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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."
Sure, everyone could handle a 10% tax very easily. Oh unless you're super rich, then you need a tax cut.
Either that, or just secure a small million dollar loan from your daddy.
Our President is a stuck up, toffee nosed, elitist twat.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
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.
If you're wealthy enough to purchase an iPhone, you're wealthy enough to pay this tax. If not, I guess Apple is going to lose a number of customers.
Plus, this effectively also serves as a corporate tax given that iPhones are fairly common for commercial use.
This may end up being a fairly progressive tax.
So, what does GM do - start the process of eliminating ~15,000 jobs and closing factories. I know, it's more complicated than that in that competition for foreign car makers, most of whom make cars in the US with likely higher quality products, changes in customer preferences to SUVs and trucks, and the availability of hybrid and electric vehicles from other companies. Another example is Ford's decision not to make a car for import to the US from China and rejecting the suggestion that it be made in the North America because it would cost too much.
No one wins from a trade war.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Politicians of both parties are quite flippy-floppy on taxes, debt, war, regulation, immigration, spending, ally selection, states-rights, etc. as it serves their short-term political goals. This is largely because the average voter has a short memory.
Table-ized A.I.
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?
... well pretty much everything?
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
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.
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, Democrats love their taxes.
Poor people aren't buying them as it is. Rich people can handle another $100. Or they can just go with a Korean phone.
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."
There is no evidence that lowered corporate taxes lowers the price of American goods. Lowered corporate taxes this time seem to have been used for stock buybacks, i.e. propping up market valuations. But don't let lack of evidence get in the way of corporate tax cuts because that wouldn't be AMERICAN.
I mean, it just needlessly increases the cost of a good without giving anyone an incentive to move manufacturing into the USA because it's less expensive to just pay the tax than build entirely new domestic infrastructure that would in the long run, cost more anyways because of the costs of recovering those infrastructure costs.
Of course, the problem with all of this is that long before you've applied any tax high enough to create such an incentive, you will have already created another incentive for a black market that will present its own problems.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It takes many years of study to achieve a level in Chinese that is high enough to study at university. You sure you're not just making that up? China offers a bunch of programs with instruction in English.
Degrees from Chinese universities are problematic because everyone knows that the students cheat. Ask any American who has taught at a Chinese university, there are lots these days.
The Europeans are welcome to buddy up to China instead of America. They said they were going to do it after Trump pulled us out of the Paris deal. They'll find out real fast that China aren't easily fooled chumps like America is. You think China is going to pay 80% of a defense "alliance"? No way, they're not idiots. You think they're going to have hugely unfair trade agreements that function as gigantic bribes to the tune of $150 billion a year? Hell no. Good luck with the Chinese. I hope they help you out, but I know that won't be the case.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
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.
Bingo. If I had mod points I'd up you instead of commenting... I worked in industrial automation for 6 years and have a very good understanding of this. Tech has advanced sufficiently now that we can make long term, very robust solutions for significantly cheaper than the labor costs. No matter how you slice it, that will not change.
There would literally have to be an automation tax applied to companies doing it and that will never happen. If it did they would have to take the money from the tax and give it out as a UBI (which the Republicans would call an entitlement) to keep the economy from collapsing. It probably wouldn't even stop the automation because the technology will likely advance much too quickly for them to keep an effective tax on it. Then on the Democrat side, they won't tax it because they are fine with the globalization drive and the only way we can keep up in the US is to allow for new job TYPE creation (such as skilled technicians and such).
I've tried to explain this again and again to people, but they don't seem to WANT to grasp it.
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/
If you read more carefully, you'll find that many of those people are visiting China, and while there trying to exercise a dual nationality that the PRC does not recognise. The PRC recognises two citizenships: "Chinese" and "Other". Pick one.
Iran does the same sort of thing, and folks who insist on retaining their Iranian citizenship and then travel there often find themselves in the same sorts of trouble.
The US State Department makes it very clear that A dual citizen may be subject to the laws of the other country that considers that person its citizen while in that country's jurisdiction... Dual nationality may hamper efforts to provide U.S. consular protection to dual citizens in the foreign country of their other nationality. (See page 7 of your US passport.)
The best thing to do if you are a citizen of either country, you become naturalised elsewhere, and your original citizenship is not revoked (China does this customarily to its nationals living overseas who take on a foreign citizenship, I've no idea about Iran), is to renounce your former citizenship, and make sure it's official under the laws of your original country. Do not attempt to return to your native country as a citizen of that country. Use your US passport, obtain a visa as a US citizen, and do not mention anything about dual nationality or previous nationality to any official of the other country. If you do--see above.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
..with it's throttle stuck wide open.
For fucks' sake, I fully understand that China is so corrupt and screwing us (and other countries) over, in more than just trade (militarily, human rights [comma, lack of], and so on, and so on) but there's got to be a better way to handle this than this.
Of course you also have to admit: we're like spoiled-assed kids in this country. Our overall high standard of living is because everything has been so damned cheap for so many decades. You all complain about the cost of an iPhone, but if it was produced 100% here in the U.S. (from the smallest component on up), it would cost several times as much I'm sure, assuming they'd produce them at all (might be too expensive to produce in any quantity). Before anyone jumps my shit for that: without U.S. companies using Chinese companies for production, Chinas' economy would probably be absolute shit. So it is a two-way street -- but still there's got to be a better way to deal with this than what Trump is doing. He keeps trying to run a country like it's a business -- and he's not a good businessman to start with (vis-a-vis, all his bankruptcies and failures), and it's just a bad idea to run a country like it's a business anyway. He's achieving the opposite of what was intended: he's costing Americans money, he's destroying American jobs, and he's running American companies out of business. Do I have a better idea? No. If I did, I'd run for office. But someone else must have a better way to do this, and they're not stepping up -- or maybe they've been told to shut up.
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!
That's why the Chinese are so upset with President Trump. It turns out, you can't really bribe a billionaire real estate mogul TV star President who's married to a supermodel - what exactly are they going to offer him that he doesn't already have?
I'm sure the Russians and the Saudis could make some very helpful suggestions.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That wouldn't just be iphones you plonker, it will be any phone that is built outside the US. It really is an idiot tax if you don't understand that ;)
the actual situation is merely that it would take time to ramp US production back up, and time for inventories to build to desired levels?
The next administration can press the "undo" button on all of Trump's bullshit. No one with half a brain is going to invest a cent in increasing domestic production. All tariffs accomplish is hitting average hard-working Americans right in their wallets.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I remember when Republicans were against tax
Judging by the shit I've seen "deplorables" post, I very much doubt many of them understand that it's a tax they'll have to cough up. I think they imagine Trump is just going to send a bill to China.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Maybe pissing off the iCrowd will be the last straw.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Up the tariff! Create domestic jobs!
Huh? No, not in production. In repairing and second hand sales. Because when a new phone costs about 2000 bucks, repairing your old one for 100 suddenly becomes very compelling.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
This is what happens when you put a billionaire in the White House. He has no idea that 10% is a huge amount for many people (let alone 25%!).
Next time, guys, put a poor person, or even a homeless person, in there. Someone who has some concept of the value of $1.
With so many things coming from China basically everything would become more expensive and this wouldn't exactly be a popular thing. Sticking it just to the elitist iPhone owners (although I fear Trump may be wrong here, but whatever) is more limited. Those who buy $200 China smartphone anyway will say "serves them right!" and love Trump even more. At least I'm fairly sure that Trump thinks this way.
I don't know, I've been to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York over the last 6 months and the number of native Chinese seems to growing, not shrinking. I'm pretty sure they didn't come to the US to find worse paying jobs.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Yeah, no, Russia spends 3x what Canada spends. Roughly the same as Saudi Arbia, sure, but Canada, no. source
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato