Summary
Fox News host Julie Banderas warned that President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs—25% on products from Mexico and Canada and 10% on those from China—could significantly raise costs for Americans, as many businesses rely on foreign goods.
While some companies are shifting to U.S.-based suppliers or stockpiling goods ahead of the tariffs, Banderas noted that buying American often results in higher prices.
She highlighted that the financial burden would likely fall on consumers, questioning, “Who’s going to pay for that? We are.”
Economists have also warned of inflation risks.
The “Buy American” companies will raise their product prices to match the foreign companies hit by tariffs. Governments and corporations NEVER pay tariffs. They pass on the tariffs to consumers in the form of higher prices.
And those price increases won’t translate to paid workers since unlike the Democrats, he doesn’t plan to properly raise minimum wage. So underpaid workers will still be underpaid, but will be hit with inflation
It will all go to share holders or management
This is the honest conversation that Fox News should have with its viewers before the election. It’s moot at this point.
Here’s the thing. Even if the terrifs, somehow, didn’t directly cause inflation, the fact that we are taking about inflation means that companies can raise prices and gouge just like last time.
Man, I sure am worried about deflation.
Deflation is actually really bad. It essentially means that not spending money is the best option, which makes it so people stop buying as many things and the economy slows down dramatically. A small amount of inflation is ideal. It encourages spending but doesn’t do much harm either.
This sounds completely backwards, like if you are talking purely about investment.
If not it seems to completely ignore that high prices alone would discourage spending, particularly on non-essential things (even then, don’t think for a second that there aren’t people skipping healthcare or meals).
The only other way I could interpret would be that high prices force people to spend more money on just essentials (even if they’re buying less than they otherwise would), somehow painting living paycheck-to-paycheck as a good thing because it means more money in the economy.
It’s not about the price. Price is just a number. Prices today would look insane to someone 100 years ago. It’s about how price changes over time.
If your money becomes less valuable the longer you wait, it’s worse to wait. The longer it takes for you to spend it the less buying power it has.
If it becomes more valuable over time then it encourages hoarding your money because the longer you take to spend it the more buying power it has.
The average person likes stuff and wants their stuff now. The average person will buy shit on a credit card even though saving up to pay cash would make the cost much cheaper. Particularly disciplined people may put off purchases for a few months if they think the price will drop (maybe a few years for something really big like a house) but those folks are the exception rather than the rule. Are there real world examples of times when deflation triggered a mass consumer cash hoarding? Or is this something that only exists in economics books?
If you’re talking about investing and the behavior of companies, then maybe you’re right. Although I suspect it would also depend on interest rates and stock market performance.
The average person buys their stuff from companies and investors or businesses who get their supplies from said companies and investors. The people will not be able to buy things if those companies decide that they are more profitable sitting on pile of coins.
That’s actually neoliberal propaganda and not true. “The economy” in the context of GDP turned out to really mean “rich people”.
In our current economic model, any deflation creates a perverse incentive to not spend. It is extremely bad for the economy, and all of us reliant on it. The rich are one of the few groups that come out ahead (relatively).
Like it or not, we are all stuck on that merry go round. Until we find a graceful way off, it’s in no-one’s interest to jam it up.
Our current economic model is a humanitarian and ecological disaster. We need to pump the brakes. Many more lives will be lost due to excessive consumption and inequality - we’re out of time for graceful.
There’s a difference between pumping the brakes and throwing a grenade into the fuel tank. A large scale economic collapse would be devastating. The world economy is so interdependent now that even minor disruptions cause problems.
I’m all for pumping the brakes, but we either need to stop gracefully, or have an alternative to jump to.
No, we absolutely do not. It’s too late to stop gracefully - I cannot overstate how much worse it’s going to get if we stop even now.
Consumption needs to go down, this will collapse the delicate house of cards we’ve built… and we have no other choice.
Can you not eat? There are some things you have to consume all days.
Just basic requirements for life and nothing extra will destroy any developed countries economy. If things aren’t sold they’ll stop sending them there, so as people just stop buying luxuries, they’ll stop even being an option. Less tax money means the government has issues more than normal, and if you aren’t buying anything who are they gonna tax? The companies won’t have money because they aren’t selling anything.
If you don’t buy luxuries but keep buying groceries, what do you think they will do? Just a hint: groceries also have taxes.
Sure, yeah. It’s especially sucks for rich people and business owners, but no it’s not just “neoliberal propaganda.” It’s really simple economics and logic. If your money becomes more valuable over time, it is on your benefit to save it. If it becomes less valuable over time, the opposite is true and you should spend it. And yeah, capitalism sucks, but we’re all tied to the health of the economy, which doesn’t mean the stock market like the media often links it to, but if businesses can’t afford to hire as much staff, all of us lose.
simple economics and logic. If your money becomes more valuable over time, it is on your benefit to save it. If it becomes less valuable over time, the opposite is true and you should spend it.
This is true, but it’s a bad thing. The economy would be better off if people had savings. We could afford to strike without going homeless. We would consume less and pollute less. Wages would be growing in proportion to the overall economy, not falling relative to the cost of living.
Us being forced to spend money on businesses is good for the businesses, but it hasn’t been good for us. Businesses being able to hire more people because we’re forced to invest in them is trickle-down economics.
Wages would not necessarily grow in proportion to the economy. In fact, they probably wouldn’t. It’s a nice idea, but it’s assuming a lot. As more people are laid off, there’d be more people competing for the same jobs, allowing businesses to pay less. They’d also be in the same situation as everyone else, where spending is disincentivized. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never know a business to pay more than they have to.
As long as inflation is low, it doesn’t force you to spend money. In fact, saving is still encouraged because you can normally get higher returns than inflation. It just encourages you to not sit on money that isn’t doing anything. Every dollar spent multiplies. When money changes hands a fraction of it is saved, but the rest is spent. The more that’s spent and less saved the more effective dollars there are, as the federal reserve requires a fraction of every dollar saved in a bank to be stored in with the Fed where it can’t be loaned out. This isn’t trickle-down economics. That is a totally different thing.
If you can find where a concensus of experts say deflation actually helps workers, I might believe you. It’s my understanding that they don’t think so.
Wages did in fact grow in proportion to the economy before Nixon.
Are we using the same pool of neoliberal economists who brought us here?
That’s actually neoliberal propaganda and not true.
“And I’ll prove this by just spouting empty propaganda!”
My sister’s fiance thought just because an iPhone (for instance) was designed in the states that it wouldn’t be subject to tariffs, despite being made in China and using foreign parts.
Lack of education is the best way to control people.
Also messianic prophecies, but agree education is number 1
need people dumb to have the lack of critical thinking skills for the messianic bullshit to take root in.
In the end there will be all sorts of carveouts for whatever company kisses Trump’s ass the most. Apple products will be on that list almost assuredly.
This is a bad thing because it’ll be yet another thing for people to point to and say “See! The tarrifs aren’t so bad.”
To be fair, an iPhone could be manufactured entirely in the US it would just cost 4x as much. Maybe 10x, actually.
CPU manufacturing would be the hardest to bring online. The second most difficult one would be screens (though we may not have tariffs with South Korea 🤷).
In the US there’s already plenty of PCB manufacturing, CNC machining (case), ultra hard glass (screen) manufacturing, and it’s relatively easy to ramp up capacitor and resistor manufacturing. Things like USB C connectors would need some company to step up though.
Only TSMC can produce the SoC which is a huge problem. An US produced iPhone would be something quite different no matter the price.
It would be a TI-83 calculator with a built in walkie talkie. 2.7 ghz.
Throw a map application on there and I’d be interested.
Wish granted. You must purchase and carry an external satellite receiver and upgrade the internal battery with an also external lead-acid battery with fan-cooled inverter. 🪄
Things like charge controllers need to be made too, and nobody makes those domestically. Same with simple chips like 555 timers. Nowhere in the US are these made.
How can a financially broken, over stressed, oppressed public fight? This is by design, to further oppress, divide and conquer. But I’ll wait over here with the other couple million people that have been screaming this for months till the shit hits the fan and we can actually start working toward a common greater good.
BuT tHe StOcK mArKeT iS uP!
THINK OF THE POOR SHAREHOLDERS YOU UNGRATEFUL MONSTER. /s
I’m always thinking of them.
It was fine until the 80s converted all the pensions into “mutual” funds. Now all our retirements are tied to the fucking stock market. We’re gonna need a general strick and the billionaires reckoning to fix this shit.
Since the Nixon Shock you’ve had to either invest in exploitation or watch your savings evaporate.
Billionaires shouldn’t even exist.
I do think of them. In terms of cooking recipes. Yummy yummy shareholder steak
And it won’t be once sales drop precipitously across entire industries. Lots of manufacturing simply doesn’t exist in the US anymore, and there isn’t enough time to start it up before massive economic impacts.
The effects of this Trump administration will be clear and they will be bad. I’m somewhat optimistic that they will eventually start to generate a kind of unity we haven’t seen in the US in a long time. But, to be clear, it will be a very, very, very rough few years to get there, and it assumes the world isn’t consumed by massive wars anyway.
What’s gonna happen is that prices will go up, and companies in the US will gouge even harder on top of that because they have an external excuse to. Maybe things will get so bad that Democrats are able to win in the next election, but after the Biden administration, it’s not like they have any credibility when it comes to standing up to price gouging in any meaningful way.
Democrats will need a candidate who isn’t some preordained corpodem like the last 3 cycles. Because if they do that again, they will be running as second worst yet the fuck again, and any noises they make about wanting prices to come down or wages to go up will be just that. Noise.
I keep thinking about how musk was talking about the upcoming hardship… I wonder if he was maybe referring to this too. He had to have known.
I’ve been asking people, might as well ask you. When’s the right time to cash out of the casino? Maybe buy puts?
Might seem crass to talk about making money off this disaster, but I have people I love to take care of.