We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA

Is this a situation where if you abide by the letter of the law without tech it doesn’t work, where if you use software and/or route through nations that already have no tariff deals with US you get your items through?

I just bought (last week) an EEG kit from Europe to US for personal sleep studies. It has similar metals that you indicate. There was no issue in my shipper getting it through. There was no tariff added. There was no certificate of analysis.

I think if the shipper can't determine the amount of copper in their products, then neither can customs.

Boats. They're still dealing with tariffs, but it's a lot easier to declare an entire container than individual airmail packets.

But having a US presence that can then receive the containers and ship domestically, is kindof reserved for the big boys.

> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product

Wow this administration is f**ing batshit insane. I thought the tariffs would be on raw metals, not anything at all that happens to contain them.

> Mouser and Digikey have the same issues, but have professional import customs brokers and do these import procedures and handle all these charges by themselves. The average small US customer have no clue how to do import, they wait someone to deliver their parcel to their door. Which now do not happens, and after several weeks of this parcel hanging at US customs they ask the seller “where is my parcel? I ordered this way many times and every time the parcel arrived to my door” meantime they have to pay import taxes, storage fees etc etc and they simple refuse the parcel and return it back. This is why DHL and UPS refuse to take parcels to USA now until they figure out how to calculate these import tariffs correctly so they can be pre-paid in advance i.e. the US customer knows what he have to pay $$$ tariffs in advance and all these returns stop.

"Suspensions including from Australia and Europe come after Donald Trump removed a rule exempting parcels worth less than US$800 from his tariffs."

(For some reason this isn't showing the full article to me in Firefox with uBlock Origin. There's more info here that works with that setup - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/25/postal-serv...).

From TFA: "U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product. "

They WANT you to pay the full 100% in taxes.

I seriously wonder if Digikey lost money on that order, shipping alone must have cost 20-30€, and on top come all the antistatic bags, handling costs, payment costs.

Olimex sells kits, kits made by others.

They don't know how much copper is in the MPS430F5438 because Texas Instruments made the MPS430F5438.

> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product. This is a prime example of unnecessary complexity in international trade.

Also why would they go through all that trouble? Easier to not sell there anymore.

I got bit by this one - ordered a few days ago, thinking there might not be much time left - guess I was more right than I realized. (they're offering refunds but I'll probably let them keep the money - not like it's their fault)

No, it is not insane. This creates perfect "everyone violates the law, we can selectively enforce it" scenario. That's how 10% Intel-like condition can be created for other companies.

("History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," attributed to Twain)

It's also fair for a company to say 'f- that, even just doing that eats away at our bottom line, we'll concentrate on more profitable markets' (which is the intention I guess. Go and build it in USA,USA,USA).

Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States (Japan Post)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45016517

I don't agree with it, but isn't that ostensibly the end goal? That is, to force/encourage the manufacturing of goods in the US, rather than importing them. Of course, the metal itself still needs to enter the US either way.

Price I pay is not getting my $20 fairy lights that made my backyard look cute. The price foreign factory workers pay is that they’re out of a job. I don’t think Americans pay the most, but they do pay.

Edit: Clearly people are missing the point Im trying to make here. I’m trying to address the viewpoint that Americans will somehow lose the most, which i don’t think is the case. This isn’t a pro tariff argument. American consumer is the biggest market there is on the planet. Pretending we can just find other buyers is ludicrous. Yes, there will be some jobs affected domestically, but that number will be much higher elsewhere.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/

If this was a serious economic policy, it would have started small—perhaps a 5% tariff, to take effect in six months. Then, promise to ramp it up (say an additional 5% every year).

Do I understand this correctly that if I have a 1kg product that costs $1000... the US is trying to charge me a $1000 tariff on at most $10 [1] worth of metal?

[1] Copper is the most expensive of those metals at roughly $10/kg

It’s on the whole product not just micrograms of aluminum, which could break the bank based on how much you order.

Funny that this time this started from the right side of the political spectrum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45020661

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44970269

There's an announcement today on the PiHut WWW site, for example.

* https://thepihut.com/pages/delivery

Just a random Bing search turns up loads of these from the past week.

* https://crooked-dice.co.uk/blogs/news/temporary-suspension-o...

* https://www.elgrecominiatures.co.uk/pages/temp-suspension-us...

* https://coscraft.co.uk/blogs/three-nerds-in-a-shed/tariffs-o...

and so on. I suspect that dang and tomhow might have to apply the "It's in the mainstream news and we have umpteen dupes." rule soon. (-:

Digi-key never offerred free shipping for US customers and now we will have to pay these high tariffs too.

There's your problem. It enables selective enforcement, because the authorities can decide at any time "if you're off by 0.1% we'll consider you in violation".

Authoritarianism is the common denominator; only the details vary.

The EU is making moves right now to position itself as the preeminent center of world trade.

Losing that position will hurt Americans more than anyone else.

Good to remember that pretty much all leftist governments had to pivot toward authoritarianism 'for the greater good'.

Or...they have a warehouse in Germany?

all these single-piece mini packages

Automated pick-and-package.

If you think you have the best idea, the natural next move is to force everyone to follow that best idea, no room for disagreement or alternatives.

This pops up everywhere, everywhere ideology is involved in decisions.

Yes, the the cost of (at least) some foreign workers is that the jobs they had creating good exported to America will go away. That's true. The trade-off though isn't just that the Americans don't get their stuff. The real trade off is that the good those factory workers buy (whether they be physical or immaterial, cultural or financial services) will not get bought. Americans making those good will therefore ALSO be out of a job.

In the end, nobody gets what they want and everybody loses employment. It's a lose/lose for everybody involved.

  Plaintiffs plainly lack standing when they fail to provide evidence that the statutory provision has ever been enforced against them or regularly enforced against others.  

So if you think the law is bullshit the judge can just say you probably won't be prosecuted so you have no imminent fear of prosecution and you can't challenge it.

This is something this manufacturer should already be doing, otherwise it’s unclear how they’re complying with RoHS or REACH.

E.g. if he wanted to tariff electronic devices, why not tariff them directly, instead of those weird mental gymnastics?

It's reasons why this that I refuse to associate with Republicans in my daily life anymore. They are undeserving of respect or decency for how they continue to make our lives worse.

This seems like it could also lead to absurd situations. If a device contained both, would customs pretend it was simultaneously 100% made out of copper and 100% made out of steel and apply both tariffs?

In this case, though, I would imagine that lightly waterproofed decorative outdoor lighting would sell about equally well to any first or second world market.

It's not the most productive but for all the pain their "opinions" create, the least I can do is make them feel the group believes their opinions to be ridiculous as the group all laughs.

I don't think they should get civility outside of the voters booth if they're uncivil within the booth.

It's been ten years.

I friggin love that podcast, and keep recommending it to friends. The only problem I have with it is that I like to listen to it while driving, but I can't stop to take notes every five minutes.

That is all of your imports that are impacted by tariffs? Whatever it is that you are smoking is some good stuff.

Just as the real effect of a vaccine ban will be to damage US health, and the real effect of dismantling government funded R&D will be to damage US education and competitiveness.

I have no doubt some people believe patriotism is involved, and some large companies will get exemptions.

But I also have no doubt these decisions aren't being made for the long-term benefit of the US as a whole. Or even most of it. Or even those parts of it which are currently exempt.

This is Brexit++, sponsored by the same people, with similar - but much worse - lasting effects.

AfD is objectively far more popular in the former east Germany. Look at a map of votes, it’s clear as day. The borders are exact. They are not a left wing party, not at all. They are a far right party.

It makes sense that the the economically struggling former communist areas would be both more drawn to extreme parties and have a distaste for the left.

Your only option now is to use FedEx or UPS which cost a significant amount more.

[1] https://www.post.ch/en/about-us/media/press-releases/2025/us...

Makes perfect sense to make ordinary Americans pay tariff/taxes on imports in return. Sucks to be them.

I read it more as decentering the United States, which frankly I'm completely, 100% for. America's (lack of) culture has been our biggest export. We've sanitized vast swathes of the globe into our hollow consumerist self image at great cost to interesting and beautiful places. All products are designed with Americans in mind, because Americans were the center of global trade. If you wanted to make money, you had to sell your thing to Americans.

And, worse, Americans have grown accustomed to this deference and preferential treatment. It's time we got a reality check: that the world doesn't need us anymore. That we've become as old, dumb and worthless as the shitty president that so perfectly embodies our culture of consumption, waste, and useless greed.

>For PCBs shipped to the EU, a Certificate of Analysis is not typically required for determining tariffs, as tariffs are based on the HS code (e.g., 8534.00 for bare PCBs), country of origin, and customs value. However, a CoA or similar documentation (e.g., material composition report) may be needed for: Regulatory compliance with REACH or RoHS, especially if the PCBs contain restricted substances like lead or cadmium. Customs verification if the product’s classification or materials are questioned.

What about the aluminized foil-sealed bottles for pills, powders, etc.?

Customs doesn't have to. They can simply decide you haven't followed the rules, and it'll be up to you to prove you haven't or face paying fines/losing a shipment/possible prosecution. And they can decide the playing field: can you be wrong by 10% on that copper estimate? 1%? 0.001%? Good luck.

I would not limit it to "this administration". Bureacracy tends to fuck thing up royally regardless of which imbecile they're currently serving.

American own Cultural Revolution.

For example, the US has some of the largest lithium deposits in the world, but it's not being exploited because extraction is dirty and polluting, generally the compliance for opening a new mine is very complex (takes 7-10 years), and catching-up on refinery capacity will take an enormous investment (China does almost all Li refining now).

Similarly, developing the techniques to boost oil extraction (fracking, EOR...) took significant and sustained government support of different kinds until it became competitive, it's unclear if market pressure alone would have done it. This made the US again into the largest exporter rather than the largest importer of oil.

There are many such cases.

Note: I'm not from the US, and I'm not particularly pro-US, I'm not saying that tariffs are a good mechanism to support these industries, and I'm not necessarily in favour of such anti-environmental policies. But those are the facts as I understand them.

I had no idea who Byung-Chul_Han was before listening to this podcast- he has a lot of interesting things to say about the current state of our capitalist society. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byung-Chul_Han )

Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hitler- they were all 'idealists.'

They were in it to improve the human (or some subset thereof) condition. And they weren't going to let anyone get in their way of making things better!

Yes, because it benefits the “here’s how much extra revenue our copper tariffs generate in 2025” sound bites for the Administration to tout (even if they are fabricated numbers based on nonsensical assumptions.)

The US is treating everyone else like shit and isolating themselves from the world.

The world is slowly esponding accordingly and reconfiguring to the new reality where the US is unreliable and unfriendly.

While it's a lose/lose this will ultimately hurt the US more than everyone else.

The world isn't going to come to the aid of the US and prop them back up to their place of hegemony when this all goes to shit. The rest of the world is going to pick at the carcass of what was once an inspirational empire.

Then why are they being made? That is the real question that in my opinion is not being discussed enough. A lot of reacting to what's happening in the US, but not enough pondering about what the real goals are here.

I have my own views about this, which I used to think were somewhat conspiratorial and hyperbolic, but no more.

voters have essentially zero influence over policy and overwhelmingly vote on "vibes". also most people don't care about policy at any level of detail until it directly affects them. is this good? no. true nonetheless. much of why i'm not much of a fan of democracy and i think it's a sham.

i don't think contributing to increased polarization, especially at the level of your neighbors, is something to be proud of.

Meaning that for a lot of businesses, especially those that manufacture goods US is often a very important and hard to replace market.

e.g. What do you think will happen to the profit margins of EU drug companies if Trump actually imposed his tariffs on pharmaceuticals? Besides the size of the US market they also generally charge much higher prices there.

First of all, if you want to use tariffs to boost domestic manufacturing, you must also tax the steel/al content of finished (or intermediate) goods. Otherwise, you put your local producers at a disadvantage, making the tariffs worse.

If you only tariff raw materials, then an american manufacturer has to pay either US steel prices or imported steel + tariff to manufacture, but a company overseas can use the cheaper foreign steel.

So if you want to tax raw materials, then you also want to tax those goods where raw materials are an important part of the cost.

The US has a catalog called the "Harmonized Tariff Schedule" (HTS) which is a catalog of basically everything under the sun [0]. When the steel & AL tariffs were announced, they also published a list of all the HTS codes where the steel/al content would also be taxed.

Last week the US published a revised list of HTS codes to which these tariffs apply, and they added about 400 items to them. For example, the aluminum content of cans is now taxed when it wasn't before.

Flexport has a very cool (and useful!) tariff simulator where you can look up any item and it will tell you if the steel/al content will be subject to these tariffs: https://tariffs.flexport.com

[0]: https://hts.usitc.gov/

- Abraham Lincoln, 1868

The EU being what it is considering to start planning to make a plan to take moves to plan these moves.

Then it will have to align those plans with all its members etc.

(For government agents: The above is a "joke", you surely have been introduced to this concept before they gave you the government brain chip, if not, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke)

Furthermore as I know customs, the moment you will start making stuff up in a too brazen way, they will just use Google, search some average price of products and use that instead what you are declaring.

Sometimes it looks like they are getting a cut from amount of tariff they successfully scalp from you.

If the US has a ton of Lithium but finds it too expensive to extract, why not buy it now while it's cheap, wait for it to become rarer in other countries so more expensive, and only extract it once it's worth it (or close to worth it)?

But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently.

Maybe you realize that neither do something for the working class but the big corporations and billionaires.

The ones who try are labeled socialists.

Losing a significant proportion of their revenue can easily bring down plenty of businesses.

Here is the official link:

https://www.post.ch/en/about-us/media/press-releases/2025/us...

Pretty crazy if you ask me

As for communism -- if you think the Dems are communists I recommend you research what communism really means.

Disclaimer: I'm non-partisan and abhor partisan politics, but I do think the Constitution is a worthy document to try to adhere to as best possible.

> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product.

(FWIW I assume this was a language barrier issue leading to a misunderstanding, perhaps with a customer service rep that didn't review my past messages. I don't think DeepComputing intended to trick me.)

Being a US citizen used to be a perk, not a liability.

Do you think it will finally click after 2 more cycles, that's 8 years or so?

You will be your current age + 8, maybe you can then start saying "yeah man both sides suck, it is as if there is something above it that controls them both and we are made to support them as if we're supporting our favorite soccer team"?

- new regulation changing trade in a way that companies are struggling to follow

is child's play compared to

- a memo from a think-tank suggesting a particular choice of words

?

They are a populist semi big tent party as well. They are not particularly coherent but there is some overlap between some of their policies and what some in the far-left might support (Euroscepticism, the Euro and such)

Obama pointed straight at call-out culture as a losing strategy 5 years ago; NYT article: https://archive.is/Di4uG . The Democrats need to start divorcing themselves from "allies" like the parent poster immediately and loudly if they want to build a voter coalition strong enough to win the midterms.

Dimensions: 85 mm x 56 mm

Area: 4760 mm^2 or 7.38 in^2

Copper: 4 x 1oz layers

Copper Weight: 0.205 oz = 0.013lb

Copper price: 0.013 * $4.50/lb = $0.0585

And that doesn't include the copper removed by etching. So if they paid a 6c tariff on each raspberry pi board, they'd be overpaying.

Can they generate a certificate claiming each board contains no more than this amount of copper, overpay the tariff by a few pennies, and carry on?

So if a single prosecution (including your own) under the relevant section occurred at any time in the decade prior, that's likely enough to argue standing to challenge that section, provided the other tests of standing are met.

No, fascist consolidation of state and businesses has little to do with communism and "seizing the means of production".

It's important to get news from politically unbiased sources, because the reality is that US lithium sources are being stood up! Especially in that politically incorrect state of California which is supposedly a hellhole that would never approve something of the sort.

As for tariffs being a good way to support these industries citation needed! It's exactly the opposite type of policy for driving the investment that's needed. It's actually drastically collapsing all of the massive investment that was happening under Biden, in a complete disaster for the US. So I totally agree that you are not pro-US, but let's be honest about the disaster of tariffs.

There is no logic to it, it’s make believe for the narrative machine.

   On Oct. 1, 2020, federal agents raided the home of an Adams County man.

   They threw flash grenades, handcuffed the homeowner, used a Taser on his dog, confiscated hard drives — and seized $5 million of switchblade knives from locked cabinets in the man’s spacious garage, according to court documents.

   Two and a half years later, government representatives returned the switchblades with the message that they did not intend to pursue the matter further.

   Lumsden on Tuesday filed a federal lawsuit against the United States, alleging the government ruined his online switchblade business by taking his inventory, damaged his property and reputation, injured his dog, and caused him pain, suffering and severe emotional distress.

So as long as they only taser your dogs, flashbang your family home, take millions in inventory it's all good as long as there wasn't a successful prosecution and thus there is no standing?

They don't need to actually toss people in prison to get compliance. Tasing their dogs and destroying their business is enough, using an unchallengeable law.

We have laws on the books and they have to be enforced equally, whether you're shipping in entire containers or thousands of small direct mail packages.

You can follow citations from these citations to find primary search that shows quite a bit of support for it in academic political science.

One of the first things the Socialist government did was violently put down a communist coup. The communists would have abolished democracy ASAP and purged the socialists if they ever took power.

Fact is that extremist movements will crack down on anyone that tries competing with them for power. Ideological affinity hardly matters.

That is not what the link says. It says that goods consignments are not accepted -- which is not at all the same thing as "does not ship to the US anymore". The link explicitly says that they're continuing to ship letters, will continue to ship goods via another service, and (I can only presume) will continue to accept personal packages, since those aren't affected at all by these tariff changes.

The discussion on this topic on HN is far more heat than light.

That: "have a distaste for the left" is extremely wrong, because before the AfD, the far-left parties which traced their history back to the SED (the socialist party of the GDR (East Germany)) were very popular there, much more so than in West Germany.

The problem isn't creating a reasonable estimate, anyone can do that. Most cheap consumer PCBs are going to be 2-layer FR4 with 1oz/sq. ft. of copper, minus some etched away, with negligible copper in parts like chips. That indeed should get you fairly close.

But there are also 32-layer PCBs, and even PCBs with a solid copper core. And your PCB could be filled with copper inductors! Similarly, it could also be a solid aluminum-core PCB. If I were a malicious customs officer, I would insist that the only valid upper bound is a 100% copper PCB, which is also 100% aluminum, and 100% whatever else. Don't want to pay that? No problem, just provide a certified lab analysis report!

Simple things rapidly get complicated when the goal is to frustrate the process as much as possible. You don't live in a modern economy focused on global trade anymore, you are now living in a Kafka book.

The Repub model is being replicated globally too. It just works.

I seem to recall Trump doing the press conferences about covid response. Is he the deep state now?

The mega-wealthy individuals will not suffer from any economic downturn, so it doesn't matter if their policies harm the economy.

Hitler was an O.G. troll, taking over the Workers' Party and renaming it with the word Socialism purely to aggravate his political opponents. He hated socialists, communists, and anarchists.

Yeah sure they are very different except for the consolidation of state and business that every fascist and every communist state has attempted :)

This is more a reversion to the mean/making them more equal. Which is a big deal.

I’m wondering if some of them are wide but shallow, and that they have a much smaller total consumption quotient available.

The tl;dr of the current conundrum is that we have two corrupt political parties, and a system that's so rigged that it's nearly impossible to elect someone outside of them. Modern society's problems are complex to reason about and nearly intractable to solve. The people in power are not capable of even trying to reason about, let alone solve them.

I grew up in Nevada. Most of the people I grew up with are lowercase-L libertatian: they believe the government exists to arbitrate between the conflicting rights of individuals; that it should be as small as possible and let them do what they like unless they're harming someone else. Because of the aforementioned duopoly, these people tend to count as Republicans (in the style of Reagan). (This is true generally - the more geographically isolated a place is, the more it skews libertarian. The more urban, the more it skews liberal.)

The national Republican party was weak after Bush and got taken over by the Trump personality cult. The people I grew up with don't believe in instituting tariffs and arresting immigrants; yet if you force them to choose an R or D label, most of them are still going to count as R.

The world is a nuanced place. If you ignore that nuance and force everyone you're willing to converse with to pass your litmus test, you end up with two tribes ostriching themselves into bubbles of partisan-approved groupthink. That begets more yelling, less mutual understanding, and makes it even harder to solve problems. All of this empowers the extremists who control the major parties to continue making the world a worse place in service of their own power.

Yes, everything about politics sucks, and the people in charge are unfathomably awful. But if you refuse to share ideas with people you might disagree with, you're contributing to making that even more true.

https://hts.usitc.gov/search?query=8534

...and has been that way for a long time. Only thing that might be different now is that the de-minimus import exemption is going away for (certain?) countries? (and of course the tariff rate changing).

But these things take time and significant capital to develop, you often need to be non-competitive for years, doing things in a more expensive way, until you can catch-up. But then you can overtake everyone else, if nothing else due to the momentum of growth and the higher efficiency you had to maintain to catch-up. Just like it happened with oil in the US, or with Germany, Japan, Korea or China recovering from catastrophe.

If you don't do this, you can get cornered, where in principle you can produce a resource much more efficiently in your country, but you can't quite climb over the hill because you are addicted to depending on others as an economy and you don't anymore have the capital, know-how or culture for such things.

Is certificate of analysis anything more than a pdf made with word with your signature on it?

If I buy a Swiss watch (<$800) I’ll have to use DHL or UPS (though AFAIK, they also use national post in places) so I’m SOL.

But if my Swiss friend mails me a watch they can use Swiss Post still? Unclear.

If you say so. Seems like a rather incoherent view though…

Fact is that there is a lot of overlap between far and far right voters in ex-socialist parts of Eastern Europe. Just compare the supporters of BSW and AFD in Germany..

If you want the most absurd example this was a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevik_Party

I suspect this is more about politics than it is about international trade. If you've ever done imports you know that there's a substantial amount of paperwork and compliance, demanding that products state their composition doesn't seem extraordinary at all. Maybe OP should try consulting what regulations food exporters must follow.

Well over a million people died from a communicable disease. Whatever issues you have with policy surrounding the pandemic, the nomenclature isn't controversial.

Governments ask for something like a metal spectrometer analysis of components. They might even say each batch needs to be analyzed and we trust analysis from spectrometers manufactured and/or operated in US. Each condition raising the price for certificate/analysis even more.

Or directly from the post

> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product.

Government control over transportation, newspapers, and other industries that should ideally not choose profits over quality of service. Communalized non-profit grocery stores. Sounds familiar?

Strict measures to ban or nationalize war profiteering, high interest rates, capital heavy business models allowing rent seeking. Explicit profit sharing required by large companies.

Welfare state with free healthcare and expanded pension funds.

Sometimes 'bad' people have the same 'good' ideas you have. Now sure why this is so difficult to grasp.

The mechanisms behind both ideologies are different, and the outcomes are different too.

For years, Democrats were generally aligned with labor, and broadly opposed to trade agreements -- remember that Hillary Clinton campaigned on rejecting the TPP [1], and it was unusual that Trump agreed with her, taking the issue away. Now, suddenly, the left is on the other side of the issue, because the current executive wants to restrict trade. It's nothing but realpolitik.

Also, not that long ago, it was the left that was advocating tariffs. For example, Obama in 2009 [2]. Admittedly nothing as sweeping or rushed as what is going on now, but still far from the party of free trade.

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-trade...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32808731

You can’t have both..

That tiny German company making lab equipment which happens to be absolutely essential for your company? Their shipments aren't getting through customs anymore, and dealing with the additional paperwork is way more than the two-and-a-half people in charge of shipping can handle on top of their regular duties. The US is only 5% of their market, so rather than drown in an attempt to serve the US they'll just suspend shipping until the US fixes itself, and serve the other 95% of the world instead.

Can't do your job without a replacement MacGuffin? Oh well, sucks to be you! Not our problem that your company is going to lose millions, take it up with your government.

Maybe not "as a whole" but the majority of Republicans voted for this so at least those need to be written off. The rest have an opportunity to claim that they oppose the takeover by the personality cult. A great way to do it is to change their voter registration to anything else.

At this point, ever Republican has absolutely opted in to the current leader and platform.

It generally punches below its geopolitical weight, but that’s because it was happy to follow the US when American policies were decent (not great, but good for trade and mostly good for stability). But that’s not a law of nature, things do change, even if it is slow compared to the modern news cycle.

I don't know if the Swiss post office has realized this, but it's true.

Edit: one bit of nuance (see my comment downthread with some of the actual laws and the EO) is that if you buy a watch from Chrono24 or something then it's more like the Temu use-case, and I think the personal exemption probably doesn't apply? But if you go to Switzerland and pick up a $799 watch and post it back or carry it on a plane, then there's no problem.

You can't make an omellete without breaking a few eggs, after all. That was Lenin, supposedly.

edit: spelling of "one"

I'm pretty sure that if the curtains are pulled to the side, the people who are behind these policies are not seeking wealth and power. They are instead religious zealots seeking transformation.

What are you talking about?

It’s really frustrating if you need to ship stuff around as an individual.

Biden, who actually walked a picket line, is probably among the most proworker presidents in American history (certainly in my lifetime) and that's sad because the bar is so low. Trump, and his litany of judges, are all very much anti-worker and pro big business. He is trying to dismantle the NLRB at their behest!

This stuff is not so shocking any more!!!

I can’t wait to see what will happen when German auto industry crashes. It will be a very very interesting domino fall. Unfortunately I’ll watch it from inside, so it won’t be fun, but it will be interesting nonetheless.

As far as Biden goes, you do realize that he didn't roll back the tariffs that Trump 1 put on China, right?

> Biden, who actually walked a picket line, is probably among the most proworker presidents in American history (certainly in my lifetime) and that's sad because the bar is so low.

I said, at the very top, that the Democrats were historically aligned with labor. They had no qualms about enacting trade barriers or opposing trade agreements in order to appease that constituency. It is only since -- well, this year, basically -- that they have become free trade evangelists.

It's realpolitik. Democrats see a wedge issue, and they're riling up the base to exploit it, regardless of the party's own historical actions.

Democrats still broadly align themselves with labor (the many people getting the stuff done)

Republicans still broadly align themselves with rich CEOs (the few people profiting off the backs of the labor).

It has been this way for at least 40 years.

Labor vs. Trade ≠ Tariffs vs. Free Trade — Democrats’ historic opposition to trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP was about protecting workers from job outsourcing and race-to-the-bottom standards. That’s not the same thing as imposing blanket tariffs as a blunt weapon in foreign policy. Conflating the two is lazy at best, dishonest at worst.

Obama’s 2009 tire tariffs were a narrow safeguard against China dumping, consistent with WTO rules, and widely viewed as a targeted response to an actual violation. That’s worlds apart from sweeping, across-the-board tariffs used as political theater.

And if it’s all “realpolitik” like you say, then your whole point collapses: by your logic, both parties shift based on circumstance — so stop pretending there’s some tidy ideological flip when the reality is far messier.

Pay me 20$ i will tell you the upper limit and then bobs your uncle, you can change your customers the added cost.

Disadvantaging local producers is how tariffs work! Local producers would then turn to local suppliers who don't have any additional taxes applied. Tariffs are a very blunt instrument, and clumsily attempting to assuage 2nd order pain points will only give rise to 3rd (and higher) order effects.

The lesson here is: don't fuck around with multivariate dynamic systems that have achieved stability: there won't be any one knob you can twist to get a result you want on a single parameter. It'll be worse if you pick one knob and turn it all the way to 11.

It's the same reason why all the manufacturing outsourcing was so short-sighted. Sure, you're saving a few bucks on labor, but you are literally giving away all your knowledge about the manufacturing process! Those local factory workers you are firing? They won't be around to train new workers when you want to restart the local factory a decade or three later. Meanwhile, the factories overseas haven't been sitting idle either and have kept developing their manufacturing processes. They will not give you their trade secrets so you're going to have to reinvent the wheel yourself - without experts.

Congratulations, you have created your own competitor, and they are now better than you.

I highly doubt these kinds of companies will reduce their prices once the tariff is gone resulting in a permanent higher cost of products made with these machines in the US.

Today's pseudo-fascism in the form of Trumpism is something else. More of a reaction to a) climate crisis and the potential/growing crisis in the energy sector and b) and identity politics/culture-wars stuff.

In regards to my ability to "realize" I suppose I'll keep myself to the facts. At present, I don't see a set of functional equivalency in each party's extravagances.

Well, that depends on what you are getting done.

If your objective is solely to get a product done, the most efficient way is probably going to involve terrible salaries plus ample disregard for the environment and human life. Anything else is going to be disruptive to that end.

It is worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf-bSAnW_E0 but it itself is a somewhat simplistic take.

I'm not sure who is arguing against ever using tariffs in general. Obama's, like Trump's tariffs against China, they were at least planned and somewhat targeted for a specific purpose. The argument against Trump's tariffs this time around has always been they are capricious.

I guess I missed the part where you "countered" them. Saying "that's not true" is not an argument.

> You even gave up the point when admit Obama's tariffs were "nothing as sweeping or rushed as what is going on now".

I didn't "give up the point" -- I can admit when something is different in scale while still nothing the fundamental shift in historical stance.

Some more examples for you:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/politics/china-tariffs-biden-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/business/energy-environme...

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-steel-dumping-2014071...

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2017/0...

"Tarrifs" are paid by the importer.

These are being charged to the exporter

These are not tarries. But novel arbitrary taxes

Batshit crazy does not come close

No, hence horseshoe theory.

You are the one arguing for 'erases' here. Given the horseshoe theory is valid, it seems completely on point for these assholes to have some far left ideas. Doesn't make them not nazis.

Democrats were nice and polite, always letting themselves be guilted into treating Republicans nicely. It was loosing strategy.

Zohran Mamdani is doing so well for a reason: a decent part of the voter base is getting increasingly fed up by the center-right politics the Democrats have been selling. Young left-wing voters really don't like the fossils currently leading the Democratic party. If the Democrats don't start selling something better than "we aren't the Republicans", they are at risk of losing yet another generation to the next right-wing populist who claims he's going to "drain the swamp".

So no, call-out culture isn't the problem: the complete lack of left-wing values is.

I understand

I urge you to reconsider

The purpose of the policies are to create division that can then be exploited.

So fight them by building bridges and maintaining relationships

It is hard work, but it is the most effective way to fight these people who would sacrifice general peace and prosperity for the sake of their personal greed

Tariffs.flexport.com

It’s free even for non Flexport customers.

It makes complete sense for the left to oppose this. And it is completely consistent with position of "i want these smart selective predictable tariffs". It would not be consistent with what is happening now

Are you willing to write off so many people? That is what the "fascists" want. Division is a core technique of erasing liberty

I think it does, those are all efforts to destroy trust in qualified experts. It's impossible for everyone to understand everything, so we have to trust experts. But the experts correctly point out that Republican policies are actually harmful to their own voters. So, Republican media bought into a ton of conspiracy theories, which are centered around exploiting difficult-to-understand systems and promoting "do your own research" type conspiratorial thinking. Once your voters no longer trust the experts, you can sell them anything you want, namely policies that move wealth from the poor to the wealthy.

What I don't like is when we start using the terminology if "winning" a trade war. A trade war, like an actual war, has no winners. We are all going to be poorer, both materially and culturally, from hurting each other.

So yes, the current American administration (which is currently a legitimate democratic representation of the American people) has started a trade war meant to inflict pain on everybody that doesn't align with them. The answer to that isn't "well actually the trade war is going to backfire and the whole world is going to be stronger than you" its "you're going to pay for this too. However much you hurt us, and it is non-zero, you are also going to hurt yourself. Not because I'm going to hurt you, but because we are all part of one system of trade".

You might want to tell labor. I just listened to an hour-long podcast with the Teamsters leader, where he revealed that over half of their members supported Trump in the most recent election:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-unions-went-for-tr...

The postal union treaty also externalized shipping costs.

America's average net salary is $53,000 and Portugal's is US$19,000.

If your TV factory can't ship to America for the time being, you might need to retool and make more 43" screens and fewer 85" screens. You'd prefer to be making the higher margin products, but at least you keep work coming in and keep your workers fed.

For them, "success" involves feeling that a particular social arrangement has been solidified. It involves an exploitative hierarchy (which they believe is both inevitable and required) where they aren't obviously on the bottom and where "the right people" are on top.

They simply do not care how much it costs to raid people's attics looking for Anne Franco, or even the odds of finding her family, as long as The Authority is taking Firm Steps and people like Anne Franco are afraid.

OK, so we agree on the facts -- historically, the Democrats were aligned with labor, and opposed to trade. They had absolutely no qualms about opposing trade when they felt it was in their political interests to do so.

> Obama’s 2009 tire tariffs were a narrow safeguard against China dumping

I mean...you can attempt to diminish it in scale if you like, but the fact is that the left has historically been pro-labor and anti-trade, and the right has been pro-trade and anti-labor. Now the right controls the government, and they're clearly anti-trade.

They've flipped.

There's multiple countries that are now suspending shipments over $100 to the US. So either there is a huge fuckup in communications from the US to every other country or there's a fuckup in the process itself.

Is there even a dog?

It's worked really well for the Republicans for decades. The Democrats just need to try harder.

It's like saying that both antarctica and oregon are 'cold'. Fucking stop already.

And

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/...

And you use the ACE system to set everything up and report origins of melting, etc and it computes the fees for you:

https://www.cbp.gov/trade/automated