Amazon’s Chinese sellers to raise prices or quit US market as tariffs hit 145%

"It'll be very hard for anyone to survive in the US market," Chinese group says.

See full article...

 

[McTurkey]

I used to think this way. But, then I realized two things:

1. The ruling class is us. Just the group of us that happen to control material wealth at the moment. For all the blather about rising inquality, that comes and goes, just like money.
2. We used to have jobs provided by those evil oppressors, but they moved them overseas because the incentives of free trade favor that. Putting up barriers incentivizes having the jobs be domestic instead. The people who immediately counter by saying "well robots" miss the point. There will always be more jobs. The question is who is the most economic employee -- where that person is. Barriers make it more desirable to have that person be domestic.

The left's propaganda has been better for so long that in circles like Ars, it's become accepted wisdom. This has happened while the whole country's working population has been hollowed out. The left is simply wrong and won't admit it, and so are the technocrats here.

That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

 

[Miltonault]

I'll miss Anker devices.

ah Dude, don't even. I love Anker devices. Q20 soundcore..say what.

 

[David Mayer]

I just wish there was a way for Amazon sellers (and all retailers) to show what portion of the price is from tariffs.

LOL

 

[Darkly]

Don't you have to declare upon returning and pay taxes? Or is it cheaper even with that added cost?

What this Laptop Custom's officer? This old thing? No... I bought it out with me and now we're coming back... Oh yes... I've had this old thing for several years now... I'm thinking of buying a newer model. Do you have any suggestions?

 

[hillspuck]

Psshaaaw, whatever dawg, I stand by the MUID brand squishy duck light that I got on the cheap.

I had to check that this was real and not AI (it is real).

I think this works by transferring your stress to the duck. That facial expression says less "peaceful" and more "I am a man of a certain age and this is just something that I have to go through on a yearly basis now."

 

[David Mayer]

While it will be very painful in the medium term, this is a good thing. Dependence on the single most dangerous enemy we have for just about everything is a disaster, and this is our only way out of it.

You do realize that free trade reduces the likelihood of armed conflict, right?

 

[Darkly]

While it will be very painful in the medium term, this is a good thing. Dependence on the single most dangerous enemy we have for just about everything is a disaster, and this is our only way out of it.

"Dependence on the single most dangerous enemy we have for just about everything is a disaster". I think the world is realising this now that America has finally ripped off their mask and shown they can't be relied on or trusted.

 

[Darkly]

You do realize that free trade reduces the likelihood of armed conflict, right?

I don't think the original poster even knows what time of day it is... or perhaps even what day.

 

[KeyboardWeeb]

If Trump doesn't back down on them and especially if he keeps adding more and more to them¹ you can also add "Goodbye Black Friday" this year. Most of those special deals Walmart, Target, etc. have for Black Friday each year come from China.

And pretty soon you can also say "Goodbye Dollar Tree," since they've reported in the past that between 41% to 43% of their products are from China. (Same will likely happen to Dollar General as well.)

¹ It's clear Trump thinks a big enough number will get China to back down, but I doubt even 1,000,000% tariffs would do that. In fact the higher they go, the more China's going to dig in its heels and refuse to budge. It's probably already about saving face for them and they aren't going to lose face just because Trump is throwing a tantrum.

Saving face hell, they think they can win, and they are probably right. Hell, they could easily win by giving Trump some worthless shiny trinket so he thinks he's won and calls off the dogs. That's generally how Trump works.

 

[mpfaff]

And where are you going to buy the parts for repairs?

I was just looking at repairing a watch with a somewhat obscure lithium battery. The only place I could find a matching replacement was on AliExpress for about $80. Much more than it should be, but not totally unreasonable all things considered.

Now? Because the executive order illegally bypasses the de minimis exemption for Chinese goods, that same battery apparently costs $200. Oh, and by the way, you'll be submitting your name, address, phone number, email address, and SSN to CBP via the carrier in order to get the shipment cleared through customs, and very likely paying some handsome brokerage fees on top of the $200 to get it all done. (Look up CBP form 2504, which is now required for all goods that don't qualify for de minimis.)

What these tariffs actually do is kill repairability, because importing obscure parts becomes cost and time prohibitive.

I have a PC gaming headset, a nice one, I've had it since COVID. It doesn't hold a charge so well anymore, $200 to replace the headset now with the same-ish updated one. No worry, Aliexpress sells a replacement battery for $6, some minor disassembly and some basic soldering and boom, good headset once again. The only waste is an old battery that can be recycled.

Trump's bullshit plan means that $6 battery becomes a $206 battery come June. Trump is looking to screw everyone, handy DIYers, people who prefer to just buy new stuff. No one is going to be spared his enormous tax hike.

 

[David Mayer]

The Nobel Prize in Economics has always annoyed me. Might as well have a Nobel Prize in Aromatherapy.

Economics is a real field. It's just based on a fuzzy foundation: people's behavior.

That being said, there is no "Nobel Prize in Economics". There is a "Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences".

It's just based on a fuzzy foundation: people's behavior.

One of the first things people are taught about economics is the story of how currency was created as a result of the deficiencies of barter, while COMPLETELY ignoring what came before barter, credit/debt based economies, and what came before that, people just doing what they can to help the community when they could. Then there is the near complete disregard for the tendency of humans to engage in mutual aid (you ever lend a tool to a neighbour?) and you get a field that is in many ways divorced from reality while also directly influencing it.

Then you get the mental health impacts of studying economics:
https://evonomics.com/how-learning-economics-make-you-antisocial/

And you have a recipe for a field that is deeply flawed.

 

[David Mayer]

I used to think this way. But, then I realized two things:

1. The ruling class is us. Just the group of us that happen to control material wealth at the moment. For all the blather about rising inquality, that comes and goes, just like money.
2. We used to have jobs provided by those evil oppressors, but they moved them overseas because the incentives of free trade favor that. Putting up barriers incentivizes having the jobs be domestic instead. The people who immediately counter by saying "well robots" miss the point. There will always be more jobs. The question is who is the most economic employee -- where that person is. Barriers make it more desirable to have that person be domestic.

The left's propaganda has been better for so long that in circles like Ars, it's become accepted wisdom. This has happened while the whole country's working population has been hollowed out. The left is simply wrong and won't admit it, and so are the technocrats here.

We used to have jobs provided by those evil oppressors

This take is completely divorced from the reality that is the mostly healthy unemployment rate for nearly the entire time period in question.

 

[ShortOrder]

And where are you going to buy the parts for repairs?

I was just looking at repairing a watch with a somewhat obscure lithium battery. The only place I could find a matching replacement was on AliExpress for about $80. Much more than it should be, but not totally unreasonable all things considered.

Now? Because the executive order illegally bypasses the de minimis exemption for Chinese goods, that same battery apparently costs $200. Oh, and by the way, you'll be submitting your name, address, phone number, email address, and SSN to CBP via the carrier in order to get the shipment cleared through customs, and very likely paying some handsome brokerage fees on top of the $200 to get it all done. (Look up CBP form 2504, which is now required for all goods that don't qualify for de minimis.)

What these tariffs actually do is kill repairability, because importing obscure parts becomes cost and time prohibitive.

Carriers already have backlogs of thousands of packages which would have cleared customs easily just a week ago, and which now must be fully documented and paid. The old procedures were the way they were for a good reason.

I've been wondering what would happen to the de minimus exemption, has it been completely removed or just for certain items?

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

China already has a giant cultural chip on its shoulder about getting bullied economically by Western powers. Most of us don't know the first fucking thing about the Boxer Rebellion and the foreign concessions and treaty ports and so on, but they have not forgotten, and their rise as a great power is in large part motivated by "no other nation will ever do that to us again, ever." Face is a big part of this, no doubt, but this is about national self-image, at this point, and not without historic justification.

Myeah, you more or less have to read up on it to believe it. The opium trade the british forced on China at gunpoint is so shameless it beggars belief.

China used silver as currency.
Britain wanted Tea and Porcelain but was short on cash.
So Britain carried opium from its holdings in India, sold it aggressively in China, addicting entire regions.
When China objected, the british sailed a cannon ship up the Yangtze and threatened to shell Beijing.
And extorted Hong Kong from China to use as a safe port from which it could conveniently buy tea and sell poison.
The british invented the first modern-era drug cartel and ran it as ruthlessly as any colombian 'El Jefe'.

Meanwhile aggressive american missionaries walked into villages smashing memorial tablets and vandalizing graveyards because they felt some way about ancestral worship. And demanded - and often got - bloody retaliation when said missionaries were thrown out, beaten, or stampeded by angry mobs.

The russian and french weren't much better.

The chinese still call this period the "Century of Humiliation".

And although it certainly doesn't justify it it certainly explains why China has focused so hard on wiping out any remaining traces of foreign influence from Hong Kong.

Trump waving economic sanctions in the face of China and threatening them in a way almost comically the stereotype of some piggish british 18th century lord probably had every collar in the PRC's assembly popping from spiking blood pressure.

Edit: And the chinese citizenry? They've all learned this too. I'm betting this is one of the few topics where, when Xi says the country stands behind him, you can take him at his word.
I think that to a man the chinese people are angry enough to eat the tariffs and escalate until the Orange clown caves.

 

[DCStone]

I enjoyed those along with BTF Lighting's LED strips and Waveshare's LCD displays for various hobby-grade electronics projects.

The damage won't be limited to the Chinese brands though; it's going to hit the large US brands that make their products in China and sell on Amazon too.

It's going to hit a lot of small businesses as well, and people are likely to lose their homes and savings because of it. Case in point, this CNN interview:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owp8WzgYLyA


BTW That's not the only interview I've seen where someone designing and selling injection-molded plastic goods had essentially been forced to go to China in the first place, because they couldn't find any local companies will to look at it due to the costs of tooling and spooling up manufacturing.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

Wait, are you saying the economy of the US is different from balancing your checkbook and making sure bills are paid each month? Because I've heard that one in some form for ages now. Sounds like you're trying that ivory tower librul stuff to confuse the issue!

And gotta love that nefarious "left". Even when Trump is running things with a belly-showing fearful Congress and (most of the time) a pet Court, it's always "the left" at fault. That takes some doing, how about we try putting "the left" in charge as they are obviously pretty clever.

I'm certainly no economist, how long would it take for companies to start manufacturing stuff in the US with US-made parts? Pharma, goods, whatever. Is that even remotely possible? And if it is, are we talking years, decades? And all the while the fucking dipshit is doing press conferences with his usual blather like "companies are coming back in great numbers to the US". Present tense. Fucking name one would be a question I'd love for him to be asked...maybe he was and he just ignores it like usual.

Even entertaining that dubious premise, what company would even begin to start moving back due to tariffs when the damn things are here one day, paused the next, and it's obvious there's not even a ghost of an actual plan regarding them. It's usual Trump "in the moment" stuff. He's doing his shakedown thing, except now with countries. Threaten, and get your way, and if not, you sue. This is what he's done thousands of times.

Just going to address the bolded part. It will take decades and will require massive government subsidies to build and run factories crewed by workers and engineers who have to rebuild a knowledge pool from zero.
Same way china originally did it. Churn out cheap shoddy shit no one wants until your factories and engineers are good enough you produce world class product and everyone wants you to build their shit.

Tim Cook, then CEO of Apple said it best way back when.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...t-if-apple-were-forced-to-make-it-in-america/

And it's no rosier today.

https://futurism.com/trump-iphones-america

 

[Coriolanus]

Alas, a lot of books are printed in China, it turns out.

In Trump's America, books are only for burning.

 

[ktmglen]

It's going to hit a lot of small businesses as well, and people are likely to lose their homes and savings because of it. Case in point, this CNN interview:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owp8WzgYLyA


BTW That's not the only interview I've seen where someone designing and selling injection-molded plastic goods had essentially been forced to go to China in the first place, because they couldn't find any local companies will to look at it due to the costs of tooling and spooling up manufacturing.

keyboard(dot).io has a good blog post on what the tariffs mean for their supply chain and US customers as well:

https://shop.keyboard.io/blogs/news/an-open-letter-to-u-s-customers

 

[Retrosal]

Wait, is this a bad thing? I'm trying to avoid them, now they will volunteer to disappear?

Don't worry, the higher quality electronics, hardware will go up more in price than the cheapest stuff. Cheaper crap have higher margins meaning low price when going through customs = low tariff cost compared to margin. Actual quality stuff = lower margin, which will mean a need to raise prices much more.

So while you may be able to avoid the low quality crap sellers, the stuff you actually want may go up in price 50-60%.

 

[Coriolanus]

China already has a giant cultural chip on its shoulder about getting bullied economically by Western powers. Most of us don't know the first fucking thing about the Boxer Rebellion and the foreign concessions and treaty ports and so on, but they have not forgotten, and their rise as a great power is in large part motivated by "no other nation will ever do that to us again, ever." Face is a big part of this, no doubt, but this is about national self-image, at this point, and not without historic justification.

I was born in Tianjin, the port city that feeds Beijing. The old parts of the city is a monument to that. There are portions that have completely different architectures because the city was carved up by the European powers and the people displaced.

 

[mpfaff]

Just going to address the bolded part. It will take decades and will require massive government subsidies to build and run factories crewed by workers and engineers who have to rebuild a knowledge pool from zero.
Same way china originally did it. Churn out cheap shoddy shit no one wants until your factories and engineers are good enough you produce world class product and everyone wants you to build their shit.

Tim Cook, then CEO of Apple said it best way back when.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...t-if-apple-were-forced-to-make-it-in-america/

And it's no rosier today.

https://futurism.com/trump-iphones-america

China has expertise and supply chains that won't be able to be reproduced here for a very long time. Also, because of government central planning, they were able to set up a massive manufacturing hub that meant practically anything could be made efficiently and inexpensively that we'd never be able to reproduce. The components to make anything in an assembled product are all located in Shenzhen, they don't need a continent wide supply chain consisting of companies of varying reliability.

People who are not bright enough to see how well we have it and why, voted for a moron who is ruining this country. We're going to pay enormous taxes unnecessarily, because of stupid man's vibes and feeling's.

 

[TheOldChevy]

Economics is a complex subject and very difficult to learn about on a good day. People get degrees in it, spend their lives researching it, and still get stuff wrong about it-- constantly.

That's people who are interested or passionate about the subject. Your average voter? Good lord is it frustrating watching people suddenly trying to pretend they're conversant in one of the most complex disciplines on the planet.

One of my econ professors once said that if anyone confidently asserts anything after the sentence "I'm an economist", you should stop listening to them immediately. They could be right, wrong, or anything inbetween, but they almost certainly have no idea what they're talking about.

I get that it's super frustrating but there's a reason that people who actually know things about the topic couch their language carefully, hedge their bets, all the annoying things that make it hard to get a straight answer out of someone. It's because there usually isn't one.

So to circle all the way back around: we're getting the results of economic policies made by idiots who were voted in by idiots. Love this for all of us.

Bold text -> this is basically like any science. I studied physics and (later) economics. Both are very different but both share this common characteristics: it's very easy to get it wrong.

 

[Wedgewood]

Just saw that OnePlus raised prices already. Watch 3 is now $170 more than yesterday and the Open got it's discounts slashed from $500 to $200. Trade in values have also been reduced.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

While it will be very painful in the medium term, this is a good thing. Dependence on the single most dangerous enemy we have for just about everything is a disaster, and this is our only way out of it.

Compared to the US, China is now suddenly a less odious partner for most of the OECD.

Trump's first term was bad enough. Now that you've elected him a second time, knowing what he was...
Long term the US has cut in one fell stroke, EVERY fiscal tie it has to every now former ally.
And that's before he began threatening to annex allied nations.

You have, in the eyes of the world, gone from being the steady if arrogant partner to being the wild-eyed thug who occasionally goes on binges and then tries to stab his friends.

China has been immeasurably strengthened by this. In sheer self-defense the global community will have to reorganize global trade in ways which keep the angry toddler at arm's length.

Courtesy of the US showing the worth of its voting population, the next century may revolve with China being the new center of commerce.

 

[mpfaff]

If Trump doesn't back down on them and especially if he keeps adding more and more to them¹ you can also add "Goodbye Black Friday" this year. Most of those special deals Walmart, Target, etc. have for Black Friday each year come from China.

And pretty soon you can also say "Goodbye Dollar Tree," since they've reported in the past that between 41% to 43% of their products are from China. (Same will likely happen to Dollar General as well.)

¹ It's clear Trump thinks a big enough number will get China to back down, but I doubt even 1,000,000% tariffs would do that. In fact the higher they go, the more China's going to dig in its heels and refuse to budge. It's probably already about saving face for them and they aren't going to lose face just because Trump is throwing a tantrum.

Critics like to say “people just want cheap stuff” and it’s not that people want cheap stuff, they need cheap stuff. They don’t need a President who doesn’t understand why the trade deficit exists to slap a big tax on American’s purchases.

 

[Fnord666]

Economics is a complex subject and very difficult to learn about on a good day. People get degrees in it, spend their lives researching it, and still get stuff wrong about it-- constantly.

That's people who are interested or passionate about the subject. Your average voter? Good lord is it frustrating watching people suddenly trying to pretend they're conversant in one of the most complex disciplines on the planet.

One of my econ professors once said that if anyone confidently asserts anything after the sentence "I'm an economist", you should stop listening to them immediately. They could be right, wrong, or anything inbetween, but they almost certainly have no idea what they're talking about.

I get that it's super frustrating but there's a reason that people who actually know things about the topic couch their language carefully, hedge their bets, all the annoying things that make it hard to get a straight answer out of someone. It's because there usually isn't one.

So to circle all the way back around: we're getting the results of economic policies made by idiots who were voted in by idiots. Love this for all of us.

I’ve heard that for an economist, the real world is often a special case.

 

[Korios]

I can only speak from personal experience and the people I know, but a lot of us used the trips to the USA to buy tech products and bring them back home, laptops, consoles, phones, etc (I even brought an iMac once). It was mentioned in the Vision Pro article on Ars, that a lot of the customers in New York were foreigners. This will completely disappear, even with 10% tariffs, costs will be the same as in other parts of the world and both sales tax for states with many visitors and income for many retailers will drop.

Inbound tourism to the US has been collapsing since January even before accounting for shopping tourists. The obvious reason is the daily horror stories of Germans, Brits, Canadians, Irish etc who got "accidentally" caught in the machine of ICE and their private subcontractors.

A story about an Aussie or some European, who got arbitrarily deported by ICE with no explanation or due to "error", used to reach the front page news once every few months, with ICE always "declining to comment on individual cases".

But now said "mistakes" are a daily occurrence. They are "mistakes" where ICE can detain anyone even when they're leaving the country, because ICE is in bed with two major for profit companies. The own and operate most immigrant incarceration facilities; so despite the ostensible cost cutting by DOGE the more people are detained and the longer they're incarcerated (even when they were on their way out or have a return plane ticket) the more profit gets to be made.

Everyone visiting the US, from wherever they come, even the most affluent countries, is now by default suspected of making a runner and planning to stay permanently. And that's by design; ICE and Border Patrol agents do not really think every single non US citizen is desperate to stay in the US illegally. But they act like this is the case because they turned immigration management into a highly profitable business.

Of course that destroys tourism, but they don't care. They are not in the tourism business.
Can the US tourism industry survive on domestic tourists alone? Because this is only going to get worse.

No one is in the mood to take a trip of a few weeks to the US and find themselves handcuffed and ankle chained after a very thorough body and cavity search, and then get stuck in the ICE system for weeks or months, without any explanation at all, or even access to a lawyer.

All due to a misplaced period in a visa or travel document, a wrong look at the wrong time, or no reason whatsoever - other perhaps than filling the daily detainee target...

 

[Nogami]

I encourage them to completely dump the US market. Once stuff is no longer available, or affordable, it'll start to hit the fan. Just wait until prices for everything in Walmart triple or more. Trump's key support base is going to evaporate.

 

[Chinsukolo]

I just wish there was a way for Amazon sellers (and all retailers) to show what portion of the price is from tariffs.

They can - they just wont.

There is 0 reason i reseller cant list price then report "Tariff Markup" (and stick a Trump I did that stick next to it).

The US already doesnt include sales taxes in its listed price. So this is pretty easy. But again... they just wont bother.

 

[Mrbonk]

We have jobs now. Unemployment is low, factories have a hard time hiring right now with less factories here than overseas. The "hollowed out" work population is a talking point from the 80s and 90s, the workforce moved on since then. The people who lost their job at the local plant 35 years ago are retired now, their kids are working somewhere else. Who is going to work at the factories of Trump's dreams that would come here?

Trump's brain is broken, he remembers shit from the 80s and struggles with keeping up with today. He still whines about low flow toilets and has an idea of how people work that come from 60s sitcoms. Know what people need? Shit they can afford. Know what Trump is trying to eliminate with his giant tax hike? Shit people can afford.

To add to this I just reminded a friend yesterday if they cared about mfg why are they trying to to destroy the IRA and Chips Act? Those were both the best ways to get people to invest here in addition to needing to completely overhaul the education system to get people in programs with knowledge for those jobs. We tossed it all decades ago. And if Craftsman owned by another giant mega Corp can't make a new mfg plant in TEXAS of all places can't make it work before all this tariff nonsense, what makes you think playing economic terrorist is going to do anything other than just hurt us?

 

[Mrbonk]

...if the laws of physics changed a bit every time someone had a really bright or shady idea.

I.e. "Ugg lend spear to Ogg. Ogg give two shells with spear drawn on them to Ugg as reminder he owe Ugg two spears. Now Ugg has two spears, so Ugg and wife will go hunt wild boar".

Wonderful new invention to calculate debt as an asset. Unless Ogg fails to provide the spears upon which the boar kills and eats Ugg's wife.



"Ogg persuade everyone wheel is square. Ugg's Porsche business is now about low dinner tables".

At least when you build a fighter jet no one decides to redesign thermodynamics or periodic table elements while you work.

"Ugg angry with Ogg. Wants smash Ogg with Big Giant Club. Big Giant Club was Small Twig yesterday but Ugg sure renaming it make it hit harder".

Thank you, this comment wins the day for me.

 

[ShortOrder]

They can - they just wont.

There is 0 reason i reseller cant list price then report "Tariff Markup" (and stick a Trump I did that stick next to it).

The US already doesnt include sales taxes in its listed price. So this is pretty easy. But again... they just wont bother.

They could, and might. A fairly respectable website recently reported VW would be adding a line detailing the tariffs right next to the destination charge on their Monroney stickers
https://meincmagazine.com/cars/2025/0...-stellantis-are-reacting-to-trumps-25-tariff/

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

China has expertise and supply chains that won't be able to be reproduced here for a very long time. Also, because of government central planning, they were able to set up a massive manufacturing hub that meant practically anything could be made efficiently and inexpensively that we'd never be able to reproduce. The components to make anything in an assembled product are all located in Shenzhen, they don't need a continent wide supply chain consisting of companies of varying reliability.

People who are not bright enough to see how well we have it and why, voted for a moron who is ruining this country. We're going to pay enormous taxes unnecessarily, because of stupid man's vibes and feeling's.

The taxes and the fiscal harm is secondary. The US elected Trump, not once but twice. In full view of how erratic he was.

Here, mpfaff, would you lend a hundred bucks to someone who might be bloody awkward but who's had your back for years?
Sure you would.

Twenty years later the guy has gone on a few benders, beating his wife and kids, and spent other people's money on booze.
Would you consider lending him money, trusting him with work, or trust him yo have your back?

US credibility? It's gone.
Not until Trump is gone, and not until MAGA is gone.
It's gone and won't return until the entire rest of the world looks at the US and sees a country which can be relied on never again to let shitheels grab power that easily.
A nation where 'freedumb' isn't a thing and which won't tolerate malicious stupidity to the point where that is a significant portion of the voter base.

 

[Coriolanus]

Oh no! Not Dollar Tree!

For a lot of folks, Dollar Tree is the only place they have to buy food and toiletries and other essential items.

 

[ColdWetDog]

One of the first things people are taught about economics is the story of how currency was created as a result of the deficiencies of barter, while COMPLETELY ignoring what came before barter, credit/debt based economies, and what came before that, people just doing what they can to help the community when they could. Then there is the near complete disregard for the tendency of humans to engage in mutual aid (you ever lend a tool to a neighbour?) and you get a field that is in many ways divorced from reality while also directly influencing it.

Then you get the mental health impacts of studying economics:
https://evonomics.com/how-learning-economics-make-you-antisocial/

And you have a recipe for a field that is deeply flawed.

That's all comfy and nice but doesn't really scale. How do you deal with an Airbus 380? How do you lend something to Airbus to get a ride? You can argue, successfully in my opinion, that the current baseline assumptions of society are deeply flawed, but those are the basis of how we do things.

 

[Mrbonk]

It's going to hit a lot of small businesses as well, and people are likely to lose their homes and savings because of it. Case in point, this CNN interview:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owp8WzgYLyA


BTW That's not the only interview I've seen where someone designing and selling injection-molded plastic goods had essentially been forced to go to China in the first place, because they couldn't find any local companies will to look at it due to the costs of tooling and spooling up manufacturing.

I've been looking at producing my own plastics lately, and trying to recycle some into new products. Injection molding is basically a non starter for all the reasons listed above. And the cost of getting SMALL rudimentary tools to do it yourself is astronomical. If I did, it would HAVE to be overseas as a 1 man show. Which was also a non starter knowing what was coming after the election. Getting some tools I actually have to have and need badly tho are only economical buying from another country as like injection tooling, either there is no one selling parts on this end of the scale or barrier of entry can only be overcome by large capital.