re: Tariffs are Taxes and Increase Prices for Consumers

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Words have meaning, Neanderthal

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Do you want me to explain it a 3rd time?

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Old rehashed Democrat lies to the unions

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That one is demonstrably true

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Your statism?

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Care to make a substantive reply to my comment?

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Why not just stick with the status quo where we can buy cheap shite at the store right now?

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Why does this have to be explained again?

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Do you want me to explain it a 3rd time?

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You didnt have a clue the first "two times."

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And this is the problem with the anti-tariff bros. You will let American companies die due to unfair trade practices while getting pissed at the one guy in DC who cares about protecting Americans.

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I never said I was against the Tariffs. I just said it is going to raise the prices for domestic consumers.

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other countries

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Other countries socialize their medicine.

I guess we should too.

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we're talking about recent inflation which was absolutely caused by government action in 2020

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Oh, you mean the virus started by corrupt people tied to corrupt politicians who then lied to everyone and punished businesses for daring to attempt to stay viable.

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Imports make up 10% of the total production of the US economy. A 10% tax on 10% of the US economy is a 1% increase in overall prices.

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Nope.

First of all, I don't know where you got your numbers, but imports make up around 15% of the GDP.

Let's start here—the reason imports only make up 15% of GDP is because the US economy is an 80% service economy. Only 20% of the economy is products, which is exactly why Roger is correct upthread about your observation kicking the legs out from under the victim narrative, and exactly why anybody who thinks that just because some other country enacts tariffs that means we should too is being moronic.

Secondly, it's not a one to one effects ratio. That's not how it works.

Because tariffs have a disproportionate ripple effect.

This is the hardest thing for me to try to get dim bulbs here to understand.

If only half a dozen or so things that we import are heavily affected by tariffs, it has the potential to cause an economic drain many times it's own weight as long as they are the correct half dozen or so things.

Anything having to do with construction materials, anything having to do with auto or other machine parts, or anything having to do with medical supplies, for a starting trio of examples, will cause a disproportionate economic drain.

Let's take one of those, construction materials.

If it starts being more expensive to build and maintain structures, housing prices will rise and rent will also rise. Not just on personal residences, but on commercial property as well.

Which means that every single business—regardless of what they sell—who operates out of a rented structure will experience either a loss of profits, or they will raise prices to maintain them.

Now add in medical insurance price increases (because medical supplies are more expensive, so the care is now more expensive) and shipping price increases (the more it costs to maintain vehicles due to auto parts increases, the higher the cost to maintain a shipping fleet AND the higher the insurance rates to insure the vehicles).

And again, this is something that will—to a greater or lesser degree—affect virtually every business in the country, regardless of what they sell.

I'm sure those examples are sufficient to get the point.

Before finishing the post, please notice that I specifically said "economic drain," and observed that the affected business would experience either a loss of profits, or they would raise prices to maintain them (and I will now add in that of course they could do both as well).

So the economy suffers no matter whether the effect is higher prices across the board, jobs layoffs, hiring freezes, expansion freezes, or a loss of profitability that is reflected in the stock market.

Again. There is no way to add 2 to 2 and end up with only 2. You cannot introduce a drain into a system without the system having to adapt to the drain in some way.

Tariffs cannot simply have no effect on the economy. It's as impossible as 2 + 2 = 2.

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Yet income taxes are way down

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How so?

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Why do those things HAVE to be produced elsewhere?

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They don't.

They can be produced here. For a lot more money. Which then leads to the same problems as the tariffs themselves.

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This is a horrifying problem

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Explain to me in economic terms why you make that claim. Why is it bad in your estimation to have a majority service oriented economy?

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which the tarrifs aim to correct

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The average factory worker in the US makes $17 an hour. So let's say that these tariffs succeed in bringing back a bunch of $17 an hour jobs to the US. Do you realize that we don't have enough workers to fill the $17 an hour jobs we already have?

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So add you to the knuckleheads who can't understand the basics

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There's nobody so insufferable as the person who is stupid enough to not be able to realize how stupid they are.

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The rest of your diatribe was crap because you're overlooking the basic point

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Nah. You're simply an idiot who for some reason thinks that bringing low paying manufacturing jobs back to America is worth tanking the economy.

I'm sure you're not aware that Trump's first round of tariffs (from 2016) resulted in a net loss of jobs. Need a link? I can provide one. When you burden industries by making things artificially more expensive, that's what happens. You actually lose jobs.