With the United States having started an incredibly dumb and destructive trade war with Canada, Mexico, and most likely soon the European Union, there’s quite a few people who want to avoid American products. With how interconnected the global production chain and corporate ownership structures are, it’s often difficult to determine where products actually come from. Luckily, technology can help. There’s online directories like Buy European Made, which lists European companies in all kinds of markets, or European Alternatives, which focuses on listing European alternatives to online services.
As nice as these are, they are quite manual, and require people to actively search around, which is kind of a hassle when you’re making a quick grocery store run. What if we could use image recognition to just take a photo of a product’s box, and have our phone tell us where a product’s made? That’s exactly what Made O’Meter does: take a photo of a product, wait for a few seconds, and it’ll tell you exactly where it’s made. It’s made in Denmark, with the goal to “support Europe, Canada & friends”.
I’ve been trying it out on various products around the house, from groceries like cereals and cookies, to tech products and clothing we just bought that still had the tags on them. Every result turned out to be 100% accurate, and it takes only a few seconds to analyse each photo. It also doesn’t seem to be too fussy with the quality of the photos themselves – it doesn’t care about hands and fingers in the frame, or weirdly-shaped boxes that don’t fit nicely in a view finder. It’s a website, not an app – very platform-agnostic, which is great – and I was using it in Firefox for Android without issue.
If you want to avoid American products, Made O’Meter is a great tool to have with you the next time you order something or run to the store.
Great find! I’m sharing this with my Canadian friends.
I love how political OSnews is becoming. Ugh. This is not the “news” I want to read here.
It’s not politics when the actions of others are turning your world upside down and you try to find technical ways to respond to those actions.
Burying your head in the sand doesn’t make the problem go away, does it?
Don’t forget to ditch the Chinese products too.
American and Chinese products are pretty much all computer hardware out there, x86 and ARM (and x86 is American-only). While Europe was busy producing designer handbags and luxury cars, the Americans cornered the information age (with China being a notable contender).
There’s so much garbage in this it’s hard to unpick but we live in age where people have their own “facts”. You do know ARM wasn’t originally Chinese or American right? I was using ARM based products in the 80s, I’d bet my house you weren’t. As for x86 being ‘American’ only, I think companies like NEC or VIA and others might say otherwise. Just write off all the contributions that Japan, the UK, Germany and many others made to the information age and pretend it was “all American”. I don’t think too many are doubting that much technology is American owned now and / or Chinese (and Taiwanese) made but your phrasing is disingenuous.
Why? I haven’t heard any announcements that China’s trying to tariff my country into being vulnerable to annexation.
China is one of the most protectionist countries in the world. Try to do bussiness there.
Interesting. Looks like the US is following…
https://checkthelabel.ca is another one that let’s you scan barcodes to determine where a product is made.
It’s worth mentioning that some products have barcodes that don’t have a country encoded. I know because there is a retailer in Greece (called “Plaisio”) that has it own in-store brand of TVs and other electronics (called “Turbo-X”), and those products have one of those no-country barcodes. When it comes to their TVs, you can obviously tell from the remote control that they are Vestel TVs (what else could they be?), but when it comes to their other products, good luck finding out the registered country of the company that made them.
A sample of such a barcode can be seen below, good luck deciphering it (I blanked out the serial number, but the barcode is unchanged):
https://ibb.co/YgM54Dg
So, if you want to avoid barcode lookup apps/websites, just use one of those no-country barcodes.
And then there is the fact barcodes do not accurately reflect country-of-origin even if they have a country encoded:
https://www.barcodestalk.com/learn-about-barcodes/resources/barcode-country-codes
Yeah, sure, I am going to buy an alternative to American GPUs and x86 CPUs from Europe… hmm… can you recommend a brand?
Similarly, all non-American alternatives to popular online services are nobodies.
We’ve been through this with the US invasion of Iraq, where anti-war protesters told you to not buy x86 CPUs from Intel or AMD without telling you where to buy x86 CPUs from.
Not that I would participate in such a boycott anyway, the US is a sovereign nation and has the right to impose tariffs. Honestly, I wish the EU would do the same so Turkey would stop sending us agricultural produce laced with dangerous pesticides (long banned in EU countries).
Intel’s influence is waning. ARM seems to be the platform with the least geopolitical ties.
If you want x86 compatibility, your only choices are Intel and AMD. There used to be a third choice called Zhaoxin (the company that bought VIA’s x86 division), but Zhaoxin CPUs don’t work with Windows 11, so you are buying an SoC with a CPU that’s already dead in the water (as far as Windows compatibility is concerned). Not that Zhaoxin CPUs were any good, but now they are not even a choice.
Similarly, there are no alternatives to Intel, AMD, or Nvidia GPUs when it comes to x86 systems.
And guess what? My GOG library and Steam library are x86-only. Also, most of the new games aren’t available on GOG (which I prefer because it gives you an offline installer), so I have to buy them on Steam. Which is owned by an American company called Valve. And I often watch reviews of videogames on YouTube, which is owned by some other American company. This brings me to my other point: all non-American alternatives to popular online services are contentless nobodies.
Good thing I bought the CPU and GPU I intend to use for the next ten years about a year ago when I replaced my Athlon II X2 270 from 2011 and my GeForce GTX 750 from 2014.
That’ll give me plenty of time to see how things unfold.
(Hell, 99% of the games I care about run just fine on the hand-me-down Core i3 from 2012 with a 2009 Radeon that I’m still using as a “game console”… and they’re all GOG.com, Itch.io, or old Humble Bundle games… or emulated. Gotta love owning a cartridge dumper.)
Sure, but other people may need to upgrade (plus, stuff might break), so that’s not universal advice you can give to everyone.
Also, if you want to buy games for your PC, Valve (Steam) and EA (Ea App) have the market pretty much covered. I wish I could buy some games on GOG, but I can’t. Again, even if you don’t buy PC games, other people do. And then there is YouTube, which has pretty much zero competition (all competitors are contentless nobodies).
(darn, I meant cornered, not covered)
I wish I could say the same, but I am not the kind of person that buys (or plays) “filler” games or low-budget titles just to make my collection look big or kill my time, I know what I want and I focus on getting it.
If GOG ever gets games like the Project CARS games, the DiRT games, the Need For Speed games, the new Tomb Raider games, Assasins Creed Blag Flag etc, then we’ll talk. GOG has some good modern games, such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Wreckfest (which I of course bought on GOG), but that’s it, the rest are on Steam or EA App.
So again, buying only from GOG.com, Itch.io, or Humble Bundle is not universal advice you can give to everyone.
Funny you should phrase it that way when a big part of the reason I’m so happy with sticking to GOG.com and a bit of Itch.io, Humble, and emulation is that I see modern AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077 as “filler games”.
I’d much rather play a small labour of love like Stardew Valley or Baba Is You than wander around a big, relatively empty world for 50+ hours.
And RISC-V is rising quick. You have to look 10-20 years out on these things. It took as long for Linux to basically take over the world, and the same is going to happen with an unencumbered source of silicon. In the case of CPUs, it might even happen quicker – China and others are heavily investing state funds to push this stuff forward.
BTW, geopolitically, the world is clearly splitting in to 3 separate spheres, with the United States basically going backward toward the least power efficient platforms (including in transportation and heating). I wonder whether we will see incompatible base platforms between them: USA on x86_64, Europe on ARM, and China on RISC-V. (Many are predicting Africa to go along with Europe, but I think it more likely they end up in China’s sphere of influence.)
Stranger things have happened.
The worldwide food industry alone is almost twice the size of the worldwide tech industry.
Sure, but how much of the US’s exports are food and how much is online services and technology (direct and indirect, aka designed in the US but manufactured in China or Taiwan)?
Re: food, according to a news story I watched yesterday (can’t remember which Canadian mainstream network it was by), Saskatchewan is the source of a third of the world’s potash and something like 80% of the U.S.’s supply.
If we decide to choke down or cut off their fertilizer, they’ll very much feel it domestically.
Yeah, sure, cut off their fertilizer to massively cut your agricultural produce. Especially considering that the other large producer of fertilizer is Russia, which is under heavy sanctions by both the EU and Canada.
Canada’s retaliatory measures aren’t done with the primary purpose of pivoting away from trading with the U.S.
They’re done with an intent analogous to how embargoes and sanctions on places like Cuba are intended to work… they’re meant to make Trump’s business-owner donors rise up and demand that he reconsider.
Since you asked a direct question…
US Agriculture accounts for about 8% of US GDP and the tech sector is around 9%. Maybe closer than you thought.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1239480/united-states-leading-states-by-tech-contribution-to-gross-product/
About 75% of US GDP is “services” with about half of that going to consumers.
kurkosdr,
It doesn’t even represent what people in the US want. What’s happening is that Trump imposes massive taxes on imported products in order to help subsidize tax cuts for the wealthiest people and companies on the order of trillions. Unfortunately people are really uneducated and don’t realize what’s happening right under their noses. So many Trump voters who are interviewed erroneously believe that other countries are the ones paying trump’s taxes instead of themselves.
*Facepalm*
https://giphy.com/gifs/Goldmaster-star-trek-tng-startrek-X4EA759a3Kqvclw7Np
Trump is a cult leader, but unlike cults that are mere curiosities to us, this cult runs the country. The autocratic leanings and support of other autocratic nations is on clear display. I don’t say it lightly, but democracy itself is genuinely at stake. All the republicans who defended the constitution above Trump during his last administration are kicked out now, they’ve been replaced with total lackeys. It hasn’t stopped there either, the entire federal workforce is undergoing a political shakedown under the guise of saving tax payer money. The real agenda behind the firings however is to eliminate everyone who contradicts Trump or places checks on Trump’s power. Everyone who investigated Trump’s crimes and even foreign election interference are gone. The FBI is being dismantled because it doesn’t serve Trump. The vacancies will be filled again with puppets that serve Trump.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/top-fbi-official-forced-criticizing-trump-pursuit-agents-investigated-rcna194610
It’s all so depressing to witness democratic foundations eroding on our watch. God I hope it doesn’t fail, but in case things turn out for the worse other democracies across the world need to take steps to protect themselves. It sucks, it’s not what anybody wants, but it’s what they have to do.
Trudeau put it well…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-full-spech-trump-trade-war-1.7474451
Import tariffs were one of Trump’s major campaign promises, so the people who voted for him knew what they were getting.
Also, “tariffs are making stuff more expensive” is one way of looking at it, the other is that they make imported stuff more expensive than domestic stuff, which allows domestic producers to raise prices to just below the ones of imported stuff, which means there is an incentive to manufacture stuff domestically (and hire local workers). I mean, the US is not some unimportant little country that can’t hope to have an extensive domestic production and manufacturing base, the US can produce and manufacture pretty much everything (including computer chips) domestically.
Also, at this point, it’s worth mentioning that the US has been bleeding manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Asia for several decades, and the response of mainstream politicians was to tell Blue-collar Joe to get a university degree (Obama’s “some jobs that are not going to come back because they are low wage, low skill jobs” response really rubbed blue-collar workers off the wrong way). So, mainstream politicians (and the people who vote for mainstream politicians) don’t get to blame Blue-collar Joe for voting Trump after dumping on blue-collar workers so badly. If they don’t care about the concerns of blue-collar workers, then blue-collar workers won’t care about theirs.
It takes a certain kind of reasoning to assume that people voted for one or even some of Trump (or any other politician or political party) policy position. That’s not how anything works in reality. What they voted for was some improvement – what they’ll get is chaos, and ultimately a reduction in US importance in the international sphere. We’ll likely end up in some kind of very serious crisis moment. But let’s be clear, both parties have been extracting American workers for generations, we just go to the point that _something_ had to happen, and it has now happened. It’s just not going to be what anyone thinks (either side – they are both incredibly programmed, and unwilling to see what’s right in front of them).
Also, if you think there is any kind of reason behind Trump’s stupid trade war, you just haven’t been paying attention. What he thinks is always, very very basic. He knows brand marketing, and he knows nothing else (it’s why he always talk about TV ratings – he literally doesn’t understand anything else). If he thinks he can sell the policy as a win, and bolster his personal brand, he’ll try it. The moment he understands he can’t sell it, he’ll stop. And look at all that waffling. It’s not negotiation, it’s not some grand master plan. He knows brand marketing, and he’ll do whatever, and say whatever, to promote his brand – that’s it. It’s not deeper than that. Pay closer attention, and stop being so damn gullible.
Tariffs boost domestic manufacturing (and result in more local workers getting hired), your opinion of Trump won’t change that.
Also, you are free to hate on Trump voters, but I can tell you they aren’t exactly in love with people who buy imported cars, electronics, and food while they see layoffs in the manufacturing sector or see their agricultural produce having to compete with cheaper imports. The practice of Obama to present the loss of manufacturing and agricultural jobs to other countries as “inevitable” (see previous comment of mine) was a terrible mistake. But that’s the bad thing about ideology (for example the ideology that “tariffs are always bad”): It can blidnly lead you down to the wrong path and you’ll keep doubling down on it without ever questioning it.
Tariffs *protect* domestic industry. It cannot build domestic industry. If you just slap a tariff on foreign goods, without doing the homework of building your domestic industry first, you just make everything expensive. Even when you do protect domestic industry, you can be sure, it’ll make everything expensive. Ask yourself, why does China have $24k electric cars (that you probably don’t even know about), while the United States doesn’t have anything cheaper than $50k Teslas? It’s because Chinese cars are tariffed at 100% – very good for Tesla – good for you?
I don’t hate Trump voters. I hate Trump, and Republican and Democrat elites. Why on Earth would you take anything I say about that idiot personally? He doesn’t care about you at all – that I can guaranty.
Also note – I didn’t say anything positive about Obama. Both parties despise you and me. You have to read all the words. If you did, maybe the country wouldn’t be standing at the precipice. There is no us vs. them here, along party lines – they both are responsible, equally, for the state of things. You might think Trump’s anti-them rhetoric sounds like something new, but he’s so full of shit, it’s hard to know where to start. He definitely doesn’t stand for anything real – least of all workers… He stands only for his personal brand, exclusively. If you don’t know what brand marketing is, I can recommend a few books on the subject. It’ll definitely help you understand what he is, and how he operates.
It provides an incentive to build out domestic industry.
PROTIP: In the US, the government doesn’t build the industry, companies build the industry (and they know how to do their homework). The government sets the incentives, though, and that’s where tariffs come into play: If there is an incentive to move production to Mexico or some Asian country due to lower labor costs or import food from another country because it’s cheaper, tariffs cancel that incentive and introduce an incentive to manufacture and produce stuff domestically.
Also, the people who work in the manufacturing sector or agricultural sector don’t care if things get more expensive if that means their job security becomes better. No, they don’t care how much your EV will cost as long as their domestic car manufacturing job is secure (for example). They have much more to gain than to lose. Better be employed so you can buy the more expensive domestic goods than be unemployed and watch others buying cheaper imported goods.
But there is an “us vs them”, the people with degrees who do not work in manufacturing or agricultural jobs thrived under the Obamas and Bidens, while Blue-collar Joe saw his job relocate to Mexico or Asia. People like you who oppose tariffs have made no effort to convince them that not voting for tariffs is good for them. Then come election day you act surprised those people exist (and vote) despite not being in your immediate social circle.
CaptainN-,
This is such an important point. Tariffs don’t make domestic industries more competitive. Tariffs manipulate prices to artificially steer consumers to domestic markets, but it’s strongly implied that domestic markets are not competitive when they need tariffs. To actually make domestic markets genuinely competitive requires expertise, investments, and long term planning. Trump isn’t the guy to do any of those things. He uses Tariffs as a shortcut but their use long term will actually result in US markets becoming even less competitive over time and more dependent on tariffs 🙁
And for the second time: That’s what Blue-collar Joe (who works in manufacturing or agriculture) wants. He wants everyone in the US to be artificially forced to buy domestic goods (even if domestic goods are “non-competive”, aka more expensive and worse value-for-money) so his job is secure! Why can’t you understand that?
So what? The US is big enough to produce and manufacture everything domestically, it’s not some unimportant little country that will never be able to produce and manufacture everything domestically. Also, you people forget that companies such as Toyota and Mercedes (and potentially Foxconn) can bring technology and product design from abroad tariff-free, as long as they manufacture them domestically.
Again, you are confusing US manufacturing with US companies/IP. As I said above, companies such as Toyota and Mercedes (and potentially Foxconn) can bring technology and product design from abroad tariff-free, as long as they manufacture them domestically.
@kurkosdr what?
Your arguments are all over the place… it’s always like this, circular non-rational logic, then I have to fill in the logic you didn’t bother to think about at even a surface level. It’s always like this when talking with right wing peoples.
Here’s a sequence of events:
– US government helps companies move over seas for decades (the idea that government and private sector are separate, and don’t support each other is easily, repeatedly debunkable nonsense – you need to read more, from more diverse sources.)
– Trump applies blanket tariffs against entire countries, regardless of industry, driving prices of those goods up.
– They retaliate, making it harder for American companies to do business.
– This seems to be the contentious part – you seem to think American companies will just be able to, what, magically build entire industries that took decades to outsource in half a minute? What are you talking about? Do you know how long it takes to build an electronics plant? To build not just the capital, but to train all the workers you need to make it work? Even then, how many people do you think they’ll employ – they’ll be so heavily automated…
It will take DECADES to build those industries back up. For so many reasons, not the least of which – we don’t have the population who knows how to do any of that shit any more, and we don’t have the young people to even staff them. Americans are old – that means expensive – to employ.
I’m NOT against doing any, or all of that – but if you think just applying a tariff will somehow address this in any kind of reasonable time frame – you probably also think Musk can put a man on Mars… There’s just not reality here. It’s all pure fantasy land.
I’m curious though – when Trump eventually drops the entire of idea of using tariffs (he’s already dropped it all a few times) what magic will you use to explain that?
Yes, that’s one of the reasons mainstream politicians that ran the show for decades lost to Trump
Yes, I’ve analyzed the reasoning above.
Let’s see who wins this one. The fact companies such as Toyota and Mercedes had to manufacture all their US-market trucks in the US to not pay the “chicken tax” shows that the US will probably win, it’s too big of a market to ignore
No necessarily, foreign companies will build domestic manufacturing plants in the US. Also, you guys seem to think that Blue-collar Joe cares about prices more than he cares about not losing his job.
I doubt the whole “decades” thing, Tesla did it with start-up money for much less. You underestimate the impact of incentives in making companies not drag their feet and scale up quickly. About the “heavily automated” thing, if companies can build fully automated or near-fully automated plants in the US, this will be a net benefit for humanity, but that’s a big “if”. For now, companies need labor, that’s why they relocate manufacturing to countries with low labor costs in the absence of tariffs.
kurkosdr,
I don’t think we’re underestimating government incentives, which is quite a different policy from Tariffs. Telsa has received tons of loans and grants paid for by taxpayers. Tesla experienced financial hardships even after Musk took over. if not for government committing to invest in EVs (ironically enough by Democrats) we don’t really know whether Tesla would have grown as it did or even survived. Blindly imposing Tariffs on foreign cars is not what built Tesla. EV manufactures and Tesla in particular had significant government investment and aide.
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/?company_op=starts&company=tesla&order=sub_year&sort=asc
Take another industry where the US did the opposite. Tariffs on solar panels but a failure to secure domestic investments. The US has lost the competition for solar. We’re extremely dependent on Chinese solar panels and we’re paying a high taxes to import them.
@kurkosdr you really don’t seem to understand the basics. For example, a tax break, is a gimmick – it’s government money on the other side of a ledger (whcih has 2 sides – with me? income and expense. If the government cuts expense for a company, it’s EXACTLY the same as providing free money – it’s just 2 different sides of a ledger. On the government side – again, 2 sides of the same ledger – they can boost revenue through taxes or print money to give money to a company or industry, or they can tax that company or industry less, and take it out of government revenue – same effect, different sides of the ledger. I don’t know why your side always misses this, but it’s tiresome to always have to explain it.)
Tesla was founded 2 decades ago, and received TONS of government help. They are STILL not competitive. You really don’t seem to have a grasp of the facts here.
Foreign companies can’t build – and STAFF – anything any faster than any American entrepreneur. We are talking about the same timescales here. TSMC just announced a new plant in Arizona (which is mindbogglingly stupid, for so many reasons) – which BTW, is planning to use CHIPS money – we will definitely see how long it takes to get that up and running. It’s a minimum of 5-7 years – that’s if NOTHING goes wrong (and they are building it in Arizona – plenty will go wrong…) Maybe ask Apple how long it took to get a simple glass plant up and running – oh that’s right, after years and years of wasted effort, they closed it… You really aren’t paying very close attention.
I will say, one thing TSMC has going for it, is geopolitics. America’s international thinkers really want to get out of Taiwan, so there’s that at least. But I mean – did throwing money at Intel work? This isn’t going to go how anyone thinks.
I have a theory —
Electing a fibbing felon as one’s leader is what happens when “tax cuts!” has been the mantra for decades.
The result is generations of citizens who can’t tell fact from fiction because their public school systems were whittled down to just warehousing the children.
And what you don’t understand is that 5-7 years of paying 25% more for a product, or you know, even an eternity of paying 25% more for a product, is still preferable to a blue-collar worker if that means having a stable and good-paying job (as a result of higher demand for jobs domestically). Let’s not forget that the golden age for the working class was when an RCA TV cost $5000 in today’s money, yet Blue-collar Joe didn’t mind because he had a stable, well-paying job.
Also, I am fully aware that having to manufacture things domestically means Apple stocks will fall. The reason RCA never reached the valuation that Apple has right now (in inflation-adjusted dollars) is because they had to share some of their revenue with the American working class by hiring American workers to build their products instead of having impoverished Chinese workers build their products. Guess what, Blue-collar Joe doesn’t care about your Apple stocks. This also answers your question regarding “the wealth distribution problem” below: The reason Apple can concentrate so much wealth in their corporate coffers is because their products are built with impoverished Chinese labor. They pass a small amount of the savings as cost reduction to the customer and keep the lion’s share of the additional profit margin for themselves.
As an aside, the problem with modern liberals is that they pretend to represent the interests of the working class while having lost contact with the interests of the working class. They’d rather argue to exhaustion anyone who points out the obvious in forums and comment sections so they can keep living in the bubble that the working class still likes them that try to reconnect with the working class.
kurkosdr,
Who are you to tell them that? Prices are hurting everyone here. It was among if not the dominant issue for voters across the political spectrum. What you are saying may make perfect sense to you, but you are incorrect in saying people voted for that because they absolutely did not. While I disagree with a lot of voters here, I do know that the majority of them aren’t in agreement with you on prices and they don’t understand that tariffs are a tax on them.
Secondly I’m afraid this notion that jobs are coming back is extremely naive. You’d need tarrifs of 100% or more to make US labor competitive, it would spawn an affordability crisis when people are already struggling with inflation. Those jobs are going to be automated.
kurkosdr
They were sold on the lie that other countries pay the tarrifs, after all that’s literally what Trump said in campaigns. Those who actually understand who pays the Tariffs are much less supportive of them.
Maybe you can make the case that uneducated voters deserve what they get even though they’re being lied to. Still, this is very different position than saying that they knew what they were getting. I have to call out this argument because they really do not know that Trump’s tariffs are a tax on them.
I’m sad to say it, but the US lost at manufacturing. Even with the 25% import taxes, imports are still cheaper. It’s really remarkable how Chinese cars (with 100% tariffs btw) are still cheaper than American. I’m not saying Chinese products are a beacon of quality or anything insane like that, it’s a lot of junk. But there is no denying that they are way competitive than us….by an even greater margin than 25%. We’ve been down this path before and nearly all economists agree that protectionist measures to protect our industries don’t make us more competitive…we actually become less competitive and we know the outcome as a matter of fact: consumers will end up paying more for less.
Now maybe there could be an ulterior reason for imposing tariffs, like curbing child labor or something like that. But Trump’s tariffs are instigating a trade war with close allies, consumers will loose all around. I highly recommend you watch Trudeau’s speech.
Trump will of course lie till he’s blue, but ike it or not trump isn’t bringing those jobs back either. Cheap chinese labor is not going to be replaced by expensive labor here. It’s going to be automated robots that take those jobs and it’s only because Chinese labor is cheaper than robots that they haven’t been replaced already.
As I said to the other guy above, people who work in manufacturing jobs or agricultural jobs know very well who will pay the tariffs: The people who don’t work in manufacturing jobs or agricultural jobs (and currently buy imported cars, electronics, and food, and benefit from the cheaper prices) will. And guess what: that’s what the people who work in manufacturing jobs or agricultural jobs want! They want people who don’t work in manufacturing jobs or agricultural jobs to buy the more expensive domestic stuff, so stop trying to convince them that they don’t know what they are voting for. They do.
So, how is a 0% tariff better than a 25% tariff? If anything, your argument is an argument for higher tariffs than what the current US administration wants.
Citation needed. If anything, the “chicken tax” on trucks saved domestic truck manufacturing in the US, since even Toyota and Mercedes have to manufacture every truck sold in the US domestically. Also, for the second time, the people who work in manufacturing jobs or agricultural jobs want the consumers who buy imported goods to be force to buy domestic and pay more for less, that’s part of the plan!
kurkosdr,
You’re a smart guy, but I don’t think you realize the state of education here for the masses. They genuinely don’t understand that tariffs are a tax on them.
It’s not just me, most economists are in agreement about tariffs. Fixing our manufacturing base is important but tariffs don’t provide the right incentives. Unfortunately in the US this is made worse by corrupt politicians doing favors for powerful corporate lobbyists rather than embracing the spirit of competition. The best way to prepare ourselves for external competition would have been to foster internal competition. Regrettably though, rather than encouraging healthy competition within the US, we’ve been protecting our industries from competition. Just as CaptainN-, said, this isn’t just a republican or democrat issue, it’s systemic across parties. This is a huge problem and it’s not going to be fixed with tariffs.
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/economists-agree-trump-is-wrong-on-tariffs/
It’s not that one tariff level is better or worse than another – it’s all about how you use them. Biden kept Trump’s initial tariffs – really! Surprise surprise, the 2 parties agreed on a thing (they agree on most things – again, I don’t have an ally in those parties, and neither do you.) They were targeted, and constrained. I don’t think anyone is arguing against tariffs as a tool in specific cases. But if you think just applying a tariff against an entire country, across industries is going to do ANYTHING other than simply drive prices up by whatever percentage the tariff is, you have a rude surprise coming. THAT is a stupid way to use a tariff. And it WILL backfire, enough that even a legendary idiot like Trump will likely reverse course. When he does, will you come back here and make up some stupid story about he’s a genius negotiator? Or will you understand that he’s just an idiot, doing stupid idiot things?
There you go again, arguing that blue-collar workers don’t know what they are voting for.
PROTIP: They do, you just don’t like how they voted because it goes against your interests as a person who consumes cheaper imported goods.
What if I told you that those economists have vested economic interests in arguing against tariffs? For example, because they want to be hired by finance firms that benefit from a lack of tariffs. None of those economists has managed to explain how the “chicken tax” saving the US truck manufacturing sector was bad for the US (I repeat: the US, not some unimportant little country that cannot hope to have domestic truck manufacturing).
Again: Blue-collar workers don’t care whether domestic-manufacturing goods are worse value-for-money than foreign-manufactured goods. For blue-collar workers, tariffs provide the right incentives.
There you go again, conveniently confusing US manufacturing with US companies/IP. For the third-time or so: internal competition is NOT required (it’s desirable but not required), as long as Toyota and Mercedes (and Foxconn) are forced to manufacture things domestically in the US, Blue-collar Joe doesn’t care what badge he is gluing on the product or who owns the IP.
That’s the whole “other countries will retaliate” argument repeated numerous times. Counterarguments are:
– Other countries didn’t retaliate against the “chicken tax”
– The US is big enough that it has much more to gain that to lose (I am talking about employment numbers and domestic working-class wealth, not “the economy” as in “stocks go higher”).
@CaptainN
Apparenly Trump thinks that his previous tariffs were good but not enough, and wants to pretty much force US citizens to buy domestic goods 100% of the time. You say that won’t happen. I say the US economy is big enough to make it happen (I am saying this without emotion, I am just looking at the size of the US and the US market). Let’s see who wins on this one, the US or the countries that export goods to the US. Yes, I will remain on this site reading your comments.
kurkosdr,
And for good reason: it’s true. I don’t mean it as an insult to anyone. And it’s not even a judgement on their votes. But damn it man I’m not going to sit idly back while others justify reality distortion bullshit. That’s what it really is. You have no idea how many people there are here taking Trump’s lies as the truth.
https://x.com/acyn/status/1827139464906600538
You may not know many Americans, and I can’t fault you for that but still those of us who actually live hear are very alarmed at how much misinformation has permeated society.. Yes average Joes are absolutely being conned by it! Once you see it there is no denying it. I realize nobody likes to hear that, especially not from “elites”, but those of us who have intellectual credibility can’t ignore that this is actually happening…for real. I for one don’t say these things to put down others, their voices matter to me, but that so many people are being educated by sources that contain nothing but misinformation is extremely concerning to me and it should be concerning to you too.
It’s not just blue collar voters – white collar voters are just as capable of over confidence, of wishful thinking, and of blind faith in the wrong ideas, and the wrong people. People vote for vague sentiment, and for values. They do NOT vote for policy. For example, all the over educated elite wannabes, who all keep voting for Democrats, keep voting for all kinds of other scams – including balanced budgets, and other nonsense. I already told you, BOTH parties did this, not one more than the other. They have basically the same policy. I already told you, Biden continued many of Trump’s policies, and Trump continued many of Obama’s. You really gotta pay closer attention. I’m just not going to pretend Trump offers anything that will actually work – that’s not his intention, he’s not intelligent enough, curious enough, or thoughtful enough to figure anything out. He’s just a clown, running a clown show, for ratings. Eventually, you are going to see it. And I’m sorry to have been the one to tell you so directly.
At this moment, you think x86 from Intel and AMD is still the most important thing? You just aren’t paying close enough attention.
x86 CPUs (and GPUs for x86 CPUs) is something you can’t avoid buying from an American company, that’s all I am saying.
Again, the “boycott the US” people are telling as to not buy x86 CPUs from Intel and AMD, without telling us where to buy x86 CPUs from.
The “boycott the US” thing is far more serious than it seems. It’s less likely to come in the form of an actual organized boycott, and way more likely to come from government and business interests, hedging their bets against countries centralized in a hostile nation. There was already a movement to diversify server architectures, even within American companies – I would expect we’ll see accelerated efforts to build up alternative platforms, and like in China, we’ll likely see some hedging that burns the planet. Governments and companies need compute hardware – but they don’t need efficiency from American silicon. Once the world gets over the shock of the loss of America as a trade *partner*, I think we are going to see rapid adoption of alternative platforms. The only real question is, how fast can they get the fabs online?
China already has alternative platforms, they even have x86 CPUs (Zhaoxin). But those x86 CPUs don’t run Windows 11 and generally aren’t that good, so Chinese private citizens will keep buying Intel and AMD, because they are the only viable options for x86 computing.
And then there is the question of what the EU will buy. Will they buy from China? Considering that EU countries took great effort to strip communications infrastructure made by Huawei, probably not. EU countries will keep buying Intel and AMD, both government and private citizens. I’d love to see a European x86 CPU (or any European CPU for that matter) but I don’t see it happening.
Why would anyone care if it can run Windows in the long run?
They buy x86 when it’s convenient. When it’s not, they’ll scale an alternative so fast, your head will spin. I haven’t used Windows in my house for years. At work (web developer), no one uses Windows (or x86 for that matter). Seriously, what makes you think that’s a relevant argument at all, for anything?
What will EU countries buy? IDK, maybe Samsung ARM CPUs running Linux? There are so many options these days… And yes, they’ll buy Huawei – absolutely. The orders are already in. What are you even talking about?
Unless I’m mistaken, you’re the only one here talking about x86 CPUs (and I haven’t seen any other example elsewhere either, but “elsewhere” being the Internet, it is of course possible to find some instances of it, I’m just not sure they have a statistical value).
And I haven’t seen anyone here either saying “do not buy, under any circumstances, like ever, anything from the US”.
What I see is people talking about tools to avoid buying US products where there are alternatives, ideally produced closer to home. There’s absolutely no reason to make this an absolute, “do or die” rule that must necessarily always be followed. Unless of course you want to discredit the whole thing as absurd and senseless.
So please, you want to keep buying US products, that’s absolutely fine, please continue. But don’t try to ridicule people willing to push a political agenda that fits them with their money and trying to ease the life of other people wanting to do the same. Particularly when said political agenda helps creating jobs closer to their own homes, which is exactly what the Trump administration says is good, and actually on that I can agree. The violence of their method to achieving it is certainly greater than that of those pushing apps to interested people, though.
But, hey, to each their own, right ?
Sure, but you’re acting like that can’t change. I mean I never thought in my lifetime I’d hear of Canada ‘joining the EU’ even if it is just tounge-in-cheek. The reason why everything is so “US” oriented is the influence the US has but that comes with guarantees – mostly protection from ‘the bad guys’. When the US treats friends as enemies the they will look elsewhere for solutions. Oh if only I could buy a Jack Daniels & Coke in Ontario…
Those are mostly US designed products, and most likely designed by Democrats in cities. A better idea would be for an app that lists if it was manufactured by a red state, and by a Trump supporting company. They’ll still vote for whatever Fox News and Fox News copycats tell them, even if they go bankrupt; but at least it will be more targeted to the now anti-democracy crowd.
USA is financially bankrupt, they just haven’t been foreclosed on yet. Nothing happening over there should be surprising. Being the reserve currency of the world doesn’t work. It automatically makes your currency stronger than other countries and that kills your export market (and your employment market) and makes you a permanent importer. It’s quite natural they’d try to become an export country again to avoid a financial disaster, but they will have to give up being the reserve currency and their military empire to do it. No country has ever come back from being $40 trillion in debt. We’re watching the closing down of the US empire in real time. It’s going to be painful and it’s going to cause massive geopolitical upheaval, but the alternative looks like the collapse of the Soviet Union. Trade, geopolitics and all the rest of it is going to have to realign around the new realities of the world. Chinese trade share will increase. Hopefully we can get something better than X86 to replace the current set of tech. I like the idea of a MIPS RISCV hybrid CPU, it’s software that hasn’t felt innovative lately. I’m hoping AI allowing more people to program and make their own tools helps fix that.
This is 100% correct. I’m here in the US, and I can also say that domestically, there is no one at all, in either viable political party, talking about seriously addressing the wealth distribution problem – including even Bernie Sanders, as much as I love him. We are really circling the drain, and it’s probably going to get very, very ugly. I imagine it’ll get ugly, when folks realize that everything Trump and the entire Republican party (he’s not alone, despite the rhetoric) is doing will hasten the decline, and make it permanent. When people lose their social security, and their homes, and their retirement, and potentially their ability to eat (yeah, it can get that bad), it’s going to get interesting around here.
Score a point for Peter Turchin.
BTW, “AI” and “LLMs” and “AGI” – those are “centrist” hail marry passes, attempts for America to stay relevant after losing the green tech race – it will NOT work, for multiple reasons.
First, the tech isn’t there, and won’t be for decades. What you are seeing in the hype bubble is desperation driven hype. Reals expectations have that stuff on the order of decades away.
Second, whatever tech is there, China can immediately match, as they did with DeepSeek. (And India isn’t too far behind.) They have 4 times the population to draw from, and are increasing investment in education, while America is divesting… and we only train domestic lawyers anyway, not domestic engineers – the foreign engineers we teach, are increasingly moving back home to their countries of origin.
It’s almost impossible to overstate how utterly boned America is.
Made O’Meter’s homepage says it is an “experimental AI app”.
Is Thom promoting AI apps now?
Human laziness=Data collection. There is a lot if product market information this Made O Meter can collect.
Besides most countries only require final product information being the last step. Yes problem we had where I was that vegetable that were label product of X country were in fact just packed in X country with the complete contents inside the bag being from China that was not X country. So I would not be surprised if Made O Meter tells you something is not a USA product when the only part that is not at USA product is the packaging.
There is not method to truly “easily and quickly avoid” a particular countries product. By reading labels and the like you can reduce you usage of particular countries product. Its kidding yourself that you can avoid completely.
I have noticed some USA can goods(yes truly usa made) since the trade war that have altered what they have printed on the can not to straight up say product of USA on can with this swap to just POU and it gets worse. They have also altered to embossing the batch number. Yes the POU printed on with solvent removable ink.
Now this leaves the question how many USA products are going to alter themselves to make themselves simpler to relabel.
Yes these tins I first noticed this one was USA salmon. How long until we have like UAE antarctic salmon that just USA tin salmon that been though relabeling. Trade wars always equal proxy countries making profit.
China has done the same things with food products in the past. Both USA and China are very skilled at cheating ways around trade wars. Yes I like the one where China was like we will not buy Australian Coal they finally gave on on that once they worked out Australia was selling coal to India for a higher price then what they would sell to China then India was selling that same Australian coal at a higher price again but to China as India extracted coal. Yes it was India firm extracted coal because they had a 10 percent share in the Australian mining company.
Trade wars like it or not make it harder for us poor consumers to know where our products come from because the companies effected by the trade war will have in their best interest to work out how to use a proxy country to bypass the restrictions/taxes/ tariff and the higher the tariff the more cost advantage to cheating the system.
oiaohm,
I agree with your whole post. There’s tons of loopholes and proxy countries that are virtually impossible to police. Right now the US only spot checks shipments. They’ll never be able to catch everything, but they can certainly make it harder. The problem is they’d have to hire armies of inspectors if they really want to go through all the containers.
According to this there’s 10k-42k TEU (large shipping containers) worth of goods every day from china alone.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104473/daily-container-traffic-from-china-to-the-us/
Add Canada and Mexico to that and you’ve got triple. Double that again for the rest of the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/business/economy/mexico-china-canada-imports-tariffs.html
I suspect a lot of cargo just gets a peek at the manifest and then waived in, there’s no manpower to inspect everything. To do so thoroughly would take hundreds of thousands of employees at the cost of several tens of billions of dollars per year.
Edit: It occurs to me that I don’t know how tariffs work with virtual goods like games on steam. Are those subject to 25% taxes and how is it enforced? I’ll have to research this.
https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/a72040b4/tariffs-101-what-you-need-to-know-about-tariffs
“””Digital goods are protected from the imposition of tariffs under CUSMA/USMCA. Article 19.3 of the agreement provides that neither Canada nor the US shall impose customs duties, fees or other charges on or in connection with the importation or exportation of digital products transmitted electronically, between a person in Canada and a person in the US. A digital product includes a computer program, text, video, image, sound recording, or other product that is digitally encoded, produced for commercial sale or distribution, and that can be transmitted electronically. The restriction under the trade agreement, however, does not prevent the imposition of GST/HST on digital goods.”””
Alfman as long as Trump obeys the USA different agreements there should be zero Tariffs on digital goods. Now if Trump decides to rip up these agreements all bets are off.
Yes this could take a horrible hit from hell if these agreements are ripped up as in every time you download your steam library you need to pay the Tariff/duity on the digital goods you downloaded.
Most countries have decide not to have Tariffs on digital goods because it can turn stupid really quickly.. Remember Tariff is calculated every time you cross the board for the value of the item crossing the boarder. Digital good this can be happening every single time you download the item.
Yes you think about it you download a game 10 times and there is a 10% Tariff applied you have paid full game value to government. Gets worse higher the Tariff. Tariff is absolutely the wrong tool for digital goods problem is we cannot be sure that Trumps people will
1) Be smart enough to know this not to do this.
2) Not let greed for tax so they don’t do this stupid.
Yes digital Tariff would effective be death to paid global digital subscriptions to anything. Alfman think about this website you have paid subscription right you are getting services because of that paid subscription now think every time you reload the page you now owe so much Tariff duty on it because you have cross over the intentional boarder digitally. Tariff is just absolutely the wrong tool for digital goods.
oiaohm,
Thank you for the link…yeah I have no idea what happens now. As I understood the tariffs were to cover everything, but does everything actually cover digital goods? Haha. Given that so many game studios are in Montreal, a lot of them could be affected.
It does open up a lot of questions. US customers are likely downloading the games from steam’s US servers even though payments have to be paid to the foreign studios. I also wonder about all the tech companies like google, AWS, apple, etc. Will the the trump tariffs alongside the reciprocal tariffs be applied to internet services? As informative as your link is, one has to wonder if it will be upheld through a contentious trade war.
Preaching to the choir my friend 🙂
“””It does open up a lot of questions. US customers are likely downloading the games from steam’s US servers even though payments have to be paid to the foreign studios. “”””
Alfman Tariffs trigger when you cross international boarders. So US customer downloading from US server are you sure the internet has not decide to route traffic by lets just say china.
https://commsrisk.com/china-telecom-misdirected-net-traffic-through-china/
Historic example of Internet routing screw up. Yes a Tariff on digital this now come o hell I owe import and export duties to the the Tariffs at play because due to internet miss routing you have imported and exported.
Tariffs on digital goods risk triggering in ways that will be unexpected to the unaware.
“payments have to be paid to the foreign studios.”
By on steam us normally a purchase handed by valve with payment passing once over the boarder.
Alfman Tariffs duties or Customs duties are independent to the pursuance of the product. Importer/end consumer in case of software is the custom duties due on.
There have been many different papers written in many countries detailing how if you apply Tariffs to digital goods how this with minor issues turns into absolute disaster resulting in customers being due massive number of times over. Alfman horrible not answered in USA law is each TCP packet classed as it own Tariff apply-able item as long as it been purchased. Yes insane is possible if the rules are wrong you download a game and now you own 1 billion times the games price in Custom duties to the government.
oiaohm,
Granted it’s an interesting hypothetical but I wouldn’t worry about instances where both the source and destination are in the same country. If you think it’s a legal problem, I’d ask for western case law where that opinion has been successfully upheld.
Obviously the importer pays the tariff, however it isn’t obvious how that would work for things like software/music/digital books and the like. Consider that one copy crosses the border yet that copy can sell millions of times. It seems pretty clear that if digital works are subject to tariffs, then there will need to be some accounting of digital sales for tariff purposes.
“””Granted it’s an interesting hypothetical but I wouldn’t worry about instances where both the source and destination are in the same country. If you think it’s a legal problem, I’d ask for western case law where that opinion has been successfully upheld.”””
Not exact 100 percent hypothetical in cases of cyber crime. With the USA in different cases have ruled different ways. Some cases each TCP packet has been classed as a independent events other cases they have been bundled as a single charge for single event. Basically USA case law on how that would be treated has contraction rulings that have in fact been upheld by the supreme court. Basically welcome to clear as mud. USA law has this currently as a legal maybe would be nice of the government in fact gave a ruling before doing digital tariff but this would not help much..
“””source and destination are in the same country”””
Lets say I ship a item from USA mainland to Alaska by road this has to go through Canada do I have to pay Canada tariffs if they apply at the destination the answer is yes. Source and Destination the same country is not good enough for tariffs. Alfman route of package turns out to be important with tariffs. Yes some country creatively causing traffic to be rerouted though them can cause all kinds of tariff problems. Yes this has happened with physical before where ships due to weather/pirates(government funded) pulled into non safe habour port for safety then had local tariffs applied due to be the importer that had to be paid before they could leave.. Yes reason for harbor that boats pull into having to declare if they are covered by safe harbor laws or not. Yes a ship with overseas freight that they will not be off loading will do everything possible to avoid harbors that are not declared safe to avoid the tariff max ouch. Yes some historic ship captions have gone as far as intentionally sinking their ship to avoid having to go into a non safe harbor and have to pay the tariffs from crossing the country boarders would trigger.
“””Obviously the importer pays the tariff, however it isn’t obvious how that would work for things like software/music/digital books and the like. “””
Problem here is tariff rules are mostly stupidly simple and that the problem.
“””Consider that one copy crosses the border yet that copy can sell millions of times. “””
This kind of simple but there is a little more to it because it digital.
Define how that 1 copy cross the boarder.
1 copy cross boarder as a multi cast to all users then all users have to pay the tariff.
! copy cross boarder as a single cast and then that single user gives it on to millions of local users. The party who brought the copy across the boarder pays and no body else.
Only difference to standard tariff is that it possible for a single digital item outside the country to multi cast over the boarder and duplicate crossing the boarder.
“””It seems pretty clear that if digital works are subject to tariffs, then there will need to be some accounting of digital sales for tariff purposes.”””
No this is why it comes very clear very quickly tariff is the wrong tool for the job.
Accounting for sales that under sales taxs not tariff. Yes you can apply sales tax to all imported items and this is not a tariff.
Alfman simple rule a trigger tariff happens when you cross a country boarder unless there is some counter rule like safe harour saying the crossing does not count as long as particular conditions apply. Anything you cannot observe at the boarder crossing cannot be used in application of the tariff. Yes expect digital smuggling using VPNs to be a problem as well with tariff on digital items.
Lot of ways importing a steel injection mold is the same thing as important a digital goods with tariff the tariff at the boarder cannot bill you for the millions of plastic items you are going to sell from that steel injection mold. Just like the tariff on a digital item you are importing 1 copy of that you plan to give to a million + people cannot be for more than that 1 item. Sales tax is what you have to use to get the replicated items..
Now lets say a ship pulls into harbor runs a injection mold on the ship itself so uses the steel mold on the ship and then proceed to give to customers the produced plastic item each one gets a tariff right this is like multi cast digital work.
Tariff is a very simple brute force tool. Its that simple that applying it to digital turns into legal mess.
Yes attempting to law enforce Tariff on digital items will make the war on drugs look like a simple process.
Tariff as a tool works ok on physical items complete falls into a enforcement and consumer nightmare for digital items all due to how simple Tariff.
Yes Tariff trigger is boarder crossings if something not going to tax sanely just from boarder crossing information don’t use Tariff to tax it unless you want to open up Pandora box of stupidity resulting in law enforcement normally working out any possible way to get the party who did it out of power to fix the disaster they have been given..
Yes one historic military COOP was started because a leader said they had to tariff ideas crossing the boarder yes this is 200BC. Issue with non physical items and some government idiot attempting to apply Tariff to it predates computers and every time it turn into an enforcement mess. Yes if you can learn from history you don’t ever tariff non physical items you use other taxs instead that can also lead to some horrible stupid outcomes if you are not careful..
oiaohm,
Rather than talking through anecdotes, I’d really appreciate links to actual cases.
First of all I don’t know if your claim is true even for physical goods.
https://www.thestar.com/business/are-goods-that-simply-travel-through-the-u-s-to-get-to-canada-subject-to/article_437bb4c0-fa99-11ef-b007-b3ad7839c8e4.html
For digital internet goods your interpretation seems even less likely to me. I doubt that western courts are using your interpretation to impose tariffs. You deserve the opportunity to prove that they do, however it’s plain to see that we’ll never arrive at a concrete answer paying armchair experts all day. So it would be extremely helpful when you make claims like this to back them with sources. Fair enough?
To the extent that I can I’d like to encourage you to link sources in all our discussions. It’s a good habit to get into to optimize discussions and shortcut the back and forth.
“””First of all I don’t know if your claim is true even for physical goods.
https://www.thestar.com/business/are-goods-that-simply-travel-through-the-u-s-to-get-to-canada-subject-to/article_437bb4c0-fa99-11ef-b007-b3ad7839c8e4.html“””
The answer is in the CUSMA/USMCA as long as those stand. Good shipping though under those are treated as safe harbor rules. The experts are divided because they cannot work out if those documents are ripped up by Trumps actions or not. If you go back before treaties good shipping though the USA between Canada and Mexico did have tariffs applied.
“””For digital internet goods your interpretation seems even less likely to me. I doubt that western courts are using your interpretation to impose tariffs.”””
We are not talking about western courts in general here we are talking about the broken USA courts. A sane court Weston or not would call a tariff on a non physical item stupidity so unenforceable and the party who did it should be in legal trouble for public endangerment of some form..
CUSMA/USMCA has particular sections forbidding Tariffs on digital goods because the USA in the past has tried already to apply this stupidity and the USA courts did not stop it that time around..
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/why-wto-moratorium-digital-tariffs-should-be-extended
Yes the WTO moratorium against digital tariffs is that there are a lot of countries that have not been smart on this topic. Alfman my interpretations are not theory you can find them all in examples of why the WTO moratorium against digital tariffs were put in place in the first place by different countries who attempted digital tariffs and had it go horrible wrong and one of those historic screw up countries is the USA but was not the worst. Yes there was one country who attempted to apply digital tariff who got the wording wrong and it applied to each individual TCP packet at percentage of the full final item. Trump party wanting to take the USA back to it past does this include repeating historic tariff stupidity.
Alfman yes all studies on digital goods and tariffs basically say don’t with list of historic examples where it wrong. Digital goods use sales taxes so you ignore all the routing in the middle and have simple enforce. If you don’t do this you end up with Pandora box to enforce..
oiaohm,
I don’t know what you mean…what specific cases are you claiming have broken tariffs in US courts?
Beyond a shared disdain for tariffs I can’t find evidence for the specific claims you’ve been making. For example you suggested that digital goods that begin and end in the same country can nevertheless be subjected to foreign tariffs due to internet routing. That’s very interesting food for thought, but without any evidence I remain skeptical that any western court has ruled this to be the case. Please provide evidence!
Let me explain how this comes across when I read it. When you say there’s a list of historic examples and then fail to provide even one of them, it’s just like the president saying he’s got the best ideas to save healthcare and social security and then consistently failing to provide even a single solution….This pattern immediately triggers Machiavellian BS detectors everywhere.
Maybe I’m just getting the wrong impression from your wording. If so, then for what it’s worth discussions might go smoother if you used “IMHO” to clarify that we’re discussing opinions. Opinions are insightful and external validation is much less important than it would be for facts.
“”I don’t know what you mean…what specific cases are you claiming have broken tariffs in US courts?””
USA has not had digital tariffs instead you have to look at digital crime precautions. Now people have been charged as a oversea actor because their packets were routing overseas.
“” remain skeptical that any western court has ruled this to be the case.””
Problem western courts have not got to rule on this in a Tariff case. Instead you have to look to non western courts where they got it wrong. Or digital crime cases where they have been totally inconstant in the USA.
Alfman you keep on asking me for western examples.
https://globalnews.ca/news/11030201/trump-digital-services-tax-tariffs-canada/
Yes trump is trying to go down this stupidity. Canada and other Weston countries use a sales tax in form of a digital services tax that you cannot screw up.
Yes western countries have been using sales taxes on digital goods like the digital services taxs.
Alfman Trump with Tariff on digital goods is going into uncharted zone for western countries. UAE had a digital goods tariff for exactly 1 hour its the one with the goof ball mistake of each packet being a individual tariff application yes telling the King that he owes the complete value of the country in tax already because he just watched a online video kind caused instant reverse.
Alfman Remember until we have trump writing of the tariff to inspect we cannot be sure how far he got it wrong or right. Something else to remember USA use to have per state tariff systems that were not lined up. Yes that also has examples of take item into X state have to pay tariff and take it straight back to Y state where it came from and not get tariff back. The routing risk has historic precedent in the USA before the unified Tariff system.
USA history Trump has tones of room to get it wrong.
oiaohm,
There’s a huge gap between law enforcement observing a transaction that began and ended in a foreign country. versus observing actual crimes. I doubt very much courts would take issue with same country transactions. Regardless, without case law to point at, both our opinions are just speculation.
You’re link sums up the trade war, which I also follow. But it doesn’t provide any details for the questions we’re been asking. We’d probably need to get in touch with somebody who does it for a living to get a clear answer.
Yea well he’s a con man at heart.
Alfman
“””You’re link sums up the trade war, which I also follow. But it doesn’t provide any details for the questions we’re been asking. We’d probably need to get in touch with somebody who does it for a living to get a clear answer.””””
There is a reason why we don’t have a clean answer. To apply a sales tax that is the safe method of putting costs on digital goods would require a vote of congress.
“””Yea well he’s a con man at heart.”””
Yes one problem con man are normally incompetent somewhere.
Trump is using a loophole in presidential power to allow him to directly apply Tariffs. Yes USA agreement with WTO also says USA should not make digital Tariffs. Digital sales taxes those are absolutely allowed WTO. Yes what trump is claiming to counter with a Tariff is a sales tax. There is a reason to use like for like.
Thank you the judges that put Trump basically above the law USA now risks Tariff designs being applied in the USA that WTO and other have forbidden because they don’t work right..
Yes you want particular types of Tariff and Taxes to be illegal and unable to be applied. Remember just because something is stupid does not mean that a person cannot find themselves in horrible location of a court upholding it.
Yes until we see tariff being enforce we will not know how badly it screwed up. History of internal USA Tariff when they existed between states tell as that tariff being applied at each boarder cross is allowed under USA law with no refunds. This makes Digital Tariff lot more risky that most western countries. Most western countries allow for duty refund if a item comes in has Tariff applied and is then shipped back out without being changed. USA does not have this refund system. Yes most western countries have this refund system even in their sales taxes.
USA tax system is not really designed for Taxes/tariff being applied then reversed. This makes using the correct tax type lot more important in the USA system so it only applied where it should be applied because once the tax is applied getting to back is going to be problem.
oiaohm,
Ok, so there is no source. That’s what I wanted to know.
Congress is officially in charge of tariffs, and Trump is not legally supposed to impose tariffs without an emergency, however they’ve largely deferred to the president to do just about whatever he wants with no justification – even just for a grudge.
https://www.usconstitution.net/executive-tariff-authority/
You’re entitled to that opinion, but I don’t think the current government really cares. Judicial and congressional branches having been acting increasingly political even though they are supposed to be a check on executive power.
Finally, an “ai” Thom found useful?
I was quite sure it was about a barcode scanning application. Product barcodes include country of origin, at least when it comes to food products.
Interesting enough, I passed the link around on whatsapp and the site preview loaded …
lovable.dev
Server set up wrong over there.
So this seems to be an “AI” generated thingy. Reliable? Probably not.
I started moving my personal project away from GitHub to Codeberg, leaving X, moving to Vivaldi et al. and looking for euro alternatives to OneDrive.
thanks for pointers. Just to add …
— it seems that BlueSky might be the “smoothest” alternative to Xitter.
— Sync.com offers a reasonable online filestorage service — located in Canada.
“We regret to inform you that Madeometer has occasionally been providing inaccurate information regarding the origin of products. This issue arises due to limitations in the AI technology we employ”
So there seems to be a “good” AI and a “bad” AI, right?
It reminds me a meme showing a couple of A-bombs, each with a comment. The last one has “what bomb?” (supposedly depicting an Israeli A-bomb)
More seriously – if this app is recent, then it may be as well an orchestrated scam or even threat vector from some serious players.
Something I’ve seen commented on in a few places recently is that, for the folks in power in the US, the harm to their own economy is a feature rather than a bug — in that there’s a pattern that’s remarkably consistent, where Republic presidents come in, they do something that tanks the economy, rich folks buy up stocks on the cheap, and then make out like bandits when the markets inevitably rebound. The only difference this time is that Trump & “co-president” Musk are able to benefit from that directly, while previous Republican presidents mostly only benefited indirectly by enriching their donors.
Though this has had the side-effect of unintentionally (for the US) benefiting Canada, in that (at least in terms of global economics) the US’ loss is often Canada’s gain. To put it in terms of an old Simpsons gag:
World Economy: Get me America!
Mr. Smithers: Uh, they’re unavailable sir.
World Economy: Then get me their smaller, but less politically volatile North American equivalent!
And it seems like the main driver of the tariffs is that Trump is incensed that someone else could possibly benefit from his self-dealing (0nly he and his cronies are allowed to do that!) — particularly if they’re not beholden to him or under his direct political control hi some way.