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PC Case Maker CaseLabs Closes Permanently (pcgamer.com)
U.S.-based PC case manufacturer, CaseLabs, announced on social media that it is "closing permanently" and will not be able to fill all current orders. "We have been forced into bankruptcy and liquidation," CaseLabs said in a statement. "The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages), which cut deeply into our margins. The default of a large account added greatly to the problem... We reached out for a possible deal that would allow us to continue on and persevere through these difficult times, but in the end, it didn't happen." PC Gamer reports: CaseLabs is likely referring to the growing number of tariffs being enforced on Chinese imports by the United States government. China and the US are currently engaged in a trade war, causing many U.S. companies to lose money, lay off employees, or close entirely. CaseLabs went on to say that it won't be able to fill the backlog of case orders, but other parts will most likely ship to customers. "We are so incredibly sorry this is happening. Our user community has been very devoted to us and it's awful to think that we have let any of you down."
... that Trump has made for America!
I guess you can say this case...is closed.
YEAH!!!!!!!!
It's the "World War III": the global commercial war.
The poor and rich people will be in the battle.
"The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages), which cut deeply into our margins.
I hope our president will reconsider his stance on tarrifs. Folks are struggling. It's rumored that a kinda distant neighbor has lost his house to foreclosure.
On the other hand though, I won't be surprised if I hear of those asking the president to double down on tarrifs.
likely could fit most of our endless blather & FUDged digits in a couple of rooms now? take out the repetitive monotonistic propagandic bleachy clean mindphucking,.. & we could each have a copy on our key(block)chain?
The sell out went BK. Poor fella.
FT company website:
"We are very sad to announce that CaseLabs and its parent company will be closing permanently. We have been forced into bankruptcy and liquidation. The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80% (partly due to associated shortages), which cut deeply into our margins. The default of a large account added greatly to the problem. It hit us at the worst possible time. We reached out for a possible deal that would allow us to continue on and persevere through these difficult times, but in the end, it didn’t happen.
U.S.-based PC case manufacturer
The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages)
Can someone explain? The tariffs are designed to help American manufacturing, they make American products cheaper than foreign products. And as for shortages, a PC case manufacturer needs thin sheet steel, paint, plastic, and LEDs. Don't tell me you cannot get sheet steel in America any longer? Also, the margins on cases should be astronomical, 5 lbs of steel and a few LEDs, an ounce of black paint and a few plastic parts probably take 5-8 dollars in material costs. The only problem in the industree should be that China can make them cheaper which can be solved with the appropriate tariffs.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The tariffs have played a major role raising prices by almost 80 percent (partly due to associated shortages)
The ten percent aluminum tariff causes prices to spike eighty percent? Sounds like CaseLabs' suppliers ripped them off.
The default of a large account added greatly to the problem... We reached out for a possible deal that would allow us to continue on and persevere through these difficult times, but in the end, it didn't happen.
So, CaseLabs got ripped off by a client. This was a business failure, not a tariff problem. That's confirmed by the company's failure to secure financing to continue: even the bank knew that the owners sucked at running a business.
They made overpriced cases (seriously, $600 for a case?) and ran their business badly. They failed.
Coming real soon!
Manta has Case Labs at a staff of 3 and annual revenue of $178,500.
Parent company California Fabrication Company is not much larger - staff of 8 and annual revenue of $1.4 million.
I'd guess that all they really did in-house was accept shipments from their manufacturers in China, and put together the parts needed to fill orders for shipment.
It sucks that they went out of business, but as noted on their website, the tariffs were not the only reason they declared bankruptcy - they also had a large account default on payment. That they didn't have enough operating capital to survive these issues one on top of the other is not too surprising, given that they are not well funded. They can't be. The average personal salary in California is $51K; the company payroll at that rate would account for 85% of annual revenue.
The way the media portrays it:
If a trade policy is implemented by a Democrat:
If a trade policy is implemented by a Republican:
The reality is that both are true. The press just likes to spin it in favor of or against the party in power.
Nope. They're designed to help American manufacturing by making foreign products more expensive than American products. That is, they protect American jobs, but do so by making the products you buy more expensive.
That's why I generally fall on the pro-open trade side of this. It's a Prisoner's dilemma situation, where if one side implements tariffs, they get a better result than open trade, while the other side gets the worst possible result. But if both sides implement tariffs, they both end up worse off than with open trade. The best solution for both sides overall is open trade.
Trump's rationale (which I partly agree with but mostly don't) is that China has been abusing our policy of open import of Chinese goods by restricting export of American goods to China and/or subsidizing some of their goods which the U.S. imports which artificially kills off U.S. producers, thus giving China the advantage in the Prisoner's dilemma (and puts the U.S. at a disadvantage). The best solution found thus far to the iterated Prisoner's dilemma is the tit for tat strategy. If one side abuses the Prisoner's dilemma, the other side abuses it right back thus signaling that it won't take such abuse lying down. And eventually the side which started the abuse backs down, and the other side also backs down, reverting both sides to the best possible strategy for both (in this case, open trade).
it hurts !
#maga
Did I miss something, or are we back to the BBS era?
#DeleteFacebook
... It's just that he's so bad at the job.
How many personal bankruptcy cases has he had, and totally fucked everyone involved?
This time it's Our turn in the barrel.
There is no Moral Right, they gave up morals to elect Trump.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
There are objectively few reasons to like almost anything he's done unless you're either very short-sighted and on the receiving end of his wealth transfers to the rich, and/or you're a godawful centipede who gets a boner at gratuitous cruelty toward brown people and wanton damage to global liberal-democracy, including the western world's economy as seen here.
Among non-deplorable people who use facts and math, Trump has made himself a supervillain, and his typical actions will be met with disapproval. DEAL WITH IT. Go full deplorable and revel in the destruction, or stop being an infected sore on humanity's ass and get off the wrong side of history.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
and recycled plastic,
hardwood for the nice look and feel for the outside of the case and recycled plastic for the interior because it is not electrically conductive and strong & lightweight
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
One thing everyone here is missing is that U.S. Steel and Nucor Steel have been fighting every single exemption request companies have put forth to the U.S. Commerce Department. These companies want exemptions from the tariffs so they can continue to get steel at reasonable prices and/or quality and type they need.
Instead, the two largest producers of steel in the country have raised their prices and told the Commerce Department the exemptions are bogus because they can make the product, even though in at least one case, a company stopped buying steel from U.S. Steel because of quality control issues.
Of course politics plays a big role in all this:
In one case, a company stated “the sole U.S. producer of high speed steel material appropriate for cutting tools is not currently ramping up any production to expand this aspect of their business and has not shown any interest in quoting new business.”
As the tariffs take hold, expect prices of finished goods to rise substantially and more businesses to either go under or relocate out of the country. The largest nail manufacturer in the country has already laid off 12% of its workforce, cut hours for the remainder and is still on the brink of extinction, so it has to make such a decision.
Assumption: cases from CaseLabs are mostly alloy,not steel!
Fact: Trump pushed alloy tariffs on Turkey recently because of blackmail campaign by Erdogan.
Conclusion: Twitter and other prefer American companies work with dictators and their alloy to have it standing on their desk, rather then have American alloy in their home.
I think there's a reason CaseLabs did not name the country they were dealing with here, to not ruin their name entirely. Tariffs are put out to country harming US economy. China is using state subsidized steel, which is a crime. Turkey is on it's way to full blown dictatorship. What do you guys actually want? I say ROT IN HELL CaseLabs, ROT IN HELL
The bile in your comment renders your festering words less powerful.
Trump is definitely not a good politician. It's right for political people to really freak out about him.
A bias to the truth. But you don't want the truth.
nt.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Tip: We aren't.
Trump will be out of there in ~2 or ~6 years, as well as congress changing hands at some point, and whatever policy changes were brought about consequent to the current administration are almost certain to be reversed — the pendulum always swings back, particularly when it goes so far away from center.
Some of the damage done in the interim is potentially recoverable: environmental / pollution damage, trade conditions (your focus), international relations, regulatory erosion.
Some of it is unavoidably long-term, such as the installation of supreme court justices who base decisions on superstition, cronyism and ideology not derived from the constitution. That sort of damage tends to hang on a long time due to weaknesses in the design of the judicial system.
But some of the the damage done is not recoverable. Jobs, businesses, ranches and farms lost, families injured by radical changes in circumstance, people suffering and dying due to reduced access to adequate medical care.
This nation is quite resilient in the largest sense and it will almost certainly recover in general from the current blundering and malfeasance; but part of what's happening now is low-level suffering that will be lost in the noise of the overall stats or a recovery. Doesn't mean it isn't there or doesn't matter. It does. Doesn't mean Trump and the Republicans and the wealthy and powerful interests they kowtow to should be forgiven: they should not.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Am I the only one who's exhausted by all this winning?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Finally, someone has drilled down to the correct answer. The customer / end user / taxpayer always ends up paying when costs increase.
Tariffs increase costs of imports. In our economy, locally produced materials cost more than imports. Either way, end products cost more, and that ends up eroding the wallet of those who ultimately pay the bills.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well said. Thanks.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You also forgot to mention that the end product price goes up, the market shrinks, and the economy follows it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Blame it on tariffs. This company was on the skids for longer than BJ Clinton's wooden nose. Sour grapes are better with a good whine.
Company that is barely in business finally goes out... and finds something to blame it on.
Ok.
What makes you idiots think people like me wanted these tariffs because it would make things cheaper?
I don't want it to be cheaper.
I want it to be more expensive; being competitive would be a bonus.
And I want my neighbor to have a job, making that more expensive thing.
The flaw in my own vision is the expectation that with more people working and paying taxes, that taxes will actually get lowered.
Sooner or later another Democrat will be president and spend the sheet out of whatever gains were made before them, on 'programs that cost money' and don't necessarily build citizen or national wealth.
Democrats don't build wealth, they build a voter base.
Republicans build wealth, and the voter base are people wanting to be successful.
Democrats want a cheap Chinese computer for a cheap price, at any cost.
Republicans don't care what the computer costs, as long as we are wealthy enough to afford it.
americas industrial base was lost in the 70s when greedy american companies were allowed to move jobs to third world countries and dictator regimes. when greedy american companies paid american politicians to kill the labor movement. when greedy american companies were allowed to globalize. theres a recurring theme here, wonder what it is....oh yeh. greed. Make America Greedy Again.
breaking the camel's back. Anyone here old enough to remember 3DFX? They went out of business while their cards were flying off the shelves. It really doesn't take much to kill a business. Cases are steel and aluminum, both of which just got slapped with a 20% increase. If you're already struggling to compete because of supply problems and your costs go up 20% what do you suppose happens?
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either that or he's corrupt and giving out tariffs to help specific businesses/people (he's got friend in the Steel industry who helped bankroll his campaign).
Tariffs make sense when you're protecting existing business. We've spent 40 years outsourcing everything we can. There's nothing left to protect. What's needed is to very carefully build back American industry. And even then the impact on jobs will be so-so due to automation. It's mostly something you do to protect national interests. Still, The current approach is like a kid playing his first management sim on the Amiga. It's not going to end well. This shouldn't be surprising either. Trump's a guy who couldn't make money running a casino. You know, where the house always wins....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and normally you'd do a very careful analysis of the effects of a tariff before putting it in play. You'd expect
1. The POTUS to be aware that aluminum prices are already high due to shortages.
2. You'd expect him to understand that if there is a shortage of a good driving up prices that putting tariffs on it is pointless since high prices for a good mean you've already got a healthy enough market you don't need to protect it.
3. You'd also expect that companies that are hurting due to high aluminum prices would be on the verge of collapse and that a tariff will tip the scales for many, sinking companies that might have weathered the storm otherwise.
4. And above all you would expect the POTUS not to undertake risky national policy to score cheap political points.
None of these expectations have been met.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I doubt the tariffs were to blame, they have hardly been in place long enough to seriously affect a business. Yeah probably some liberal in the company blaming Trump for a problem with competition and pricing not tariffs.
You must be hoping the government subsidizes all poorly run companies and bad management for free? Whenever a company fails , the blame for the failure of that company falls squarely on the president of the united states in your world correct?
You socialist libtards have no fucking idea how business, loans, commerce, and the world works. Every thing, every problem, every reason for anything failing is the president of the Unites States fault.
Libtards such as yourself absolutely disdain personal responsibility.
> so far away from center.
Note to non-USA readers: refers to US definitions of 'center'. Apparently derived from the prevailing US mythology that Obama Administration was not, despite the evidence, a right-wing government.
were lost.
I worked for an AMERICAN company in the early 1980s that made personal computers. The cases were all made in America by Americans, as were the motherboards, the plug-in boards controlling all the peripherals etc. There came a point when a little shop opened up in the area dramatically underselling us and then another and then another and they all had something in common: they were selling very cheap motherboards and cases and cards from Asia (mainly Taiwan at that time). The stuff they were selling as complete products in boxes with manuals and such had retail prices far below our basic cost of materials. A Motherboard was selling at retail for less than our cost for a PCB and the ICs. We had to cancel our orders for more American cases and transition to cheap imported Asian cases, then eventually stopped making cheaper peripheral boards and simply imported them from Asia. Then one day a guy from Asia came in and offered to help us setup a plant in China, and his big selling point was that the Chinese military would bring in all the workers each morning, and escort them back to their housing each evening and make sure there was no worker theft! The owners of the company decided to call it quits and retire. I suspect something similar happened at a number of other similar companies.
Somehow, all the "free traders" who scream at any jobs lost related to a Trump tariff as Trump tries to force the issue of a level playing field for trade are nowhere to be seen before Trump's tariffs (when the tariffs of those other countries assist them in destroying countless other American jobs). "Free Trade" clowns, it seems, as perfectly FINE with every nation on Earth using tariffs against the US and all the American manufacturing jobs that have been demolished over the past 20+ years under both Republican and Democrat presidents.
If you do not support "free trade" in both directions then you're no free trader at all; you're just a shill for Wall Street con men who get rich on cheap imports.
Muh brown people! Muh wrong side of historyyyy!
Is all you can do spew buzzwords?
Go eat a bag of dicks. He's the president, you can cry insults all you want but that won't change anything.
Deal with it.
As a few non-Trump-hating press have pointed out, Harley was already moving those jobs out of the US and simply grabbed the Trump tariffs as a politically-acceptable PR excuse. Other articles have pointed out that the management of HD have a problem: they failed to realize that the US Millenials would be less interested in their products and that meant market stagnation. They have failed to adapt and create new products to excite the US market and attract enough young buyers, but the rising economies elsewhere are well-suited to motorcycles and have many buyers looking for the iconic brand. As a result, HD has been ramping-up production in those foreign markets where they will manufacture and sell locally. When they fight their American workers over this offshoring, it's more palatable to say "blame Trump and his tariffs" than to say "management is out of touch with the American customers, and wants to boost its bonuses by jettisoning US workers".
Where HD is a good anti-Trump example is that they got a big Trump tax break and, unlike many other companies, they are not using it to benefit their American workers or to increase/upgrade American production facilities etc. HD is apparently doing what Nancy Pelosi wanted people to believe every company would do, as long as you ignore that they started this long before the tariffs were announced.
you seem to not account for the tariffs nearly every other nation puts on goods from America.
The underlying assumption of the entire post-WWII period was that the US had such a strong manufacturing base and such a solid middle class that American diplomats could make deals all over the world that bought international political favor at the expense of a few American jobs scattered around the country. If five or ten thousand jobs disappeared in the heartland and in exchange Germany seemed a more stable ally then elites in Washington DC were happy to let those German tariffs exist. If another ten thousand manufacturing jobs in America were lost to buy favor with Spain, the elites in DC were happy to overlook Spanish tariffs. Same thing for country after country (and American factory after American factory destroyed).
At some point, the people in America in "fly-over country" (places between the coasts that the political and media elites avoid) decided they did not want a future of only being able to buy cheap Chinese junk, and the best jobs in town being: "greeter" at the door of the local Wallmart.
The argument pushed by elites (many of whom make money from investing in firms that import junk from China) that tariffs are bad and will kill the economy seem to miss a big point: America's economy became the giant it was WITH tariffs, and slumped to very low growth in the era of "free trade", and other countries like China have grown enormously WITH huge tariffs they currently maintain. In fact, as a matter of historical record, nations who control their trade with tariffs maintain their independence and manufacturing capacities and nations that eliminate tariffs tend to collapse. HISTORY classes where one studies what actually happened in the past, are more valuable here than economics classes where people imagine and project what might happen in the future with their pet theories of their preferred marketplace manipulations.
You know what happens when a big trade group doesn't want to play ball? Their customers do like Netflix, and make their own product. Don't say it can't happen. When the rust belt, rusted, smaller, nimbler steel mills came into existence, making more specialized grades.
According to all the world's foremost facts & math experts, Hillary is definitely going to win the election. 99 to 1 odds I hear! All the best people are saying so. Shut up and don't disagree with us, we're very important.
They were already slow on filling orders, and they've had moratoria put on taking new orders in the past just to catch up on backlogs.
It was not a healthy company.
If you can use "facts and math" to condemn Trump's policies, then do so.
This BS hit piece uses neither - in truth, it conceals essential facts and obscures the math to make it all seem like Trump's fault... when it isn't anything close to.
A 10% tariff on one component will not cause an 80% increase in the price of a case.
On the other hand, declining sale and the getting ripped off by a major client? Those WILL wreck your garage business of building absurdly priced cases. Notice how the article barely touches on those, but emphasizes instead the political line.
Your own post reveals how "facts and math" have little to do with your own thoughts. You respond to a complaint about excess politics on slashdot by making classist and racist accusations (plus the typical "fascist" complaint), including the obligatory sexual perverted smear. Your conclusion delves deeper, deteriorating into straight out personal attacks.
In comparison, the parent used to insults and blamed no one for anything. Which one of you is the adult?
And this is where I'm just at a loss.
I'm a white male who grew up in the country hunting, fishing and driving pickups and working on farms, who's now upper middle class and headed into middle age. About to move into the suburbs.
I'm pretty much someone who should absolutely be a core republican voter. (Save for a little too much education.) Yet here I sit, repulsed at what the republican party has become. They lost me. For the entire rest of my life. Until everyone who was complicit in the last decade of cynical depravity by the republicans and their spawn has left the party, fuck 'em.
Now that my grandmother has passed, I'm never voting for another republican the rest of my life. The options are democrats or hopefully someone sensible. I just don't understand how a party could draw a hard social line that they know is going to alienate marginal voters for a generation. It's madness.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
fuck off you ignorant cunt
If only there was a way we could add a fiscal disincentive to making things overseas and importing them into the US. We could call them tariffs or something...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
what is everyone worried about? that a middle man front shop for chinese cases went down? could you not order your own cases from china cheaper? do you really need someone to hold your dick for you while your piss ? ...... like the mexicans i can understand, but Americans? becoming a joke lately .... used to look up to that country .....
Wow a California company blaming going out of business on Trump, imagine that. No not all the other factors they name afterwards or the fact they sell over priced cases in the first place. Nope itâ(TM)s Trump.
Produce, assemble, and buy components made in the USA to make the cases. I don't see the issue really. You cheapened out and now your seeing the consequences of it.
I grew up in a time when knowing something about computer cases meant something. Machine tooling was expensive, so knowing the difference between one case that had been designed by a machining efficiency expert and another that had been designed by a wizened system builder was worth a 100-150% markup. Cheap cases were notable for having a layout where the motherboard was screwed down so far from the 5 1/4" bays that your leads from your cheap power supply wouldn't reach your floppy drive.
Computer cases have since become some kind of wealth signal for the PC builder prosperity gospelists. If you accept the desktop PC into your heart, you too can have an RGB-LED double aluminum liquid-cooled heaven right now on your fold-out table.
Incontrovertible fact #1: all PRs hide the chewy center. The default of a large account added greatly to the problem is the chewy center. Every business is accountable to its shareholders. If CaseLabs went out of business because they lost a primary account, they will definitely blame anything but that fact. That's why they are pointing to tariffs, which they have no control over, as a primary cause, rather than the possibility that they have been price raping a major client, who may have hired somebody who said "why the f-ck are you buying $400 cases?".
Incontrovertible fact #2: US companies that arbitrage Chinese trade markets are rent-seekers. They could employ 1,000 minimum wage+ employees, but they are not what you'd call "domestic industry". China knows quite well what industry looks like. That's why everything is built in China.
Incontrovertible fact #3: In the modern world, a Chinese child laborer who hand-solders an Arduino board has more skills than a union worker who ensures the "Made in the USA" sticker was applied correctly. If you're a producer, and you have no control over your production chain, you're a marketer.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
The tarriffs apply to steel and aluminum stock: sheets, bars, etc.
They don't apply to things made of steel and aluminum like cars and PC cases.
World+dog have been complaining that the tariffs are stupid because there are far more jobs in the metal-using industries than in metal production.
They were also applied abruptly, leading to market instability as everyone adjusts. People who import bulk metal don't know how much domestic demand will decrease and domestic production will increase. If they hold off on a shipload until they can judge the market, that can lead to shortages and temporary price spikes greater than the tariff amount.
According to all the world's foremost facts & math experts, Hillary is definitely going to win the election. 99 to 1 odds I hear! All the best people are saying so. Shut up and don't disagree with us, we're very important.
Well you were wrong, weren't you?
>> CaseLabs is likely referring to the growing number of tariffs being enforced on Chinese imports
The growing US tariffs on Canadian products, including steel, imposed on May 31. Not China.
America first!
The Republicans don't plan to be around in anything resembling their past or current form for another generation. They know their platform can't win a popular vote anymore and that American society won't tolerate minority rule much longer, so they're catering to the worst of society for one last desperate hold on power. When this backfires spectacularly on them, I expect they'll spend a decade or two in the political doghouse and come back as something of a centrist party as the Democrats move left.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I am sad to see them go, but their business model depended on cheap, foreign gov't subsidized material that gutted domestic production of those raw materials.
They are exactly the kind of businesses that the tariffs are aimed at... in the end, businesses like this are bad for our economy and security. Good for globalization, but that's not the phase we are in right now.
We live in the age of little cardboard robots being sold at Walmart for STEM projects and cute little knit cases for raspberry pis being sold on etsy. RC Aircraft made out of commodity servos and single chip flight controllers are housed in dollar store foam board. No-one really cares about the case in this day and age. I can buy a "gaming PC" from any number of vendors, I don't really want to build one myself. I think I'm more likely to buy a videocard to upgrade an existing PC rather than buy a new PC from parts and eat the shipping. PC Gaming is maybe 25% of the market, these guys were just in the wrong segment and looking to blame anything but their industry and failure to adapt.
Did Caselabs buy steel, buy complete formed cases or ? Given our environmental restrictions, the most economic way for Caselabs may have been buying flat punched & painted case metals, paying for shipment by weight, then forming (folding) into finished case parts. Gone are paint and steel making emissions problems, gone is most of labor. Production becomes quick & easy. Problem is Caselabs would have no machines, permits or skills to punch, paint & debur case parts when prices from China increase greatly.
Point of tariffs was protection of and creating economic environment for production is USA. Putting a case parts importer out of business is a step toward a place for a US based cast maker using US raw materials.
They aren't the first and as long as Trumpelstilzchen is in the WH, they won't be the last US small business that goes under either...
I would almost lay money that the defaulting customer had more to do with the closure than tariffs. This was kind of a niche market, which would probably swallow a 20% price increase. Depending on the size of the default, that may have been something that just couldn't be overcome. Blaming the tariffs sounds like a political scape goat.
All the parts are from foreign countries and so is the assembly. Most of the jobs that went to creating those boxes were not in the US.
What this company was doing was undercutting potential US based case manufacturers from even existing by undercutting their prices with Chinese products.
So, yes, if your job is importing Chinese products, the US retaliating against China's unjust economic dominance might bite you in the ass.
TLDR: Death Star Contractors.
It is good that you are repulsed by the Republican Party.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, do not assume that the Democratic Party will be your saviour from the evil Republicans. Both parties are corrupt to the core.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen