United States Politics: ∆τ_i*ε*φ*m_i<0 where ε=4 and φ=0.25

[Polident]

The thing I don't understand about the tariffs, is it seems to just be America shooting itself in the foot? We import nearly everything and don't have the infrastructure in place to make most of this stuff ourselves and won't for years, so Trump will just be forcing everyone to pay more for stuff we can't buy elsewhere. :v And even when we are able to make it in America, it'll be by people we actually have to pay wages. It won't be produced by chinese children for pennies. Is Trump gonna send us all monthly stimmies so we can afford to buy the new american made walmart goods?

I genuinely think the presumed impact is overblown.

IIRC Trump "tariffed" around last term as well. And we didn't really feel that--arguably prices are a lot weirder now than they were during his term. 

The global economy is complicated (this level of keen insight should realistically get me appointed as Secretary of OMB in the Trump admin) and I think we're a long way away from the time when a simple, logical principle like "cost go up 20%, price go up 20%" actually applied directly.

Not to defend Trump here, but I think tariffed and non-tariffed bodies will react to these things--if Trump even actually implements it--in a way to protect their business interests. For example, if China is paying a massive tariff on every piece of plastic trash they ship over, I expect many of those companies just eat some of all of that cost: if they pass it on to the consumer, suddenly you'll see Americans buying higher-priced, higher-quality shit and ignoring the million fake VINDFOO brands that are all over Amazon. 

That's just one theoretical above. Maybe that doesn't happen at all. But there are other interested actors across the world, and some of them certainly will pivot in some way. Which is why I'm skeptical we'll see some sort of Playstation Price Holocaust or whatever.

How dare you. TLBCQMYG makes great products for real people.