• smeenz@lemmy.nz
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    1 hour ago

    Because applying an import tax, regardless of the fact that Americans pay it, creates a reduction in demand for that product, and therefore a motivation for the foreign exporters to try to lower their prices to compensate and keep the price the same for the America customer, which then hurts the foreign economy. Trump is basically dangling the impact of lost sales and threatening to cut it even more.

    The logic only works if the US is assumed to be too big to fail, and that the exporter can not absorb the loss of American sales, and that they have no other markets they can grow to cover those loses. Those assumptions are not necessarily true.

    • wuzzlewoggle@feddit.org
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      13 hours ago

      I really don’t know enough about this to be sure, but I would assume the US mainly imports goods that they cannot produce on their own, right? So a reduction in demand wouldn’t occur and it really doesn’t make a lot of sense in this scenario. But again, I’m not an expert. Would love to see a statistic how much of the goods being imported by the us could realistically be replaced by their own production.

      That being said, the orange turd continuously makes it seem like a 20% tariff on a country means that that country pays 20%, which is just false and dumb.

      • plyth@feddit.org
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        10 hours ago

        that they cannot produce on their own

        That’s the issue. Trump wants those goods to be produced in the US to regain the skills. The Americans have noticed that manufacturing weapons is not enough. They have to manufacture regular products, too, to improve the skills that are needed for advanced weapons. With tariffs, American products become competitive again.

        Maybe tariffs with Europe are not high enough and Greenland is just an excuse to rise them higher despite the existing trade agreement.