As for tariffs, SmarterEveryDay has proven that we need them with his smart grill scrubber that got destroyed by cheap Chinese copycats the moment it became popular.
I'm working on a smart air quality monitor, I don't want competition with the Chinese either.
> Is HN really a place to criticize administration?
Articles critical of economics policies aren't criticizing the administration, but the policies. Yes, economic policies are of interest to technology, and articles related to it are of interest to us.
Even ignoring the fact that an article critical of a policy isn't specifically critical of the administration, yes, HN is really a place to criticize any administration.
> I don't want competition with the Chinese either.
You also only want to be able to sell your goods in the US? Because the outcome of tariffs is retaliatory tariffs, which will considerably reduce your available market. No matter what you're going to have competition from China, and tariffs ensure markets outside of the US will be more dominated by them.
If your product can so easily be duplicated, and for cheaper, it's probably not a great product.
> in an environment with regulations and high living standards.
Is this a joke? The US has poor living standards for these types of workers. Minimum wage in low minimum wage states. Poor or no healthcare. Most are probably on government assistance programs. Tariffs hit these workers hardest as well, because they're the most likely to be laid off, and also the ones paying the largest percentage of their salaries for products affected by tariffs.
The factories in China cranking these things out also have poor conditions, but the reason they're making stuff so cheaply is because their factories are typically more advanced. You can get small batches made cheaply, which is nearly impossible in the US. This allows them to compete with even somewhat niche products.
Also, let's be a bit real here. Nearly every "American Made" product at some point offloads the production outside of the US, and there's plenty of companies in the US that make dupe products as well.
It doesn't need to be tech. From the Guidelines section of HN:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
* California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years
* Inside the secret world of Japanese snack bars
* Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries
* Driver killed and several injured after second train derails near Barcelona
* De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)
It's common to have things that are covered on TV news on the front page. It's more common for anything negative about Trump to be flagged, though.
As for tariffs, SmarterEveryDay has proven that we need them with his smart grill scrubber that got destroyed by cheap Chinese copycats the moment it became popular.
I'm working on a smart air quality monitor, I don't want competition with the Chinese either.