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Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

(www.wsj.com)
462 points JumpCrisscross | 9 comments | 30 Aug 25 20:56 UTC | HN request time: 1.207s | source | bottom
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lazarus01 ◴[30 Aug 25 22:32 UTC] No.45078568[source]▶
In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created.

Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in.

NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html

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timr ◴[30 Aug 25 22:51 UTC] No.45078679[source]▶
Even assuming that there were no other federal, state or local YoY differences [1] that could explain this change (and that the numbers are right as presented in the first place), New York City private sector employment is nothing like most other parts of the US: it's the largest city in the US by a large margin, it has a concentration of employment in a few major industries (finance, fashion, publishing, software) that aren't represented elsewhere, and...it hasn't been a manufacturing center since the victorian era.

You can't wave this away with "NYC is a leading indicator for the US economy". To the extent that it's true at all, you could say it about any large city in the US.

[1] Like, say: interest rates, the business cycle, AI, the slowdown in software hiring, or the minimum wage increase that NYC implemented on January 1, 2025.

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1. apical_dendrite ◴[30 Aug 25 23:21 UTC] No.45078886[source]▶
It's true that NYC private sector employment is different from the US labor market as a whole, but NYC private sector employment is better representative of what readers of this site care about than overall US employment. Readers are much more likely to be affected by changes in the professional services and information sectors than, say, agriculture.
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2. timr ◴[31 Aug 25 00:40 UTC] No.45079313[source]▶
And again, even if you assume that all of that is true, you're still making a leap of logic that these changes are because of the tariffs.
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3. epistasis ◴[31 Aug 25 01:31 UTC] No.45079534[source]▶
The agricultural section indicators are that there's about to be a big, expensive bailout for ag:

> “Right now, we have zero bushels of soybeans on the books with China for this fall harvest that has begun in the Deep South,” Ragland said. “Normally by this time, close to 40% of our sales for the marketing year are on the books. And with zero on the books right now, it is alarming for American soybean farmers.”

https://www.farmprogress.com/soybean/us-soybean-exports-to-c...

The first time that Trump screwed over with tariffs, they got tons of bailout money that we all paid for.

Not all sectors of the economy are so lucky. The big man at the top must be paid with either bribes or allegiance or both.

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4. immibis ◴[31 Aug 25 02:06 UTC] No.45079691[source]▶
What else changed?
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5. timr ◴[31 Aug 25 05:21 UTC] No.45080567{3}[source]▶
I named several in my original comment.

The big, blinking, obvious YoY change for anyone here is tech employment.

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6. enaaem ◴[31 Aug 25 08:19 UTC] No.45081432[source]▶
ICE raids are freeing up a lot of spots in the agri sector.
7. jrs235 ◴[31 Aug 25 14:40 UTC] No.45083489[source]▶
It's part of the plan. Small farms will be the ones to go bankrupt. The large corporate, black rock et al owned, "farms" (read businesses) will be bailed out and allowed to scoop up the little ones for pennies onto the dollar.
8. immibis ◴[31 Aug 25 15:19 UTC] No.45083841{4}[source]▶
As a result of tariffs
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9. mensetmanusman ◴[31 Aug 25 21:23 UTC] No.45087225{5}[source]▶
No, that was R&D deduction changes.