Slashdot Mirror
Trump Suggests US Could Slap 10 Percent Tax On iPhones, Laptops From China (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: President Donald Trump suggested he could place a 10 percent tariff on iPhones and laptops imported from China, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Monday. He also said it's "highly unlikely" that he would delay an increase in tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on Jan. 1, just four days before a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "Maybe. Maybe. Depends on what the rate is," the president said to The Wall Street Journal about the possible iPhone and laptop tariffs. "I mean, I can make it 10 percent, and people could stand that very easily."
Good. Fuck Apple and their "designed in California (made with child labor in China)" bullshit.
Apple could easily manufacture their phones and laptops in the US. Their products are easily marked up at least 100%. They have a trillion dollars they're just sitting on.
They don't because they hate American blue collar workers, it's that simple.
Not that easily -- most of the components they use to make the phone are also made in China. Coordinating parts from hundreds of suppliers to all converge in the USA exactly when needed is time consuming and expensive. Even moreso since Apple would be paying for those components to sit a container for weeks on its way to the factory, and since the factory is so far away, they need to order weeks early just in case there's a transportation issue, so they end up owning components for months before they even start building the phone.
Those suppliers don't want to move here because then they become a high-cost supplier than can only sell in the USA, the rest of the world will buy from cheap chinese factories, so instead of a Chinese factory that makes 100 million resistors a year, in the USA there'd be a factory making 10M resistors a year, so they'd be much more expensive.
But even if Apple did bring the jobs on-shore, don't expect many blue-collar jobs to come, the whole factory will be automated, staffed mostly by relatively few highly skilled robotic technicians.
So, the end result is, Apple would earn less money on iPhones, consumers would pay more money for iPhones, and few jobs would result. So the increase in the cost of the phone is essentially a very expensive job-creation tax.
If your daughter has any Chinese blood in her, I'd be very careful about these statements. China treats all people with ethnic Han roots like Chinese citizens when they're in China, which includes all of the relevant responsibilities. Something quite a few naive Westernern born and raised people with Han roots have been finding out over last decades with everything from detention and fines to blocking of leaving China just because their relatives have something Chinese state has interest in.
Here's the latest example which has gotten too big for Western media majors to ignore:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world...
but when we lower corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, which will lower the price of AMERICAN goods
"Yup, we'll do that. Just let us complete these juicy <drool>, sorry, share buybacks ... sorry, this is gonna take a couple quarters for our finances to even out. Let us get back to you in a bit."
Washington's public policy was to offshore our entire industrial base and utterly neglect our infrastructure. Thereby impoverishing our working people, severely hampering our ability to fight a defensive war against a symmetric enemy, and fostering a culture of despair. Apparently the Establishment - President Trump's political enemies - considered that a "win".
Except of course, instead of reversing that neglect Trump has lowered the tax rate of the very people who got rich offshoring while at the same time increased the cost of goods that ordinary people buy, increased the cost of raw materials like steel to US manufacturers and increased the cost of US exports to some markets.
The only country he's making 'great again' is Russia. I see you're repeating Russian trolls with your "American troops out of Europe" trolls.
Europe provided Ukraine with 1.2 billion euros, but US will only sell them $50 million in hand guns. Trump literally blocking sales of weapons to aid Russia and undermine its European military allies.
You'll probably end up sending troops to fight Ukraine alongside Russian troops, and trolls like you will pretend its in Americas interests.
Puppet states don't work without puppets and trolls like you.
Remember Helsinki? Trump promising US troops would cooperate with Russian troops in Syria.. which would see US troops attacking US allies to prop up Assad.... and this just three months after Russian troops attacked US troops in Syria.
https://nypost.com/2018/02/13/russians-attacked-american-troops-on-putins-orders/
Please stop repeating this lie. I know, it sounds like it's making fun of Trump, but it's actually buying into his hype. His trust fund was paying him over $250k a year (inflation adjusted) every year since he was born. His dad bought him his first apartment complex. His dad loaned him (illegal) $3 million (not inflation adjusted) dollars when his casino was going bust. He inherited somewhere north of a half a billion dollars (and some estimates go to multiples of it).
To end up where Trump is, even starting with a million dollar loan, is impressive. To end up where Trump is with where he actually started is about as impressive as... well, inheriting money and living off the interest.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
First, most products are not priced based on cost, but on the market power of the sellers. Most goods compete on non-price attributes.
Second, taxes aren't just taxes. Tariffs raise the costs of goods sold, which means that they increase the costs to sell products. Taxes on profits don't. Hell, EBITDA is the common gold standard for how good an investment is, and it specifically excludes (income) taxes. It's the "T". But it doesn't exclude tariffs.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
In a trade war both sides raise taxes/tariffs. These, at least in the US are collected by the Treasury and go into the general fund.
So:
* Citizens purchasing foreign goods pay more (tariff is a tax)
* Companies importing raw materials (for example, steel and aluminum) pay more (tariff is a tax), and will have to charge more for products (indirect tax)
The goal of course is to move manufacturing into the US.
But wage disparities cripple this in many cases. We could probably handle things like chip manufacturing competitively, but putting things together via humans is far more expensive in the US. Maybe robots are the answer (they are).
The problem to me is timing. It takes a long time to move the product and processes the tariffs are targeting. And raw materials? Wage disparity again.
Anyway, the tariffs are just a way to increase Federal income, from March through July it was about $1.4 billion from steel and aluminum:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/1...
And per the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Review, "Other Income" was up by $1 billion (includes tariffs), about 1%. Corporate taxes dropped by $92 billion, about 31%.
https://www.cbo.gov/system/fil...
Anyway, corporate tax rate drop was a gift to the already wealthy ($92 billion!) and the tariffs are a tax on the citizens and revenue for the Federal government.
BlameBillCosby.com