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."

Comments

$12 billion farm bailout

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you missed the obvious, but he's already bailing out US farmers to the tune of $12 billion to compensate for lost sales to China.

Worse, he's paying it to Chinese owned companies like WH Group:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/chinese-owned-pork-producer-qualifies-for-money-under-trumps-farm-bailout/2018/10/23/154764da-d3ce-11e8-83d6-291fcead2ab1_story.html

And if he slaps a big tarif on Apple, they'll demand compensation too. Either directly or through the courts, since he's not within the Executive branches *limited* powers to kill ratified trade treaties wholesale. Apple can sue if they don't get compensated.

Also imagine how it would be if Apple does not get compensated, yet Chinese companies do get compensation from Trump?

IMHO, the US $ nearly collapsed after Bush did his 2004 monetary inflation. Here they're doing a 10% increase in money supply, gifted as tax cuts to rich people (around $1.5 to $1.9 trillion). That needs to be anchored in trade since you need China to need to buy US bonds to soak up the debt and force the retained $ value.

IMHO2: Ukraine is about to be invaded by Russia, and we'll get a lot of distraction like this.

Re:$12 billion farm bailout

[Xenx]

That old way has gone now, and even more sadly the attitude of many Americans towards their fellow humans in other countries is taking on a decidedly adversarial tone.

It's not only towards the ones in other countries....

Re:$12 billion farm bailout

[Aighearach]

In the United States, you can't discriminate against a US person or a US company based on country of origin.

That is one of the things involved in the trade dispute; anybody in the world can open a US company, or buy one, but Americans can't open a branch in China and do business there without creating a joint partnership.

That is clearly imbalanced and unfair. Personally, I think it is silly to fight a trade war over it; it would be better for a President to fight a legislative war with Congress over the rules, and try to get them to establish parity-based rules for foreign access to our markets. But Trump wants to fight a trade war over, so that is what we're doing. But clearly, under existing law, you can't give aid to US companies with conditions attached to country of origin of the owners.

And that's actually fine for the trade war, because only a tiny number of US ag. business is Chinese owned.

Everybody wants to buy US bonds, you don't need China for that. Their desire for purchases only cause the market to be less profitable for everybody buying. It doesn't even affect the US government.

Re:Cool! Let's MAGA, baby!

[LostMyBeaver]

What makes China your enemy? I can appreciate if you don't consider them friends, but have they done anything which you would consider targeted against you?

If you want to blame someone for exporting American jobs, it wasn't China... it was Walmart.

Walmart actually forced their suppliers to move manufacturing to China and threatened that if they didn't, they would make a competing product themselves in China and undercut their prices. Walmart also bullied Chinese companies into working faster and cheaper. Walmart also manipulated oil subsidies by exporting small amounts of things to China on American tax payers money and used the fuel paid for by the Americans to transport massive chunks of cargo back from China on the return trip. Walmart also manipulated the American social services system to provide welfare to their employees to avoid paying them themselves... the savings are paid as dividends to their shareholders.

Pretty much every nasty thing in your head about China is actually Walmart. Walmart started it, now Amazon is continuing it, but Amazon will replace what few Americans are left in retail with robots instead allowing them to undercut Walmart and kill their business.

No... you're really hating in the wrong direction. You should be hating on opportunistic Americans who proactively destroy American lives in order to make a quick buck. And BTW... many of these great Americans who are exporting everything to China to make a buck... they are registered voters and supporters of the Republican party.

No China is not your enemy. They simply became rich while America became poor because American insisted on paying them to make stuff for them. Now that they're rich, they decided to buy the American dream but not export it back to the US.

P.S. My daughter and I take Chinese lessons every week and she's preparing to study in China instead of the U.S.. She wanted to go to MIT or Berkley, but is heading to Bejing instead because now China has built top notch universities.

What do you think it means when Europeans are looking east instead of west for ... well pretty much everything?

I hope Trump's tariffs help you out. I know that I just working towards shifting one of Europe's oldest and biggest Cisco partners to being a Huawei partner too. The dollar is too high and Cisco just isn't that good anymore... their latest generation of.. well pretty much everything is about as good as what we used to call "Cheap Chinese Shit" and the so called "Cheap Chinese Shit" has gotten about as good as Cisco claims to be.

Re:"people could handle that very easily"

[sit1963nz]

I wonder if the clothes etc Trump buys in from China for his own golf courses will see a 10% tariff, same with the stuff Ivanka sells.... nah no tariff on their stuff.

Re:Tariffs cost GM one billion dollars

[Pentium100]

And only the rich win from open trade and being able to screw the local workers.

So, since it's a lose-lose proposition for me, I'd rather see the rich lose too.

Also, people talk about how we should take care of the environment, governments pass laws that forbid dumping toxic waste into a river etc. However, you can always open a factory in China, produce as much CO2 as you want, dump as much toxic waste into rivers as you want, that will allow you to make the product cheaper and you will out-compete the local factories that have to use expensive equipment to clean out their waste and reduce their CO2 emissions. Being able to use child labor and no need to care about workplace safety is also great. After all, what matters more than the income of shareholders?

Re: Good. Fuck Apple

[hawguy]

In summary: fuck American workers, I wanna save a couple bucks on my iCrap!

No, in summary: The globalization and automation genies are already out of the bottle, no matter how much you try to shove them back in, you can't.

So you can either realize and accept the current situation (by training well educated workers that are capable of doing more than what a simple pick and place robot can do), or you can pretend globalization doesn't exist and tell uneducated workers that you're bringing jobs "back" to them, when reality those jobs aren't coming back.

Go for it

[stealth_finger]

Maybe pissing off the iCrowd will be the last straw.