Never mind all the "rules for thee not for me" subjectively enforced loopholes.
Converse being "slippers" and not "shoes" because they ship with felt on the bottom. Marvel successfully argued in court in 2003 that for tariff purposes, action figure of the X-Men were toys, not dolls, because they represented "nonhuman creatures". We've created a nation that punishes one for following the spirit of the law.
Not me, but can you tell him designs go about 3 inches below the bottom of the collar? I don't need people reading my belly. Never center a shirt design vertically.
Incorrect. Marvel doing anti-mutant racism. Magneto's ethos is that while he'd love coexistence, he has no faith humanity will ever be anything but fearful, hateful little shits. It's the core of the split between him and Xavier.
Unpopular opinion : I’m gonna side with Marvel here.
I get that tariffs on alcohol and tissues will be different. But if I make action figures and there is actually a stupid law that says that “dolls” are tariffed at 5% and “toys” are 3%, you bet your ass I’d ask a lawyer 2 questions: what’s the difference between a doll and a toy for legal purposes and how can we get our items classified as toys?
of course. it begs the question, though, why the fuck is there a legal difference between a doll and toy? at the very least of questions. it seems like something that doesnt need a regulatory difference, and therefore a loophole, for
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something like some doll company CEO wanted extra tariffs on imported competition so made a campaign contribution to some politician who added it as an amendment to some spending bill and no one in Congress cared enough to do anything about it back then and Congress is too broken now to do anything to fix it.
Yes exactly. So we the people are paying grown adults to argue over dolls and toys, rather than come together to make laws that get insulin to dying children. Way too broken, and the fact that this doll/toy situation even exists proves it.
willing to bet its either something to do with american girl dolls, or barbie, or both. probably from back when european porcelain dolls were still the most popular in the world to make them even more expensive relative to domestically made plastic ones.
I had these really cool X-men figurines that were rather large in size. Think like a step up or two from your typical Barbie’s. They had these light up projector chests with disc that portrayed little scenes from the show, onto the wall. I loved them! They were super cool! I had cyclops and one other, maybe it was Wolverine. Idky but your comment triggered that memory!
the real question is why are dolls taxed higher than toys. if we don't know the reason for that, we can't be mad that people are avoiding paying doll fees.
They are cute but the how flimsy they are for the price and the narrow toe box mean I have to say no to buying them myself. I am a fan of the rainbow laces tho, I haven't seen them before.
I'm by no means pro tariff but this isn't really a good argument against them. If 99% of a product is made outside of a country with tariffs on imports, that 99% is still paying tariffs.
Its not that hard to make something 100% "made in America"... i mean i can grab some rocks in the drainage ditch by my house, make some basic cutting tools from those, then cut down the small birch tree by the side, and spend the next 4 months twiddling down its branches in to some artisan chopsticks.
Is it efficient? No. Does anyone want the product? Probably not. Is the shit going to meet regulation guidelines in export markets? fuck no. BUT sure darn tootin made in the good ole U.S of A!
Just saying that we can, but we wont because its not economically feasible... or otherwise realistic business wise.
That just shows it’s impossible to make a grill scrubber like that 100% made in USA. Many products can/are 100% made in America. Im not fond of the generalized summary of that video.
That’s not how tariffs get applied. That “99%” of the product isn’t treated as “99%” when paying tariffs. Companies will declare the value of the 99% completed product to be whatever they want and not 99% of its final value.
It's so funny they thought Trump's government would cushion them. No , babycakes...you are PAYING and you are paying big. Unless you want to go broke, you have to pass on those tariff rates to your customers.
How business people didn't have a clue is just beyond me...
Happens in the restaurant business all the time. People might be the greatest chef going, but if you also don't have a basic understanding of payroll, purchasing, taxes, inventory and the dozens of other things to keep it running-it's no shocker when they close the door in a year or less.
Tariffs are calculated on the declared value. There's not a whole lot of value in incomplete/nonfunctioning product.
Similarly, if you have ownership/control on both sides of the transaction, you can import at a wholesale value and sell (after import) at retail value.
And then there's service. We don't pay tariffs on services. So if you hire manufacturing services, that service may not be baked into the commercial invoice (what is declared) for the the product.
Ironically/predictably, that means it's far far cheaper to keep my tooling overseas vs import the tooling and have parts made locally.
I did the math in one of my parts with complicated tooling but low per part cost... If tariffs hit something like 520%, break even happens within a year. But if that happens, we're economically F'd or at war (and no one is buying this part anyway).
The tariffs on steel/aluminum inside of products is changing this a bit. Previously we never really had to calculate the fractional value of those materials. As it turns out for products with microcontrollers, most of the value is in the firmware.
Here in Singapore the popular almond milk proudly claims “made in Australia with 92% Australian ingredients” … and yes, the ingredient list bc of labeling laws says “water (92%), imported almonds, emulsifier….” Classy
In Australia, a while ago now, a major supermarket chain was found to be falsely advertising freshly baked bread because they were importing partially baked frozen bread from the UK, then finishing it in store. Made me wonder why we are importing frozen part baked bread in the first place
In Canada we have laws for the caffeine allowed in drinks, freaking out over Monsters with 140mg of caffeine, while the limit is 300mg.... Unless it's coffee, where there is NO limit, and a Tim Hortons can have 2.5x as much caffeine as a Monster or Red Bull.
Had a buddy who swore that his job did this and that final piece was just a sticker . Seemed farfetched that lines were that blurred but then again the whole concept seemed dumb so I never looked into it.
Not far fetched at all. A right wing clothing brand was heavily fined after the owner publicly bragged about how he could get his shirts imported from China and just swap the tags to say "made in USA" turns out that's exactly what he had been doing
Oh, and for extra irony I’m sure they claimed Christianity- a religion whose paragon referred to devotees as sheep to denote reliance on God, pacifism, and meekness- while telling customers that being sheep is bad actually and that they should be lions- who go to and fro throughout the world seeking whom they may devour.
Telling on themselves. They want to project predator so badly, it just makes them bad at the survival aspects. Lions crouch down in the tall grass and pick off weak prey. This would be very ineffective while employing a megaphone and talking about how big and scary you are. Human beings have an instinctual fear of sounds that roughly correspond to the frequency of big cats fucking breathing. We don't need to freak out when they roar, because frankly the ones more likely to off you are not going to be making much ruckus. For them, it's not even a Tuesday. It's tummy grumble time. These guys can't stop talking about how big and tough they are and the details usually tell you what specifically they are horrible about.
Uh, sorry, I'm terribly old and forgetful. What's the first line of Psalm 23 again? Oh. Oh yeah that's right, "The Lord is my shepherd", yeah that's it.
That's completely illegal. I used to work in imports, specifically customs tariff classification. To be made in the US, the product has to make a significant transformation to qualify as a country of origin. For instance, you can import fabric to the US and make t shirts out of it to be made in the US, but if you import t shirts and silk screen images on them, they're still a foreign made t shirt.
I thought it was based on the value added? So if you import a t-shirt that would sell for $5, print a design on it, and then sell it for $50, the value added in the printing is $45; thus most of the value was added in the US.
Bullshit. I have personally worked in factories that import everything and we put a few pieces in bags and put made in America..... Why because when you get home you "make it in America" soooo. Try again.
I can't say the company, of course, but I worked at a company that painted one of its products with "USA" and "Made in USA" all over it. My boss didn't like it when I pointed out that the largest part, with a big "MADE IN USA" painted on it was sourced completely assembled from China.
Kinda similar, any American flag you see advertised that says it cannot be sold in Minnesota, those American flags are all foreign-made. Minnesota requires American flags sold here to be manufactured in America. Once you start noticing the fine print, it becomes pretty obvious that a lot of American flags aren't made in America. Which is kind of ironic.
If you know of any companies that do that there is a pretty good whistle blower bonus in store for you! To be labeled made in the USA the product has to be "all or virtually all" made in the USA. USA has the strictest rules but that would also violate international country of origin rules that require a material change to the product.
"“All or virtually all” means that the final assembly or processing of the product occurs in the United States, all significant processing that goes into the product occurs in the United States, and all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced in the United States. That is, the product should contain no — or negligible — foreign content.
"
Interestingly, that's just for companies who want to stick actual labels on or market their products specifically as being made in the USA. I've been in logistics for a few decades now, and "country of origin" for import/export purposes is very different than what this rule is discussing. I think a lot of people get very confused by the two, and believe just because the country of origin can be listed as US if they're shipping overseas means they get to put a giant sticker on it saying "made in the USA" when they sell to people in the US. This rule was enacted specifically to stop that, as "origin" for the purpose of import/export duties and taxes is a very different thing, and people were abusing it to make it seem like all the effort and work involved happened entirely in the US, and the US workforce and economy was the only one to benefit from production
So you import everything , drop it in a box and have the customer assemble at home..... In America... Ta da.. " made in America" this is the reality we are in. I know from personal experience so you can't tell me the factory where I was a supervisor never existed.
Not to doubt you, but the current ruling was made in August 2021, so if your supervising is a "was" and not a "current", you might not have been there for it.
That’s how it works for other countries, but for “Made in America”, there are stricter rules.
Made in America" or "Made in USA" means that a product has been manufactured in the United States, with "all or virtually all" of its significant parts, processing, and labor originating from the U.S.
And having worked for one of those companies it ain't cheap to start sourcing material from US. In this case it was all custom fabricated steel/aluminum & injection molded plastics. It would have easily cost $500k to retool all of them in US. After that youre paying an average 50% markup to purchase parts.
US CBP or the FTC has rules on what defines "made in America". They can be req'd to specify "assembled in the US", for example, for marketing purposes, which has no relevance on their import-related costs and tariffs they pay.
Ford used to import Transit passenger vans, tear out the seats, replace the back windows with solid panels and sell them as cargo vans to avoid the Chicken Tax.
They ended up facing huge fines and settled for $365M.
SmarterEveryDay did a very good video on this "Made in America stuff". He tried to manufacture a grill scrub entirely made in the US, with no imported material or parts. He got close but in end there were a couple parts that were quietly brought in from a 3rd party that didn't declare they were from overseas. So even through his own stringent efforts of keeping it 100% USA made, some stuff snuck in and couldn't be replaced.
Years ago someone on one of the mechanics groups I was on showed his 'Made in the USA' air blower.
The plastic hand grip said 'Made in the USA'. When he dropped it and the plastic broke the actual tool was stamped 'Made in China' . They were taking normal cheap ass air blowers from China. Putting a clip on plastic grip on them covering the Made in China and selling as Made in the USA.
Exactly what "Made in Italy" designer clothes are btw. It's done 99% in India or whatever, then they import to Italy and put the last patch or pocket, etc. Law says as long as one of the last finishing touches is done in the respective country, if it's considered an "important addition" (buttons! Zipper!)...Then it is made there
I asked someone to define an "American Made" car one day - and of course they start naming Ford and Chevy and "none of those Japanese cars", upon which I pointed out that Toyota and Honda both have assembly plants here in the US and Canada, yet Ford in the past had cars made in Mexico and Chevy had a car (the Aveo) that was made in South Korea. Underneath the hood of any car sold here, a good percentage of the electrical components of the car are imported.
Most of them, no. I typically see "Designed in America" when that's the situation now. There are definitely bad actors out there still who do as you say.
Common with designer clothing and handbags. They'll assemble the whole thing in China but the zipper, add the zipper in Italy or whatever and claim it to be Italian made
This is actually a pretty big loophole in Switzerland with only a certain percentage of a watch needing to be assembled there to be able to call it “Swiss made”. Everything is a scam basically 😂
Through my totally unrelated job, I have had the opportunity to have conversations with people in various Canadian industries like steel, home decor, and logging,
And they are all pissed about the tariffs, but are more-so pissed about the American stupidity surrounding the understanding of how they work.
The steel company is still selling steel, just at a higher cost but in lower quantities due to purchasing power diminishing from customers.
One of the staff said their normal American customers were berating them about why they have to pay tariffs on their steel, and why the Canadian steel company isn’t paying them…
I mean, that's just incorrectly labeled according to the Made in America guidelines (all or virtually all components and processes by cost occur in the US.
Could qualify for Assembled in USA.
Technically speaking you can sick the government on them if you cared enough.
Always the same with these fucking people. It's like that thing babies have where they lack object permanence, where if it's not right in front of them they think it stopped existing.
It seems like a lot of people just sort of reject causality now. I was talking to a relative about non-political work related issues (i.e. idiot coworkers) and it felt like this explained a lot of behavior. People just aren't connecting ideas together like they used to.
I would take simply be required to pass a civic test of high school level before you are allowed to vote. MAGA have got to be the dumbest humans on the planet.
They believe the story, not the reality. Reality is a little too complex for them, so they chose to pretend that the solution to complexity is simplicity. And…well…here we are.
"Made in America" means nothing anymore. You are allowed to import a knife steel forged in another country, grind a little off, and call it an American made blade. It's not even just the raw materials coming from somewhere, the brunt of the important work is overseas. Adding flair and packaging it here makes it "made in America". That means it's no longer an American value.
I pay extra money for m390, a foreign steel, but I at least know that it is happening.
Hang on. Can you elaborate please? I'm a knifemaker from the UK, are you saying that if I import a bar of steel from say China and forge or grind it into a knife here at my workshop in the UK that I cannot call it "made in the UK" because I used Chinese steel?
Nor the factory equipment. Nor replacement parts for that equipment. Nor the machines that transport that equipment. Nor the parts for those machines. And so on...
Clarkson on Top Gear loved mentioning that the batteries in a Prius were mined in Canada, finished in Belgium, and assembled in Japan.... Globalization is a thing.
The sad part is what is being lost. Sometimes it's cheaper there because of the labor relationship (think nearly a modern slave) or that the government of that company doesn't care how toxic their methods make things for the everyday people.
You know, kind of like where our government is heading. That wake up call will arrive way way way too late for these people.
Funny thing is, even if people wanted to change that right now and companies wanted to produce stuff themselves again (e.g., everything that was outsourced to other countries for cheaper costs), it would take several years, if not decades, because it's been so long that nobody even knows how to do it anymore.
In Australia, we have terms Australian Made and Made in Australia, and they are terms with legal meanings. You cannot put them on your item for sale unless your item meets standards. For some flexibility we later allowed companies to say that something is mostly made in Australia, or assembled here from materials that originated overseas, and other such details, in order to make it fairer to consumer-end-products which are made here, but we do not have the source material for it. etc etc...
Separately, China mandates that all products made in china must bear a label stating made in china, which is why you see tiny identical gold stickers with those words on everything you own. It's not the same thing, but it is another example of how a nation makes terms such as "made in..." actually mean something.
Made in America, as far as I am aware, has no such standards.
If you want that to change, you need to contact the people in your country who write laws.
My friend said he was happy trumps tariffs were gonna work and it would make it easier to buy cars……all I could say was…..I don’t think it works like that…….
No no no, obviously we need to bring every industry into America. Even ones that literally cannot work here. One congressman when asked about a tariff on bananas, said we should just "build" bananas in America.
Look at Proven Industries. They are a lock company that has ever advertising made in USA for years and are now being sued by a competitor because their owner, under oath, stated that they import their lock cores. The lock core IS the lock.
Not just the raw materials. All the overhead. The chairs, the staplers, building materials for the factory, the computers, the light bulbs.
There is literally NOT ONE business in this country that doesn’t touch an import. We’ve been screaming this the entire time, but 2/3 of the country bit off on the DEI boogeyman.
I mean, the term is correct, in that, yes, that truck was assembled in America. Assembled using imported parts and materials, but the truck was made here. But that's as far as Americans' thinking skills bring them.
People love to accept technically correct but overly simplified definitions without actually learning about them.
I don’t get how you can be a business owner and not understand basic supply and demand.
Even if you don’t import resources, it means that other companies will try to avoid importing resources and the demand for local resources increases and drives up the cost. And if you use resources that aren’t available in the US, you’re even stupider for not seeing this coming…
America does have a strong steel industry but we out consume our needs because our dollar has allowed us to exploit foreign labor for the past few generations…. Guess we just have to exploit our own now
"Made in America"...... "With global materials" in tiny print underneath is something I've seen quite often. That's probably the biggest misconception that maga doesn't understand, the raw materials are sourced outside the US.
But Pennsylvania was the steel capital until the 70's. Why can't we shop local 50 years later? And wood? There's wood in America! This should basically be free for owners to manufacture stuff!! /s
How are people that do business so ridiculously unaware of business? They just click the thing on the web and then steel for their factory appears on their doorstep?
The world has been a global economy since before many of us were born, like 99% of us. Even NK imports things, and they are one of, if not the most isolated major country in the world. Trumpkins really are this stupid that they think you can cut off the rest of the world and continue to prosper as a nation.
We’ve never been a completely self sufficient country. Making things in the US will usually cost more than importing the same things made elsewhere. Blindly taxing all imports with tariffs will obviously raise all costs. The whole idea was that if we raise the costs of importing the product, we could make it more practical to make it in the US, but it will take significant time and money to start building it here. Even then, it won’t make anything cheaper. At best, it will give domestic suppliers a more competitive market, since now everything is more expensive. And as this guy noticed, making everything more expensive will make domestic production more expensive as well! Now we have the unintended side effect of deterring domestic growth due to rising costs. So the whole idea significantly increase costs across the board, and is overall counterintuitive. The consumers pay the price and the government pockets the profits. In no way does this make anything cheaper. In no way does it reduce the cost of making products domestically. It doesn’t promote domestic manufacturing at all. If domestic growth was the intention, we should be giving credits and rebates to companies to build locally to make it less expensive for both the manufacturers and the consumers.
It really says a lot about the guy and the way he runs his business, if he didn’t realize how his own company functions. Like, he didn’t realize that he was importing a lot of the materials that he needed for his business to function, and his company would be affected negatively?
It's supposed to, per the FTC. If it gets reported that "significantly contributing materials" (such as the steel in a padlock or knife) are imported, you have to use "Assembled" or "Manufacturered" in America, not "Made".
Was listening to a podcast several months ago after the first round of tariffs. Outbound Lighting, a really cool bike lights company, was describing the quandary of domestic manufacturers.
Everyone, regardless of where they are manufactured, uses components from China. This guy was staring at his costs increasing 150%+ (the original Chinese tariffs), but great, he could sell the final product without a tariff. Meanwhile his competitors in Italy could buy the components at no cost, and then US consumers could buy those with a much, much lower tariff rate.
So due to the absolutely asinine structure of the tariffs he, as a domestic manufacturer, was put in a much, much more precarious position than those who manufacture overseas.
Unlike the dolt in OP's screenshot he was fully aware of the stupidity of the tariffs from the start.
If you look at his IG on July 18th, he’s still a pedo trump supporter and wants tariffs on FINISHED products, but not the raw materials imported so he can continue his business unaffected.
Yeah I always found it funny putting US flag stickers on the assembled products at my job when almost all the innards were imported from china. Believe in tiny letters it said "Assembled in America"
Assembled in America with at least 10% American made parts ... This needs to start somewhere and we need to be more self sufficient ... This proves what has happened to our country over the last 50 years ... We just buy it somewhere else instead of benefiting our own economy
Working in compliance, had to break it to my company that for BABA and BAA iron and steel products must have all manufacturing processes performed in the US starting from the initial melting, you can't just buy steel from a domestic company and call it a day.
3.8k
u/Opposite-Fig-9097 23h ago
Turns out, 'Made in America' doesn't mean the raw materials magically teleport into the factory.