alt Hacker News> as countries will retaliate
Depends on the country. India is negotiating a Bilateral Trade Agreement by mid-2025, Vietnam has sent a trade delegation to DC to negotiate as we speak, and tariffs on Colombia, Brazil, Philippines, and Turkiye are the lowest for middle income countries.
The harshest pain will be felt by Cambodia and Vietnam, because both are part of ASEAN like Philippines and share similar trade partners (Japan, SK), Bangladesh as they have an FTA and significant capital from India, and China as EU (looking at you Poland and Czechia), Turkiye, Japan, SK, and India are now cost competitive
You'll be seeing more "Made in Philippines", "Made in Colombia" "Made in Turkiye", "Made in Brazil", and "Made in India" shirts, auto parts, and assembled electronics now.
We might also see a return of Malaysia in the semiconductor industry, as they are now cheaper than Taiwan - great for whoever buys Intel Foundry Services (Penang reax only)
Replies
But will investors make any long term decision given the unreliability of the US administration? Who would invest in manufacturing in a country if the tariffs could be gone tomorrow again?
Seems unlikely, at least in the near term. These are LARGE amounts of good to be shifting, and they don't shift overnight. Plus, if the tariffs calculations are really based on trade imbalance, who's to say Columbia won't get slapped with more tariffs as soon as they start making and exporting more goods to the US. Pretty risky to be opening up a bunch of factories only to be tariffed to death right after.
As soon as Malaysia gets anywhere near a significant capacity of semiconductor manufacturing they’ll also get increased tariffs. Or, the the tariffs will end and it will return to Taiwan.
Stability is necessary for any big shifts to be worth taking.