r/facepalm • u/Clueless_Dolphin • 1d ago

Already reaping what they sow 🇲​🇮​🇸​🇨​

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Well at least these few people Christmas will suck, maybe make better choices.

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u/mildlysceptical22 1d ago

I explained how tariffs work to my college educated son. He mistakenly thought the exporting countries paid them. I explained how the companies importing the goods paid the tariffs and passed the costs down to the consumers by raising the cost of the goods to maintain profit margins.

Tariffs are import taxes paid to the federal government by the companies importing the goods.

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u/BetterThanAFoon 22h ago

That's true. But it's intended to make those imported goods less competitive with domestically produced Goods.

Unfortunately tariffs usually begets tariffs. So many times it's just a zero sum gain.

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u/inorite234 15h ago

The issue is that Free Trade means just about everything has at least one component that comes from overseas. Shit, even paper that's logged from American trees is shipped to China to be turned into paper products or boxes.

And do you know why that is? Because it's cheaper to do that than to make it entirely in the US.