alt Hacker NewsUS Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
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From what I understand, de minimis exemption has also been removed.
That is a huge, huge deal. It effectively means that all goods imported from China will be slapped with a 30% import tax, as soon as said goods arrive the US border / customs.
Usually what happens then, is that the courier will pay that tax, and then bill the recipient later on - as well as charge some fee/fees for the work done.
This is why in some European countries, that $1 item from China with free shipping can end up costing $10, because you're paying $0.25 in VAT or import taxes, and $10 to the shipping courier for doing the paperwork.
If that is the case in the US, I fully expect total chaos and mayhem when all the Temu / AliExpress/ Wish customers start receiving extra bills for their orders.
(That's just from the most obvious consumer example...then you have pretty much everything else. Goods, commodities, etc.)
EDIT: I found more info here https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
So it is even worse, you either pay $25 per shipment, or 30% - whichever is higher. Then later it moves up to $50 per shipment, or 30% - whichever is higher.
a $1 item with $1 shipping will end up costing you as much as $52 after June!
Aside from everything else one thing what strikes me as particularly insane is how it’s not even defensible as a protective measure. My favorite everyday olive oil comes from Tunisia. They now have a 38% tariff on them. There are no out of work olive farmers in the US.
The orange man wanted tariffs, the orange man is going to get tariffs. Now we have to hope the American people aren’t so dumb as to still be convinced only he can solve their issues. I don’t hold out hope for that.
Here's a csv and google sheet of the data. Turns out they aren't tariffs countries charge us. They are trade imbalance percentages. Unreal:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xK0OQ5VGl8JHmDSIgbXh...
https://gist.github.com/mcoliver/69fe48d03c12388e29cc0cd87eb...
This won't bring home manufacturing but let's say that it will...
The US doesn't have the people to do the actual manufacturing. I saw a video recently explaining how sectors like the military, construction and the automotive industry each have 100K+ positions that they are unable to fill. A return to manufacturing adds to that shortage.
Apparently there's some 7 million young men of working age that are...missing in action. Self-isolated, gaming, addictions.
In construction, for every 5 people that retire, only 2 enter. And it's been like that for over 10 years. The people aren't there nor is the motivation.
I'm sure you'll have Apple investing in a mega plant where 50 educated people push some buttons though.
I don't see anyone mentioning that the United States needs to manage its massive national debt, currently in the trillions, by issuing Treasury securities. These securities mature at varying intervals and require continuous "rolling" or refinancing to pay off old debt with new borrowing.
Significant rollovers are expected from April through September 2025, with additional short-term maturities due by June.
Higher interest rates significantly complicate US' ability to refinance. The cost of servicing this debt — paying interest rather than reducing principal — is already a major budget item, surpassing Medicare, approaching Defense and Social Security levels.
If rates don't come down soon it locks in higher costs for years. The country is at risk of a debt spiral.
How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy.
Treasuries are considered safe during such crisis. Increased demand for Treasuries pushes their prices up and yields down, effectively lowering interest rates.
What are the flaws in this thinking?
Everyone is quick to deride this move as stupid. I don’t disagree that there are downsides to the approach, but there is a set of very real national problems that this might address.
For instance, globalization and offshoring of production has made goods cheaper for consumers, but what about the former domestic producers who could not compete, and do not have the skills or capital to find a new job which pays as well? Increased foreign competition pulls down domestic wages; telling people that they should shut up and be okay with that because they can get cheaper goods isn’t palatable to a lot of people facing the negatives of globalization. Globalization has played a big role in creating the massive income inequality in our country; it seems like we should fix that.
There really are structural challenges to onshoring production due to strength of the dollar due to its reserve currency status; our society as such is biased heavily toward importing goods rather than exporting goods. This is a real challenge that needs to be addressed as well.
Our national debt is not sustainable either. Either we pay it down some, or we inflate it away; these are the two ways it goes away, ignoring the option of a world-shattering default on the debt. Tariffs accomplish both of those, raising money at the same time as raising cost of goods and weakening the dollar.
So, to anyone who disagrees with these measures, but agrees that these are issues we ought to solve, what would you propose?
So the US has been, more or less, the best place in the world to do business. Stocks historically soaring, yadda yadda yadda ... and somehow this guy sells the story that the US has been taking advantage of by all the other evil countries in the world. It does not, in any way, make sense. What a clown. A totalitorian clown unfortunately.
A blanket 10% minimum tariff is a great excuse for any local US manufacturing to increase their prices.
I used to live in a country with heavy tariffs, every time tariffs were raised the local producers increased prices to be just below the imports. Even after the tariffs were abolished the prices (on local and imports) never really lowered in any significant way.
"This guy cracked the tariff formula: @orthonormalist
It’s simply the nation’s trade deficit with us divided by the nation’s exports to us.
Yes. Really.
Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1 Deficit = 123.5
123.5/136.6 = 90%"
From the people in my life who talked about their preference for this administration, the economy was the core reason I heard. Specifically interest rates, but ignoring that that’s the federal reserve and the president has no impact on that.
Whatever - all that said, I can’t imagine this leads to an economic boom or anything near it by the midterms. Are the republicans going to lose midterms if the economy is shit? I’m not sure, but I can’t imagine this works out well. I’m no economist though, so what do I know.
I think a lot of people assume the economic consequences like these have not been understood by the WH. Although I don't like this administration I beg to differ: they know what's going to happen, and they expect the coming storm because they seek what follows.
They want to repudiate foreign held debt, or devalue it, by revaluation of the USD and they will wear what they think of as a one time economic shock to get their reset in a belief they can make it less like the Smoot-Hawley great depression because so many other economic levers exist now, including floating currency, MMT, and massive fintech.
Personally I think it's a mistake but hot takes "they have no idea what's coming" are I believe naive. They know. They just don't care. Some amount of foreign trade will absorb the cost. Not all, not most. Not all prices in the US will rise and some substitution will happen although spinning up cheap labor factories again isn't going to happen in 2025. Maybe by 2027? Rust belt sewing shops and Walmart grade cheap goods production lines?
What amazes me is the timing: the midterms will hit while the bottom is still chugging along. I would think it unlikely they can secure an updraft from this to keep the house. What's the plan for that?
A possible retaliation by the EU could be to not enforce US intellectual property rights in the EU anymore. Or we could start taxing cloud companies, who, until now, have not paid taxes in the EU for profits that they generate in the EU.
When americans are angry, they tend to spread that frustration with a shovel on everyone.
My country as been hot by 29% tariffs.. I can't say what we did to upset americans, given that we do not compete with any american industry in any substantial way, bu we are bearing the wrath of the wounded american blue collar worker regardless.
I wonder what the net effect of tariffs will be in an year, americans are so used to cheap imports, especially all those shien/aliexpress/temu stuff.
Can someone explain if there's any logic at all to counting a countrys VAT as part of its tariffs? In my home country VAT is ultimately charged the end-customer and this happens regardless of the origin of the goods. How can this be a seen as a tariff?
Besides, isn't the "Use tax" most(?) American states have more or less equivalent in function?
The De Minimis loophole is highly significant with FOUR Million packages per day (What ???). The clause to address this loophole needs to be stated more accurately - It should be clearly defined to be higher or lower of 30 % of the value of shipment under $800 OR $25 per shipment and not either. If either then the De Minimis loophole will be continue to be used at $25 per shipment. Source : https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr...
The whole table doesn't make sense. We (NL/EU) don't charge the US 39% to import . Apparently orange guy (not the Dutch) doesn't understand VAT rates.
Car? max 4.5 + 21% VAT = 25%. But it simply doesn't matter bc we don't want their cars.. Except for thee Dodge RAM, which can be converted to a tax efficient company car (crazy)..
What amazes me even more is that Elon doesn't seems to understand it either.
And here I thought brexit would keep the top spot as act of self harm
The EU probably does not have a trade surplus with the US, but rather a trade deficit.
https://www-gmexconsulting-com.translate.goog/cms/de/dunkle-...
I believe this from the White House contains the only semi official numbers:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr....
That has 10% across the board starting April 5th, then unspecified rates for the “worst offenders” starting April 9th.
I say “semi official” because it’s not official until US Customs and Border Patrol publishes the rates. So far I don’t think they’ve done that. Their announcements page here doesn’t have anything:
The exemptions...
>Some goods will not be subject to the Reciprocal Tariff. These include: (1) articles subject to 50 USC 1702(b); (2) steel/aluminum articles and autos/auto parts already subject to Section 232 tariffs; (3) copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and lumber articles; (4) all articles that may become subject to future Section 232 tariffs; (5) bullion; and (6) energy and other certain minerals that are not available in the United States.
Here's something I want to understand: In 1930 the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed by congress - an act of legislation. Nearly 100 years later we have the president unilaterally picking any tariff numbers he wants. What happened?
So what's going to happen is:
- each country will impose equivalent taxes on the import of US goods - this is not only expected, but the norm under international trade law. - with the rest of the world, still having free trade agreements between them, will start trading around the US, the US won't be able to compete
The value of the US$ will likely drop by the value of the tariffs. If everyone starts trading around the US we'll probably lose the US$ as a standard currency to trade in, maybe switching to yuan or euros, the US$ is buoyed by it being the currency everyone uses, that's going to drive it even lower.
I'm an American. I've generally benefited from the system here (which speaks to my privilege, of which I'm aware). I don't want to wade into political battles, but I'm genuinely concerned for my future and the future of my children from an economic standpoint, based on where things seem to be going.
I am considering options on the spectrum with ends like:
* Staying here, because this is where I was born and raised and I've felt like the country has generally taken care of me - and hey, it can't stay bad forever, right?
* Leaving to another country, because I am feeling less and less like the country's leadership care about building a society or economy that tries to take care of its people and creates incentives to innovate.
This isn't because of just the last few months; I view the last few months as big symptoms of something more systemic that's been building up. I am also not looking to jump ship quickly because things "temporarily got hard."
On the flip side, I'm also feeling incredibly jaded these days: how could it be much better anywhere else?
Are there places out in the world where my wife and I could take our experience (mine being a strong career in tech, my wife's being a strong nursing career) and put it to use elsewhere where I could hope for a good standard of living, more stability in government leadership, and incentives similar to the economic system I grew up in, where our children could thrive and build a life?
I'm not pulling any triggers quickly or easily... I'm just trying to gather some data and different perspectives, even those that might challenge my own. Maybe an answer is "stop reading news."
edit: formatting
I can't say it any better than Randy Newman:
The end of an empire // Is messy at best
And this empire's ending // Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada // Adrift on the sea
We're adrift in the land of the brave // And the home of the free
Americans have been hurt for 50 years … yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers. Buuuuuut - placing tariffs on our allies that will likely lead to a recession makes no sense.
Devaluing the dollar and subsidizing production in the US makes far more sense.
But I’m not an economist or anything.
So, it already starts affecting stuff. I and 10 other recent hires were cut today because our next round is in jeopardy. That startup is in sales and hiring area, so it senses recession much sooner than other industries, but there's that.
The idea that a giant regressive tax, which these are, will help the lower or middle class or do anything but kill demand and destroy jobs is madness.
It also won't help the debt because even though we might collect some money in the short term, the long term solution is we need to grow our way out and these policies are recessionary.
If anyone is interested, you can find the US's assessment of the tariffs imposed on the US by other countries here: https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Reports/202...
EG:
"The UK has duties on approximately 5,000 tariff lines, including on certain agricultural products, ceramics, chemicals, bioethanol, and vehicles. Tariffs on some products such as bananas, raw cane sugar, and apparel, which tend not to be import sensitive for the UK, are maintained to provide for preferential access for imports from certain developing countries into the UK compared to the MFN rate. The UK has some high tariffs that affect U.S. exports, such as rates of up to 25.0 percent for some fish and seafood products, 10.0 percent for trucks, 10.0 percent for passenger vehicles, and up to 6.5 percent for certain mineral or chemical fertilizers"
The goal of the world now is to specifically target red swing states with counter tariffs so that the democrats will win the midterms, pass legislation to prevent the president from being able to unilaterally impose tariffs in the future and thus put a swift end to the golden age.
Liberation day indeed... when Canada/Australia/Europe/South Korea/Japan are now the enemy I'm not sure there are any more friends left.
This is just a stray thought of mine - but I feel like the US might go down a very dangerous path - I think to avoid retaliatory tariffs, US companies, such as NVIDIA might decide to create foreign subsidiaries, and license the technology to them - after all the tariffs don't apply if Europe does business with a Taiwanese subsidiary.
But this will expose them to a technology exfiltration scheme and/or hostile takeover in the vein of what happened to ARM China.
Am I reading too much into this?
Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade deficit with that country divided by the country's exports. I think more and more we see lots of evidence they don't know what they're doing.
This is absolutely shocking. As these tariffs are reflective of trade deficits this administration is taxing the cheapest sources of goods for the American economy in proportion of volume.
This is economic handbrake territory. It will impact every industry that imports goods (as well as many raw materials and components) and will devestate many, if not all SMEs who rely on importing goods to sell to local customers. Fashion retail in particular and drop shippers will have to raise their prices considerably.
While I imagine the ideas behind these tariffs have some sense of justification, the numbers simply don't add up. Manufacturing clothing in the US simply isn't viable at the sorts of scales for mass consumption. For example, you can pick up Levis at Walmart for around $25 that have been manufactured abroad. The Levi Vintage run, which are made within the US, have prices starting at $150. So all this will do is force people will less money to spend an extra ~50% (or $12.5 in this case) on their jeans, as this will still be cheaper than $150. Obviously to entirely succeed at the supposed aim would to create a world where all jeans cost $150 and this would simply mean that most people would not be able to afford jeans.
I'm a freelance selling software services. Some of my customers are in the US. Am I affected? These tariff don't impact software, right?
Different countries have different tariff. Is there room for arbitration? In which a 3rd party business from a country with low tariff would buy a product in one of the countries with high tariff and export that to the US, taking a small cut.
Genuine questions: why are they calling it “reciprocal”? Is the US just matching the tariffs set by the other countries?
Also, this announcement has wiped out any plans of buying tech products this year, plus a holiday to the US and Canada later in the year. Good thing too, as the entire globe is probably staring down the barrel of a recession.
Are those in addition to existing tariffs?
And there are a lot more countries in that list, South Korea and Taiwan are going to really hurt for electronics. And I assume Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and other countries will hurt for other good that are made cheaply there.
I don’t buy the blanket statement that the consumer always pays the tariff. It depends on what alternative companies have. If a company can purchase the same clothing from Chinese, Vietnamese, or Mexican vendors, a tax on China only could make the Chinese vendors lower the price or risk losing the business.
However, a blanket tax on every country, regardless of available alternatives, would leave businesses with fewer options and make it more likely that the cost is passed on to consumers.
Most goods in US directly or indirectly relies on importing. So practically, I think it just mean US introduced VAT.
The lion is not killed by other beasts but by the worms inside.
This doesn't come as a surprise as we all know it's going to come.
My question is, how does the US prepare to re-industrialize itself? Is the tariff good enough to provide incentives so that factories start to appear domestically? I fear this might not be the case.
Factories are not coming back to the USA in large number, for a lot of reasons, at least not until full automation + tariffs makes them economical. But the biggest reason is that what's going to happen is that the average joe is going to suffer a bit, then will vote against these policies in the next election, and that's only 3.5 years away. If it takes a year to build a factory -- and frankly these tariffs could be adjusted again or removed in a few months -- and then they're likely to be fully removed in 3.5 years, I'm just not sure it makes sense to invest in a factory.
The De Minimis loophole is highly significant with 4 Million packages per day (What ?). The clause to address this loophole needs to be stated more accurately - It should clearly define it to be higher / lower of 30 % of value of shipment under $800 or $25 per shipment and not either
Source :https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-pr....
So has anyone an idea how those tariffs would affect software sales? Say I'm a German guy selling a license for my software to someone in the US. Will this fall under tariffs, too. Or are software licenses somehow exempt? Asking for a friend(me).
Three things:
1. On the face of it, this looks horrible. I won't rehash the many arguments against it here, though. This page is already chock-full of those arguments.
2. Robot labor could make ultra-low-cost manufacturing possible in the US, to the point that many things become cheaper to make locally than to ship from abroad, tariffs or or no tariffs.
3. If any major country/region negotiates lower tariffs by fully opening its market to US products, every other country/region will be forced to do the same, expanding free trade everywhere.
As a preview of our future, it's now a good time to review the decline of standard of living that occurred when Great Britain lost the privilege of having the World's reserve currency, the Pound Sterling.
My estimate is we're in for a 75% haircut to our personal standard of living as the US Dollar loses it's place, and we actually have to pay for everything we want in hard currency or real goods. Trump killed the golden Goose, and threw it into a wood chipper.
This is basically the Kim Jong-Un approach to foreign policy:
Kim: threaten a nuclear war, see if people will pay you to stop
Trump: threaten to crash the world economy, see if other countries will pay to stop you
He doesn't care that this will shrink the global economy, or even, at least in the short term, the US economy. If other countries submit in order to negotiate tariffs down then he has his "win" politically, if not then he has someone to blame.
What most people don’t see is that we are basically under “shadow austerity” to correct for the not so hyperinflation we saw post COVID.
It is a combination of post WW2 Britain (China is the US in that analogy) - this helps to explain the Canada and Greenland issue; and Volcker era stagflation economics. It will not get any better in the short term, but there is likely to be substantial growth in the long term as a result.
What that means is the fed likely won’t reduce rates, and it may reduce its rate decrease to 1 this year, if even that. It is entirely possible the rate doesn’t come down at all.
Expect Layoffs to come, as the fed doesn’t seem to care about unemployment as its target is on inflation. Many zirp era businesses and funds will fail. Less cereal and eggs for the same dollar.
I am really hoping we don’t start to de-anchor from 2% inflation as a result of all this. I wonder how various US infrastructure projects can and will be financed. Reduction in entitlements. Possibly some type of mandate to hold treasuries.
Tariffs are a tax on consumer goods. They will also be counterproductive to economic growth.
The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US dollar as a global reserve currency.
Since trade is conducted largely in USD, that means other governments must purchase USD to trade. This is the core of trade deficits. Foreign countries buy US dollars so they can trade with other people. That guarantees the deficit since they give us something in exchange for USD, which they do not then spend on goods we make.
If you no longer want the trade deficit that means payments of fealty by those who trade in dollars, which countries aren't likely to tolerate, or abandoning the USD as a global reserve currency, which would be disastrous, truly disastrous. Our debts would suddenly become existential because inflating our currency to pay for them could result in functionally not being able to import goods required to run our economy. I don't think many truly understand just how disastrous it will be.
This isn't America's liberation day. This is Russia's and China's liberation day. While America was once able to check their power, America is no longer in a position to do so, we will barely be in a position to satisfy our own military's logistics requirements.
This is a decapitation strike (Timothy Snyder: Decapitation Strike -- https://archive.is/1xkxK) on America by our enemies. It is not only a de facto soft blockade of American trade, but it is an attack on the mechanics of American hegemony. Politicians already ask for money instead of votes or actions. That means if foreign governments spend money, they can elect their preferred candidates. America's own government was a result of french support. We institute regime change in other counties, and I see no reason to believe we are immune.
If trade stops occurring in US Dollar, which is a consequence of the stated goal of our current ruling regime, that would be the coup de grace on this country's hegemony. It is the definitive end to it, and the birth of Chinese hegemony.
Ray Dalio's Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order feels prescient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8
It's true that free trade is hugely beneficial to the US economy as a whole, particularly with the USD being the reserve currency.
The flow of goods is balanced by a flow of US dollars to other countries, which are ultimately cycled back into the US financial system - enabling budget deficits and an abundance of capital to invest in high growth industries.
The flip side of this is that it also drives inequality - the upside of this system is felt by the entrepreneurs, investors and high-skill employees in tech and finance, while the downside is concentrated with low-skill workers whose jobs are offshored to lower wage countries.
The obvious solution is not to hurt the economy as a whole, but rather for the government to lower the cost of high-quality education, build out social systems, and invest into onshoring select strategic industries by raising taxes at the high end.
As such, this administration's policies are foolish, but many on this very site would need to give up a little bit of their privilege to reduce the pain felt by many of their fellow citizens.
That is something that in the current American political climate seems a nearly impossible sell.