If you don't care that MAGA is a Nazi-style movement, the only thing you have to know about this race is that Trump's plans will destroy the economy (20% sales tax "tariff" and crippling deportations) while Harris' will improve it (attacking price gouging, build new housing).
How is an import tariff a sales tax? It is a tariff on imports, not on sales to US buyers. Supply and demand determines when a buyer will stop buying and most companies were able to absorb the tariffs or the Chinese found ways to get around it. Take a look at the De minimis import rules. They simply made less profit. Not true in all cases of course but most US consumers are completely ignorant of how the Chinese evade enforcement of trade, energy, and labor rules.
Try looking in the dictionary. Nevermind, I know you can't be bothered. Also in his first term he recklessly slapped tariffs on all kinds of things from countries that are our allies. It's a tax used to fund his billionaire tax cuts. If you're not a billionaire you're gonna get hosed.
A tariff is a tax imposed by a government on goods or services that are imported or exported between countries. Tariffs are also known as customs duties.
I'm done with this person - just trolling against obvious and incontrovertible evidence that's presented to him.
If you don't care that MAGA is a Nazi-style movement, the only thing you have to know about this race is that Trump's plans will destroy the economy (20% sales tax "tariff" and crippling deportations) while Harris' will improve it (attacking price gouging, build new housing).
How is an import tariff a sales tax? It is a tariff on imports, not on sales to US buyers. Supply and demand determines when a buyer will stop buying and most companies were able to absorb the tariffs or the Chinese found ways to get around it. Take a look at the De minimis import rules. They simply made less profit. Not true in all cases of course but most US consumers are completely ignorant of how the Chinese evade enforcement of trade, energy, and labor rules.
They won't just take less profit, though.
IDK, maybe these companies will be nice about it?!?
It is not that simple, some companies had conversations with customers to share the increases, others passed it on, while other companies had to source elsewhere or take the hit. It was mostly the middle market and SMB segments that got hit the hardest. Not saying it is pretty, but many companies made it work. Many took compliance risks to stay afloat. But people should be very aware of the Chinese threat to our country. They do not play fair.
If you don't care that MAGA is a Nazi-style movement, the only thing you have to know about this race is that Trump's plans will destroy the economy (20% sales tax "tariff" and crippling deportations) while Harris' will improve it (attacking price gouging, build new housing).
How is an import tariff a sales tax? It is a tariff on imports, not on sales to US buyers. Supply and demand determines when a buyer will stop buying and most companies were able to absorb the tariffs or the Chinese found ways to get around it. Take a look at the De minimis import rules. They simply made less profit. Not true in all cases of course but most US consumers are completely ignorant of how the Chinese evade enforcement of trade, energy, and labor rules.
do you believe the companies and goods these tariffs will apply to, will just absorb these without passing them on to consumers?
do you know just how much foreign trade the average consumer supports ? would apply to components manufactered overseas but assembled here I would assume.
can you show me where tariffs did not affect consumers in the past when they are applied unilaterally and not in a targeted way to address trade imbalances?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
If you don't care that MAGA is a Nazi-style movement, the only thing you have to know about this race is that Trump's plans will destroy the economy (20% sales tax "tariff" and crippling deportations) while Harris' will improve it (attacking price gouging, build new housing).
How is an import tariff a sales tax? It is a tariff on imports, not on sales to US buyers. Supply and demand determines when a buyer will stop buying and most companies were able to absorb the tariffs or the Chinese found ways to get around it. Take a look at the De minimis import rules. They simply made less profit. Not true in all cases of course but most US consumers are completely ignorant of how the Chinese evade enforcement of trade, energy, and labor rules.
do you believe the companies and goods these tariffs will apply to, will just absorb these without passing them on to consumers?
do you know just how much foreign trade the average consumer supports ? would apply to components manufactered overseas but assembled here I would assume.
can you show me where tariffs did not affect consumers in the past when they are applied unilaterally and not in a targeted way to address trade imbalances?
I can only speak to my first hand knowledge. And most certainly, not all tariffs were passed on to consumers. And yes this applies to inputs as well as finished goods. The strategy many companies are considering is getting out of China, for tariffs, energy, labor and geopolitical risks. The consumer supports much of our foreign trade. The trade imbalance exists because our businesses have come to rely on Chinese manufacturing to earn larger profits. But is it fair and truly market based? And tariffs have mostly been applied unilaterally as a response to war or an oppressive government (column 2 duty rates). Tariffs are imposed to counteract unfair trade or unlawful subsidization. For better or worse, our ability to impose tariffs is largely product based. I do think it is a farce that tariffs against China will reestablish US manufacturing in a meaningful way. I think we are too far past that.
Not too worry, the Chinese just ship their merchandise to Vietnam or Mexico, label them as goods of those countries, and not pay the duties anyway. They have been doing that for decades with antidumping and countervailing duties and going back to when quotas were imposed on apparel imports in the 80s. They do this while stealing our IP, not opening their markets, and making it tough for any business to pull currency out of their country. So is the consumer really benefiting from this?
Talked to a coworker. She is fairly elderly. Lifelong Republican. Said she’s voting for Harris. She really struggled with it.
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Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession. PHOTO: KENT NISHIMURA/GETTY IMAGES
Whoever wins the White House next week will take office with no shortage of challenges, but at least one huge asset: an economy that is putting its peers to shame.
With another solid performance in the third quarter, the U.S. has grown 2.7% over the past year. It is outrunning every other major developed economy, not to mention its own historical growth rate.
More impressive than the rate of growth is its quality. This growth didn’t come solely from using up finite supplies of labor and other resources, which could fuel inflation. Instead, it came from making people and businesses more productive.
This combination, if sustained, will be a wind at the back of the next president. Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession (the exception was Donald Trump, in 2017), which consumed much of their first-term agenda. The next president should be free of that burden.
Meanwhile, higher productivity growth should make the economy a bit less prone to inflation, more capable of sustaining budget deficits, and more likely to deliver strong wages. All would be a boon to President Trump or President Kamala Harris.
To describe this economy as remarkable would strike most Americans as confusing, if not insulting. In the latest WSJ poll, 62% of respondents rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” which explains the lack of any political dividend for President Biden. There are many reasons for the disconnect, most important the high inflation of 2021-23, whose effects still linger.
Cumulative change since 2019, quarterly
GDP
Productivity
Working hours
Eurozone
U.S.
10%
5
0
–5
–10
–15
–20
2020
’21
’22
’23
Note: Shows GDP- and PPP-weighted averages. Source: Bank for International Settlements Alana Pipe/WSJ
When you’re unhappy at home, you can gain some perspective by checking in on your neighbors. The whole world has been through the wringer since 2020; any country’s performance alone is less revealing than how it compares with its peers.
Most leaders from around the world would trade their economies for the U.S.’s in a heartbeat. Through the second quarter, the U.S. grew 3%; none of the world’s next six largest advanced economies grew more than 1%. Even China is struggling.
Sometimes strong growth is a prelude to a recession because it comes from straining the economy’s capacity, generating inflation and forcing the Federal Reserve to raise rates.
Yet inflation has fallen in the past year, to 2.7% in the third quarter, using the Fed’s preferred underlying measure. That’s still above the Fed’s 2% target, but the progress was sufficient for the Fed to cut rates in September and pencil in more cuts—all without growth flagging.
“That’s pretty impressive. That’s a bit of a Goldilocks outcome,” Robin Vince, chief executive of BNY, said in a recent interview. “A year, two years ago, very few commentators actually thought that was going to be possible.”
Some of that growth was due to the labor force swelling with inflows of unauthorized migrants. Payroll employment was up 2.4 million in the year through the third quarter, or 1.6%. That, however, overstates the contribution of labor because on average each employee worked slightly less hours.
The U.S. economy is an outlier when it comes to strength in productivity. PHOTO: ADAM GLANZMAN/BLOOMBERG
Adjusted for that, productivity—i.e., output per hour—probably rose 2% to 2.5% in the past year, well above the 1.5% average annual rate from 2007 to 2019.
Economic growth is unlikely to sustain its recent pace because migrant flows have already slowed. Yet thanks to higher productivity, the U.S.’s potential growth—what it can sustain over the long run—might be higher than the 1.8% that many forecasters like the Fed have long assumed.
Satyam Panday, an economist at S&P Global Ratings, thinks the potential might be 2% to 2.3%, citing booming investment in artificial intelligence, data centers, and renewable energy. “You have to pick your side,” said Panday. “We are techno optimists.”
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Productivity is extremely volatile, especially since the pandemic, so it is too soon to say its trend has shifted. Still, one encouraging sign is that no other country has witnessed it.
The Bank for International Settlements, a Swiss-based umbrella group for central banks, calculates that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, total output rose 7.9% in the U.S., of which 1.2% came from more hours worked and 6.7% from productivity—more output per hour. In the eurozone, output was up 3% in the same period, entirely due to more hours.
“Productivity is really bad across the world,” said Hyun Song Shin, the BIS’s economic adviser. “The U.S. is an outlier.”
The BIS thinks inflation is a bigger risk globally in coming years because of threats to supply chains such as from geopolitical conflict. But productivity provides some cushion by enabling companies to absorb higher costs, such as wages. Shin said, “The U.S. can run the economy hot in a way others cannot.”
Odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. PHOTO: RICHARD B. LEVINE/ZUMA PRESS
What’s behind the divergence? Read the recent report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on European competitiveness. In explaining why Europe lags behind, it reveals why the U.S. leads.
One reason is the domestic energy supply, which insulated the U.S. from the surge in natural-gas prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. European Union companies still pay two to three times more for electricity and four to five times more for natural gas than their U.S. counterparts, Draghi found.
More important is the role of technology. No EU company worth more than 100 billion euros, equivalent to $108 billion, “has been set up from scratch in the last 50 years,” while all six U.S. companies worth more than $1.08 trillion were created in this period, Draghi said. America’s companies are also faster to adopt technology such as artificial intelligence, which explains much higher productivity in professional services, finance, insurance, and information technology services.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What should the next president do to keep the U.S. economy strong? Join the conversation below.
These differences are mostly the product of the intrinsic dynamism of American capitalism rather than any president’s policies. Still, Trump and Biden, in their respective fiscal policies, both sought to boost business investment, a key ingredient to productivity: Trump, through lower taxes and regulations on corporations broadly, and Biden by directing federal dollars and tax credits to semiconductor manufacturing, low-carbon energy, and infrastructure.
If the economy is so good, why are Americans so glum? Lots of noneconomic reasons, I’ve argued. But no question, inflation looms large. Wages, from 2021 to 2023, didn’t keep up with inflation, as they are supposed to when productivity and economic growth are strong. Higher prices flowed disproportionately to profits rather than pay.
That has begun to change, though. Average wages since mid-2023 have outpaced inflation as the latter fell. Inflation could yet stall, or even rise; both nominees, and Trump in particular, have plans that could pressure prices. And surprises could interfere, like a big rise, or fall, in oil prices, another pandemic, or war.
Still, odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. With time, anger at today’s higher prices will become acceptance. The next president is likely to bear much less of the burden of inflation than Biden did.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; Phila, PA 10/21/13; Phila, PA 10/22/13; Baltimore Arena 10/27/13; Phila, PA 4/28/16; Phila, PA 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; Phila, PA 9/7/24; Phila, PA 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession. PHOTO: KENT NISHIMURA/GETTY IMAGES
Whoever wins the White House next week will take office with no shortage of challenges, but at least one huge asset: an economy that is putting its peers to shame.
With another solid performance in the third quarter, the U.S. has grown 2.7% over the past year. It is outrunning every other major developed economy, not to mention its own historical growth rate.
More impressive than the rate of growth is its quality. This growth didn’t come solely from using up finite supplies of labor and other resources, which could fuel inflation. Instead, it came from making people and businesses more productive.
This combination, if sustained, will be a wind at the back of the next president. Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession (the exception was Donald Trump, in 2017), which consumed much of their first-term agenda. The next president should be free of that burden.
Meanwhile, higher productivity growth should make the economy a bit less prone to inflation, more capable of sustaining budget deficits, and more likely to deliver strong wages. All would be a boon to President Trump or President Kamala Harris.
To describe this economy as remarkable would strike most Americans as confusing, if not insulting. In the latest WSJ poll, 62% of respondents rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” which explains the lack of any political dividend for President Biden. There are many reasons for the disconnect, most important the high inflation of 2021-23, whose effects still linger.
Cumulative change since 2019, quarterly
GDP
Productivity
Working hours
Eurozone
U.S.
10%
5
0
–5
–10
–15
–20
2020
’21
’22
’23
Note: Shows GDP- and PPP-weighted averages. Source: Bank for International Settlements Alana Pipe/WSJ
When you’re unhappy at home, you can gain some perspective by checking in on your neighbors. The whole world has been through the wringer since 2020; any country’s performance alone is less revealing than how it compares with its peers.
Most leaders from around the world would trade their economies for the U.S.’s in a heartbeat. Through the second quarter, the U.S. grew 3%; none of the world’s next six largest advanced economies grew more than 1%. Even China is struggling.
Sometimes strong growth is a prelude to a recession because it comes from straining the economy’s capacity, generating inflation and forcing the Federal Reserve to raise rates.
Yet inflation has fallen in the past year, to 2.7% in the third quarter, using the Fed’s preferred underlying measure. That’s still above the Fed’s 2% target, but the progress was sufficient for the Fed to cut rates in September and pencil in more cuts—all without growth flagging.
“That’s pretty impressive. That’s a bit of a Goldilocks outcome,” Robin Vince, chief executive of BNY, said in a recent interview. “A year, two years ago, very few commentators actually thought that was going to be possible.”
Some of that growth was due to the labor force swelling with inflows of unauthorized migrants. Payroll employment was up 2.4 million in the year through the third quarter, or 1.6%. That, however, overstates the contribution of labor because on average each employee worked slightly less hours.
The U.S. economy is an outlier when it comes to strength in productivity. PHOTO: ADAM GLANZMAN/BLOOMBERG
Adjusted for that, productivity—i.e., output per hour—probably rose 2% to 2.5% in the past year, well above the 1.5% average annual rate from 2007 to 2019.
Economic growth is unlikely to sustain its recent pace because migrant flows have already slowed. Yet thanks to higher productivity, the U.S.’s potential growth—what it can sustain over the long run—might be higher than the 1.8% that many forecasters like the Fed have long assumed.
Satyam Panday, an economist at S&P Global Ratings, thinks the potential might be 2% to 2.3%, citing booming investment in artificial intelligence, data centers, and renewable energy. “You have to pick your side,” said Panday. “We are techno optimists.”
Advertisement
Productivity is extremely volatile, especially since the pandemic, so it is too soon to say its trend has shifted. Still, one encouraging sign is that no other country has witnessed it.
The Bank for International Settlements, a Swiss-based umbrella group for central banks, calculates that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, total output rose 7.9% in the U.S., of which 1.2% came from more hours worked and 6.7% from productivity—more output per hour. In the eurozone, output was up 3% in the same period, entirely due to more hours.
“Productivity is really bad across the world,” said Hyun Song Shin, the BIS’s economic adviser. “The U.S. is an outlier.”
The BIS thinks inflation is a bigger risk globally in coming years because of threats to supply chains such as from geopolitical conflict. But productivity provides some cushion by enabling companies to absorb higher costs, such as wages. Shin said, “The U.S. can run the economy hot in a way others cannot.”
Odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. PHOTO: RICHARD B. LEVINE/ZUMA PRESS
What’s behind the divergence? Read the recent report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on European competitiveness. In explaining why Europe lags behind, it reveals why the U.S. leads.
One reason is the domestic energy supply, which insulated the U.S. from the surge in natural-gas prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. European Union companies still pay two to three times more for electricity and four to five times more for natural gas than their U.S. counterparts, Draghi found.
More important is the role of technology. No EU company worth more than 100 billion euros, equivalent to $108 billion, “has been set up from scratch in the last 50 years,” while all six U.S. companies worth more than $1.08 trillion were created in this period, Draghi said. America’s companies are also faster to adopt technology such as artificial intelligence, which explains much higher productivity in professional services, finance, insurance, and information technology services.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What should the next president do to keep the U.S. economy strong? Join the conversation below.
These differences are mostly the product of the intrinsic dynamism of American capitalism rather than any president’s policies. Still, Trump and Biden, in their respective fiscal policies, both sought to boost business investment, a key ingredient to productivity: Trump, through lower taxes and regulations on corporations broadly, and Biden by directing federal dollars and tax credits to semiconductor manufacturing, low-carbon energy, and infrastructure.
If the economy is so good, why are Americans so glum? Lots of noneconomic reasons, I’ve argued. But no question, inflation looms large. Wages, from 2021 to 2023, didn’t keep up with inflation, as they are supposed to when productivity and economic growth are strong. Higher prices flowed disproportionately to profits rather than pay.
That has begun to change, though. Average wages since mid-2023 have outpaced inflation as the latter fell. Inflation could yet stall, or even rise; both nominees, and Trump in particular, have plans that could pressure prices. And surprises could interfere, like a big rise, or fall, in oil prices, another pandemic, or war.
Still, odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. With time, anger at today’s higher prices will become acceptance. The next president is likely to bear much less of the burden of inflation than Biden did.
This is why we are so fucked. People are just stupid. They think our country is garbage and we're the laughing stock of the world (this is true if Trump is elected), meanwhile we're actually far out performing the rest of the developed world since Covid. Trump is more than guaranteed to kill another great economy he inherited if elected. Obama and Biden cleaned up their predecessors messes and then the fuck your feelings crowd wants to vote back in the dumbest presidential candidates they can find. Unreal. If Biden would have been about 10 years younger he would have skated to reelection.
Elon Musk is openly admitting they're going to crash the economy. This is very obvious, like all the other arguments against this fucker.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; Phila, PA 10/21/13; Phila, PA 10/22/13; Baltimore Arena 10/27/13; Phila, PA 4/28/16; Phila, PA 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; Phila, PA 9/7/24; Phila, PA 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession. PHOTO: KENT NISHIMURA/GETTY IMAGES
Whoever wins the White House next week will take office with no shortage of challenges, but at least one huge asset: an economy that is putting its peers to shame.
With another solid performance in the third quarter, the U.S. has grown 2.7% over the past year. It is outrunning every other major developed economy, not to mention its own historical growth rate.
More impressive than the rate of growth is its quality. This growth didn’t come solely from using up finite supplies of labor and other resources, which could fuel inflation. Instead, it came from making people and businesses more productive.
This combination, if sustained, will be a wind at the back of the next president. Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession (the exception was Donald Trump, in 2017), which consumed much of their first-term agenda. The next president should be free of that burden.
Meanwhile, higher productivity growth should make the economy a bit less prone to inflation, more capable of sustaining budget deficits, and more likely to deliver strong wages. All would be a boon to President Trump or President Kamala Harris.
To describe this economy as remarkable would strike most Americans as confusing, if not insulting. In the latest WSJ poll, 62% of respondents rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” which explains the lack of any political dividend for President Biden. There are many reasons for the disconnect, most important the high inflation of 2021-23, whose effects still linger.
Cumulative change since 2019, quarterly
GDP
Productivity
Working hours
Eurozone
U.S.
10%
5
0
–5
–10
–15
–20
2020
’21
’22
’23
Note: Shows GDP- and PPP-weighted averages. Source: Bank for International Settlements Alana Pipe/WSJ
When you’re unhappy at home, you can gain some perspective by checking in on your neighbors. The whole world has been through the wringer since 2020; any country’s performance alone is less revealing than how it compares with its peers.
Most leaders from around the world would trade their economies for the U.S.’s in a heartbeat. Through the second quarter, the U.S. grew 3%; none of the world’s next six largest advanced economies grew more than 1%. Even China is struggling.
Sometimes strong growth is a prelude to a recession because it comes from straining the economy’s capacity, generating inflation and forcing the Federal Reserve to raise rates.
Yet inflation has fallen in the past year, to 2.7% in the third quarter, using the Fed’s preferred underlying measure. That’s still above the Fed’s 2% target, but the progress was sufficient for the Fed to cut rates in September and pencil in more cuts—all without growth flagging.
“That’s pretty impressive. That’s a bit of a Goldilocks outcome,” Robin Vince, chief executive of BNY, said in a recent interview. “A year, two years ago, very few commentators actually thought that was going to be possible.”
Some of that growth was due to the labor force swelling with inflows of unauthorized migrants. Payroll employment was up 2.4 million in the year through the third quarter, or 1.6%. That, however, overstates the contribution of labor because on average each employee worked slightly less hours.
The U.S. economy is an outlier when it comes to strength in productivity. PHOTO: ADAM GLANZMAN/BLOOMBERG
Adjusted for that, productivity—i.e., output per hour—probably rose 2% to 2.5% in the past year, well above the 1.5% average annual rate from 2007 to 2019.
Economic growth is unlikely to sustain its recent pace because migrant flows have already slowed. Yet thanks to higher productivity, the U.S.’s potential growth—what it can sustain over the long run—might be higher than the 1.8% that many forecasters like the Fed have long assumed.
Satyam Panday, an economist at S&P Global Ratings, thinks the potential might be 2% to 2.3%, citing booming investment in artificial intelligence, data centers, and renewable energy. “You have to pick your side,” said Panday. “We are techno optimists.”
Advertisement
Productivity is extremely volatile, especially since the pandemic, so it is too soon to say its trend has shifted. Still, one encouraging sign is that no other country has witnessed it.
The Bank for International Settlements, a Swiss-based umbrella group for central banks, calculates that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, total output rose 7.9% in the U.S., of which 1.2% came from more hours worked and 6.7% from productivity—more output per hour. In the eurozone, output was up 3% in the same period, entirely due to more hours.
“Productivity is really bad across the world,” said Hyun Song Shin, the BIS’s economic adviser. “The U.S. is an outlier.”
The BIS thinks inflation is a bigger risk globally in coming years because of threats to supply chains such as from geopolitical conflict. But productivity provides some cushion by enabling companies to absorb higher costs, such as wages. Shin said, “The U.S. can run the economy hot in a way others cannot.”
Odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. PHOTO: RICHARD B. LEVINE/ZUMA PRESS
What’s behind the divergence? Read the recent report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on European competitiveness. In explaining why Europe lags behind, it reveals why the U.S. leads.
One reason is the domestic energy supply, which insulated the U.S. from the surge in natural-gas prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. European Union companies still pay two to three times more for electricity and four to five times more for natural gas than their U.S. counterparts, Draghi found.
More important is the role of technology. No EU company worth more than 100 billion euros, equivalent to $108 billion, “has been set up from scratch in the last 50 years,” while all six U.S. companies worth more than $1.08 trillion were created in this period, Draghi said. America’s companies are also faster to adopt technology such as artificial intelligence, which explains much higher productivity in professional services, finance, insurance, and information technology services.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What should the next president do to keep the U.S. economy strong? Join the conversation below.
These differences are mostly the product of the intrinsic dynamism of American capitalism rather than any president’s policies. Still, Trump and Biden, in their respective fiscal policies, both sought to boost business investment, a key ingredient to productivity: Trump, through lower taxes and regulations on corporations broadly, and Biden by directing federal dollars and tax credits to semiconductor manufacturing, low-carbon energy, and infrastructure.
If the economy is so good, why are Americans so glum? Lots of noneconomic reasons, I’ve argued. But no question, inflation looms large. Wages, from 2021 to 2023, didn’t keep up with inflation, as they are supposed to when productivity and economic growth are strong. Higher prices flowed disproportionately to profits rather than pay.
That has begun to change, though. Average wages since mid-2023 have outpaced inflation as the latter fell. Inflation could yet stall, or even rise; both nominees, and Trump in particular, have plans that could pressure prices. And surprises could interfere, like a big rise, or fall, in oil prices, another pandemic, or war.
Still, odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. With time, anger at today’s higher prices will become acceptance. The next president is likely to bear much less of the burden of inflation than Biden did.
This is why we are so fucked. People are just stupid. They think our country is garbage and we're the laughing stock of the world (this is true if Trump is elected), meanwhile we're actually far out performing the rest of the developed world since Covid. Trump is more than guaranteed to kill another great economy he inherited if elected. Obama and Biden cleaned up their predecessors messes and then the fuck your feelings crowd wants to vote back in the dumbest presidential candidates they can find. Unreal. If Biden would have been about 10 years younger he would have skated to reelection.
Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession. PHOTO: KENT NISHIMURA/GETTY IMAGES
Whoever wins the White House next week will take office with no shortage of challenges, but at least one huge asset: an economy that is putting its peers to shame.
With another solid performance in the third quarter, the U.S. has grown 2.7% over the past year. It is outrunning every other major developed economy, not to mention its own historical growth rate.
More impressive than the rate of growth is its quality. This growth didn’t come solely from using up finite supplies of labor and other resources, which could fuel inflation. Instead, it came from making people and businesses more productive.
This combination, if sustained, will be a wind at the back of the next president. Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession (the exception was Donald Trump, in 2017), which consumed much of their first-term agenda. The next president should be free of that burden.
Meanwhile, higher productivity growth should make the economy a bit less prone to inflation, more capable of sustaining budget deficits, and more likely to deliver strong wages. All would be a boon to President Trump or President Kamala Harris.
To describe this economy as remarkable would strike most Americans as confusing, if not insulting. In the latest WSJ poll, 62% of respondents rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” which explains the lack of any political dividend for President Biden. There are many reasons for the disconnect, most important the high inflation of 2021-23, whose effects still linger.
Cumulative change since 2019, quarterly
GDP
Productivity
Working hours
Eurozone
U.S.
10%
5
0
–5
–10
–15
–20
2020
’21
’22
’23
Note: Shows GDP- and PPP-weighted averages. Source: Bank for International Settlements Alana Pipe/WSJ
When you’re unhappy at home, you can gain some perspective by checking in on your neighbors. The whole world has been through the wringer since 2020; any country’s performance alone is less revealing than how it compares with its peers.
Most leaders from around the world would trade their economies for the U.S.’s in a heartbeat. Through the second quarter, the U.S. grew 3%; none of the world’s next six largest advanced economies grew more than 1%. Even China is struggling.
Sometimes strong growth is a prelude to a recession because it comes from straining the economy’s capacity, generating inflation and forcing the Federal Reserve to raise rates.
Yet inflation has fallen in the past year, to 2.7% in the third quarter, using the Fed’s preferred underlying measure. That’s still above the Fed’s 2% target, but the progress was sufficient for the Fed to cut rates in September and pencil in more cuts—all without growth flagging.
“That’s pretty impressive. That’s a bit of a Goldilocks outcome,” Robin Vince, chief executive of BNY, said in a recent interview. “A year, two years ago, very few commentators actually thought that was going to be possible.”
Some of that growth was due to the labor force swelling with inflows of unauthorized migrants. Payroll employment was up 2.4 million in the year through the third quarter, or 1.6%. That, however, overstates the contribution of labor because on average each employee worked slightly less hours.
The U.S. economy is an outlier when it comes to strength in productivity. PHOTO: ADAM GLANZMAN/BLOOMBERG
Adjusted for that, productivity—i.e., output per hour—probably rose 2% to 2.5% in the past year, well above the 1.5% average annual rate from 2007 to 2019.
Economic growth is unlikely to sustain its recent pace because migrant flows have already slowed. Yet thanks to higher productivity, the U.S.’s potential growth—what it can sustain over the long run—might be higher than the 1.8% that many forecasters like the Fed have long assumed.
Satyam Panday, an economist at S&P Global Ratings, thinks the potential might be 2% to 2.3%, citing booming investment in artificial intelligence, data centers, and renewable energy. “You have to pick your side,” said Panday. “We are techno optimists.”
Advertisement
Productivity is extremely volatile, especially since the pandemic, so it is too soon to say its trend has shifted. Still, one encouraging sign is that no other country has witnessed it.
The Bank for International Settlements, a Swiss-based umbrella group for central banks, calculates that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, total output rose 7.9% in the U.S., of which 1.2% came from more hours worked and 6.7% from productivity—more output per hour. In the eurozone, output was up 3% in the same period, entirely due to more hours.
“Productivity is really bad across the world,” said Hyun Song Shin, the BIS’s economic adviser. “The U.S. is an outlier.”
The BIS thinks inflation is a bigger risk globally in coming years because of threats to supply chains such as from geopolitical conflict. But productivity provides some cushion by enabling companies to absorb higher costs, such as wages. Shin said, “The U.S. can run the economy hot in a way others cannot.”
Odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. PHOTO: RICHARD B. LEVINE/ZUMA PRESS
What’s behind the divergence? Read the recent report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on European competitiveness. In explaining why Europe lags behind, it reveals why the U.S. leads.
One reason is the domestic energy supply, which insulated the U.S. from the surge in natural-gas prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. European Union companies still pay two to three times more for electricity and four to five times more for natural gas than their U.S. counterparts, Draghi found.
More important is the role of technology. No EU company worth more than 100 billion euros, equivalent to $108 billion, “has been set up from scratch in the last 50 years,” while all six U.S. companies worth more than $1.08 trillion were created in this period, Draghi said. America’s companies are also faster to adopt technology such as artificial intelligence, which explains much higher productivity in professional services, finance, insurance, and information technology services.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
What should the next president do to keep the U.S. economy strong? Join the conversation below.
These differences are mostly the product of the intrinsic dynamism of American capitalism rather than any president’s policies. Still, Trump and Biden, in their respective fiscal policies, both sought to boost business investment, a key ingredient to productivity: Trump, through lower taxes and regulations on corporations broadly, and Biden by directing federal dollars and tax credits to semiconductor manufacturing, low-carbon energy, and infrastructure.
If the economy is so good, why are Americans so glum? Lots of noneconomic reasons, I’ve argued. But no question, inflation looms large. Wages, from 2021 to 2023, didn’t keep up with inflation, as they are supposed to when productivity and economic growth are strong. Higher prices flowed disproportionately to profits rather than pay.
That has begun to change, though. Average wages since mid-2023 have outpaced inflation as the latter fell. Inflation could yet stall, or even rise; both nominees, and Trump in particular, have plans that could pressure prices. And surprises could interfere, like a big rise, or fall, in oil prices, another pandemic, or war.
Still, odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. With time, anger at today’s higher prices will become acceptance. The next president is likely to bear much less of the burden of inflation than Biden did.
This is why we are so fucked. People are just stupid. They think our country is garbage and we're the laughing stock of the world (this is true if Trump is elected), meanwhile we're actually far out performing the rest of the developed world since Covid. Trump is more than guaranteed to kill another great economy he inherited if elected. Obama and Biden cleaned up their predecessors messes and then the fuck your feelings crowd wants to vote back in the dumbest presidential candidates they can find. Unreal. If Biden would have been about 10 years younger he would have skated to reelection.
Elon Musk is openly admitting they're going to crash the economy. This is very obvious, like all the other arguments against this fucker.
Meanwhile some people are just so gosh darn torn over who to vote for.
#ToughCall
Yeah, I may rethink the whole thing. Those red hats are just so cool.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; Phila, PA 10/21/13; Phila, PA 10/22/13; Baltimore Arena 10/27/13; Phila, PA 4/28/16; Phila, PA 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; Phila, PA 9/7/24; Phila, PA 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
You might think it isn't passed on "in all instances" but you really have no idea. Unless you are doing the books for all of these people you have absolutely no idea.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018) The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
Who’s candidate and voters do you think know more about those things that concern you, like coal, child/slave labor, environmental degradation, etc. and might actually be trying to do something about them? See 7 lines, you should try it sometime.
Spectrum 10/27/09; New Orleans JazzFest 5/1/10; Made in America 9/2/12; Phila, PA 10/21/13; Phila, PA 10/22/13; Baltimore Arena 10/27/13; Phila, PA 4/28/16; Phila, PA 4/29/16; Fenway Park 8/7/16; Fenway Park 9/2/18; Asbury Park 9/18/21; Camden 9/14/22; Las Vegas 5/16/24; Las Vegas 5/18/24; Phila, PA 9/7/24; Phila, PA 9/9/24; Baltimore Arena 9/12/24
Tres Mtns - TLA 3/23/11; EV - Tower Theatre 6/25/11; Temple of the Dog - Tower Theatre 11/5/16
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
You might think it isn't passed on "in all instances" but you really have no idea. Unless you are doing the books for all of these people you have absolutely no idea.
Not for all companies, but a relevant and representative sample. From mom and pops to Fortune 100 companies. I actually do have an idea and am called upon to advise on best how to deal with the tariffs, pending legislations, government enforcement actions related to tariffs etc. It is 100% true that it is not always passed on to the consumer. I have been in the guts of this discussion since the tariffs were first proposed. Even farther back with antidumping. Look that up. Same with forced labor. So take what I say with a grain of salt and believe it or don't. But what I say is exactly what I encounter with real businesses.
Personally I’m all for not doing superfluous actions where there is any risk to increase costs to the customer, especially coming out of a terribly inflated economic recovery that has turned positive and robust.
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
You might think it isn't passed on "in all instances" but you really have no idea. Unless you are doing the books for all of these people you have absolutely no idea.
Not for all companies, but a relevant and representative sample. From mom and pops to Fortune 100 companies. I actually do have an idea and am called upon to advise on best how to deal with the tariffs, pending legislations, government enforcement actions related to tariffs etc. It is 100% true that it is not always passed on to the consumer. I have been in the guts of this discussion since the tariffs were first proposed. Even farther back with antidumping. Look that up. Same with forced labor. So take what I say with a grain of salt and believe it or don't. But what I say is exactly what I encounter with real businesses.
It's like anything else. It depends on how elastic a company believes the demand level is for their products. If it's very elastic, then they will have no choice but to eat into their margins. The net effect of that decision will be lower treasury receipts.
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
You might think it isn't passed on "in all instances" but you really have no idea. Unless you are doing the books for all of these people you have absolutely no idea.
Not for all companies, but a relevant and representative sample. From mom and pops to Fortune 100 companies. I actually do have an idea and am called upon to advise on best how to deal with the tariffs, pending legislations, government enforcement actions related to tariffs etc. It is 100% true that it is not always passed on to the consumer. I have been in the guts of this discussion since the tariffs were first proposed. Even farther back with antidumping. Look that up. Same with forced labor. So take what I say with a grain of salt and believe it or don't. But what I say is exactly what I encounter with real businesses.
It's like anything else. It depends on how elastic a company believes the demand level is for their products. If it's very elastic, then they will have no choice but to eat into their margins. The net effect of that decision will be lower treasury receipts.
I can talk econ but in reality, keeping the customer meant eating or splitting the cost in many cases. More about customer relations than the elasticity of goods. And you are wrong about net receipts. Tariffs were and still are a windfall. Why do think they are still in place? They helped close the gap on uncollectable antidumping and countervailing duties.
Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
You might think it isn't passed on "in all instances" but you really have no idea. Unless you are doing the books for all of these people you have absolutely no idea.
Not for all companies, but a relevant and representative sample. From mom and pops to Fortune 100 companies. I actually do have an idea and am called upon to advise on best how to deal with the tariffs, pending legislations, government enforcement actions related to tariffs etc. It is 100% true that it is not always passed on to the consumer. I have been in the guts of this discussion since the tariffs were first proposed. Even farther back with antidumping. Look that up. Same with forced labor. So take what I say with a grain of salt and believe it or don't. But what I say is exactly what I encounter with real businesses.
It's like anything else. It depends on how elastic a company believes the demand level is for their products. If it's very elastic, then they will have no choice but to eat into their margins. The net effect of that decision will be lower treasury receipts.
I can talk econ but in reality, keeping the customer meant eating or splitting the cost in many cases. More about customer relations than the elasticity of goods. And you are wrong about net receipts. Tariffs were and still are a windfall. Why do think they are still in place? They helped close the gap on uncollectable antidumping and countervailing duties.
Same answer. If it's a windfall, that means the demand was inelastic and consumers kept purchasing. But it's likely that a price increase was passed to the consumer because the business is not going to just cut margins and keep consumer price the same. That's counter to any economic theory.
When you have a tariff, someone is going to take a hit. Maybe it's the exporter, maybe the importer, maybe the consumer. To argue that no American or American business is harmed means that it's the exporter eating the tariff. Certainly that will be the case for some tariffs but not all. And it certainly matters the tariff %.
And the original tariffs are not still in place. Trump killed several of them and Biden killed the ones from EU. Australia, England and others. Really only leaving in China. But now Trump is throwing numbers around like 20, 30, 50% tariffs. Maybe that's fine on steel and semi- conductors. We would build that here with more skilled labor and robotics. But shoes, clothes, etc. would be an issue. We are not going to start making televisions and shoes in the US.
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POOTWH’s got the bikers but Kamala’s got The Terminator! Still undecided?
Arnold Schwarzenegger says he’ll reluctantly vote for Kamala Harris
The actor and former Republican governor of California said on X that he will vote for the Democratic ticket despite disagreeing with many of Harris’s policies.
Yeah, Arnold and the Harris husband both got their nannies pregnant. Perfect together.
POOTWH’s got the bikers but Kamala’s got The Terminator! Still undecided?
Arnold Schwarzenegger says he’ll reluctantly vote for Kamala Harris
The actor and former Republican governor of California said on X that he will vote for the Democratic ticket despite disagreeing with many of Harris’s policies.
Yeah, Arnold and the Harris husband both got their nannies pregnant. Perfect together.
Better than rape and sexual assault from your hero....x 28 and counting
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Comments
It is not that simple, some companies had conversations with customers to share the increases, others passed it on, while other companies had to source elsewhere or take the hit. It was mostly the middle market and SMB segments that got hit the hardest. Not saying it is pretty, but many companies made it work. Many took compliance risks to stay afloat. But people should be very aware of the Chinese threat to our country. They do not play fair.
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memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I can only speak to my first hand knowledge. And most certainly, not all tariffs were passed on to consumers. And yes this applies to inputs as well as finished goods. The strategy many companies are considering is getting out of China, for tariffs, energy, labor and geopolitical risks. The consumer supports much of our foreign trade. The trade imbalance exists because our businesses have come to rely on Chinese manufacturing to earn larger profits. But is it fair and truly market based? And tariffs have mostly been applied unilaterally as a response to war or an oppressive government (column 2 duty rates). Tariffs are imposed to counteract unfair trade or unlawful subsidization. For better or worse, our ability to impose tariffs is largely product based. I do think it is a farce that tariffs against China will reestablish US manufacturing in a meaningful way. I think we are too far past that.
Not too worry, the Chinese just ship their merchandise to Vietnam or Mexico, label them as goods of those countries, and not pay the duties anyway. They have been doing that for decades with antidumping and countervailing duties and going back to when quotas were imposed on apparel imports in the 80s. They do this while stealing our IP, not opening their markets, and making it tough for any business to pull currency out of their country. So is the consumer really benefiting from this?
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https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-next-president-inherits-a-remarkable-economy-7be2d059
The Next President Inherits a Remarkable Economy
The high quality of recent economic growth should put a wind at the back of the White House’s next occupant
By
Greg IpOct. 31, 2024 5:30 am ET
Whoever wins the White House next week will take office with no shortage of challenges, but at least one huge asset: an economy that is putting its peers to shame.
With another solid performance in the third quarter, the U.S. has grown 2.7% over the past year. It is outrunning every other major developed economy, not to mention its own historical growth rate.
More impressive than the rate of growth is its quality. This growth didn’t come solely from using up finite supplies of labor and other resources, which could fuel inflation. Instead, it came from making people and businesses more productive.
This combination, if sustained, will be a wind at the back of the next president. Three of the past four newcomers to the White House took office in or around a recession (the exception was Donald Trump, in 2017), which consumed much of their first-term agenda. The next president should be free of that burden.
Meanwhile, higher productivity growth should make the economy a bit less prone to inflation, more capable of sustaining budget deficits, and more likely to deliver strong wages. All would be a boon to President Trump or President Kamala Harris.
To describe this economy as remarkable would strike most Americans as confusing, if not insulting. In the latest WSJ poll, 62% of respondents rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor,” which explains the lack of any political dividend for President Biden. There are many reasons for the disconnect, most important the high inflation of 2021-23, whose effects still linger.
Cumulative change since 2019, quarterly
GDP
Productivity
Working hours
Eurozone
U.S.
10%
5
0
–5
–10
–15
–20
2020
’21
’22
’23
Note: Shows GDP- and PPP-weighted averages.
Source: Bank for International Settlements
Alana Pipe/WSJ
When you’re unhappy at home, you can gain some perspective by checking in on your neighbors. The whole world has been through the wringer since 2020; any country’s performance alone is less revealing than how it compares with its peers.
Most leaders from around the world would trade their economies for the U.S.’s in a heartbeat. Through the second quarter, the U.S. grew 3%; none of the world’s next six largest advanced economies grew more than 1%. Even China is struggling.
Sometimes strong growth is a prelude to a recession because it comes from straining the economy’s capacity, generating inflation and forcing the Federal Reserve to raise rates.
Yet inflation has fallen in the past year, to 2.7% in the third quarter, using the Fed’s preferred underlying measure. That’s still above the Fed’s 2% target, but the progress was sufficient for the Fed to cut rates in September and pencil in more cuts—all without growth flagging.
“That’s pretty impressive. That’s a bit of a Goldilocks outcome,” Robin Vince, chief executive of BNY, said in a recent interview. “A year, two years ago, very few commentators actually thought that was going to be possible.”
Some of that growth was due to the labor force swelling with inflows of unauthorized migrants. Payroll employment was up 2.4 million in the year through the third quarter, or 1.6%. That, however, overstates the contribution of labor because on average each employee worked slightly less hours.
Adjusted for that, productivity—i.e., output per hour—probably rose 2% to 2.5% in the past year, well above the 1.5% average annual rate from 2007 to 2019.
Economic growth is unlikely to sustain its recent pace because migrant flows have already slowed. Yet thanks to higher productivity, the U.S.’s potential growth—what it can sustain over the long run—might be higher than the 1.8% that many forecasters like the Fed have long assumed.
Satyam Panday, an economist at S&P Global Ratings, thinks the potential might be 2% to 2.3%, citing booming investment in artificial intelligence, data centers, and renewable energy. “You have to pick your side,” said Panday. “We are techno optimists.”
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Productivity is extremely volatile, especially since the pandemic, so it is too soon to say its trend has shifted. Still, one encouraging sign is that no other country has witnessed it.
The Bank for International Settlements, a Swiss-based umbrella group for central banks, calculates that from the end of 2019 to the end of 2023, total output rose 7.9% in the U.S., of which 1.2% came from more hours worked and 6.7% from productivity—more output per hour. In the eurozone, output was up 3% in the same period, entirely due to more hours.
“Productivity is really bad across the world,” said Hyun Song Shin, the BIS’s economic adviser. “The U.S. is an outlier.”
The BIS thinks inflation is a bigger risk globally in coming years because of threats to supply chains such as from geopolitical conflict. But productivity provides some cushion by enabling companies to absorb higher costs, such as wages. Shin said, “The U.S. can run the economy hot in a way others cannot.”
What’s behind the divergence? Read the recent report by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on European competitiveness. In explaining why Europe lags behind, it reveals why the U.S. leads.
One reason is the domestic energy supply, which insulated the U.S. from the surge in natural-gas prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. European Union companies still pay two to three times more for electricity and four to five times more for natural gas than their U.S. counterparts, Draghi found.
More important is the role of technology. No EU company worth more than 100 billion euros, equivalent to $108 billion, “has been set up from scratch in the last 50 years,” while all six U.S. companies worth more than $1.08 trillion were created in this period, Draghi said. America’s companies are also faster to adopt technology such as artificial intelligence, which explains much higher productivity in professional services, finance, insurance, and information technology services.
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These differences are mostly the product of the intrinsic dynamism of American capitalism rather than any president’s policies. Still, Trump and Biden, in their respective fiscal policies, both sought to boost business investment, a key ingredient to productivity: Trump, through lower taxes and regulations on corporations broadly, and Biden by directing federal dollars and tax credits to semiconductor manufacturing, low-carbon energy, and infrastructure.
If the economy is so good, why are Americans so glum? Lots of noneconomic reasons, I’ve argued. But no question, inflation looms large. Wages, from 2021 to 2023, didn’t keep up with inflation, as they are supposed to when productivity and economic growth are strong. Higher prices flowed disproportionately to profits rather than pay.
That has begun to change, though. Average wages since mid-2023 have outpaced inflation as the latter fell. Inflation could yet stall, or even rise; both nominees, and Trump in particular, have plans that could pressure prices. And surprises could interfere, like a big rise, or fall, in oil prices, another pandemic, or war.
Still, odds are inflation will be much closer to 2% in the next four years than in the past four. With time, anger at today’s higher prices will become acceptance. The next president is likely to bear much less of the burden of inflation than Biden did.
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Companies ready price hikes to offset Trump’s global tariff plans
Executives say Americans, not foreign countries, will pay the tariffs.
Across the United States, companies that rely on foreign suppliers are preparing to raise prices in response to the massive import tariffs that former president Donald Trump promises if he wins the election Tuesday.
Producers of a range of items, including clothing, footwear, baby products, auto parts and hardware, say they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers.
The planned price increases next year would come as consumers are beginning to enjoy relief from the highest inflation in four decades, and they directly contradict Trump’s repeated assurances that foreigners will pay the tariff tab.
“We’re set to raise prices,” Timothy Boyle, chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said in an interview. “We’re buying stuff today for delivery next fall. So we’re just going to deal with it and we’ll just raise the prices. … It’s going to be very, very difficult to keep products affordable for Americans.”
Trump vows to impose the heaviest tariffs since the 1930s, including a 60 percent tax on products from China and a 10 to 20 percent fee on all other foreign goods. Doing so will encourage companies to produce inside the United States using American workers rather than buying from foreign suppliers, he has said.
Trump also has repeatedly claimed that foreign companies — not Americans — pay such import taxes. “The countries will pay,” he insisted this month during an interview with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago.
In fact, American importers pay all tariffs to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency at the time their products enter the country.
Depending upon demand for individual products and the availability of alternatives, the tariff burden may be shared among the foreign producer, the U.S. importer and the final customer.
The foreign company that makes the product, for example, might redesign its assembly line to reduce its costs or might agree to trim its profit margin to retain U.S. sales.
But the main costs fall on American buyers.
“A consistent theoretical and empirical finding in economics is that domestic consumers and domestic firms bear the burden of a tariff, not the foreign country,” according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University.
Executives at AutoZone, an auto parts retailer, told investors this month that they were prepared for products they import to become more expensive. The company’s top suppliers include companies in India, China and Germany, according to a June press release.
“If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” Philip Daniele, CEO of AutoZone, said on a recent earnings call. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of — we know what the tariffs will be — we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
Likewise, Stanley Black & Decker CEO Donald Allan earlier this year told investors his company would probably “have to do some surgical price actions” to offset any new tariffs.
During his presidency, Trumpimposed tariffs of up to 25 percent on $360 billion in Chinese imports. The Biden administration has retained most of those taxes and added others on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and solar cells.
Vice President Kamala Harris has assailed Trump’s proposed tariffs as a “national sales tax” that would hammer consumers. Trump’s tariff plans would cost a typical U.S. household between $1,700 and $2,600 per year, depending upon whether his universal import fee was set at 10 percent or 20 percent, according to an August study by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely.
Harris campaign officials say their approach is more targeted than Trump’s plan to tariff all of the $3 trillion in foreign products that the United States imports each year.
“Just like 2016, Wall Street and so-called expert forecasts said that Trump policies would result in lower growth and higher inflation, the media took these forecasts at face value, and the record was never corrected when actual growth and job gains widely outperformed these opinions. In fact, then — as now — Trump policies will fuel growth, drive down inflation, inspire American manufacturing, all while protecting the working men and women of our nation from lopsided policies tilted in favor of other countries. These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Manufacturers that have been hurt by China’s trade practices, including its heavy use of government subsidies, say tariffs are justified as a defensive measure.
Over the past two decades, Orrco, a maker of precision machined products such as brass hose nozzles, lost sales to Chinese competitors that produced the same products for less than its material costs.
Orrco employs about 25 workers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, just half of its workforce 20 years ago.
“I’m a believer in free trade. But what we have with China is not free trade. It’s just hollowing out our manufacturing sector,” said Keith Orr, Orrco’s vice president.
As the presidential campaign enters its final days, businesses are bracing for potential trade policy upheaval.
Some companies are placing unusually large import orders, aiming to stock up before new tariffs take effect. The United States imported 11 percent more Chinese goods in July and August of this year than during the same two months in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.
Other companies hope to avoid the heaviest levies by shifting to suppliers outside China, Trump’s main target. By December, some of Acme United’s Westcott brand products, such as rulers and paper trimmers, will be made in Thailand and the Philippines, allowing them to escape tariffs aimed at China, CEO Walter Johnsen said on a recent earnings call.
The Shelton, Connecticut-based company, which operates under multiple brands, also has shifted production of some first aid and medical products to India, Egypt and its U.S. factories in Florida, North Carolina and Washington state.
Johnsen said he was skeptical that Trump would actually follow through with his announced plans to increase tariffs on all U.S. imports. Taxing imported medical products, including medicines, for example, would be too disruptive for the U.S. health-care system, he said.
“The hospitals would come to a halt. So it’s highly unlikely, in my view, that 60 percent tariffs are even remotely going to be real, but it’s a negotiating point,” he told investors.
Likewise, on a recent trip to China, Sebastien Breteau, CEO of QIMA, which conducts worldwide factory inspections and audits for major retailers, found few Chinese suppliers who believed Trump would implement what he has promised.
“He’s a man who can change [his] opinion 10 times in a day. So people don’t believe him. People don’t believe Trump is going to raise tariffs by 60 percent,” said Breteau, whose clients include Costco and Walmart.
Still, Trump’s first trade war, starting in 2018, rattled U.S. companies that had become overly dependent upon Chinese suppliers. Subsequent trade disruptions during the pandemic, aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused many companies to investigate other options.
Columbia Sportswear in recent years has moved some of its production for the U.S. market from China to Central America, Boyle said.
Newell Brands, owner of Rubbermaid, once relied on Chinese suppliers for about 30 percent of the goods it sold in the United States. But it has trimmed that dependence to less than 15 percent and expects to be below 10 percent by the end of next year, CEO Chris Peterson told investors this month.
By making foreign goods more expensive, tariffs should make items produced in Rubbermaid plants in Ohio and Virginia more competitive, he said. “We’ve been preparing for the potential for tariffs and I think we are as well-positioned as we can be to benefit in some categories,” he said.
Computer peripherals maker Logitech for several years has been trying to spread its supply chain across additional Asian nations. About 40 percent of its global shipments come from outside China, and the company aims to boost that figure to 50 percent in “the near future,” executives told investors this month.
“We’re on a multiyear journey to make our supply chain more resilient, more diversified,” said CEO Hanneke Faber. “We’ll continue to do that, and we think we’ll be prepared for whatever happens after the U.S. election.”
Trump’s repeated insistence that other nations will pay his tariffs frustrates the U.S. importers who actually get the bills. Lalo, a baby and toddler products retailer, was just opening its doors as the first trade war got underway. The company imports an array of premium items such as play tables, high chairs and bibs.
Some of its products were exempt from the trade levies. But many of the made-in-China goods faced tariffs, forcing the company to raise prices, according to Michael Wieder, the company’s co-founder.
Lalo is growing fast but is not yet profitable, Wieder said. The last thing the 30-employee company needs is higher costs. Along with China, it imports products or materials from countries such as India and Turkey, all of which would face Trump’s universal tariff.
Though reluctant to raise prices, Lalo needs to become profitable so it can invest in new products and continue growing, Wieder said. Fresh tariffs will get in the way.
“It just hurts the consumer. Straight up. Ten times out of 10,” he said. “Exporting countries do not pay the tariffs. It’s just that simple.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/30/companies-tariffs-trump-prices/
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Meanwhile some people are just so gosh darn torn over who to vote for.
#ToughCall
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Just communicating what I see in real life. With real clients. It is not passed on the consumer in all instances. Those are real facts from boots on the ground. All of this corporate speak is simply lobbying, designed to enhance their bottom line and efforts to get costs reduced. That is actually very republican. I agree the tariffs hurt small businesses more than enterprise level entities that can afford to absorb the tariffs. Apparel has actually been very lucky to avoid most of the increased tariffs. I am sorry Columbia, but take a look at Patagonia even if some of their goods are made in China. I am also sorry Lalo cannot sell their $235 high chairs through e-commerce and make 200% profit. And yes, the Chinese government does reimburse companies for the tariffs they pay to export to the US. It is export incentives and subsidization. People need to get real on where goods are coming from and at what expense. You want to talk about the environment? Let's talk coal. You want to talk about human rights? Let's talk about forced labor. It is not as simple as the media wants to make it. Call me out for not playing game, but please do not call me out for being uninformed. And if you post more than 10 lines or so, it does not get read.
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
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Not for all companies, but a relevant and representative sample. From mom and pops to Fortune 100 companies. I actually do have an idea and am called upon to advise on best how to deal with the tariffs, pending legislations, government enforcement actions related to tariffs etc. It is 100% true that it is not always passed on to the consumer. I have been in the guts of this discussion since the tariffs were first proposed. Even farther back with antidumping. Look that up. Same with forced labor. So take what I say with a grain of salt and believe it or don't. But what I say is exactly what I encounter with real businesses.
I can talk econ but in reality, keeping the customer meant eating or splitting the cost in many cases. More about customer relations than the elasticity of goods. And you are wrong about net receipts. Tariffs were and still are a windfall. Why do think they are still in place? They helped close the gap on uncollectable antidumping and countervailing duties.
When you have a tariff, someone is going to take a hit. Maybe it's the exporter, maybe the importer, maybe the consumer. To argue that no American or American business is harmed means that it's the exporter eating the tariff. Certainly that will be the case for some tariffs but not all. And it certainly matters the tariff %.
And the original tariffs are not still in place. Trump killed several of them and Biden killed the ones from EU. Australia, England and others. Really only leaving in China. But now Trump is throwing numbers around like 20, 30, 50% tariffs. Maybe that's fine on steel and semi- conductors. We would build that here with more skilled labor and robotics. But shoes, clothes, etc. would be an issue. We are not going to start making televisions and shoes in the US.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/31/2281248/-Republicans-are-enraged-their-wives-might-secretly-vote-for-Harris?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_3&pm_medium=web#comment_89985947
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The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2