Featured Trump tariffs put the US auto industry in disarray

By that same logic the USA should still be a British colony I suppose. Thing is, the world is a violent place & no one is born with a protective bubble. Wouldn't it be nice though if we all lived in that land of Shangri-La
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I hope I never get as cynical and negative as you.

 

So, now genocide is classified as 'defending itself'?!

 

Waiting for someone to grow up enough to handle these topics without so much personal bias.

 

If only we were all that mature, and we wouldn't have wars.

 

Anymore or less then when innocent German citizens died over ½ a doezen decades ago?



Often times the "cleaner" that war gets - the longer it takes to resolve.
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I'd venture to guess the feeling is mutual. But hey this is a conversation among friends right?

 

I think that's apples and oranges my friend. History is weird, how the oppressed have become the oppressers. There's no way to talk yourself into the words "defending themselves" when you're talking about a Nuclear nation versus sticks and stones basically.

 

Well, so far cars aren't double or triple the price of a decade ago.

On the other hand, cars in general are a bit more expensive than in certain years, or at least the very, very cheap options aren't there. anymore or are disappearing. I remember when the MSRP on a Mitsubishi Mirage was just under $10k. (Of course you got to adjust for inflation for an accurate comparison, so perhaps closer to $13 or $14k today.)

Still, it's just a slight increase. What's probably hit harder still is the used car market. It's coming back down compared to the COVID era, but not all the way back down. Small changes in the new car market can cause bigger changes in the used car market since the used car market supply is fixed to that of the new car market.

But I don't think the full effect of tariffs is there yet. Manufacturers can absorb the extra cost for a while, but eventually they have to start charging for the extra loss somewhere. So how much this will effect things is quiet uncertain at this point.

I think the uncertainty is what bothers some people the most, more than the actual price increases. Will this stay in place or will a court order stop the president? Will the president lower them or raise them or let them stay the same? We have a "high supply" now, so prices should come down, but with tariffs in place will that supply dwindle down raising prices a bit? And will that price increase cause demand to slow down? And will the uncertainty of all this cause manufacturers to try to keep their customers by keeping prices as low as possible or will the try to play it safe and raise prices and cut models that aren't huge profit makers?

I think we need time to see what will really happen, but in the end it probably won't be as bad as some make it out to be.

Then again, some feel the economy as a whole is down, so anything that raises prices is a target to be criticized.

I also believe that the "just make it in America" might be good in some ways, but maybe not so good in others.

On the one hand labor is more expensive in the USA. Ideally, if you have trade with other nations and you want yours to make more money, you make expensive products and buy cheap products. This is one way how the rich are rich, they get poorer people to do their work for a cheaper wage than they would make, but offer their services for bookoh bucks. The same can supply to a whole nation.

On the other hand, if too much labor is sent away then labor supply and demand in your own country starts to favor lower wages. If there are hardly any jobs and a lot of people wanting to work, then employers can offer low wages and still get workers. But if more jobs are created in a country then you have more demand for workers and employers will have to compete more causing wages to rise.

At the same time, it's still complicated and not as cut and dry as "if you make it here there's no tariffs." Some things can be way too expensive to manufacturer in a richer country, which means that companies that rely on that product might suffer and need to increase their prices which lowers demand and ultimate lowers their production cutting the need for workers. So what might seem like a way to increase jobs in a country like the USA could potentially have the opposite effect. Only time will tell how many jobs will be created and how many will disappear because of tariffs, since the experts came seem to agree on what the overall outcome will be.

And then you have to factor in what other changes might make this a great thing or not. Increasing wages and jobs might sound good but that can also cause inflation. Take real estate for an example. Of everyone started paying less taxes and getting more pay then there'd be more competition for buying property and houses. This would undoubtedly cause real estate prices to increase, putting people back at a similar financial situation as before where many people struggle to make enough money to afford basic necessities.

One thing is for sure, there's a lot more to the puzzle than just one "if only this." Tariffs alone won't solve a lot of these issues. Even very good calculated control on tariffs won't. Neither will putting the blame on the worker and getting people to "just work harder."

People who think they know the solution to everything with a "well, if people just did this" are usually belligerent and dogmatic. Everyone's situation is different. A small increase on the price of a car might be nothing to one person but feel like the end of the world to another. And it's best to treat each individual as an individual and show some care to one another.

 

Still waiting...

 

In years past, news sources endeavored to provide a balanced view. For what it was, it's much different today. News sources are now mostly devoted to some sort of agenda, usually Right or Left.
They all claim to be "fair and balanced," but this is not supported by the very different nature of how these stories are reported. Both seem set on attacking the "other side."

The result has been a deeply divisive situation. Never before has there been so much vitriol, and polarization in society. Insane as it sounds, supporting your "side" often involves taking all credit for everything good and blaming the "other side" for everything bad. Not much sign of sanity returning any time soon.

 

No.....basically it isn't.
A friend of mine mentioned during a discussion that William Tecumseh Sherman was a war criminal.
He didn't couch it in those terms - but I'm trying to keep it....um.....'civil.'
I told him that he probably thinks much the same thing about Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr, and then I spent about 15 minutes proving he was wrong about the Bill and that Tibbets more or less saved many MANY more lives than he took when we launched the second deadliest attack on Japan on that fateful morning.....
Not to mention a divided North and South Japan.....
Gladwell danced around this point in his book "Bomber Mafia."
I do not agree with some of historical data or points of view but the book is still worth a read because he finally arrives at the logical point of warfare.
Since ALL of history is basically Rocky Movies or Star Trek episodes I will simply invite you to watch:
Star Trek: The Original Series: Season 1, Episode 23
"A taste of Armageddon"
One of my favs....
Spock got jokes!

Another historical distortion.
The news has NEVER been 'fair and balanced.'
Even when America fought to free herself from the yoke of servitude under England, most towns had two newspapers of opposing views.
People used to, LITERALLY, shoot each other on the field of honour...many times over nothing more than politically inspired insults - in case you missed 'Hamilton.'
During the US Civil Wah, people died by the score in political uprisings and Old Honest Abe sent actual armed federal troops into NYC who shot and killed more than a few draft rioters.
Yellow Journalism.....
Labour riots in the 30's
Think things got better in the 60's?
The one thing about print newspapers is that they each realized that they depended upon the other as a counterpoise if noting else - and it was not uncommon for them to have contracts to print each others product of something happened to one of their printing plants.

What's different NOW is that there is a permission structure for people to do more than engage in polite disagreements or even nasty insults....on BOTH SIDES.
NewsNation is one of my subs, and NO.
Cuomo isn't a person that I would normally agree with......on much of ANYTHING!
His work with NN hasn't been entirely lopsided......and he's NOT wrong about the whole extremism thing.
IIRC one of the first 'comments' when this was posted was somebody slagging him for being the root cause.

Spoiler Alert:
Nope. He's had a LOT of HELP.

 

That's why I said "for what it was." My point is that it was MORE fair and balanced than it is now.

I didn't even say that; I said they endeavored to do so. I was there.

 

The American Revolution is not an excuse for mass disobedience. Human populations revolt when things become intolerable, which is a lot more than political discontent.

It happened in France in 1789, and it happened in Russia in 1917. But it's not a justification for one special interest to take over the government.

 

What isn't? Genocide is pretty cut and dry, or were talking about something else?

 

Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular ethnic group with the aim of destroying that group.
This is different from war - which is basically a nation-level assault or more often an armed robbery.
Some nations have engaged in genocide without the war part - "some say" that the CCP is a pretty good example of that.
Some nations have engage in war without genocide.

Genocide is actually more complicated than bumper-sticker politics.
Example - There are still American Indians (Native or Indigenous peoples) Jews, Armenians, Kurds, Uyghurs, etc....despite previous attempted genocides - real or imagined.....

 

The word "genocide" has been watered-down from its original meaning, which was the eradication of a group of people, be it a religion, ethnicity, race etc. Extreme terms are often used for greater emphasis, but the unfortunate side effect is the deprecation of the term.