Trump says he will introduce 25% tariffs on autos, pharmaceuticals and chips.
-
I was at a hibachi place in December and one of the managers was trying to light a candle. The lighter didn't work and he made a joke that it "must be made in China. It'll cost 25% more soon!" A guy at the table said "well you'll just need to buy one made in Pennsylvania!"
I asked him if he knew of any companies that manufactured disposable lighters in Pennsylvania, and he just said "Trump will make it happen!"
The disconnect is crazy.
BIC probably produces lighters in the US, they have a couple of locations there. It could also be razor blades or ballpoint pens though and the lighters are coming in from Mexico. Or surfboards. Still can't believe they produce surfboards.
Or BIC might exit the US market, the French aren't exactly known to be forgiving or accommodating. If you make their US factories pay 25% on the flints they're importing from another factory elsewhere they might just say fuck it, let's burn this place down, we'll go somewhere where these lighters aren't hit by 25% retaliatory tariffs.
-
If that's the goal, you announce tariffs are coming in a few years so that people scale up local production to avoid the higher costs.
In this case, there was like 4 months notice where all of it was undefined, so of course nobody did anything and now we still don't have local production. Now, prices will go up and local producers (if they even build up) will match the new prices instead of keeping them low.
Congrats, worst of both worlds! We still have no local production and prices have gone up! Yay!
Even then, as a democracy, you can only do really mild tariffs as companies won't trust the tariffs to stay high come the next government. You instead subsidise, in whatever form, including things like long-term supply contracts. If you want to push domestic ball point pen production, just order your administration to prefer buying domestic ball point pens if they're within what 20% of the import price, then slowly reduce that rate but keep the preference to make sure your ballpoint pen industry is productive, efficient, and competitive. Make it a 10-year supply contracts the next government can't just cancel. If you're the US, give them to teachers to give children.
-
I have no way to prove it obviously but nothing in that story was made up.
For what it's worth I do believe your story only because I have family who have used a very similar "Trump is gonna fix it!" line to me and when I asked what he'd fix their response is "everything!"
-
I think you're underestimating the Department of Education's role in preventing red states from destroying public education. They can now do whatever they want with their education system and there is absolutely zero federal oversight coming their way. And you better believe Republican state legislatures are chomping at the bit for this one.
Edit: "champing at the bit" per u/slumberlust
It's kind of fascinating. In Germany recently the idea of a federal education ministry has been floated and the general answer was "no". Other states don't want to have to deal with CSU politicians trying to get "the purpose of the school is to instil fear of god" into law applicable on their turf, that BS can stay in Bavaria. The federation is co-responsible for tertiary education (university etc) because they have responsibility when it comes to research so they can set, in practice, some standards regarding secondary graduation but that's it.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Yeah because drugs aren’t already prohibitively expensive.
-
As the standard of living and pay in the USA quickly tanks and becomes less desirable than where they're from, those people will stop applying for those positions.
They can't force foreigners to sign up for H-1B visas. The whole point is the salary is currently and the USA is currently a desirable place to live. Won't stay that way long. They're literally tearing down all the things that made it desirable to begin with.
Why would anyone want to come over here right now? I don’t even want to be here.
-
I think you're underestimating the Department of Education's role in preventing red states from destroying public education. They can now do whatever they want with their education system and there is absolutely zero federal oversight coming their way. And you better believe Republican state legislatures are chomping at the bit for this one.
Edit: "champing at the bit" per u/slumberlust
The phrase is champing at the bit. I was 35 years old before I learned that, so thought I'd pass it on. Thanks for posting!
-
Why would anyone want to come over here right now? I don’t even want to be here.
A lot of immigrants are paid more highly in the US than they are in their home countries.
The Indian Rupee, for example, has a poor exchange rate with the US dollar and they have higher salaries in the US.
So they take an H-1B job and they make enough to take care of themselves in the US and usually have US dollars they can send home to their family which can be exchanged for large amounts of rupees.
Current exchange is rougly $1 USD to about ₹80 rupees.
This will change as the US economy tanks and people stop using the US dollar as a reserve currency.
-
But hey, at least we have bird flu infested eggs
Make H5N5
greatkill everyone again! -
Except for China-made Tesla right?
For better or worse, all Teslas sold in USA are built in Fremont or Austin.
-
When a quarter of the most qualified engineers to make the stuff and a lot of the cheap manual labor are immigrants and you do a campaign against immigrants so they leave, maybe you don't have enough people left to to create local production.
Illegal immigrants went to America because their home countries are fucking miserable. They're not going back because they don't feel welcome. And they're definitely not engineers, much less the "most qualified" engineers.
-
We don't manufacture cars in the United States we assemble them. Most of the parts for cars are made outside of the states. Mainly in China.
No country manufactures cars 100% locally. We live in a global economy. All cars are made from components sourced from countries all over the world, in varying degrees.
-
On the one hand, fostering local production of these goods is positive for national resilience, and also has a chance to reduce shipping around the world, which is bad for the environment.
On the other hand, good fucking luck, lol.
I agree, tariffs will be a net positive for the country. Problem is, the people taking the brunt of that impact will, as always, be the poorest and most vulnerable. There are many ways we could solve that problem but of course authoritarians have no interest in that.
That being said, anyone who voted for Trump thinking he would fix the economy is a fucking moron. Tariffs make shit worse before they get better. It will probably be a decade before we start to see any positive impact from them.
-
Illegal immigrants went to America because their home countries are fucking miserable. They're not going back because they don't feel welcome. And they're definitely not engineers, much less the "most qualified" engineers.
I said immigrants, not illegal immigrants. But in the end, legal immigrants get deported too.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states
As of 2019, immigrants made up almost one-fourth, or 23.1 percent, of all STEM workers in the entire country.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/01/politics/migrants-legal-status-trump-biden/index.html
The Trump administration is preparing to revoke legal status for many migrants who entered the United States under a Biden-era program, according to a source familiar with the planning, expanding the pool of people who could be deported.
-
tariffs are just a tax on the plebs. more money for them to funnel into billionaire pockets.
Those new AI datacenters will get hit hard by that if it goes through. And Elon Musk is still trying to build them. That is a 25% tarrif on every CPU, motherboard, NVME drive, GPU, network switch, and optic.
Unless import duties only apply to chips not soldered into devices in which case all the foreign produced stuff is fine and the American assembled stuff is no longer competative. Oops
-
I said immigrants, not illegal immigrants. But in the end, legal immigrants get deported too.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states
As of 2019, immigrants made up almost one-fourth, or 23.1 percent, of all STEM workers in the entire country.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/01/politics/migrants-legal-status-trump-biden/index.html
The Trump administration is preparing to revoke legal status for many migrants who entered the United States under a Biden-era program, according to a source familiar with the planning, expanding the pool of people who could be deported.
legal immigrants get deported
You have evidence of this?
-
legal immigrants get deported
You have evidence of this?
A search turns up some hits legal migrants are put in detention centers. But you can also wait a few weeks and evidence should be on the news.
-
For better or worse, all Teslas sold in USA are built in Fremont or Austin.
My 2024 MSLR is made in Freemont CA but you can be certain the display, CPU and sensors aren't made in America.
-
My 2024 MSLR is made in Freemont CA but you can be certain the display, CPU and sensors aren't made in America.
Yes that would be covered under "chips" but not under autos.
-
A search turns up some hits legal migrants are put in detention centers. But you can also wait a few weeks and evidence should be on the news.
Ah yes, the classic "look into it" argument. When evidence finds itself in the news I will consider this a threat. Until then, your claims are unfounded.
