Tariffs and sky high audio prices.

Tarriffs are always a tax on your own people.  (Not a problem if you are a person who never pays their fair share)  You and I will pay more for products that are artificially price inflated.  Total rejection of capitalistic principles based on supply and demand and 'market freedom'.  And even the most American products are full of Asian parts.  And if you want a nice tube amplifier you will of course depend on Russian vacuum tubes.  

World trade was always an inevitability because of innovation. IT greatly increased the diffusion of knowledge which led to decreased costs for trade seeking firms. Add in lower labor costs in less developed nations and you have a perfect recipe for worker and capital displacement.

I recall the 1980's and 90's when the common mantra preached in the US was let the less developed nations do the manufacturing, we'll be the innovators, the idea nation. People employed in manufacturing would now be working in some new nebulous 'high tech' job yet to be created. My thoughts at the time were, this was going to be the greatest redistribution of wealth the world had ever known.


Elites are certainly good at reading history, they understand the appeal of exhortations of national exceptionalism. A promised great new future where we do all the thinking for the rest of the world was a grand delusion.

Still, even the elites were fooled into believing their own mantras. They were all too willing to enter into Faustian bargains, trading proprietary property rights for greater profits. They didn't steal our knowledge, we gave it to them. Chinese were playing by a new Capitalism playbook, we played along.

Consumers played their role as well. My, how we love lower cost consumer goods.

And so, this bargain seemed to work until rather recent times. Suddenly the middle classes of developed nations discovered they weren't as secure as they imagined themselves. A lifetime of work for what? And so, who to blame? Well, we'll blame the immigrants and those who cheated us in trade.


And so now they want to kill the golden goose of world trade and return to a protectionist and primitive trade policy. Bad times are inevitable in this world, a less competitive world won't make us richer.


We must understand free trade has greatly increased wealth in this world. The question as always is how that wealth has been redistributed. We will never get out of the quagmire until we find new ways to assign equity to resources. Think about the coming AI revolution, who will have ownership of this valuable resource?

Hello all. So, what we have here is, as in all things in life, there are 3 opinions... “3 sides to the coin”.

Tariffs: the “tax” will be levied and Americans will pay it, OR the Chinese will pay it, OR it will be shared.

Tariff policy: the policy/strategy is brilliant, OR it is not brilliant at all, OR it is random and made up on the fly.

World standing: this episode will raise and enhance our profile internationally, OR it will erode and minimize our profile, OR it is benign.

To bring my rhetoric back to the center, I certainly believe Americans will pay the tax, the strategy is ill-conceived (it appears spontaneous actually) and I believe our international profile when evaluated in conjunction with our behavior with our friends (bash Canada and England sporadically) and our adversaries (N Korea, Russia) it will take a concerted effort by leadership and diplomats going forward to heal the damage. Thats provided others even want to dance with us anymore. Add to that that some of the genius negotiating going on is being sprinkled with a little post deal renegotiating on our end (if the NYT is to believed about the deal with Mexico actually being done weeks ago) which is never good. People begin to expect that a deal is not a deal and nothing is ever final. We have a history we would like to shake (treaties with native American tribes for instance) so that will enter the minds of trading partners more prominently.

So, how would the above affect audio? There will be little, if any, predictability or advance notice on the next tax/tariff. The flow of goods will also be sporadic and unpredictable should the rifts deepen. The price of in stock gear will rise and the supply of new gear with the potential for disruption or embargo will make then nervous too and they may actually stock up. Then, should the disruption to new supply not materialize, there may be sales with price reductions to clear it out. Also, depending on how deep the trade rift becomes, it may involve parts tariffs which will affect every manufacturer everywhere and could materially harm American manufacturers using internationally sourced parts. Of course, this will bode well for used gear maintaining its value with the potential of appreciation. Sort of like the car program “cash for clunkers” establishing a floor to used car pricing.

Let’s not kid ourselves though, this is home hifi and its an industry that at best is a rounding error in any conversation about any topic.of course, there may alternative truths...who knew that was a thing?

Seven pages strong and the only good post is still by geoffkait. 

No idea who you’re talking to--maybe yourself--but you type tens of thousands of words which ultimately reduce to "whoever I disagree with is obviously a Nazi and should not be allowed a voice."

A major appeal of an audio site is that we’re spared this kind of smug, intolerant cant. Well, at least we’re normally spared the political variety. You and a few others here need to go to political sites to share your bloviating

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Your simplistic attempt to deflect did not go unnoticed. The topic is tariffs and if they're used as a tool to politically excite a base and citizenry for the effect of looking like a strongman, then that, is political.

The guy doing it bypasses the democratic process (Congress decides tariffs), openly admires fascists, and is conflating the political and the economic on a scale that is dangerous. Mussolini coined the term fascist. Look it up. 

All the hoopla with the Mexican tariffs turned out to much ado about nothing. Victory was claimed and tariffs "hereby" rescinded (thank you, your majesty) when the conditions met were decided months ago. 

It was all an act, meant to distract, and swallowed whole by a lot of ditto heads. We buy more from Mexico than we do from China. A third of it comprises auto making. 

And in case you haven't noticed, smug political comments are the norm here, as long as they come from the right side of the aisle. Take a gander at past threads. It's when someone from the left counters such tripe is when you ladies get up on the table and hike up your skirts.

All the best,
Nonoise