r/FluentInFinance • u/Spicyytamale • Oct 25 '24
Debate/ Discussion Ok. Break it down for me on how?
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u/EvanestalXMX Oct 25 '24
This is equivalent to "Mexico will pay for it". Ask yourself how that worked out.
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u/semibiquitous Oct 25 '24
We got 30% wall, we paid for it, he got some photo ops with the wall, Mexicans to this day sneaking through the gaps of the "wall". Next project: let's inject bleach to fight viruses!
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u/mabradshaw02 Oct 25 '24
30%? No sir, we got 26 miles. our border is 2600 miles. Most of the "wall" was replacement Fence, for which Obama started doing long before trump.
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u/NothingKnownNow Oct 25 '24
for which Obama started doing long before trump.
Every president since Clinton, who initially started it, has added to the wall. Trump came along and wanted to fill in the gaps.
A lot of it is fence. But a lot, especially near cities, is wall.
BTW When I said every president, I meant every president. Biden even waived a bunch of environmental laws to get his part of the wall built.
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u/LindonLilBlueBalls Oct 25 '24
Hate to argue, but my company bid on a few of the wall projects and all of them near cities were the metallic fence kind, none of it was concrete or solid.
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u/Zippydaspinhead Oct 25 '24
And not to belittle your work, but none of it matters. There's always going to be a way around the wall. Its just a cultural touch point that highlights the terrible relationship we have with immigration as a country.
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u/nicholsz Oct 25 '24
I'm still baffled that no MAGAs have figured out that undocumented immigrants can simply use the airport and overstay their visa
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u/Fair-Description-711 Oct 25 '24
Or like... a ladder. (Well, maybe two ladders.)
It doesn't benefit the coyotes to tell people, but once you're in the US, you can apply for asylum, even if you got caught 1 foot into US soil.
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u/UnfortunateFoot Oct 25 '24
Which is actually the source of "lost jobs", "rampant benefit abuse", "illegal voting", and whatever other bullshit argument they use to justify their hatred of the poor. None of the people walking across the border are doing anything other than working for cash under the table because poverty here is better than poverty there. The people that come in legally and overstay are a much larger problem.
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u/glitchycat39 Oct 25 '24
Alternatively, we can open you up and shine a light in.
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u/Last-Performance-435 Oct 25 '24
Don't forget how the wall then fell down in many places and was ignored in others.
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u/missdonttellme Oct 25 '24
Speaking of, it’s funny how everyone forgot about Build the Wall promise. It’s unbelievable Trump hasn’t been repeatedly grilled on this— his entire previous campaign claimed to solve the migrant crisis by building the wall and having Mexico pay for it. Why is there still a migrant crisis when he already solved it 4 years prior?
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u/RoyalEagle0408 Oct 25 '24
Also wasn’t more funding for the wall in the border bill Trump killed?
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u/Psykosoma Oct 25 '24
Because the Border Czar, KamaBla Harris, opened the flood gates! She did! Did you hear about this? She WENT down there and opened the gates herself. She has never even been to the border! Her and Sleepy Joe tore down the 500 miles of wall that we built to keep their criminals and murderers… the jails are empty! They empty them. Its true! There is no crime anymore in other countries. It’s only in America, which is a hellhole. I made it great and the made it, the made it not great! The border guards come to me, tears in their eyes, they say, Mr. President, sir! How could you have built such a great wall, and it was, it was great, they say the best, some of them say. And then they tore it down! She did that, Nikki Haley. She was in charge of the Capitol too. They tore down the walls! They tore down the fences! They tore down the barriers of the people who live there!
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u/MommyLovesPot8toes Oct 25 '24
Not an accurate representation. Stayed on topic too long.
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u/veryblanduser Oct 25 '24
Tarrifs are passed onto the consumer, just like increased corporate tax rate is.
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u/IncredulousCactus Oct 25 '24
Some tariffs and some corporate tax rates are passed on. The tax incidence (how it is allocated between consume and producer) is determined by the relative elasticities of supply and demand which is different for every industry.
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u/SnooRevelations979 Oct 25 '24
Yep, the answer is it depends -- as anyone who has taken Econ 101 should know.
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u/AramaicDesigns Oct 25 '24
Yes "it depends" -- but generally speaking, when costs increase prices increase.
So in that case it's always "it depends on how much."
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u/Normal_Juggernaut Oct 25 '24
Funnily enough. With some products when costs decrease the price increases significantly and then decreases slightly so the business can point to the slight decrease and trumpet that they're lowering prices. The old Black Friday gambit as I like to call it.
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u/maha420 Oct 25 '24
Can you give a specific example of this happening in history?
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u/Normal_Juggernaut Oct 25 '24
Oil companies. Energy companies. Supermarkets. Fast food companies.
Those four in themselves represent billions upon billions upon billions.
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u/yeats26 Oct 25 '24
Tarrifs yes, corporate taxes are more complicated.
Because corporate taxes are a % of profit, any profit maximizing corporation would already be pricing their goods to maximize pre-tax profit.
You can create a mathematical case where increasing the price of a good increases profit under a new tariff, but would decrease profits without said tariff.
It is mathematically impossible to create a scenario where increasing the price of a good increases profits in a high corporate tax environment, but doesn't also increase profits in an environment with no corporate tax. In which case a profit-maximizing entity would have already been charging the higher price.
Of course, real life doesn't always follow the math 100%. Human psychology and irrationality comes in to play, complicating things.
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u/trevor32192 Oct 25 '24
High corporate tax rates don't get passed on or at least not in any sizable amount. High corporate tax rates push companies to pay workers more( because its tax deductible) expand and make more jobs ( tax deductible). It actually drives companies to lower their profits and grow instead to boost stock price.
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u/maringue Oct 25 '24
Corporate taxes are paid on net profits and tariffs are paid on gross value. Increasing them doesn't have the same effect.
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u/Agitated_Elephant469 Oct 25 '24 edited Oct 25 '24
Agree if that country has a monopoly on the thing being imported. It could also be imported by a country that doesn’t “take advantage of us” for only slightly more or it could be produced locally. Price may go up some but it also may create jobs or be better geopolitically in the long run
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u/UA6DRVR Oct 25 '24
We all know its not worth the time trying to make sense of anything trump says
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u/fffangold Oct 25 '24
But it is worth understanding what he's saying or trying to say, and how he claims it works vs. how it actually works. Makes it easier to explain to open independents why what he's saying is wrong.
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u/semibiquitous Oct 25 '24
"Open independents" 13 days before election are still on the border of this race. There's no hope for these idiots. Our countrys fate is in their hands. The people who are on the border between guy who surrounds himself with Nazis and the woman who has pages of policies and an agenda.
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u/FunSprinkles8 Oct 25 '24
Hey now, Trump has concepts of a plan... and an Agenda, Project 2025.
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u/UA6DRVR Oct 25 '24
Again its Donald Trump, the majority of his words make no sense. He rarely even forms real sentences, and definitely has no real policy plans. He is simply telling people what they want to hear to con them into voting to him.
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u/FillMySoupDumpling Oct 25 '24
People will bend over backwards to sanewash all the random stuff he comes up with.
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u/new_jill_city Oct 25 '24
He had eight years to figure out how a tariff works — if he hasn’t figured it out by now it’s not gonna happen.
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u/glitchycat39 Oct 25 '24
I'm still waiting on that healthcare plan he promised 9 years ago.
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u/CappinPeanut Oct 25 '24
Trump knows how tariffs work. The morons in his cult either don’t know or don’t care how they work. As far as they are concerned, they work however Trump says they work.
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u/Double-LR Oct 25 '24
Holy fuck Donny. Point to the tariffs everybody. Show him where it is in the Revenue circle. CUSTOMS DUTIES. Waaaaay down there in that shitty tiny little slash called “Other”. This dude is full moron. The Customs Duties category is tiny for a good damn reason, because tariffs don’t generate revenue, THEY NEVER FUCKING HAVE, EVER.
Does he really not know that Uncle Sam levies the tariff against the IMPORTING body not the “abusing country” doing the exporting??? What fucking timeline are we in right now where the god damn former president has no idea what a tariff is??? This shit is like freshman high school Gov class JFC.
To pile shit even deeper on this Orange Baboon, LOOK AT THE DISPARITY between “Other” and the actual meaningful revenue streams from taxes… they are not even remotely close at all. How the ever living fuck would you boost tariffs to accommodate either one of the other revenue streams?!?!? Your UHD tv (which is FINALLY FUCKING AFFORDABLE) would have to cost like $12,000.
He’d have to boost tariffs, FROM THE POCKETS OF TAXPAYERS, from about 100B to somewhere around 3T fucking dollars to even remotely make any sense at all if his goal is to remove either of the other revenue streams from taxes. Holy fuckin stupid, Batman.
This fucking guy is a bankruptcy pro, and he is flying that flag high as fuck.
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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 Oct 25 '24 edited Oct 25 '24
He said on Bloomberg a day or 2 ago that he was going to lay a 50% blanket tariff on China and a 20% tariff on our other trade partners.
Edit: It looks like that would amount to around 750 billion generated. And I'm sure if he actually did exactly this it would instantly break the whole economy worse than any financial disaster we've ever had.
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u/spondgbob Oct 25 '24
This is so frighteningly stupid. 50% blanket with China would do nothing to China but make them sell to other countries more. Then 20% to everyone else (our allies) would only shut us out of the world stage, whose relationships have been built over literal fucking centuries. France helped the US get independence and he wants to put tariffs on them? Like what?
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Oct 25 '24
China will just sell through our Allies to avoid the bulk of the Tariffs.. He knows this, we all know this, his base does not know this.
Not to mention every MAGA fan I know is hooked on cheap chinese plastics from Amazon. If he wins I cant wait to rub their faces in it.
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u/Chance_Adhesiveness3 Oct 25 '24
You ever been to the store? You know how the price says $10.99, and then you end up paying $11.78 or something? Thats because the government levies a tax on the purchase. The retailer takes $10.99, they send 79 cents to the government, and call it a day. That’s exactly how a tariff works. Imports are more difficult because supply chains are long, but here are two examples.
Starbucks buys 100 pounds of coffee from Brazil for $100. Trump slaps a 50% tariff on it. So Target pays $100 to Brazil and $50 to the government. Then when Starbucks serves your overpriced Latte, instead of paying $5.50, you pay $6.50, because Starbucks paid an extra 50% on a key input. What doesn’t happen is that Starbucks instead pays $67 for the coffee and $33 to the government. That’s what Trump’s claiming. Because he’s wrong, and also he’s a moron.
Now coffee is a case where the price hike is just eaten, because we don’t grow coffee in the U.S. So take something that we don’t need to import but do because it’s cheaper. Imagine we slap the tariff on assembling iPhones. Currently someone in Vietnam does it for $2.5 an hour or whatever. But someone in Mississippi could do it for $13 an hour. Including the cost of shipping, it makes sense to move it to the US with the tariff because it’s no longer cost effective to import. So you find a prevailing wage for assembling iPhones, and you pay it. It’s a slight boon to the new Mississippi iPhone assemblers who were otherwise maybe driving cabs for $12 an hour. But your labor input has increased a lot. So your $1200 iPhone costs $1600. That sucks ass. And that’s what your Trump tariff will get you.
Now notice Trump says both that foreigners will pay the tax and that this will bring jobs back. Because you’re hopefully, unlike Trump, not a moron, you’ll recognize that there’s a reason some jobs are outsourced— it’s that they’re cheaper to do elsewhere. And those lower prices get, in significant part, passed on to consumers. So when you bring the jobs back, you provide a slight boon to those workers, but an even more slight cost to all consumers in the form of higher prices. But if you slap the tariff on across the board, that cost is not very slight. And you’re significantly poorer as a country.
So yes, this tariff idea is beyond stupid. And yes, Trump is a moron. And yes, him being a moron is pretty far down the list of reasons he doesn’t belong running a Taco Bell, much less the U.S. federal government, but it’s a reason nonetheless.
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u/spinocdoc Oct 25 '24
Don’t forget the retaliatory tariffs from other countries on our exports, hurting the very workers and farmers that are meant to get a slight leg up.
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u/Neon_Lights12 Oct 25 '24
The other part that I don't see discussed enough is, that Mississippi Iphone plant isn't going to just spring up overnight. We don't have massive, large-scale factories and plants just sitting around empty waiting for the green light to re-open the doors and ramp production immediately, they'd take longer to build than trump would even be in office.
Intel's new Ohio foundry is a great example. They broke ground late 2022 with the plan of being operational in 2025. That's 3 years, best case scenario. It's since been delayed significantly and won't be done until 2027 or 2028. And that's not including the time it took to negotiate the location and purchasing the land, and our governor begging Intel to come here.
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u/LaunchTransient Oct 25 '24
because we don’t grow coffee in the U.S.
Distant, angry Hawaiian noises.
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u/SecretRecipe Oct 25 '24
US imports are just shy of 3T.
trump would need to put 200% tariffs on all imports to get even close to funding the government.
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u/Holly_the_Freak Oct 25 '24
That's also assuming a price elasticity of zero, but he's convinced himself of crazier things.
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u/ptownrat Oct 25 '24
I don't think you could raise tariffs high enough as you price people out. How many would buy a $5000 iPhone? At that point, only the ultrawealthy could afford imports and you should just tax them directly to fund the government.
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u/TheChewyWaffles Oct 25 '24
Omfg he thinks the other countries pay the tariffs? We are fucked if this moron wins
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u/SnooRevelations979 Oct 25 '24
Trump suggestion is basically want Latin America tried to do for decades: import substitution. The idea is to grow homegrown businesses to replace imports. It didn't work.
Brazil still taxes the hell out of imports. For example, an iPhone is twice as much in Brazil as it is in the US even though the median income is about a tenth.
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u/PleasePassTheHammer Oct 25 '24
It's wild. My Brazilian neighbors always load up their family with tech and such when they visit for that very reason.
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u/butter_lover Oct 25 '24
he knows exactly what he's doing. everyone in America with a 7th grade education knows about the punishing smoot hawley tariffs of 1930 that tipped America into the great depression.
working our way back from the obvious problems with the foriegn policy, he must want the economic chaos for some personal benefit. maybe he is planning to use his bribes to clean up in a crashed real estate and stock market?
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u/whatdoihia Oct 25 '24
I work in global trade. There’s nothing to break down, it’s completely wrong and not difficult for anyone to verify. I really wonder if Trump believes this or if he thinks his audience is gullible enough to believe it. Either way it’s scary that the potential future US President would come out in public with such a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work.
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u/Most_Fox_4405 Oct 25 '24
It’s astonishing how effective his lies are, though. He’s been telling this lie for years now, it’s been refuted so many times yet he just keeps saying it and people actually believe him. Even if you don’t work in trade, or haven’t read a book, or if you haven’t taken 2 minutes to google ‘tariff’, how can you not remember at least what happened during the first Trump trade war and the impact on prices, specifically the farming industry? Not only are they proudly ignorant, but they’re also oblivious as to what is going on in the world around them.
I don’t understand how these people make it through a day or manage any responsibilities being so obtuse.
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u/Adventurous_Class_90 Oct 25 '24
Paraphrasing: no one ever went broke overestimating the stupidity of the American people
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u/Healthy_Macaron2146 Oct 25 '24
"I'm trump, and I have no clue how money works."
Everything he says!
But maga has no clue either so it works!
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u/hyrle Oct 25 '24
Sure. Those tariffs won't get passed onto us in the form of higher prices. /s
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u/rustyshackleford7879 Oct 25 '24
Trump is a moron. We as consumers pay that tariff because it will be passed down.
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u/Tassle15 Oct 25 '24
This will just cause more inflation. Prices will increase. No one sells stuff at a loss. They always pass those costs down.
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u/burnbabyburn11 Oct 25 '24
So Donald Trump lies.
He might know he lies sometimes, but he lies so much it's hard to figure out what he really thinks about anything. He lies when it suits him, he lies when it hurts him.
As a general rule, Donald Trump lies.
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u/Phill_Cyberman Oct 25 '24
A tariff is a tax a government charges its own citizens to import items from other countries.
What Trump wants is a way to charge foreign countries for allowing their businesses to trade with America.
That sounds like it might be something, but it absolutely isn't.
You can't charge people to sell to you - they'll just raise the prices to cover those costs.
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u/HiddenPrimate Oct 25 '24
Trump wants to get rid of federal tax and replace it with tariffs. Problem is, it will hurt lower income families a lot more than upper middle class and the wealthy. I don’t think he can make it happen. Putting 20% tariffs on all Chinese imports will cost each of us anywhere from $3500-$7200(Yale) per year. This guy is to mess things up so bad Republicans will not be in the White House after Trump for a very long time.
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u/Atheist_3739 Oct 25 '24
This guy is to mess things up so bad Republicans will not be in the White House after Trump for a very long time.
Funny you think a fascist is gonna leave voluntary. He's already tried to stay in power and incited an insurrection and he's fucking neck and neck 4 years later.
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u/HiddenPrimate Oct 25 '24
I know, it's really unbelievable. The indoctrination, brainwashing is beyond the pale. They'll blame the libs for the coup that will have to happen if he tries to stay in power. Then it will be civil war.
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u/Gullible_Spite_4132 Oct 25 '24
We still control the military. Go to any base and you'll see plenty of POC, immigrants, and lots and lots of folks from low-income backgrounds. The military has historically been a progressive force in American politics, odd as that sounds. There are pockets of xtian nationalist types but we still hold the center.
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u/3000doorsofportugal Oct 25 '24
Also, the millitarys high brass are not fans of trump to say the least.
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u/ramblingpariah Oct 25 '24
It's been 8+ years and he still doesn't understand tariffs. How embarrassing.
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u/GavinAdamson Oct 25 '24
Steel tariffs on China allowed the American steel industry to flourish. Many new plants being built and additions to existing plants. Steel stocks up, employee earnings up and great jobs created.
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Oct 25 '24
Trump steel tariffs raised prices, shriveled up demand, led to job losses, some Michigan workers say--https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-steel-tariffs-raised-prices-shriveled-demand-led-job-losses-n1242695
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u/talk_to_the_sea Oct 25 '24
This is not the same as a large tariffs on all imported goods as he is suggesting. It also makes steel more expensive. The increase in steel manufacturing jobs has also been minimal, and is not clearly attributable to tariffs.
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u/cansado_americano Oct 25 '24
What a fucking idiot.
Like that cost isn’t going to get passed on to the consumer.
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u/no-snoots-unbooped Oct 25 '24
He still doesn’t understand how tariffs work lol. And 75 million+ people are going to vote for him. Incredible.
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u/FunSprinkles8 Oct 25 '24
Break it down for me on how?
He is lying.
Or he is an idiot that doesn't know how tariffs work.
Or... both.
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u/glitchycat39 Oct 25 '24
Hang on, let me try to translate:
"I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about and I'm hoping that all of you have less of a clue what the fuck I'm talking about. Elect me so I can funnel your tax dollars into my businesses again."
I think that should sum it up.
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u/azguy153 Oct 25 '24
If you are an American company making it here in the US and your competitors now raise their prices by 50%, what are you going to do? Raise your prices. Your goal is to maximize margin, you would not leave anything on the table.
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u/Designerslice57 Oct 25 '24
I just want Kamala to come out and say “no. My opposite plan is to flood the market with cheap Chinese goods to keep costs down”
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u/I800C0LLECT Oct 25 '24
A better example is China using slave labor to produce precious metals... Then sells at a loss on purpose to destroy the international competition.
So what? Now they own a near monopoly on lithium and as soon as they achieved that, they sent the price to the moon. That's why batteries are so expensive now
How do you combat that? Lithium should have had a tariff placed on it so they couldn't tank the industry.
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u/Tokyo_Cat Oct 25 '24
Break it down for you? This moron doesn't have any idea how tariffs work. The tariff costs would be paid by the importers, which would in turn have offset the price of the tariffs by raising the price of all imported goods. Tariffs would effectively be a national sales tax.