Tracking toy tariffs

Also, can I just say, I fucking hate that the Democrats are too fucking cowardly and pathetic to start calling the tariffs Trump's War on Christmas. It's perfect. They can just hammer it on. ONLY ever ask in public 'why does Donald Trump hate Christmas?' 'Why does Donald Trump hate children?' I mean, if you can't turn their own stupid conservative talking points against them, what are we even doing?
 
EnigmaticClarity said:
Almost every spending bill passed since we first started collecting federal income tax in 1913 regardless of which party passed it. Or so the Project 2025 people think.
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yes and why do they like tariffs instead? because the rich do not have to pay their share then
they don't mind tariffs because then it is pennies to them
that is why they want to replace income tax with tariffs
 
Goldbug said:
they want to replace income tax with tariffs
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As stated a few weeks ago in this thread--federal income tax raises about $4 trillion per year, but prior to this year tariffs raise a bit under $100 billion per year. Trump can raise them all he wants, but even if he cut 100% of federal spending (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc etc) besides defense he'd be unlikely to fund even a quarter of the defense budget with tariffs.

My leading hypothesis is still that he wants to boost tax cuts for the rich as high as he can get them. I'll believe all the chatter from Bannon, Trump, etc about eliminating the tax cuts for the rich in the new bill when I see it.
 
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Damien said:
Also, can I just say, I fucking hate that the Democrats are too fucking cowardly and pathetic to start calling the tariffs Trump's War on Christmas.
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Old Joe missed the PR opportunity of a lifetime when didn't award Mike Pence the Presidential Medal of Freedom for standing up to Trump on January 6th. I don't agree with Pence on just about any other issue, but when when push came to shove, he stuck by his convictions and spoke truth to power, and his party crucified him for it. He was the Evangelical's poster boy and those hypocritical pharisees made him persona non grata in his own party. The Dems could've won over a lot of centrist conservatives by making a big hullabaloo in celebrating Pence.

The morals of the story are that the Dems are generally pretty awful at messaging and the Evangelical community is a house built on sand.
 
RunestoneCowboy said:
Old Joe missed the PR opportunity of a lifetime when didn't award Mike Pence the Presidential Medal of Freedom
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... when he didn't send Donald Trump to prison. Had he done that, this thread would be a lot shorter. In fact, it wouldn't exist at all.
EnigmaticClarity said:
Since 2016 that's definitely true, but not before that.
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I don't want to derail us any further, but I hate when people say this.

Donald Trump is a historically unqualified president. He's a failed businessman and a reality TV star. He has no experience in government, and despite being president for five years, is either too stupid or senile to know that he took an oath to uphold the Constitution. He's an unprecedented threat to U.S. democracy. He's a national security threat. He's a threat to our wealth and prosperity. I don't think it's hyperbole to call him the least qualified presidential candidate in U.S. history and the stupidest person to ever run for president. In that way, you're right. On average, the candidates in 2016, 2020, and 2024 were historically weak.

The Democrats who ran against Trump were... fine?

Hillary Clinton was perhaps overly ambitious and unlikeable (thanks to a successful decades-long smear campaign by right-wing media). Most politicians are. I maintain that she would've made a very good president, even if her policies were far too right-leaning for my tastes. She's one of the most qualified people not to hold the office. Honestly, the most damning thing about her is being married to Bill Clinton.

Joe Biden was too old and had a checkered past, but it's hard to complain about the results. Had he locked Trump away, he'd be easily the best president since FDR. He saw us through the pandemic Trump mismanaged. He got us out of Afghanistan. He passed a massive infrastructure and climate bill. He returned good manufacturing jobs to the U.S. He rebuilt our international reputation after Trump destroyed it. He led the best pandemic recovery economy in the world by far.

Finally, Kamala Harris. She was the weakest candidate of the three, IMO. Not entirely her fault. The U.S. media decided age was the single most important issue in the election only while Joe Biden was in the race. (Things that make you go hmm.) Harris didn't have a ton of legislative experience. Major points in her favor, though, for being the youngest candidate for president since Obama. (As an aside, I cannot believe this country continually elects presidents who won't live for even 20 more years.) I think she would've made a decent president based on her decision to select Tim Walz as VP. That's not much to go on, but I know she wouldn't have destroyed the global economy in three months.
 
RunestoneCowboy said:
Old Joe missed the PR opportunity of a lifetime when didn't award Mike Pence the Presidential Medal of Freedom for standing up to Trump on January 6th. I don't agree with Pence on just about any other issue, but when when push came to shove, he stuck by his convictions and spoke truth to power, and his party crucified him for it. He was the Evangelical's poster boy and those hypocritical pharisees made him persona non grata in his own party. The Dems could've won over a lot of centrist conservatives by making a big hullabaloo in celebrating Pence.

The morals of the story are that the Dems are generally pretty awful at messaging and the Evangelical community is a house built on sand.
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Yeah let's not give Pence all sorts of accolades. The guy is a hard right, mostly MAGA. It is the same thing with people like Liz Cheney. She was going on TV all the time and being praised for standing up to Trump, yet most of the time it was glossed over that she overwhelmingly voted for Trump's positions in his first term.

Although at least she had some sort of moral conviction to walk away from her party (not conservatism, just Republicans). Pence was literally threatened with death by MAGA, had little vocal support from traditional Republicans, and yet he can't bring himself to distance himself from the party. Now he is just quiet about his support, and believe you me he still supports them.

Dems are not so much terrible at messaging, as it is just the standards are different. I've said it before. Republicans, especially in the past decade, can say or do pretty much anything and they don't get punished for it at the ballot box. Also Republicans seem to revel in hypocrisy now, so long as they can "own the libs."

Democrats seemingly can't say boo without being called out on it by the media and public. I mean look at the idiots in Michigan who either voted for Trump, or a third party, because of Palestine. I mean how on Earth do you think to yourself that the Democrats would be worse for Palestine than the Republicans or Trump? That is willful ignorance, not messaging. Yet there you go the Democrats got punished because of what? While the Republicans/Trump got rewarded for basically saying they were going to side with Israel 100%.
 
Don't even get me started on the protest vote due to Palestine/Israel. Nothing has been more infuriating to me than that phase.

Meanwhile, it's remarkable to me that those same TikTok activists, those hashtag activists, those whose morals are based on the flavor of the week-- virtually radio silent on the subject now. They've moved on to the newest "outrage".

However, the damage was already done. Kamala's positions were too closely aligned with Biden's, therefore...carry-over protest vote because influencers told too many people who to vote for, because people vote off of "vibes" now.

Fuck those people. Forever.
 
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RicksNerdLife said:
Don't even get me started on the protest vote due to Palestine/Israel. Nothing has been more infuriating to me than that phase.
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Honestly, the most reasonable "both sides suck" take is that no matter who you voted for, Gaza was still going to get flattened using US weapons. I can see how that's a hard pill to swallow, and in a sane world it would ignite a real grassroots push for major election reform so we might have more than two choices ever.

(which is not to say one side isn't more harmful or that in this election staying home was a better option, there was still a clear correct option among the ones presented, even if it also sucked)
 
Does anyone know yet how de minimis tariffs will be assessed on individual shipments? I can't believe how many articles I've read on this without ONE of them saying how much the tariff on a $50 Aliexpress or Temu item will be or who and when that tariff will be collected, although for now that's a moot point for Temu since they suspended shipping to the US when the de minimis exception expired this week. I mean...maybe the answer is nobody's figured that out yet. But if that's the answer then say it. I bet there's a method, but maybe there isn't.

I've been watching a few items on Aliexpress recently, and ALL of them increased in price by about 50% over the last month. That makes me think Aliexpress is collecting the tariffs, but that seems odd and I doubt that's the case. It's probably just coincidence with the market on the items I'm following, but I won't know that until I figure out how they're supposed to be collecting those tariffs.
 
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I'm concerned about de minimis more than anything. I still don't know what's true or not. I read something about USPS charging 100% of the item's value from China or HK. I assume the stores that temporarily stopped shipping to the US are worried about abandoned packages.

Early on there was some question whether a tariff is applied to the retail price or cost of manufacture. The way I understood it from Bobby Vala, the value is kind of derived from what you insure your goods at. You wouldn't want to pay more for insurance in the rare chance your container gets lost at sea, but you also don't want to take a risk and undervalue to save on tariff fees. You put a number down to recoup your cost.
 
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mrboshek said:
I'm concerned about de minimis more than anything. I still don't know what's true or not. I read something about USPS charging 100% of the item's value from China or HK. I assume the stores that temporarily stopped shipping to the US are worried about abandoned packages.

Early on there was some question whether a tariff is applied to the retail price or cost of manufacture. The way I understood it from Bobby Vala, the value is kind of derived from what you insure your goods at. You wouldn't want to pay more for insurance in the rare chance your container gets lost at sea, but you also don't want to take a risk and undervalue to save on tariff fees. You put a number down to recoup your cost.
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For wholesale items manufactured in China and shipped to the US as in the case of Valaverse items (or any other of the half a billion dollars worth of items manufactured in China) the manufacturer declares the value of the item, and US Customs collects the tariff I think at the port it arrives in--but I'm not sure how and when the collection actually happens. I do know it's based upon the value the manufacturer declares, and sometimes they game the declared value for the reasons you outlined. So for a Marvel Legends figure maybe Hasbro declares that it cost $10 to make, so the tariff is $10 * 145% = $14.50 tariff.

My current educated guess for something from Aliexpress is that it will be whatever the item sold for as the declared value, so my hypothetical $50 item has a tariff of $72.50 bringing the total to $122.50. That's why the de minimis was in place; it's insane to assess some huge tariff on retail or aftermarket prices unless your explicit goal is to halt all low-value trade between countries which is exactly what it will do. And that's what it will do for Aliexpress items for now, which for the vast majority of the items they list means US buyers pretty much can't buy from China anymore.

Who collects it and when is the other thing I'm unsure of aside from how they calculate the tariff. It has to be the shipper, doesn't it, probably at the port the package arrives at? I can't think of any other viable way for it to happen. So the USPS is equipped to do this? What about FedEx, UPS, DHL, EMS, etc? I know other countries do tariff small value items, so some of the international shippers probably have a way to do this already in place. I'd be pretty surprised if the USPS can do it, but maybe they had some specific reason that they had to do it that I can't guess and it won't be an all new system they have to design and suddenly put into place.
 
Today I learned about the Tijuana Two-Step from PBS.

“This is what’s known as sort of the Tijuana two-step,” Packard said. “If you’re sending a $1,500 package from China that’s ultimately bound for the United States, what you can do is send it to Mexico, split it into two $750 packages and ship it from Mexico to The United States.”
 
mrboshek said:
Today I learned about the Tijuana Two-Step from PBS.

“This is what’s known as sort of the Tijuana two-step,” Packard said. “If you’re sending a $1,500 package from China that’s ultimately bound for the United States, what you can do is send it to Mexico, split it into two $750 packages and ship it from Mexico to The United States.”
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If we're talking about manufactured goods I heard on a recent podcast that it's not just a matter of re-packaging, but that the intermediate country has to actually add some value to the production process, i.e. the product has to be changed in that country in some way. My guess is that it means you can probably just re-package it and Customs won't be able to tell since they don't open packages, but if someone rats you out for re-packaging an unchanged product (or Customs just discovers it in some other way) then I bet Customs fines the manufacturer.

I wonder why people use Tijuana for this? Maybe their government refuses to assist with these investigations into manufacturers who use the two-step? That's the reason people use the Cayman Islands to hide money from their governments; that country's government won't help with financial investigations in most cases.
 
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