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42 sats \ 15 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 Aug \ on: Tariffs are generating inflation? econ
So the price of imported goods is barely up 1% with tariffs averaging something like 12%. Looks like the "perfect pass through" doomers were pretty wrong.
Don't get me wrong, tariffs are still bad policy. That's mostly because they needlessly hurt foreign producers and distort local production, though.
According to FT, inflation is not already up because the impact of tarrifs is not yet realised in full potential. It also suggests that the tarrifs won't bring much change because the foreign producers will start selling at lower prices to the US, like in the case of Japan's car makers already doing.
I completely agree that tarrifs or any other import duty is bad. TBH, the world needs to understand that it's become much smaller now.
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foreign producers will start selling at lower prices to the US
Exactly. This is what some of us have been saying the whole time. Price elasticity is greater for the exporters because the US is a larger share of their business than they are of the US, and the US can ramp up domestic production in most cases.
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I mean tradewise. Example- If US puts tarrifs on one country, it'll still sell to the US via another country. Also, I think the world needs to implement (at some point) global prices for everything.
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Prices are emergent. If you want globally smooth prices, you just have to knock down trade barriers and let arbitrage do its thing.
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I know it's pretty ambitious to even think about it with the nasty boundaries of all kinds set in between. Still, if somehow the world does it, that will see the rise of a new world, a peaceful, better and beautiful Earth.
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Short-term, I think we're in for nastier boundaries, but long-term I expect freer movement of goods and people.
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Yes definitely. It's one among so many drawbacks of creating such boundries. The world was better without passports.
Now there's a complete disparity which could be avoided by letting people move and settle without any restrictions. After all America what we now call is "Dream Destination" was actually filled up by the migrants. If we were living under the same old ruless at present, I have no doubt that the prices for goods and services weren't as high as they are now.
Whenever I compare the inflation in US to that of India, I'm always astonished. Even the bread costs ten times more in the US than it costs in India.
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I believed the greenhouse gas anthropogenic warming story (and still don't think it's entirely wrong) but I was never convinced that it would be bad. That was the question no one ever answered to my satisfaction.
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Yeah, I'm not fully convinced the actual science of what is happening is wrong.
- The predictions are nonsense. No one knows
- Most politicians screaming about it don't believe it either. If they did they'd live very different lives.
- I should try to live my life in a way that minimizes negative effects on the earth. Live in a way that is more in harmony with God's creation than one at war with it.
The predictions from the 90s I repeated are absurd and many thought they were absurd at the time. Same goes for what is being said today. We see the same stuff in bitcoin land. The US dollar is just about to collapse. No it isn't. Will it? Yeah, it will in time but no one really knows how long. Its easy to get ink when you say stuff like this.
For most of my life had a closed mind to environmentalism. This was because I was being reactionary to the Marxists that call themselves environmentalists. The answer to every problem is Marxism for them. Man is a poison on this planet to them. If I was a God hating atheist I would still reject this position. At worst man is just another species on this planet and he will eventually die off. But I don't believe that. As a Christian I believe man was given stewardship of this world and we've allowed Satan to really mess with our minds.
One can care about the earth and nature and at the same time not be a Marxist. Learning about permaculture really opened my eyes to the fact I'd allowed my mind to be clouded by politics. I now reject being a reactionary in anything. Today I seek to understand before I decide I'm against something just because of how is proposing it.
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