like the administration can't even see around the corner in simple causality cause-and-effect chains. They will never work out how to control the global trade using one country's import tax program. Its insanity.
I can't speak for everyone, but I can honestly say that I had no idea there was any tariff actions back in 2017.
Maybe I was just not paying attention, but it certainly is more front page news these days.
Some of the 1st term tariffs have been disasters. It destroyed soybean farming in America. HitlerPig had to give them a massive bailout, and it still hasn't recovered.
The ones that were able to keep their farms only remember the bailout. Some of the uproar from farmers since Trump came back is that the money they expected from the government is gone, and they can't figure out why when this is the man that bailed them out. It's selective af memory
Well well well... if it aint the good old FAFO principle.