Let’s assume tariffs are used as a means to bring manufacturing to the US. By that definition the administration has no idea what level of tariffs will make this happen. Setting up manufacturing in the US for any item is not cheap - we don’t have the know how, labor to do it to begin with. On top of that the cost of manufacturing is many fold compared to china, India, Bangladesh or Taiwan. So 25% or 10% is still not in anyway going to force manufacture to come back.
Tariffs have to be at an insane level to justify bringing manufacturing back. My worry is that the administration is may be prepared to go there. That will cause a deep deep recession across the whole globe. Even then it will take a couple of decades to have meaningful manufacturing in the US
> we don’t have the know how, labor to do it to begin with.
That, I believe, is one of the reasons why the H-series and E-series exist in the United States, along with the L visa. It gives you the opportunity to bring foreigners into the United States, either for a limited (but finitely-extendable) period of time, or permanently.
You can argue that the current forms of those visas do not work, but that is not my point: My point is that the above reason is why the visas exist.
To bring my point back around to tariffs: I think making the above-mentioned visas harder to get goes against the purpose of the tariffs. If you want manufacturing etc. brought back here, then make it easy (or easier) to get the knowledgeable folks who you need to train the folks who will do the manufacturing here.
I am not sure I understand the implications of these tariff. Basically it means that products are becoming more expensive for people in the US. How is that a good thing for them? I understand this can help some US company to sell more products in their country, but that seems to benefit only a very small amount of industries.
Tariffs are just a tax. Similar to a sales tax, but it needs to be paid on import. To be clear, it's a tax on your own citizens, not foreign exports.
If a product is cheaply produced in another country, and your domestic industry cannot match that price, your domestic industry might disappear. Suppose that other country is subsidizing their industry, then it's quite unfair, and it legitimizes supporting your own industry either by your own subsidies or retaliatory tariffs. As they say, to level the playing field.
If the domestic industry is already dead, tariffs won't magically resurrect it. For example, building a chip industry can take billions of dollars in investments and years of development. All that time, those taxes are basically just costing consumers money. They need to be kept in place up until the new factories come online AND are paid off. This can take decades. Will those tariffs still be there? Will those other countries have ALSO invested? Those uncertainties make it hard to invest in a dead/dying industry, even with tariffs in place.
One feature of tariffs is that it's a tax on consumption, so it's ultimately paid by consumers, and it's a regressive tax; the wealthiest will pay the smallest ratio of their income and/or wealth, while the working Joe will just see stuff getting more expensive - especially in the short term.
Tariffs can work to retaliate against, and discourage, dumping. They can play a role in protecting vital industries. But arbitrarily imposing them for political points is a dangerous gambit.
> For example, building a chip industry can take billions of dollars in investments and years of development.
Worse than that... you also need all the other things in the "ecosystem" that support them chips, such as discrete components, circuit board fabrication, assembly, etc.
And the most important bit, people who can staff the plants and operate the machinery required.
And divesting capital and workers from other industries that might benefit the country more.
“One feature of tariffs is that it's a tax on consumption, so it's ultimately paid by consumers, and it's a regressive tax; the wealthiest will pay the smallest ratio of their income and/or wealth, while the working Joe will just see stuff getting more expensive - especially in the short term.”
I don’t think it’s this simple. The wealthy fat cats that are making money producing their stuff overseas or simply operating as middlemen for overseas manufacturers are going to have a reduction of income and profits.
Furthermore, it depends on how the revenue from tariffs were used. If revenue from tariffs is used to lower taxes for lower income citizens, it would be effectively a progressive tax.
I run a tiny (<$30k annual revenue and much much smaller profit, or negative if I paid myself an hourly wage) side business that relies on custom manufacturing of open source hardware products I've designed. So very much not a "wealthy fat cat" - here's my experience with manufacturing:
For die-cut plastic cards (think custom-shaped gift cards or hotel door hangers), I reached out to several US manufacturers for quotes and most never even responded. The one that did respond basically laughed at me and said my design was impossible to cut. So I went on Alibaba and had tons of quotes instantly and found a manufacturer. Not one of the responses were concerned about the design's manufacturability. And the manufacturer I picked does an incredible job with what is admittedly a challenging die cut design.
As a tiny business, most of my orders end up being under de minimis (which is actually great for helping small businesses avoid the overhead of dealing with tariffs and level the playing field against large players that can be much more efficient at handling regulatory overhead through high volume).
But with the change to eliminate de minimis and increase tariffs another 10% essentially overnight, my COGS is going to increase ~30%, which means either I shut down my business due to losing nearly all of my margin, or I increase prices substantially. It just hurts consumers AND small businesses like mine in the US.
There isn't a US manufacturer I can switch to (again, price wasn't the issue). And the US manufacturers in the space that WERE still selling products despite the international competition will just increase their prices now that competition is more expensive.
That is what people like trump don't understand (not surprising). Instead of gradually rebuilding the manufacturing capabilities of the US while supporting essential industries (like steel production) to create competition, they think slapping tariff will magically make the domestic manufacturing come back. Like you said, the US manufacturers will just ride along the coattails of tariffs instead of trying to be competitive and/or expand their production (they have no incentive to do so).
Again, knowing how short-sighted the US politicians and the society as a whole (e.g., look at how a majority of corps only care about short-term/quarterly profit) have become, it is not surprising but saddening to observe (because I have been living in the US for a bit over two decades and cannot move back to my home country, which is, at the moment, riddle with civil war).
> they think slapping tariff will magically make the domestic manufacturing come back.
Certainly not when tariff policy changes every few days on a whim. That doesn't make you want to build a chip resistor plant in the US. Or even a smartphone plant.
Indeed.
Or when you have trade agreements in place, but then use emergency powers granted to you in 1977 to push aside those agreements and add tariffs
It doesn't engender trust.
Businesses within and without are not a fan of constantly shifting sands.
But there is new incentive created here. Now someone can create a small business to serve die-cutting like the parent needs because they have the extra edge over the Chinese competition. These sorts of small shops that did small runs used to be part of the economy before they closed after they couldn't keep up with the low cost coming out of China and they can in theory come back if making stuff in China becomes expensive enough.
Is that an immediate win for the consumer and the economy? Probably not. In the long term it could be reversing the globalization which is maybe a good thing (or at least that's the argument).
Anything imposed on the whim of the executive can be taken away just as easily, so building an entire factory based on an assumption about tariffs remaining in place is probably a hard sell.
As the joke goes only two things are certain in life, death and income taxes.
Seriously though- yes. But it moves the needle a little bit on the expected value. If the tariffs survive for a year it'll move the needle more.
> But there is new incentive created here. Now someone can create a small business to serve die-cutting like the parent needs because they have the extra edge over the Chinese competition.
You’d need dramatically higher tariffs for there to be any chance of that. Or a complete trade embargo. And either way, it’s gonna mean much more expensive goods for consumers.
> Instead of gradually rebuilding the manufacturing capabilities of the US while supporting essential industries (like steel production) to create competition, they think slapping tariff will magically make the domestic manufacturing come back.
So what would you propose as the proverbial kick in the butt to encourage domestic production? And before you say “subsidies”, remember that a large segment of the population isn’t wild about those either because they perceive it to be some sort of evil tax dodge for big corporations (see: literally every time some state gives a company incentives to build a plant or office).
The reason we’re in this mess in the first place is because we chased cheaper means of production and once everything at home was gone, we just threw our hands up and went “well it’ll be too painful to fix it, anyone who tries is an idiot.”
I don't get it. You go into the grocery and pay sales tax on food for the week, but you import random trash from China, pay nothing and this is "great for helping small businesses"? No matter what you think about wholesale tariffs, surely this particular arrangement must strike you as odd and impossible to compete with for local producers?
In the EU we pay full taxes on every import, it's really not that complicated once you explain to the Chinese guys to not mark it as "gift" like its 2005.
> The wealthy fat cats that are making money producing their stuff overseas or simply operating as middlemen for overseas manufacturers are going to have a reduction of income and profits.
The companies who moved manufacturing abroad and pocketed the savings for their investors and CEOs aren’t likely to just say “oh well” and take a big hit to their margins—they’ll just mark up their products to make up the difference. Maybe, eventually, domestic competition will emerge but it’s not a given and likely takes time. In the meantime, consumers are paying the increased costs.
Middlemen for overseas manufacturers are not typically what comes to mind when I hear “wealthy fat cats.”
If all the middlemen see the same increase in costs, they are not going to be the one to try to keep prices the same. They know everyone is taking the same hit so they can just pass it along together. The consumer decides to buy or not at that level.
The innovation comes in avoiding the tariff. Often companies with sufficient scale of operations can pay additional lawyers and accountants to restructure and avoid tariffs.
Tariffs can dramatically affect specific companies, but squishy middlemen (and multinationals) can often work around them.
They won’t be using tariffs to lower taxes for lower income citizens. Tax cuts for the rich have already been proposed.
The wealthy fat cats are often heading companies in oligopolies. They just increase prices to absorb the tariffs, blame inflation and public policy, and continue to make the same profits.
>The wealthy fat cats that are making money producing their stuff overseas or simply operating as middlemen for overseas manufacturers are going to have a reduction of income and profits.
I'd love this to be true, but where is there recent evidence this will happen? When Trump put tariffs on washers in 2018, LG and Samsung (importers of machines) didn't lose profits, their prices went up: https://youtu.be/_-eHOSq3oqI?t=130
> I understand this can help some US company to sell more products in their country
If they are even able to satisfy the needs of the customer, either in quality, price or supply.
They wont be at first for sure. The vain hope is that it will settle out and eventually people will build manufacturing.
People don’t want to make capital investments whose success is based on a loose plan that seems to change weekly.
Add in that you are then almost certainly limited to a domestic market since your goods are only affordable when the competition has to pay a whacking great penalty.
> but that seems to benefit only a very small amount of industries.
Entirely logical response from a normal person used to think and act in a normal, decent way.
Criminals break into a museum. There is an artwork there, 4000(!) years old. The thieves wreck the artwork and smelt the gold that is inside it for a €225 profit.
Have you seen the kids of the president ridicule the dying people in Ukraine? We are inclined to think that if you inherit almost the whole earth, you would be very grateful, kind and compassionate.
Instead, they see the world in terms of just a handful of peers with the rest as resources to be extracted. We live in a world where we are brainwashed to think it is normal for corporate to call human beings "Human Resources".
---------------------------
As soon as people learn to see what hides behind Trump and Doge, the networks that finance and selects people, they will lose the war. The theater is there to distract you, media will pick it up as bait but will not do the investigation of what it is. And so we are paralyzed by the news of the day.
What society needs to do is to not accept abnormal and egregious behavior as normal. We all know what is decent human interaction, and the few can only take power over the mass, if the people consent to it -- be it actively or passively.
If "the cult of wealth" is a thing, and wealthy people really think different than the rest of us, then a consequence is that the ultra wealthy absolutely shouldn't be allowed to make the rules for the rest of us, or manage public institutions.
> If "the cult of wealth" is a thing, and wealthy people really think different than the rest of us, then a consequence is that the ultra wealthy absolutely shouldn't be allowed to make the rules for the rest of us, or manage public institutions.
That's why democracy was invented. :-)
You read my mind.
And the tools to create democracy.
> We are inclined to think that if you inherit almost the whole earth, you would be very grateful, kind and compassionate.
Why would you be inclined to think that?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Being greatful is not manufactured by having stuff.
Being kind has nothing to do wtih what you have.
I'm inclined to think that if someone inherit the whole earth you are
1. A person who sought after that, which is bad
2. Even if you were magically a good person before, will be ruined by it at a minimum the way winning the lottery ruins a person.
3. Even if you survive 1-2 you will become famous and will have to cope with that insanity.
> Why would you be inclined to think that?
See the number of people who say they voted for trump because they think he's a successful business man.
Sure, we might know it, but we never act on it. We allow super concentrations of super wealth and power to form. We allow corporate media. We allow corporate clients into politics. We allow fake news. We allow lies. We allow the dismantling of science. We allow the purge of competent people. Competence is a soft power, but the power hungry do not like to share.
We know it. We don't believe it. We cannot grasp. For those few, we are nothing but a resource. Why share power with the powerless? Might makes right!
> Why would you be inclined to think that?
See the number of people arguing that a billionaire can obviously be trusted with their money because he has a lot of it and clearly wouldn't want more.
As someone that sells products that are assembled from components that are sold and manufactured globally.
My customers pay me for product. Some of that pays employees. The assembly house. And for parts are are imported. The tariffs basically means I have to pay extra to the government so they can give it to bunch of wealthy financial parasites.
Unless people relocate automated manufacturing lines for export products outside US soil.
Thus, they save the US 25% + 10% tariff off, and whatever symmetric 25% response trading partners inflict on the US exports. i.e. one would save 60% off, avoid an economically hostile customs process, and may shop around for better tax systems. If the US market is isolated from a multi-origin product, than just collect the 35% markup on all products before shipping into the US like the new programs already require.
Best of luck, I don't think people have really thought about this very much... =3
That sort of manufacturing could take longer than 4 years to build much less profit from. Smarter to just wait it out and increase the domestic price to just below the foreign price+tariff.
Perhaps, but most light-industry will likely open secondary factory locations in 8 months or hire contract manufacturing firms in a few days. Then turn around and drop demand deficient labor in the hostile markets.
People respond to actions rather than posturing, and business people view the political process very differently. We'd be fooling ourselves to think it is about anything other than profit. Many people are likely about to lose their jobs, and there is nothing funny about that... Best regards =3
The tldr version imo of tariffs is to ask yourself if their should be tariffs on Chinese evs and work backwards from there to every other industry.
The more detailed answer boils down to if you as a business can save 1% producing a product by buying a widget you need from overseas, that's what you'll do. So instead of a domestic company paying employees in your country all through it's supply chain, it all goes overseas. This costs you as a business 1%, but in theory has a large enough economic impact to benefit the country overall.
Trump is going the peronism route Argentina took. Where protectionism was implemented for the sake of... Making the people in power richer.
You cannot just tariff if your industry is not there, people end up paying higher prices.
Next thing you'll hear is that America is producing but actually they will be assembling (for this you'll need to get along well with China). Crazy that Milei and Trump get along well mainly because of their social policies, but economic policies are so different. The US needs only two allies, Mexico and Canada, the only countries it has borders with, and instead Trump is just creating hate there.
I wonder if this also applies to Mouser. I've been buying pretty much all of my components from there, but if it becomes much more expensive I might have to just source from China and learn to read their datasheets. Mouser has much better customer experience and Texas Instruments, Analog Devices etc. have much better chips and docs, but at some point the 10x less expensive Chinese clones (and these days even new Chinese made chips) will just become the rational choice.
(With the assumption that this will be just the start of a trade war around chips)
> I wonder if this also applies to Mouser.
Yes.
> I might have to just source from China
It also applies to anything you source from China yourself. It's an import tax. Any applicable goods or services introduced to the US market incur it.
The one place it doesn't apply is when Digi-Key (or Mouser) ship to outside the US, their warehouses are apparently transit areas. (Source: I ordered to Switzerland a few days ago. No tariffs. You can probably check yourself by creating an order.)
If you're buying from China, you'll be paying the Trump Sales Tax. And if you try to ship directly from China yourself, you'll pay administrative fees to whoever handles the actual tax payment for you. For a few moments in early February before the administration began backtracking, DHL was charging a $32 fee for each shipment, even for a $1 trinket, and the other shippers (Cainao etc) were rapidly gearing up to do the same. The de minimis exemption for low-value goods was also briefly suspended, which is why the fees were so out of whack, and also why USPS momentarily stopped accepting shipments from China and Hong Kong: they didn't have the infrastructure to suddenly deal with fees on huge volumes of packages.
Buying your Chinese stuff through Mouser or Digikey or Arrow will spread that administrative fee across a whole shipping container of components. You'll still be paying the tax, but the administrative costs will be amortized.
I think tariff targets Chinese goods in general. Maybe you can source from ShenZhen in person but I'm not sure how the Custom office deals with this. I guess it's OK as long as you don't bring in quantity.
Another solution is to just live in ShenZhen when it's applicable. The city is nice and vibrant, and you are treated pretty well as long as you don't get into politics.
> Maybe you can source from ShenZhen in person but I'm not sure how the Custom office deals with this. I guess it's OK as long as you don't bring in quantity.
Historically this was true, because the de minimis exemption meant small value imports didn't get charged tariffs. But the recent tariff EO both increased existing tariffs AND removed de minimis, meaning even a $5 import now needs to go through the overhead of tariff calculation and payment.
The de minimis change is temporarily paused because there's no way carriers or enforcement could actually handle the change in tariff volume with no warning, but broadly speaking, the low value direct import route is going away.
> Another solution is to just live in ShenZhen when it's applicable. The city is nice and vibrant, and you are treated pretty well as long as you don't get into politics.
That's an extremely subtle way of saying "keep your mouth shut".
It's not. You can freely talk about other topics. In fact, talking politics is probably safe as long as you are not too loud. I think it is the same for all countries I have lived in. Talking about politics is always taboo.
There are also tariffs being applied to goods from China, so "just source from China" may not allow you to avoid the tariffs.
I have a PCBA order from JLCPCB that should ship any day now. Cost at checkout was a bit over $200, with no mention of tariffs. I've been wondering if I'm going to get hit with it by UPS. Has anyone else here had any experience with this yet?
Likely yes although I’m not sure if the administration has fully got rid of De Minimis or figured out how to reduce from $800 USD.
With UPS the added kicker is UPS charges a $70 processing fee themselves for processing something through Customs for you, paying the tariff for you so the package isn’t delayed and then enabling you to pay them back in advance of delivery on ups.com or the driver will ask for payment at the door when delivering your goods.
I don’t know if UPS going into the states is the same as Canada, but you can avoid the clearance fee by not shipping with UPS ground. The higher levels of UPS service do not have the bullshit fee added on, and you just pay the cost of taxes.
USPS and Canada Post were the most cost-effective way to deal with customs for the longest time. Unsure if that's the case anymore.
Canadians can also self clear packages in person at a CBSA office through the Courier Low Value Shipment program [1], if the value of the package is under $3300. It's a bit of a hassle, but has saved me >$100 in brokerage fees on some packages when UPS Ground was by far the cheapest option.
[1]: https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/import/courier/lvs-efv/menu-eng....
From that link: “The CBSA has placed a moratorium on applications for participation in the Courier Low Value Shipment Program effective June 3, 2019, until further notice. For additional information regarding the moratorium please refer to Customs Notice 19-12.”
That only applies to couriers who want to participate in the program, not consumers who want to self-clear their imported shipments. A person doesn't need to register, they can just take the appropriate forms to a CBSA office and pay any taxes/duties themselves. Kind of a confusing thing to have posted at the top of a page that seems more applicable to consumers than commercial importers.
Just got a JLCPCB order this week (below $800) via UPS and it arrived no problem with no tariffs since the de minimis exemption is temporarily still active from the latest of the tariffs EOs.
In the past with a DHL order over $800 they just sent me an invoice to pay before they'd deliver the package. Make sure you check the invoice though - DHL screwed up the HTS codes and tariff calculations and substantially overcharged, so I had to talk to DHL support to get it fixed (which ended up being really straightforward).
If JLCPCB doesn't charge, you will get a bill from CBP, customs and border patrol. I've purchased capex equipment (items over $25k) from China for my small company and that's how we've paid tariffs in the past.
(Contrary to the current US administration's lies, the buyer pays the tariff, not the seller.)
I had a $300 order (ordered late January, arrived last week) and was hit with the tariffs via UPS along with their bogus processing fee as another commenter mentioned. They wait for it to reach the US before holding it hostage. Would recommend using DHL if at all possible, as they make dealing with it a lot less painful.
> their bogus processing fee
At least here in Norway, though similar in many other countries that I know, it's not entirely bogus.
Typically there are real costs involved with submitting a customs declaration, especially if it requires actual people looking at the invoice and filling out the customs declaration based on it. An order from JCLPCB or similar would typically fall in that category.
Then there's the duties. Either they hold the goods until you've paid, in which case they need storage space and bookkeeping, along with inspections from customs every so often. Or they just pay up front and bill you after the fact. In either case there are real costs involved.
That said they're certainly not a charity, and I do think they exploit a bit the fact that often the importer doesn't have much of a say or knowledge in picking the shipping company. Perhaps the seller only deals with UPS for example.
I understand it takes more on their end but I hate that it's not baked in the the base shipping fee. They know they're going to have to do the extra work, why not take that into account on the base price?
JLCPCB recently started offering them as a shipping option, and they tend to be $5-10 under DHL's quote. The DHL price takes the additional processing fees into account and I'm not left with a nasty surprise in addition to the tariffs/customs fees.
> They know they're going to have to do the extra work, why not take that into account on the base price?
There's the option of doing it yourself or have some third party doing it, though you usually still end up paying some fee to the express company.
A lot of business customers do that, at least here, especially if they got goods with duties where they might not be confident in the goods classification[1] done by the express company, or if they have exemptions.
Though as I mentioned earlier, I do agree there's too little transparency here, and that they're taking advantage of it. I suspect the only way they'll improve is if customers start voting with their wallet.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonized_System#Classificati...
Bullshit. It's an entirely predictable cost at the time of shipping, and should be built into _the cost of shipping_ as paid for by the party _paying for the service_. This is simply a means to double dip, knowing that the receiver doesn't know better in advance and can't do anything about it once they find out.
The buyer/importer is paying for the service, either directly or indirectly, so matters little in that regard. The seller ain't a charity either and will pass on any costs. You're not getting DDP for free.
But I agree that the transparency regarding customs processing fees is very lacking. Obviously they don't have an incentive as long as customers don't see this as a differentiator.
It's not about getting it for free, it's getting billed at the time money is already changing hands.
But you can already get this, just demand DDP terms[1] when buying. Seller might refuse in which case you can take your business elsewhere, or they might accept but charge extra for the service.
For example DigiKey allows me to select[2] between DDP or CPT, which means I have to pay for importing the goods[3].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#DDP_%E2%80%93_Delive...
[2]: https://www.digikey.no/en/help-support/delivery-information/...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_costs...
I think the de minimis exemption is still in effect temporarily because they don't have a system set up to charge the tariffs yet.
https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2025/02/07/tru...
There's a piece of furniture in eyeing that's twice as much on Amazon as on AliExpress.
I have two anxieties about Ali that are keeping me from making a decision though:
- You're essentially trusting foreign eBay sellers to get customs right. If they screw up, it's a ding against your Global Entry account. You're making yourself liable for the competence of strangers, and I don't know the system well enough to know if you can trust their ratings.
- I've yet to hear anything about how the tariffs are working out in practice. I don't wanna hit buy and find out everything is way more complicated/expensive than it was last month.
I should probably just buy from Amazon, but it's hard to commit to paying full price when you know everyone else is selling it for way less (but more risk of something shady happening).
I would never buy furniture from Alibaba or Amazon. I’ve bought a couple pieces of basic furniture from Amazon, including a bed frame from a third party seller that was missing essential pieces for which I was given a 50% discount as compensation. But at least if you buy from Amazon directly, the product is more likely to meet regulations. I have no faith that any furniture ordered from Alibaba meets any of the standards (CSPC, California fire code) it might claim.
To my understanding, your board is a subassembly and not subject to the tariffs. There’s an existing semiconductor tariff as well as this product tariff, and various categories that make it hard to untangle. Anyone correct me if I’m wrong - trying to figure it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/pickup-...
Not true, all my boards have been subject to the tariffs going back to the first Trump administration.
Unless JLCPCB explicitly sold you under DDP terms[1], you'll have to pay applicable tariffs. I'm 99% certain they did not do that, it's usually explicitly mentioned. DigiKey for example has this as an explicit choice when I order to Norway.
Here in Norway that also involves a service fee by express companies like UPS as paying tariffs means they can't use a simplified customs declaration, and they typically front the payment to get you your goods ASAP. YMMV.
edit: Seems I missed that Trump postponded[2] the low-value exemption, De Minimis, so your shipment is probably in the clear. But next one might not be.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_costs...
[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/02/07/trump-reins...
Thanks for the links.
I miss the 'no new taxes' generation of conservatives
I miss conservatives.
Not a conservative but I can respect the old school conservatives to some extent.
Present day conservatives are just awful people in general in my experience.
I continue to be astonished at how the Republican party transformed from libertarians into a personality cult overnight because some weirdo won an election.
Lindsey Graham was on TV being all "never Trump" one week and then fully supportive the next. c.c. almost everyone else in Washington.
I wonder what the tipping point is among Republican voters between those who genuinely support Trump vs those who think the Democratic candidates are so bad for foreign policy, DEI, etc. that they'll vote from Trump in protest.
Who would the Democrats have to nominate to get the libertarians who used to vote Republican to back them instead?
I think Sanders would have unified because my MAGA parents liked his working-class support. But if I mention that among my progressive friends I get glares and stern warnings that Hillary was "the best" candidate and any objection is sexist. It's kinda like being a conservative who doesn't believe in god or is gay, your party will shun you.
I know anecdote vs anecdote is pretty much meaningless and I’m channeling “No true Scotsman”, but I find it hard to believe an actual progressive telling you that - the complaints from the progressive wing about Sanders losing the primaries are evergreen.
> I think Sanders would have unified
No, Sanders would never be a unifying figure. Libertarians see him as being essentially equivalent to Trump: a demagogue who makes emotional appeals to build a cult of personality, deeply misunderstands economics, and seeks to use political power in an unbounded and illegitimate ways.
But there as many libertarians that matter as there are antifa that matter.
They are noise in the data.
Populism is a marketing tool (to quote Hank Green) and Sanders wielded it as well as trump, but to help people, not punish them. Both have decades of track records demonstrating this fact.
> But there as many libertarians that matter as there are antifa that matter.
Various surveys have indicated that 20-30% of the US population broadly align with libertarian principles, regardless of party affiliation or nominal identification. This aligns fairly well with the proportion of the electorate that had negative opinions of both Trump and Harris in the last election (even those who took a "lesser of evils" approach and voted for one of them).
I'm from Nevada.
I know lots of conservatives who aren't religious.
> Present day conservatives are just awful people in general in my experience.
I don't think I've seen any conservatives involved in mainstream politics in the past 15 to 20 years. I see people using the word "conservatives" to describe something else entirely, but few actual conservatives.
I miss not fearing about being doxxed or flagged by the current administration and being targeted by their mob of thugs. And I live in the US.
These guys have been doing something similar for just Canada <> US, was surprised to see this stuff popping up: https://www.zerodraftai.com/insights/2025-canadian-tariff-re...
Says semiconductors have a 50% extra tarriff. That includes LEDs, presumably.
I'm trying to do some things with LEDs, and ouch.
AFAIK the Section 301 tariff (and increases) only applies to parts imported from China/HK. There are lots of manufacturers on DigiKey that make their parts from elsewhere where these tariffs are not assessed. As a data point, I recently bought a bunch of Lite-on LEDs on DK, their COO was Thailand, and I wasn't tariffed for those parts.
Similarly my hobby involving ship to shore cranes is going to be painful.
Seriously though they have a lot of stock in their warehouse. If this is already imported and paid for then it should be exempt right?
The page doesnt state what happens to foreign customers. Does the duty only apply for domestic buyers?
> Seriously though they have a lot of stock in their warehouse
Companies do not price things as they are now, or how much it cost in the inventory, but about how much they must charge to keep the business afloat. That means that prices will go up only because there's a risk that prices would go up, so that in any event, they can cover whatever they need to keep operations on-going. While prices go up in both a high risk or no competitive markets, prices would only go down if there's a competitive market.
That's the minimum they charge. The maximum they charge is how much they think customers are willing or have to pay. If the general mood is that tariffs will cause inflation, then price gouging will likely occur.
I’d also like some insight on the foreign buyer bit as DigiKey is by far the best and most reliable supplier to my part of the world despite being the other side of an ocean.
I pay local VAT and any local tariffs, all collected by DigiKey, and don’t think I pay any US taxes on the shipment.
By intuition I’d think whatever US tariff wouldn’t apply, but these things don’t exactly make sense a lot of the time.
Edit: Upon reading about the tariff drawback process, and these latest ones not being applicable to it - it does seem that I’ll be paying US tariffs for something [from China] that is then exported to me in another country.
> it does seem that I’ll be paying US tariffs for something [from China] that is then exported to me in another country.
I'm sure that isn't right - Digikey imports and exports from across the world - including existing items with tariffs and duty - effectively their warehouses act like Bonded warehouses - they claim back 99% of Duty and Tariff paid on exported items using Drawback. I don't know the details of the new tariffs but it wouldn't make sense for the US to stop this for reexports.
From the page:
One way DigiKey helps provide high-quality products at competitive prices is through our Duty Drawback Program, which allows us to recover a portion of the tariffs paid on imported products. However, under this Executive Order, the new 10% duty on all products imported from China and Hong Kong is not eligible for duty drawback programs.
Same.
Most credible alternative in Europe: Distrelec/RS Components (both part of RS Group).
Ouch, if that is the case this is only going to boost the non US suppliers. Has anyone tried lcsc.com? Digikey and mouser are great but if all semiconductors go up 50% that is a problem.
Yes it does seem a bit strange - I guess the goal here is to encourage them to source and sell me a quality American SMD diode at less than $(0.006 + 10%) per unit.
That said I'm struggling to fully understand it all, the site kind of implies that the 50% Semiconductor tariff _is_ drawbackable - and if we look some of those were in effect since 2024. It does say that the 10% 'China tax' is not.
My reading here then is that the 10% extra is for everyone, and the rest of that table in addition is for goods consumed in the US. (And, some of those tariffs don't look very different from some of them in my non-US locale, which I would have to pay anyway)
Still a daft situation, will for sure be looking around for other suppliers.
Duties are paid only if the products are being moved from outside into the US. And the other way around it matching tarrifs were enacted (they're almost always are). Digikey Europe might be affected because of global economic consequences but not directly by tarrifs. So short term the price should not change if you're not buying from the US (both ways)
Digikey (and Mouser) don’t have warehouses in Europe - they express ship everything from the US.
As far as I’m aware Farnell are the only major electronics retailer to have European warehouses. They don’t have nearly the same level of stock as the big players. But this will certainly be a big boost for them.
Digi-Key's US warehouse seems to be a customs transit area. At least I didn't get charged any tariff when ordering to Switzerland a few days ago.
Not doing it that way would be an immense disadvantage for Digi-Key against non-US distributors.
TME is European as well, and I think Arrow has warehouses in Europe.
I missed that, I guess I got them confused. I bought once from them and from Farnell a few more times and in my head it came from around.
Maybe its a good time for they to create one then.
Out of curiosity, can you tell me more about your hobby that involves ship to shore cranes? Or, is this an indirect way of saying that your hobby involves transoceanic shipping? This is Hackernews, so it could plausibly be either.
A third interpretation is this is a joke and they are talking about a business they want to make work without the tariffs, but yeah might have flown over my head too.
> Seriously though they have a lot of stock in their warehouse.
Given they didn't have to pay tariffs before, I would assume they've declared all the goods and in that case yes.
> Does the duty only apply for domestic buyers?
If you re-export goods that was previously imported without using it, like DigiKey, then at least here in EU you can apply to get the duties paid back. However it's quite annoying if you import large quantities and sell small fractions. It works better if you do it on a 1-1 basis.
Not 100% sure how it works in US, but in EU you can have a bonded warehouse, where you store goods before you perform the import declaration to free them for general use.
This allows you to postpone the import declaration, and hence tariffs to be paid, to when you've sold the goods, or even avoid paying tariffs if you export the goods directly from the bonded warehouse.
The latter part is very attractive to companies like DigiKey which sell a lot of their goods abroad.
There are typically strict rules regarding getting a bonded warehouse license, with requirements for bookkeeping and physical separation with access control to avoid mistaking the bonded goods for normal non-bonded and hence technically smuggle goods into the country.
This also affects who's performing the import declaration. Pre-tariffs there's usually not much incentive to do anything more fancy than letting someone else handle the import declarations. However the added bookkeeping and usually means the one responsible for the bonded warehouse is best suited to perform the declarations. At least here in EU there are companies that offer this as a service.
Anyway the point was, if they didn't already have a bonded warehouse and decide to go with one, it's not just sending an email and get some approval. It might affect how DigiKey has to handle this goods deeply.
You don't pay for how much the item in the store costs, you pay how much it will cost to restock it (see also: petrol/gasoline prices changing throughout the week - it's because there's a fixed charge to refill the tanks, regardless of how much goes in).
I guess there's always Goodwill, landfill. You can pull PCBs, desolder components.
I find it tragically hilarious how the leader of the most powerful country in the world sees tarriffs and fails to understand the interconnectedness of economies that benefit both. When someone thinks of the world as a zero-sum game it's pretty clear.
And as a Canadian whose country been the target of a certain leader's 51st state jibes, I find it pretty hard to sympathize with the pain that Americans are going through and how bad inflation is going to get.
I suspect we'll end up seeing the Trump era as a good thing for the rest of the world -- a stable America tends to suck up all the oxygen in the room and the current daily whiplash makes the rest of us just prefer to trade with each other.
While the US still holds a fair bit of monetary power worldwide, we're basically seeing them spend soft power at a ridiculous rate.
Meanwhile, we're refocusing our economy to make it less US-centric, finding new markets for our resources and watching America self-immolate.
I was discussing today with a relative how Cuba's Fidel Castro framed the public opinion in the country in such a way the nation is currently... having a very hard time. Even after Fidel Castro's dead. Worse, Hugo Chavez imported the same set of morose ideas, and a decade later, with both idiots dead, the two countries are competing to see which one has longer blackouts. Never underestimate people's capacity to listen to popular figures and embrace damaging cabals.
Strange but conventional perspective. I would say to never underestimate the long-term sadism of the US when dealing with small countries who insist on abolishing slavery or owning their own natural resources, or the ability of the people who benefit from that sadism to blame the victims of it.
We're not really spending soft power as much as flushing it down the shitter. I won't be mad at all if Canada wants their own nuclear weapons now. Good fences and all that
> And as a Canadian whose country been the target of a certain leader's 51st state jibes, I find it pretty hard to sympathize with the pain that Americans are going through and how bad inflation is going to get.
Less than half of Americans that voted voted for Trump, and while there are definitely some people happy about what he is doing, there are also many who voted for him that aren't. I'd also like to point out that Trump didn't say anything about annexing Canada until after he had won the election.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall him talking about about Greenland or the Panama canal prior to the election either.
Trump's tariffs against China are at least aligned with both his, and long-term America stated strategy and goals. America has tried the free trade trick with China to try to compel it to towards political liberalization - it didn't work. Remember that Trump's tariffs on China from his first term were not cancelled by Biden - infact Biden added to the tariffs, in addition to enacting export restrictions. Both Bush Jr and Obama enacted limited tariffs on Chinese products.
If you look at trade action against China, you can see the contours of a strategy that could maybe actually work. Obviously, tariffs cannot be the only component of such a strategy, since the disparity between Chinese and American manufacturing capability in many fields is absolutely gigantic. It took decades for China to reach their current position, there's no reason to expect that America, or the west as a whole could expect to catch up in anything less than roughly a decade scale, especially with only unpredictable tariffs.
Trumps tariff plans against the rest of North America and the EU however... those fly in the very face of attempting to seriously take on China. USMCA is up for renewal in 2026. Whatever legitimate issues Trump had with Canada and Mexico, and whatever strong arm position he wanted to take, he could have messaged as a part of a prelude to the renewal. This probably would result in better outcomes for the US.
The US is finding that many of their critical supply chains (including defense supply chains) are passing through China. Tariffs alone are not sufficient to disentangle these elements, and the domestic messaging from Trump simply does not create the domestic conditions for sustaining both the tariffs and whatever other policies and aid are required to enact these structural changes. It's difficult to reconcile "lower inflation", "slash the budget and deficit", "tax cuts for the rich", "tariffs", and "reindustrialize America" all at once.
Randomly picking the Toyota EV battery plant that's supposed to come online this year in North Carolina - site selection was announced back in 2021. In many of these critical areas, we're talking multi-year minimal lead times to bring new capacity online.
How the current US administration is treating European and North American countries makes me wonder if they are serious about taking on China.
As a Brit, I've been surprised by how much my view has shifted in the last few weeks. I used to assume we'd be allies with the US and have a probably competitive and maybe adversarial relationship with China. Now I see the US administration basically saying "we're going to make you pay through the nose for everything" (e.g. taking Ukrainian minerals). So I've started thinking "Well, if the US and China will both behave like that, surely we're best off playing them against each other and seeing who'll offer us more?"
That seems like a very bad deal for the US. So I figure that (a) the administration isn't serious about taking on China, or (b) assumes European and North American countries will roll over, or (c) they think they can go it alone.
Yeah as much as I'm very much unhappy with the consequences of this to me directly, I imagine this admin is going to be really important abroad, for the EU in particular, for identifying unnecessary vulnerabilities and dependencies on US infrastructure.
I previously worked in a five-eyes facing role and it's pretty terrifying when one staunch ally loses its mind. So much procedure and process is based on reliability.