What impact do you think it will have on you?
Are there critical items to purchase now that will be too expensive to afford next year?
Are you changing your savings or investments?
Somebody should make a website that tracks prices on goods and other items from the day Trump becomes president and throughout his term.
He said he would lower prices. His politics says the opposite. Let’s see.
American
savings or investments
I don’t understand
I may buy more dried fruit and bulk t-shirts.
the most expensive item I own is a bicycle and I’ve never had savings. i’m already $30k+ in debt so whatever
Whatever happens happens. Don’t really care that much anymore.
If you are an American, how are you preparing for the upcoming tariffs and possible trade war?
I’m not. I would love to, but there’s not really much I can do as far as I can see.
What impact do you think it will have on you?
Are there critical items to purchase now that will be too expensive to afford next year?
Probably a lot of things. Contrary to what a lot of MAGA morons would like to claim, tariffs very rarely ever benefit the country establishing the tariff. Very few things are actually wholly made in America nowadays. With such a global economy, even things that are marketed as “made in America” are typically not made 100% in America. And even if they are, the parts are often sourced from around the world since, with modern shipping, that’s actually cheaper typically than sourcing it in-country. (Not to mention that some parts can’t be sourced in-country simply because no one exists to provide that service anymore.)
Are you changing your savings or investments?
Bold of you to assume that I have any extra money to put into either of those. I put in the same amount of money every week as I have the last while: whatever I can, which isn’t much. I don’t get paid shit for my job, yet prices keep going up. Sadly, it’s not like I have much money to adjust. :(
tariffs very rarely ever benefit the country establishing the tariff.
Well. It depends.
If tariffs are sustained, then it can make sense to establish domestic companies that can supply the goods that were previously being outsourced. In that respect, over the long term–and I’m talking, like 20-30+ years–it could be positive. One of the things that made the US economy strong in the 60s was the fact that we had strong labor, and strong manufacturing; outsourcing our manufacturing has harmed labor and the middle class.
But that’s all very long-term stuff. It’s taken us 40 years to get to where we are now, and bringing manufacturing, and strong unions, back can easily take just as long. In the short term, it’s going to be super-bad for the working poor and the middle class.
My husband finally bit the bullet and upgraded his computer. I’m planning to upgrade my phone before the year is out, because mine is 6 years old and probably not getting security updates for another 4 years.
Not that these things didn’t need to happen, but having it forced on us last minute has sucked.
Considering using it as an excuse to upgrade my PC to an actual high-end rig to avoid tariffs on PC parts. Never had a PC that was actually “high-end” but this could be an excuse to build one. Aside from that, not much at the moment. There’s too much shit that’ll be affected by tariffs and aside from my PC, I can’t really see myself buying anything new that’ll truly last me four years. As such, there’s not much of a way for me to dodge tariffs.
That’s a good plan if only I had the money spare to do the same rn haha
im not, none of that shit is going to happen
Death to America
Moved forward large purchases that cannot be delayed 5 years.
I am not changing my investments. My predictions on market impacts tend to be wrong. The stock market and the economy are not the same thing (market can be up during recession).
I am working to get healthier and update vaccinations. I don’t know what is coming but being able to run, climb, and lift are versatile.
It will be interesting to see what happens for sure. It’s hard to imagine there will actually be the tariff + removal of income tax proposal that trump said he would do. I’m not sure any democrat will go for it, so Trump won’t be able to do it if there are any republican defectors in congress, and at least some of them prob won’t do it as it they realize it will destroy the pocketbooks of their donors.
i’m gonna move to china as soon as physically possible
I’m going to be working on only buying domestic goods going forward. Yes, it will increase the cost of goods overall, but that’s a given when we’re going from an unreasonably cheap standard to one built for supporting our own people. I’ve already been careful to mostly focus on domestic produce and goods, all that the tariff package will do is encourage me to continue on that journey.
Oranges grown in Argentina and flown in (with all the damage that planes do) should not be cheaper than those grown in Florida. Mexican chiles should cost more than the ones from New Mexico and Arizona. Coffee from Ethiopia or other places around the world ought to cost more than from Hawaii or elsewhere in the USA. That’s just the plants - never mind the meat, the fish, the dairy, or the hard goods.
I don’t want to buy cheap shirts made in Malaysia or the Philippines. I want to buy good quality clothing from American companies from American retailers on store shelves. I want that to be the standard everyone lives to. Whether we like it or not, tariffs are the only way to change the aggregate behavior. I don’t want half of my stuff to be plastic crap made in China under their torturous labor laws. I want to be surrounded by quality goods made here in the USA by American workers. I entirely support the tariffs and their higher-order effects, even the increased costs. In fact, I think the projected values are too low, because it might still be cheaper to import. We need to enforce tariffs that make it cheaper to produce and build here in the USA, with Americans working to the benefit of Americans.
Getting into the ‘plastic crap’ also, I don’t want America to ‘recycle’ plastic by shipping it abroad and going with the policy that says that if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. I want us to actually work to recycle our plastics, to reuse every scrap we can, because it should be cheaper to recycle and reuse domestic product than it is to import new or to export that which should be recycled.
So sure, I expect to see higher costs. I expect that my dollar will be stretched thinner for a time. But if the government stays the course to enforce high tariffs, and then uses the payments from irresponsible companies who import rather than employ Americans to pay off the national debt, we’ll all be better off.
PS - I want export tariffs too, so that it’s more valuable to sell domestic goods to Americans than to market them abroad.
