What If Tariffs?
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Swatch released a watch with swapped 3 and 9 numerals, priced at $139, as a commentary on US tariffs, sparking discussion on the watch's design, the impact of tariffs, and the Trump administration's trade policies.
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Here’s a link to the Swiss store which has more details, like price: https://www.swatch.com/en-ch/what-if-tariffs-so34z106/SO34Z1...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28013157
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9rica_Invertida
When one turned away, the message would instantly become different, like changing "Down with the heat" to "Down with the cops" - https://sztukapubliczna.pl/pl/precz-z-u-palami-pomaranczowa-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Alternative
the whole world is a work of art, so even a single policeman standing in the street is a work of art
I am not designing own watch if that is what you mean. I settled on cheap plastic ones, because well, since there is nothing better looking that cheap plastic I can go cheap.
I lean to the minimal style, so I recently got one from Obaku. The one I got is technically in their women's line; women's watches tend to be simpler, and I have small wrists so women's watches tend to fit me better. Skagen also makes nice minimal stuff.
I also sometimes dig around used watch forums like WatchUSeek. You can find dozens of cool watches from the 60s-80s, many mechanical, for like $50-200.
Thank you.
I’ll stick with my Patek Philippe Nautilus 5811 [1], thanks ;)
Also Swiss btw.
[1] https://www.patek.com/en/collection/nautilus/5811-1g-001
Ok, I can give you a Skin Irony, but then you would be paying +200 for a Quartz, why not buy an Orient Bambino or a Hamilton Khaki? much better bang for the buck.
Not to mention the clicking noise of a Swatch quartz. In silence, it drives me nuts.
The most understated watch they make is the Swatch Pay!. Super useful, never fails.
Whether the quartz movement bothers you depends on why you bought the watch. It doesn't bother me, but it's certainly true that you can get similar watches for much less money.
https://www.swatch.com/en-ch/bioceramic-what-if.html
The whole idea of Swatch is based on simplicity, reduction of parts count and automated manufacturability.
Kind of insane that the American President just made up a lie that tariffs are paid by foreign countries and rest of the administration just went along with it. It flies in the face of any common sense.
Within this administration, a lot of people feel that there has been an assault on constitutional protections, but the people who trumpeted the Second Amendment as being fundamental to protecting American liberty and democracy have largely been silent in the face of it.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty
Only silence or absolute truth should be accepted.
The fact remains that absolute truth exists ... "delusional" seems to have no idea what the word "truth" even means.
Sounds like a foolproof plan.
Did we not read 1984?
But yes, we'd need some truly neutral Ombudsmen to back up such a system. And they themselves would need to be accountable should they corrupt. I don't think it's impossible, but hard to do with the current power structures.
Perjury is.
The consumer paying the tariff is merely an optimization over the exporter paying the tariff such that the tariff money passes through one less hand. Practically they seem pretty similar.
If the demand curve is very price sensitive - like people might stop buying wool blankets if the price went up 50%, and buy cotton blankets instead - then the tariff will be paid by the suppliers, because they must lower their prices to make the final price the same.
And similarly, if the buyers are inelastic, they will pay the tariff. Like for baby formula, maybe parents are willing to stomach significant price hikes without changing how much they buy.
Nobody can predict this. Tariffs are used by trump mostly as a negotiation and distraction tactic. In that sense they've been extremely effective.
yes, as a pump and dump scheme. He and people in his administration have made a lot of money with tariffs!
Did those not introduce inefficiency? Actually, it probably produced more inefficiency because most people were probably under thr impression most of the world was under free trade, hence the existence of the WTC.
Not knowing a tax is much more inefficient than knowing a tax.
> Not knowing a tax is much more inefficient than knowing a tax.
Why would this be true?
And the people buying cotton blankets are materially worse off than they were before the tariffs were imposed. They have to accept an inferior product until the wool supplier’s prices have adjusted. Or the wool supplier folds and not nobody can buy wool blankets anymore.
Before a tariff is imposed, the seller sells the good for $10 and keeps $10 in revenue.
If a tariff of $1 is imposed under these hypothetical circumstances, does the buyer pay more? Does the exporter get paid the same as before?
Clearly, it's neither guaranteed that the buyer will "pay more" nor that the export will "get paid the same as before". In reality because demand is neither 100% elastic nor 100% inelastic, what tends to happen is that the cost of the tariff is split in some ratio between the buyer and seller.
I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case.
To be fair most people on one side think they know better than Adam Smith and the people on the other side usually never opened a book, so it's a tough bargain.
The correct thing to say is that the tariff has an effect on demand because of the impact of adding a tariff on top of the price.
If it's a company, the company pays and might pass it on.
Edit: to be accurate, the importer is legally responsible for the customs declaration and the tariffs, regardless of who does the declaration and who pays. Typically someone else does the declaration on your behalf, and typically they forward any tariffs to you.
And the data shows that American buyers are not paying their international supplies less for goods than they were before. In fact, if anything, they are paying slightly more, which maj be explained by general inflation and the fact that tariffs mean American buyers are placing smaller orders and therefore getting smaller percentage volume discounts.
you cannot just carbon tax everything locally and then let the other corner of the word produce at a fractional price polluting the same world, exploiting worker etc, without wrecking your internal labor market.
What you see as customer paying more is cause by government letting this shit go on for too long, and now the correction is ugly. But it not like its not needed, and at some point needs to happen before it reaches the breaking point.
I'm not in favor of the current round of tariffs as used by current administration which seem a baseless negotiating tactic, but the effect of outsourcing to bad faith actors has pushed the working class out of balance, they simply have no way of competing internationally unless by accepting a step downgrade in working and living conditions
My country mostly produce pine wood (and other soft wood). I like hardwood furniture, but its only imported stuff because we have very few producers. Putting a tariff on hardwood furniture could be a good idea to increase local production, as long as hardwood is not tariffed. If both hardwood and hardwood furniture get taxed, i will have to pay more, and local production will never have greater margin, as those will be hit by base material tariffs.
(To be clear: I live near on of the biggest hardwood harbour in Europe, and buy my wood directly out of the sawmill, but my point stands)
It opens up a larger profit margin for local producers for sure. Production? Maybe. Maybe not. Because there is no incentive to produce more or better. Because the cheap bad faith actor is gone and prices can now match the export price or be just slightly below it.
>but the effect of outsourcing to bad faith actors has pushed the working class out of balance, they simply have no way of competing internationally unless by accepting a step downgrade in working and living conditions
> What you see as customer paying more is cause by government letting this shit go on for too long, and now the correction is ugly. But it not like its not needed, and at some point needs to happen before it reaches the breaking point.
You don't seem to see the contradictions in both these statements. If the prices go up and working class isn't paid as much for their effort then it is for naught. The failure hasn't been to continue outsourcing, failure has been to improve wage conditions - because market was supposed to correct it or worst case it is "socialism" to even try and raise wages.
But as always people want to test economic theories for themselves and they should. See if their lives improve under a capitalist government which is going to trample on their rights.
Yup. And it can't be guaranteed that the sun will rise tomorrow.
As such, want to bet on it?
[1] https://www.ussc.edu.au/chinas-trade-restrictions-on-austral...
That is the argument of the Administration:
>> Kevin Hassett's theory of tariffs: "China has got to sell a lot of stuff to us to maintain political stability. And so if we put a tariff on their stuff, then they cut the price so that our consumer is basically still able to demand as much stuff as they need to sell to be politically stable."
> If he were right, the import price index (which measures pre-tariff prices) would have fallen by enough to offset the sharp tariff hike. It didn't.
> [graph of said index]
* https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/1981928861547041162...
Some companies might chose to loose the margin (few but still passable ). Some might try to pass some or all to the sale price (which creates all sorts another dynamics) and finally the customer does not have to buy that product. There are many note breakdowns that all adjust who pays and when they pay.
One problem with this analysis is that I can't imagine Trump doing it, or even understanding it. Well, it's not a problem with the analysis, but with the overall situation.
In particular your "Let's imagine" case is sort of ridiculous. There are no such goods, nor anything even comparable. The very existence of inflation disproves the idea (since if those inelastic goods existed, they'd see demand drop to zero if the price needed to inflate).
Exporter pays: Consumer ends up paying price + tariff, then seller pays the tariff to the shipping company, which pays it to the government.
Importer pays: Consumer pays price, then later pays the tariff to the shipping company, which pays it to the government.
In both cases the consumer is paying price + tariff. A small difference is that some consumers could be psychologically tricked by the lower price tag in the importer pays model. Note that what I'm saying doesn't concern itself with changes in pricing due to this.
That's the problem with your semantics then. If the manufacturer no longer makes the same income because they can't increase the final price, in effect the consumer didn't pay the tariff.
if exporters paid tariffs, every country would put tariffs on things that they didn't make themselves. they only do it for things they're trying to compete in making. can you figure out why?
If the exporter charges the same price, the consumer pays more, the exporter get the same as before, and the consumer pays the tariff to the government.
The consumer always pays the tariff. The exporter never pays the tariff.
the fact is that IRS is collecting money from the suckers who voted for this and you're desperately trying to make it sound like the exporters are paying for it.
If the foreign supplier pays the tariff the country COULD be better off in net terms when you add the consumer + government together assuming the government spends all it takes which in a deficit situation is a reasonable assumption.
Consumers pay all of the operating costs and taxes of a company. That's not the debate.
With tariffs, the cost of an imported product becomes higher than a domestically produced product, making consumers purchase the domestically produced product. This is the purpose.
The long-term purpose is that foreign companies start making their products in your country to avoid tariffs and be able to compete.
The discussion about if the buyer or seller pays the tariffs or taxes is non-sensical and a distraction.
There is no long term in the US anymore. TACO flip flops every few days, based on who he spoke to last.
Promote the consumption products provided by a different vendor. Namely ones that tariffs don’t apply to.
It’s not a hard concept to understand, and talking about who pays is a distraction. Namely because it will be case by case involving 3 or more parties who won’t all chose the same choices they have every time.
There are no winners in the trade war.
Not after factoring in the 35%-50% tarrif Trump has imposed on many Canadian goods.
But economic considerations are not the only ones. Opposition to the American Revolution is a fundamental theme in Canadian history. People shouldn't be surprised when Canada acts accordingly.
Punishing their own nationals is very explicitly how this is sold to the voter base. "Prices are going to go up for you but unfortunately we have to do this to try to stop our neighbor from raising their import tax explicitly on goods from us".
Taxes are not a problem if everyone plays by the same rules. The problem for the economy is that some imports are subject to tax and others aren't, or when domestic goods aren't subject to the same tax. Picking winners and losers in an economy by political has never before in history turned out a winning concept.
That is a very simplistic way of looking at it.
Tariffs are taxes on exports and like every tax tool it has its specific purpose.
Lets say US for example has surplus diary. It can export the surplus to other countries. Without tariff the only barrier is the exchange rate. If the diary prices are cheaper than local produce, US diary takes over the market and the US farmers make bank.
Canadian government might want to protect local diary industry. Or Canadians might have concerns about the chemicals in US diary. They have more stringent requirements from their farmers. Either way they raise tariffs for US diary products so that is on par or costlier than local produce.
Tariffs are normally a precision tool. Countries target specific goods and industries.
Now what Trump has done is taken a blunt hammer to it and said all goods from all countries will have tariffs. But if you look at retaliatory tariffs, imposed by other countries, it is precise and meant to hurt very specific industries.
For example, China has raised tariffs on US soyabean. In way it is targeted at US rust belt farmers. The idea being that farmers are a politically active class and if tariffs cause them pain, maybe Trump will come to the table. But that has happened yet. Maybe US farmers just don't care as they are winning too much.
In the same way that Trump is punishing Americans with the import tariffs, yes. However that is just the primary effect, not the goal.
If you eat less you might go hungry, but that doesn't mean the goal was to go hungry. Rather it was to lose weight, and going hungry is just the direct effect.
Part of the goal of retaliatory tariffs is symbolic, part is to indirectly put pressure on Trump by affecting US export industry.
What is insane, though, is that people voted for him. Elect a clown, expect a circus.
I guess most voting Americans didn't need much to throw the country's century long superpower streak down the toilet. Or worse yet, just pretend that both sides are equally bad and not use their voice that many died to give them.
So, people will just buy more american watches in your example, no?
As it is, American spending is way down and hurts everyone. A small stock crash (the thing propping the US up as of now) would truly hit with a 2nd depression at this point.
Combine this knowledge with some maneuvers as of late that reflect the Dotcom bubble and we're rife for a crash that will take the world economy with it once the bubble pops. Its a bull asset market right now, but its certainly not a healthy one
And that's just the economic side of it.When you consider the history of such extreme wealth inequality, ignoring rising unemployment and disresr among the working class can get ugly quickly. That can also go down an expensive route if taken to the extreme.
These companies are absolutely money printing machines at the scale we have never seen.
Some of the individual standout figures:
Apple’s trailing 12-month net income is around US$99 billion. Microsoft’s trailing 12-month net income is about US$101 billion. Alphabet (Google) is estimated around US$111 billion net income.
On revenue, one list shows: Amazon ~$670 billion, Apple ~$408 billion, Alphabet ~$371 billion, Microsoft ~$281.7 billion.
Have you ever read the soverign individual? He kinda predicted this. Tech companies will rise into unfathomably rich while the countries inability to tax foreign revenues will lead to the collapse of the nationstate.
Its all speculation, so it's not really going to be true or false until it happens (or the economy recovers without a crash).
Listing tech companies who have all pledged into AI certainly isn't reassuring me otherwise, that's for sure
>Tech companies will rise into unfathomably rich while the countries inability to tax foreign revenues will lead to the collapse of the nationstate.
So, we're going to crash but the tech companies will be okay for a little longer? Sure, we can phrase it that way.
You have to look at the elasticity of demand across every component to determine the correct ratio.
What i can tell you, as a GSM, from a CapEx perspective, sensors, motors, cables, and batterys made in the US just got significantly more competitive. It was already trending that way due to JIT demands and rapid factory buildouts, but the tarrifs were a huge marketing boon for american supply chains.
And i can tell you for the first time as someone in the supply chain business i can confidently ask the question "Should we be buying this bolt from Insert country here?".
It's almost like i've been given the authority to source products from the United States even if we are paying some percent higher.
For one example, the domestic PCB manufacturing industry is a joke. Even with tariffs, China is literally ten times cheaper than domestic. I recently sent an order to both, and the China fab had my boards in production inside a week. The US fab took three weeks to give us a quote, which was five times higher than China for half the quantity, in twice the time.
The US is not independent. We don't have a domestic industry competing on the global market. We make very little and rely very heavily on imports. What we do make is heinously expensive and not any higher quality than the much cheaper imported goods.
The current trade war also doesn't spur domestic industry growth because all the materials and equipment to build out industry.... is tariffed. Plus the tariffs change too frequently for any sane person to make any kind of long term investment.
Industry will wait to scale until economic forces stabilize.
Hard to see why companies would pass on a government imposed tax if it is an income tax but not a tariff.
If anything you'd expect it to be the other way around, because an income tax allows deductions for much of the cost of making that income which generally means the amount of tax is lower in times when the business is not making much money, whereas a tariff is on the cost if the businesses imports which can remain high even in times where the business is not making money.
The U.S. has lost so much in terms of even being able to produce anything that it's in a weak position not just in terms of trade, but in domestic security in and of itself. The lesson from COVID should be that ensuring domestic production of at least SOME of everything that CAN be produced domestically in the US should be ensured to exist.
As examples... IMO, all prescription medications/devices should require dual sourcing and at least 50% domestic production. This ensures actual patent licensing as well as being able to ramp up from 50% in case of a need (war/pandemic). It's nearly impossible to ramp up from 0, but easy to ramp up from 50%. This can/should be extended to essential infrastructure, communications and technologies.
Most countries don't have the size/scale/scope to do this... the U.S. and a handful of other countries are and should take advantage of that and ensure it for their own critical security.
I don't say any of this from an isolationist PoV, I think trade is important... I think diplomacy is important... I just feel that a level of domestic security in terms of self-reliance at a certain level is more important.
Microeconomics 101: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...
If it were a Rolex or a Patek Philippe that did the same, I'm sure there'd be another zero at the end.
Tariffs are a tax, paid on the value of imported good, by US citizens who are buying things from outside of the USA. That's it. They are not paid by anyone outside of the US.
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