Tariffs are great. They protect the struggling domestic IT industry and gives it time to ramp up its production of vintage computer parts.
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Of course he considered making chips and other components in the US, but he was few billions short to start the fab.
if that happened, the business already had seriously bad margins, bad cash flow, over-leverage, or maybe he was just doing it out of love getting paid maybe back for his time or not.
tariffs might’ve hurt, but they don’t collapse a healthy niche hardware company where buyers are presumably also into the niche.
seems weird i dont get it. can you explain further?
(But seriously I do not know how good US Customs is but in my country every day millions of packages from Asia arrive and they are checking not even a percent).
Zoom out; recent levels are actually quite impressive in the USA. Yes, they've climbed since 2023, but they're only just reaching the pre-GFC minimum (https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...).
Zoom out further: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE/
Had it not been for COVID you'd be at more than 16 years without a(n NBER-determined) recession, long enough to suggest a fundamental shift vs. how things worked in the several decades before that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W_mSOS1Qts
tariffs have chopped and changed so much since this video that the specific tariff amounts mentioned are likely not accurate.
Let's say a companies margin was 40%. The cost of their constituent parts doubles due to tariffs, they are no longer making money as a result.
I hope this helps explain it for you.
Often with older electronics designs, the parts the engineers originally picked are no longer made. It's not the end of the world, there are solutions. Sometimes the vendor changes the part number due to a process change or the part design is sold to another company and goes under a new number. You can also sometimes find drop in compatible parts (common for the 7400/5400 series chips), these may be in a different package so you might have to design an interposer or deadbug it. The worst option is finding old stock using a broker. There are legit brokers that will source old stock and "refurbish" them for you (called re-lifeing). But there are also shady brokers that will buy counterfeits (or get tricked into buying them) that may or may not actually work. Sometimes the counterfeits are relabeled parts that are compatible but the new label gets a higher price because they aren't being made any more. Sometimes the counterfeit is actually a totally different design that is shoehorned into its desired purpose (like a new microcontroller masquerading as an old processor or ASIC). Other times it's just some random junk pulled from e-waste that's been relabelled. Other times you'll get a counterfeit that comes from a stolen design. Even when the counterfeit functions, it may not perform to the same spec as the original part (very important for military spec parts) or will have other characteristics that make it incompatible with the rest of the design (like drawing too much or too little current). When it comes to engineering in ISO9001, traceability is a huge thing and brokers just can't provide that.
At my job, we have an "absolutely no brokers" rule. They simply cannot guarantee that what they provide is genuine. If a legitimate distributor doesn't have stock of a discontinued part, they'll never have stock of it. Brokers will tell you what you want to hear while they go out and try to make it happen. I'm not saying all brokers are shady but if you are considering buying from a broker, you should be instead considering how you can replace that part.
On the other hand, perhaps that's a burden the US should be excited about tossing off. It's expensive to be the World Police, and it's left them with a lot of strained reputation and burnt-through leverage. It also requires them to do a lot of "lead by example" stuff that they seem completely disinterested in (industrial policy, forming consensus, trying to present as a magnanimous moral model).
For example, the company can raise its prices. How well that works depends on whether there is competition for the company's product. If the competition is also hit by the tariffs, then they're on an even playing field. If the competition is using native parts, then the competitor gets the business.
There are often no "native" alternatives.
Even the machines that make the chips are nearly all made in one country and then shipped around the world.
The amazing, modern nature of our modern world is built on the collective effort and knowledge of humankind globally.
Globally.
It's also done to protect local industries, hence the term "protectionism". For example, Canada's large tariffs on American milk are there to protect the local Canadian milk producers.
AFAIK, Trump's tariffs are meant to serve the following purposes:
1. so critical supplies, like chips, will be produced domestically
2. to raise money for the treasury
3. to convince countries that have high tariffs to lower them in exchange for the US to reciprocate in lowering ours
4. to incentivize foreign manufacturers to invest in factories in the US
5. to use them as a negotiating tool for other terms favorable to US interests
These are not crazy things. We'll see how things play out.
Unions often even make this worse because they'll latch on to a monopolistic employer and then lobby with them to retain the monopoly at the expense of all the workers who are their customers rather than their employees.
That assumes the customers are price insensitive. If you're making vintage parts for hobbyists and archivists, maybe they're not; maybe they don't get a raise just because the price went up and your thing is the thing they cut out of the budget when it all won't fit anymore.
3 and 5 are undermined by the fact that even nations with positive trade surpluses with the US, and countries like Japan with Trump first term negotiated trade treaties (which for Japan included major concessions already) are being hit with these tariffs.
1 and 4 are a problem because many of the inputs into building out US manufacturing capacity come from abroad and are hit by tariffs. Secondly many of the manufacturing inputs into making products in these factories would come from abroad and be tariffed, unless those supplies are bootstrapped domestically first but there is no policy to ensure this. Thirdly as soon as the tariffs go away, these factories would become uneconomical, so they are a gamble on that not happening in the lifetime of the factories.
Finally, who’s going to build and operate this huge new manufacturing sector? Infrastructure construction relies heavily on immigrant labour that’s being driven out, so does actual manufacturing, and there are no hordes of unemployed Americans lining up for manufacturing jobs. It’s addressing a problem that largely doesn’t exist, to build out less efficient more expensive ways to make stuff, in a way that can’t work anyway.
Manufacturing investment surged in the last few years with the introduction of the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction acts. It’s going to be hard to disentangle the continuing effects of that from the effects of the Tariffs, but it’s hard to see how the Tariffs can have a positive effect.
It seems that you're operating under the normally reasonable assumption that these policies were implemented after careful consideration with specific goals in mind. I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the people involved in this are doing what they're doing for well-thought out reasons or ones that are meant to benefit America.
Sure there are a number of Democratic Socialists and other progressives winning elections and driving changes but everything I’ve seen policy-wise has been directly targeted areas where unchecked capitalism has clearly failed their constituents. Even in those cases, there’s no dramatic shift towards government ownership.
1) Stopped buying USA wine totally
2) Canceled our plans for vacations in the USA
3) Stopped buying USA orange (or any citrus) juice
4) Carefully check the provenance of any fruit or vegetable in the supermarket and actively avoid anything that comes from the USA
... and the list goes on.
I am not alone!
How do those immediate and tangible consequences serve the interests of the USA producers and companies affected, exactly?
If even if there are such ideas in new government, they quickly disappear over wine and steak dinners with the lobbyists.
Unfortunately this is not seen as bypass of democratic process. Nobody voted for having less rights and any bargaining power stripped and yet here we are.
That's where security services should come in (in many countries protection of democracy is their main statutory duty) - but they are not doing their job tax payers pay them to do.
The new NY city mayor wants to convert parks into low income housing.
https://abc7ny.com/post/mayor-adams-makes-elizabeth-street-g...
Even if we pretend the policies are well-intentioned, it takes decades of investment to make the infrastructure and workforce ready to produce things locally at scale. With policies like the dismantling of department of education, I do not see any initiative being taken to prepare the workforce for the future.
Let's face it, tariffs are a disaster. The increased prices, hurt American businesses, caused job loss, and increased waste and bloat. The administration created a problem (tariff induced inflation), now they are selling the solution by rolling back tariffs to bring prices down. Anybody older than 8 years know this was the same playbook in previous administration. And they know their base is gullible eough to fall for it. It's just unfortunate that hacker news audience in included in there as well.
Interesting that you mention this. It's not exactly the same thing, but someone in another thread here on HN pointed out that the feds have been acquiring non-trivial stakes in a number of companies. More than just the one or two that I had seen in headlines.
It's funny, because it's a bigger overt push in the direction of actual socialism than the dems have ever tried, by the group of people who most love to use socialism as a boogeyman.
But the argument in favor of it seemed compelling on it's face, at least worthy of debate.
And admitting that is why SCOTUS will kill them. Raising money for the treasury is Congress' job, not the executive's.
That's what the administration has stated as the goals of them.
For example, many foreign companies have announced plans to invest in creating factories in the US. How that will eventually work out will take some time to see.
> I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the people involved in this are doing what they're doing for well-thought out reasons or ones that are meant to benefit America.
That's a pretty fantastic assumption. I cannot think of a single instance of any President imposing a policy meant to hurt America. Of course, in my opinion, a lot of Presidents have pushed policies that I regard as destructive, but they didn't mean it to be.
The DOE was created by Carter, and there is no evidence in the last 45 years of it having any positive effect on education in the US.
Any change in policy will make things worse before they get better. For example, if you have surgery to remove a tumor, you'll endure a fair amount of pain and misery before getting better.
It's probably helped in some aspects too, but the student debt crisis was created by the DOE. And most everyone can agree that college costs have ballooned in the US while the value of the degrees have decreased.
It's a perfect example of the worst of both worlds of government guarantees in a capitalist society, like Amtrak and US health care. It eliminates many aspects of competition and blurs incentives while remaining in a economy where decisions are profit-driven.
Making and shipping chips all over the world is what keeps Taiwan safe. They would never jeopardize that.
Yes, the DoE has been planting decade-scale workforce seeds since the Carter years—mostly via STEM/CTE programs that outlive administrations. Core idea: build adaptable skills (problem-solving, digital literacy, work-based learning) so kids & adults can pivot when AI/climate/whatever nukes today’s jobs.
*Carter-era kickoff* - 1979: Science and Engineering Education Act (Carter signs) → first federal push for pre-college STEM pipelines. NSF/DoE joint grants still fund teacher training 45 yrs later.
*Reagan/Bush I* - 1983 A Nation at Risk → DoE launches magnet schools & AP incentives. Many still running.
*Clinton* - 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act → seed money for apprenticeships. morphed into Perkins.
*Bush II* - 2006 Perkins IV → “programs of study” with stackable credentials. Still the backbone of high-school CTE.
*Obama* - 2010 Race to the Top → $4B for state STEM/CTE alignment. - 2014 Computer Science for All → CS now in 70% of HS nationwide.
*Biden* - 2022 YOU Belong in STEM + 2025 DOL/DoE joint admin of WIOA/Perkins → less red tape, more training $.
*Impact numbers* - Perkins V: 8M HS students/yr in CTE; 1.3M postsecondary. - WIOA adult ed: 1.5M/yr gain credentials. - Meta-analyses show STEM exposure → +0.2σ critical thinking, +15% lifetime earnings.
*Caveats* - Funding is ~$16B/yr total—peanuts vs GDP. - 2025 DoE staff cuts (≈50%) threaten oversight. - Europe still laps us on apprenticeships (3-yr paid tracks vs US 6-month internships).
Bottom line: DoE’s been playing the long game since disco. The programs work, but they’re chronically underpowered and politically fragile.
And the rest of the world as well, as collateral damage.
There are times when it’s politically infeasible to defend the currency, even if they technically could. See the response in France to trying to raise the retirement age a bit, because their budget is in trouble.
A point. Economists like people to believe that hyper inflation lead to Hitler. When it was austerity policies at the start of the great depression 10 years later that lead to the Nazi's winning in 33. Same austerity policies in the US lead to FDR and the Democrats winning.
The presence of a few nationalistic morons doesn't wholly negate the goals mentioned by GP, and in fact, may be more important than ever.
So yes, pretty they didn’t have any money to spend on anything else. Of course bonds became worthless well before the peak in inflation.
1. That stated goals reflect real motivations
2. That every president and their administration operates with a coherent, disciplined strategy
3. That competence can be assumed by default.
Unfortunately these assumptions simply don't match anything we've seen from this administration.
There's a difference between good intentions, stated intentions, and effective execution of policy and there's nothing to indicate that these things are aligned here.
There's also nothing to indicate that the American democratic process guarantees a President who always has Americas best interests in mind and there's nothing to indicate that every person who has filled that roll has had that as their primary motivation.
HS graduation: ~75 % → 87 % (94 % including GEDs)
BA or higher, age 25+: 17 % → 38 %
Some college or associate’s: ~30 % → >60 %
Immediate college enrollment: 49 % → ~70 %
Black BA attainment roughly 3×, Hispanic 4–5×
AP/IB exams: 400 k → 5 M+