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

(oldvcr.blogspot.com)
320 points goldenskye | 4 comments | 15 Nov 25 23:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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JSR_FDED ◴[16 Nov 25 00:41 UTC] No.45941785[source]▶
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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varispeed ◴[16 Nov 25 00:53 UTC] No.45941825[source]▶
I know one US business that used to make niche electronic product. Most components they used were from China. Got hit by the tariffs that wiped all the operating profit. Guy also had to sell his home and is now couchsurfing. Business is unlikely going to recover.

Of course he considered making chips and other components in the US, but he was few billions short to start the fab.

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Gibbon1 ◴[16 Nov 25 01:10 UTC] No.45941888[source]▶
Reminds me of a comment I think by Nancy Teeters the first female Federal Reserve board member. She said the other board members thought they could savage the US manufacturing industry to kill wage inflation and break the unions and it would come right back once they stopped. And it didn't.
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seg_lol ◴[16 Nov 25 01:52 UTC] No.45942066[source]▶
Sociopaths. It breaks me to see the Fed use interest rates to cause unemployment as the lever against inflation. It all seems so cruel.
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ericd ◴[16 Nov 25 03:23 UTC] No.45942498[source]▶
Have you ever read about people burning piles of German currency because it was better than using it to buy firewood with? Not to say we would get there, but allowing inflation to run is not kinder.
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inferiorhuman ◴[16 Nov 25 03:32 UTC] No.45942531{3}[source]▶
I think these days folks typically use Zimbabwe or Argentina as examples.
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1. brobdingnagians ◴[16 Nov 25 13:05 UTC] No.45944829{4}[source]▶
Those are more recent examples, but I think Germany is still a more visceral example for a lot of Western nations because Germany was a high tech, educated industrial nation that was hit with such massive problems from government policy. It's closer to home. Other countries are (wrongfully) easier to dismiss as being just too different from our wealthy and enlightened selves.
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2. ericd ◴[16 Nov 25 22:21 UTC] No.45948982[source]▶
Also, Germany was a great power seriously challenging the greatest power of the time, the British Empire. They fell a lot further than those other examples.
3. Gibbon1 ◴[16 Nov 25 23:37 UTC] No.45949499[source]▶
People get confused the hyper inflation in Germany was right after the end of WWI when Germany's economy was collapsing. Turns out you can't fix that with monetary policy.

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.

4. inferiorhuman ◴[17 Nov 25 01:52 UTC] No.45950206[source]▶
Unfortunately we're looking more like Hogan's Heroes than Germany. Both Zimbabwe and Argentina (and, quite frankly, Venezuela) were well developed before they went down the road of disastrous policies.