We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA

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.

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.

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).

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).

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".

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

...or you could read the actual changes? Accusing people of lying is not cool when you clearly haven't even read the source material.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/susp...

Here's a summary by a law firm:

https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/united-states-suspen...

Specifically:

> The executive order declares that “[t]he duty-free de minimis exemption provided under 19 U.S.C. § 1321(a)(2)(C) shall no longer apply to any shipment of articles not covered by 50 U.S.C. § 1702(b) [enumerating narrow exceptions, such as for donations, informational materials and transactions ordinarily incident to travel] regardless of value, country of origin, mode of transportation, or method of entry.”

50 USC 1702(b)(4) lays it out explicitly:

> (4) any transactions ordinarily incident to travel to or from any country, including importation of accompanied baggage for personal use, maintenance within any country including payment of living expenses and acquisition of goods or services for personal use, and arrangement or facilitation of such travel including nonscheduled air, sea, or land voyages.

You don't need to go into this much detail, of course -- you could just Google it or ask an LLM -- Google's AI summary currently returns the correct answer.

https://www.google.com/search?q=does+trump+de+minimis+tariff...

He told them what he wanted to do, over and over and over again. Now that he's doing what he told them he was going to do (again over and over and over again) they want some respect for their objections? They voted for him knowing what he was going to do. Exactly what is there about these fucking morons that I shouldn't write off?

Don't some tariffs motivate people to do processing offshore?

If I import 1kg of copper and machine/etch/whatever it down into products, with some wastage, maybe I should just do everything offshore and only import the final articles with 500g of copper in it.

At some point, higher tariffs on input materials will overtake the higher value of finished goods and you might as well just manufacture the whole thing offshore anyway.

It's a known flawless way to evolve code... Never revise, never delete, add enough so the tests pass.

But I don't think your lesson is reasonable. Fucking with multivariate dynamic systems is what governments do. And it's well settled that in the absence of the government doing that, everything goes to hell quite quickly.

Yes, I've read that inspiration in the Mein Kamph. Hitler cited the US's hatred, slavery, and Jim Crow for how Germany responded to the Jewish problem.

If you were a WASP - white anglo-saxon protestant, you were fine. Elsewise, yeah, not so much.

Because they didn't use the right specificity in the announcement (used an 8 digit HTS vs 10 digit), there was some confusion for a few weeks if Beer in glass bottles was subject to it as well.

There is now an FAQ on CBP's website clarifying it is not [^2]. And they've updated to the right specificity in the new lists.

> Is HTS 2203.00.0030, Beer made from malt, In containers each holding not over 4 liters, In glass containers; subject to Section 232 duties? > No.

But yes, effective 18 August, they broadened the list a whole lot more and added things from condensed milk to deodorant to both steel and aluminum lists. An absolute nightmare for FMCG supply chain to have to figure this out.

You can agree or disagree with the current administration's trade policy but hopefully, even the staunchest proponents will admit that the execution has been sub-par. With u-turns (sometimes leaving partner countries fuming because the final published tariffs were not what were negotiated[^3]), lack of clarity and changes that land on Friday night after work hours and go into effect on Monday midnight.

[^1]: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-05884.pdf

[^2]: https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...

[^3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/business/japan-tariffs-us...

Its not that you have to appeal to them. Feel free to have policy positions and to stand on those. You might even get some people on the other side to agree with you on policy.

Instead, the losing strategy is doing what the OP is apparently doing, which is preemptively dismissing half the population, wholesale. Defining yourself as nothing, exempt as a hating half of the country is neither a real policy position, nor does it gain much.

> Zohran Mamdani is doing so well

He is doing well because he is standing on values. Not because he spends his time saying that he hates half of America. I'm sure he would be happy to get republican voters who move over to his side and agree with his policy positions.

> Division is a core technique of erasing liberty

Seems like embracing a self-coup is also a core technique of erasing liberty? Maybe both of these statements are so broad that they are meaningless.

There are two mutually exclusive stated goals. One is, as you said, onshoring tech manufacturing to the USA [1]. The other stated goal is to eliminate income tax and replace it with income from tariffs [2][3]. To play these out on their own terms: if the first goal succeeds, then import volume would drop, and total tariff income would be too low to replace income taxes. If the first goal fails, then tariff income would be high enough to replace income taxes. IDK I haven't done the napkin math and I suspect neither have they.

[1]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trump-says-his-tariffs-...

[2]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/trump-proposes-abolishment...

[3]: https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6371514396112

Going with Fox Business links to avoid accusations of bias.

Well, I don't keep track of what post offices around the world are doing, but if they're not following the rules that I just showed you, then yeah, they're wrong.

It wouldn't be the first time that bureaucratic organizations get things wrong.

> The EO doesn't mean shit as much as how things are enforced.

You really need to step back from the keyboard.

> Som privatperson kan du fortsat toldfrit sende gaver med en maksimal værdi á $100

You can see the number and read the obvious words, it's not even necessary to translate it

The EU is the top trading partner for 80 countries. By comparison, the US is the top trading partner for a little over 20 countries. The EU is the world’s largest trader of manufactured goods and services.

You chose your lesser of 2 evils, and others chose theirs. There is no acceptable choice in American presidential politics.

And also, letting new batshit insane things slide is just complying in advance. If we're ever going to get back to a sane society (a big "if"), we can't accept the insanity until then, or it'll stick.

Once that's complete and the dependence on the US is broken, expect more dramatic moves.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017265

> I'd suggest something like: "Japan Post stops accepting US shipments over $100."

I'm with you in expecting government to tweak, adjust and modify policy, but it's usually the experts advising and implementing, but we're in the "My ignorance is as valid as your experience era", and we will witness where that will take us.

They have no way to do this, because it's normally not done - tarrifs are paid by the importer, and responsibility for correct labeling is by the importer.

I doubt they’re conspiring to leave money on the table just to make Trump look bad.

I'm not saying that post offices around the world don't make mistakes, or even make decisions that have nothing to do with the actual rules. I'm telling you what the rules are, right now.

Would you agree that Third Way’s positions and suggestions should be weighted differently than official federal government stances and actions?

https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...

The "vibes" that attract conservative voters are fucking disgusting.

Clinton was VOCIFEROUSLY pro-TPP for quite a while, and "changed" her stance as the race with Trump tightened. I believe she was a bald-faced liar.

The Clintons were ur-Third Way democrats. Financialization of the economy and globalization were the stock-in-trade (puns intended) of 1990s-2010s Democrats (at the Federal level) until Bernie came along.

Here's a summary by a law firm:

Normally that would be sufficient, but now we have an executive branch that tries strategies like personally suing all the federal judges in a district because it dislikes some of their rulings on one of the president's signature issues. CEOs of major corporations are literally giving the president lumps of gold to decorate the oval office. So you'll have to forgive me for discounting the value of legal opinions in general nowadays.

Several people have explained that you are incorrect — Swiss and others are not accepting gift parcels over $100.

You then changed tack and said Swiss Post etc have the law wrong.

So what to you? It doesn't matter what details and uncertainties are in the law, it's resulted in most European countries setting a $100 limit, and at least Finland has suspended delivery entirely (even letters).

Domestic manufacturers are still disadvantaged by having to pay tariffs for materials used for the product, but not present in the final product. And foreign manufacturers still don't. If used in machines (and used up), used in mining (and used up), used in transport, used in energy production, ...

These costs are very large, especially because specific materials are often not available worldwide, or have large differences in quality due to availability of tiny amounts of additives for alloys or compounds. These things do lead to very large differences in quality, and thus in value. You can't model that as a government, it's just not going to happen.

There's no way to fully analyze an entire economic chain (especially when almost everyone involved has a financial incentive to sabotage you doing that correctly, and that includes foreign governments). You'd think this wouldn't have to be explained to either Americans or especially a supposed "defender of capitalism", but here we are.

The US just sort of randomly decided to tariff everything from people they don’t like anymore. Because of the randomness of these tariffs, they impact not only consumer goods but production equipment.

The justification for these tariffs is something along the lines of “let’s bring production back to the United States.” That’s likely a good idea (says the Canadian), but when they use that justification while simultaneously tariffing production equipment the same as consumer goods you have to wonder what’s actually going on.

With production equipment, you amortize the cost of that tool over the years of usage. These tariffs are not amortized, meaning they must be paid at import. That takes cash off the balance sheet, puts it into equipment and hits liquidity.

If I was wickedly powerful and really hated Americans, going after SMB liquidity would be the most convenient (and profitable) way to cause generational harm.

The EU is a single market.

Obama was wrong. Look at your own article, which quotes Tulsi Gabbard gushing about the need for a little more of that 'aloha spirit', and compare it with her actual behavior now that she's Director of National Intelligence in the current administration.

https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html <- a 1995 strategy document from former GOP speaker Newt Gingrich's GOPAC.

At the same time, there are things to keep in mind:

- this is asking member-states to delegate some of their sovereignty, which is never all easy and always involves quite a bit of horse-trading

- the member-states are perfectly happy to fuck things up on their own and things like growth figures for the eurozone actually mask very different realities depending on the country and its government

- stagnation is a very western point of view, things are still changing quite a lot on the eastern side

- the reference point should be the same situation without the EU. I am not sure, for example, that things would be improved with a trade war between Germany and France, the baltics fending off for themselves, or each country having its own import requirements and sets of tariffs.

As if activist conservatives won't simply lie about them. Yes, in an ideal world everything would be evaluated on the basis of policy by rational actors using objective criteria. In the world we live in bad faith abounds, and voters aren't very attracted to candidates who are long on integrity but allow themselves to used as a punching bag in some sort performative political martyrdom.

You are being governed by someone with dementia who has surrounded himself with people who appear unable to say 'no'.

I literally just quoted the statement, which was explicit that the change involved “goods consignments”. They are continuing to accept mail, in general, and are continuing to accept goods consignments via another service.

In other posts I showed you that there’s no change to US policy for personal exemption.

Neither fact is in tension with the other.

The capricious implementation of the tariffs is another issue. Biden raised tariffs but the implementation involved a months long comment period, then a notice months in advance, and finally implementation. It wasn't ideal in my mind (the specific tariffs) but there was a way to work through the consequences and plan accordingly. This administration does not believe in that. Maybe congress would if they took back responsibility for tariff policy but I don't see that happening right now.

Ultimately, that's always the case.

But just like VAT or sales taxes are usually paid by the seller on behalf of the buyer, so could customs duties be levied by the exporter.

If you want tariff that option away from a bunch of China-men, have them do the next even shittier dangerous job that they bypassed on the way to the steel mill, and then save them while you instead work next to molten iron, that's the proposition you're moving towards.

Of course if you want a little taste of being that hero, there are domestic steel mills currently hiring, you can take that job so the next guy in line won't get maimed. But somehow I think you won't, so you must be "all cool" they are "instead maimed."

What exactly distinguishes a commercial import from a personal gift? How on Earth would the USPS adjudicate the difference?

We’ve been had and the number of people covering for this grows daily, and will continue to do so until one day we all wake the fuck up.

If we have that in common, then I find the difference in politics is mostly implementation and method. I'm happy to debate civic policy on the merits all day at that point.

The people who are drawn to the performatively cruel side are not rational actors and can't be reasoned with. I've tried.

You have my admiration for trying, especially in this political climate. I've had younger folk straight up not believe me when I say this is exactly the same playbook they ran against gay men in the 90s.

If, in their minds, Harris and Trump are somehow equally implicated in the Epstein scandal, all I can say is "lol, have a good one".

Tabloid trash publications like the NY Post are not honest messengers, but rather seek to amplify things like this using synecdoche to suggest that they're representative of the median Democrat. If the poster above wanted to showcase the underlying ideas, they could have just linked to the Third way website and paraphrased their argument directly, but instead they decided to share the gutter press version. I discount tabloid newspapers the same way I discount left-leaning outlets like Democracy Now! or Truthout - they might be right some of the time but the general level of bias outweighs their utility as providers of factual information, which is readily available from less biased sources.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-pr...

1. Biden was old and everyone knew it. He still got shit done. The idea that everyone thought he was great and fine is not true. That's what Republicans claimed people thought.

2. Primaries are not an official part of the election process. They are a party matter. The whole weird Republican meltdown over it is not based in fact or history.

3. Russia did interfere with the 2016 elections. There's a whole congressional report on it, by a majority Republican committee. [0]

4. I don't even know what this means. If someone did crimes, they should be held responsible. The idea that we don't want that is, frankly propaganda.

[0] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/...

All those traditional conservatives and "lowercase-L libertatians" could speak up now, and do something about the ongoing fascist takeover, but they are not. American democracy is probably doomed, we will find out in 2026 whether we can have fair mid-term elections.

In particular, if I walk into a random post office and send a one-off shipment internationally, the paperwork, origin, packaging, manifest, etc. is vastly different than what, say, Temu was doing to ship a $10 widget to US consumers at scale.

The rule you're talking about is not new, so presumably they've figured it out.

this is to say they have a glowing endorsement of the trump agenda of authoritarian intervention in both social and economic issues. they could have stayed home, or voted for democrats who were pushing a more traditional conservative policy.

they also could have voted for local politicians who are against trump policies, but the local republicans are lockstep with trump too.

you need to reevaluate what the people in your community believe in. they mught say theyre libertarians, but their actions say theyre very favourable to criminal dictators. if they werent, they would have acted dofferently in elections, and the votes speak louder than words

I'm not defending people who voted for Trump. I'm saying if your response is "then I'm going to pretend you don't exist," this is only going to get worse.

Normal people need to be able to work together to find common ground for us to have anything resembling a healthy society.

It makes me sad that Hacker News, the place that emphasizes thoughtful curiosity in its post/comment guidelines, has lately often devolved into an echochamber indistinguishable from Reddit when anything remotely political comes up. Anything more nuanced then "Trump is evil and Republicans are stupid" gets downvoted, which is a microcosm of the whole problem that put them in power.

The US was a unique money-making machine... Although the gears seem to be getting looser and the machine is being broken. Personally I think the US economy is flexible enough to mitigate much of the damage, however I worry about the future impact of political changes.

I'm in New Zealand which is quite wealthy although the demographic timebomb will go off in next decades: and our economy is also fucked because our voters hate businesses and business people.

One strong signal of how fucked a country is economically, is how well small businesses can survive.

If the US starts screwing its businesses more, that is the time to worry.

-----

i think people pick by name recognition rather than by lesser evil. if folks think trump is less evil than harris, theyre probably far beyond any conversation i could have. as south park puts it, not even satan wants to have sex with him.

the dems gave up fighting against it, but its still a republican idea to wreck the manufacturing base and put the publicans into unemployment

you want to pay more in taxes for everything because you dont like the high standards democrats have for themselves?

some democrats also want to raise taxes? why not support them if you eant to raise taxes?

bureaucracy tends to make processes that are complicated but still straightforward to complete, even if they take decades for skmethjng that shiuld only be a couple minutes

These people have lost all sense. The only remaining option is to make their party electorally impotent. Dominate through any available dirty trick. Redistricting. Impeachment. Ignoring judges. Endless executive orders. Shock and awe. Whatever they've done, return straight back to them. (Except the really grotesque parts like sending innocent people to a foreign torture prison.)

It seems that many people still haven't gotten the memo that we're not really living in a democracy anymore.

My argument here isn't moral. It's that this class of strategy simply cannot be effective. I'm not claiming a better one, only that it's on all of us to look.

You asked me what distinguishes a commercial package from a personal gift.

You need to build bridges with people that you disagree with

Casting somebody out of "the big tent" because of how they voted works towards increasing division. Increasing division, especially between majorities and minorities, is a time worn and effective tactic to create the conditions for authoritarianism.

If you favour authoritarianism over liberty then I am not talking to you.

If you favour liberty, support it, do not work against it

https://www.dominioncustomsconsultants.com/cbp-updated-guida...

Closest I can think of is the Romans required a constant influx of cheap labour from outside their empire for their economy. When the flow stopped (diminished conquering meant diminished number of slaves coming in) that was a major factor in economic decline.

So which is it?

It is time 60% of the country decided to stop wasting effort on people who do not participate honestly.

And please stop with the "oh no, Reddit" garbage.

It is that they create problems, they pitch suboptimal solutions that will create the next crisis, and then they frame the crisis in a way that appeals to your emotions.

So no, it is not a tiresome both sides argument. It is that you are being led by people that don't care about you, that don't have your best interests in mind; they have their own agenda and you're just being swayed left and right as the zeitgeist allows.

And you're left cheering for your team because you think your team is better. But hey, the other team really bothched something up recently, so yay your team. And then we will get your team in power, they'll do some things you like while creating other problems and then pendulum will swing the other way, some will cheer for the other team and then swing back. And then before you know it, oops you're 64 years old now.

I have to actually deal with the former.

You're allowed to say "fucking".

The most virtuous of us do not vote their own interest first, but rather the interest of justice and morality. The assumption that people should or will vote their own interest first & always is what the kids these days seem to call "mid" and "basic".

You are definitely right that the parties/political system does not make decisions in my favor (or really make decisions at all). Beyond just the crises, it's pretty clear that the "vested interests" in our economy have substantial sway in the outcomes regardless of how much of the discourse they try to avoid.

to be clear, I'm not in favor of the expansion of the executive power through executive orders under Obama, nor am I in favor of Trump using it. I think the democrats were short sighted in allowing the precedent and not expecting it to backfire. IMO, democracy is strongest when the motivation is to close loopholes as an exercise in disarmament, rather than the pyrrhic victories of escalation.

All that said, the recent escalations are alarming, and I hope that when I'm 64, the pendulum is still attached to swing. I understand the realpolitik of the situation, but I don't agree that I need to adopt such a fatalistic view of the whole situation that I won't care that people are making mistakes at all.

2. I'm not a Republican and I like the idea of the people getting to have a say in their leadership.

3. The claim I mentioned was that Trump was a Russian agent. Where's the evidence for that one?

4. This means the blue team had plenty of time to do something about the Epstein files and didn't. We'll never know what kamala would have done about it, but my money is on jack and squat.

Again, I'm not a republican. The red team sucks, and still the blue team wasn't good enough to beat them.

This won’t work. Just look at any country that dealt with a fascist regime. The ideology gets shunned, but you don’t just cancel even 30% of a country’s population, otherwise you just create a permanent state of tension. You need a combination of very harsh punishments for the leaders and the most harmful people, but you also need a way to reintegrate most of them into the democratic process.

There's really no reason why we shouldn't have steel mills aside from that.

In fact this should be a sales tactic for fedex or whomever "we bullshit the numbers for ya!"

Export markets will of course collapse outside of the very high-end. But that has been slowly occurring over the last few years anyway.

I do also strongly believe that the Eurozone or a rather a monetary union without a fiscal union hasn’t been the best idea as far as south-north goes.

And then you have countries which are doing quite well despite retaining their free-floating currency.

Poland is an interesting case in that you can retain a free floating currency and your own monetary policy and still do quite well.

What's more likely, as I stated in another comment, is if you destroy their comparative advantage at a tariffed industry, the Chinese guy that had the steel mill as his best option now has to move to the next even shittier one. Tariffs are usually economically worse than zero-sum.

Presumably for things like import restrictions (I could imagine somebody sending homemade cookies is treated differently than a large-scale food importer), but not for a decision on whether to charge or not levy duties though, right?

These are not the only two options. Considering the source is always relevant and worthy of comment.

I think there will be even stronger trend of european brands put on Chinese made cars. Like Renault is already doing with Dacia Spring. Brands themselves will survive, even companies themselves may survive, but many of them may be just headquarters. Moving production means supply chain follows. And that's where most of the jobs are. Over time R&D will follow factories. So for the job market it could be pretty close to full-on crash.

I'm not talking about Harris specifically re Epstein, no idea what her involvement is. I'm saying the blue team in general. And is it really a good defense to say "my team was less involved with Epstein"? I'd humbly submit that it's not.

Is the purpose of the democratic system to get people like Trump in power? Apparently that's what it does, no?

This is why we live in different realities.

2. It doesn't matter if you are or not, you're parroting the propaganda lines. Primaries have always worked like this. Anyone who passed high school civics should know that. I did and I do.

3. "Russia, if you're listening..." lol

Anyways, people don't think Trump is an "agent" like a spy. The issue is his campaign and office are compromised and Russia has leverage on him. That's the real issue.

4. I still don't know exactly what you're talking about.

Y'all do know the "Epstein files" are mostly imaginary, right? I mean, obviously he existed, he trafficked teenagers for sex, and he kept records and such. And yeah, we already knew famous people tagged along with him.

But the idea that they're this spooky secret special trove of famous pedophiles that everyone in power is desperate to hide is straight out of QAnon baby eating fantasies.

Nobody did anything about it because there was nothing to do. Basically everything was mostly released years ago. Trump flogged it because it got a reaction and now he has nothing to show. It's honestly hilarious to watch it bite him.

Different realities indeed. The dems didn't even do that first part of promising to release things before "failing" to. Nobody in charge wants this stuff out.

This is why our system is fucked. You just have to convince people you're not as bad as the other guy, and you get carte blanch to do pretty much whatever.

Hahaha so instead of voting for 60 year old you voted for the almost-octogenarian who thinks there were airports in the revolutionary war, representing the party that has absolutely never hidden the neurological decline of a sitting president. My guy.

I'm not sure what you're arguing for here, but you come off as morally bankrupt. Worker safety can certainly be improved but people like you happily shrug it off and are fine with hazardous cost cutting which allows people to continue to be maimed as long as you're steel or whatever is super cheap.

Also, is anyone claiming that Trump isn't steering the ship? The people elected him and he seems to be the one at the wheel. The people elected Biden, who may have been steering the ship in his good hours of the day, but who knows who made the decisions the rest of the time.

I suspect that quite a lot of Trump supporters will not be interested in doing this, and will instead maintain a permanent state of tension by declaring their continued support of a regime that hated me. That's not great, I agree, but if there's one thing the 2024 election taught me it's that pretending it's OK doesn't defuse the tension. The Republican party had a clear opportunity to let the past go and win with a candidate who doesn't hate me - a candidate I would have voted for! - but they decided they prefer not to.

Once again, because being in a political party that has rapists is not the same as committing rape. Do I need to explain this further?

> The dems didn't even do that first part of promising to release things before "failing" to.

So then don't vote for them? Though if you are voting based on this issue and have a choice between a man who is in the files and has a documented history with Epstein or a woman who is a former state AG and didn't run in the east coast Trump/Epstein circles, please tell me you aren't as naive as Joe Rogan.

UPS can collect tariffs. Source: I've written checks recently to UPS to cover tariffs.

They existed long before the EU was called the EU, but that is misleading.

Both the customs union and the common market were created in 1957 with the European economic community, which got a new name and a coat of paint to become the EU in 1993. Both are fundamental parts of the European project. They would not exist without the EU and the EU would not exist without them.

That being said, actual labor as in worked did not went for Republicans all that hard. It appears that way only if you restrict labor meaning to males of specific demographics.

It is not labor thing. It is gender resentment over not being on top of hierarchy thing.

The infantilizing thing is constantly project positive motivations on people who do the opposite.

They were literally looking forward to cause harm, they just thought it will harm only liberals, trans, stupid feminists and well ... anyone not them.

To answer the broader question, if you believe in markets at all, then demand creates supply, and supply for cheap (and therefore abused) labor is arguably at least in part responsible for economies like China being so shitty to your average worker. If all Western countries would e.g. slap tariffs on goods imported from places with poor labor rights, but they were specifically contingent on that (and not just a list of countries that our Great Leader has a problem with), that would put the pressure on the Chinese government to raise the standards to remain competitive. That would be the kind of tariff I would support, and I don't buy the argument that if we don't allow for such shitty jobs, the alternatives would be even worse - this is exactly the kind of attitude that creates a global race to the bottom that is the major driver for enshittification all around.

As I understand it, US customs wants foreign carriers to collect tarriffs when packages are shipped, and pay them to the US.

There is no system to do this, nor a system to actually receive payments and associate them with a package. Nor any clarity on what the rules actually are and thus what the import duties will be when things arrive.

The normal course of things is that things get shipped, hit customs and get assessed for duties, and then the importer pays for release. If you've ever experienced differently it's because someone is handling it for you - e.g. Amazon provide this service and absorb the complexity and risk.

Look up the history of the phrase "the purpose of a system is what it does". It was adopted as a principle because it made more sense than every other possible alternative. It makes no sense to claim that the purpose of a system is to do something that it never has done and consistently fails to do, because the system would have been replaced in that case.