When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts

While tariffs aren't a secret, they are a new reality for majority of americans. They never had to bother with any of that before they ended De Minimis, now every single package must go through a complicated import process and if you are somewhat inexperienced with it (as most people do), you might end up with UPS screwing up the paperwork and charging you wrongly hundreds of dollars.

That's ultimately what the US citizens voted for and I think that's important they know what they are dealing with.

The annoying thing about this setup is that people outside the us pay tariffs going both ways. They must pay the us tariffs to send into the us and then they must pay their countries tariffs receiving goods coming from the us. I read that the EU is ending de minimus in 2026. This is going to really put a hurt on small businesses like crafters, used bookstores, antique dealers, …

Yeah, it’s what they voted for, but having the world get into the tariff act is a real pain.

I still find it baffling that Trump managed to convince people that, somehow, "China" is paying these tariffs, despite the fact that that makes no fucking sense. These companies in China aren't charities; even if the exporter were the ones directly paying the tariffs, it would simply be baked into the price of the good being sold.

This really isn't hard. It's literally something I learned on the first day of high school economics.

Its scary how many things Trump says, claims that are roughly equivalent to, "1 + 2 = 4", which people just eat up as truth!

It feels like all the deficets in our education system (going back decades) are finally coming to roost... so many people lack critical thinking skills and media savvy/awareness. I think its too late to fix it, now that a sufficient majority of people are susceptible to this deception, and a sufficient chunk of politicians are willing to deceive them... there is too much motivation to keep them dumb. The hatred towards the "Intellectual Elite" is scary, and really is reminicent of Pol Pot.