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New Trump Tariffs Won't Include Fitness Trackers Or the Apple Watch (theverge.com)
According to Bloomberg, the next round of China tariffs won't include devices that receive and transmit voice data, a category that includes the Apple Watch, Fitbits, Sonos Speakers, and a host of other fitness trackers and home assistants. The Verge reports: The White House recently backed down on the rate at which the imports would be taxed. Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that listed goods would likely be taxed at only 10 percent. As recently as August, President Trump had considered setting the rate at 25 percent. Customs documents describe the category in vague terms, listing the devices as "machines for the reception, conversion and transmission or regeneration of voice, images or other data." But that vague category has come to encompass a wide range of personal tech, including fitness trackers and personal voice assistants. The Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, BeatsWL, AirPort, and Time Capsule all fall under the code, according to a letter submitted by Apple to the U.S. Trade Representative. Other categories of Apple products will still be affected by the tariff, including adapters, the Mac mini, and any circuit boards or internal components shipped individually to the United States.
and pass the MAGA
The orange idiot rages on
Enjoy your inflation, Trumpanzees
No tariffs on any technology that can be used to spy on Americans. Hmm.... Nope, that's not suspicious at all!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Soft? Try dickless. No balls. To call him a weenie would be a complement at this point.
I just think it's great that the american taxpayer can foot the bill for an objective idiot to play out his mercantilist fantasies in advance of his pending resignation/removal from office. More dumbass bullshit, just like with his trillion dollar welfare check to the 1%.
Products that have no reason to have voice input and output are going to include voice control features just to get around the tariffs. This kind of market distortion is the worst kind of government interference in the free market there is, where real progress is masked by pointless "progress" in a direction that is coerced by government interference. Samsung and Baidu have already developed their voice assistant technology, so this market distortion isn't even going to necessarily benefit American companies.
Eventually the country with the stronger economy wins the war of tariffs. The US economy is quite strong now and China's is fairly weak. They need to sell their crap to the US way more than we need to buy it. It may be not be politically popular (that's why no politician before Trump has even thought about imposing tariffs on China), but Trump is not a politician. We'll win; just give it time.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is what he and his followers all have.
No, nearly everyone loses the war of tariffs. This is a race to the top in how much to tax one's own citizens.
Oh wait, the rest of the world kept hearing "USA First" from Trump...... problem is the rest of the world said FU and said "USA last", so Trump has managed to piss off the 96% of the worlds population that does not live in the USA.
China on the other hand has been negotiating and signing trade agreements with the rest of the world, while Humpty Trumpty has been tearing them up.
Do phones fall in this category? Seems like a huge detail was left out of summary.
These items are worthless to me. How about we put a 100% tariff on those items and take it off for all of the useful stuff.
Eventually the country with the stronger economy wins the war of tariffs. The US economy is quite strong now and China's is fairly weak.
Hmm, How is the US strong? Last I checked we were burning money like Donald Trump running a casino and mainlining heroin (crazy unsupported tax cuts) to keep the motor red lined.
Sure a tax cut that is deficit spending might make sense if you were in a major recession, but now?
Sooner or later there will be a contraction. Then debt will really go the rest of the way through the roof and at some point our credit is likely to get one or more downgrades, which will kick our borrowing costs higher which will make our debt go up faster. I can't see this ending well.
Then again, maybe that is the goal. If we actually go bankrupt so that we can't pay our creditors, they have a perfect excuse to totally gut entitlements. It's probably the only way they could get it done. Not too sure how MAGA that would be, but it could certainly happen.
Certainly I can see Mr. Putin liking that particular outcome, since it would make Russia stronger by comparison.
Make
Apple
Great
Again
Donald Trump is about to raise taxes on working class Americans by $200 billion dollars and nary a peep from them. If they had somebody like Karl Rove running their show they'd be on MSNBC non stop hammering that point home. But they never learn. Hell, if anyone should know that's the Republican's Achilles heel it's the party that beat Bush "Read my Lips" Sr....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"he US economy is quite strong now"
That's the $1.2-1.5 trillion borrowing for the tax cuts, it's worth about 8-10% of GDP growth which they'll probably time in the quarters before elections (i.e. you'll get another hit in Q3 2018).
"China's is fairly weak"
China has a trade surplus with most of the world, and will continue to trade with most of the world.
"They need to sell their crap to the US way more than we need to buy it"
Normally I'd agree, but Trump started trade wars with EU, NAFTA countries and USA needs *some* market *somewhere*. It can only inflate the economy for so long without trade to prop it up. No trade, no $$$ propup, dollar falls, inflation is worthless money printing, welcome to 2007.
That Mexico 'deal' Trump made is terrible, 75% minimum NAFTA manufacturing to qualify as trade free. Which favors low cost labor Mexico and stops US companies manufacturing in China, finishing in USA, and exporting to Mexico. So US companies will get hit with tarrifs in the short term and in the long term will move jobs to Mexico to cut costs.
I see the 'adults in charge' op-ed, but they can't stop the random acts of Trump.
..all devices will try to conform to these specs. Thanks for putting voice recognizing personal assistants in all our devices.
Thanks daddy
Trump is finally starting to realise he can't win this one and is slowly backing down. But he's Trump, so he can't admit it either.
Unless they caollapse first, or encounter a Dotcom bubble, or an excessive number of baby boomers, or any of a dozen other factors overwhelming the economic trend. I'm afraid that the Libertatian ideals of the "the market will decide" is often overwhelmed by more powerful, temporary forces.
And shame on Tim Cook for seeking these exemptions.
This is a perfect example of working class voters voting against their own interest and getting exactly what they voted for (and deserve).
No tariffs on any technology that can be used to spy on Americans. Hmm.... Nope, that's not suspicious at all!
yup, even more so : as all it takes to avoid tariffs is apparently to slap some voice data capability on anything.
thus you can expect tons of gadget that haphazardly add voice capabilities that barely make sense, just to skip on the tariffs.
So lots of buggy implementation in IoT devices *with mic*.
Probably even in your next microwave oven (case in point, in a related /. story, Amazon has exactly announced that !)
A paradise to happily hack into, for any three letter agencies (probably the original intent).
Or any criminal organization that has a ploy to earn money by abusing large swaths of equipment (too bad that your micro-oven got enrolled into their zombie-bot swarm).
Or any script kiddie that just want to wreck havock for the lulz.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
willing to deliver tracking data to the NSA.
Probably most implementation will be so bad (rushing to slap "voice capability" on any gadget, just to avoid tariffs. - See Amazon's Alexa-enabled microwave oven to get an idea of how far this shit can go)
that the manufacturer probably won't be needed to be willing.
Merely "existing" would open them enough to hacking.
Meaning large gaping security hole for any criminal or script kiddie to attack.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Keep astroturfing those sites badly ($100k a day according to your fundraising documents).
hah
Not taxing working class Americans. The Dems want to raise local taxes.
200B on tariffs to China who are raping the US with one sided trade deals which should have been fixed years ago.
Previous admins were too corrupt or too chicken shit to fix it.
More promises kept by Trump!
Damned right he has.
I was planning to take a vacation in the US soon, but I've cancelled it, because I have no interest whatsoever in spending my money in the US now.
Will my choosing to not spend my money in the US matter to anybody? Probably not. Will I feel better I'm just sending a big "fuck you"? Absolutely.
Trump has picked trade fights with North America, Europe, Asia, and damned near everyone else, and acts as if long-time allies are enemies. OK, fine, we're enemies ... and while I bear no ill-will to average Americans, the only recourse I have is to simply try to avoid buying stuff from your companies, buy local, and let you suffer from Trumps' trade policies.
Those Americans thinking that the rest of the world is going to recognize your awesomeness and bend over backwards to feed the ego of that orange shit head ... I've got some bad news for you, that won't be happening.
His ego got you into this mess, so now you get to live with it. But don't whine when the natural choice for the rest of us is to stop doing business with you, which is apparently what you wanted.
Buy American for near the same price, and stop complaining.
They need to sell their crap to the US way more than we need to buy it.
Oh ye of little knowledge. You think this is about cheap consumer products? You have no idea how dependent the USA has become on Chinese manufacturing. That is precisely why every USA based company is spitting chips at Trump. It is precisely why your farmers require a bail out package. The thing about countries that have dabbled in free or large economic trade is that they almost universally become dependent on it.
Maybe you needed to stop screwing us over in trade. Just because the US has money doesn't mean everyone has free reign to gouge us. Other countries have been selfish for decades, now we're simply doing the same. Good luck not buying anything American, crybaby.
Bush Sr. didn't raise the taxes willingly, that would be the majority Democrat congress that pushed for taxes. Like they always do. They convince people that the country's economy and the national budget are the same thing. But go ahead, deflect away and act as though Bush raised taxes single-handedly. Funny how the Executive branch can't actually do that, but the legislature can.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Sounds like most electronics will be exempt, in a practical sense. So only 'hard goods' will be effected. ( raw materials, food, etc ).
Seems odd, but ok.
I find it funny/sad that they keep mentioning the Mac mini, which Apple has downgraded in 2014 and haven't updated ever since.
#DeleteFacebook
Tarriffs affecting Cell phones... don't impact Apple so much, as their product is already the most expensive.
On the other hand: the impact on Chinese eBay sellers selling competitive alternatives at super-low rates and cheaper Android phones may be enormous --- this may put them out of business (By causing a high burden to compliance.... consumers buy something on eBay from overseas, and will start suddenly finding out that your orders going to be held by customs --- that might be a 2 to 5% then you have to pay that duty plus an extra $50 or more in extra handling, processing and storage fees that were incurred when your item was found to require being held) resulting in less competition against larger retailers and manufacturers.
I predict a sudden surge in things which now are "machines for the reception, conversion and transmission or regeneration of voice, images or other data."