Summary

China has shrugged off the latest U.S. tariff hike, dismissing the Trump administration’s threats as a “meaningless tariff numbers game.”

Donald Trump’s move to impose tariffs “wiped trillions of dollars off Wall Street” and raised duties on foreign goods, claiming to bring back U.S. manufacturing jobs.

A White House fact sheet announced tariffs on some Chinese imports would rise to 245%.

China’s Commerce Ministry said the move “fully exposes the fact that the United States has become irrational” and vowed to see the trade war “through to the very end.”

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      I am rooting for free trade. It’s stupid and inefficient for every country to try to manufacture the same goods.

  • riodoro1@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    What are americans going to do? Stop buying Chinese crap?

    Once amazon warehouses are empty the tariffs are gonna be „paused”. In trumps own words „he has no cards”.

    • Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub
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      5 days ago

      There’s two ways this works out.

      1. Trump’s regime doubles down, never backs out and holds firm.

      Basically, you’re fucked. Chinese goods stop flowing, medical devices and equipment stop coming, tools and utilities stop being restocked. You’re on your own. Welcome to Thunderdome.

      1. Trump’s regime keeps this going until the backlash forces them to give it up.

      Then we capitulate to China, end up paying more overall but not an impossibly high figure for our items and life goes on… only a little less swimmingly.

      My bet is on #1. Stock up on ammo and food, road warrior.

  • Crackhappy@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Trump has already lost this war. The war he started because he’s stupid as fuck. He’s going to die before he sees the results of the chaos he reigns.

    • P00ptart@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Have you seen him recently? Sometimes he neglects the orange deck stain, and his skin is grey and ghoulish. I swear if he didn’t have some necromancer keeping him alive, he’d have died 20 years ago.

  • RangerJosey@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    Lmao. Could be 2400% and it still wouldn’t matter. China already has the pipelines to circumvent all retaliatory measures including Chumps tariffs.

    Remember how China exposed all the luxury brands? It’s that. Send the products to Vietnam or Brazil or somewhere. Get a domestic label sewn on and bingo.

    Xi is playing chess. Chump is playing with his own feces.

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Once again I miss competence. Just - plain old competence. Knowing a goddamned thing.

      Unfuckingbelievable we’re here again. The fucker almost wiped out the planet last time with a virus. Gotta give him another at-bat eh? Fucking idiots.

    • madame_gaymes@programming.dev
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      6 days ago

      In Trump’s defense, its easier to shove a turd through the round hole than a square peg. Especially if it’s liquid McD’s turds.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 days ago

      I mean, that’s still a lot of extra cost and red tape, and the guys sewing labels will eventually start sewing everything else.

      It rarely adds 200%, though. At 125% the talking head were already saying the US was in effective embargo territory, so it is kind of meaningless.

  • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Trump is going to loose this trade war in 6 months or less.

    We at about to have Covid level disruptions to our supply chain. Over 80 cargo vessels have canceled sailings. Think about the amount of goods we are not going to get in 3 weeks time. Yeah China will loose money and will be hurt by the trade war but they can find other markets.

    The USA is going to have epic supply chain disruptions. We wont have consumer goods or components for manufacturing within 6 weeks. It’s going to be a shit show unless Trump backs down.

    https://www.asiafinancial.com/transpacific-cargo-trade-decimated-by-trumps-tariff-war

    • opus86@lemmy.today
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      5 days ago

      It happened in his first term when he pull this tariff crap. All of our projects came to a stand still because we couldn’t get gear. The same thing is about to happen again.

    • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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      6 days ago

      China is not without a butt load of economic problems already. We are their biggest trading partner. I agree we, the US, is fucked, but China is about to be as well. There will be no winners here.

      • shawn1122@lemm.ee
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        5 days ago

        China has a much greater tolerance for pain than the US for a multitude of reasons. China is also in a position to bolster trading relationships with other nations since it has not gone scorched earth like the US.

        The US holds disproportionate purchasing power for its size but it’s still has far less than 50% global purchasing power. China and most other countries will find other partners to trade with while the US isolates itself further.

        The only reason the US holds 20% of global purchasing power is because of mutually beneficial relationships with other countries. Purchasing power will slowly erode over time if Trump continues on his current path.

        The US is really overestimating its leverage here and, being a fairly overmiliatarilized nation, one can only hope it doesn’t turn to violence once things go south.

      • generichate1546@lemmynsfw.com
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        6 days ago

        The soft power and better relationships China creates with other countries looking for a trading partner that is consistent… China playing the LOOOOOOONG game.

  • notsure@fedia.io
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    6 days ago

    …how anyone in the US sees this as positive is beyond my ability for faith and reason…

    • Match!!@pawb.social
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      6 days ago

      the trump voters largely do not want positive, they want big negatives for everyone else and are willing to accept negatives for themselves to get it

    • entwine413@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      That elected a 34 times convicted felon. I’m not sure why anyone is surprised anymore.

    • crank0271@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      What makes you think that they do? I imagine the biggest beneficiaries of this whole thing is a somewhat longer runway until Russian and Chinese demographic collapse.

  • yarr@feddit.nl
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    6 days ago

    China can live without us. We can’t live without them. Go into a Chinese house and remove all the items made in the USA. Now try that in an American house and tell me what’s left.

  • Yoga@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    There is functionally no difference between a 145% and a 245% tariff.

    The cost of going through a black market rather than a clear or grey one is likely already below 145% and the grey one is likely to fill most gaps in the long run anyways.

    Grey market tariff skirting might be Canadian or UK companies slapping their logos and “made in X” marker after making a tiny change to the product. The barrier to entry on this is quite low as is the risk. If your profit is capped at 145% you still have a lot of room to make money.

    • shawn1122@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      Generally any tariff over 50% eats into profit margins sufficiently to end trade altogether.

      Any escalation in tariffs above that is essentially just a symbolic dick measuring contest. China is being the adult in this situation by not engaging.

  • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    So now we see whether Trump gives in or makes up bigger and bigger numbers. “900%! 1,776%! A BILLION PERCENT!

    • wjrii@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      If you raise the tariffs to a billion percent then the US will get a billion dollars revenue for every $100 TV that comes from China! There will be so many millions of billions!!! Why wasn’t anyone smart enough to do this before???

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      They’re not good, but they are easy to win…if you have all the manufacturing facilities and are okay with plunging your country into depression for the sake of absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

      Wait, what’s the definition of “win” again?

  • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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    6 days ago

    I can only picture Xi Jinping swimming through a pile of rare earth minerals like Scrooge McDuck, while a call from Trump rings, unanswered.