An Irony on Trump's Tariffs

[Elixir]

One of our major exports is agricultural products. So .gov handed out $10 billion DOGE bucks to farmers this week. Something, something, efficiency. Because Ag could get retalitory tariffs and many inputs like fertilizer and tractors are going up in price.

Apparently paying farmers is not welfare.

I agree with pretty much everything said above. Except that these are Trump's ideas. I believe most of them are Steven Miller's ideas, and that the object pursued by his policies, is increased repression of an ever-growing class of "poor people" to the benefit of the uber-rich.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

EU as well. The Trump Admin wants tariffs on all parcels. That'll slow things up and cost everyone more money. But we are going to get rich! By paying ourselves more money.

Yeah. Somebody must have told him that small stuff isn't charged duty. And he didn't comprehend the part where it's not charged because it's impractical to collect and collection costs could easily exceed the amount collected. There was a box from China long, long ago that showed up with the postman collecting a few dollars worth of duty that had been assessed. Worthwhile?! No way!

Of course, with his crazy tariffs it might not be so small.

 

[Swammerdami]

And now, the de minimis exemption is officially ended, and against the whole world, not just China and Hongkong. Orders are being canceled. Raising the exemption from $200 to $800 in 2016 was apparently a "Godsend" for many consumers, who could then order many hard-to-find items on-line with no concern about what the country of origin would be.

Lowering the exemption back to $200 would be stupid enough, but Google doesn't show me that that's what happened. Is there still some small exemption? If an American forgot a cheap scrapbook or souvenir during his holiday in Barcelona, will customs be involved when the hotel mails the scrapbook back?

Contrary to their oafish behaviors, I think Trump and his cabal really do have 90+ IQs. Is their malicious approach to tariffs "smart" after all? Perhaps they know that hard-core MAGGOT voters are xenophobic bumpkins uninterested in buying foreign goods, and thus that Trump's malice will inconvenience only people whose 100+ IQs mean they'd never vote for this flatulent fascist anyway.