Nobody here is surprised.
Trump almost has it. If he can just be a slightly bigger ass on a slightly bigger stage, then he’ll be happy.
Musn’t give up too soon.
It doesn’t even matter:
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/18/consumer-confidence-trump-republicans-white-house
Turns out, a lot of consumer mood is literally just people’s social media feeds. Even if prices go up and QoL goes down, on average, consumers might feel better simply because Trump being in office makes them feel good.
I am not going to point out how monumentally problematic this is… Nope. There’s definitely no bad precedent for that.
Yes, this is not news. News is supposed to be new information, this is entirely well known information, which stupid people just didn’t care about
buys that external drive I’ve been putting off for a while
Meanwhile, in Canada, I’ve been meaning to build a raid 6 with 4TB drives. With any luck, as imports into your country drop, prices in my country will drop as well
I was planning my first build in 7 years for around 6 months from now. I just CANT right now.
I just upgraded my GPU even though I wanted to wait until the new stuff drops, but I can’t risk getting boned by tariffs and/or scalpers.
Folks, listen closely, okay? Nobody understands tariffs better than me. Believe me, they’re tremendous, tremendous tariffs. And now Walmart – yes, Walmart, great company, big stores, huge – they’re telling you that YOU, the great American people, will be paying for these tariffs. And you know what? That’s fantastic news. Incredible. Let me tell you why.
First, it’s about sacrifice. The greatest country in the world doesn’t rise without its amazing, hardworking patriots chipping in a little bit more. And trust me, when you pay a little extra at Walmart for your cheap, uh, Made-in-China toasters, you’re not just buying a toaster. You’re buying FREEDOM, folks. You’re sticking it to the Chinese economy. No one else could get that deal done, okay? Only me.
Second, we’re BUILDING here, okay? When American families dig a little deeper into their pockets, that’s money going back into our economy. It’s like… MAGA economics, so smart you wouldn’t believe it. All of a sudden, Americans will say, “Hey, why am I buying Chinese stuff? Let’s buy American!” And BOOM – jobs. Factories humming. Steel, coal, maybe even wood, I don’t know. Beautiful stuff.
Third, let’s talk winning. When we pay these tariffs – our tariffs – we’re showing the world who’s boss. China thinks they’re so smart. So clever. Well, joke’s on them. We’re so good at tariffs, we’re making YOU pay them instead of them. Genius move, right? They won’t even know what hit them. Tremendous strategy. They’re probably shaking in Beijing.
And look, folks, I hear you. “But sir, sir, what about the prices?” And I say this: are you willing to pay a little more at Walmart to make America the GREATEST it’s ever been? I think you are. And if you’re not, then maybe you like China too much. Sad!
So remember, every time you spend a little extra at Walmart – and it’s a GREAT store, by the way, I love it, fantastic – just think of it as making a donation to America. To freedom. To ME – your favorite president – who is bringing the best tariffs, the best deals, and the best America you’ve ever seen.
God bless tariffs. God bless Walmart. And God bless the United States of America. MAGA!
Long long maaaaan
Good thing I can’t read
votes Republican
China will pay for the tariffs in the same way Mexico paid for the wall.
Didn’t part of the wall fall over into Mexico a while back?
Realistically it will shift more work to India, vietnam, mexico. I’m not in supply, but I’m pretty sure my company has started shifting out of china in prep for this.
Hearing more and more stories about companies cutting bonuses this year so they can buy more supplies now at cheaper prices. They know the prices will go up and they’ll have to pass the increase to the consumers. But how much you wanna bet these companies will still raise prices even before they have to pay their tariff increases? They’re gonna get extra money on the supplies they paid the lower prices on.
I saw it explained best like this
Current imported price: $30
Current locally made price: $35
New imported price: $70
New locally made price: $69.99
…This is just normal basic business economics.
Your retail price is not predicated on what you paid to produce or obtain the product, it’s based on what you expect to have to pay to produce or procure the next one.
The I voted for him for cheaper eggs crowd are about to call this fake news.
Mango Mussolini’s tariff plans will increase prices across the board. The corporations earned record profits during the so-called inflation and the US consumers that voted for Cheeto are fucking clueless about the inbound out of control freight train.
Oh well don’t worry the out of control freight trains mostly poison trump voters in ohio and the water supply of all the red states.
Yeah, I mean I knew that, you knew that, Americans are so uneducated that the majority had no idea how basic economics work.
Well FAFO, we’re all going to learn the hard way I guess.
And fuck those of us who already knew the lesson. Its like school but without getting to go home at the end of the day. And just like school, the kids who need it probably wont pay attention
First of all walmart doesnt have to do this, they are choosing to.
Second, last time trump did tariffs prices went up in the following months, and then returned back to baseline following that.
There will be a reactionary period once they are placed. Walmart will either shift to buying more locally to maintain the most profit they can, or a competitor will undercut them.
Buying local is an option to evade paying tariffs on imported goods.
But what do you do if buying local is no real option?
I’m thinking of coffee, chocolate, computers, mobile phones, game consoles, cars, etc.Shifting to buying more locally can work when there are local businesses that can ramp up production easily to meet demand, it doesn’t work when there is no local production that can be easily expanded, or when there aren’t enough local resources to supply local manufacturing (for example lithium for battery production)
Also, trade has been our leverage keeping China in check, we need their stuff, and they need our money, so we get along. If suddenly we say “we don’t want your stuff anymore, and we’re not giving you our money” they’re gonna turn around and sell more to India, Russia, and Europe. They’ll be fine, but we’ll both lose our leverage and toilet our economy for at least a decade while we try to recover from shooting ourselves in the leg.
100% guarantee price raises across the board, even for stuff not affected by tarrifs/mass deportation labor shortages.
It’ll be covid all over again, an excuse to price gouge the fuck out of those who can least afford it.
If companies are going to suck consumers dry just because they can, they’d better put Republican’s name on it.
Are you kidding ? This is absolutely going to be blamed on Biden, loudly and repeatedly.
I know I know, Walmart is in the GOP’s pocket. But if the DNC knows what’s good for them they’ll take any scraps they have from Harris 2024 and painting the entire Republican movement as lovers of raising prices on Americans.
They won’t.
Wonder who they who are they gonna blame then?
What are you talking about? It’ll all be Biden’s fault.
Cool. Places like Aldis will continue not-fucking their customers while walmart will continue doing the same shit it always has, fucking over poor people and small business owners.
Dont shop at walmart if you can help it. Or kroger. Or any other shitty american company thats profit driven.
Cool trick y’all can do: if profit is the clear main goal, that company is garbage no matter what they do.
Can you provide a list of companies that are not profit driven?
Here is my list:
Migros, in Switzerland. Literally a non profit chain of supermarkets. It can happen.
Also Bosch, technically, in a weird and roundabout way.
Im calling bs on that one
94% of Bosch is owned by the Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH, which is a charitable organization. They take a significant fraction, nearly half, of the profits not reinvested back into the company or distributed to founding family members and use the money for philanthropic purposes. And for the record, the portion distributed to heirs is comparatively tiny, like a quarter of a percent overall.
Most of the profits are indeed reinvested back into the company, but for the purposes of R&D and keeping the lights on, not appeasing shareholders.
Very cool and good to know. Makes me feel better about those fucking buy it for life wiper blades I just spent too much money on. I’d argue still profit motivated but sounds like a relatively good company given capitalism.
Edit: big woof – they apparently wrote, maintained, and distributed the fake-emissions-reporting systems used by VW and others. If thats not profit motivated then I don’t think I can trust anything. Founder was a big trump supporter too, the wiki says Bosch parts were in every maga tank in the 1940s.
… what is a maga tank…?
Legally, it’s the fiduciary duty of any publicly traded corporation to seek higher returns every year for their shareholders.
So… yeah, that list will effectively stay empty.
I was promised cheaper eggs.
Realistically though, that’s how tariffs just work. With products costing more, theoretically that should drive demand down and eventually lead to fewer imports. Of course, if there’s still no competing product or the product is a basic necessity, then it’ll likely just result in people paying more.
Working tariffs make importing goods so expensive that manufacturing them nationally is viable. There are definitely areas where tariffs make sense, e.g. you have or want to build an industry that’s competing against a subsidized industry from another country. Tariffs are one way to help with that.
But we all know that’s way too much thought for him, which probably boiled down to “China bad”… which I’m not necessarily disagreeing with fully… but for reasons that tariffs aren’t necessarily an answer to.
Working tariffs make importing goods so expensive that manufacturing them nationally is viable.
The lack of American subcompact trucks is evidence that this is false.
I think this is rather an issue with what the majority of the market wants. If carmakers saw a bigger profit in offering smaller transport vehicles (pickup trucks in my opinion aren’t even particularly good at transporting a lot of stuff), they’d manufacturer and sell them.
But the truth is pickup trucks are often just lifestyle products (when I need to transport something, I just rent something adequate) and as such, there is a much larger customer base than for sensible options, which makes the others commercially risky.
Wasn’t it something to do with trucks are work vehicles so emissions restrictions didn’t apply to the same extent, so they basically pushed trucks hard and made everything truck sized to skirt around it? That has the effect of turning into a lifestyle product. Guarantee my little Subaru sees more off-road than most jacked up trucks.
Actually I’d argue Subaru is more of a lifestyle brand, selling the idea that you for sure need that extra clearance and all wheel drive, just in case you decide to rock crawl your way up to a camping spot after Costco. I love mine, and actually use it, but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to what they’re pushing.
In the US, CAFE which regulates this sort of thing has different rules for light trucks versus cars. That’s why nearly everything sold today is a “light truck” - not just pickups but SUVs, CUVs, and vans which make up the majority of new vehicles sold. These rules also had a lot to do with large cars like station wagons going away.
That could also be, I’m not American so I don’t know all the details.
However, watching from the outside, it clearly comes off as some kind of statement.
Yeah, the fact that every sporting event’s commercials rotate between dick pills, beer, and giant trucks totally doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Also, if the market didn’t demand smaller trucks, why slap a tariff on them to encourage local production?
I don’t know, is that particular tariff already in effect?
I’m not saying they’re always good, bit that they can be a strategic instrument. The example you brought up makes no sense, I agree. But I’m sure if carmakers saw a market for a class of cars, they’d take the opportunity - maybe not on their core brand (like I don’t think Ford would build one under that brand in the US).
Yeah, the fact that every sporting event’s commercials rotate between dick pills, beer, and giant trucks totally doesn’t have anything to do with it.
I think this rather proves my point, they’re lifestyle products targeting a specific demographic under the guide of being a utility.
It’s called the Chicken Tax and it’s why I can’t buy a Hilux despite demanding as hard as I can.
I think this rather proves my point, they’re lifestyle products targeting a specific demographic under the guide of being a utility.
It’s also creating demand for trucks that are terrible at doing truck stuff.
Saying “the market demands big trucks” ignores the billions they spend making the market demand big trucks.
Why? Because they’re insanely profitable.
So this is a retaliatory tariff and not actually one that makes particular sense otherwise.
It’s also creating demand for trucks that are terrible at doing truck stuff.
Yeah, they’re garbage.
Saying “the market demands big trucks” ignores the billions they spend making the market demand big trucks.
It’s probably some kind of feedback loop.
On the other hand, if just marketing budget created demand, they’d advertise these more here as not a lot of people own one. But someone figured out that that marketing budget would probably not yield an RoI, as opposed to the US. Though they’re are probably practical factors at pay, like gas prices and road size.
I think this is why single use vehicles aren’t popular in America. Everyone needs a car, usually to work, and generally also to vacation, grocery shop, meet friends and family, etc.
