It’s actually quite shocking to leave the U.S. and experience the drastic fall in respect.

The U.S. has over a century’s worth of dominance and control built in, so it’s not gonna unravel anytime soon and countries will need to grovel along for a bit.

But the decoupling has begun, is almost certainly irreversible and is gonna hit Americans hard at most a decade from now.

We have no idea the the chain of motion that has already been set in. Trillions of dollars worth of goodwill and respect has been lost in months.

• RestartKernel

  10/26/2025

  From my Western European perspective: what's specifically striking is how sentiment towards China has improved in turn. Not sure what caused it exactly, but my guess is 1) the U.S. as common rival, and 2) the amalgamation of fears of Chinese manufacturing with newfound fears of U.S. big tech into European nationalism to replace some vague sense of "Western" alliance. The latter may be turning China from the big geopolitical rival to be wary of to just another outside force.

  • corimaith

    10/26/2025

    Virtually every single one of Europe's prized industries are in China's crosshairs.

    • RestartKernel

      10/26/2025

      No doubt about that, but I'm talking general sentiment. Not the conclusions you'd get to after careful deliberation.

    • illiac786

      10/27/2025

      that is true of every country with a significant industry… and if the US had the capability, they would try to do exactly the same.

      And that’s also a good illustration of sentiment toward the US today.

      • corimaith

        10/27/2025

        The US did have that capability from 1945 to the 80s. Clearly Reagan and Clinton were willing to transition to a financialized service based economy and offshore the supply chains elsewhere.

        Well for the OECD it worked out pretty fine, Japan and Korea provided new markets for USA while standards of living improved. But when you are realistically not expecting to maintain balanced import dependency or public foreign ownership, then it becomes zero-sum. A cynical projection from those less fortunate.

        • illiac786

          10/27/2025

          Fully agreed, they did. They would not anymore, this is my perception/sentiment.

• sojournerc

  10/26/2025

  I'm not sure it's all that new. During the Bush Jr. years America was not highly thought of.

  I'm an American traveling through Scandinavia and Northern continental Europe for the last three weeks, now in the UK.

  I haven't experienced a bit of grief. Their opinion of our politics is generally separate from how they treat me personally, and I do the same for people of other nationalities.

  American cultural dominance is everywhere. I can barely find a pub or restaurant not playing American music, for instance.

  • honzabe

    10/27/2025

    > I'm not sure it's all that new. During the Bush Jr. years America was not highly thought of.

    From my Eastern European perspective, this is something fundamentally different. Sure, many people were critical of Bush Jr., but still, you could, with a bit of effort, construct some semi-reasonable narrative even around Iraq and Afghanistan. But Trump? That feels like an entirely different league.

    I grew up in Czechoslovakia, still occupied by Russians at the time. Seeing Trump clap at Putin's landing, seeing US soldiers on their knees rolling red carpet for Putin... this broke something in me. I honestly almost threw up. And that meeting with Zelenskyj in the White House, that will stay with me until I die.

    I spent some time in the US when I was at college, and I will always cherish those memories - these were the best seven months of my life. Coincidentally, I was in the US during the Bush Jr. presidency. And despite my dislike for him, I was always defending the US. Somewhat irrationally, I was always trying to justify even the questionable things. But now, that's gone and buried. As far as I am concerned, the US I loved no longer exists. Now it is another Russia-like hostile country that we need to protect ourselves from.

    And the personal experience you mention - sure, most people can separate citizens from their state. I can have a civil discussion with a Russian. I was always friendly to my Russian colleagues, immigrants who now live here. But that does not mean I am not hoping with all my heart that their state goes to hell.

  • torginus

    10/27/2025

    Considering how many places are actively going to sh*t in the world right now, I'm not surprised that people have grown weary of keeping track of which are the 'bad' countries we're supposed to dislike, at the same time, thanks to globalized work and social media, people have realized that people are people everywhere, and governments are varying degrees of shitty in every country, with people even in the supposedly more democratic ones feeling powerless in affecting how they are governed.

    I know a ton of Russian emigrees, and basically nobody gives them grief (until some of them start talking politics).

  • stavros

    10/26/2025

    > I'm not sure it's all that new. During the Bush Jr. years America was not highly thought of.

    Yes, but the decline is precipitous now. It's gone from "eh, we don't like Americans much, but they're a useful ally" to "wow these guys are fucking insane and we need to divest ASAP".

  • avaika

    10/26/2025

    > Their opinion of our politics is generally separate from how they treat me personally, and I do the same for people of other nationalities.

    That is such a sane thing to do. I was always astonished and sad how often strangers in foreign countries instantly link my origin to the actions of the people in power. As if this is completely under my control and with no doubt I support and approve whatever they do.

    • ponector

      10/26/2025

      [flagged]

      • mrbombastic

        10/26/2025

        The default should be to treat people with respect and give benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise, treating people as guilty because of where they were born is always a crappy thing to do.

        • Freedom2

          10/27/2025

          Which is a very interesting statement considering how the US is treating immigrants these days.

          • jzebedee

            10/27/2025

            Immigrants, residents, citizens, protestors, journalists...

          • sssilver

            10/27/2025

            [flagged]

            • ponector

              10/27/2025

              As well as legal immigrants, green card holders and even citizens. ICE detains all of then.

      • avaika

        10/27/2025

        Given that the EU after over 3.5 years of full scale invasion still buys Russian oil, should we also treat EU citizens as sponsors of the war?

        • ponector

          10/27/2025

          Typical russian whataboutism.

          EU countries with government infiltrated by russian agents are buying russian oil.

      • snapcaster

        10/27/2025

        Judging from this logic you would have supported the US locking up the japanese people in internment camps right? If not, why not?

      • csomar

        10/27/2025

        [flagged]

    • csomar

      10/27/2025

      > That is such a sane thing to do. I was always astonished and sad how often strangers in foreign countries instantly link my origin to the actions of the people in power. As if this is completely under my control and with no doubt I support and approve whatever they do.

      I've never witnessed this happen. People (in person) are usually not aggressive and would not tell what's on their mind. Maybe if a Ukrainian and a Russian are to meet in a bar, things can get heated.

      Mind to share the countries where you saw this happen?

      • avaika

        10/27/2025

        Fortunately nobody was aggressive to me. It was vice versa to a point which made me deeply uncomfortable. Once people learned that I am originally from Russia (even though I am not Russian and I don't live there for many years), people in e.g. Algeria or Tunis or some SE Asia countries were shouting Russian politician names with approval. Some of them tried to lecture me on politics there, assuming I fully approve government actions. Eventually I simply stopped mentioning my origin whenever it was possible, cause I really have no desire to go into same discussion over and over again. And people won't listen anyway.

    • tracker1

      10/27/2025

      Like assuming the U.S. has control over what Israel or Russia does.

  • Tiktaalik

    10/27/2025

    There's no comparison to the W Bush years. He was a buffoon that was mocked, but few if any seriously did things like boycott travel to the USA. Now boycotting travel to the USA is commonplace and travel to the USA has plunged.

    People are nice and will continue to be nice to nice American tourists but make no mistake, there has been a severe shift both in the actions of regular people and business.

  • trollbridge

    10/26/2025

    If anything, it would be nice if a few places were left that didn't have American cultural artifacts everywhere. My experience in the Middle East was often wondering if I were actually in either an American colony or else some place that had dedicated itself to being a kind of museum of American culture, movies, models, advertising, and so forth.

    • sojournerc

      10/26/2025

      100%. I'm excited to find somewhere not playing disco and skater boy, and instead supporting their local music.

      Hell, here in the UK I'm happy to hear Sheeran even though he's not really my style typically.

      I don't mention that because I like American cultural dominance, merely because it is so ubiquitous.

      I was in the middle of South Africa in the oughts and there were bootleg Britney Spears albums... Kind of shocking and I honestly don't exactly understand the appeal of American pop, but it's widespread...

      • saulpw

        10/26/2025

        Avril Lavigne (singer of "Sk8er boi") is Canadian.

        • sojournerc

          10/26/2025

          Fair enough. It popped to mind because I just heard it.

          After looking it up, I found it was produced and recorded in California, by an American label.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sk8er_Boi

      • cobbaut

        10/27/2025

        My experience here in Antwerp is that a lot of places also play French, Italian, German, Swedish (Abba), Greek, Mexican, Brazilian, and many others, and of course Flemish music mixed with British and American. Never only (or mainly) American for as long as I live (I'm 55).

• xnx

  10/27/2025

  > Trillions of dollars worth of goodwill and respect has been lost in months

  And for nothing. Normally you can at least get a good price for selling your reputation.

• CoastalCoder

  10/26/2025

  > It’s actually quite shocking to leave the U.S. and experience the drastic fall in respect.

  My only vantage point is from inside the U.S., but I find the loss of prestige completely believable.

  What amazed me was discovering that my own countrymen would vote in, and continue to support, someone like Trump.

  My political views are pretty centrist, and I thought I understood the views of most liberals and conservatives.

  But I never thought there would be so little resistance to the lies, corruption, authoritarianism, and the breakdown of the separation of powers. And the simple incompetence w.r.t. running the executive branch.

  It's like my mental framework has no way to model whatever is going on here.

  • Tiktaalik

    10/27/2025

    This is what happens in a FPTP two party system.

    If you don't like one party what other option do you have but to vote for the other party?

    So as a result it's enormously easy for radicals to take over a big tent party and still achieve remarkable support.

    • M95D

      10/27/2025

      Bernie was a 3rd option. Very few voted for him.

      • KerrAvon

        10/27/2025

        Bernie was never a 3rd option, to be clear. He wasn’t running a Ross Perot-style third party campaign, he was running to be at the top of the Democratic ticket. And when the DNC cleared the way for Hillary, he was out of the game.

      • marpstar

        10/27/2025

        The enthusiasm around Bernie in 2016 was palpable. The DNC took it from him.

        • KerrAvon

          10/27/2025

          This is true. Anecdata, but I talked to some of the “Republicans for Bernie” back then, and it was real, not astroturf. We’d be in a different place if Bernie had been the Dem candidate in 2016. I think it’s likely Bernie’s actual presidency would have been a major shitshow that made Jimmy Carter’s look pretty solid, but it would have relegated Trump to what he originally wanted to be, a fringe political figure grifting millions from gullible conservatives.

          (I also think Bernie could not have won in 2020.)

          • AnimalMuppet

            10/27/2025

            But in that scenario, the Republicans would not have run Trump a second time (and maybe not even the first, because all the populist action would have gone to Bernie). So Bernie would lose in 2020 to a normal (that is, not populist) Republican.

      • tracker1

        10/27/2025

        Bernie still runs/ran/supports the DNC umbrella... The socialists are embedded in the DNC, not a separate party.

        That said, most Libertarians are now under the RLC (Republican Libertarian Caucus) as disaffected neo-socialists have come into the separate party, and the Democrat party has become more Socialist itself.

        Also, Bernie should have one, but the DNC leadership absolutely cheats... this was incredibly apparent in 2016 and 2024. Talk about an oligarchy/autocracy...

        • nobody9999

          10/27/2025

          >Also, Bernie should have one, but the DNC leadership absolutely cheats... this was incredibly apparent in 2016 and 2024. Talk about an oligarchy/autocracy...

          How, exactly? Clinton received 12% (55.2%-43.1%[0])/three million-plus more primary election votes than Sanders.

          And he only received that many because Clinton wasn't a great candidate, and more importantly, the decades-long campaign to smear her and her husband.

          What's that? 'Muh "superdelegates!"' Those actually didn't matter -- the actual votes by actual Democratic voters is what did it.

          What's more, even if Sanders had not lost by 12% and had become the Democratic nominee, the ads just write themselves:

             Pan in on Bernie Sanders saying "I am a proud Socialist!" 
             with shimmering backgrounds of the Soviet and CCP flags 
             and portraits of Stalin and Mao smiling down on him. "I'm 
             Joe Stalin, and I approve this message!"
          
             Then video of Soviet/Chinese armies parading with tanks 
             and all sorts of other "socialist" imagery.
          

          and on and on just like that, over and over. As such, Sanders would never have won the general election and it wouldn't have been nearly as close as the actual one.

          Go ahead. Call me a liar. But actual vote counts from actual elections have nothing to do with "superdelegates" or any of that.

          [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presiden...

          Edit: Added more detail to the imagined "campaign ad"; Fixed prose.

  • estearum

    10/26/2025

    Try on the "it's a cult" model. It explains pretty much everything. This has almost nothing to do with politics or policy or even economics.

    It's a cult around Trump and then a (quite diverse) set of politically/culturally/economically-motivated opportunists surrounding him and trying to leverage the Donald's cult-building magic into whatever future United States they dream of.

    Whoever speaks to him most recently before he steps in front of a microphone gets policy priority for the next media cycle!

  • csomar

    10/27/2025

    > It's like my mental framework has no way to model whatever is going on here.

    It is historically in line with the U.S.A. The last few decades were the exception.

  • SlightlyLeftPad

    10/26/2025

    Well, we could be amazed although you seem to be jumping past another, more controversial yet still equally possible conclusion which is that our elections aren’t as pure as we’d all like to believe.

    Certainly, I’m not here to spread conspiracy and I agree with you here, the results are the only evidence we have of the current situation. Given that, I think many of us were amazed.

    • AnimalMuppet

      10/26/2025

      Are you saying that, under the Biden administration, there was voter fraud that threw the election to Trump? If so, given that the Biden administration would have every reason to try to prevent that, I'd like to see your evidence.

      If you aren't, then what exactly are you saying?

      • woooooo

        10/27/2025

        There's no significant evidence of fraud, but the states run elections. Feds just tally the electors. Biden admin wasn't closely involved either way.

    • 1oooqooq

      10/26/2025

      did you ever try (barelly a research, im not even asking if you got up from your chair) to know about joining a party or participating in voting counts?

      • SlightlyLeftPad

        10/27/2025

        Sigh…I’m NOT referring to the popular voter fraud case here. My point has more to do with gerrymandering and a variety of strategic and tactical choices by the two parties to sway elections. Manipulation of Social and mainstream media for instance. When you think about it even a little but beyond the vitriol, it makes sense.

  • brailsafe

    10/26/2025

    > My political views are pretty centrist, and I thought I understood the views of most liberals and conservatives.

    I think that effect comes from astroturfing, algorithms, and tribalism.

    The only way imo that a person gets any kind of genuine small sample of the varying vibes outside their circle is to speak with randoms in different geographic regions with a sense of humility, curiosity, and friendliness, in real life.

    • brailsafe

      10/27/2025

      I'd add that I'm not assuming the person I was replying to doesn't do this, just that it's my hunch in a general sense that people basically stick to their circles and don't realize how differently people see the world outside it and why, because only the most emotionally charged, opposing, or niche topics make their way across someone's radar unless they speak to those people in real life. People are broadly much more alike than they are different, and the reasons they're different come down to familial, regional, or circumstantial variation that aren't as much of a barrier to forming common bonds as the internet or media would have us believe. That's also not to say that there aren't insurmountable differences like economic class that influence outcomes in a major way.

• LennyHenrysNuts

  10/28/2025

  To be fair you haven't had a great deal of respect for the last forty years or so.

  What you mistook for respect was fear.

  • kuboble

    10/28/2025

    As a person who grew up in Poland.

    In the 80s and 90s USA was idolized and admired. Yes, even in the 80s when officially Poland was still in a soviet influence sphere with soviet and communist propaganda being everywhere.

    The word "Ameryka" was a colloquial used to describe something amazing, rich, high tech. The myth of American freedom, that in America hard work can lead to personal eneichment were told like fairy tales.

    When Poland joined NATO it was like dream come true. There was this huge enthusiasm of becoming officially friends and allies of USA.

    We looked up so much to the USA.

    It's really sad to see that completely disappear.

The number 39 refers to the 39% tariff rate on Switzerland.

Kind of insane that the American President just made up a lie that tariffs are paid by foreign countries and rest of the administration just went along with it. It flies in the face of any common sense.

• tzs

  10/27/2025

  It's even worse than that. Their argument against corporate income taxes is that any tax imposed on a corporation is just passed on to consumers.

  Hard to see why companies would pass on a government imposed tax if it is an income tax but not a tariff.

  If anything you'd expect it to be the other way around, because an income tax allows deductions for much of the cost of making that income which generally means the amount of tax is lower in times when the business is not making much money, whereas a tariff is on the cost if the businesses imports which can remain high even in times where the business is not making money.

  • tracker1

    10/27/2025

    Both are passed to consumers... the difference is a tariff is a point for international negotiation, there are competing options to a tariffed product, and it's a relativistic approach.

    The U.S. has lost so much in terms of even being able to produce anything that it's in a weak position not just in terms of trade, but in domestic security in and of itself. The lesson from COVID should be that ensuring domestic production of at least SOME of everything that CAN be produced domestically in the US should be ensured to exist.

    As examples... IMO, all prescription medications/devices should require dual sourcing and at least 50% domestic production. This ensures actual patent licensing as well as being able to ramp up from 50% in case of a need (war/pandemic). It's nearly impossible to ramp up from 0, but easy to ramp up from 50%. This can/should be extended to essential infrastructure, communications and technologies.

    Most countries don't have the size/scale/scope to do this... the U.S. and a handful of other countries are and should take advantage of that and ensure it for their own critical security.

    I don't say any of this from an isolationist PoV, I think trade is important... I think diplomacy is important... I just feel that a level of domestic security in terms of self-reliance at a certain level is more important.

• TrackerFF

  10/26/2025

  It's not insane when the sitting American president is a known pathological liar, and has been known to be so for half a century.

  What is insane, though, is that people voted for him. Elect a clown, expect a circus.

  • johnnyanmac

    10/27/2025

    "But she had a weird laugh!"

    I guess most voting Americans didn't need much to throw the country's century long superpower streak down the toilet. Or worse yet, just pretend that both sides are equally bad and not use their voice that many died to give them.

• mbrumlow

  10/27/2025

  So why would the Swiss company care then? Care so much to make a special watch? It’s no skin off their back, they don’t pay the tariff right? Americans are the only ones affected right?

  • dieortin

    10/27/2025

    It obviously affects Swiss companies too, because their products become more expensive to American consumers, which makes it more unlikely they will buy them. No one said Americans are the only ones affected. But it’s Americans that pay the tariffs.

    • burnerRhodov2

      10/27/2025

      if i charge a 39% tarrif on swiss watches, doesn't that make american watches 39% more competitive?

      So, people will just buy more american watches in your example, no?

      • 20after4

        10/27/2025

        That's way too simplistic. When a tariff raises the price of competition, everyone else raises their prices too. It just increases costs to consumers, and raises government revenues.

        • burnerRhodov2

          10/27/2025

          Yes, that is way to simplistic.

          You have to look at the elasticity of demand across every component to determine the correct ratio.

          What i can tell you, as a GSM, from a CapEx perspective, sensors, motors, cables, and batterys made in the US just got significantly more competitive. It was already trending that way due to JIT demands and rapid factory buildouts, but the tarrifs were a huge marketing boon for american supply chains.

          And i can tell you for the first time as someone in the supply chain business i can confidently ask the question "Should we be buying this bolt from Insert country here?".

          It's almost like i've been given the authority to source products from the United States even if we are paying some percent higher.

      • johnnyanmac

        10/27/2025

        You'd be correct in an economy not tumbling towards recesssion due to said tarrifs being universal, and not just focusing on specific industries to make american ones more competitive.

        As it is, American spending is way down and hurts everyone. A small stock crash (the thing propping the US up as of now) would truly hit with a 2nd depression at this point.

        • burnerRhodov2

          10/27/2025

          Everyone keeps screaming recession, i see an extreme bull market across all asset classes...? Am i missing something?

          • johnnyanmac

            10/27/2025

            The very short of it is that a lot of bus bull market is propped up by AI. To such an extent that the top 10 companies of the S&P 500 have half the value right now.

            Combine this knowledge with some maneuvers as of late that reflect the Dotcom bubble and we're rife for a crash that will take the world economy with it once the bubble pops. Its a bull asset market right now, but its certainly not a healthy one

            And that's just the economic side of it.When you consider the history of such extreme wealth inequality, ignoring rising unemployment and disresr among the working class can get ugly quickly. That can also go down an expensive route if taken to the extreme.

            • burnerRhodov2

              10/27/2025

              I don't think thats true at all...

              These companies are absolutely money printing machines at the scale we have never seen.

              Some of the individual standout figures:

              Apple’s trailing 12-month net income is around US$99 billion. Microsoft’s trailing 12-month net income is about US$101 billion. Alphabet (Google) is estimated around US$111 billion net income.

              On revenue, one list shows: Amazon ~$670 billion, Apple ~$408 billion, Alphabet ~$371 billion, Microsoft ~$281.7 billion.

              Have you ever read the soverign individual? He kinda predicted this. Tech companies will rise into unfathomably rich while the countries inability to tax foreign revenues will lead to the collapse of the nationstate.

              • johnnyanmac

                10/27/2025

                > don't think thats true at all...

                Its all speculation, so it's not really going to be true or false until it happens (or the economy recovers without a crash).

                Listing tech companies who have all pledged into AI certainly isn't reassuring me otherwise, that's for sure

                >Tech companies will rise into unfathomably rich while the countries inability to tax foreign revenues will lead to the collapse of the nationstate.

                So, we're going to crash but the tech companies will be okay for a little longer? Sure, we can phrase it that way.

      • estimator7292

        10/29/2025

        This assumes there are competitive domestic alternatives. For the vast majority of tariffed products, there are not.

        For one example, the domestic PCB manufacturing industry is a joke. Even with tariffs, China is literally ten times cheaper than domestic. I recently sent an order to both, and the China fab had my boards in production inside a week. The US fab took three weeks to give us a quote, which was five times higher than China for half the quantity, in twice the time.

        The US is not independent. We don't have a domestic industry competing on the global market. We make very little and rely very heavily on imports. What we do make is heinously expensive and not any higher quality than the much cheaper imported goods.

        The current trade war also doesn't spur domestic industry growth because all the materials and equipment to build out industry.... is tariffed. Plus the tariffs change too frequently for any sane person to make any kind of long term investment.

        Industry will wait to scale until economic forces stabilize.

      • jibal

        10/27/2025

        The question they were answering is why would a Swiss company care.

  • jibal

    10/27/2025

    People buy less when the price goes up.

• 10/26/2025

• lijok

  10/26/2025

  I don't know how this tariff stuff works, so for my own understanding, how come countries retaliate to US tariffs by imposing retaliatory tariffs? Are they punishing their own nationals?

  • lreeves

    10/26/2025

    In a sense you can think of it that way, as a Canadian we counter-tariff the US and that can be considered punishing us; however the US is only one country and it encouraged more free trade with every other one of our trading partners so in a game theory sense it's affecting Canadian trade negatively with one country and affecting US trade negatively with you know.. every country.

    • lijok

      10/26/2025

      I see, so like saying "we'll make it less appetizing for our nationals to do business with you, so they'll go shopping elsewhere"?

      • lreeves

        10/26/2025

        Exactly right. There are trade deals forming between countries that in unprecedented ways to avoid dealing with the constantly changing tariffs while one country says they'll take their ball and play alone.

        • jenadine

          10/26/2025

          But the US is the bigger country just next to it, also the most practical to trade with. Trading with country further appart means less efficient in transport. Is it not still self inflicted harm?

          • projectazorian

            10/27/2025

            The Econ 101 view would say yes, note most countries haven't imposed 1:1 retaliatory tariffs.

            But economic considerations are not the only ones. Opposition to the American Revolution is a fundamental theme in Canadian history. People shouldn't be surprised when Canada acts accordingly.

          • jamincan

            10/26/2025

            What options do Canadians have? Deal with the wildly capricious economic policies of the US president, or go seeking other, more stable opportunities elsewhere? Almost all countertariffs we have in place are targeted as opposed to the sweeping tariffs Trump is implementing.

            • jenadine

              10/26/2025

              They could seek other opportunities elsewhere without adding tariff themselves: continue to import from the US and other countries like before. They may indeed export less to the US due to reduced demand from the US, but reciprocating the tariff won't help with that.

              • ponector

                10/26/2025

                But the point is to hurt producers of other country, to motivate them to argue to their government about original tariffs.

                There are no winners in the trade war.

          • watwut

            10/27/2025

            No it is not. It would be being doormat to a bully and bully would come in bully them more.

          • rkagerer

            10/26/2025

            less efficient in transport

            Not after factoring in the 35%-50% tarrif Trump has imposed on many Canadian goods.

          • lreeves

            10/26/2025

            It's not practical when Trump sees a TV ad that enrages him and then cancels all negotiations, how are Canadian leaders supposed to proceed? There's no good faith whatsoever from him.

  • magicalhippo

    10/26/2025

    > Are they punishing their own nationals?

    In the same way that Trump is punishing Americans with the import tariffs, yes. However that is just the primary effect, not the goal.

    If you eat less you might go hungry, but that doesn't mean the goal was to go hungry. Rather it was to lose weight, and going hungry is just the direct effect.

    Part of the goal of retaliatory tariffs is symbolic, part is to indirectly put pressure on Trump by affecting US export industry.

  • thisisit

    10/26/2025

    > Are they punishing their own nationals?

    That is a very simplistic way of looking at it.

    Tariffs are taxes on exports and like every tax tool it has its specific purpose.

    Lets say US for example has surplus diary. It can export the surplus to other countries. Without tariff the only barrier is the exchange rate. If the diary prices are cheaper than local produce, US diary takes over the market and the US farmers make bank.

    Canadian government might want to protect local diary industry. Or Canadians might have concerns about the chemicals in US diary. They have more stringent requirements from their farmers. Either way they raise tariffs for US diary products so that is on par or costlier than local produce.

    Tariffs are normally a precision tool. Countries target specific goods and industries.

    Now what Trump has done is taken a blunt hammer to it and said all goods from all countries will have tariffs. But if you look at retaliatory tariffs, imposed by other countries, it is precise and meant to hurt very specific industries.

    For example, China has raised tariffs on US soyabean. In way it is targeted at US rust belt farmers. The idea being that farmers are a politically active class and if tariffs cause them pain, maybe Trump will come to the table. But that has happened yet. Maybe US farmers just don't care as they are winning too much.

  • xorcist

    10/27/2025

    An import tax works just like any other tax. You decide a law that "import of fresh fruit from Mexico is as of (date) subject to a 10% tax" together with details about exactly what fruit is considered fresh, how to calculate the tax, and where to pay.

    Punishing their own nationals is very explicitly how this is sold to the voter base. "Prices are going to go up for you but unfortunately we have to do this to try to stop our neighbor from raising their import tax explicitly on goods from us".

    Taxes are not a problem if everyone plays by the same rules. The problem for the economy is that some imports are subject to tax and others aren't, or when domestic goods aren't subject to the same tax. Picking winners and losers in an economy by political has never before in history turned out a winning concept.

• croisillon

  10/26/2025

  it's thanks to the lying that he was elected in the first place, and no one around him dares to contradict him, what would be the incentives to stop?

  • Ekaros

    10/26/2025

    I wish there was simple three strike policy on any elected official. Three proven lies and they are remove from office for life. And these can be anything. And not knowing at time does not change it.

    Only silence or absolute truth should be accepted.

    • growt

      10/26/2025

      That way politicians would change every week. Probably not a bad thing :)

    • sneak

      10/27/2025

      So someone gets to arbitrarily decide what is or isn’t true, and thus arbitrarily remove anyone from any office for life?

      Sounds like a foolproof plan.

      Did we not read 1984?

      • johnnyanmac

        10/27/2025

        That's how it works right now. Besides Trump, the US's last presidental impeachment was over a sex scandal. They "say" it was because he lied about it, but I think we know better at this point. It's just really hard to impeach because you need 66 or 67 of the Senate to agree on something, not the usual 51.

        But yes, we'd need some truly neutral Ombudsmen to back up such a system. And they themselves would need to be accountable should they corrupt. I don't think it's impossible, but hard to do with the current power structures.

        • sneak

          10/27/2025

          Cheating on your wife isn’t a crime.

          Perjury is.

          • johnnyanmac

            10/27/2025

            Yeah, use loopholes to get what you want. This year has taught me that well.

    • delusional

      10/26/2025

      "absolute truth" doesn't exist. I understand what you're saying, but the question of when a lie should then disqualify you from office must itself be a political question.

      • jibal

        10/27/2025

        Absolute truth exists, and a claim that it doesn't is self-contradictory. The difficulty is in determining what is or isn't true, especially for empirical matters. (In math and logic the difficulty can vary. And some statements are true by definition, e.g., all unmarried men are bachelors.)

        • delusional

          10/27/2025

          You're confusing logical/mathematic "truth" with philosophical/scientific "truth". While "politics should be based on scientific truth" is an opinion I have some sympathy for, even if it immediately falls apart under any scrutiny. "politics should be based on mathematical axiomatic truth" is a statement so laughable I can only imagine you forgot the context we were talking about.

        • jibal

          10/29/2025

          P.S. I'm not confusing anything and not forgetting any context, and then I get slammed with an absurd strawman, "politics should be based on mathematical axiomatic truth"--not remotely anything I said. Gawd but some people are rude.

          The fact remains that absolute truth exists ... "delusional" seems to have no idea what the word "truth" even means.

    • 1oooqooq

      10/26/2025

      lol. just last week he posted that the Canadian ad showing the audio recording of nixon against tariffs was fake.

      • Throaway152

        10/26/2025

        Reagan, not Nixon

    • 10/26/2025

  • Swoerd

    10/26/2025

    And now that the U.S. has a tyrannical government, there’s no one left to stand in its way, the Second Amendment has proven to be a paper tiger.

    • mlrtime

      10/26/2025

      Can you expand on what you mean exactly? I see these sentences like your littered throughout reddit, vague notions of violence/war?

      • jamincan

        10/26/2025

        It was a common argument that ultimately all of the constitutional protections, balance of powers and all that were protected by the Second Amendment - that in the face of losing their liberty, Americans would rise up against an authoritarian government.

        Within this administration, a lot of people feel that there has been an assault on constitutional protections, but the people who trumpeted the Second Amendment as being fundamental to protecting American liberty and democracy have largely been silent in the face of it.

        • jibal

          10/27/2025

          It was always BS .. the Founders never intended the 2nd Amendment as a means to overthrow the government they created--the Constitution explicitly says that treason can be punished by death. And the people making that argument were always hypocritical about how they would apply it.

        • esseph

          10/26/2025

          It was also avoided for decades as "vile" and now the groups that could most use the 2nd Amendment are (mostly) unarmed.

      • kelseyfrog

        10/26/2025

        It brought to mind the Four Boxes of Liberty[1]. It used to be toted out by conservatives during the gun control debates, but I haven't seen it used by anyone recently until now.

        1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty

  • lukan

    10/26/2025

    [flagged]

    • RobotToaster

      10/26/2025

      The election was stolen, From Al Gore.

      Hell, I'm sure people have been claiming rigged elections since the Ancient Greek republics

      • trollbridge

        10/26/2025

        They did, although back then when votes were public, accusations of bribes for votes were the most common thing, followed by accusations of attempting to rig votes to ostracise someone from Athens.

    • spiderfarmer

      10/26/2025

      Why are you attacking a point he didn't make?

      Trump lies. Almost every sentence is a lie.

      If you're allowed to lie during your campaign and you're immune from the repercussions, of course you're going to sway voters.

      Don't close your eyes to obvious truths.

      • throw0101a

        10/26/2025

        > Trump lies. Almost every sentence is a lie.

        To be fair, a lie is when some knows the truth but says the not-truth.

        Trump may (a) actually believe the things he is saying (i.e., has no firm grasp on reality), or (b) doesn't care enough to actually find out what is true and just says whatever enters his mind to try to get to the destination he wants:

        > On Bullshit is a 1986 essay and 2005 book by the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false.[1]:61

        * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

        • spiderfarmer

          10/29/2025

          Yeah, that argument is bullshit in itself. Trump learned to double and triple down on his lies from Roy Cohn:

          https://forward.com/culture/431851/how-roy-cohns-shame-made-...

          You'll never make me believe he doesn't do it on purpose. He thrives on it. There's no reason for him to stop lying before he's dead. Again, just like Cohn.

      • lukan

        10/26/2025

        "Why are you attacking a point he didn't make?"

        Because I missunderstood.

        "If you're allowed to lie during your campaign and you're immune from the repercussions, of course you're going to sway voters"

        But in my world, lying is enough to not vote for them anyway.

        • johnnyanmac

          10/27/2025

          Sadly a lie travels the world by the time the truth can put on its pants. If Trump did rig any polls, we're still here a year in just trying to get such a court case off the ground. And that year was more than enough to do decades worth of damage.

          • lukan

            10/27/2025

            I think people could know that Trump lies out of habit. It is kind of obvious? The problem that I see is, that they voted for him anyway.

    • croisillon

      10/26/2025

      it's funny you'd ask because it's litterally the first time out of three that he got more votes than his opponent ; and he got more votes thanks to lying, inclusive lying about having won the 2 precedent ones

• mrep

  10/26/2025

  Depending on the circumstance, the burden of tax can fall more on consumers or on producers based on the elasticity of supply and demand.

  Microeconomics 101: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

• charcircuit

  10/26/2025

  >It flies in the face of any common sense.

  The consumer paying the tariff is merely an optimization over the exporter paying the tariff such that the tariff money passes through one less hand. Practically they seem pretty similar.

  • exe34

    10/26/2025

    The exporter gets paid the same as before. The buyer pays more. There's a subtle difference, can you spot it?

    • Borealid

      10/26/2025

      Let's imagine, hypothetically speaking, that demand is perfectly inelastic. The price of a good is $10, and buyers will absolutely refuse to pay more than $10 under any circumstances.

      Before a tariff is imposed, the seller sells the good for $10 and keeps $10 in revenue.

      If a tariff of $1 is imposed under these hypothetical circumstances, does the buyer pay more? Does the exporter get paid the same as before?

      Clearly, it's neither guaranteed that the buyer will "pay more" nor that the export will "get paid the same as before". In reality because demand is neither 100% elastic nor 100% inelastic, what tends to happen is that the cost of the tariff is split in some ratio between the buyer and seller.

      I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case.

      • hshdhdhj4444

        10/26/2025

        You can go into hypotheticals, but unfortunately for you the data exists.

        And the data shows that American buyers are not paying their international supplies less for goods than they were before. In fact, if anything, they are paying slightly more, which maj be explained by general inflation and the fact that tariffs mean American buyers are placing smaller orders and therefore getting smaller percentage volume discounts.

        • avereveard

          10/26/2025

          That opens up greater margin for local production. Not everything is elastic, but as long as the producer side cheats in term of local subsidies, less regulation, slave labor etc, implementing tariffs seem a good choice.

          you cannot just carbon tax everything locally and then let the other corner of the word produce at a fractional price polluting the same world, exploiting worker etc, without wrecking your internal labor market.

          What you see as customer paying more is cause by government letting this shit go on for too long, and now the correction is ugly. But it not like its not needed, and at some point needs to happen before it reaches the breaking point.

          I'm not in favor of the current round of tariffs as used by current administration which seem a baseless negotiating tactic, but the effect of outsourcing to bad faith actors has pushed the working class out of balance, they simply have no way of competing internationally unless by accepting a step downgrade in working and living conditions

          • orwin

            10/26/2025

            > That opens up greater margin for local production

            My country mostly produce pine wood (and other soft wood). I like hardwood furniture, but its only imported stuff because we have very few producers. Putting a tariff on hardwood furniture could be a good idea to increase local production, as long as hardwood is not tariffed. If both hardwood and hardwood furniture get taxed, i will have to pay more, and local production will never have greater margin, as those will be hit by base material tariffs.

            (To be clear: I live near on of the biggest hardwood harbour in Europe, and buy my wood directly out of the sawmill, but my point stands)

            • avereveard

              10/26/2025

              Yeah and thats where I was going with the last point about tariff needing to be integrated with the rest of the economic system as a tool and not arbitrarily as a tool for negotiation. Tariff are a damper to any economic system and reduce efficiency, they need to be proportional, predictable and non escalatory (well, as much as possible)

          • thisisit

            10/26/2025

            > That opens up greater margin for local production.

            It opens up a larger profit margin for local producers for sure. Production? Maybe. Maybe not. Because there is no incentive to produce more or better. Because the cheap bad faith actor is gone and prices can now match the export price or be just slightly below it.

            >but the effect of outsourcing to bad faith actors has pushed the working class out of balance, they simply have no way of competing internationally unless by accepting a step downgrade in working and living conditions

            > What you see as customer paying more is cause by government letting this shit go on for too long, and now the correction is ugly. But it not like its not needed, and at some point needs to happen before it reaches the breaking point.

            You don't seem to see the contradictions in both these statements. If the prices go up and working class isn't paid as much for their effort then it is for naught. The failure hasn't been to continue outsourcing, failure has been to improve wage conditions - because market was supposed to correct it or worst case it is "socialism" to even try and raise wages.

            But as always people want to test economic theories for themselves and they should. See if their lives improve under a capitalist government which is going to trample on their rights.

      • femto

        10/26/2025

        The exporter may sell less to the US, but typically they will then sell the difference into non-US markets, reducing the impost. This is exactly what happened in a lot of (not all) markets a few years ago, when China tried to intimidate Australia with trade restrictions [1]. When Chine dropped the restrictions, they found that they were now competing with more buyers and so paying higher prices.

        [1] https://www.ussc.edu.au/chinas-trade-restrictions-on-austral...

      • exe34

        10/26/2025

        Losing sales isn't the same as paying the tariff. The person importing the item pays the tariff. Their item won't be released from customs if they don't pay. They pay to the US government.

        The correct thing to say is that the tariff has an effect on demand because of the impact of adding a tariff on top of the price.

        • mlrtime

          10/26/2025

          It's not a person, it's a company. The company pays 100% of the tariffs, they are passing it to the consumer who is a person.

          • magicalhippo

            10/26/2025

            The one importing pays the tariffs. If that is a person, say buying directly from AliExpress or some other site, then that person pays.

            If it's a company, the company pays and might pass it on.

            Edit: to be accurate, the importer is legally responsible for the customs declaration and the tariffs, regardless of who does the declaration and who pays. Typically someone else does the declaration on your behalf, and typically they forward any tariffs to you.

          • exe34

            10/26/2025

            companies are persons. see: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.

      • throw0101a

        10/26/2025

        > In reality because demand is neither 100% elastic nor 100% inelastic, what tends to happen is that the cost of the tariff is split in some ratio between the buyer and seller.

        That is the argument of the Administration:

        >> Kevin Hassett's theory of tariffs: "China has got to sell a lot of stuff to us to maintain political stability. And so if we put a tariff on their stuff, then they cut the price so that our consumer is basically still able to demand as much stuff as they need to sell to be politically stable."

        > If he were right, the import price index (which measures pre-tariff prices) would have fallen by enough to offset the sharp tariff hike. It didn't.

        > [graph of said index]

        * https://twitter.com/JustinWolfers/status/1981928861547041162...

      • ajross

        10/27/2025

        This is all true, but in practice end consumer demand tends to be much more elastic for almost everything else in the chain. You don't get to decide not to buy toothpaste for more then $2.50 when you run out, you need a new phone when your old one breaks (and not when the price goes back down), etc... Consumers buy products to fill needs, and *needs* are the inelastic part.

        In particular your "Let's imagine" case is sort of ridiculous. There are no such goods, nor anything even comparable. The very existence of inflation disproves the idea (since if those inelastic goods existed, they'd see demand drop to zero if the price needed to inflate).

      • ThrowMeAway1618

        10/27/2025

        >I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case.

        Yup. And it can't be guaranteed that the sun will rise tomorrow.

        As such, want to bet on it?

      • mbrumlow

        10/27/2025

        Finally. It’s not a cut and dry as one side or the other. People have lost their minds. It’s case by case for every product and every consumer.

        Some companies might chose to loose the margin (few but still passable ). Some might try to pass some or all to the sale price (which creates all sorts another dynamics) and finally the customer does not have to buy that product. There are many note breakdowns that all adjust who pays and when they pay.

      • vasco

        10/26/2025

        >I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case.

        To be fair most people on one side think they know better than Adam Smith and the people on the other side usually never opened a book, so it's a tough bargain.

        • corimaith

          10/26/2025

          The underlying motivations regarding trade imbalances are Keynes' works. If you go back to Bretton Woods you'd find actually alot more support.

        • 10/26/2025

        • mlrtime

          10/26/2025

          One way 100% to get people to see your viewpoint is to insult them. Which side are you talking about?

          • exe34

            10/26/2025

            I assume the left know more than Adam Smith, given his ideas have been tried for few hundred years, while the right can't read

          • vasco

            10/26/2025

            If you read carefully you'll notice I did both sides.

            • jibal

              10/27/2025

              I noticed that what you wrote was neither true nor fair.

              • vasco

                10/27/2025

                That's like, your opinion, man.

                • exe34

                  10/27/2025

                  I assume you have citations you are holding off on for dramatic effect?

                  • vasco

                    10/28/2025

                    People can just say things, it's not all a big plot.

                    • exe34

                      10/28/2025

                      Well yes, I too can pull stuff out of my ass, but I wouldn't usually then call people talking about reality "but that's like your opinion man".

                      • vasco

                        10/28/2025

                        Would it have been better if I had asked for sources instead? How backed up was the talking about reality? What you agree with is reality and what you don't is out of people's ass when everyone was just sharing opinions!

                        • exe34

                          10/30/2025

                          It's pretty clear who pays the tariffs. the buyer pays the manufacturer. the manufacturer ships the product. the product gets held in customs until the buyer pays the tariff.

      • christkv

        10/26/2025

        Yeah we can literally see it happening in real time. If you have a product with competitors in the market and you are a foreign entity you will eat some of the cost to try to stay competitive in the market. Your only other option is to leave the market. A good example of this is Brasil who tariffs a ton of stuff.

      • maxerickson

        10/26/2025

        The other thing that happens is that a buyer doesn't buy anything at all. Deadweight loss.

        • exe34

          10/26/2025

          Sounds like he made America great again - people can't afford the food they like anymore.

      • lucianbr

        10/26/2025

        Isn't your example actually perfectly elastic? It does not change the conclusion at all, of course.

        One problem with this analysis is that I can't imagine Trump doing it, or even understanding it. Well, it's not a problem with the analysis, but with the overall situation.

      • tonetheman

        10/26/2025

        [dead]

    • jakewins

      10/26/2025

      This isn’t actually how it works though. Who pays the tariff is the same as who pays a tax: it depends on the price elasticity of supply and demand.

      If the demand curve is very price sensitive - like people might stop buying wool blankets if the price went up 50%, and buy cotton blankets instead - then the tariff will be paid by the suppliers, because they must lower their prices to make the final price the same.

      And similarly, if the buyers are inelastic, they will pay the tariff. Like for baby formula, maybe parents are willing to stomach significant price hikes without changing how much they buy.

      • throwaway173738

        10/27/2025

        > If the demand curve is very price sensitive - like people might stop buying wool blankets if the price went up 50%, and buy cotton blankets instead - then the tariff will be paid by the suppliers, because they must lower their prices to make the final price the same.

        And the people buying cotton blankets are materially worse off than they were before the tariffs were imposed. They have to accept an inferior product until the wool supplier’s prices have adjusted. Or the wool supplier folds and not nobody can buy wool blankets anymore.

      • thesumofall

        10/26/2025

        As with many things in economics the effect of a measure often depends on the timeframe one considers. Honestly, anything could be true if one just chooses the appropriate timeframe. However, the tariffs clearly introduce an inefficiency which - globally speaking - will be net negative. Locally speaking, though, who knows …

        • ThunderSizzle

          10/26/2025

          Tariffs existed before Trump, and existed by other countries against the US.

          Did those not introduce inefficiency? Actually, it probably produced more inefficiency because most people were probably under thr impression most of the world was under free trade, hence the existence of the WTC.

          Not knowing a tax is much more inefficient than knowing a tax.

          • estearum

            10/26/2025

            Yes, they were inefficient. No tariffs anywhere are the same combination of breadth and depth as the Trump ones.

            > Not knowing a tax is much more inefficient than knowing a tax.

            Why would this be true?

        • vasco

          10/26/2025

          > However, the tariffs clearly introduce an inefficiency which - globally speaking - will be net negative.

          Nobody can predict this. Tariffs are used by trump mostly as a negotiation and distraction tactic. In that sense they've been extremely effective.

          • exe34

            10/26/2025

            > they've been extremely effective.

            yes, as a pump and dump scheme. He and people in his administration have made a lot of money with tariffs!

          • dekerklas

            10/26/2025

            [flagged]

            • degurechaff

              10/26/2025

              salah posting?

              • dekerklas

                11/03/2025

                [dead]

    • charcircuit

      10/26/2025

      I don't see it.

      Exporter pays: Consumer ends up paying price + tariff, then seller pays the tariff to the shipping company, which pays it to the government.

      Importer pays: Consumer pays price, then later pays the tariff to the shipping company, which pays it to the government.

      In both cases the consumer is paying price + tariff. A small difference is that some consumers could be psychologically tricked by the lower price tag in the importer pays model. Note that what I'm saying doesn't concern itself with changes in pricing due to this.

      • bregma

        10/26/2025

        To simplify: if the exporter lowers their price, the consumer pays the same, the exporter gets less, and the consumer pays the tariff to the government.

        If the exporter charges the same price, the consumer pays more, the exporter get the same as before, and the consumer pays the tariff to the government.

        The consumer always pays the tariff. The exporter never pays the tariff.

        • throw234234234

          10/27/2025

          Sure but what actually matters is the consumer's value received vs value earned. In the end it isn't "who" pays, but who gains and who loses value in the net. NOTE: This includes government spending from the tariff.

          If the foreign supplier pays the tariff the country COULD be better off in net terms when you add the consumer + government together assuming the government spends all it takes which in a deficit situation is a reasonable assumption.

        • charcircuit

          10/26/2025

          Please pretend that the exporter hypothetically pays the tariff. It just changes who is paying who. The end result is the same.

          • exe34

            10/26/2025

            We don't have to pretend. We know who's paying. It's the consumer/importer.

            • charcircuit

              10/27/2025

              You are not listening to what I am writing. I am saying that they are equivalent. If you are not going to engage with my comment, why comment?

              • exe34

                10/28/2025

                They are not equivalent. What usually happens isn't that people buy less foreign and more local, but that local sellers take advantage and raise their prices to be just below the foreign+tariff.

                the fact is that IRS is collecting money from the suckers who voted for this and you're desperately trying to make it sound like the exporters are paying for it.

      • ThunderSizzle

        10/26/2025

        > Note that what I'm saying doesn't concern itself with changes in pricing due to this.

        That's the problem with your semantics then. If the manufacturer no longer makes the same income because they can't increase the final price, in effect the consumer didn't pay the tariff.

        • exe34

          10/28/2025

          what happens in practise is that local sellers also increase their prices so that the customer still pays more, but the exporter isn't paying any tariff.

          if exporters paid tariffs, every country would put tariffs on things that they didn't make themselves. they only do it for things they're trying to compete in making. can you figure out why?

      • carlosjobim

        10/26/2025

        > In both cases the consumer is paying price + tariff.

        Consumers pay all of the operating costs and taxes of a company. That's not the debate.

        With tariffs, the cost of an imported product becomes higher than a domestically produced product, making consumers purchase the domestically produced product. This is the purpose.

        The long-term purpose is that foreign companies start making their products in your country to avoid tariffs and be able to compete.

        The discussion about if the buyer or seller pays the tariffs or taxes is non-sensical and a distraction.

        • exe34

          10/26/2025

          > The long-term purpose is that foreign companies start making their products in your country to avoid tariffs and be able to compete.

          There is no long term in the US anymore. TACO flip flops every few days, based on who he spoke to last.

          • carlosjobim

            10/26/2025

            Trump didn't invent tariffs.

            • exe34

              10/26/2025

              No other country flip flops like he does - nobody will make any long term plans when they don't know if the tariffs will be there Tuesday, much less in 3.5 years. Business and investment need stability, not histrionic outbursts and foreign policy at 3am.

    • mbrumlow

      10/27/2025

      The buyer might pay more. If the importer (which is often a foreign institution) tries to pass the cost along to the customer. And the customer looks at the product group and decides to buy the higher priced item. But on average the tariff is doing what it was meant to do.

      Promote the consumption products provided by a different vendor. Namely ones that tariffs don’t apply to.

      It’s not a hard concept to understand, and talking about who pays is a distraction. Namely because it will be case by case involving 3 or more parties who won’t all chose the same choices they have every time.

    • xyzzy123

      10/26/2025

      Without knowing what the product and market structure is, you cannot tell if the cost of the tariff will be borne by the seller or the buyer.

      • exe34

        10/28/2025

        The shipment won't be released by customs until the buyer pays the tariff. I can tell who's paying. It's impressive how so many are contorting their minds trying to make this seem uncertain.

This would be more impactful if we could see the cost to US purchasers was actually 39% more. Sadly some manufacturers spread the cost across all consumers, which actually means non-US customers are actually paying some of the tariff costs too.

• onion2k

  10/26/2025

  I imagine some manufacturers used tariffs as a reason to lower the price of their products that imported into the US while also raising the price outside of the US to balance that change, but that doesn't mean the manufacturer or their customers outside of the USA are paying anything towards tariffs. The entire tariff transaction is between the customer and the US government, and it's all transacted within the USA.

  Tariffs are a tax, paid on the value of imported good, by US citizens who are buying things from outside of the USA. That's it. They are not paid by anyone outside of the US.

  • d1sxeyes

    10/26/2025

    Let’s say I’m a widget seller in the US, and my widgets cost $100 to import from Switzerland before tariffs. I retail them at $150 USD in the US, but I sell internationally. In the UK for example, I retail them at £113 (simple conversion, obviously it doesn’t really work like this).

    Now tariffs are imposed, my import cost per widget is $139. Not only do I have to jack up my US price to $189, I have to jack up my UK price to £142, meaning UK customers are also paying the tariff now.

    Even if you’re a bit smarter about your logistics and use an FTZ or drawback against the import duties, imagine you sell two widgets, one where you don’t pay import duties (bound for the UK) and one where you do (remaining in the US). Your total cost to import is $239.

    Instead of making your US customers eat all the cost of the tariff, you might instead adjust your retail prices to $170 and £128 respectively. Again, now your British customers are paying an increased price due to the tariffs.

    • amanaplanacanal

      10/26/2025

      That only works if you have no competition in the UK. Why would your customers there continue to buy from you when you are now more expensive than the competition?

      Edit: for that matter, if you could raise your prices without losing any customers, why did you wait for the tarrifs? You should have already done it.

      • d1sxeyes

        10/26/2025

        Ok, so I should have said that I make gizmos which depend on Swiss widgets, I’m not just round-tripping Swiss widgets through the US, I’m adding some value somewhere.

        I didn’t say I wouldn’t lose any customers. I probably will, but this way I probably lose the fewest.

      • torginus

        10/27/2025

        True, and this is extremely important with cars, where China, the main upcoming competitor of established brands, is banned from the US markets.

    • jopsen

      10/26/2025

      It's very likely that for luxury items the price is what people are willing to pay. And it's adjusted for each country accordingly.

      Thus, the change may simply be that profit margin for sales into the US drops (or rather than it skews that way).

      But there are still many commodities where you're not pricing the product based on branding.

      These commodities will likely still have the same price on the international market. And thus, consumers in the US will see the effects of tariffs in the price.

      Such commodities could be finished goods, but also parts, machines or feedstock for industry in the US.

      I'd also guess that if you look at what middle class people buy, these commodities make up a larger percentage of the expenditure -- than it does for wealthy people. Making tariffs a very regressive tax.

      Most people won't care about the price of luxury watch. But most people will buy aluminum cans, etc.

    • immibis

      10/26/2025

      Switzerland would sell the same widgets to the UK for much less, since they wouldn't be hit by the tariffs and also wouldn't be paying to ship Europe->America->Europe.

      • d1sxeyes

        10/26/2025

        Ok, so I should have said that I make gizmos which depend on Swiss widgets, I’m not just round-tripping Swiss widgets through the US, I’m adding some value somewhere.

    • carlosjobim

      10/26/2025

      [flagged]

      • Tenemo

        10/26/2025

        So what you are saying is that no company has raised prices for any product after tariffs had gone live? That's easily proven to be false (https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-raise-prices-co...).

        Going by your logic, tarrifs would have always no impact on consumers, even e.g. 300% tariffs?

      • kryptiskt

        10/26/2025

        They don't sell for the highest possible price, because sales would suffer, they try to sell for the price point that brings them most profit. Adding tariffs will change the point of maximum profit upwards, drastically so for low margin goods.

        • carlosjobim

          10/26/2025

          Companies sell for the highest price they can without losing more sales than it's worth, exactly as you say. I thought it was such common knowledge as not needing to be mentioned.

          Adding tariffs means that you might have to lower your profit margins to remain competitive or that you will have to stop exporting to that nation completely, or start manufacturing in that nation. Which is the purpose of tariffs.

  • exe34

    10/26/2025

    The manufacturer are subsidising the tariffs if they lower their price in the us to counteract part of the tariff. When they charge other markets more to make up for the cost, they are making those markets pay for the subsidy.

    • bigfudge

      10/26/2025

      That might be a short term strategy to avoid losing market share in the states and it’s rational if you think the tariffs are temporary. For goods like iPhones which are truly global that might last. But It doesn’t look like a stable equilibrium in the long term for any food which can support multiple suppliers because manufacturers who don’t do this will be more competitive in non us markets.

  • watwut

    10/26/2025

    Afaik it was distributors not manufacturers who sacrificed margin.

• tjpnz

  10/26/2025

  Seems to have been the case with PS5 and Xbox consoles. The rest of the world was effectively subsidizing US gamers for a while, until prices there were jacked up even higher.

  • ThunderSizzle

    10/26/2025

    Aren't most subscriptions significantly cheaper outside the US? I don't know specifically about those, but YouTube's premium is pennies on the dollar in places like Ukraine, Turkey, etc.

    • tjpnz

      10/26/2025

      I'm talking about console prices specifically.

• MadDemon

  10/26/2025

  The tariff is applied to the import value. For many products you'll get a significant markup on top within the US for distribution, which is not affected by the tariffs.

• spiderfarmer

  10/26/2025

  Would you trust statistics coming from this administration?

• carlosjobim

  10/26/2025

  > Sadly some manufacturers spread the cost across all consumers

  Of course not. They charge the highest price they possibly can in each market, regardless of other factors. They're not compensating this here or that there. Every company always charge as much as they can get away with, that is the core function of business.

• vachina

  10/26/2025

  Settlement in RMB, pay the producer not the middleman.

• duxup

  10/26/2025

  > spread the cost across all consumers

  Did they lower the US import price before the tariff is applied in the US?

• bootsmann

  10/26/2025

  This was a big worry initially when the tariffs were announced but it doesn’t actually seem to be happening. Most manufacturers are not adjusting their price structure because the effects are super hard to estimate (don’t forget that the US is still just 20% of worldwide demand)

  • johnnyanmac

    10/27/2025

    The gaming market is a good example of how they tried to mitigate this. Firstly, Nintendo tried to not surge the price of the Switch 2 by instead increasing the prices of accessories. Then they raised Switch 1 prices. It might still end up needing to raise the Switch 2 price if this keeps up.

    Sony and Microsoft did price hikes outside of the US at first as an example of how other countries may be paying for US tarriffs indirectly. But as of a month ago these had to relent and eventually they did both do price hikes on their systems.

  • cybersquare

    10/26/2025

    This might have been true three months ago, but it isn't any more. Narrow margin business like independently owned coffee shops are already seeing consumables increase in price by up to 3x, which then leads them to have to add "tariff surcharges" that show up on their POS devices.

    • carlosjobim

      10/26/2025

      The profit margin on selling brewed coffee is normally counted in thousands of percent. Any tariff on the imported coffee beans does not have any noticeable effect on operating costs of a coffee shop, so you can safely assume that the owners are just lying in order to jack up their prices, which might work depending on customer base.

      Operating costs for coffee shops mainly come from other things than the beans, such as rent, utilities, wages.

    • bootsmann

      10/26/2025

      I think we agree?! I’m arguing that the tariff is being passed on to US prices and not distributed onto the worldwide customer base. A manufacturer that doesn't adjust their price structure is passing the price on because the tariff is applied by the government and not by the company selling the product.

      • cybersquare

        10/27/2025

        Yeah that tracks.

So... they swapped 3 and 9 numerals. Does it run counter clockwise then, as a horological commentary on our present age of backwardness?

• brightbeige

  10/26/2025

  That you can find around southern South America

  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28013157

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9rica_Invertida

  • isoprophlex

    10/26/2025

    Fascinating, thanks

• nunorbatista

  10/26/2025

  no, it's a regular quartz movement.

  • stavros

    10/26/2025

    So the hands show 9 o'clock but the face shows 3 o'clock?

    • nunorbatista

      10/27/2025

      yes, the hands show the normal hour corresponding to the wrong number: at 9 o'clock, the hours pointer will be in it's correct place, pointing to a 3.

Gotta be careful making fun of trump and the tariff situation lest you get another 10% added, which will make this watch irrelevant.

• stavros

  10/26/2025

  Let's not capitulate to bullies.

• spiderfarmer

  10/26/2025

  Nobody should be careful making fun of him. Everybody should confront him and then dial back. TACO 2.0.

• nunorbatista

  10/26/2025

  He would actually be working against his interest: he has been seen wearing multiple Swiss watches - Patek's, Rolex, Vacheron, etc,

  • simmerup

    10/26/2025

    You don't think they're gifts for services rendered and therefore tarriff free?

    • 10/26/2025

Tangential. It is fun to note how in ads showing watches the time is usually 9 past 10 as shown in the image. This apparently gives the most pleasing balance of the watch dials for the eye, while not covering the time indicators below.

• hshdhdhehd

  10/26/2025

  10:09:30 is probably the closest to 120 degree equal separation.

• mlrtime

  10/27/2025

  Once you know this, you can never stop seeing it. I learned about it years ago and every time I see a watch ad, I notice the same hand position.

• kitd

  10/26/2025

  It makes the watch face look like it's smiling.

• jenadine

  10/26/2025

  In the image it is 10 to 2.

At first I thought tariffs were just more inflation. Import prices increase, sales prices balance it out and people will buy anyway.

But no, it hurt import businesses in unforseen ways. I saw entire shipment crates get discarded because it was suddenly too expensive to get into the country overnight and too expensive to ship back. Just senseless, pointless waste.

• blitzar

  10/26/2025

  It hurt import businesses in foreseen, expected and one must assume desired ways

Do the hands tick counter clockwise? I am assuming so to make 3/9 swap work, but it’s not mentioned.

• dalmo3

  10/26/2025

  It can't not be clockwise.

  • layer8

    10/26/2025

    It could be clockunwise.

    • tempodox

      10/27/2025

      That’s it, definitely.

  • hshdhdhehd

    10/26/2025

    Locally clockwise

    • dr_kiszonka

      10/27/2025

      Best comment! Thanks.

  • 10/26/2025

  • louthy

    10/26/2025

    It ticks, therefore it is

• fainpul

  10/26/2025

  Boring answer: no, because that would require modifications to the movement and would make the watch much too expensive.

  The whole idea of Swatch is based on simplicity, reduction of parts count and automated manufacturability.

  • jenadine

    10/26/2025

    So who wears this watch goes back in time?

Only available in Switzerland

Here’s a link to the Swiss store which has more details, like price: https://www.swatch.com/en-ch/what-if-tariffs-so34z106/SO34Z1...

• Quarrel

  10/26/2025

  I like the "Hopefully, just a limited edition." line too :)

Whoever said tariffs were bad for business? There's a whole industry springing up of people taking the piss out of the POTUS.

Do we still remember that Tariffs are supposed to raise the price of foreign goods and make domestic goods more reasonable for buyers? it targets buyers and this is how it works regardless of how it is presented to the public, I don't imagine lots of supporters if presented as it is.

• advisedwang

  10/27/2025

  > raise the price of foreign goods and make domestic goods more reasonable for buyers

  Tariffs never make domestic goods cheaper. In fact if the supply chain has anything imported then domestic goods become more expensive.

  The best argument is that it makes domestic good relatively cheaper, thus supporting US manufacturing and so keeping jobs and profit in the country.

  However... that would require domestic goods to be an actual option. I don't see many US manufactured watches available, and the ones that are still don't really compete.

absolutely brilliant, one of the greatest things i have ever seen. shame its only available in switzerland.

• immibis

  10/26/2025

  how is a watch with 3 and 9 swapped brilliant in any way at all?

  • jagrsw

    10/26/2025

    Reminds me of the Orange Alternative movement in communist-era Poland. A group would wear t-shirts, each with a letter, spelling an innocent phrase.

    When one turned away, the message would instantly become different, like changing "Down with the heat" to "Down with the cops" - https://sztukapubliczna.pl/pl/precz-z-u-palami-pomaranczowa-...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Alternative

    the whole world is a work of art, so even a single policeman standing in the street is a work of art

  • layer8

    10/26/2025

    Right? I don’t want to work from 3am to 9pm. ;)

• mndgs

  10/26/2025

  True that

Interesting: does that mean the watch runs in reverse as well to account for the 3 and 9 markers being flipped? That would be kind of neat.

> glass that allows a side view of the watch’s dial.

Greatest feature, you can glance at it sideways! And the built-in reminders of 39%.

I like that it's priced at 139

• Nextgrid

  10/26/2025

  For a "statement" piece and limited edition with otherwise no notable features I'm surprised how cheap it is.

  • input_sh

    10/26/2025

    It's a Swatch, their prices don't go much higher.

    If it were a Rolex or a Patek Philippe that did the same, I'm sure there'd be another zero at the end.

• shikon7

  10/26/2025

  For full effect, it should be priced 100 in Switzerland and 139 in the US

  • ainiriand

    10/26/2025

    139 CHF is 174$, you have the punishment right there.

    • layer8

      10/26/2025

      With the tariff it should be $242.

Missed opportunity to initiate a global switch to clocks that go positive direction

• bmacho

  10/26/2025

  Maybe next time 39 becomes relevant for any reason

Haha but seriously, Trump is just starting to ramp up full kleptocracy mode. Each tariff change is going to be associated with billions in trades made with foreknowledge of the move. His robber baron friends will fund him and his regime forever. They can do whatever they want now. We might as well tear down the White House and replace it with a Putin style gilded palace for Oligarchs. Oh wait.

Ironic that it can't be tariff'd

Large order in from Venezuela

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It says Arabic numeral 3 and 9. I don't know why. Arabic 3 looks like this

٣

• orwin

  10/26/2025

  During the middle ages, France and Spain (and probably Sicily/Southern Italy) used two numerals: Arabic and Roman. In the end, Arabic numerals gave our (western) current numbers and Romans are mostly kept in titles and names.

  Some watches still use Roman numerals (XII, III, VI, IX), Swatch specify here that those are Arabic (12, 3, 6, 9).

It looks so terrible I thought the idea behind it was “this is what the US can manufacture without importing foreign materials”. But nah, it’s just an ugly watch with a pretty dumb marketing stunt that makes it less usable as a watch.

• brightbeige

  10/26/2025

  It’s a part of a collection: “WHAT IF?”

  https://www.swatch.com/en-ch/bioceramic-what-if.html

  • tjpnz

    10/26/2025

    Should be called "WATCH IF?".

• louthy

  10/26/2025

  Swatch watches are all ugly tbf (imho, of course). But let’s face it, this is more of a statement than a product

  • InsideOutSanta

    10/26/2025

    Swatch makes thousands of different watches in all kinds of styles, from 80s-inspired neon fever dreams to understated mechanical watches. What type of watch are you looking for that they don't make?

    • nunorbatista

      10/26/2025

      agree with your comment, but to be honest, I'm not sure there's any Swatch I would wear: which model would you choose if you wanted to dress business casual?

      Ok, I can give you a Skin Irony, but then you would be paying +200 for a Quartz, why not buy an Orient Bambino or a Hamilton Khaki? much better bang for the buck.

      Not to mention the clicking noise of a Swatch quartz. In silence, it drives me nuts.

      The most understated watch they make is the Swatch Pay!. Super useful, never fails.

      • InsideOutSanta

        10/26/2025

        It depends on what you consider a Swatch. If it has to say "Swatch" on it, yeah, any Skin Irony is fine for business casual. Or a Swatch Essentials. I'd probably wear something like Boxengasse for business casual, but that's just me; I like complications. Maybe it's too much.

        Whether the quartz movement bothers you depends on why you bought the watch. It doesn't bother me, but it's certainly true that you can get similar watches for much less money.

    • louthy

      10/26/2025

      > What type of watch are you looking for that they don't make?

      I’ll stick with my Patek Philippe Nautilus 5811 [1], thanks ;)

      Also Swiss btw.

      [1] https://www.patek.com/en/collection/nautilus/5811-1g-001

      • InsideOutSanta

        10/26/2025

        I guess beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder :-)

      • robjan

        10/26/2025

        It's like comparing a Fiat to a Ferrari

  • watwut

    10/26/2025

    Like, seriously and not just Swatch. I wanted to buy myself a watch that would look good. Ended up with nothing because good looking watch dont seem to exist.

    • coldpie

      10/26/2025

      Are you disliking the big honking watches with like 3 subdials? I don't like those either.

      I lean to the minimal style, so I recently got one from Obaku. The one I got is technically in their women's line; women's watches tend to be simpler, and I have small wrists so women's watches tend to fit me better. Skagen also makes nice minimal stuff.

      I also sometimes dig around used watch forums like WatchUSeek. You can find dozens of cool watches from the 60s-80s, many mechanical, for like $50-200.

      • watwut

        10/26/2025

        Actually, yes, those are much better. And yes "big honking with three dials" is good description of the issue.

        Thank you.

    • nunorbatista

      10/26/2025

      taste is subjective. Are you sure you know what you're looking for?

      • watwut

        10/26/2025

        A watch that does not look ugly. I am usually ok with almost anything visually, but all the watches are in basically same ugly style.

        I am not designing own watch if that is what you mean. I settled on cheap plastic ones, because well, since there is nothing better looking that cheap plastic I can go cheap.

    • golem14

      10/26/2025

      I find the Tissot Seastar pretty. I wish it came with a spring drive. My Seastar has terrible accuracy.

    • aredox

      10/26/2025

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• kleiba

  10/26/2025

  De gustibus non est disputandum - I actually like the design, but then again, I don't wear watches.