They deliberately disinformed the public, there is blatant evidence that the news anchors were aware that they were lying. Not just bending facts a little or opining, but knowingly and purposefully lying.

The pretext of freedom of expression, and more narrowly freedom of press should not *continue* to apply to businesses/individuals which are found liable/guilty of such destructive behavior for the society they operate in.

The same should apply to people like Alex Jones, you had your chance to use freedom and you have wasted it, move on to another profession.

It’s true on its surface - most people don’t know about economics, across all political spectrums, and so rely on leaders (which I thought is what liberalism advocates for?).

It’s not a helpful model if you want to understand what’s going on. So then the interesting parts to explore are the reasons they want to believe it, and the reasons given by the educated economists who also support the position

What do you mean by "pass the cost"? Exporters do not pay tariffs, importers do. The exporter doesn't give a shit because it doesn't affect them at all.

This is one of the most fundamental misunderstandings of how tariffs work in the first place. The entity that's picking up the cargo at the port is who literally has to pay CBP for them to release the goods. The middleman (say, Walmart) may pass the cost to customers or whatever, but tariffs are entirely inconsequential and irrelevant to foreign exporters. There's no way to send a bill to a foreign entity demanding a tax for some goods that have arrived at a port, after all.

Tariffs rates by this administration are capricious and punitive, not targeted and strategic.

The only fruit of this is real economic pain for the American consumer. But that was likely the goal, so mission accomplished I guess.

Countries geographically closer to the USA might reason differently because close countries usually trade more and they have more to lose. But even in this case, if a Mexican or Canadian company can find other markets or discovers that it can keep selling at the same price, they will not bear any of the burden of the tariffs.

Russian like sanctions were applied to Italy about 100 years ago because of colonial wars in Africa. Despite the sanctions lasted only 6 months, Italy discovered that they ended up trading less with the usual partners and more with others. Tariffs are somewhat similar to sanctions as they apply friction to trading.

Isn't the only thing that could matter - apart from strategic considerations of financing a loss for a time - if the margins are big enough? Who wants to pay for people to take their products below the full cost of making them, apart from some investor-financed hype startups?

I wonder what supply and demand curves look like if you keep telling people that the increased costs will be paid by foreigners and not them?

I assume it has an impact eventually but it must dampen the speed of response if people believe that.

But, integrally the whole package is just wishful thinking.

I mean, maybe it was elastic for imports from Heard and McDonald Islands. Penguins don't care about margins after all.

First you subsidize and support the creation of currently not commercially viable chip fabs on-shore. Literally handing companies money under some obligation into the future.

Eventually the on-shore chips are produced, but they have higher total cost of ownership for the users: Logistics may be cheaper due to less distance, or more expensive because they are not well-trodden paths yet. Production costs like labor, water, energy could be higher. And the chips could just have higher failure rate, because problems in the new processes need to be kinked out.

But to get local consumers to switch to these switches, one applies tariffs to other sources of chips so the on-shore chips become more competitive artificially, until they become actually cheaper and competitive.

The way it is threatened here isn't in the use case of tariffs at all from my limited understanding.

There are circumstances where much of the burden of increased production costs is borne by the producer. When demand is very elastic (consumers are price sensitive, or there are many good substitutes), and supply is inelastic (its hard to change the level of output), the suppliers will eat the cost.

Out of that price: $3 goes to production cost, $3 goes to tariffs, and $4 goes to profits.

Now the taxes/tariffs are doubled. The producer can up their price to $13, meaning $3 to production, $6 to tariffs and $4 to profit.

But customers might not accept any price higher than $10. They won't buy.

So instead you continue selling for $10 and your costs are: $3 for production, $6 for tariffs and $1 in profit.

That's what people mean when they say that companies are paying the tariffs. They're not profiting as much as before.

In practice it's usually a mix of higher consumer prices, lower company profits, or even some products not being imported anymore.

Which would be a nice balance to the way productivity has rocketed since the late 70s, and has mostly flowed to the top 1%.

Ultimately - and predictably - wealth hoarding becomes economic self-harm. You need distributed prosperity if you want diverse growth and economic and social stability.

Does it change who customers buy food from? No, because everyone increases their prices regardless of if they’re impacted by tariffs or not.

The 2018 washing machine tariffs are a clear cut example of why tariffs are a garbage strategy.

https://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20250522.html#:~:text...

Price Pass-Through: Studies found that 100% of the tariff cost was passed through to consumers, resulting in an estimated $1.5 billion in additional costs to American families in the first year. The "Unexpected" Dryer Rise: Although tariffs only applied to washers, the price of dryers (a complementary good often sold with washers) also rose by an equivalent amount—approximately $92 per unit—as manufacturers increased prices on laundry pairs. Job Creation Cost: While the tariffs helped domestic manufacturers like Whirlpool, LG, and Samsung shift production to the U.S. and create about 1,800 new jobs, researchers estimated that consumers paid over $800,000 annually for each job created. Outcome: The tariffs resulted in a 49% decline in imports from 2017 to 2019. They expired in February 2023, after which washer prices decreased.