Politically-motivated tea tax, what could go wrong?
what would the boston tea party equivalent for america be? dumping an entire mcdonalds worth in the sewers?
The Boston tea party was the American equivalent of the Boston tea party.
I think they meant to say modern American, no?
Then they should've
Maybe they a word
The Galveston Coffee Shootout.
Nationalizing energy infrastructure
That's just eating at McDonald's with ... less steps.
They wouldn’t handle it.
Tbh thats just one step less than how it normally works.
"No tariffs without Harris"
Chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, pepper, tea, bananas, and a fuckload of other things that are completely integrated into our regular diets are almost exclusively imported.
Sugar too. That ain't healthy and is kinda fancy but... Can you see them losing their shit over sugar prices? I do.
Tomatoes imports were 2.5B in 2023.
Apparently the us imports 15% of it's food supply.
That can't be right. Corn can't be only 85% of our food.
But seriously, there's so much goddamn corn. Our meat is fed corn. Our processed foods and drinks are pumped full of corn. Even our fucking cars eat corn. We're up to our fucking ears in ears of corn.
Based on what I find online, the us import about $2B in raw-sugar, while some (about 100M) is exported again.
How much "processed" sugar leaves the us again? I am not sure. Maybe all of it.
We already use HFCS in everything, it will just get even more extreme.
Gonna have to put a spoonful of HFCS into your ersatz coffee.
The government subsidizes corn, so there's an incentive to use that corn. There are tariffs on imported sugar so it's cheaper to use HFCS
W-we gotta get out of here Morty! Everything here is on a fucking cob!
Sugar is fancy now? Man my grandpa would be thrilled were he alive. There's a colloquial term for the farm-houses of sugar beat farmers in Northern Germany, "beat castles", as they quickly made a lot of money growing the beats in the late 19th century. When sugar became more accessible due to the processing of the beats to refined sugar. The wealth is long gone now, similarly to how salt used to be a luxury good.
No. That is the point.
Sugar is "fancy" as in "you don't need sugar for your diet".
Technically, we don't need raw sugar for our diet at all. So technically correct?
We also don't need any sugar substitutes, like HFCS, but you can find that or sugar, in the ingredients list of pretty much all processed foods.
Yay capitalism!
Yeah, we do high fructose corn syrup over here. It's even more addictive, even less healthy, and it tastes bad. So obviously, we put it in everything, even premade salads
There's plenty of corn syrup to replace it with unfortunately.
I understand your perspective but I want to ask a question, not to you, but for you to think about it. What motivation causes the imports?
If corn syrup is a replacement for whatever they are doing, why are they importing raw sugar? If raw sugar is cheaper than you would expect them to already use sugar for everything and not corn syrup, and switching to corn syrup would be an increase in cost . If raw sugar costs the same, import is additional paperwork, why import? Raw sugar is more expensive, why would they pay more?
Raw sugar can't be replaced easily in their use case? Now that makes sense.
Sugar tastes better than HFCS. Ask anyone who drinks Mexican Coke. "Tastes better" doesn't matter when there's no other option.
Fact is, HFCS is cheaper. I haven't checked the entirety of it's supply chain to figure out why, but it is cheaper.
If sugar was the same cost, they wouldn't have switched to HFCS in the first place (why mess with your successful product for no gain?). Fact of the matter is that HFCS is saving them money. It might be pennies per bottle, but when you're moving 10M bottles of soda, those pennies turn into dividends, literally.
Which is why I am almost certain that there is a reason why they import raw sugar
And the rest is farmed here by undocumented workers.
Avocados for your avocado toast. Smh.
not if you live in cali
That's it, the other states have crossed the line, time for CalExit.
honestly this is more feasible than brexit imo (not advocating for it)
Such a nice opportunity lost. "I'm not avocading for it."
id rather advocate for is the demolishing of all borders and the guarantee of helping every person on the planet no matter what.
It was just a little pun. Advocating / Avocading.
im dumb
We can be dumb together.
A lot of fruit/veg is grown in places they can get away with slave wages and then shipped here because that’s how little labor costs. Less than our already super low paid fruit/veg pickers that are primarily the people who escaped the countries and situations that put them in those even lower slave wage places.
Coffee, tea, and everything you're wearing right now.
A ton of parts of what you are driving, all your maga hats, a ton of stuff that's in your house
Your mom wears maga hats.
Oh no, but I need to buy a new buttplug every day!
Wait, I'm not American, nvm.
Most buttplugs can be washed. Just a money-saving tip for you there.
Nah, it's not about single-use, it's about the collection. You can't take some og the rare ones out of their original packaging or they lose value!
I hear it's all about the blind box butt plugs today. That way you have to keep buying them and getting duplicates until you get a rare one.
A shiny!!
everything you're wearing right now
Much of that is cotton. I believe that in the "good" ol' days the US grew that themselves. Start that industry up again, and you don't need mass deportations across the border.
You could even run the farms the same way as in the olden days, if you criminalize and incarcarate enough black people.
I mean, that's how cotton is produced nowadays too, except Uyghurs are the ones doing it.
Well boy howdy, it turns out we already been done doin that there part about criminalizing and incarcerating them black people just out of sheer racism. You're telling me that there could've been a profit motive to it this whole time too?
jk, private contracted prisons were already profiting deeply off of that.
I thought you were already doing that...
Ah, yes...
All we need to keep that industry running like the good ol' days is a massive industry of government subsidized illegal immigration of easily identified persons
The US still makes massive amounts of cotton. That all gets exported to other countries before getting turned into garments and things.
Cotton takes a LOT of water to grow. And takes up farmland that could grow food.
Most of your clothes are artificial fabrics these days. Or blended
Yea, and I hear children's tiny hands are perfect for picking it.
I wanted some foreign goods to get more expensive. To end slavery, not to escalate a trade war!
I should have checked my vicinity for any stray monkey's paws when I made that wish.
“Fair Trade” is what you’re looking for. I don’t know how legit all instances are or whether they make a real difference, but its an attempt
This may sound pedantic, but you're looking for Fairtrade (one word) for the organization with the strictest vetting standards. Fair Trade (two words) isn't regulated and just means they follow some sort of ethical code. It's not necessarily bad, but it warrants more product specific research.
Huh I wonder how many Fair Trade items I bought thinking they were Fairtrade. Thanks.
Some people have never even looked at a dang banana
It's one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?
In trump's economy, maybe?
The joke will take on a new meaning when $10 is the good old days.
That's the thing I find most depressing about a trump presidency, there will be a time when the rational Left looks back on it as "when things weren't so bad."
Like, when I was a kid I, and many others, never imagined there could be a president dumber than Bush...
Don't they grow bananas in Hawaii? I know they have coffee out on Kona.
Coffee grows on Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and recently in a little bit in CA (to add to water problems)
But Labor + limited amounts means it won't be cheaper
You can grow a banana at home. Dwarf banana plants can grow inside. The normal size banana plant is not living room sized, no wonder people think they grow on trees
But how many people drink coffee? And how many bananas can you grow for your self?
I'm not American, but tariffs to fix import issues is pretty stupid.
This is the capitalist dream, export all the production of the goods you use daily to third world countries, who will have shit labor practices like the US used to have when slavery was a thing (and bluntly, for quite a while afterwards), so that the boots-on-the-ground laborers that produce everything are either treated like slaves or literally are slaves, then import the raw material to be manufactured into whatever you're selling in the US, so you can slap a "made in the USA" sticker on your shit to enhance sales and charge more. Meanwhile "made in the USA" doesn't and shouldn't imply that there's no imported goods going into the manufacturing process to make that thing, just that you took raw materials (from wherever) and made this thing in the USA.
Tariffs unduly harm end consumers, pretty much everything we buy and own is, or has components that are, imported shit.
Most microchips, a large amount of the food we eat, most electronics, pretty much everything you'll find at a dollar general, etc (the list is very very long)... all imported in whole or in part.
Hell, there was a time that it was more economical to have your raw materials, even if they're mined/harvested/produced in the USA, shipped overseas for assembly by slave labor, then shipped back for sale to the US public, than to have it assembled inside the US. Much of that is still true. The US neither has the manufacturing capacity, nor the desire to build their own shit. The only time that's not the economical option is for large cost (and scale, either in size or money) items, like housing or vehicles. Assembly generally happens in the country/landmass where the vehicle will be sold and used. Even a company like Toyota, a Japanese brand, will have assembly plants in the USA for cars sold in the USA, because that's cheaper than importing hundreds of vehicles. For everything else, it's generally cheaper to assemble it outside of the country and import the final product.
You think process are high now? Wait until the tariff wars really kick off.
No company is going to accept the costs of tariffs and be okay with that eating their profits, they're passing that cost into consumers, because we're the saps that are still going to buy it.
When the tariffs come down, and they will eventually, prices will drop, but not to where they were from before the tariffs. Companies will continue to post record profits, justifying not giving raises because tariffs, and wages will remain stagnant. We'll earn less, while they rob is for more than they already do.
The worst part is that when the tariffs are lifted, we'll thank them for lowering the prices by buying more of their shit. We'll be grateful for the opportunity to pay even more into their profit margins.
Congratulations, you're experiencing late stage capitalism. The system is working as intended. You are poor, you remain poor, barely able to scratch out a living, while your owners profit more and more off of your hard work, and you get to thank them for that opportunity.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
The worst part is that when the tariffs are lifted, we’ll thank them for lowering the prices by buying more of their shit. We’ll be grateful for the opportunity to pay even more into their profit margins.
Prices won't go down, companies will pocket the difference
Oh, they'll go down.... But it won't be nearly as much as it went up to cover the tariff.
What I'm thinking is, let's say a widget is $100, tariffs go in at, say 5%. So it should cost $105, but the price increases to $110. People cry bloody murder, but ultimately they "need" the widget so they buy it. Tariffs go away, yay, the price is dropped, it's now $107.99
that's what I'm thinking.
Also it's all the Democrats fault.
In practice, that's not what happens generally. A widget is $100, the 5% tariff brings it up to $105 and company bumps the price to $110. People need the widget so they buy it at $110. Tariff goes away, but company knows that people will pay at least $110 for the widget, so they try bumping the price to $115. Maybe it doesn't sell, so they "discount" it back to $110 and people will happily buy it thinking they're getting a deal, while the company is pocketing that extra $10.
That's certainly a possibility.
I would argue that we're both right depending on what the widget is.
(Assuming the price is changed to be proportional and appropriate for the product) Something like a grocery item is more prone to my thought, and something that has generational differences, such as a laptop or something, will likely follow your theory more closely.
I think a lot of this will still be tied to price elasticity. If the price is very elastic then the former system would be more likely. Drop the price so you can push more units (and overall, profit goes up), where things that are far less elastic, say, an iPhone, would tend to simply continue to increase like the latter system you describe.
At the end of the day, both are horrid, terrible, and very very common. So I'll finish by saying: no matter what happens, people are going to be getting massively fucked, and corporations will post record profits yet again.
Fuck corporations.
I want everyone to be angry enough to do something about this.
How do we get everyone angry.
You spew this every day for the next four years with as wide a firehose as possible. Track every tariff and price it effects, scream it into every tar pit media site out there. Literally just shove this in everyone's faces for this entire time. Every time.
Won't work, they yell "fake news" then bury their heads in the sand like they always do.
Idk misinformation tactics would probably work the same for information and with Republicans theres enough hidden truth to firehose. We aren't swaying MAGAts. We're grabbing those dumb centrists
A proper education would have done it.
Let's be reasonable here.
How do we get everyone angry.
This is the problem --- taking away my coffee makes me angry, but I'll be too tired to do anything about it.
nor the desire to build their own shit
I would say that we've also largely lost the means to afford stuff built here, in large part as a consequence of our endless pursuit of cheap crap while scraping the bottom of the barrel with outsourcing. Even if you want to buy domestically-made goods, since we've lost so many of those good union jobs, especially in manufacturing, we no longer have the means to pay what it costs to make such a product with American workers. Especially if people intend to continue with their current consumerist trends.
I'm making $20/hour at the moment. If I want to buy American, union-made shoes, it'll run me $400 a pair, on the lower end. I think it's pretty reasonable to have a pair of work boots, a pair of regular shoes for wearing out and about, and a pair of dress shoes, which at that low end will run me 37.5% of my monthly gross pay. Now do the same for domestically produced clothing, and you've probably run up a bill of several month's pay, just to have enough outfits to last you a single week, leaving aside coats, seasonal clothing, or formal attire. We're either going to have to sharply curtail our purchasing and focus on buying a smaller amount of goods meant to last as long as possibly, or the sadly more likely scenario, we'll see the establishment of domestic sweatshops to fuel the consumerist impulses of what remains of the middle class and up. Whether we'll just go even more insane in our treatment of the poor here, or use prison labor and undocumented migrants "pending" deportation in these sweatshops remains to be seen, but Americans have demonstrated we shortsightedly value our ability to accumulate cheap trash over anything else.
I'd love to be proven wrong, and see a growth of strong unions and domestic production leading to a resurgence in American craftsmanship again, but the current environment is less than amenable to this outcome, to put it mildly.
I don't mean to imply the US should go back to manufacturing their own goods like they had to before global trade was economical.
I hope the point I'm making is that the people like Trump, mostly aggressive capitalists, are significantly in favor of these trends, and adding tariffs to imported goods will harm the businesses that the tariff is intended to protect.
Sales will drop because most goods are simply more price elastic than that. Cost goes up, sales drop, and overall you lose profits. When costs go up, alternative products are supposed to take up the business you lost by raising prices.
Though, to be fair, that price elasticity model is broken. Most product types have been agglutinated into a couple of large companies in an oligopoly, so all brands of that kind of product raise prices to match all the other brands. With no other competition in the market, consumers have the "choice" of paying more for the same thing, or not buying it.
In any case, the entire economy has been so thoroughly fucked by corporations that is just a money printing machine for the ultra rich to get richer.
I've depressed myself now. I'm gonna go.
I didn't think you were, I was more saying that the loss of many of those jobs that had been outsourced in the pursuit of cheap stuff means that, even if Trump's proposed tariffs were effective at bringing those jobs back, it might not matter because they would still cost more than most residents of the US would be able to afford. At least, with current working conditions, many of these goods would simply cost more than people would be willing to pay, as we've been collectively conditioned to want as much stuff as possible, as cheap as possible. Domestic production of so many goods would require a drastic shift in consumer habits to even have a chance at being viable in the long term, but they absolutely couldn't do the sort of volume that places like China has and be able to sell at a profit, barring the implementation of Chinese-style working conditions.
Chocolate also. Lol I hope you fucking like corn syrup and candy corn you little shits.
I prefer buying my coffee and chocolate directly from the child slave labour. None of that free trade shit. It makes me feel connected to a past I never lived in.
I usually fly in to buy it locally. Important these days to know your farmers
I like to talk to the grain harvesting robot every once in a while, really lets me feel like I'm part of a community
I pictured this together in a bowl and it's making me feel a hair nauseated
Classic American breakfast 🤌
The syrup helps the little corns slide down better.
Also: I can't feel my toes but I'm sure that's unrelated.
Who are we kidding? Trump’s going to enforce it selectively to nefarious ends and enrich himself off exemptions that he’s hand picked to be subservient. Free market my ass.
I've been saying this. I'm curious to see who wins out. In this case it's populist bullshit vs American coffee retailers. Let's see who comes out on top.
100% this. I see tariffs on foreign cars coming quick.
So nothing and it's just a money grab
No. Everyone who doesn't have money for him to grab is fucked.
Most competent governments think like this goose because their believe in rules based order and systems. Trump doesn't ascribe to that view and I think he will make a sweeping change and will personally govern exceptions until it suits himself and his base. Hopefully that mangment consumes his time enough to make him less effective.
People listing Hawaii like they could meet the total US demand, even if they could scale to maximum production overnight.
Most of the corn we eat is Brazilian. Most of the corn we grow is feed corn for cows and process corn for HFCS and other processed food ingredients.
As an American born and raised in Illinois I can also inform the rest of the populace our corn also gets used to make ethanol, an alternative fuel source.
Ethanol is incredibly inefficient as a fuel source.
If not for the massive subsidies it would not exist.
Still, ethanol is a better fuel additive than lead. (Both reduce knocking)
Still, the far better use is to grow food.
Im guessing they also never seen how much the coffee from there cost. Plus supply and demand you dumb fucks. The cost will skyrocket. Kona coffee ranges from $30 to $100 a bag. Think of a massive increase of demand. Are we going to pay $100 a bag for low end stuff?
Hawaii does have the largest coffee growing industry in the entire US but they are severely limited by the amount of available land. Compared to other coffee-producing nations, the Big Island is microscopically tiny, so they mainly focus on high quality, artisanal product sold at extremely high prices. Not that I would mind if all the coffee sold everywhere would be replaced by Kona coffee overnight, but it just isn't feasible.
It sure would help if Americans weren’t generally ignorant about uh… tons of stuff and especially anything that involves other countries. All sorts of fruits and vegetables are imported - green beans, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, berries, bananas, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant. And then at the same time, the Trump bros want to crack down on groups of people who make up a large portion of the domestic agricultural workforce? It’s difficult to see some conservative policies as intended to do anything other than just fuck people over and cause chaos.
They are going to blame the deep state or some marginalized group other than the one they just deported
It’s those darn liberal environmental and labor regulations
They would blame Biden, Harris, Obama and Hillary Clinton for these things and more.
Jokes aside, people will only start being outraged when Starbucks and Dunkin’ start selling their favorite drinks for $15+. I only hope that when things get to that point people start taking the streets in protest.
and I'll probably just pay the tariffs and move on because half the time stuff made in the US falls apart or is laced with pesticides banned elsewhere
Yep. If you're rich enough to can profit off the economy tanking
I think thats what the crypto people are banking on. Rapid inflation. You're better off just buying imported goods now though, you can always sell them the crypto people at a markup later. Real goods have far more intrinsic value.
There is also seasonal trade to US even when it grows in US.
New FDA head will just change the food pyramid to Coca Cola is a vegetable.
Right, if all you eat is meat, wheat, corn syrup and potatoes, no problem!
Well, the US turning into a banana republic will at least solve the problem for bananas.
I just remembered that Coca-Cola requires denatured coca leaves from South America.
So enjoy that $8 Coke can, America
Finally a real cure for American obesity.
We'll just drink mountain dew, instead. It has bonus brominated vegetable oil.
Ah, well, if the vegetable oil has been brominated by the council of bros, it should be all good, bro.
Some folks were a little late to figuring out what tariffs were okay!
I feel like most people I have heard talking about them while supporting Trump seem to know that tariffs are taxes, but have no concept of how they play out in a real economic situation. Most fall into one or both of two camps:
A) Tariffs are taxes, but they're taxes for companies not individuals, and they're only applied to importing, so they won't affect me.
B) Tariffs are taxes for foreign companies, to level the playing field and keep American business competitive. Since the companies that have to pay it are foreign, it won't affect me.
Spoiler alert, guys: no matter where the tax is levied in the system, the consumer is the only person who ever pays for it, since they're the only ones that can't pass that cost on to anyone else.
Also, while this can make domestic competitors more competitive, it's important to remember two things: first, if it works, it's only working by making things more expensive for consumers, and second, this assumes that the domestic competitors want more business, have the ability and posture to increase their production to meet the new greater demand, and will operate in good faith. Much more likely is that they simply also increase their prices in reaction to the tariffs, so they're not producing or selling any more volume and aren't creating any jobs... they're just padding their profit margins at the corporate/shareholder level while doing nothing for their employees, all while having the average consumer foot the bill.
That's exactly what happened with the steel tariffs in the first Trump term and that's exactly what will happen now...the only difference is that this time it seems like there will be significantly fewer economic buffers between the tariff and the consumer, so more people will more directly feel the sting here...and presumably the mental gymnastics from the MAGAts will be even sadder in their attempts to somehow make it not a criticism of their orange leader's incompetence.
Tariffs are taxes, but they’re taxes for companies not individuals, and they’re only applied to importing, so they won’t affect me.
Typical Magoo (literally my dad in 2016): "you can't tax business owners, they're going to just make everything more expensive for us! They pass on the burden to us!"
Also Magoo: "Yay tarrifs! They are a tax on business but that won't get passed on to me!"
The Magoo motto: Whatever words I need to use to suit my purpose I will use, to hell with reality.
"Surely the company that sells a product for $100 will keep selling the product for that price once tariffs mean that it costs a $125 to produce and import!" - crazy people.
Wanna bet that the search trend spikes again when/if they come into affect?
I will literally cry if Trump takes coffee from me
Thankfully they only placed tariffs on covfefe imports.
Thank you for reminding me there is at least some comedy coming in the future
Invest in Hawaiian. Maybe Trump can add a few more islands out there so we can compete and export.
Peter Theil coffee farm ships
You think it's going to be bad when people find out coffee prices are shooting up? Wait until they find out about chocolate.
Good news - chocolate rations have increased from 30 grams to 20 grams
This calls for 50 milliliters of Victory Gin!
And meat after all that feed gets tariffed.
I'd bet they exempt it. The corporate grinder doesn't really work without stimulants for the workers to purchase so they can work (and consume) more and sleep less.
No, need to keep the peasants to tired to revolt
No more avocado toast
Yay! I can finally afford a hous-… and Blackrock just bought it out from underneath me…
Uff, we'll have to eat Florida avocados, I do not think they taste as good as hass avocados.
Coffee :(
Honestly though the coffee industry is really awful and I should probably stop drinking it
Just about all of the food industry is abhorrent
Just about all of the food industry is abhorrent
FTFY
Just about all of the food industry is abhorrent
FTFY
Just about all of the food
FTFY
mm. Food.
Yeah
Drink your brown go-water, slave. You need to output at least 10% more than the last quarter, every quarter.
It would be interesting to see the first bipartisan riot.
The first bipartisan riot in the US was kinda the whiskey rebellion.
They can't get out of bed for it without their coffee.
I work at a small, premium pet food manufacturer. People already complain about our prices. While most of our ingredients are sourced domestically, specialty meats are not. Lamb, duck, venison, goose, etc. going up will dramatically raise our prices.
Many of our products are chicken, pork, or beef-based, and these ingredients are sourced domestically. The fun twist is the rise in popularity of breeds and designer mixes that are predisposed to ingredient sensitivities or allergies. Many of these breeders advise against chicken or beef in these dogs' foods.
You'd think people spending 3-9 thousand dollars on puppies would be in a position to afford special diets, but my experience says otherwise. It's about to get a lot worse.
We're lucky, in that we're one of the few brands who utilizes mostly domestically sourced ingredients. I would expect pet food to jump generally, which doesn't bode well for the increased pressure shelters and rescues are already facing.
All this insecurity about tariffs has me hoping he have a Boston Tea Party situation. If I recall the story correctly, they threw the expensive British Tea overboard to protest the tax.
Similarly, I also recall a sugar tax, and either an ink or paper one: basically, I hope I can see something similar to see there's still a small piece of American values from our ancestors (not the twisted Conservative heaven MAGA wants, but on the American dream of freedom, liberty, and justice for ALL.)
They were definitely just going to protect the natives, that's the lovable British empire that I know
For sure, this wasn’t out of benevolence. The Brits mostly wanted to avoid more war. Remember why those all those taxes were raised? Sending soldiers over to fight Frenchmen and Indians is expensive. If those backwards colonists keep fucking with them, the Indians are going to cooperate more with the French.
Can we do it without fucking up the environment in the process?
Nah. Environment needs to pay
What has Mother Earth ever done for us?
Rabbit hole time.
Apparently, caffeine in soft drinks is synthetic. I thought they just used caffeine that is extracted from decaffeinating coffee beans - not so. Also it's barely produced in the US (anymore), and we mostly import it from China.
Neat part is: it doesn't look all that complicated to synthesize and requires some common-ish organic compounds and solvents to make. As a bonus, the "the raw synthetic caffeine often glows - a bluish phosphorence". If anyone is on his Patreon, please give NileRed a nudge to give this a shot; I think it would be right up his alley.
So we can get by without coffee, but short of running your own chemistry lab, it's going to be a bit before industry can ramp up production of the synthetic stuff. Meanwhile, caffeinated beverages across the board would be more expensive were synthetic caffeine a part of any tariff scheme.
I am kinda surprised the banana country authorities let this happen at all
Hahaha, shame on you. I live in a country where we make the coffee and we still pay taxes for it.
Where is that? Brasil?
My remembrance fo colombian coffee is that it was stupidly good and stupidly cheap to buy freaking everywhere inside the country.. I may be wrong though
Yep, Brazil. We pay around 10 to 15% IIRC. Could be more, idk.
Well, someone has to pay to keep the land off of poor people.
Gonna be some cranky leopards in America.
They are just gonna blame Biden still
"I can't believe Kamala did this!"
Huge uptick in folks drinking 4 Loco.
Apparently, farmers buy a lot of fertilizer from China.
Don't worry, that can be sourced locally. Trump produces enough bullshit to supply the country.
Unfortunately toxic bullshit isnt great for growing things.
Yeah but all his hot air isn't got for global warming.
Hawaii for one
Hawaiian coffee is $25 a pound, at least it was when I bought some there a few years ago
Soon that’ll be the cheapest you can get it
And that's how tariffs work
It'll rise with the rest, or does anyone believe a premium brand would just omit a general price increase among virtually all competitors and become a brand anyone can afford? Especially since Hawaiian coffee is majorly limited in supply.
Right, I’m saying $25 will be the floor for coffee that’s currently $6, not that $25 coffee will be unaffected by the market
Gotcha
until the demand for it skyrockets. then it’s either gone or just as expensive as all the tariffed coffee.
Lived in Hawaii most of my life: the big name coffees from here are terrible and only have that insane price because it's from Hawaii. Though there are some small local roasters here
Kauai Coffee is a relatively large operation that exports to the continental US and is more like $9 retail (and perpetually on sale for $7.50 or so) for a 10oz bag in the grocery store.
It's not cheap coffee, but it's certainly not top of the line priced coffee.
They do make some coffees that are more than $25/lb, but not the "regular* stuff people would buy in a store.
Of course I agree that their price will go up with the market with tariffs introduced, and that in general the tariffs are a terrible, terrible idea.
Unfortunately the Jones Act means shipping from Hawaii to the continental US requires the use of a shipping vessel constructed in the US, flying the US flag, and entirely crewed by US citizens which makes the shipping costs expensive as fuck.
Hawaii is wayyyy too small to meet the coffee demands of a country as big as the US.
This is factually accurate by a several orders of magnitude
A LOT of food sold in the US are imported.
No more coffee but plenty of PRIME(tm) for all!
Dude, if we tariff coffee I will personally write a strenuous letter to Trump. In crayon, and strenuous because I won't have had my coffee.
I do think like 1 million americans sending letters to the white house telling them to fuck off is a funny thing to do. How many letters can be opened by 1 person a day?
All of them in severe grogginess crayon writing on construction paper. So they know as soon as they open it.
Beans?
The things at the bottom of some paws?
Nah, those are and will always be free--if you're lucky. 😼😹 Grab 'em while you can (without bite marks).
(with a little bite marks is still fine :))
inb4 ersatz coffee revival
My chicory plantation will finally turn a profit! Wait till Dandelion Dan hears about this!
Chicory makes my teeth hurt, and it tastes like ass. Just seeing the word makes me want to explode vomit out of my eye sockets. It's horrible what the fuck is wrong with you people
On slave plantations for the most part
Foreign slave plantations.
.... Not that slave plantations anywhere makes it better, but the fact that it's foreign will mean that not only is the labor mainly performed by slaves, but we're also paying a premium because it's imported goods. Double jeopardy.
Yay capitalism!
No tariffs have been set but we're going to just assume they'll be put on items we can't even make. 100% tariffs on everything, trade isn't something you strategically do.
The incumbent has claimed repeatedly that there will be 10% tariff on all foreign goods. We can certainly bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening, but that doesn't really do us much good.
He's not the incumbent. He's the president-elect.
Either he lies all the time or he tells the truth, can't have both. I'd love to try elimination of the income tax in exchange for tariffs but there's no way it's going to happen despite whatever campaign promises were made.
That is a laughably stupid tax policy.
To expand on this, it's laughably stupid because it disproportionately affects the poor. When everybody pays the same tax, poor people have to be taxed significantly more. Same rate of taxation on 35k and 200k, the person earning 200k can easily afford things like food and housing and a luxury car whereas the person making 35k would be pressed just to afford the increased prices on things like groceries and other necessities that tariffs bring. Not to mention that a 10% tariff would not support our budget, and that tariffs are intended to boost domestic manufacturing. When that does occur, the budget starts getting less and less because the US is no longer raking in the tariff cash.
Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.
Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.
IF the thinker is looking for a good overall policy and not just trying to stick more money in their pockets in the short term.
You expect them to cry about the working class affording food when they only have a house for three out of the four seasons of the year?
I want to expand on your expansion of my glib comment. While taxing the poor and working class at a higher proportional rate is obviously immoral, it's also bad economic policy. The working class are essentially the "engine" of the economy. Their income circles back into the greater economy at a much higher rate than a rich person's. The harder you tax them, more more you slow down the economy. While is technically true for any tax bracket, you can tax the rich much more aggressively with very little impact on the overall economy, because so much of their money is for toys.
We're actually seeing a big problem right now, with so many billionaires they are running out of decent places to put their money that's worth their time. We have way too many billionaires and not enough millionaires and small business owners. A billionaire will never invest in your taco truck, but the local "fairly rich" guy might. The billionaires are betting big on AI, in part, because they have no other bets they can make. We need to tax their asses way more aggressively and pump that money into micro businesses to make our economies robust.
(While I'm speaking about the US in particular, this is somewhat of a global trend.)
That is a laughably stupid tax policy.
A comment so good I upvoted it twice
Why try that? It’s terribly regressive economic and taxation policy. It’s essentially a huge sales tax.
Alternative reality peeps be like:
That’s the problem. Trump is a complete fucking idiot, so just because something is a terrible strategy doesn’t mean he won’t do it. Look what happened last time with the tariffs on Chinese goods and the small trade war he sparked that screwed over soy exports. Did Trump learn anything from that? Or his voters? Evidently not.
Not sure if nafta is still active but I don’t think we can tariff Mexico. Mexico has some good coffee options
And I’m not defending trump at all but I don’t think he has any plans on putting tariffs for South America. I thought it was like only a China thing.
Could it be possible for companies to drop ship through Canada or Mexico to skip the tariffs?
If tariff checked based on country of origin it wont help.
then that's what will happen. The Trumps will likely embezzle their fortune from tax payer dollars by only applying tariffs from shipment origin, allowing billions to come through SA, which in turn may fund more fascism in SA and ultimately help support Russia.
it would be the biggest liquidation of a country in history as all the American wealth is pumped into SA and distributed out from there.
Also there’s always Hawaiian coffee. It’s just not cheap.
Maybe there’s money in starting a coffee exporting business to the US…
???
Not only do tariffs decrease demand by increasing cost, I think you'll find that people have, in fact, considered that idea before.
Wonder if we will see an uptick in American made "koffee"?
Something like the Ersatzkaffee from yesteryear. I mean they have the means of making caffeine so maybe it will be better?
Black Rifle Koffee
But (assuming a tarrif is something that can even pass) I imagine you're going to see a swiss cheese of exemptions for favored countries. And these countries will become a back door for imports.
Expect all of your coffee to be mysteriously harvested from Canada.
Why do you think Canada would be spared tariffs?
The intent is clearly to "fix" the USs trade deficit, so Canada being the biggest trade partner would be prime for these.
I think any tariff that passes will have a swiss cheese of exemptions, because that's just how the game is played in Congress.
Lobby hard enough and you'll get your country excused one way or another.
Canada being the biggest trade partner would be prime for these.
It would be prime for Canadian ports, and for a host of middle men who get to launder trade goods through a legal loophole.
But that's the real end game. Not domesticating manufacturing, but monopolizing channels for import/export.
I mean sure that's the way it went before, but just on the intention of the incoming administration (who will have full control of all three branches) the planned tariffs will target something.
No don't. Last mandate, Trump out tarrifs on Canadian steel, labeled it a strategic risk. Read somewhere that it boosted Russian owned us steel mills somehow. Canada is not getting any favors from that guy.
Read somewhere that it boosted Russian owned us steel mills somehow.
Given the degree of US sanctioning on Russia, I'm not clear what a "Russian owned US Steel Mill" is even supposed to look like.
I remember Japanese Manufacturer Nippon Steel is moving towards full acquisition of US Steel, the largest steel maker in the country. That has, at least in part, been driven by the threat of US tariffs. But this only further illustrates the problem. Foreign mega-corps gobbling up domestic industry do nothing to improve the US economy.
About a year of shelf storage life for green whole unroasted coffee beans.
Been thinking about them beans
In our techo utopian future, the only caffeinated beverage will be Diet Mt. Dew.
Because of your lack of patriotism for our national beverage, the leadership has decreed that you will now only be able to drink caffeine-free Diet Mt. Dew.
The leader has issues a new memorandum. You will only be allowed to drink flat, room-temperature, caffeine free Diet Mt. Dew.
Ewwww, I will take the crab juice.
Sorry, everyone who knows how to make khlav kalash has been deported.
Get yourself a few bottles of caffeine pills. They're really cheap and might get you through some tough times
I'm sure the fuckface is going to only tariff countries and products he doesn't like, that saidF we have no idea if Mr. KFC drinks coffee or andrenochrome (joke) my guess is he hates mexico so coffee is getting taxed and things like monster and coke are gonna be the only caffeine available. Start growing coffee folks.
I have a gut feeling that his talk of tariffs is a bluff. Even if it's not my gut still tells me there's going to be exceptions for certain things that are big money makers for Trump and his allies. Trump's administration is not going to tax themselves unless they can provide a loophole to get themselves out of it. Ultimately it's the consumer who pays for tariffs, but they're entire purpose is to slow down trade and if that costs Trump and his allies too much of their wealth it won't happen.
Trump is as predictable as he is unpredictable because he doesn't stay consistent. He changes what he says and does to be perceived as best he can in that moment. Which makes understanding his actions a little easier, his past actions are irrelevant to his future decisions, it's just about what's in his head in the moment. Which is just a lot of words to say that Trump, his administration, and his allies are just chaos, and you never really know what chaos will bring except a change in the status quo. It's not looking optimistic though.
You mean, so-called shit hole countries?
As a Canadian, I'm curious if we're considered a "shit hole country" to these fucks.
I think it depends more on how white you are.
Me? I'm basically driven snow over here. Plenty of people who live here aren't though. I like those people. They're different. I like different.
So then what companies should be formed in the US to give its citizens a chance at affordability of breathing in this life ?
Not something Daniel Suelo buys
As a non-drinker of coffee, I am fully onboard with raising the price of coffee. Everyone is far too addicted to it and drink excessively to an unhealthy amount. Less coffee would be better for general health. Same for chocolate, as I saw someone else mention.
Too bad Trump doesn't care about that and doesn't actually have any plan in mind for this kind of economic policy for the welfare of the people.
"I want things to be worse for everyone who isn't exactly like me."
You're the worst kind of person.
As a non-drinker of coffee
the rest of your opinion is moot. you have no say in this because you don't understand the concepts behind coffee.
I had to stop drinking coffee for health reasons. it was fucking awful. drank a cup a day for decades. I couldn't function properly even six months later.
eventually I started drinking decaf, it helped.
you know why? the routine. the caffeine content is abysmally low but it comforts me first thing in the morning. It's probably the same for many coffee drinkers.
so really, do you want to inhabit a world where at least HALF of the people you know start their day out on the wrong side?
Politically-motivated tea tax, what could go wrong?
what would the boston tea party equivalent for america be? dumping an entire mcdonalds worth in the sewers?
The Boston tea party was the American equivalent of the Boston tea party.
I think they meant to say modern American, no?
Then they should've
Maybe they a word
The Galveston Coffee Shootout.
Nationalizing energy infrastructure
That's just eating at McDonald's with ... less steps.
They wouldn’t handle it.
Tbh thats just one step less than how it normally works.
"No tariffs without Harris"
Chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, pepper, tea, bananas, and a fuckload of other things that are completely integrated into our regular diets are almost exclusively imported.
Sugar too. That ain't healthy and is kinda fancy but... Can you see them losing their shit over sugar prices? I do.
Tomatoes imports were 2.5B in 2023.
Apparently the us imports 15% of it's food supply.
That can't be right. Corn can't be only 85% of our food.
But seriously, there's so much goddamn corn. Our meat is fed corn. Our processed foods and drinks are pumped full of corn. Even our fucking cars eat corn. We're up to our fucking ears in ears of corn.
Based on what I find online, the us import about $2B in raw-sugar, while some (about 100M) is exported again.
Source: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-sugar/reporter/usa
How much "processed" sugar leaves the us again? I am not sure. Maybe all of it.
We already use HFCS in everything, it will just get even more extreme.
Gonna have to put a spoonful of HFCS into your ersatz coffee.
The government subsidizes corn, so there's an incentive to use that corn. There are tariffs on imported sugar so it's cheaper to use HFCS
W-we gotta get out of here Morty! Everything here is on a fucking cob!
Sugar is fancy now? Man my grandpa would be thrilled were he alive. There's a colloquial term for the farm-houses of sugar beat farmers in Northern Germany, "beat castles", as they quickly made a lot of money growing the beats in the late 19th century. When sugar became more accessible due to the processing of the beats to refined sugar. The wealth is long gone now, similarly to how salt used to be a luxury good.
No. That is the point.
Sugar is "fancy" as in "you don't need sugar for your diet".
Technically, we don't need raw sugar for our diet at all. So technically correct?
We also don't need any sugar substitutes, like HFCS, but you can find that or sugar, in the ingredients list of pretty much all processed foods.
Yay capitalism!
Yeah, we do high fructose corn syrup over here. It's even more addictive, even less healthy, and it tastes bad. So obviously, we put it in everything, even premade salads
There's plenty of corn syrup to replace it with unfortunately.
I understand your perspective but I want to ask a question, not to you, but for you to think about it. What motivation causes the imports?
If corn syrup is a replacement for whatever they are doing, why are they importing raw sugar? If raw sugar is cheaper than you would expect them to already use sugar for everything and not corn syrup, and switching to corn syrup would be an increase in cost . If raw sugar costs the same, import is additional paperwork, why import? Raw sugar is more expensive, why would they pay more?
Raw sugar can't be replaced easily in their use case? Now that makes sense.
Sugar tastes better than HFCS. Ask anyone who drinks Mexican Coke. "Tastes better" doesn't matter when there's no other option.
Fact is, HFCS is cheaper. I haven't checked the entirety of it's supply chain to figure out why, but it is cheaper.
If sugar was the same cost, they wouldn't have switched to HFCS in the first place (why mess with your successful product for no gain?). Fact of the matter is that HFCS is saving them money. It might be pennies per bottle, but when you're moving 10M bottles of soda, those pennies turn into dividends, literally.
Which is why I am almost certain that there is a reason why they import raw sugar
And the rest is farmed here by undocumented workers.
Avocados for your avocado toast. Smh.
not if you live in cali
That's it, the other states have crossed the line, time for CalExit.
honestly this is more feasible than brexit imo (not advocating for it)
Such a nice opportunity lost. "I'm not avocading for it."
id rather advocate for is the demolishing of all borders and the guarantee of helping every person on the planet no matter what.
It was just a little pun. Advocating / Avocading.
im dumb
We can be dumb together.
A lot of fruit/veg is grown in places they can get away with slave wages and then shipped here because that’s how little labor costs. Less than our already super low paid fruit/veg pickers that are primarily the people who escaped the countries and situations that put them in those even lower slave wage places.
Coffee, tea, and everything you're wearing right now.
A ton of parts of what you are driving, all your maga hats, a ton of stuff that's in your house
Your mom wears maga hats.
Oh no, but I need to buy a new buttplug every day!
Wait, I'm not American, nvm.
Most buttplugs can be washed. Just a money-saving tip for you there.
Nah, it's not about single-use, it's about the collection. You can't take some og the rare ones out of their original packaging or they lose value!
I hear it's all about the blind box butt plugs today. That way you have to keep buying them and getting duplicates until you get a rare one.
A shiny!!
Much of that is cotton. I believe that in the "good" ol' days the US grew that themselves. Start that industry up again, and you don't need mass deportations across the border.
You could even run the farms the same way as in the olden days, if you criminalize and incarcarate enough black people.
I mean, that's how cotton is produced nowadays too, except Uyghurs are the ones doing it.
Well boy howdy, it turns out we already been done doin that there part about criminalizing and incarcerating them black people just out of sheer racism. You're telling me that there could've been a profit motive to it this whole time too?
jk, private contracted prisons were already profiting deeply off of that.
I thought you were already doing that...
Ah, yes...
All we need to keep that industry running like the good ol' days is a massive industry of government subsidized illegal immigration of easily identified persons
The US still makes massive amounts of cotton. That all gets exported to other countries before getting turned into garments and things.
Cotton takes a LOT of water to grow. And takes up farmland that could grow food.
Most of your clothes are artificial fabrics these days. Or blended
Yea, and I hear children's tiny hands are perfect for picking it.
I wanted some foreign goods to get more expensive. To end slavery, not to escalate a trade war!
I should have checked my vicinity for any stray monkey's paws when I made that wish.
“Fair Trade” is what you’re looking for. I don’t know how legit all instances are or whether they make a real difference, but its an attempt
This may sound pedantic, but you're looking for Fairtrade (one word) for the organization with the strictest vetting standards. Fair Trade (two words) isn't regulated and just means they follow some sort of ethical code. It's not necessarily bad, but it warrants more product specific research.
Huh I wonder how many Fair Trade items I bought thinking they were Fairtrade. Thanks.
Some people have never even looked at a dang banana
It's one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?
In trump's economy, maybe?
The joke will take on a new meaning when $10 is the good old days.
That's the thing I find most depressing about a trump presidency, there will be a time when the rational Left looks back on it as "when things weren't so bad."
Like, when I was a kid I, and many others, never imagined there could be a president dumber than Bush...
Don't they grow bananas in Hawaii? I know they have coffee out on Kona.
Coffee grows on Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and recently in a little bit in CA (to add to water problems)
But Labor + limited amounts means it won't be cheaper
You can grow a banana at home. Dwarf banana plants can grow inside. The normal size banana plant is not living room sized, no wonder people think they grow on trees
But how many people drink coffee? And how many bananas can you grow for your self?
I'm not American, but tariffs to fix import issues is pretty stupid.
This is the capitalist dream, export all the production of the goods you use daily to third world countries, who will have shit labor practices like the US used to have when slavery was a thing (and bluntly, for quite a while afterwards), so that the boots-on-the-ground laborers that produce everything are either treated like slaves or literally are slaves, then import the raw material to be manufactured into whatever you're selling in the US, so you can slap a "made in the USA" sticker on your shit to enhance sales and charge more. Meanwhile "made in the USA" doesn't and shouldn't imply that there's no imported goods going into the manufacturing process to make that thing, just that you took raw materials (from wherever) and made this thing in the USA.
Tariffs unduly harm end consumers, pretty much everything we buy and own is, or has components that are, imported shit.
Most microchips, a large amount of the food we eat, most electronics, pretty much everything you'll find at a dollar general, etc (the list is very very long)... all imported in whole or in part.
Hell, there was a time that it was more economical to have your raw materials, even if they're mined/harvested/produced in the USA, shipped overseas for assembly by slave labor, then shipped back for sale to the US public, than to have it assembled inside the US. Much of that is still true. The US neither has the manufacturing capacity, nor the desire to build their own shit. The only time that's not the economical option is for large cost (and scale, either in size or money) items, like housing or vehicles. Assembly generally happens in the country/landmass where the vehicle will be sold and used. Even a company like Toyota, a Japanese brand, will have assembly plants in the USA for cars sold in the USA, because that's cheaper than importing hundreds of vehicles. For everything else, it's generally cheaper to assemble it outside of the country and import the final product.
You think process are high now? Wait until the tariff wars really kick off.
No company is going to accept the costs of tariffs and be okay with that eating their profits, they're passing that cost into consumers, because we're the saps that are still going to buy it.
When the tariffs come down, and they will eventually, prices will drop, but not to where they were from before the tariffs. Companies will continue to post record profits, justifying not giving raises because tariffs, and wages will remain stagnant. We'll earn less, while they rob is for more than they already do.
The worst part is that when the tariffs are lifted, we'll thank them for lowering the prices by buying more of their shit. We'll be grateful for the opportunity to pay even more into their profit margins.
Congratulations, you're experiencing late stage capitalism. The system is working as intended. You are poor, you remain poor, barely able to scratch out a living, while your owners profit more and more off of your hard work, and you get to thank them for that opportunity.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Prices won't go down, companies will pocket the difference
Oh, they'll go down.... But it won't be nearly as much as it went up to cover the tariff.
What I'm thinking is, let's say a widget is $100, tariffs go in at, say 5%. So it should cost $105, but the price increases to $110. People cry bloody murder, but ultimately they "need" the widget so they buy it. Tariffs go away, yay, the price is dropped, it's now $107.99
that's what I'm thinking.
Also it's all the Democrats fault.
In practice, that's not what happens generally. A widget is $100, the 5% tariff brings it up to $105 and company bumps the price to $110. People need the widget so they buy it at $110. Tariff goes away, but company knows that people will pay at least $110 for the widget, so they try bumping the price to $115. Maybe it doesn't sell, so they "discount" it back to $110 and people will happily buy it thinking they're getting a deal, while the company is pocketing that extra $10.
That's certainly a possibility.
I would argue that we're both right depending on what the widget is.
(Assuming the price is changed to be proportional and appropriate for the product) Something like a grocery item is more prone to my thought, and something that has generational differences, such as a laptop or something, will likely follow your theory more closely.
I think a lot of this will still be tied to price elasticity. If the price is very elastic then the former system would be more likely. Drop the price so you can push more units (and overall, profit goes up), where things that are far less elastic, say, an iPhone, would tend to simply continue to increase like the latter system you describe.
At the end of the day, both are horrid, terrible, and very very common. So I'll finish by saying: no matter what happens, people are going to be getting massively fucked, and corporations will post record profits yet again.
Fuck corporations.
I want everyone to be angry enough to do something about this.
How do we get everyone angry.
You spew this every day for the next four years with as wide a firehose as possible. Track every tariff and price it effects, scream it into every tar pit media site out there. Literally just shove this in everyone's faces for this entire time. Every time.
Won't work, they yell "fake news" then bury their heads in the sand like they always do.
Idk misinformation tactics would probably work the same for information and with Republicans theres enough hidden truth to firehose. We aren't swaying MAGAts. We're grabbing those dumb centrists
A proper education would have done it.
Let's be reasonable here.
This is the problem --- taking away my coffee makes me angry, but I'll be too tired to do anything about it.
I would say that we've also largely lost the means to afford stuff built here, in large part as a consequence of our endless pursuit of cheap crap while scraping the bottom of the barrel with outsourcing. Even if you want to buy domestically-made goods, since we've lost so many of those good union jobs, especially in manufacturing, we no longer have the means to pay what it costs to make such a product with American workers. Especially if people intend to continue with their current consumerist trends.
I'm making $20/hour at the moment. If I want to buy American, union-made shoes, it'll run me $400 a pair, on the lower end. I think it's pretty reasonable to have a pair of work boots, a pair of regular shoes for wearing out and about, and a pair of dress shoes, which at that low end will run me 37.5% of my monthly gross pay. Now do the same for domestically produced clothing, and you've probably run up a bill of several month's pay, just to have enough outfits to last you a single week, leaving aside coats, seasonal clothing, or formal attire. We're either going to have to sharply curtail our purchasing and focus on buying a smaller amount of goods meant to last as long as possibly, or the sadly more likely scenario, we'll see the establishment of domestic sweatshops to fuel the consumerist impulses of what remains of the middle class and up. Whether we'll just go even more insane in our treatment of the poor here, or use prison labor and undocumented migrants "pending" deportation in these sweatshops remains to be seen, but Americans have demonstrated we shortsightedly value our ability to accumulate cheap trash over anything else.
I'd love to be proven wrong, and see a growth of strong unions and domestic production leading to a resurgence in American craftsmanship again, but the current environment is less than amenable to this outcome, to put it mildly.
I don't mean to imply the US should go back to manufacturing their own goods like they had to before global trade was economical.
I hope the point I'm making is that the people like Trump, mostly aggressive capitalists, are significantly in favor of these trends, and adding tariffs to imported goods will harm the businesses that the tariff is intended to protect.
Sales will drop because most goods are simply more price elastic than that. Cost goes up, sales drop, and overall you lose profits. When costs go up, alternative products are supposed to take up the business you lost by raising prices.
Though, to be fair, that price elasticity model is broken. Most product types have been agglutinated into a couple of large companies in an oligopoly, so all brands of that kind of product raise prices to match all the other brands. With no other competition in the market, consumers have the "choice" of paying more for the same thing, or not buying it.
In any case, the entire economy has been so thoroughly fucked by corporations that is just a money printing machine for the ultra rich to get richer.
I've depressed myself now. I'm gonna go.
I didn't think you were, I was more saying that the loss of many of those jobs that had been outsourced in the pursuit of cheap stuff means that, even if Trump's proposed tariffs were effective at bringing those jobs back, it might not matter because they would still cost more than most residents of the US would be able to afford. At least, with current working conditions, many of these goods would simply cost more than people would be willing to pay, as we've been collectively conditioned to want as much stuff as possible, as cheap as possible. Domestic production of so many goods would require a drastic shift in consumer habits to even have a chance at being viable in the long term, but they absolutely couldn't do the sort of volume that places like China has and be able to sell at a profit, barring the implementation of Chinese-style working conditions.
Chocolate also. Lol I hope you fucking like corn syrup and candy corn you little shits.
I prefer buying my coffee and chocolate directly from the child slave labour. None of that free trade shit. It makes me feel connected to a past I never lived in.
I usually fly in to buy it locally. Important these days to know your farmers
I like to talk to the grain harvesting robot every once in a while, really lets me feel like I'm part of a community
I pictured this together in a bowl and it's making me feel a hair nauseated
Classic American breakfast 🤌
The syrup helps the little corns slide down better.
Also: I can't feel my toes but I'm sure that's unrelated.
Who are we kidding? Trump’s going to enforce it selectively to nefarious ends and enrich himself off exemptions that he’s hand picked to be subservient. Free market my ass.
I've been saying this. I'm curious to see who wins out. In this case it's populist bullshit vs American coffee retailers. Let's see who comes out on top.
100% this. I see tariffs on foreign cars coming quick.
So nothing and it's just a money grab
No. Everyone who doesn't have money for him to grab is fucked.
Most competent governments think like this goose because their believe in rules based order and systems. Trump doesn't ascribe to that view and I think he will make a sweeping change and will personally govern exceptions until it suits himself and his base. Hopefully that mangment consumes his time enough to make him less effective.
People listing Hawaii like they could meet the total US demand, even if they could scale to maximum production overnight.
Most of the corn we eat is Brazilian. Most of the corn we grow is feed corn for cows and process corn for HFCS and other processed food ingredients.
As an American born and raised in Illinois I can also inform the rest of the populace our corn also gets used to make ethanol, an alternative fuel source.
Ethanol is incredibly inefficient as a fuel source.
If not for the massive subsidies it would not exist.
Still, ethanol is a better fuel additive than lead. (Both reduce knocking)
Still, the far better use is to grow food.
Im guessing they also never seen how much the coffee from there cost. Plus supply and demand you dumb fucks. The cost will skyrocket. Kona coffee ranges from $30 to $100 a bag. Think of a massive increase of demand. Are we going to pay $100 a bag for low end stuff?
Hawaii does have the largest coffee growing industry in the entire US but they are severely limited by the amount of available land. Compared to other coffee-producing nations, the Big Island is microscopically tiny, so they mainly focus on high quality, artisanal product sold at extremely high prices. Not that I would mind if all the coffee sold everywhere would be replaced by Kona coffee overnight, but it just isn't feasible.
It sure would help if Americans weren’t generally ignorant about uh… tons of stuff and especially anything that involves other countries. All sorts of fruits and vegetables are imported - green beans, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, berries, bananas, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant. And then at the same time, the Trump bros want to crack down on groups of people who make up a large portion of the domestic agricultural workforce? It’s difficult to see some conservative policies as intended to do anything other than just fuck people over and cause chaos.
They are going to blame the deep state or some marginalized group other than the one they just deported
It’s those darn liberal environmental and labor regulations
They would blame Biden, Harris, Obama and Hillary Clinton for these things and more.
Jokes aside, people will only start being outraged when Starbucks and Dunkin’ start selling their favorite drinks for $15+. I only hope that when things get to that point people start taking the streets in protest.
and I'll probably just pay the tariffs and move on because half the time stuff made in the US falls apart or is laced with pesticides banned elsewhere
Yep. If you're rich enough to can profit off the economy tanking
I think thats what the crypto people are banking on. Rapid inflation. You're better off just buying imported goods now though, you can always sell them the crypto people at a markup later. Real goods have far more intrinsic value.
There is also seasonal trade to US even when it grows in US.
New FDA head will just change the food pyramid to Coca Cola is a vegetable.
Right, if all you eat is meat, wheat, corn syrup and potatoes, no problem!
Well, the US turning into a banana republic will at least solve the problem for bananas.
I just remembered that Coca-Cola requires denatured coca leaves from South America.
So enjoy that $8 Coke can, America
Finally a real cure for American obesity.
We'll just drink mountain dew, instead. It has bonus brominated vegetable oil.
Ah, well, if the vegetable oil has been brominated by the council of bros, it should be all good, bro.
Some folks were a little late to figuring out what tariffs were okay!
I feel like most people I have heard talking about them while supporting Trump seem to know that tariffs are taxes, but have no concept of how they play out in a real economic situation. Most fall into one or both of two camps:
A) Tariffs are taxes, but they're taxes for companies not individuals, and they're only applied to importing, so they won't affect me.
B) Tariffs are taxes for foreign companies, to level the playing field and keep American business competitive. Since the companies that have to pay it are foreign, it won't affect me.
Spoiler alert, guys: no matter where the tax is levied in the system, the consumer is the only person who ever pays for it, since they're the only ones that can't pass that cost on to anyone else.
Also, while this can make domestic competitors more competitive, it's important to remember two things: first, if it works, it's only working by making things more expensive for consumers, and second, this assumes that the domestic competitors want more business, have the ability and posture to increase their production to meet the new greater demand, and will operate in good faith. Much more likely is that they simply also increase their prices in reaction to the tariffs, so they're not producing or selling any more volume and aren't creating any jobs... they're just padding their profit margins at the corporate/shareholder level while doing nothing for their employees, all while having the average consumer foot the bill.
That's exactly what happened with the steel tariffs in the first Trump term and that's exactly what will happen now...the only difference is that this time it seems like there will be significantly fewer economic buffers between the tariff and the consumer, so more people will more directly feel the sting here...and presumably the mental gymnastics from the MAGAts will be even sadder in their attempts to somehow make it not a criticism of their orange leader's incompetence.
Typical Magoo (literally my dad in 2016): "you can't tax business owners, they're going to just make everything more expensive for us! They pass on the burden to us!"
Also Magoo: "Yay tarrifs! They are a tax on business but that won't get passed on to me!"
The Magoo motto: Whatever words I need to use to suit my purpose I will use, to hell with reality.
"Surely the company that sells a product for $100 will keep selling the product for that price once tariffs mean that it costs a $125 to produce and import!" - crazy people.
Very late:
https://www.axios.com/2021/02/13/us-tariffs-wine-cheese-imports-france-germany
Wanna bet that the search trend spikes again when/if they come into affect?
I will literally cry if Trump takes coffee from me
Thankfully they only placed tariffs on covfefe imports.
Thank you for reminding me there is at least some comedy coming in the future
Invest in Hawaiian. Maybe Trump can add a few more islands out there so we can compete and export.
Peter Theil coffee farm ships
You think it's going to be bad when people find out coffee prices are shooting up? Wait until they find out about chocolate.
Good news - chocolate rations have increased from 30 grams to 20 grams
This calls for 50 milliliters of Victory Gin!
And meat after all that feed gets tariffed.
I'd bet they exempt it. The corporate grinder doesn't really work without stimulants for the workers to purchase so they can work (and consume) more and sleep less.
No, need to keep the peasants to tired to revolt
No more avocado toast
Yay! I can finally afford a hous-… and Blackrock just bought it out from underneath me…
Uff, we'll have to eat Florida avocados, I do not think they taste as good as hass avocados.
Coffee :(
Honestly though the coffee industry is really awful and I should probably stop drinking it
Just about all of the food industry is abhorrent
Just about all of
the foodindustry is abhorrentFTFY
Just aboutallof the foodindustry is abhorrentFTFY
Just about all of the food
FTFY
mm. Food.
Yeah
Drink your brown go-water, slave. You need to output at least 10% more than the last quarter, every quarter.
https://www.fairtradecertified.org/what-we-do/what-we-certify/coffee/#:~:text=Fair%20Trade%20Certified%20coffee%20is,and%20strong%2C%20transparent%20supply%20chains.
It would be interesting to see the first bipartisan riot.
The first bipartisan riot in the US was kinda the whiskey rebellion.
They can't get out of bed for it without their coffee.
I work at a small, premium pet food manufacturer. People already complain about our prices. While most of our ingredients are sourced domestically, specialty meats are not. Lamb, duck, venison, goose, etc. going up will dramatically raise our prices.
Many of our products are chicken, pork, or beef-based, and these ingredients are sourced domestically. The fun twist is the rise in popularity of breeds and designer mixes that are predisposed to ingredient sensitivities or allergies. Many of these breeders advise against chicken or beef in these dogs' foods.
You'd think people spending 3-9 thousand dollars on puppies would be in a position to afford special diets, but my experience says otherwise. It's about to get a lot worse.
We're lucky, in that we're one of the few brands who utilizes mostly domestically sourced ingredients. I would expect pet food to jump generally, which doesn't bode well for the increased pressure shelters and rescues are already facing.
All this insecurity about tariffs has me hoping he have a Boston Tea Party situation. If I recall the story correctly, they threw the expensive British Tea overboard to protest the tax.
Similarly, I also recall a sugar tax, and either an ink or paper one: basically, I hope I can see something similar to see there's still a small piece of American values from our ancestors (not the twisted Conservative heaven MAGA wants, but on the American dream of freedom, liberty, and justice for ALL.)
No Taxation Without Representation!
It’s hilarious how everyone knows the Tea Party and all of the taxes, when the real reason the American revolution happened was that England wasn’t going to let us drive Native Americans out
They were definitely just going to protect the natives, that's the lovable British empire that I know
For sure, this wasn’t out of benevolence. The Brits mostly wanted to avoid more war. Remember why those all those taxes were raised? Sending soldiers over to fight Frenchmen and Indians is expensive. If those backwards colonists keep fucking with them, the Indians are going to cooperate more with the French.
Can we do it without fucking up the environment in the process?
Nah. Environment needs to pay
What has Mother Earth ever done for us?
Rabbit hole time.
Apparently, caffeine in soft drinks is synthetic. I thought they just used caffeine that is extracted from decaffeinating coffee beans - not so. Also it's barely produced in the US (anymore), and we mostly import it from China.
Neat part is: it doesn't look all that complicated to synthesize and requires some common-ish organic compounds and solvents to make. As a bonus, the "the raw synthetic caffeine often glows - a bluish phosphorence". If anyone is on his Patreon, please give NileRed a nudge to give this a shot; I think it would be right up his alley.
So we can get by without coffee, but short of running your own chemistry lab, it's going to be a bit before industry can ramp up production of the synthetic stuff. Meanwhile, caffeinated beverages across the board would be more expensive were synthetic caffeine a part of any tariff scheme.
More here:
https://www.decadentdecaf.com/blogs/decadent-decaf-coffee-co/174589383-ever-wondered-where-the-caffeine-comes-from-in-soda-or-energy-drinks-answer-synthetic-caffeine
Finally, the Step Too Far.
Maybe? We also import a shed-load of tobacco. Combined, that's not gonna be pretty.
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-tobacco/reporter/usa
I am kinda surprised the banana country authorities let this happen at all
Hahaha, shame on you. I live in a country where we make the coffee and we still pay taxes for it.
Where is that? Brasil?
My remembrance fo colombian coffee is that it was stupidly good and stupidly cheap to buy freaking everywhere inside the country.. I may be wrong though
Yep, Brazil. We pay around 10 to 15% IIRC. Could be more, idk.
Well, someone has to pay to keep the land off of poor people.
Gonna be some cranky leopards in America.
They are just gonna blame Biden still
"I can't believe Kamala did this!"
Huge uptick in folks drinking 4 Loco.
Apparently, farmers buy a lot of fertilizer from China.
Don't worry, that can be sourced locally. Trump produces enough bullshit to supply the country.
Unfortunately toxic bullshit isnt great for growing things.
Yeah but all his hot air isn't got for global warming.
Hawaii for one
Hawaiian coffee is $25 a pound, at least it was when I bought some there a few years ago
Soon that’ll be the cheapest you can get it
And that's how tariffs work
It'll rise with the rest, or does anyone believe a premium brand would just omit a general price increase among virtually all competitors and become a brand anyone can afford? Especially since Hawaiian coffee is majorly limited in supply.
Right, I’m saying $25 will be the floor for coffee that’s currently $6, not that $25 coffee will be unaffected by the market
Gotcha
until the demand for it skyrockets. then it’s either gone or just as expensive as all the tariffed coffee.
Lived in Hawaii most of my life: the big name coffees from here are terrible and only have that insane price because it's from Hawaii. Though there are some small local roasters here
Kauai Coffee is a relatively large operation that exports to the continental US and is more like $9 retail (and perpetually on sale for $7.50 or so) for a 10oz bag in the grocery store.
It's not cheap coffee, but it's certainly not top of the line priced coffee.
They do make some coffees that are more than $25/lb, but not the "regular* stuff people would buy in a store.
Of course I agree that their price will go up with the market with tariffs introduced, and that in general the tariffs are a terrible, terrible idea.
Unfortunately the Jones Act means shipping from Hawaii to the continental US requires the use of a shipping vessel constructed in the US, flying the US flag, and entirely crewed by US citizens which makes the shipping costs expensive as fuck.
Hawaii is wayyyy too small to meet the coffee demands of a country as big as the US.
This is factually accurate by a several orders of magnitude
A LOT of food sold in the US are imported.
No more coffee but plenty of PRIME(tm) for all!
Dude, if we tariff coffee I will personally write a strenuous letter to Trump. In crayon, and strenuous because I won't have had my coffee.
I do think like 1 million americans sending letters to the white house telling them to fuck off is a funny thing to do. How many letters can be opened by 1 person a day?
All of them in severe grogginess crayon writing on construction paper. So they know as soon as they open it.
Beans?
The things at the bottom of some paws?
Nah, those are and will always be free--if you're lucky. 😼😹 Grab 'em while you can (without bite marks).
(with a little bite marks is still fine :))
inb4 ersatz coffee revival
My chicory plantation will finally turn a profit! Wait till Dandelion Dan hears about this!
Chicory makes my teeth hurt, and it tastes like ass. Just seeing the word makes me want to explode vomit out of my eye sockets. It's horrible what the fuck is wrong with you people
On slave plantations for the most part
Foreign slave plantations.
.... Not that slave plantations anywhere makes it better, but the fact that it's foreign will mean that not only is the labor mainly performed by slaves, but we're also paying a premium because it's imported goods. Double jeopardy.
Yay capitalism!
No tariffs have been set but we're going to just assume they'll be put on items we can't even make. 100% tariffs on everything, trade isn't something you strategically do.
The incumbent has claimed repeatedly that there will be 10% tariff on all foreign goods. We can certainly bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening, but that doesn't really do us much good.
He's not the incumbent. He's the president-elect.
Either he lies all the time or he tells the truth, can't have both. I'd love to try elimination of the income tax in exchange for tariffs but there's no way it's going to happen despite whatever campaign promises were made.
That is a laughably stupid tax policy.
To expand on this, it's laughably stupid because it disproportionately affects the poor. When everybody pays the same tax, poor people have to be taxed significantly more. Same rate of taxation on 35k and 200k, the person earning 200k can easily afford things like food and housing and a luxury car whereas the person making 35k would be pressed just to afford the increased prices on things like groceries and other necessities that tariffs bring. Not to mention that a 10% tariff would not support our budget, and that tariffs are intended to boost domestic manufacturing. When that does occur, the budget starts getting less and less because the US is no longer raking in the tariff cash.
Basically, 20 seconds of thought could tell anybody that this is a terrible idea.
IF the thinker is looking for a good overall policy and not just trying to stick more money in their pockets in the short term.
You expect them to cry about the working class affording food when they only have a house for three out of the four seasons of the year?
I want to expand on your expansion of my glib comment. While taxing the poor and working class at a higher proportional rate is obviously immoral, it's also bad economic policy. The working class are essentially the "engine" of the economy. Their income circles back into the greater economy at a much higher rate than a rich person's. The harder you tax them, more more you slow down the economy. While is technically true for any tax bracket, you can tax the rich much more aggressively with very little impact on the overall economy, because so much of their money is for toys.
We're actually seeing a big problem right now, with so many billionaires they are running out of decent places to put their money that's worth their time. We have way too many billionaires and not enough millionaires and small business owners. A billionaire will never invest in your taco truck, but the local "fairly rich" guy might. The billionaires are betting big on AI, in part, because they have no other bets they can make. We need to tax their asses way more aggressively and pump that money into micro businesses to make our economies robust.
(While I'm speaking about the US in particular, this is somewhat of a global trend.)
That is a laughably stupid tax policy.
A comment so good I upvoted it twice
Why try that? It’s terribly regressive economic and taxation policy. It’s essentially a huge sales tax.
Alternative reality peeps be like:
That’s the problem. Trump is a complete fucking idiot, so just because something is a terrible strategy doesn’t mean he won’t do it. Look what happened last time with the tariffs on Chinese goods and the small trade war he sparked that screwed over soy exports. Did Trump learn anything from that? Or his voters? Evidently not.
Not sure if nafta is still active but I don’t think we can tariff Mexico. Mexico has some good coffee options
And I’m not defending trump at all but I don’t think he has any plans on putting tariffs for South America. I thought it was like only a China thing.
Could it be possible for companies to drop ship through Canada or Mexico to skip the tariffs?
If tariff checked based on country of origin it wont help.
then that's what will happen. The Trumps will likely embezzle their fortune from tax payer dollars by only applying tariffs from shipment origin, allowing billions to come through SA, which in turn may fund more fascism in SA and ultimately help support Russia.
it would be the biggest liquidation of a country in history as all the American wealth is pumped into SA and distributed out from there.
Also there’s always Hawaiian coffee. It’s just not cheap.
Maybe there’s money in starting a coffee exporting business to the US…
???
Not only do tariffs decrease demand by increasing cost, I think you'll find that people have, in fact, considered that idea before.
Wonder if we will see an uptick in American made "koffee"?
Something like the Ersatzkaffee from yesteryear. I mean they have the means of making caffeine so maybe it will be better?
Black Rifle Koffee
But (assuming a tarrif is something that can even pass) I imagine you're going to see a swiss cheese of exemptions for favored countries. And these countries will become a back door for imports.
Expect all of your coffee to be mysteriously harvested from Canada.
Why do you think Canada would be spared tariffs?
The intent is clearly to "fix" the USs trade deficit, so Canada being the biggest trade partner would be prime for these.
I think any tariff that passes will have a swiss cheese of exemptions, because that's just how the game is played in Congress.
Lobby hard enough and you'll get your country excused one way or another.
It would be prime for Canadian ports, and for a host of middle men who get to launder trade goods through a legal loophole.
But that's the real end game. Not domesticating manufacturing, but monopolizing channels for import/export.
I mean sure that's the way it went before, but just on the intention of the incoming administration (who will have full control of all three branches) the planned tariffs will target something.
No don't. Last mandate, Trump out tarrifs on Canadian steel, labeled it a strategic risk. Read somewhere that it boosted Russian owned us steel mills somehow. Canada is not getting any favors from that guy.
Given the degree of US sanctioning on Russia, I'm not clear what a "Russian owned US Steel Mill" is even supposed to look like.
I remember Japanese Manufacturer Nippon Steel is moving towards full acquisition of US Steel, the largest steel maker in the country. That has, at least in part, been driven by the threat of US tariffs. But this only further illustrates the problem. Foreign mega-corps gobbling up domestic industry do nothing to improve the US economy.
About a year of shelf storage life for green whole unroasted coffee beans.
Been thinking about them beans
In our techo utopian future, the only caffeinated beverage will be Diet Mt. Dew.
Because of your lack of patriotism for our national beverage, the leadership has decreed that you will now only be able to drink caffeine-free Diet Mt. Dew.
The leader has issues a new memorandum. You will only be allowed to drink flat, room-temperature, caffeine free Diet Mt. Dew.
Ewwww, I will take the crab juice.
Sorry, everyone who knows how to make khlav kalash has been deported.
Get yourself a few bottles of caffeine pills. They're really cheap and might get you through some tough times
I'm sure the fuckface is going to only tariff countries and products he doesn't like, that saidF we have no idea if Mr. KFC drinks coffee or andrenochrome (joke) my guess is he hates mexico so coffee is getting taxed and things like monster and coke are gonna be the only caffeine available. Start growing coffee folks.
I have a gut feeling that his talk of tariffs is a bluff. Even if it's not my gut still tells me there's going to be exceptions for certain things that are big money makers for Trump and his allies. Trump's administration is not going to tax themselves unless they can provide a loophole to get themselves out of it. Ultimately it's the consumer who pays for tariffs, but they're entire purpose is to slow down trade and if that costs Trump and his allies too much of their wealth it won't happen.
Trump is as predictable as he is unpredictable because he doesn't stay consistent. He changes what he says and does to be perceived as best he can in that moment. Which makes understanding his actions a little easier, his past actions are irrelevant to his future decisions, it's just about what's in his head in the moment. Which is just a lot of words to say that Trump, his administration, and his allies are just chaos, and you never really know what chaos will bring except a change in the status quo. It's not looking optimistic though.
You mean, so-called shit hole countries?
As a Canadian, I'm curious if we're considered a "shit hole country" to these fucks.
I think it depends more on how white you are.
Me? I'm basically driven snow over here. Plenty of people who live here aren't though. I like those people. They're different. I like different.
So then what companies should be formed in the US to give its citizens a chance at affordability of breathing in this life ?
Not something Daniel Suelo buys
As a non-drinker of coffee, I am fully onboard with raising the price of coffee. Everyone is far too addicted to it and drink excessively to an unhealthy amount. Less coffee would be better for general health. Same for chocolate, as I saw someone else mention.
Too bad Trump doesn't care about that and doesn't actually have any plan in mind for this kind of economic policy for the welfare of the people.
"I want things to be worse for everyone who isn't exactly like me."
You're the worst kind of person.
the rest of your opinion is moot. you have no say in this because you don't understand the concepts behind coffee.
I had to stop drinking coffee for health reasons. it was fucking awful. drank a cup a day for decades. I couldn't function properly even six months later.
eventually I started drinking decaf, it helped.
you know why? the routine. the caffeine content is abysmally low but it comforts me first thing in the morning. It's probably the same for many coffee drinkers.
so really, do you want to inhabit a world where at least HALF of the people you know start their day out on the wrong side?
It worked out fine with cigarettes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotalism
Maybe the improved focus from a nice cup of joe would have made you realize how foolish this sounds before posting.