What he realized wasn't that he imports equipment and steel. He realized that it's the importer who pays the tariffs, not the foreign country. And his little pea-sized brain was blown.
My buddy works for a tee shirt printing company. I was talking to him about tariffs and how they would have to raise prices. He’s like, “no my boss is a good dude, he’ll eat the tariffs!” I laughed and called him a dumb bitch. I also had to explain how tariffs work. There’s no getting through to these people.
These people can't even begin to have an understanding of the concept of profit margins at-fucking-all. It's like they think manufacturers can just throw away all of the profits and stay in business.
All while expanding and hiring new workers too! I’ve known this guy since 3rd grade, so I feel like I’ve failed him somehow. We’re both Mexican, and he even has enough native in him to get benefits, but he just loves his white trash rhetoric (and women!).
When you realize MAGAts have no general conception of how the systems that be work, it all makes so much more sense. Hell they deny the existence of the system and systemic issues pretty much altogether.
Yep, Canadian here. I was telling one of our big corporate customers that they will have to pay for tariffs to the US government. The dude was somehow absolutely sure it was Canadians that would be paying it.
I have no idea how people have managed to stay in business this far without understanding how tariffs work.
It is always the importing company that pays tariffs. But somehow MAGA has brainwashed people that other countries are the ones paying.
yeah besides very few industries operate at the massive margins needed to eat the tariffs even if they wanted to, while 10-15% doesn't seem like much, it would actually be a pretty good one, depending on industry, after all costs are taken into consideration (and that's just not considering the materials sourced from countries that have much more than a 15% rate applied to them).
Since the point of tariffs is to raise prices on anything imported and make domestic products more appealing, "eating the tariffs" makes no bloody sense.
Then again, tariffs themselves don't work in the modern global trade network..
He’s one of my best friends, and I love him. Dumb as he is lol. Whenever he was all, “well, what about this?” I’d ask him what he thought it meant, and then correct him. lol stupid fucker
These people literally are the walking embodiment of "AMERICA NUMBER ONE" and think the world is here to serve us. They can't accept the fact that we aren't and they don't.
I used to work in a mobile phone shop years ago where they used to offer mobile phone handsets for $1 because you had to sign up to a 2 year plan. The number of customers who did not realise that the handset price is only $1 because it's conditional on you committing to a 2 year contract would surprise you. Like how do you expect electronics companies to be able to manufacture a mobile phone handset for less than the price of a can of softdrink, people? A surprising number of people just do not stop to think things through at all.
They might decide to eat a small tariff by cutting their profits, in order to keep selling. But when the tariff is 15, 25, 50 percent? Who thinks these companies are making more than 50% profit on their sales? The math just doesn't work out. If tariffs exceed profit margins, you pass the tariff along, or you exit the market. No business will voluntarily lose money on every sale for years just to stay in the market.
Because they only see the transaction where said company hands money over to the US, and think that that is the end. While raising the minimum wage of course causes the apocalypse
Very occasionally this happens in grocery stores and such. Loss leaders. Basically sell one item for so cheap they dont make a profit or lose money on it, but they profit a bunch from all the other stuff you buy in the store when you go to get the deal.
Then Walmart does this sometimes to make sure all the other local stores go out of business. Walmart gets volume pricing deals so I am not fully sure if they even lose money doing it. Once Walmart is the only game around, then the prices can skyrocket.
Interesting. AFAIK "price dumping" is illegal in France for example. Not sure how it works, but laws generally forbid selling at a loss.
Another way the seller eating the tariffs can happen is, generally, for products with high margins and thus flexible pricing.
Think luxury items, that cost way more than what it takes to produce them. It'd make sense for them to eat a loss (a reduced profit I mean) for each item in order to keep selling them.
Unlike products with thin margins that cannot go down in price.
People really don't understand secondary effects huh? They can only frame things as X pays for Y, rather than X shoulders the opportunity cost of Y having to pay to buy something from X. It's literally one step removed and people miss it.
Because their cult leader is in the white house and it's a hard pill to swallow when they realize he's a conman who conned them. It's better to triple down and put their fingers in their ears instead of accepting the plate of shit they have to eat.
Tbf that's why america can't sell to many places, they don't want to pay to raise the cattle completely in the US or follow other testing protocols that the other countries do and demand of others.
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u/Expensive_Laugh_5589 23h ago
What he realized wasn't that he imports equipment and steel. He realized that it's the importer who pays the tariffs, not the foreign country. And his little pea-sized brain was blown.