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http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42784380

So Whirlpool and the solar manufacturers bitch to Trump about cheap Chinese dogshit products. In turn, he imposes 30% tariffs, which are a good thing. But what I don't understand is, at least on the appliance front, why stop at just washing machines and why only on machines from South Korea (home to LG and Samsung in case you were curious)? Why not refrigerators, ranges, dishwashers, etc. or appliances built in China or India? And what about the parts that go in the machines? They have this new horseshit label on appliances:

HE_Extended_Content_ROV_com_MIUSA.ashx


here's one from LazyBoy

madeinamericaweb.jpg


American-made is basically code for built in america with asian parts.
 
No the onus is on you to say why the are good

if we're talking about free trade - that's nothing something i believe in. free trade is simply elites betraying their own.

in regards to tariffs, i don't think they're necessarily good or bad either way. the key is in the application. if you're a business and you can get asian wage slaves to build your shitty thing for $2 an hour vs some jamoke in america for $10, why wouldn't you choose asia? this is why we've effectively sent all of our manufacturing jobs to asia and why certain industries like solar aren't getting off the ground here. solar was also getting the subsidies but that turned into a shit show during Obama's term. so in this instance, i could see a tariff helping to make conditions change so that eventually, a job that was once shipped to asia was brought back home.

but if you look at it like that, my original question still stands - why stop at washing machines?
 
It's a good question.

The simplistic answer might be that countries pick and choose specific commodities or manufactured goods to make a point 1) so they can pander to a specific domestic audience, or 2) they know they can get away with it and not spark a full on trade war.

Most of this stuff is usually symbolic.
 
Tariffs are a tax on your own consumers/citizens and protect inefficient industries and cartels.
 
Tariffs are a tax on your own consumers/citizens and protect inefficient industries and cartels.

Partly yes, but the current wave of globalism favours multi-national corporations at the expense of local companies and entrepreneurs. These too also function as cartels and can manipulate clients to ensure that only one of a small group of companies can satisfy the scope of tenders.

These companies also have the ability to transfer staff from cheaper countries on short term work contracts and are able to undercut local labour.
 
Tariffs are a tax on your own consumers/citizens and protect inefficient industries and cartels.
Partly yes, but the current wave of globalism favours multi-national corporations at the expense of local companies and entrepreneurs. These too also function as cartels and can manipulate clients to ensure that only one of a small group of companies can satisfy the scope of tenders.

These companies also have the ability to transfer staff from cheaper countries on short term work contracts and are able to undercut local labour.
Pimple's got the thread on this. The idea and the reality of so-called "free trade" are two wildly different things.

Again though, I'm more interested in the specifics of the deal in and of itself. I just cannot understand why Whirlpool only lobbied for relief against LG and Samsung in the field of one single appliance and not all appliances. Whirlpool is having their ass handed to them in most appliance markets by these companies. I'm also curious why Maytag wasn't involved in this seeing as they're the biggest flag humpers of the bunch.
 
I'm a pretty dry market orientated person on trade and business. I don't like tariffs at all. I think they unfairly target certain countries and product and also impose a burden and tax on your own citizens and consumers. They are inefficient and also impose a lot of deadweight costs.

I'm generally not in favour of propping up inefficient, badly managed or corrupt (generally all 3 when tariffs are involved) businesses or sectors. If there is a case for subsidies - and there sometime is - then they should be clear subsidies transparent, named as subsidies and monitored as to what the outcomes expected are.

Propping up old industries against the tide is particularly fraught and ill thought through. It only delays the inevitability and when the inevitable comes its impact is worse as its sudden and catastrophic. If we propped up industrys we'd still have a very large Buggy Whip Manufacturing Sector - with cosy wage deals, wealthy factory owners and kids clamoring for an apprenticeship and a job in buggy whip making. Towns and states would be competing to offer even more incentives for buggy whip manufacturers to locate in their town.

I 'm happy to give (some) transparent and tapering out subsidies to emerging technologies/industries like electric cars, solar panels etc so that a bank of expertise can be built up.
 
if we're talking about free trade - that's nothing something i believe in. free trade is simply elites betraying their own.

in regards to tariffs, i don't think they're necessarily good or bad either way. the key is in the application. if you're a business and you can get asian wage slaves to build your shitty thing for $2 an hour vs some jamoke in america for $10, why wouldn't you choose asia? this is why we've effectively sent all of our manufacturing jobs to asia and why certain industries like solar aren't getting off the ground here. solar was also getting the subsidies but that turned into a shit show during Obama's term. so in this instance, i could see a tariff helping to make conditions change so that eventually, a job that was once shipped to asia was brought back home.

but if you look at it like that, my original question still stands - why stop at washing machines?

Did you just say jamoke? OLO.
 
I'm generally not in favour of propping up inefficient, badly managed or corrupt (generally all 3 when tariffs are involved) businesses or sectors. If there is a case for subsidies - and there sometime is - then they should be clear subsidies transparent, named as subsidies and monitored as to what the outcomes expected are.
isn't this just a fundamental inverse of a tariff? as opposed to taxing the import you're just goosing the export on the back end? i also don't see how a subsidy would keep one of these fortune 500 companies from offshoring all their labor to some third world shit hole where they can make the goods for .25 an hour.
 
Solar Import Tariff: Pain Without Benefit
Posted on January 25, 2018 by Yves Smith


By Roy Morrison, whose latest book is Sustainability Sutra (2017, Select books NY). He is working on dual-cropping installations in New England and NY

The new 30% import tariff just imposed on imported solar panels and solar cells is a protective tariff without benefit.

It will not revive the declining U.S. silicon solar cell industry. It will harm U.S. workers in factories manufacturing solar panels using imported solar cells. It will hurt the rapidly expanding U.S.solar industry, slowing down the rapidly growing adoption of solar across the U.S.economy and costing jobs. It will slow the reduction of green house gases and the replacement of coal and natural gas plants with cheaper, zero pollution energy.

In Jacksonville, Florida the city council has just voted for a $23 million dollar subsidy for Chinese company Jinko Solar to build an 800 worker modular production plant which itself will be subject to the tariff on solar cells. Similarly, the tariff will affect the Tesla giga-factory in Buffalo that uses imported cells.

The tariff will slow, but not stop, the expansion of U.S. solar. According to Green Tech Media there will be an 11% net reduction of solar installations over the next five years. This means the installation of 61.3 gigawatts instead of a projected 68.9 gigawatts, a 7.6 gigawatt shortfall. That’s the bad news, if the projection is correct.

7.6 gigawatts of solar if it displaced fossil fuel generation would save, according to the EIA, 1.64 pounds of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour, or 7.3 million tons of carbon dioxide per year based on New England solar production per megawatt. That’s the projected ecological consequence of the solar tax.

The good news is that solar is now big and rapidly growing. 61.3 megawatts of new solar in next five years is equal to the capacity of 61 one thousand megawatt nuclear plants. Total U.S.nuclear capacity is 99 gigawatts and declining as nuke plants shut down, unable to compete while solar rises.

The 30% tariff on cells or modules is scheduled to decline by 5% a year to 15% in 2021, the last year of the tariff. The first 2.5 gigawatts of imports are exempt, as will be a blend of other specialized modules that are applying for exemption from the tariff as are a number of developing nation producers limited to a total of 9% of imports.

What does this all mean on the ground for solar installations? A 30% module tariff means about a ten cent per watt increase in solar costs. Average residential solar cost, according to NREL (National Resource Energy Laboratory), in 2017 was $2.80 a watt installed, a 3.6 percent increase in 2018 that will decline to 1.8 percent for typical 5-6 kilowatt systems.

For utility scale solar, huge installations above 10 megawatts or 10,000 kilowatts, the price in 2017 was $1.11/watt. Here, a ten cents a watt increase means a 9 percent increase, declining to 4.5% increase.
The negative effects of the tariff are likely to be felt most strongly in emerging PV markets in Southern and other States with limited financial support and market rules for solar.

Mitigating Possibilities

Solar in recent years has been characterized by plunging costs, improved efficiency, and technological innovation. Globally, wind and solar are now competitive in more than thirty countries with fossil fuels without subsidies and represents “an outright compelling investment opportunity with long-term, stable, inflation-protected returns,” according to Michael Drexler, Head of Long Term Investing, Infrastructure and Development at the World Economic Forum. The judgement of big capital.

Current responses to utility scale RFPs for solar have been an astounding less than two cents per kilowatt hour. This is stunning for a zero fuel, zero pollution low maintenance cost energy fuel. Fossil fuels and nukes simply won’t be able to compete.

In addition, there is ongoing technical innovation in all areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency, as well new applications of renewables. It is likely, for example, that new types of solar cells will replace silicon as material of choice such as using perovskite crystals, and further advances in thin film technology.

Giant offshore wind machines can now float and be anchored to the sea floor in deeper water expanding the available off-shore wind resource. A legion of new innovative renewable projects are moving forward. I am working on a pilot installation for a new Swiss design for a megawatt scale vertical axis wind turbine that is quiet, minimizes or eliminates bat and bird kills, minimizes rotor shade, has a small footprint.

As a solar developer, I am developing dual-cropping PV systems on working farms that allow PV on poles or tables, at four foot intervals, to be installed in pasture or fields without significantly reducing agricultural productivity. This system was developed by work in test plots by Prof, Stephen Herbert of the Stockbridge Institute with contractor James Marley.

The market consequences of the tariff may also lead to price reductions by Chinese suppliers, and help accelerate the reduction in cost by racking companies, inverter manufacturers, and in PV installation techniques. For example, Spice Solar, now offers solar panels integrated with racking that can be connected to the roof quickly with a few roof anchors, shipped recently at .60 per watt, a significant price reduction. The tariff may also mean foreign companies, as Jinko did in Jacksonville, building American based factories.

Tariff or not, now’s the time for us all to embrace the economic, ecological and social benefits of building a secure and prosperous efficient renewable energy future. Our pursuit of ecological economic growth and our democratic action on all levels will shape the emergence of a renewable energy future and our escape from ecological calamity by making economic growth mean ecological improvement and building step by step a prosperous ecological civilization.
 
isn't this just a fundamental inverse of a tariff? as opposed to taxing the import you're just goosing the export on the back end? i also don't see how a subsidy would keep one of these fortune 500 companies from offshoring all their labor to some third world shit hole where they can make the goods for .25 an hour.
NO NO NO NO - -I can't give you Economics 101 on a fucking clothing forum.
 
All I know is those arbitrary import duties stopped me from buying at J.Press online.

We don't live in an equalized world and that's the problem the globalista's don't understand or comprehend. On the basic level it functions that someone educated to a degree level in Bangladesh hasn't necessarily achieved the same academic prowess as in the West. At the other end of the spectrum it can be as severe as contaminated produce having achieved all the standards being accepted by corrupt officials.

I am all for tariffs applied where necessary because the world is not as uniform or compliant as some of us have the uncomfortable knowledge of knowing.

Even here in Europe, you have the UK the worse country for implementing EU legislation to the full whereas everyone else does it selectively. And other areas too. Just today I've been looking at the costs of some international licenses for a number of my employees in the UK it will take 8 weeks of intensive training and quite costly. I can get the same qualification that meets the two international accreditation body requirements in Italy in 5 days. It's not like for like in any way shape of form, but on paper it is and to those clients who need it, they care nought for where it has come from.
 
They really don't.

It depends where you are, not all education establishments are the same. But some of our youth have been abused in the education system, certainly my nephew has. He's come out with less intellectual rigour than when he went it. That was a deliberate act by the LSE.
 
http://www.industryweek.com/economy/what-companies-are-really-doing-their-tax-windfall-so-far

What Companies Are Really Doing With Their Tax Windfall (So Far)
Only 4% of companies have increased wages and 3% said they will next year. A further 13% are considering wages and 80% said they aren’t considering giving raises at all.
Bloomberg | Jan 29, 2018

The GOP tax overhaul has inspired what seems like a flurry of action from companies looking to gain billions of dollars in potential savings. Every day, a new organization announces bonuses and wage increases.Others, however, are using their funds to lay off thousands of workers.

Despite the headlines, it turns out most companies aren’t doing much at all with their tax savings, according to a new survey from Willis Towers Watson. At least not yet.

The HR consulting firm asked 333 employers with at least 1,000 employees what they have done or plan to do as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Only 4% of companies said they had “increased wages for all employees”; an additional 3% said they planned to do so in the next year. While a further 13% said they’re “considering taking action this year or next,” a full 80% of companies aren’t considering giving raises at all.

“Companies are really spending time thinking about this,” said John Bremen, a managing director at Willis Towers Watson. “They’re trying to figure out what to do in terms of what’s going to be the highest impact and greatest value.”

Bremen sees three general trends among employers. One group is using the tax bill windfall to make previously planned investments, such as raising the minimum wage or increasing 401(k) contributions. Another group is trying to modernize their workforce by hiring new kinds of workers. The third group is attempting to keep up with the proverbial Joneses: As companies see their competitors offering headline-grabbing bonuses, they feel compelled to do the same.

At this rate, it’s too early to tell what the trickle-down impact of the bill will be, if any. The bonus and wage increases provided to employees have, so far, been a fraction of the savings companies are seeing from the tax bill. It will take years to determine the full impacts of the bill, economists say.

Still, employees are seeing some changes. Almost 20% of companies surveyed said they had already added Roth 401(k) retirement plans for employees, making it the most popular benefit change as a result of the tax bill. Unlike a traditional 401(k), a Roth taxes money up front when it goes into the account, rather than down the line when it comes out.

“Many employers are saying ‘Tax rates are lower, I’d rather pay taxes on the lower amount than pay gains in the future,’ because maybe they will go up in the future,’” Bremen said.

Not all workplace upgrades come in the form of money. Around 40% of companies said they have already taken at least one “action” as a result of the tax bill, from increasing hiring to spending money on automation. “I’m not seeing a preponderance of any one thing companies are doing,” said Bremen. “There’s no one-size-fits-all.”
 
Why young Germans are feeling gloomy about their country

"There is also a feeling, even if things are going well right now, that Germany is on the brink of bigger financial and societal problems. In other words, many young Germans might feel they are in a good position now but fear that further down the line that might not be the case."

Economical hypochondriacs?
 
Why young Germans are feeling gloomy about their country

"There is also a feeling, even if things are going well right now, that Germany is on the brink of bigger financial and societal problems. In other words, many young Germans might feel they are in a good position now but fear that further down the line that might not be the case."

Economical hypochondriacs?

The stage looks set for a major European wide recession next year. That'll be the final nail in the coffin for ''refugees'' welcome,
 
The downturn will be wider than Europe, though obviously its impact will vary across the globe.

Interestingly, many of our clients are switching to single currency USD contracts. I think they're factoring a European banking crisis and a currency that soars like an eagle before collapsing in a right bloody mess.

Anway, looks like the EU and Iranians are close to developing a vehicle to circumvent SWIFT. But will the European banks accept payment via this route? I doubt it.
 
The downturn will be wider than Europe, though obviously its impact will vary across the globe.

It will be felt very widely. We've basically clamped down on all CapEx for the foreseeable future.

A lot of people in our industry are almost completely out of work and wondering if they will keep the doors open.
 
It will be felt very widely. We've basically clamped down on all CapEx for the foreseeable future.

A lot of people in our industry are almost completely out of work and wondering if they will keep the doors open.

I still have my retirement portfolio 100% in US ETF. I'm not going to get an 16% bump this year?
 
Shit man, it's been straight sideways this year.

Little bump last month though.

Nasdaq passed 8,000. The President promised there will be so much winning I'll be tired of the winning.
 
Nasdaq passed 8,000. The President promised there will be so much winning I'll be tired of the winning.
I'm tired alright. Not of winning though.

I'm basing my retirement on 5% per year, and this shit ain't gonna cut it.
 
I'm tired alright. Not of winning though.

I'm basing my retirement on 5% per year, and this shit ain't gonna cut it.

That's why the day after he won the election I moved to a completely unbalanced portfolio. I was barely hitting 3% inflation before that.

You should be cheering for your country's economic might. It'll be of use to your offspring.
 
That's why the day after he won the election I moved to a completely unbalanced portfolio. I was barely hitting 3% inflation before that.

You should be cheering for your country's economic might. It'll be of use to your offspring.

Sounds like you had a shitty asset manager. The gains in the late 00's were incredible.
 

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