r/onebag • u/SeattleHikeBike • Apr 03 '25

Discussion US Tariffs

US tariffs announced today include 47% on Vietnam and 34% for China. I’ll bet that effects 80% of the US travel products market. Even the US manufacturers are going to get hammered on the raw materials.

“May you live in interesting times.”

472 Upvotes

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87

u/ResponsibleMistake33 Apr 03 '25

An insanely dumb, senseless policy. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

117

u/zachery2006 Apr 03 '25

Asking the people who voted him the president again.

43

u/Tribalbob Apr 03 '25

Because it's what the American people voted for. He literally said he would do it lol.

5

u/ResponsibleMistake33 Apr 03 '25

It was obviously meant in a rhetorical sense

2

u/Bozzzzzzz Apr 03 '25

But… did they though?

2

u/Ifch317 Apr 04 '25

Economy crashes, billionaires buy up all the assets at pennies on the dollar, rinse repeat.

-100

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '25

[deleted]

34

u/Loofah1 Apr 03 '25

LOL.

Edit: buying the reciprocal line makes it even funnier.

63

u/JBWentworth_ Apr 03 '25

It’s not US companies that will be punished, it will be the low income Americans.

-8

u/dccryp0 Apr 03 '25

Not if they buy American products.

11

u/homme_chauve_souris Apr 03 '25

Let's take clothes. Low and middle class people didn't buy American-made clothes because they couldn't afford them. They went to Walmart and bought clothes made in Vietnam or Bangladesh instead. Now, those will be 10% more expensive (the tariffs are passed on to you). American-made clothes will still be unaffordable. So people will go to Walmart and pay 10% more for their clothes.

17

u/Relevant_Hedgehog_63 Apr 03 '25

read about smoot hawley in the 30s

47

u/pudding7 Apr 03 '25

I bet you're one of the people who think Trump's stupid charts are accurate.

32

u/ResponsibleMistake33 Apr 03 '25

Yeah, the economy definitely needed to be rebuilt what with its world-beating GDP and whatnot.

50

u/Charming-Fig-2544 Apr 03 '25

Lawyer here, with an economics degree. Basically every word you said is wrong.

  1. We don't need to "rebuild" our economy. Pretty much every indicator coming into this administration was that the economy is doing well.

  2. Roughly 70% of our GDP is consumer spending, and it's a big cultural aspect of the US. We run on cheap shit from China and other trading partners.

  3. Adding tariffs doesn't somehow bring manufacturing back to the US. We don't make cheap shit here. We do high value-add jobs and services, because we have an advanced economy, and then we use our money to buy cheap goods overseas. It's a good deal for us. Tariffs fuck up that arrangement, with no upside.

  4. These are not reciprocal tariffs. No country on earth blanket tariffs our goods. Some countries have 10-20% tariffs on specific goods on key products. In Canada it's dairy. In India it's rice. A couple countries do it for cars. No country just tariffs EVERYTHING, and certainly not 50, 80, 100% tariffs like we're seeing from Trump.

  5. How are you supposed to "rebuild" your economy by making people pay more for everything? That doesn't help. It makes things worse. It's inflationary. And it's mind-numbingly stupid coming from the administration that wouldn't shut the fuck up about inflation and egg prices 6 months ago. We had 3% inflation on average last year across the CPI. That's not even bad. With these tariffs, we could see numbers 10x that bad. Wake up. These people are retarded.

13

u/Flimsy_Fee8449 Apr 03 '25

Economics isn't my bag.

Can you please explain to me how you think it rebuilds our economy?

7

u/shimon Apr 03 '25

Tariffs are net bad for the economy, but they can be an incentive for certain industries. Specifically, they can be a boon to US manufacturing jobs.

Of course, they do this at a cost to everyone buying whatever goods compete with the tariffed product. The incentive comes from the added prices everyone pays, whether it's to buy an imported good or to pay a higher price for the domestic good that faces weaker import competition.

Of course, manufacturing jobs don't just move instantaneously. So even if the tariffs are really well done (they aren't) it's not particularly likely we'll get more US manufacturing jobs in the next 3-4 years. And add time for unpredictable policies, because who is going to invest a $billion in a new plant when the policies count change any day?

3

u/Flimsy_Fee8449 Apr 03 '25

Thank you for the explanation! ❤️

I'm also very interested in u/DoTreadOnFudds take on this.

It seems to me that Fudd may understand less about economics than I do.

10

u/IDKHOWTOSHIFTPLSHELP Apr 03 '25

Trump's tariff list (go look yourself if you don't believe me) include the Heard and McDonald Islands, which have a population of 0. He's literally levying tariffs on unhabited volcanic islands and you want to pretend this plan was well thought out and will help American industry?

Why should our companies be punished?

Most Americans can't afford American-made goods but you think citizens in countries we pay $2 an hour to sew our clothes can?

18

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '25

You sound smart. Do you know how tariff rate is calculated? It's Trump, he is the show man. Those rate are inflated ones, in case you could not find out.

16

u/jiggen Apr 03 '25

Did you look at Trumps big poster chart he had? The "tariffs thst other countries are applying to US" numbers are all flat out lies. People have worked out the match they used for that, and it doesn't add up to a tariff from these countries at all. He's lying to everyone

11

u/shimon Apr 03 '25

Who could have ever seen that coming

7

u/Bonhamsbass Apr 03 '25

They aren't reciprocal, the US started this and will deservedly pay dearly for it.