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Tariffs? Buy stuff now?
- Thread starter old-fart
- Start date
florduh
Well-Known Member
I honestly find this kind of shocking. I thought for sure China would cave at least a little. To keep global trade functioning.
www.bbc.com
LOL. The US is now begging to negotiate. China says, "nahhh we're good. Best of luck
"
China tells Trump: If you want trade talks, cancel tariffs
China denies any trade talks with the US as it calls for sweeping tariffs to be cancelled.
www.bbc.com
LOL. The US is now begging to negotiate. China says, "nahhh we're good. Best of luck
"
Flotsam
Well-Known Member
Screenshot-2025-04-24-121038 hosted at ImgBB
Image Screenshot-2025-04-24-121038 in Flotsam2025's images album
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old-fart
Maybe not the oldest, but possibly the fartiest!
If we are going to bring back manufacturing to the US, we are goin to have to cut wages significantly. Like by 75%. Some people may not like this.Look, I'm no Big City Business Genius. But maybe instead of crashing the global economy to bring factories back, we can instead simply improve the wages of the jobs we have now?
Hyundai factory workers in Alabama make less than McDonalds workers in Denmark
Flotsam
Well-Known Member
i never bought anything from there, but i get a weird reaction from that site. Like i get a link from here for something like Vaphit store on AliExpress. It works the first time i link but after that it just says "store not found". Its like they are hiding it from me. I suppose it is a different experience if you are shopping and logged in.
- on the other hand -
I had just bought some little glass pieces i wanted to try at this shop in Shenzen & the cc transaction didn't go through but i did get a response via Whatsapp from the seller. I was able to do the transaction via paypal and i literally had their shipment in 1 week. All tracking provided via Whats App as well. Probably the quickest i have ever gotten something from China.
So not sure what is supposed to be happening May 2 but you see Banner headlines on some Vape sites (eg TVape) about 125 % etc. Just another episode in this Shtshow
florduh
Well-Known Member
Container ships from Asia take 25 days to the West Coast and 35 days to the East Coast. We've barely seen the effects on store shelves and prices yet.
We're not bringing manufacturing back to the US. At least not with tariffs alone. It's a farce.
China has a manufacturing base because their government spent...probably trillions of dollars on subsidies and educating their populace. That's simply never happening in this country.
Listen to Tim Apple:
We're not bringing manufacturing back to the US. At least not with tariffs alone. It's a farce.
China has a manufacturing base because their government spent...probably trillions of dollars on subsidies and educating their populace. That's simply never happening in this country.
Listen to Tim Apple:
Bakin4Life
Oink
Within 5yrs or so, robotics will supplant most of the jobs in *both* countries. China is running factories right now with no lights on -- bc there are no people in the facilities except for small overnight weekly maintenance windows.Look, I'm no Big City Business Genius. But maybe instead of crashing the global economy to bring factories back, we can instead simply improve the wages of the jobs we have now?
Hyundai factory workers in Alabama make less than McDonalds workers in Denmark
The new / next generation of 'workers' will require no wage, no time off, no break room, and no HR organization. 5-10 years from now, 'blue collar' jobs (and many of the grey / white collar) won't exist any longer.
The time it would take to 're-shore' manufacturing (about 4-5 yrs) is about the same timeframe for full automation. There might be a few new buildings, but they're not going to be built with human workers in mind.
Actually, it *should* be even longer, as goods 'in the water' weren't subject to the tariffs. Of course, that won't stop the opportunistic from a quick 125% / 245% price hike (or whatever the price of goods will be, tomorrow morning).
florduh
Well-Known Member
If this is true, China beats us here too. Someone still has to make the robots. Like Tim Apple said, America doesn't have enough advanced manufacturing engineers/technicians to fill a single room. China has multiple football stadiums full of them.
Exsmoker
Plant Manager
Yep, I checked my AliExpress wishlist, and things are dropping like flies. I now see this on many of the items.
Bakin4Life
Oink
Yep. (and I never said the robots in those new US factories would be US-made)
![:\](/i/s/hmm.gif "Hmm :\")
There's a YT vid with Friedman (who I fully acknowledge as a right-leaning libertarian) who explains this, as part of his many trips / observations there over the last few decades.)
China plans for the long-term, and their leadership doesn't need to worry about churn. Meanwhile, Tangerine Idi Amin is still stuck in the 20th century, remembering the halcyon days of US manufacturing when he grew up, in the 50's-'60s, and we were rebuilding the post WW-II era world with US-supplied materials, labor (and education). That time has come and gone, and it's not coming back.
My favorite vaporizer these days comes not from Germany or China, but from Vietnam.
chillAtGVC
Well-Known Member
And then what? Globalization has been great for the professional and managerial classes and driven wealth up. But what will happen with 10s of millions of people with no job and no prospect of a job? The opioid epidemic is probably one answer, but one I don't think we should want. Guaranteed minimum income and a life of basic leisure? Some may be OK with that, but I see that as just a recipe for eventual social unrest. As a species, we don't "do nothing" very well.
You only need that if you want to compete on price. But you can also compete on quality, repairability, longevity, trust, etc. Are people ready to pay more for better goods? I don't know.
florduh
Well-Known Member
I like this idea that everything is shitty now because foreigners are making it. And not because some fat fuck white guy in a suit says, "do this as cheaply as possible and build planned obsolescence into literally everything so I can buy a yacht"
bellona0544
Well-Known Member
If the future were more evenly distributed, we would be seeing many, many millions and billions of people moving toward a life with minimal work required to actually produce things and keep services running and people would be free to pursue hobbies, interests, education, and art while having their basic housing and food and health care needs met. We have way more than enough productive capacity to create that world. Until such time as the billionaire class no longer determines the course of human history, we will instead have mass stagnation, unrest, and very quickly we will see mass starvation and violence as monocrop globalized agriculture fails in the face of climate change.
China isn't going to stop it--Xinping is a billionaire who doesn't care about human rights abuses or environmental abuses. They are moving toward green energy purely out of economic viability, but they still have an atrocious record when it comes to things like rare-earth metal mining and storage of hazardous waste. See here for a recent example. China is still ruled by a handful of elites with deeply centralized hierarchical power, and while they are *more* forward-thinking than the oligarchs that rule the US and Russia, they are still ultimately oligarchs that destroy this planet for profit.
We are probably going to see a bunch of smaller revolutions this century that will culminate in a more equitable, more just world, where the desire to accumulate more resources than you and a thousand of your generations could use in their lifetimes is seen as the cancer it is on both this species and this planet. Let's not forget that we are fully in the seventh mass extinction event right now and that will continue until billionaires are not allowed to exist anymore. We either see a series of revolutions that create new organizations (probably smaller than most nation-states) that work to limit the harm any individual can cause while promoting the public and ecological good, or we all start dying en masse alongside our planet until a handful of assholes get off this planet or until our population dwindles dramatically. Those are the options in front of us. Death, or change.
@chillAtGVC--you are welcome to provide anthropological evidence that contradicts my claims. Until then, your laugh means nothing
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I'm not sure about all that tbh...
A sustainable agricultural practice and food supply chain would require a lot of sweat from everyone...