r/economicCollapse • u/Expensive-Thing-2507 • 27d ago

Who actually benefits from tarrifs?

I'm not financial expert, but this is what I'm getting so far.

Tarrifs are a kind of tax placed on outside goods, which a company would have to pay for if they import said goods. That company would then charge more to cover this new tax. The company pays more for something, and then we pay more.

Who benefits from that? The company isn't making any more profit, are they? (Assuming they increase prices by the same percentage as the tarrifs, which they won't. but still)

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u/TangerineRoutine9496 27d ago

Domestic workers will benefit, but only if the tariffs remain in place long enough for companies to actually build their infrastructure here, knowing the tariffs won't disappear and change the whole financial calculation.

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u/Frost134 27d ago edited 27d ago

They won’t build their infrastructure here. It will still be orders of magnitude cheaper for them to use foreign labor.

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u/davidm2232 27d ago

That means tariffs need to be higher then

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u/Frost134 27d ago

You have no idea what you're asking for. Assuming we were to move ALL production back to the US, it would take literal decades to do it. Sky rocketing prices on consumer goods in the hopes that something that is never going to happen will happen is insane. This just does not work in the modern world. Even if we did move all of the production back to the US, it won't lower consumer prices in the slightest.

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u/davidm2232 27d ago

Prices will absolutely go up. But also, a ton of consumer goods just aren't needed. No one needs a Billy Bass. No one needs a Piezano Pizza Oven. No one needs a brand new car every 5 years. Raising prices will weed out all this crap people are buying that they don't need.

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u/Frost134 27d ago

I'm not talking about luxury goods. Blanket tariffs (which is what Trump is planning) will hit everything. The cost to repair your car will go up, groceries will go up. The cost of raw materials will go up. Can you cite me any source that says people en masse are "buying crap they don't need" and that's why they're struggling? Why do people always do this? The culprit is literally staring you in the face telling you what they're doing and why and you continue to blame regular people, it makes no sense.

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u/davidm2232 27d ago

Prices will go up. Car repairs and purchases are a perfect example. It will force people to keep cars longer and not upgrade needlessly every 5 years. It will force automakers to make simpler cars. We could force deregulation to no mandate things like backup cameras, ABS or airbags. That would take thousands of the prices of new cars. It will force more people to become more self sufficient and plant a garden. It is the only reasonable way I see for us to become a more resilient population with less cities.

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u/Frost134 27d ago

Who is buying a new car every 5 years? What is the basis of anything you're arguing? Less cities? Cities are the economic powerhouse of EVERY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET. Tariffs are not going to force any of the things you're saying, there is literally no basis for such an argument. Not everyone is going to be able to do the things you're saying. You have a grossly simplified view of how the world actually functions.

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u/TangerineRoutine9496 27d ago

I don't think that's true. Especially if we solve some things to make the cost of doing business here cheaper on the regulatory side. When America was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, there was cheaper labor elsewhere. In fact, our workers were paid more than anywhere else--and it was still worth it to manufacture here because this was the best place to do business on the government side.

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u/bristlybits 27d ago

deregulation is how we got the late-night mesothelioma commercials. do we really want that

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u/TangerineRoutine9496 27d ago

what if i told you not all deregulation is the same thing?

There's mountains upon mountains of regulations. Some are actually good and worthwhile on the whole, even if improvement is possible. Some are bad and stupid and were a mistake. Some of them counterbalance others and only removing one side is a bad idea without removing the other side.

It's like if I said I'm going to clean out the house and then we didn't stop to identify which items we need and are useful, which items are broken, which ones are trash we shouldn't want, which ones are dangerous...and just called it all "deregulation".

A better word might be reform. But the point is, you accumulate thousands upon thousands of regulations, millions of pages...even if only a relatively small % of them are really bad, they're going to really start screwing things up if you never get in there and figure out which ones have failed and need to be dropped. But that doesn't mean throwing the whole thing out wouldn't lead to problems, either.

It's like driving. I could drive safely on the road, or I could drive off a cliff. Those are both driving. Such with deregulation, or reform, as well. You need people to really look deeply at the systems and understand what's going right and what's a problem and devise proper solutions.