[throwaway657656]

My small business produces a niche consumer electronic device. Anyone watching us operate would say that our product is Made in the USA. But the components of our product are sourced and pre-processed all over the world and our COGS just increased significantly due to tariffs.

We now have to raise our prices, but our Made in China competitors have to increase theirs even more. That isn't a net benefit for us, given the product is "nice to have" and does not have an inelastic price.

If my sales drop by 50% and the Chinese competitors drop by 75%, is that winning ? I am still in shock and denial by all this. After 11 years in business, this manufactured/avoidable crisis can't be what ends us.

[Jtsummers]

And it gets worse for you. That's primarily considering the US market. Your Chinese competitors aren't simultaneously being shut out of non-US markets (since this is a unilateral trade war, not the US + allies).

Your US sales may drop 50% due to the change in price, and your Chinese competitor's US sales may drop by 75%, but their sales in other countries may not change at all. Meanwhile, your sales outside the US are going to drop because not only are your component costs going up driving your price up, you now face tariffs when selling in every other country in the world (if they choose to respond to the tariffs the US is levying on their goods).

[disgruntledphd2]

Because of how China desperately needs exports, they'll almost certainly end up being tariffed by the EU, so just because this started in the US doesn't mean it's gonna stay there.

[SvenL]

I don’t understand the argument why EU would tariff China just because they need export. Can you elaborate?

[ethbr1]

Because the EU tariffing Chinese exports will be one of the asks for an EU-US trade deal.

The ability of tariffed countries to sell their output elsewhere is understood by the people doing this.

A better way to look at this is the first salvo to economically re-partition the world into spheres of influence. (i.e. circa 1960s)

The principals have all written about how they see political-economic-military alliances as being inherently tied together.

So their intent is to make this a US-dollar-NATO choice, rather than any of those in isolation.

(Agree or disagree with their premise, feasibility, and/or morality, as one might)

[mindslight]

So the goal is to rely on NATO as allies right after they threatened individual members of NATO and generally telegraphed that the alliance shouldn't be relied upon?

Please, just stop steelmanning these actions as anything coherent that would possibly benefit the United States. In the best case, Trump is a demented has-been that only understands the world in terms of bullying. So sure, maybe the "plan" is to keep bullying Europe until they're joyfully professing that Trump's diapers smell just like roses and asking how high he'd like them to jump. But that just doesn't seem very in touch with reality.

[stevenwoo]

That Peter Navarro item resurfacing on news today (he is the chief advisor to Trump on tariffs) explains a lot. He made up at least one of the experts he quotes on trade in his non fiction books using an anagram of his own name. https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771396016/white-house-adviser... If something looks entirely stupid one the surface, it is exactly what it looks like, there's no 4-D chess with any of these guys except exploiting inaction of Congress to do things it could, like revoke the law that gave Trump these wide powers to tariff given for the "war on terrorism".

[ethbr1]

You can be angry, or not.

You can be curious, or not.

But you shouldn't let the fact that you're angry force you to be incurious.

[ashoeafoot]

So you want a tradeblock of democratic countries? Like NATOASEA? Could have had that but you sabotaged both ?

[spwa4]

You forget what has already happened. Canada has escalated the trade war ... that cannot be explained by your reasoning. And the flaw is this: yes, Canada cannot seriously hope to defend against Russia without the US, and needs a US alliance, but they also see the US has no choice but to defend any Russian attack. Either that, or face Russian nukes in Ottawa. So, Canada escalates.

Plus, I get that it makes sense for you to think about it this way. But given the choice to get fucked militarily BUT get a few more euros now, I guarantee every EU government will choose to get fucked militarily. 95% of the EU countries only have to "sacrifice" in that OTHER countries get fucked militarily, so it's not a hard choice.

And that is before you factor in that Russia is not in any shape to attack any European nation of importance right now, not even Poland. In other words: the politicians choosing to act on the military problem or choose a quick buck ... will be out of office by the time their military decision matters!

And, lastly, I put forward the history of the UN. The great forum for international cooperation and making compromises in shared interests. The first 3 things the UN was going to solve with this cooperation-not-obstinate-refusal-to-accept-reality was the "Arab Issue" (now better known as Israel-Palestine), Kashmir (which under UN guidance has lead to such "successes" as the Partition wars, which when combined made more victims than WW2 according to some sources), and the Congo-Rwanda issue (which has raged on, with no-one actually caring after colonialism ended, and is now at risk of turning into a pan-African war involving every country from Morocco to South Africa). I'm glad they got all those issues solved to everyone's satisfaction before they were going to try forcing the US, EU and ... to cooperate because otherwise absolutely no-one would believe they have any chance whatsoever.

Besides: your hope that foreign governments will act in the interests of "the citizens of the world" (when the vast majority won't even act in the interest of their own citizens) ... what exactly is that idea based on? 12% of the world are free democracies and mostly do that. What about the rest?

[ethbr1]

That is a lot of response to a pretty tightly framed comment.

Especially considering most of the consequential decisions and impacts will play out over the next 6+ months.

Maybe people/governments will act one way; maybe another.

[skinnymuch]

Classic western mindset. Western liberal democracies aren’t real/free democracies.

[disgruntledphd2]

Because otherwise China will sell all of their tarrifed goods into the EU, undercutting local producers.

Note that the EU is also removing their di minimus loophole (with a longer lead time, announced last month). See the tarriffs on BYD for likely moves on other goods.

And yes, this is a bad idea. But it's the least worst idea available right now.

[rcrsvpreordnmnt]

it probably won't end you but maybe try to make sure your neighbors don't vote Right and support ultra-nationalist racists in Eastern European countries.

An old lady in the fashion industry once said "Everything is connected" and if Europe hadn't been mislead for fuck knows how long by dimwitted conservatives and their formidably educated voters, they would have been a proper economic competition with their own social medias instead of a tool to dump and pump stock prices ... which is how you can absorb your losses ... by focusing less on your productivity and more on that of le Wall Street's drivers and handlers of crisis