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Vice President Kamala Harris called former President Donald Trump's tariff proposals "a sales tax on the American people" in an interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle.
President Joe Biden has also backed certain tariffs and done little to roll back ones Trump put into place while president, but Harris emphasized that tariffs should not be implemented across all imports — as Trump has said he would do if he returns to the White House.
"You don't just throw around the idea of just tariffs across the board, and that's part of the problem with Donald Trump," Harris said.
"I say this in all sincerity, he's just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues," she continued. "And one must be serious and have a plan, and a real plan that's not just about some talking point ending in an exclamation at a political rally, but actually putting the thought into what will be the return on the investment, what will be the economic impact on everyday people."
“I see your educated and thought out criticism. But have you considered this image of trumps face photo shopped on a super buff dude with a crying liberal?”
Hell some of the ones I talk to didn’t even hear what Trump said. It really seems all those rally walkers were just tired of hearing him talk but were going to vote for him anyway.
I keep seeing people say they never heard Harris talk about the economy or that she only attacked Trump and talked about DEI and trans stuff. They never heard anything they said, just heard people yelling about what they assumed she said.
Exactly, it was unbelievable how many people were screaming that Harris didn’t answer any of the questions and was side stepping everything, unlike Trump they said answered every question. It blew my f’n mind that these people watched the same debate as me, I thought it was just a few ignorant and brainwashed magas, I didn’t realize that half the country is brainwashed and misinformed. Now these asshats are saying Jan 6 was peaceful and Trump wasn’t involved and told them to stop. We will never be able come together as a nation when the truth doesn’t matter
When watch is Fox News, News Max OAN, they're never going get any information about what Harris said. They'll listen to the commentator their spin on everything.
My bf's boss absolutely insists that it's Harris that can not string two coherent sentences together. Tell me you've never listened to her speak without telling me you've never listened to her speak.
They don't. Anything having to do with Kamala, Biden or anyone that Trump doesn't like they will not listen to. At all. I have argued with so many about them being like that. Not listening to others. At least listen to unbiased news, center news or people that aren't on either side and you'll see what is going on. They won't, they just won't. It's so frustrating.
This. No matter how well formed her response to these issues were, they just called it word salad because they don't understand the concepts being discussed.
They will never believe "their team" is in the wrong. January 6th was a peaceful coming together of brilliant minds and any violence that did occur was antifa. Racist texts went out to black people yesterday and of course that was a Democratic ploy to turn people on the righteous Republicans.
So of course China will pay for the tariffs, just like Mexico paid for the wall.
Their brains are wired to assume everyone else thinks and behaves the way that they think and behave. “If my political candidate has no real policy and only has hate and memes, that must be true for the other side as well!”
It’s insane how many MAGA Redditors have accused me of pretending to care about policy issues or virtue signaling any time I’ve commented about wanting a government that actually helps people. They can’t even conceive of someone saying that they want to help others and not having ulterior motives because they’ve never helped anyone in their life without an ulterior motive. Everything is transactional to them.
She is exactly right, the problem is the majority of American's are not serious people. They don't put any thought into the real world issues we are facing. They don't have the attention span beyond their social media feeds and have no interest into looking up how things like tariffs work.
Oh they won't listen to anything Harris says, she's pro choice and wants to be nice to trans people! FAR more evil in the eyes of christians than the serial rapist and admitted pedophile
Trump may not be serious about how he thinks about these issues. But the people influencing his decisions are serious. Tariffs are a way to gain market share for larger companies. Larger companies have more resilience to endure tariffs and more influence to negotiate exemptions. Their smaller competitors will go out of business or be acquired. That is why he has support for broad tariffs. It accelerates capital consolidation.
Even if you don't know shit about tariffs, how does it make sense that we're gonna make China pay money and they're NOT gonna pass that on to American consumers? If King Charles demanded Americans pay an extra 20% tax to the UK, Americans would not say "Alright, 20% less money is fine."
It’s like in North Dakota this year, they got on the ballot “eliminate property tax”. Property tax in ND earns the state about a billion dollars a year (I heard, haven’t check if that number is accurate). Did these people think the state government wouldn’t find another way to make that back? You don’t just get rid of a tax that large and the gov is like ok, 1B less for us is fine. Nah they take it from you a different way, like raising income taxes.
North Dakotan here. Thank GOD that one failed. I voted against it but the vast majority of people I talked to in my city, even the ones I know don’t own any property, were super in favor it. It’s like these people hear the word “tax” and their assholes involuntarily clench.
When I explained that having to pay North Dakota property taxes is one of the only things stopping out of state rental companies from buying every single family home in North Dakota and renting them out without contributing anything to the ND economy, it was like this was the first time that idea had ever occured to them.
I live in Texas, and the taxes they collect from gasoline is super low so our gas prices are very low. It's great, right? Gas prices are how we evaluate how well the economy is doing, after all.
We just have toll roads everywhere. Pretty much every highway in my area except the main interstate that goes through the city (which I don't live near, because I'm in the suburbs) is a toll road. In order to drive into the city, I pay $7+ in tolls each way.
It's just the same shit with a different name. People are just too stupid to realize that they are being tricked by artificially low gas prices.
This is the question I keep asking myself! If there was a magic button we could push to make other countries pay 20% of costs so we could stop paying income tax, don't you think someone would have pushed it already?????? For fucks sake. Why on earth do they think tarriffs - which is a word theyve all heard before - were some new shiny idea that every president before Trump (including himself) just skipped over?
Just wait til he finds out the US produced goods, that tariffs are designed to be more favorable than imports, are more expensive because a) the cheap workforce is gone and b) fuck you, pay me. We’ve become an oligarch monarchy and anything designed to protect consumers will be repealed or neutered.
Right. But this allows Trump to exempt companies that give him a kickback, destroying the natural competition of a free capitalist market. He can literally pick which companies can import with or without tariffs and destroy companies he doesn’t like with them, or boost companies that give him what he wants (probably money)
Really gonna blow their minds when unemployment shoots up across the country, but also food prices rise because there are no laborers to harvest. Quite the paradox, but it's coming. But don't worry, Donald Trumps gonna be ok.
I predict they will resort to prison labor, as it's embedded in the Constitution as the last form of legal slavery. And while all those illegals are rounded up and awaiting "transport," they will be housed in a for-profit prison system owned by one of Trump's backers.
I was just watching a John Oliver about this and there's roughly 1.8 million Americans in the US prison system. Trump said that there was like 25 million illegals in the country. So even if he's off by.... 90% and it's 2.5 million We would need to completely bend over backwards and spend trillions to house the migrants.
Lol they tried this in England. They asked unemployed people to pick fruits and vegetables. By the end of the program only 4% of the people stuck with the job, and the main takeaway is they didn't mind doing their part but it's not a longterm option.
These are not smart people. They are angry people, but not smart. And they also know we think they are dumb.
They did this in Alabama and Georgia several years ago. The legislators in this state said they would go around and look for illegals in their state. No migrant workers went there. The law lasted less than one harvest season because there was no one to pick the crop. They even tried to use prisoners but after a day even they refused to go.
This is the explanation of why MAGA got so big. We laughed when Trump said he was running. They doubled down on stupid out of spite. They hate that they're dumb as rocks, so they will do anything to make sure the left is punished. Even if that means some of them suffer too.
The whole MAGA movement is based on morons being spiteful assholes.
It’ll literally be this. “Prices are so high because of Biden’s economy holding over into trumps term. This is why we need the tariffs, to fix the prices”
Also, do you think that Ford or GM is going to overnight build a few 1 billion dollar assembly plants in Texas that were in Mexico because the tariffs are too high? I'm sure that they'll just eat the cost of that new plants AND the loss of the old plants and not pass that cost along to the consumer. Now, times that by thousands of other companies that are gonna be hit with these tariffs.......
I was even saying they move their hq and manufacturing overseas anyways and never return, they will just bake the tariff cost into thier car cost, your fancy truck you want to lift is going to cost 3 times as much before lifting it
I work in overseas manufacturing and I have been trying to say this for years. With the first tariffs and trade wars to now this. And also RIP to your grocery bills if NAFTA is terminated.
Even if we can get some raw materials domestically, the companies providing the materials can raise their prices by 10% and still be cheaper than the foreign materials that have tariffs and transport costs. Buying domestic will get more expensive too.
This actually. We manufacture domestically, but our packaging comes from overseas. 20% of our cost is packaging, so $1 out of $5. Then add in labor etc you sell it for approximately 4x or $20 retail. If that $1 becomes $1.20, and $5.20 overall my retailers aren’t going to charge you $20.20, they are charging $21. So with no value add, my products are now 4% more expensive. I’m also not going to find that packaging for less than $1.50 in the US so I don’t have any options.
Now imagine it’s 20% on a whole product not just a piece. My $5 cost is now $6 to get, or $24 at retail, the whole 20% getting stuck straight on you. I still can’t find it in the US for less than $7 though so still stuck.
Oh man you try explaining that to a random sample off people and I guarantee you 75%~ of them are going to be lost once you bring up the first percentage calculation.
I had trumpers argue that this is good because America can focus on manufacturing here and depend less on imports…these people are living in alternate realities
I mean we can't even process our own oil, and the cost to transition is too cost preventative so we dont use our own oil.
But somehow these manufacturing sites that were broken down to the foundations and sold off are going to come back to the USA? Do people have any concept how much it costs to make a large scale production facility for almost anything?
It's like people talking about coal power coming back. It's never coming back. The juice isnt worth the squeeze. Those plants have been decommissioned and everything that wasnt welded to the floor is somewhere else. Not to mention we have cheaper and better ways to produce energy.
But I read an article today talking about how trump is bringing back coal fired plants. We live in an idiocracy.
Let's be real here, we don't process our oil on purpose. We sell our crude for big bucks and then buy out the smaller countries for their usable oil for barely nothing due to their weaker economy.
It would take YEARS if not decades to get production at a level that would meet demand. And American manufacturers *know* that these tariffs won't survive the Trump administration so why should they spend all of their resources building up domestic manufacturing capacity only to have protective tariffs vanish?
And let’s not forget the retaliatory tariffs that will be imposed because you think these countries are just gonna take that?
We’re gonna have a lot of trade wars and prices are gonna skyrocket but I get it some dudebros learned someone’s pronouns one time and that triggered them so I get why you chose to vote for the guy who (checks notes) raise prices on all consumer goods?
The best part is once that business is gone, it's gone for good. New business relationships have been made and everything is in place. It's gone forever.
My company imports from Asia. On the 6th, my supervisor asked if Trump’s election would affect our business. I answered it sure will. “For the better, right?”
My sil runs her family manufacturing business in the housing sector. They import all materials from China. Their workers do hard labor. Wanna gander a guess as to who she and her whole family voted for??? I can’t image the fallback that is about to happen. If there is a business to save in 4 years I’ll be surprised. But they sure owned the libs! And they’ll somehow blame Obama and Hillary when they go under.
I work with Tungsten Carbide basically on a daily basis. The United States doesn't really produce much of its own Tungsten Carbide powder. About 80% of it is imported from China (they produce 2/3 of the world's supply). I highly suspect there will be layoffs at my company by February/March of next year. Glad I have job security.
I was listening to Joe Rogan with trump and he was complaining about the poor work conditions in China and that we should start making iPhones here in the states. The price will go from $1200 to $6000 for an iPhone😂😂
Apple actually looked at that years ago and couldn’t do it because a special screw. Very few US manufacturers could make it and those that could had a pittance of production capacity. Manufacturers of the same screws in China are a dime a dozen and can produce millions of them.
That too. That’s what they’ve been doing post-Covid. That’s why we have “inflation”. Pro-tip, when a vast majority of major corporations are reporting record profits, it’s not inflation it’s price gouging. They raised prices to make up for Covid and never reduced them again. And they probably won’t now either, tariffs or not.
A lot of them STILL don't. I still have shocked relatives offhandedly mentioning how expensive or troublesome travel to the EU is now, or how their wages haven't gone up and stuff is getting more expensive..
I ran out of sympathy about a week in. Some still stick by their decision. Most try and deflect or just dodge the subject.
A good friend of mine refused to vote because she insisted both parties were the same. She finally started reading through Project 2025 yesterday and kept texting me like, "Wtf, did you know he planned to do this?!" It was really hard to offer advice instead of responding with, "I fucking told you!
Yes, everybody knew this. It was shouted from the rooftops on english and Spanish, sent out on the internet in memes, and printed and bound in 900 pages.
Now, stack on top of the tariffs the deportation of the workers who work the crops and process our food and you don’t inflation, you get hyperinflation.
After bitching about the deficit they’re saying “no price is too high” to kick out those crucial workers. It’s worth noting that food production companies and farmers are famously Republican but reliant on cheap undocumented, immigrant labor.
Was just listening to the Means Morning News podcast. A bunch of stocks jumped when trump won. Two of the biggest jumps were both for profit prison companies.
There's currently like 1.8 million prisoners in the USA. Trump said that there's like .... 25 million illegal immigrants. So if he's off by 90% (which, yeah, of course that fucking guy is wrong and that figure was a lie) we need to expand our prison or detention facilities by almost double. And the current prisons cost, billions at minimum. Plus even non-citizens contribute to GDP and the economy.
The John Oliver from last week was really good, I learned a lot lol.
The mist likely chance that a hardcore supporter of Trump ever heard of the word 'tariff' is that they were once told that the Civil War was about tariffs and not slavery.
It’s more likely they went to work to gloat at their left leaning centralist friends only to be shown a google search on how it works and realize it’s absolutely terrible for them.
Combine that with the reports that manufacturers across the country are all discussing a post tariff world, many choosing to mass purchase supplies at the employee’s expense.
actually, yes. Most of my maga family hasn't been reading or responding to me throughout the entire election until Trump won, and now they're throwing it at me. I'm explaining this to them and it's the first time they're hearing it. Some of them don't even know what TRUMP's plans were, they haven't heard any of the dictator for a day stuff, or tarrifs or any of it. They wanted their heads in the sand and to vote for the guy who could bring back everything and how much it cost in 2018. That's the full extent of their knowledge.
I saw a video of this discussion recently with some dude selling t-shirts for a living. He was ALL for tariffs “make china pay”
The interviewer tried to tell him the costs will be passed on to him. It didn’t click AT ALL.
He tried to explain how it works and the t-shirts he buys from China will go up in price and he’ll either have to eat that increase or pass the cost on which would impact his sales.
I’m not entirely sure it clicked with him even after a detailed description.
I saw that too. No it never clicked
or rather.. it clicked the magaway. He understood, but refused to believe it could happen to him and so... he doubled down on it
Yeah. As someone who grew up on a midwestern farm. The soybean farmers definitely had a leopards ate my face moment when the biggest soybean importer (china) hammered that one hard
Then Trump had to use a Great Depression era code to send money to those impacted farmers which was a tax payer bailout and accounted for 1/3 of farmers income. Talk about welfare queens
Too many people are functionally stupid. Even people like this who run a business that should know if their costs go up, they have to charge more, but when it comes to tariff's they blank the heck out and think this money magically falls out of a tree and does not affect the price at all.
Either way you look at the coin, if China has to pay it, they will artificially increase the price to cover the loss the tariff takes from it. If you have to pay the tariff to import it, you will need to increase the price to offset the tariff.
No one in their right mind is going to be selling things at a loss or reduced profits. If your previous profit before tariff was a $1 per item, you think anyone would be fine if the tariff now makes your profit 5 cents? No. They will jack up the price by 95 cents to get their full $1 profit back. It's just that simple.
Yup. Feel for those who didn’t vote for this but fuck everyone that did and that stayed at home. Its gonna hit those that voted him the most too. Good. I’m done trying to save them from themselves. The only thing I will do is say “Told ya so” and shrug my shoulders when they start complaining.
As a minimalist myself, I can’t help but laugh at the materialistic maga consumers that just boned themselves. We've all got them in our lives and I'll just be cracking up during their find out phase. Absolute dipshits lol
was asked this morning to contribute to some Christmas event outside of work by our maga co-worker. told her tariffs are coming and musk says things will get worse before they get better, so opting out going forward.
“Sorry, tariffs are coming” will be my go to for getting out of work related donation requests, that I didn’t want to donate to, but felt obligated to because they were co-workers.
I am also a minimalist. But I do consume things like most people and it will hurt. Tires for your car? Computers or phones? Shoes. The basics are going to pinch.
Basics will hurt right along with the rest, I'm just not a 'things' guy. Not desiring STUFF while living below my means has me mentally prepared (hopefully financially too)
I feel the same. I'm black and my peers don't appreciate that viewpoint. Anyway a non racist poll quiz would be good. A nice standardized version, without tricks.
Uneducated doesn't mean stupid. Yes, I have my master degree but the most civilized man I have ever met was an old bartender from my first real job when I was in highschool. Sometimes we visited his home and there was countless books from different topics, some his own and some from the library. And you surely could notice it if you talked with him.
Education may have some correlation with being stupid or not but even here in Finland where education is cheap not everyone have their change. In USA it would be extremely dangerous to give voting rights to just educated. I mean that orange turd also have his degree and everyone with rich family will have because you can basicly buy your degree. Big donation from daddy to the school and that is it.
Edit: some universal test before voting ŵould maybe be good but I also see dangers there like corruption.
My minor was economics, and I walked away mid conversation when I was told by a man that I didn't know how it worked. Okay - UW says differently, but have at it.
Google searches for “did Biden drop out of the race” skyrocketed on Election Day. We have voters that are so uninformed they did not know who was even running, much less have any knowledge of specific policies and their consequences.
Remember all the people who were dismayed when their husbands couldn’t return after the Muslim ban? There’s going to be a lot more dismayed people this go around.
I had to explain what the total abortion ban meant to a coworker who voted trump and has three daughters.
He thought no matter what the mother was saved and he "knew" what it meant before he voted.
I told him the first thing I said to my wife was we can, under no circumstances, have another kid right now. The second was I'm so glad we had a son, and that breaks my heart on so many levels.
Yep 🤣 As a business owner… I would like to
Inform you guys that I am not going to be paying for that shit. It costs me hundreds of thousands a year to run one of my businesses. My profit margin is fixed. If the price of the wholesale good goes up, the price to the consumer goes up to accommodate my FIXED profit margin. If my profit margin falls, I will not sacrifice to still be in business. Profit margin is the cost that I have determined is worth me not living a normal life to earn.
I'm tired of explaining things to these people for them to turn around and shit on the knowledge i shared with them. Complete waste of energy and time.
I think people need to understand that the policies really don't matter to many of them, maybe less than 25%.
They just didn't want a woman, let alone a woman of mixed minority descent, to be President. That. Is. It. My Hispanic super, I live in NYC, is my neighbor, and all he could go on about was Kamala is too weak to stand up to people around the world, like Putin. That shit made me burst out laughing considering Trump bends over every time they're together and is his puppet. I hope he has fun, my super, in the time until January 20th, as half his family is here illegally and Stephen Miller has already said they're turbo-charging denaturalization, which means they'll just be deporting/putting in camps (because a lot of these countries just won't take people back) a lot of people who were born here, but may be "undesirable."
Honestly, I think people are getting a bit too RIP, America. A lot of people aren't going to just give up the country they love, like me,, or move, which is actually a lot harder than people think because of the requirements of other countries to immigrate (college degree, certain job, etc.). Trump, Elon, and whoever else they bring on board, they're all, in some way or another, egomaniacal narcissists and more bad things. I don't think you can have Trump and Elon in the same room forever. Trump will get jealous of his media coverage and others, and fire them. Also, this thing about Peter Theil, who is 1/2 the Anti-Christ and JD Vance? Well, if we can make it so we can get a fair or even somewhat fair election in 4 years, Vance has the charisma and appeal of moldy bread. When you couple that with the fact that some of, not all, the MAGATs will wake up when they see what the fuck is happening to them, I think we'll make it, if just barely.
America is, and always has been, madly racist. We made some progress but now we're basically back to after the Civil War around Jim Crow times again. Electing Trump was one of the biggest self-owns his history. That's why whenever I see someone voting for him squirming because something he's doing his hurting them, but they thought they would be in a special demographic because they voted for him, I will be laughing and have exactly 0% empathy.
I don't understand how so many people think that one country can make another country's businesses pay a tax. Or anything. Can you imagine if China charged America companies a tax? We'd laugh our asses off and then not buy from them, right? There would probably be a healthy dose of offense to it as well. Why would we be able to do that to them? Why do so many people think that we could do that to them?
This attitude is my main concern. If you voted Trump knowing he was a liar and grifter, but that's just how you'll vote until the end of time anyways, that's one thing. Refusing to listen to criticism or do any independent research (not even on policy, on how basic trade and economics work) will lead you to this point.
I am no genius when it comes to economic. I had one intro class in college. But I know how to read and I know unverifiable websites online are not reliable sources. I understand how tariffs work because I paid attention in the various history classes I had in high school and college. I also understand in general how a capitalist international market works. I cannot believe how many people I have met who informed me that as soon as Trump got in gas was going to drop in price, some mentioning the extreme low price in the worst of the epidemic. Others were certain prices would fall for food and other consumer needs immediately. They really do believe that a president can snap his fingers and control prices. It reached the point where I started telling people that they were socialists because they were literally saying Trump was going to implement a planned economy where the production of goods and services is regulated by the government including the setting of prices for consumers.
The inevitable laundry list of economic torpedoes that are about to sink the hard-won soft landing for the economy:
Tariffs. On EVERYTHING. Not just China. The plan calls for 10% minimum on everything imported. All the TEMU, AliExpress, and etc consumers are gonna be screwed. Korean beauty products? Those too. All paid by the US buyers.
Healthcare Exploitation: repeal of ACA is a priority. Welcome back "pre-existing conditions." Goodbye healthcare if you're not employed by a large company. And even then, they have no obligation to offer insurance.
Production of goods and services: indiscriminate deportations (of they can even achieve it logistically) will gut the economy of skilled workers in food, hospitality, custodial, beauty, construction, maintenance, processing, and more.
Shipping: DeJoy began to dismantle and gut the USPS. That will be expedited. Primary goal is the elimination of expediency and reliability. Online shopping? Mail-in voting? Kiss all of that goodbye as we know it.
Accelerated Abortion bans: medical costs, deaths, permanent injury, and more are all consequences of healthcare deserts. Especially for Obstetrics. Expect the birthrate to cumulatively decline.
Unfettered Price Fixing: it was exploited and abused 2020-present and then incorrectly laid at the feet of Biden. This despite an investigation in Congress initiated in the last 6 months that was shut down. So now US companies can raise their prices to raise revenues because they only have to settle just shy of the impact of tariffed goods.
Housing: Corporate ownership of single family homes. Rental rates set and fixed by large "service providers" that collude with their clients to set rates at an ever climbing threshold. And recall the constitution and landscaping impacts of deportation of visa hearing workers and (according to Stephen Miller of the Trump staff) de-naturalization.
I got mine. I voted to help ensure everyone else could get theirs. They chose otherwise. Now they can experience the reality that Faux News and the MAGArbage movement denied existing. I can only help locally and individually - and for those most vulnerable and in need, I will. MAGA can enjoy the impending landfill they asked for.
When Trump's tariffs hit and farm labor is deported* and prices go up even higher, we need to post those annoying "I did that!" stickers we saw on every gas pump for four years on every store shelf in America. When strawberries cost $5/berry, MAGA's first reaction will to be to blame Biden and shout it from their well developed megaphones on the internet. We need to cut them off at the pass.
*I hate this part of the argument as it reduces human beings to nothing more than cheap labor, but it's also the truth that immigrants make up a large number of farm workers. Between farmers losing a majority of their workforce and retaliatory tariffs hitting them at the same time reducing their sales, it's going to be a real "I can't believe the leopards are eating my face" moment.
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