Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

> Closing these de minimus exemptions is making it harder for discerning consumers to buy higher quality goods than are currently available in the US right now.

Everything has a trade-off.

On the other hand, it also prevents companies from dumping artificially cheap and crappy goods (TEMU) on US markets and making it nearly impossible for others to compete.

Unsuspecting consumers buy a super cheap (subsidized) crap product on Amazon or Temu or Shien or wherever - probably a knock-off of an American product, have it shipped to the US, then it disintegrates after a couple of uses or stops working, and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country all so we can help a certain country whose name starts with a C keep the lights on and keep factories running so that they don't see unemployment numbers tick up.

Legitimate businesses selling higher quality products where they exist will be able to figure it out. Or not. It's not a big deal if your sunscreen is slightly worse than the Korean version (which I use). Maybe it just hasn't been approved because they haven't done the work to apply because they can get around working with our government and making sure their product meets our safety standards because of the de minimus loophole?

There's also safety concerns, which I think the CBP did a good job of overviewing here: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploi... . Send drugs or guns or illegal animal products to the US, get caught, who cares you live in (not the US) so you can just spin up another sham company and do it again.

> and we wind up with pollution, additional landfill, and relentless consumerism that's harmful to the country

But that happens regardless of whether or not you import manufactured goods, doesn't it?

You're not going to get new clothing for TEMU prices without the de minimis exception. In theory, the higher price of these goods will decrease the amount they're purchased and lessen impact of pollution.

As others in this thread point out, though, there are other casualties of this change.

Temu should already be paying the tariffs on China-origin goods. De minims for China origin stuff ended May 2nd.

Unless they’re sending it all via China Post and US CBP is letting it pass through anyway. Anecdotally, most of their stuff in major cities is arriving by Gig couriers or from US warehouses (ie: not postal imports) = tariffs applied.

Where Temu and big retailers win the game is that they can structure it to exclude last-mile delivery/logistic cost in their tariff calculations, and that’s a lot of the price.

My counterexample is that I sell mid-high end vintage bicycle parts.

There’s about a 0% chance of Shimano or Campagnolo bringing that production to the US because they haven’t made this stuff in several decades.

I’ve now jacked my US shipping prices to account for tariffs. I’ll probably lose all US sales.

US buyers probably won’t realize that ~5-10% of its supply has disappeared for these parts. They also may not recognize that US sellers can/will raise their prices accordingly but they will have that increase in price.

Heck, I know some Canadian sellers that set up their supply chain well enough that they put down a US location and buyers think they’re buying domestic. Those will be toast (or have to vastly inflate their pricing).

>the Korean version (which I use)

Beauty of Joseon?

I bought a pair of motorcycle boots this way. It was a brand that isn't routinely imported into the US. The seller was a dealership near the Canadian border. It was something like they stocked them in London, Ontario and sold them from their Detroit subsidiary.

Yea that’s what I use!

Everything does not have a tradeoff. This philosophy alone is bullshit.

The tradeoff here is “pay the middleman markup tax” for the most part.

Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing.

If we are going to outsource production in order to save on consumer goods costs, the consumer should be the one reaping the surplus - not capital. Properly informed buyers were quite capable of getting quality product out of China for a tenth of the cost of exactly the same thing stocked on major retailer shelves here.

While there are certainly abuses of the current system, it would be best to close those loopholes vs. just give a bunch of profits to giant companies for effectively doing nothing more than having scale and volume. If you’re lucky they may do some curation too.

Not everything was Temu or Shein. Plenty of smaller factories basically going direct to consumer in a win win sort of scenario. They get paid more, and the customer doesn’t pay any middlemen.

> buyers think they’re buying domestic

This is hard to tell from the discussion, but are you defending this practice?

Sometimes the tradeoff is that someone gets richer / inflates their ego while most people’s lives get worse in a tangible way.

> Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing.

Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be.

I mean this is kind of the price of putting what we say first. Want higher minimum wages, higher environmental standards, unionized labor, benefits/healthcare, lunch breaks, etc.? We will have to pay more, and we should, for those things.

You should trust people who live in countries that tariff a lot. You won't get quality crap. When tariffs cause the imported good to become equal to $200, the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180. Obviously any incentive that remained for local product to improve is now totally dashed too because of state forced back protection from competition. You end up paying multiple times the prices for the same shit sane countries buy much cheaper than you and life turns to shit, and the lower classes don't get better but end up loosing more money on the same crap.

I don't think we're comparing apples to apples though, and even so it's again just a trade-off we can make.

> the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180

Lowering prices isn't the goal, otherwise we could just export everything to (insert low-cost country here) and have products made as cheaply as possible regardless of working conditions or other considerations. The goal in part with tariffs would be to make it so that domestic products or products from friendly countries are cost competitive, not necessarily cheaper. Some folks just want the cheapest possible products and they don't care about any other issue. But that's just one factor among many for the nation. Some think that we should have lunch breaks and 40 hour work weeks and different environmental standards - that costs money and makes labor more expensive in countries like the United States.

I would disagree that there isn't an incentive to improve your local products, at least in the United States. The market here is big enough that we generally have competition regardless of whether or not competitors from other countries are participating in the market. But even so, it's not like competitors aren't participating in the market even with tariffs, it just changes the pricing calculations.

> Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be.

This won't work for clothes. We'd need Wal-mart shoppers to be spending like $400/outfit (incl. shoes) to even maybe bring those jobs back to the US. For clothes specifically, short of raising prices so much that the poorest few tens of a percent of the population are reduced to wearing shit-tier disposable clothes covered in also-cheap patches and often worn threadbare, shoes fully wrapped in duct-tape because the soles are practically gone, et c, there's no way you're bringing those jobs back. We'll just pay more for the exact same stuff, with few or no extra jobs as a trade-off.

Meanwhile, goods partially manufactured here (materials made here, finished elsewhere; materials foreign, construction domestic) will see price increases due to tariffs, which may harm sales, which may reduce employment. Between that and any broader economic down-turn resulting from these policies (can't buy as many things if prices are up, can't spend more on expensive US goods if your basics go up in price) I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of the remaining US clothing manufacturers go out of business in the next few years. I have several brands I like that are already showing visible signs of distress (things like products lines being reduced, no new models showing up) and am worried I'll soon have almost no US clothes to choose from, due to these "protectionist" policies.

And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive? Its the same inferior product still, except you artificially forced the better stuff to be more expensive. Its absolutely hilarious seeing USA adopt policies of communist countries of the Latin America.

Wrong, as I said just ask countries like Brazil what happens when you tariff everything to shit and beyond. Brazil doesn't have chip fabs still and still has to pay a huge amount for phones and computers.

The answer to local industry being shit isn't to coddle it further, it is to scare the living shit out of them. Clearly in-country competition isn't enough, otherwise it'd already have been better than foreign goods. That's how capitalism succeeds, coddling them will only lead to overall crappy product and crappy life everywhere. I find it quite amusing this anti China rhetoric suddenly jumped up after in some areas Chinese getting superior to Americans. Hilarious really how much of a sore loser America is.

Enjoy and suffer shit goods at shittier prices. The tradeoff is you get fucked in both, in any countries that do tariffs. If one of the goals was to make life better for the lower classes, what will happen is that it won't, they'd be fucked even more being forced to pay more for the same stuff.

> And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive?

I disagree with this characterization on at least two points:

The first is that you're assuming the product is crappy. Maybe it's actually quite good but just slightly more expensive for whatever reason, maybe that's unionization or something. Many people may opt to pay $6 less for a cheaper "thing" because they're not thinking about quality or wages or other factors. I know plenty of people who opt for buy-and-replace strategies because of "cheaper" products.

Second you're assuming that the cheap product isn't also artificially competitive. Other countries subsidize manufacturing or have lower wages or have other factors that lead to the product being cheaper than it should be.

> Its absolutely hilarious seeing USA adopt policies of communist countries of the Latin America.

I'm not sure protectionist policies are inherently communist, but to the extent they are I expect leftists to cheer these policies on.

> Enjoy and suffer shit goods at shittier prices.

Sounds good - stop bothering us about our crappy decisions then?

> This won't work for clothes

Says who? Also you're forgetting if we as a country decide hey this really doesn't work for clothing we can just lower the tariffs on clothing.

>Other countries subsidize manufacturing or have lower wages or have other factors that lead to the product being cheaper than it should be.

Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier.

Its not just about the buyer choosing a quality-price tradeoff. Let us be honest, the USA (or any other country) isn't the best in every sector. Artificial tariffs just mean your people will have to buy worse product. Again, its a slide to Latam style communism, absolutely hilarious.

I will even agree that a careful and targeted application of tariffs can help grow certain industries and can be a beneficial thing, but again careful and targeted is key, its a teat that they should be removed from in time. But what Trump is doing isn't remotely targeted or thought out.

The fact that you somehow are pegging me as a leftist and reacting emotionally to simple statements of fact show how incredibly stupid people who love tariffs are. Absolute comedy.

Tariffs are essentially a signal you are a loser, you can't do better so you force barriers on others. And I will maintain this for all countries that do it, whether its USA, Brazil or China. You are not showing strength by tariffs you are showing how weak you are. If I were thinking of investing in a weakening country, I might think otherwise now.

> Says who?

Uh, labor costs? I guess we could work to lower those, though. Like, a lot lower.

Meanwhile if the $2 wholesale-in-China shirt costs $30 on the shelf due to tariffs and the identical-quality US-made one costs $40 because that's just what it costs, the latter won't even be made, zero factories will start up to manufacture them. You'd have to raise prices a lot for it to make sense to even try, clothes are (relatively—still far less than once-upon-a-time, which is why the poor can afford to wear clothes that aren't third-hand and much-mended) labor-intensive despite lots of automation because machines remain terrible at manipulating cloth, despite decades of effort at solving that problem.

It's really expensive to make clothes in the US, and skimping on quality doesn't save all that much, percentage-wise. Being that they're also a necessity, we'd truly have to drive quality of life way down for a large chunk of the population to get that industry making low-end clothes.

>You are not showing strength by tariffs you are showing how weak you are.

Why does that matter?

> The fact that you somehow are pegging me as a leftist

I didn't mean to do that, and I apologize for that. I just meant that to the extent that you are associating tariffs with communism that those on the left will applaud Trump's tariffs and trade policies as they align with that ideology.

Though as an aside, you mention that we're sliding toward LATAM style communism (again I think it's mercantilism and not communism but whatever) but it seems to me that it's more so happening in the political sphere via Trump and his cronyism, not so much because of trade barriers.

> Then do the same for Americans. Make better product, don't force people to buy crappier.

A t-shirt is a t-shirt. At some point we're not really talking about making a better product, but we're instead talking about the costs associated with making that product. Instead of phrasing this as "buy the cheaper product" or "buy the better product" it should instead be looked at as "buy the product that is more environmentally friendly (shipping, environmental standards, etc.)" or "buy the product that supports higher American wages and 40 hour work weeks".

These are all just trade-offs and policy decisions. If you gave me the choice between buy American made t-shirt for $20 [1] or buy the made in (insert country) shirt for $5 - I would buy the American one every time because the price isn't the only factor.

For a long time we've focused on price only, but the prices on the shelves are not necessarily the only consideration, they're just the easiest one for people to make and we don't have other clear and obvious incentives right at the point of sale to help someone make a decision - was the (insert country here) product made by a despotic regime hellbent on assaulting your way of life - is that on the sticker? Or is it some harmless text hidden away that says "Made in Country X".

Efficient markets are great, but they're not the point of society, just another thing we decide how much or how little we want of.

[1] https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/shirts/produ...

This is more like setting `trade: off`.

Signals are important to pay attention to. Its not a nice thing to be weak as a country. It's alright if you think you need this or that tariff right now to prop up this or that key industry, but what happens over time if you continuously slide ever weaker. Its just a warning sign that must be paid heed to. A strong sector shouldn't need a tariff to survive. For better or worse your IT/tech sector is one of the good examples of a strong sector, to extent that other countries are trying to shield themselves from it's success. That should be the aspiration for the industry, not living under tariffs forever.

Quality is to an extent a personal function, each person may have a different idea of what factors to consider in quality. But the word here is personal, I find it highly unpleasant when a state uses its might so transparently to force these choices.

You should also not discount price. You can afford to, I can afford to buy something more expensive because we consider some other aspects of the item more important. Again, if you had said this in terms of simply propping up a local even if less efficient industry alive, it makes sense, redundancy is a concept I can understand of course, I could have accepted it even if I don't agree fully. But I feel if it is presented as making the life of lower and middle classes easier, it is a total lie since they will be impacted most by these price increases. Some T-shirt firm in America will start earning more, but then where do the people of that firm spend it on? The other firms are also now higher priced if we fully commit to such extreme and wide ranging tariff programs. I am sorry if I come across as a bit vigorous in this, but I have seen how it is in high tariff countries so I have a strong feeling on this matter.

American made t-shirts today don't even cost $30.

What does "American made" mean? Is the raw fabric also made in America or is it just cut and sewn together in America?

Here is an example: https://www.allamericanclothing.com/collections/shirts/produ...

According to the website it’s compliant with the Berry Amendment, made in California, $15. From what I understand Berry Amendment “compliance” means all raw material and manufacturing is exclusively US sourced and US manufactured.

A quick comparison I saw was this:

  A “Made in USA” jacket could have fabric from China but still be assembled in the U.S.

  A Berry Compliant jacket must have U.S.-made fabric, thread, zippers, and even labels!

There’s a lot of different variations of these products in general and this is just one example.

> We will have to pay more, and we should, for those things.

No. US labor costs are high and working conditions are better, in large part, because US labor is worth it and US productivity is high. That labor is spent in high value industries and is often highly skilled.

We should accept we're better at some things and trade according to the principle of comparative advantage.

I don't disagree with you, but I think it would be better for society if we had fewer gig workers and Wal-Mart greeters, and more artisans who become more price competitive.

I don't think making things more expensive for consumers is going to help that happen. I think it's going to steepen the divide between capital and labor.

And most of the products we're talking about that are coming in via de minimis are not exactly competing with US "artisans."

Indeed, I'm helping train future US artisans, and we depend upon being able to get input components cheaply and consistently, which is becoming more and more of a problem and endangering my programs being able to do as much.

But as I look around with our current trade strategy (pre-tariff) I've only seen exactly what you describe happen - the divide between capital and labor has only increased exponentially, and as prices have gotten lower people we see less entrepreneurship, less new business starts, fewer products made in America, and more consolidation into Wal-Mart scale corporations.

> And most of the products we're talking about that are coming in via de minimis are not exactly competing with US "artisans."

Sure they are - they're much cheaper, mass manufactured goods which people default to because they are only exposed to the price of the product. Raising the prices of those goods makes artisan products more cost competitive.

> and more consolidation into Wal-Mart scale corporations.

I think this has more to do with the effective abandonment of antitrust mechanisms.

> Raising the prices of those goods makes artisan products more cost competitive.

Look, I don't want an artisan UART board, and I don't think that my programs can ever afford "artisan UARTs." I'll just give up teaching this stuff to students instead.

I don't know what you mean by artisan UART board - artisans and craftspeople don't, in my view, need to have anything to do with programs or universities or teaching or students - like you sit at home and work on making stuff, maybe you can sell it at a farmer's market or if you make something really good start your own business which could just be a single shop you run. Not to suggest there aren't or can't be training or teaching programs, but that's not a requirement.

Today that's much more difficult because a bar of soap at Wal-Mart is $1 or something and entrepreneurs can't make stuff that cheap when they're making it by hand using real ingredients or honing a specific craft - and it doesn't even end up with shelf space. The suburban, 1-stop-shop big box retailer, drive your SUV down the highway to buy cheap stuff from not America model drives down entrepreneurship and closes off small competitors and artisans.

> I think this has more to do with the effective abandonment of antitrust mechanisms.

That's a factor but not the primary one.

I buy stuff -- small circuit boards, electronic components, unusual milling cutters, bearings, etc. The existence of these things as commodities lets me do a lot of deep EE and ME work with high school students.

The US will not build a supply chain for these at any reasonable price. And shouldn't. These should be commodities and US labor should focus on higher value things.

(Not to mention that US suppliers don't really like selling at low quantities and most don't really love selling to education or hobbyists).

Tariffs just directly make my programs less feasible.

Note that de minimis-- which we're talking about here-- has something to do with what's at Amazon because of drop shippers, but basically nothing that is sold somewhere like Walmart.

Well we were also talking about artisan products too and not electronics.

I don't buy the general consensus that the US can't or won't build supply chains for these products - we can and will if the tariffs are high enough, it'll just be highly automated which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In your specific case yea you are probably just looking at higher prices, but I don't think that your general argument is necessarily applicable across the entire economy. That's not to say in your specific case yea maybe the tariffs are just a net negative.

> Note that de minimis-- which we're talking about here-- has something to do with what's at Amazon because of drop shippers, but basically nothing that is sold somewhere like Walmart.

Well yes and no. The availability of drop-shipped products en masse, whether it's through Amazon or Wal-Mart's own drop-ship marketplaces still enable cheap consumerism and generate lots of waste and poor quality products at cheap prices (along with some good products at cheap prices to be fair). But I think the point about Amazon just strengthens my argument (for the sake of argument) which is you get these artificially cheap products shipped in, sometimes with stolen designs, and we can't spin up mom-and-pop shops or cottage industries because everybody just looks at the price of the cheapest bullshit thing they find on Amazon and they don't care about any number of issues that factor in to that price.

These people make insane statements like supposed "pollution" and "slave labor" of China. What pollution man? The item needs to be produced and the factory will have same level of energy use here or anywhere else, so how does that make China a pollutant. I don't understand his obsession with forcefully jacking up prices of inferior shit, how exactly does that help anyone at all? Does he not know what happens with that minuscule extra profit? The worker will have to spend it on, wait for it, another such overpriced expensive junk completely nullifying it. And local industries get coddled and cozy and lose what tiny remaining incentive they had to compete. I am repeatedly asking him to see how high tariff countries like Brazil are. Just ask a Brazilian how they buy an iphone for example. I have never seen this blatant level of economic illiteracy from supposed educated people.

And I don't even know whats his deal with "artisan" bs, technology is technology. It doesn't stop being tech just because it was invented ten thousand years ago. Artisan crap is a luxury for financially comfortable people. Automation is somehow this weird magical "magitech" to this guy I don't know what. Automation isn't a nice to have, its the essence to have something available and affordable to the masses at all. I seriously don't understand this hunger for economic regression.

Making higher quality items cheaper is literally the fundamental basis of capitalism, or even technological progress in the first place. I really don't understand these bizarre economic theories at all.

Man whats "real ingredients". No you have to clarify what you meant by this. This is hinting at some really deep confusion of concepts. Are you somehow thinking that a chemical process when done at a home workshop is somehow different from the same chemical process being done in a factory?

It can be - I don’t recall using xanthum gum or food dyes (or whatever these are just random “ingredients”) when I make something for someone in else to eat.

I don’t think this really requires clarification but I’m happy to indulge you on a product by product basis. Do you really think that loaf of bread you make at home is made with the same chemical process as the bread coming from Wonderbread on the shelves at Wal-Mart? It’s sure as hell not using the same ingredients and it definitely costs quite a bit of $.

You can apply this to furniture too. Do you think the furniture you buy at IKEA is made of actual wood with the same chemical process as the wood furniture you spend more money on that’s made by hand? (It’s not)

Are IKEA’s (or whoever) suppliers paying workers good wages? Are their practices sustainable? Are they clear cutting forests and mixing plastic and literal trash into the furniture you buy and throw away after it starts to degrade?

Even pharmaceuticals - are you sure generic drugs are just as good? I generally think so, but just because you cook with the same ingredients doesn’t mean Anthony Bourdain RIP isn’t using those same ingredients and making a better dish (drug).

If there’s confusion about concepts I would say it’s mostly confusion on behalf of the public whom goes to the store, sees price tag + brand, and thinks that’s all they are comparing when they buy things.

Plywood, MDF and various other wood products are not a bad thing. They have superior mechanical properties and are actually better for the environment since you can use wood that otherwise won't yield large solid boards. Again you yourself said it, pure hardwood furniture is kind of a luxury. There is nothing wrong with "artisanal" except pretending it is something that actually sustains life. Artisanal is a perfectly fine luxury hobby.

And yes, its the exact same chemical processes. How on earth would it not be? The fermentation of sugar is not a chemical process that suddenly changes based on weather its done at home or in a factory. The rest is just choice of grains, sugars and additives.

The public compares price tag first, and often only because its a LUXURY to factor in anything else. If they could afford and they saw some higher quality in it, they would have already bought something more expensive. Which obviously artificially inflating the price of the exact same item via tariffs doesn't suddenly make the "quality" part of the equation any different, so why bother with the same item but more expensive.

> so why bother with the same item but more expensive.

It's not the same item, that's why. You're still not understanding how products are priced, nor are you accounting for negative externalities (or positive ones) that factor into that price.

Prices aren't being artificially inflated because of tariffs any more than they are artificially lower because of a certain country's monetary policy or wage gaps or whatever.

Its the exact same item on the shelf. It didn't change at all. The only thing changed was the government came and artificially jacked its expenses up.

Again you are repeatedly failing to understand the word "luxury". Please look it up in a dictionary somewhere. Luxuries are nice, I can afford many luxuries. Others can't. All for the stupidity of paying more to gain absolutely nothing more at that, not even for any meaningful discernible difference.

Give me a million dollars right now, and I will buy everything with supreme moral and ethical standards. If you truly believe in it, then you'd immediately give me a million instead of demanding the impossible: for someone to buy things several times out of their capabilities if you sum all items up.

> And yes, its the exact same chemical processes. How on earth would it not be?

Here's the ingredients list for Wonderbread from Wal-Mart.com

Ingredients Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Nonfat Milk, Enriched Semolina (Durum Wheat, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Soybean Oil, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Cultured Wheat Flour, Sunflower Lecithin, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid, Soy Lecithin.

Active Ingredient Name Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Enriched Semolina (Durum Wheat, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Soybean Oil, Wheat Gluten, Salt, Vinegar, Cultured Wheat Flour, Sunflower Lecithin, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid, Soy Lecithin.

Here's my ingredients list for bread: salt, water, flour, yeast.

Are you really going to sit here and argue that these are the same products and they are made in the same chemical process?

This applies to other goods too, including manufactured goods. It's why Apple has historically had such great products. Sure the Windows PC specs were better, but the computer was always more than the sum of its parts and Apple continued to win out.

> Artisanal is a perfectly fine luxury hobby.

I think you are getting hung up on this word artisanal but it's not really relevant.

"Artisinal" products today are mostly marketed that way because in order for the product to compete on the market at a price the producer can afford to make it at and still live on, the product has to tell a story or have a clever marketing scheme or something like that because they can't achieve the volume of production that they need at a low enough cost to compete with mass-market supply chains and artificially cheap labor from other countries.

But these products don't have to be "artisanal", they can just be regular products that you buy at the store or a local market or something. Introducing tariffs to offset actions by other states that cause their products to be artificially cheap, keeping American entrepreneurs from starting their own soap [1] companies or whatever might raise prices in a sense, but overall it is better for the economy since there are less economic outflows, less gig workers and people on government handouts, and more entrepreneurial activities and product innovation.

Software engineers already know this is true, which is why they always complain about outsourcing of jobs to cheaper countries. It's cheaper! That's all that matters, right?

[1] I don't know that soap is the best commodity product to use, it's just an example.

Yes, bread is still bread, all those are still additives. They don't suddenly turn bread into not-bread.

>"Artisinal" products today are mostly marketed that way because in order for the product to compete on the market at a price the producer can afford to make it at and still live on, the product has to tell a story or have a clever marketing scheme or something like that because they can't achieve the volume of production that they need at a low enough cost to compete with mass-market supply chains and artificially cheap labor from other countries.

Correct, its no longer a sustainable business. How far do you want to go? Would you make nails by hand too? How about mining the steel for the nails? Artisanal today (not 400 years ago) is a luxury product born out of free time and our basic needs having already been met by industrial processes. The way to make it sustainable source of income is to do what the factories are doing, automate and scale up.

And why this over focus on producers? What about consumers? Why kill consumers to artificially enrich producers? I care deeply about the middle and lower class. I don't want their expenses to suddenly rise several times because government turned what was a free choice and forced them into an artificially propped up expensive hobby market pretending to be a real market.

But let us not get too lost from the question. Let us first decide what is the meaningful distinction to our purposes between these two breads in relation to the matter of tariffs.

Do you endorse literal slave labor then to make prices as low as possible?

The government that the item comes from also artificially made the price lower so it just evens out.

If the prices are the same and there’s no difference then keeping buying the imported product.

> Yes, bread is still bread, all those are still additives.

Ok unfortunately I don’t think we really have much to discuss here if you think that. Our world views on products and economics are too different.

Are you sure they did? You have to give a precise list of those items which have been artificially cheapened by the other govts before you impose tariffs then. Obviously you can't believe the USA is the peak at every possible sector. Or do you really believe that another country being better at something must mean they are cheating? Give me the list or stop the tariff bs.

Sometimes, there is no deeper explanation for this nonsense than being a sore loser at someone else being better than you at something.

They certainly are if you are so enamored by artificially making peoples lives worse.

You still failed to explain btw precisely in what manner the differences between the production of bread at home and at a factory are relevant to tariffs?

Why? Do you think alcohol for example becomes some Magicaniumsupernaturalum non-alcohol if its kept in an oak barrel for a few years vs being sold as is? Its still alcohol, the other chemicals are additions to it. If the other chemicals are gone, its still functional alcohol. If the alcohol is gone and the other chemicals remain, then its no longer a working alcohol.

I don’t care if “other country” can make t-shirts better than we can. I care that we make them with our labor and keep our money here instead of going into debt and losing jobs.

China for example doesn’t allow US social media companies. There you go. There’s one item which is all we need, therefore tariffs against China are justified until they open their markets to free competition from the US. Hell, just this week the CCP banned Chinese companies from buying Nvidia chips.

(I’m picking on China here because it’s the east example, but it is not the only one)

> Sometimes, there is no deeper explanation for this nonsense than being a sore loser at someone else being better than you at something.

Ok let us be sore losers by ourselves with our tariffs. What concern is it if any other country?

Show me cases of "slave labor" where the workers don't strongly prefer that "slave shop" to whatever existence they would have without it.

Correct. You made a formerly cheap product artificially expensive.

I am glad we finally admitted its not about this or that labor or other nonsense but about being a sore loser.

And you seem to be forgetting I am equally in opposition of tariffs and consider it fucking shit when China or anyone else does it.

Be sore losers, nobody is stopping you, I just truly and earnestly hope for the sake of your country that I am wrong.

That’s not what we are discussing though. You’re criticizing my moral superiority over working or environmental conditions - but you clearly have your own moral superiority or else you’d be fine with literally anything needed including actual slave labor to get products as cheap as possible.

And now our domestic product is cost competitive which seems just fine to me.

You are lying and trying to put words into me by making up this imaginary "slave labor" concept. I ask you again, go ask the sweatshoppers if they prefer life in the sweatshop to life before the sweatshop.

I’ll take that as a retraction of your moral superiority nonsense.

Why haven't you stopped beating your wife?

I take that as you admitting you are a complete liar who puts words into others mouths and unable to answer not just one but several very easy questions.

You claimed we were sore losers. I don’t care what you call us. We are fine with our tariffs and being whatever names you want to call us. It’s funny how mad everyone seems to be. Oh you’re just sore losers. Oh this isn’t going to work. Blah blah blah and on and on and on and all the kicking and screaming about it just tells me that your protests are an admission that it’s a good idea.

> And you seem to be forgetting I am equally in opposition of tariffs and consider it fucking shit when China or anyone else does it.

You asked and I delivered. I wasn’t accusing you of being in favor of trade barriers.

I am calling you sore losers because I have seen not just studied a theory what happens when you tariff all over, I don't want to see America slide down. If I wanted to hurt your country I'd go full bore encouraging even more random high tariffs all over the board.

I am also calling you sore losers because its, objectively minus any value judgments, a truth. Tariffs on a sector mean you are a loser in that sector. Not a big deal when said country never claimed to be a proponent of free trade before. But when its a country that ruins the board whose rules themselves setup, then yes? Idk what else to call them.

You are more than welcome to go back and re-read your post and my response until you understand the point. Until you do that I’m quite satisfied to leave the discussion right where I left it.

Well we are just joining the rest of the world in the sore losers club so that’s no big deal.

Americans hate the current tech sector. Google and Microsoft are among the most hated companies in the US. International reach and adherence to European legal pressure has forced European laws loosely on Americans in the form of blocked sites and "accept cookie" banners.

I'd guess that most Americans don't care much if Europe perceives a strong posture. That's not a very American ideology. Many Americans would ask if Spain is in the UK. That's not an exaggeration. Americans couldn't care less about what Europe thinks.

It doesn't matter whether they like or hate the tech sector, I was just citing it as an example of an industry that is quite strong and doesn't need tariff protectionism.

I see. But in fact the tech industry is largely protected by the government too. Congress has been paying TSMC to manufacture chips in the US and they've made it illegal to export them or manufacture them elsewhere.

I hope it was clear I was talking about your software industry.

Also protected. Visa programs geared specifically to lower development costs by importing labor, and tax rules that largely cater to off shore support and software development. They aren't hated for no reason, let's say. Those aren't the only reasons, but, Congress is indeed protecting their largest backers which are, as we all know, giant software companies.