ShittyBeatlesFCPres @ ShittyBeatlesFCPres @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

That’s the dream. Good on her for claiming to live in Texas but actually living in Hawaii.

Is it because they’re ostensibly our ally but have shitty political views and I’m not sure why we keep bailing them out when they fuck up? Because that’s how I feel about half my cousins. I want to be loyal but I also try to find a way to get out of Thanksgiving every year.

I think Weee probably already imported the Ramen and it’s in a warehouse, not being made to order. But it’s ok. I can probably afford the tax on ramen noodles. I’m partial to the spicy kimchi ones anyway so they’re probably South Korean. I also love the cheapest, finest shrimp flavored packets that are like $1 each. (I ate them as a kid so they’re a comfort food.) Those might even be made in America.

Also, Master P has a gumbo-flavored Ramen product and there’s always yaka mein. I live in New Orleans and those could be made here for all I know. (Yaka mein is definitely made here. It’s basically ramen noodles but with Creole New Orleans broth and seasoning. The legend is that Chinese laborers building the railroads introduced the concept of ramen to black laborers in New Orleans and a new, cheap dish was born. It was eventually marketed as a hangover cure and called “Old Sober” but it’s called yaka mein now.)

If anything good comes from this, it’ll be reforming that. Even if tariffs were still a couple percentage points instead of based on a formula zero economists endorsed, you shouldn’t be forced to pay (or the companies able to avoid) tariffs by using a distribution center in a third country. It should all be based on country of origin and final destination.

A Chinese (or American) company setting up a factory in Vietnam is an entirely different thing. I’m not talking about that. The product was made in Vietnam and real foreign direct investment happened that’s beneficial to everyone. I just mean logistics hubs should be irrelevant when calculating tariffs.

The “ideal” solution if we must use tariffs would be to take into account where it’s all made but that’s way too complicated to implement and easy to game¹, unfortunately. An iPhone is assembled in China but using parts from all over Southeast Asia (and elsewhere) and with a substantial portion of the actual value coming from California and the UK. Where is an iPhone really made if a Taiwan Semiconductor fab makes a bespoke processor based on ARM but designed in California? “Made in China” is what’s stamped on the box (actually they put “Made in China, Designed in California).

And that’s just the processor and a few other advanced chips. I think Samsung makes the screens in South Korea based on technology developed in the U.S. by Corning. If Apple wanted to skirt tariffs under that sort of regime, they could plausibly argue that the assembly is worth $10, manufacturing is worth $90, and the design and software are worth $900. I mean, smartphones are commodities now. People use iPhones because they like the software.

Tariffs based on the final step of assembly don’t make sense for complicated products made by multinational companies in the 21st century. The world makes an iPhone. Accounting for it all would be impossible.

I’m gonna give Baron cigarettes as revenge.

I, similarly, ordered a shitload of ramen noodles from sayweee.com/en before the tariffs kicked in. They haven’t arrived yet but when they do, it’s going to be a box so big, my neighbors are going to assume I got new furniture.

Most Apple products are assembled in China — some in India and Vietnam — from parts made in the region so there’s no new tariffs involved. Only Americans will have to pay more. It’s sort of like how Toyota and Honda having plants in Alabama won’t pay import tariffs.

Cars might be a bad example because their supply chains are so complex. They’ll still be more expensive because the components are often made overseas and Trump, idiotically, has tariffs on those parts (and steel and aluminum to boot). But a “foreign” car that rolls off the assembly line in the U.S. won’t have tariffs while an “American” car assembled in Mexico will.

Everyday Americans with little power on our own are stepping up. Republicans are refusing to do town halls in their own districts because even their constituents are showing up and yelling at them. Congressional voice mailboxes are routinely full and people are writing letters and emails. Last Saturday, there were 1300+ protests with like 1,000,000 people taking to the streets. And that was just the first one. There’s a lot more people who support the protests but didn’t hear about them ahead of time or couldn’t make it (for whatever reason; work, disabilities, childcare, etc.).

The problem now isn’t with “Americans” writ large. It’s spineless leadership. And not just “leadership” in the sense of corrupt elected officials and judges. I also mean major university presidents and law firm partners that capitulated rather than fight back. Business leaders not speaking out (anonymous quotes in the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal isn’t speaking out; they’re like $400 a year and most people don’t know how to get around paywalls). Religious leaders — white evangelical Protestant ones, anyway — failing in every possible way. Retired generals (or anyone else who swore an oath to the constitution) should be livid.

Maybe now that he tanked the global economy and is fucking with rich people’s money, there will be more resistance from so-called “elites” but I’m not holding my breath waiting for them to stop being cowards and protecting their own asses. But regular people are doing what we can.

The effects of the tariffs haven’t hit most people yet. People with a 401(k) or who otherwise own stocks obviously know but that’s not necessarily immediate pain. I’m guessing if there’s no reversal in policy, late summer and early fall is when the shit is really going to become real for a lot of people.

Major companies have stocked up on inventory. Those inventories will slowly dwindle and prices will slowly rise. But a lot of consumer-facing companies launch new products in late summer (for back-to-school spending) or early fall (for Christmas spending). It’ll be completely undeniable when even Walmart doubles prices.

He’s not going to be able to run for a third term. Even if somehow no one stops him, he already looks more like Slimer from Ghostbusters than a living human and his brain clearly isn’t any different.

Everyone is blaming this solely on alcohol but I’m guessing based on his job title and the situation that steroids share some of the blame. People don’t typically get all aggro with (presumably sober and calm) hotel staff over last call if they’re just wasted.

Not currently. I used to be.

I wasn’t dismissing the problem that they exist. That’s the first problem. I was saying uncertainty prevents as much investment as do tariffs. No one knows what the tariffs will be in a month. His brain is a non-Newtronean fluid at this point.

A big problem with Trump’s tariffs isn’t that they exist; it’s that they’re subject to change at any moment. To be clear, they’re idiotic. But no one can invest in anything long term in America right now.

Imagine opening a restaurant in the U.S. right now. Half your kitchen equipment is subject to steel or aluminum tariffs. You don’t know if you can import anything. Or you can wait a year and see how full Trump’s diaper is. He also looks half dead without makeup and might have pissed off the Yakuza (or worse). The smart move is to wait to open your restaurant.

Now imagine any business bigger than a restaurant.

I hope he learned the lesson everyone else learned 6+ years ago.

Pfft. The U.S. has been around for over 2 centuries. How long has China been around?

Even if it does the basic shit at the expense of me working one less hour a week, it’s not worth paying for. And that ignores the downsides like spam, bots, data centers needing power/water, and politicians thinking GPU cards are national security secrets.

I don’t think we need a Skynet scenario to imagine the downsides.

I use it in software development and it hasn’t changed my life. It’s slightly more convenient than last gen code completion but I’ve never worked on a project where code per hours was the hold up. One less stand-up per week would probably increase developer productivity more than GitHub Copilot.

Did you see the wack ass Quake II version Microsoft bragged about? It wasn’t even playable. A fucking 12 year old could do better.

Because it’s alpha software. We’re 40 years away from “A.I.” being able to be competent at anything.