Trump Suggests US Could Slap 10 Percent Tax On iPhones, Laptops From China (cnbc.com) 387
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."
"people could handle that very easily" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: "people could handle that very easily" (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple could easily afford to drop the price 10% too. I feel like they are at the top of what folks are willing to pay. Early on i would just upgrade when i felt the need... now i give it a lot more thought... and im sure im like most slashdotters, i can afford to upgrade unlike most of my friends and family. I say bring in the 10%, if that moves some of the manufacturing to the USA or even just North America its a win
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Why would it? Unless you can also lower the security and environmental standards to the dangerously low levels you find in China, 10% are a far cry from what you'd have to pay more for domestic production.
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Since Tim Cook took over, prices have been going up. On top of that, exchange rates make these increases even worst. If you add an Orange Tax on top of both of those, it means Apple products would cost nearly twice the competitors products.
I don't mind paying a little extra to be able to use macOS, but at these prices all he's doing is pushing people to Linux and BSD while at the same time loosening our dependance on Intel and AMD later on.
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Then the net effect would probably be that fewer people can afford a new phone and will try to find second hand phones.
So, in a quite roundabout way, it would actually create domestic jobs. In the second hand sales industry.
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Actually chips are one thing that are frequently made outside of China. You’ll see Japan, South Korea and Taiwan as frequent manufacturing locations, outside of the US.
This is topical in this context:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/o... [japantimes.co.jp]
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You seem to be fixated on phones but we're also talking about computers here. There can't be much room to lower the profit margin on a 400 dollars laptop.
iPhones are luxury goods (Score:3)
Poor people aren't buying them as it is. Rich people can handle another $100. Or they can just go with a Korean phone.
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Re:iPhones are luxury goods (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just iPhones that the tax is going on. Pretty much all phones will be affected.
Trump's policy is attrition. He's hoping you can stand the pain longer than China.
He is hoping that China will capitulate, but because China is not a democracy it can simply wait a couple of years to see what happens.
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There is another option. New trade deal with China, push for them to open up. Maybe get the EU on board with it, present it as a multilateral offering.
It's not as immediate or visceral but it might actually work.
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The nature of the modern world is that low skill manufacturing jobs were going away no matter what. If it wasn't China it would be robots.
The only option is to evolve. Switch to more white collar jobs, and take manufacturing high end like Germany did.
China knows it, that's why it isn't planning to be doing low skill labour for much longer.
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Most people in the US don't have $500 to spend. And those that do, can afford $550.
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You're right and wrong. They can't afford them and are buying them anyway.
iPhones may only have about 24% market share worldwide, but the US market share is 44.5%. [statista.com]
Granted, 44.5% is not precisely "most", but certainly not limited to the top 10% types that can afford it. In order to have that kind of market share, there has to be a lot of people with below average incomes with iPhones.
And, as others have indicated, there is no way a tariff on smartphones would be limited to iPhones.
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Our President is a stuck up, toffee nosed, elitist twat.
Elitists are people who know lots of things, not people who have lots of things.
Re:"people could handle that very easily" (Score:5, Funny)
Elitists are often people who think they know things.
Don't ask me how I know this.
Re:"people could handle that very easily" (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not wrong; iPhones are a luxury item. If you can't afford the hike, you shouldn't be buying one to begin with.
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That's insane. There's a price that everyone is willing (and able) to pay for an item. You may be able to afford a $1000 phone, but not a $1100 one. And, knowing that price point, is the start of financial literacy. Your statement is the start of going to the poorhouse/overpaying at auctions.
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He's not wrong; iPhones are a luxury item. If you can't afford the hike, you shouldn't be buying one to begin with.
So are all of the most popular Android phones and the same applies to them since they are also made in China and expensive as hell. The 64Gb iPhone X sells for $1000 the new Samsung S10 entry level model is slated to sell at at $750, cheaper but not exactly affordable either and they are all made in China so why just tax the iPhone? These things are now costing more than an Ultrabook laptop on Amazon so somebody remind me, why should I pay $750+ for an entry level 64Gb smartphone (irrespective of which Mobi
Re:"people could handle that very easily" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"people could handle that very easily" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Trump is trying to play this like zero sum game in which he wins and everyone else loses. In economics that's a really stupid way to do things because if everyone else loses who is buying all the stuff you're winning at making?
Trump doesn't care because he doesn't profit from making things, he profits from scamming people. As long as there are wealthy dumbshits, Trump can still scam. And since the most important criteria in economic success is the social status of your parents and not how intelligent you are, there are plenty of stupid people with lots of money.
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Because telling your team what it's doing wrong (and why) is exactly the same thing as playing for the other team. *eyeroll*
Re:"people could handle that very easily" (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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To end up where Trump is with where he actually started is about as impressive as... well, inheriting money and living off the interest.
It's actually less impressive than that. If he had simply held onto his real estate holdings and done nothing but rent them he would be worth more today than he actually is. He's been outperformed by the S&P 500, or more amusingly, by Paris Hilton.
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Sure, everyone could handle a 10% tax very easily. Oh unless you're super rich, then you need a tax cut.
People who buy the latest iPhone for cash sure act like they are super rich...either that, or dumb. They'll absorb the 10% price increase no problem. It's not like they weren't paying over $1000 for a phone anyway...
Those who get an iPhone as part of a carrier plan won't notice the extra dollar per month or whatever.
Slapping a tariff on every laptop however is a different beast enitrely...a lot of those things are budget machines with razor-thin margins. People who buy them look after every $10 spent...this
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Bad news: yes, everyone buying an iPhone could afford a 10% tax on it. It's not like the 10% is on everything you buy if you own an iPhone. Nor is it retroactive if you already own an iPhone....
So, worst case if you use iPhones: you pay an extra hundred or so for it, however often you buy a new phone. Which really shouldn't be more often than every three or four years, unless, of course, you're rich
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More taxes (Score:2)
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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.
Re:More taxes (Score:4, Funny)
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It's more true that politicans disagree on all those points even within a political party. And people try to say "All X believe Y" from a small sample. And then other people say "All X believe not Y" from a similarly small, nonoverlapping sample.
Oh, politicians sometimes move around what they care about, but they tend to be pretty consistent. With the nuance that surrounds debt. Politicians seem to consistently believe debt is okay for either priorities, but not for not-their-priorities. Which is a fan
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The average voters memory was a short as the news media cycle and controlled by that corporate propaganda main stream media. Of course now the internet, the average voter is reminded of what ever hurts shite politicians the worst upon a regular bloody basis. No fucking short term memory any more, proof of that the corporate whore lost with, corporate backing, the military industrial complex backing, corporate main stream media backing, tech media backing and the most money and lost, lame as fuck, the corpor
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Tax breaks for the rich, and their corporate overlords.
FTFY
$12 billion farm bailout (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Russia may or may not invade Ukraine, but the spat at the Kerch Strait was not a sign of Russia getting ready to do so.
Russia is slowly strangling the Ukraine economy on the sea of Azov and Ukraine send in those ships in the hope an incident would get international help. If they don't get it, Russia will just return to strangling them.
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It's also an act of "I'm not invading you at the moment". Nothing changed because of the incident, that semi-blockade had been in place for a long time.
Re:$12 billion farm bailout (Score:5, Interesting)
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:$12 billion farm bailout (Score:5, Insightful)
Really you don't find Russia's imminent invasion of Ukraine deeply worrisome?
There was a time when America and its people cared about others across the world, just because it was the right thing to do, and knowing that helping them free themselves and advance economically would ultimately directly benefit the safety and security of the US. In short, making friends makes us safer than making enemies. 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. Does not bode well for anyone.
Re:$12 billion farm bailout (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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You clearly have no idea what made your country great in the first place.
He's Putin's little bitch (Score:2, Informative)
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 withou
Re: $12 billion farm bailout (Score:5, Insightful)
If the US would pull out of Europe, I'd take time off from work to help pack.
Why do you think the US is trying to insert itself everywhere? It's for influence.
Why do you think Trump was so angry with Macron calling for the creation of European armed forces? It's not because of NATO. Ironically, spending on European Armed forces from within members states would count as spending for NATO. Trump was angry because the very idea of not needing the US policeman is a threat to the influence of the US.
Trump doesn't want Europe to have their own independent forces. Trump wants us to just have NATO. Because NATO is purely mutual defense, whereas European forces could be deployed globally, and thereby decrease the importance of US forces. And in the current climate, many countries would be more likely to accept European forces than US forces.
Or did you think that the US was playing global policeman out of benevolence?
And if the US would pull out of NATO? They're welcome to. It would mean Europe would be forced to ramp up military spending, and make the US irrelevant in European decisions. Do you think the US government would enjoy losing all the influence they have?
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Why do you give a shit about Ukraine, which is on the other end of the world and which isn't a major US trade partner or ally?
Oh, say ... perhaps because Ukraine has borders with these countries:
- Belarus
- Russia
- Moldova
- Poland
- Slovakia
- Hungary
- Romania
And from many of them, it's a short hop to Western Europe.
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Russia itself borders Poland, in Kaliningrad Oblast, and it has significant military presence there. And Belarus is Russia's ally. If they wanted to go to Western Europe, Belarus would come along for the fun.
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And that's why we should stay the as far away from this bullshit as possible.
Do it. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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Tariffs cost GM one billion dollars (Score:3, Insightful)
No one wins from a trade war.
Re:Tariffs cost GM one billion dollars (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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only the rich win from open trade and being able to screw the local workers.
That's not true. Open trade increases the production possibilities frontier.
Let's say you can produce 5 tonnes of potato or 3 tonnes of grain with the same labor-hours. Another country can produce 3 tonnes of potato or 5 tonnes of grain with the same labor-hours. Your labor-hours might be 40 and theirs 50, but that doesn't matter.
If you produce 10 tonnes of potato and they produce 10 tonnes of grain, you can trade, and each of you can have 5 tonnes of potato and 5 tonnes of grain while investing the
Re: Tariffs cost GM one billion dollars (Score:3)
"No one wins from a trade war."
Have you seen the sorry state of the American economy? At this point, there's no possible way we could lose the trade way harder than we're already losing it.
Its Actually Laughable (Score:2)
that people get all sideways about a 10% tax on imported phones, but when we lower corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, which will lower the price of AMERICAN goods, then its supposedly a "tax cut for the rich." What's rich about millions of phone buyers that could get an American phone for less money because the company is not sending so much $$$ to Washington, and can therefore lower the price on their phones and cause more people to choose their phones instead of the Chinese phones? Taxes are taxes, w
Re:Its Actually Laughable (Score:5, Informative)
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."
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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.
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Well, good luck with that. American phone, right.
Re:Its Actually Laughable (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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First, most products are not priced based on cost, but on the market power of the sellers. Most goods compete on non-price attributes.
Products are priced based on cost. Market power allows for higher profit margins.
A commodity product will have an extremely-low barrier to entry. If you have $1M of sales per year in the whole market and you need $0.5M to be viable, a new competitor needs to capture 50% of the market. If there are $1,000M of sales per year in the whole market, that new competitor only needs to capture 0.05% of the market.
A product becomes commodity as its cost falls. It costs so much that, with a 0% profit margin,
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Re: How much this time, Donny? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
If people could "handle that easilly".... (Score:3)
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.
All the finesse and subtlety of a chainsaw.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Then I Wont Buy American (Score:2)
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Uhm, the tariff would only apply to iPhones imported *into* the US. It would only increase the cost of iPhones within the US. Apple would probably pass the tariff on to the US consumer.
Tariffs on goods imported into US will only affect the rest of the world if they are re-exported. The rest of the World can happily keep buying iPhones from apple "assembled in China" at the same price as before.
Go for it (Score:4, Interesting)
Well.. (Score:2)
10%? Not enough. 50%! (Score:3)
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.
Tariffs go to the Governments (Score:5, Informative)
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... [cnbc.com]
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... [cbo.gov]
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.
Billionaires (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
He's worth substantially less than 1 billion. Trump would like to believe his net worth is in the billions.
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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 s
Re: Good. Fuck Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
In summary: fuck American workers, I wanna save a couple bucks on my iCrap!
Re: Good. Fuck Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: Good. Fuck Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You wave your hands about a genie and a bottle, but 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? There is no fucking genie in or out of your bottle, the situation has no genie.
Supply chains are not magic. They are not powered by genies.
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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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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),
Great, so we can have a lot of highly trained people competing for the last handful of jobs. That will really help.
Spend the money you'd have spent on training on setting up UBI instead, because those jobs aren't changing, they're going away. See, every job producing something requires resources, and we're already using more resources than the planet can supply. As worker productivity increases, but the planet's ability to supply resources decreases, we literally need to do less work if we are to avoid spoi
Re: Good. Fuck Apple (Score:2)
It seems obvious to me that the term "iPhone" is being used here to include all mobile phones. In fact the phrase "iphones and laptops" basically means all tech. This isn't an "Apple tax", this is "China tax". This will affect the cost of a huge number of items, not just expensive ones, and not just specific brands. All tech, right down to that cheap calculator you saw in Walmart last week.
This will increase the cost of your weekly shopping cart too, as the tech costs for your local supermarket chain is
Re:Cool! Let's MAGA, baby! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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 lates
Re:Cool! Let's MAGA, baby! (Score:4)
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.
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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.
Not quite true. If you have any foreign blood in you, you are considered 100% foreigner. I am 1/2 Chinese, I can assure you of this fact. It applies from how you are treated by government officials to street scammers (unfortunately).
Also, if you look Chinese and cannot speak Chinese, it simply does not compute for your average Chinese person. My friend has a malaysian Chinese wife and they lived in China for a while (he is half Chinese). He spoke Chinese but his wife didn't. He said even after telling peopl
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That is actually a very good example of attitude I'm talking about. To a mainstream chinese person, ethnicity comes first and foremost. If you look Chinese, you are Chinese, papers be damned.
Now if your pedigree is diluted to the point where you don't really look Chinese, you're a foreigner. That is true. But officials may still treat you as a Chinese national. It varies regionally. T1 cities will probably have officials who understand this perfectly.
Re: Cool! Let's MAGA, baby! (Score:2)
Re: Cool! Let's MAGA, baby! (Score:2)
I would like to know more information. Primarily is it true that the detainees are Chinese citizens by choice (either their own or their parents).
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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
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Canada's not trying to pry Maine loose from the US.
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What makes China your enemy?
Like all superpowers, they want to rule the world. And if you've seen what's going on in China with death vans [wikipedia.org], organlegging [wikipedia.org] and social credit scores [businessinsider.com], it should be intuitively obvious that you do not want to live under Chinese rule.
As evil as the US often behaves, and it certainly does, it's a million billion times better than China.
Re: Cool! Let's MAGA, baby! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: Cool! Let's MAGA, baby! (Score:2)
Except it is called capitalism. Csout a list means sending production where it's cheapest .
Are you a capitalism or socialist? Your rant is socialist. You want to force companies to build in high cost area where they make less profit.
Also it has been 40+ years if offshoring Nixon started it when he opened up China trade.
I am sorry our Republican education system failed you so badly
Re: I'm so old (Score:2)
And I remember when Democrats at least pretended to care about the interests of working people.
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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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Re: Worked so well with the car industry... (Score:2)
While technically true, gym at least paid back the bailout with interest.
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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.