It makes a difference for the US but not for China. At either 80% or 145%, the only thing the US is buying from China would be the things that they can't get from anywhere else. As such, for the American importers who absolutely need those items, it makes a big difference, but China wouldn't export any more because of it.
Trump 2.0 official thread
- Thread starter siegecrossbow
- Start date
It makes a difference for the US but not for China. At either 80% or 145%, the only thing the US is buying from China would be the things that they can't get from anywhere else. As such, for the American importers who absolutely need those items, it makes a big difference, but China wouldn't export any more because of it.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
No, if that were the case, they would just use tariff exemptions on specific items. Like I said in the example before, there is often a large enough gap between Chinese and American production prices so that a 65% difference in tariff will cause just a random item to fall in between the crack such that it was more expensive to purchase Chinese are 145% but less expensive at 80%. The difference is so extreme that there are Chinese small trinket items that are under a dollar but cost several dollars from American manufacturers.
The competition isn't America most of the time though, it's other Asian nations. I mean, it's well established that China specific tariffs won't do jack shiz to move manufacturing to the US, only to other Asian countries sometimes. Also, Trump did give tariff exemptions, for a full 1/3 of the products imported from China by value. IMO there's no reason for China to hurry right now, small businesses will start failing en mass within the next 2 months if he doesn't cut it back to at least ~50%. I think at that point it'll probably reach a balance point between his tolerance for pain and his tolerance for bruised ego and it'll take actual negotiations to go down any further.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Other Asian nations don't make them competitively either; that's why they buy from China, relabel, and resell to America. They don't have the machinery and factories set up to capitalize.
I'm not aware if that actually happened or if he didn't do it (he denied it once at least) or if the ports all use "computer errors" to just not collect tariffs.
Absolutely
Trump is heaping praise on the Geneva talks and mentions a "total reset," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.
Talks apparently lasted about eight hours, and nobody except Trump said anything about progress. Who knows whether they managed to agree on anything of substance, but negotiations are set to continue later today.
Talks apparently lasted about eight hours, and nobody except Trump said anything about progress. Who knows whether they managed to agree on anything of substance, but negotiations are set to continue later today.
Means he is desperate enough to undo Obama era tariffs. He pretty much undid everything else Obama did, why not go one step further?
Bessent already said and now Trump is fully aware current tariff rates are "unsustainable" and US need to drop tariffs, so "total reset" just sounds like "I didn't lose, we just reset to pre-war" way to say they want to go back to 0% or 10%, basically at or below April 2.
IMO its not in China's interest to let US drop tariffs or even lower them, for China current rate is sustainable and the longer it goes on the easier it gets as new customers are developed. Right now China will probably accept US offer to "reset", and by other reports also extract additional concessions on Taiwan, chips and even old Biden and Obama tariffs, but it will take time for US to fully come to terms that the only concession they can extract from China is China allowing them to reset.
China is likely going to ask for the same 90-day tariff pause that every other country is getting, as a minimum baseline, and China will reciprocate it. If US can't even agree to that, then China should consider even 50% or 80% as an embargo/economic war.
A deal wasn’t reached. Bessent said the talks have reached substantial progress. We don’t even know the details of the meeting. The pro Trump media space is already calling this a trade deal. They are jumping the gun trying to make Trump look good. But it’s not a deal. The last trade deal in Trumps first term took two years to negotiate.