Do you mean this is the point of a carefully planned, deliberated, executed, and announced tariff rollout, or do you mean that's the whole point of tariffs as they are currently being implemented in the United States?
The tariffs that were announced during the campaign - the same way Ross Perot did - and the reasoning was to bring us manufacturing back to the US and reduce the tax burden on US citizens? Such as writing off car payments if the car is American?
People wigged out over non-reciprocal tariffs, where we tariff at 50% what they charge the US. People wigged out at 10℅ flat rate tariffs. "Heard island penguins get charged 10%!)
I really have to wonder how important this Chinese junk is. They make so much junk for the US, that the EU, including Von der Lyon, had to make a plan to deal with Chinese companies wanting to, and I quote here, "dump" all their exports on to the EU market.
The EU is very protectionist over their countries' economic outputs and manufacturing. But if the US does that...
> People wigged out over non-reciprocal tariffs, where we tariff at 50% what they charge the US.
The "reciprocal" tariffs are based on not the tariff duties foreign countries imposed on US goods, but the trade deficit the US has with said foreign country. There's a lot of idiocy in the tariffs, but this was one of the loudest complaints people had with them.
> People wigged out at 10℅ flat rate tariffs. "Heard island penguins get charged 10%!)
Because the list of "countries" being charged made it clear that it wasn't being based on a list of countries as people understand them. Uninhabited islands and islands consisting only of US military bases being on the list were strong signs of the lack of competence in the planning for the tariffs.
And really, that's why people are complaining so hard: it is abundantly clear that tariffs are being rolled out in a botched manner by incompetent people for inane reasons, so whatever positive effect they might have is completely ruined and all of their negative effects are intensely amplified.
Its abundantly clear that narrative is being driven. Its much less clear why, or by who.
The Heard and McDonald Islands debacle was poorly reported on.
It does have its own customs zone, it doesn’t fall under Australia.
Some years, the World Bank has reported imports from the island: https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/USA/Yea...
I assure you the US did not import $1.3M worth of machinery from an uninhabited island.
It's a data error. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/04/revea...
I don’t think anyone is claiming there’s secret industry on the islands. But a “data error” is probably understating it, that is what did actually appear on the bills of lading. Whether it was a bizarre innocent mistake or sort of some kind of financial scheme is unclear.
My strong suspicion is someone misclicked a select box in a form somewhere.
Maybe. That’s clearly the likely case for Norfolk.
Do you know if tariffs are assessed based on the country of origin in the bill of lading? The Guardian article doesn’t answer that question. I’d suspect so since that’s how everyone is counting imports and exports, but the Guardian article isn’t clear.
...and nobody bothered checking?
You've never mislabeled a package or letter?
The postal/shipping/logistics service will almost certainly have gone "that's not right..." and quietly fixed it.
The USA and the EU more or less have had even import duties. The USA averaging out at 1.47 % and the EU at 1.39 %. [1]
The EU has been advocating for a free-trade agreement, the TTIP, with the USA from 2013 on. It was buried in 2016 by the 45th president of the USA, who somehow thought it unfair. The EU has proposed a free-trade agreement only a few weeks ago. [2]
You may believe what you want, but at least in dealings with the USA the EU has always promoted free trade. Even Fox News acknowledges that ;)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tariff_ra...
[2] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/european-union-ready-neg...
Hold on now. For consumers, the only thing that's mattered as far as we're concerned is the fact the US had de minimis, which effectively meant no duties paid on all relevant goods a US consumer might want.
The EU, on the other hand, has made buying goods from the US, for consumers, horrifically expensive, including reducing the value of non-duty paid goods to essentially zero and leaving it up to EU member countries to decide if they then wanted to charge an additional "inspection fee" often more than the value of the goods themselves. Spoiler: those countries did.
So, your point isn't really relevant from a consumer point of view. The EU and its member states have tried every dirty trick in the book to make it as awful as possible to buy anything from the US.
If readers believe I am making false claims, please engage with me. I live in Denmark, as a Dane, and this is what I and any Dane who has bought goods from the US, has experienced directly.
The actual, lived experience is far different than whatever any bloc or country may claim (such as being in favor of free trade). The EU has always been economically protectionist, since its birth.
Hey, thanks for pointing de minimis out.
For those not in the know (and too lazy to look it up ;)), de minimis rules for customs duties set a threshold below which no import duties are applied. The de minimis threshold for the USA used to be 800 US$ (and for now continues to be for all but imports from China), the de minimis threshold of the EU is 150 EUR. In other words, if you import goods worth less than 800 US$ into the USA from the EU no duties are applied. If you import goods worth less than 150 EUR from the USA into the EU, no duties are applied.
There is also a tax de minimis, which is a threshold when you have to pay sales and possibly other taxes, e.g. luxury, alcohol and so on. Obviously those taxes differ from country to country in the USA and the EU, and, for example, importing bourbon whiskey into Denmark would be more expensive than into Germany because of the way alcohol is taxed. But the de minimis determines when those taxes even apply. The USA leverages those taxes from a threshold of 800 US$ (again, not any longer for imports from China), while most EU nations set this de minimis threshold to 0.
Merchants usually combine all these costs (duties, taxes, fees, insurances, shipping, etc.) into something called the "landed costs" [0]. Relevant taxes and fees are higher in EU nations than in the USA, which explains most of the differences, but you are quite right, the WTO considers the USA's landing costs fairer than those of most EU nations (Germany is especially bad.) I have no special insights but I guess this is because Intra-EU trading is devoid of duties, fees and taxes (it is a free trade zone after all).
If you want to poke around a little in the various trading nations of the globe, [1] has a nice database available.
So, I do not agree with your conclusion that the EU is a protective lock box, but could improve. Thank you for pointing this aspect out. It is easy to forget about nuance and how complicated and convoluted some of these things can be.
You've done a good job of explaining the relevant de minimis rules, but you've deflected or minimized the EU's fault.
Inspection fees, duties and taxes make it so functionally no Danish consumer bothers to purchase goods shipped from the US. For Americans to then come rushing to our aid when us poor Europeans are getting a dose of what we've been giving for decades is ironic, to say the least.
When i wanted a DVD player, the cheapest near-mint one on ebay, including shipping, that had digital audio out was shipped from the UK, to the US west coast. This was ~25 years ago.
I ended up trading it for a Volkswagen Jetta. unrelated, but quirky.
The weird thing about Heard Island is that it was specifically called out in a list that did not even include every country.
It wasn't that a flat 10% tariff implies that even non-populated islands have a 10% tariff.
> reduce the tax burden on US citizens
Do you consider the tariffs to be a (tax) burden on US citizens?
Only on those who buy imports.
This seems to assume that everything can be imported or acquired domestically. But tariffs implemented in other countries are much more specific. It makes sense to use tariffs when you have the capability to meet your domestic demand with domestic supply. Indiscriminate tariffs catch things where demand far exceeds domestic production, whether that's raw materials, specific foods, or things that will take a long time to ramp up production domestically.
Ultimately, lots of things manufactured domestically will still increase in price because of the raw materials they require.
Please do explain how one can purchase coffee beans from anywhere but a country close to the equator?
well to be fair to parent, the tariffs weren't exactly rolled out in a sane fashion and a lot of credibility was lost along the way, though it certainly was entertaining if you're a sicko like me.
The tariffs were announced with no plan to bolster on-shore manufacturing.
Yes, that's because they are a consumption tax intended to replace income tax. the talk of US manufacturing is not completely on-the-level.
The main purpose of tariffs is to change behavior for both the consumer and the manufacturers.
Auto manufacturers have been doing this for decades when the US started imposing tariffs on Japanese manufacturers back in the 1970's. To get around the tariffs and still get access to the US markets, they would simply assemble the parts of the cars here and bypass the rules of the tariffs. Many companies then started doing the same.
This effectively changed the behavior of the companies to avoid the tariffs. The end result was more manufacturing and assembly plants here - even though most of the big production tasks of the vehicles were still done overseas.
Also, there's already been several announcements of companies moving their manufacturing to the US in order to avoid getting hit with tariffs:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-commits-500-billion-to...
Nvidia (NVDA) on Monday said it will produce up to $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the US within the next four years as the tech industry looks to bolster its domestic manufacturing footprint in the face of Trump's approach to trade policy and desire to onshore more US heavy industry.
Also, Ford made some moves to avoid both US and European tariffs:
Less than a week after the White House announced its comprehensive set of tariffs, the Dearborn automaker exclusively revealed to Ford Authority its comprehensive plan to relocate all of its assembly plants to Hawaii. The move will be made possible by state of the art 3D printing technology and has the support of the United Auto Workers.
In any event, Ford envisions Hawaii as an export hub for markets outside North America and a key pillar of the company’s domestic production capabilities. Ford will utilize an obscure maritime law from World War II as a way to get completely around European and Asian tariffs, as the original intent of the legislation enabled private companies to avoid punitive trade measures to get badly needed supplies to the Allies at the height of the conflict.
You’re missing a link for the Ford news. Dare I ask when you read about Ford moving production to Hawaii? Was it in early April by chance?
https://fordauthority.com/2025/04/ford-will-avoid-trump-tari...
> We’ll have more on this never, because this was our final April Fools’ article for 2025. We hope you enjoyed all of them!
Ooooof. They got me. Ironically, this is the first article in many different search results with several other articles about how Ford will deal with the tariffs. With another article from Ford Authority on the same topic:
https://fordauthority.com/2025/03/ford-taking-broad-steps-to...
In addition to scrutinizing its supply chain, Ford is also in the process of stocking up on parts that comply with the current U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and it’s also taking a second look at its operations in those countries, according to Automotive News. Ford is “strategically stockpiling components where it is cost-effective and parts that are not pending engineering changes,” supply chain chief Liz Door told suppliers in a recent memo.
This is what got me. They had this article talking about looking at its operations in those countries and then the April Fools article which essentially described them doing just that.
Although I already knew Ford does most of its manufacturing in the US, I should've known better.
Thanks for the heads up regardless.
The Donald tariffs certainly changed my behavior as a Canadian consumer.
For example, i stopped buying US wine, US orange juice and I keep an eye open for any US made thing I could remove from my environment.
Instead of the US government spending away on overcapacity so Canadians can have cheap products, that money should go to public housing and healthcare subsidies. I think this is better for the US long term because agriculture is heavily subsidized and competes with housing and other industries for land and labor.
Oh yeah the money from the tariffs are definitely going to go to help average Americans. Oh wait be did this last time and 90% of the tariffs went to propping up all the industries that went to shit due to reciprocal tariffs (soy beans and others) and we never recovered. So many countries moved away from us and never came back. That's exactly what's going to happen this time, alienating is from our allies, almost like it's the point to cause chaos and alienation but wait why would trump do that hes always been on the up and up before
I don't expect an insurrectionist to do good for Americans.
I also think government spending on overcapacity so we can export food is a waste of money and bad for the economy and the environment. How many millions of acres of soy bean crops do we actually need?
If the market for exported soy suffers because of who people voted for, let's reduce the subsidies by n%, farmers will plant less won't be able to keep all their land and we can return that land to Native Americans. This is disruption we need (but won't get because murica).
Nice, you found Canadian wine and orange juice?
The former is very much a thing.
Impressive scale actually, didn't realize there were over 500 Canadian wineries.
They can substitute US products with those from plenty of nations plowing money into overcapacity and dumping their exports on the international market.
The tariffs were definitely part of the campaign, described in detail in Project 2025 and will eventually replace higher brackets of the income tax.
This consumption tax is tax policy, not trade policy. That was evident when there was not even any discussion about excepting manufacturing inputs (neither this time nor the 45th administration).
Wouldn't it be fairer to remove the lowest tax bracket, or move all tax brackets higher?