Explain it to me (sans facts).

You all are snowflakes but please explain this to me without triggering me
- This is MY safe space and you can't come in!

Is it surprising that the people who thought Mexico would pay for a border wall also don't understand how tariffs work?

What's annoying and nobody seems to grasp is that even if the tax was on the foreign producer instead of the domestic consumer, the end result would be the same thing. They wouldn't just eat the cost lol.
- This becomes so obvious when the tariff is over 100%. The supplier is obviously not paying 125% of the sale price in taxes.

If an entire cult is too fucking stupid to recognize what’s hurting them, then how the fuck could tariffs be MAGA’s death knell like some people are saying? You could literally douse some of these people in gasoline and tell them, ‘I need you to burn for just a couple seconds for Trump,’ and they’d fucking do it.
I saw some asshole in an interview saying, “Sometimes you gotta walk through the fire first.”
Like…Yeah? Maybe. Just don’t start by lighting yourself the fuck on fire. 😕🔫
- It took Nazis months in Stalingrad to realize Hitler didn't give a fuck about them. Shit, a lot of them probably died out there in the snow and ice thinking they were doing a great job for him.
- tariffs can and will be the death knell if he comes back to those original rates.
  No real effects from tariffs have happened yet across the board so the impact isn't truely felt. Even chinese imports don't have the tariffs yet because it's only goods that were on boats after it took effect.
  We won't see the downstream impact of even 10% tariffs for months. It won't be until sales slump that people start getting fired and then sales will get even worse...
  
  There have already been plenty of real effects from HitlerPig's tariffs, just not the financial ones. This latest tariff scam, the third one in three months, has eroded the confidence, respect, and trust of the entire world, and it will be YEARS before it returns, if ever.
- People were all 'Dave portnoy is talking about losing money!'' Yeah well, if you look into it, he still 100% supports Trump.
  
  I think I've finally seen Dave enough times before Portnoy to stop the "I've read he is a great drummer...I'm not a fan of prog rock at all...why is he being mentioned" repeat that was going on every time I read the name.

What's to explain? You got lied to by a liar who says he never lies, and you believed him.
It's like complaining that you didn't realize the Leopard you elected would have spots, when he's ALWAYS had spots.

You voted for it, you figure it out

Apparently it’s difficult to grasp that price increases when thing get more expensive.
- But why? Is it because of Biden? Please don't explain it to me.
  
  It’s because of Hunter Biden’s laptop
  
  But her emails!!
  
  Why would Hillary's emails do this?
- The catch is that the ones who don't understand always, ALWAYS think it's the other country that pays the tariff. Every time.
  
  The dumb thing is that it doesn't matter who pays the tariff, it still will get passed to the consumer. Consider a scenario where the government starts taxing Amazon $100 per order no matter what's in it. If you buy a $10 item on Amazon, how are they going to pay the $100 tax on that? Amazon will just add a $100 tax fee to your order because they can't keep running a business if that cost isn't baked into the final price. It doesn't matter who actually delivers money to the government, the tax gets paid by all parties involved.
  FYI, sales tax is already done this way. Sales tax is collected from businesses, not customers, but customers still pay sales tax because that's just how economics works.
  
  Well, that's exactly what Trump said would happen, so why would they think otherwise?
  
  Even if that’s true the price would still increase. The exporting country would just charge extra to make up the difference. It’s not like they would just absorb the extra cost by pure goodwill for the oh so poor American people.

PLEASE be Nice to Him! He THOUGHT Electing Trump would mean he could PUNCH TRANS KIDS in Public and Run Over Immigrant Children! He DIDNT think it would Hurt HIS Wallet! He's WHITE For Pete's Sake! Show some SYMPATHY!
- Where "are" your QUOTATION MARKS? Breaking grammar RULES is "punishable" and NOT GOOD!
  
  Sooo, it’s like this “Eat a bag of dicks”, right?… I’m confused, I think.

They STILL don't get it? Everyone has been yelling about exactly what would happen. The news, social media, people protesting in the streets... even Fox News is critical of the Tariffs now. Journalists are bringing it up at White House press conferences and getting reaponses from the Press Secretary. This is not a secret. What sort of social bubble/echo chamber, do these people live in? Just fully bought in to the kool-aid. Useful idiots, the lot of them!
- They have been conditioned to believe that the mainstream media is evil and constantly lies to them in order to facilitate the woke communist takeover and destruction of the USA.
  So it would be an understatement to say they are working from a position of willful ignorance.
- People are incredibly stupid.
  
  I think this is the right answer. I really don't want to believe this is true, but I think it is.
  
  People are incredibly stupid and technology / politics isolates that stupidity and builds upon it to make mindless propaganda drones.
- Social bubbles/echo chambers is exactly what has created this. Why did Musk buy X and Trump created his own social media?
  
  Because Musk accidentally made an offer for Twitter and because Trump needed to take foreign bribes?
- These kind of people get all their news from FreedomEagle on facebook or some angry guy with a red face and oakleys on youtube because mainstream news is woke dei
- @kryptonianCodeMonkey @TheBat Very difficult for a cult member to deprogram themselves
- To be fair, everyone has been yelling about a lot of things. I even notice a lot of stupid things said against Trump, which is frustrating, because imagine you're hearing all those stupid things said and you're not already committed to an anti-Trump ideology - then how will you believe when you hear the real anti-Trump things said?
  
  Having half an ounce of curiosity, sense, and genuine interest in how the world works is a good start. What's sad is that that is apparently asking too much.

In other words, Brandon has no fucking idea what "tariff" means, except it must be good cuz Daddy says so.
- To be fair, Trump doesn't even know how tariffs work properly.
  
  Trump doesn’t know how fucking anything works.
  
  Someone on reddit (from where I stole this pic) said 'Trump thinks tariffs are like tributes' and I think that's a perfect analysis of Trump's mentality.
- I wish the US media would call tariffs "import taxes", as that terminology seems to be generally better understood by the public.
  
  Then they'd blame the liberals for adding a new tax when all Trump wants is tariffs.
  
  Yesterday I type "what" into my search engine and within the top 5 was "what is a tariff". Import tax would make too much sense and people wouldn't stand behind it if it was referred to as such.
  I get that tariff is the correct word and I understand what they are, but I am sure people like my dipshit cousins had no clue until a few days ago.

A tariff is a tax on foreign goods, paid by the consumer.
IT. IS. A TAX
- Probably the whole reason behind it. A tax that your deeply tax-hating clientele is not recognizing. And also a regressive tax, that hurts poor people disproportionately harder then rich people, compared to taxes like income tax.

Your president is an idiot that is why your being charged more MAGAt.
- You're no longer his friend
  
  And nothing of value was lost.

This is 39% of the voting population folks....
Big sad. :(

See, the trick is that calling it a tariff hides the fact it's an IMPORT TAX, paid by the people within the IMPORTING COUNTRY
- It doesn't hide it from most people, just those too dumb to go and find out what a tariff is before voting for them.
  
  just those too dumb to go and find out what a tariff is before voting for them
  Of which there are more than 70 million in this country.
  
  That's the thing though. A lot of people do not bother researching and finding information themselves. That's what makes rhetoric so powerful.
  And it works. Just keep repeating the lie that people want to believe and they will believe it. The bigger the better. That's what makes Trump so persuasive to morons. They want to believe these unbelievably ridiculous lies.
  "A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique.[1][2] The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Hitler claimed that the technique had been used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist political leader in the Weimar Republic."
- Since it's a tax, the party paying the tax has no impact on its tax incidence. It's just the result of supply and demand elasticity.

I would be short and concise, and just for this person add a sprinkle of personal responsibility:
Trump taxed you because you bought something un-American.
- The extension:-
  This costs more because you have to pay off Trump as it contains something un-American.

- Sorry, Copium is produced mostly in china, im gonna have to hit you with a tarriff surcharge
  
  Also comes from Russian or North Korea!
  
  Don't worry, that's just a can of bleach and ammonia mixed together. An alt-right mouth told them real copium is a conspiracy and they should use home made copium instead. The mouth sells these kits you see...

Why is it always my president or not my president with these people? It's not a sporting event, there are teams but not the ones they're thinking of
- Its right up there with the bumper stickers I saw that said "I want MY country back!"
  Guess the race, gender and age of the driver of that car - Bonus points to guess the type and design on the cap they were wearing.
  
  I once saw a "I want our continent back" bumper sticker, Native Americans have the best shit posts. Also I fully support this idea just help me kill the English aristocrats, oligarchs, and dissolve the UK and we'll have a deal.
- Politics is football teams for them. It doesn’t matter what is being done, it’s about who is doing it.
  They believed that Obama would try to become a dictator because they assume that others think the same way they do. The goal is for your team to dominate and win, and you assume that the other team is playing the same way. Big part of why “every accusation is a projection.”
  
  Yup. And they think it's R v D aka The Left. Reality is it's Obscenely rich v. the rest of us. They're just pawns on the rich side
- In this case its his president because he thinks trump thinks and cares about him. Cause trump is a racist bigot.

People still don't know?! Lmao. How stupid can you be?
- Very. Very, very stupid.
- Think of how stupid the average person is. The. Realize half of people arw dumber then that
  
  Half of them are too dumb to know that's the mean, not the average.
  
  Give the late George Carlin his credit for this quote please.
- there are people out there who voted for trump more than twice. Very stupid.

You can't explain it to them. Not even by using toy cars or gobstoppers.
"There's none so deaf as those who will not listen"
- You can't even use Upton Sinclair's quote for these people: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." They're not even getting a salary for supporting this shit bucket!
- What about crayons?
  
  Not all Marines are trumpers.
  
  Crayons would have been a much better analogy.

If he's 100% Trump, the Trump tariff is $100. Simple.
Tell him to buy $23 worth of $TRUMP coin or he'll be deported for ripping off his lord and saviour.
- I am kind of surprised he has not pumped it a few more times. For a while I was almost thinking of buying in a bit. Not because I think it is innovative or anything, but because I was expecting him to pump it a few times as he is bribed.
  
  Well, first he had to disband the team of prosecutors who targeted cryptocurrency crimes, from today he can safely pump it again
  
  Trumpcoin isn't for you or me, so he doesn't need to pump it. It's for untraceable bribery and corruption. Say a foreign national wants something from Trump (an executive order, a crackdown on a competitor, the lifting of a crackdown, whatever). They need only make a large, anonymous Trumpcoin purchase and then discretely let Trump know about it.

- During the first rodeo the cult liked to use the phrase "he's your president, so act like it". I am still not sure what that was supposed to mean. Might be poetic to comment it on their tariff complaints and imply they are being disloyal leftists for not paying tariffs.

Do your research.

Trump has said that other countries are ripping off the USA which creates the impression that foreign companies are selling goods far higher than they are worth. That means that people who believe Trump likely think that the foreign companies have enough margin to soak up the tariff, I.e. Pay it themselves, in order to keep doing business. Then the ripping off stops and those foreign countries just grumble that their gravy train is over.
In reality, they are not and never were ripping off the USA in the way that is being suggested. Republicans seem to have forgotten that the market forces they used to talk about being so important have put a downward pressure on prices to some extent have prevented price gouging wherever there is competition and no collusion. Even when the goods come from overseas.
Now due to the tariffs, the cost of doing business with the USA went up. So if they want to keep selling products in the USA, they need to cover the cost of the tariff, and the only way to do that and stay in business is to pass the tariff on by increasing their price to the customer. They can still sell that product outside the USA at its original price but they may choose to increase those due to reduced volume sold over all since the USA will likely buy less.
By labelling the surcharge for the tariff they are simply highlighting the reason for the increase in price. As they should. I fear though that posts like this show that even when the reason for increased pricing is made clear, people will still choose their reality and not believe or understand the causes and motivations.
- The cost doesn’t increase to the foreign company. The cost increases to the importer here in the USA. The foreign companies don’t see that money (the IRS cannot audit China lol we have no jurisdiction over other sovereign nations), it’s paid by Americans TO America.
  
  Also where the fuck is the tariff money going. Never a single mention of that.
- Billionaires rip off Americans that are ripping off the rest of the world.

I'm impressed they are line iteming it for you.
- I absolutely would. Make it clear that you aren't just arbitrarily raising prices, that there is a cause, and exactly what that cause is so that people are pissed about it but at the right people.
- I'm seeing more companies making it a "tariff surcharge" right before the tax line item.
- When there tariffs change every time Trump goes into Twitter, i would expect them line itemized and with a timestamp.
- It makes sense. It is clearly to show to dumbfucks who voted for this how their dumbfuck decisions cost them.

Easy, according to Republicans 2+2=5, therefore your regular bill of $100 is actually $177 now. It's not a surcharge, they're literally the same number so the math checks out. Just enjoy your life, have more kids, and don't worry too much about politics, Trump has you covered.
- Phew

2d means lots of times for replies, I want to see what he said when it was explained to him.
- Apparently he has deleted the post.
  
  Or it wasn't real.
  I struggle to believe someone could be this disconnected from reality. Honestly.

Tariffs are paid by the company that imports foreign-made goods to the government. To make up for that expense, they charge the retailer the same amount; and to make up for that expense, the retailer charges the customer the same (or a higher) amount added to the item's price. (at least as I understand it)
If OOP is "100% Trump!", they should be very, extremely happy about paying into THEIR President's pockets.
- You're right, except for how early in the process the profiteering starts.
  Every single company involved will exploit the situation to add extra on top of the tariffs themselves.
  Because the already broken (in the 80s if not earlier and progressively worse ever since) system not only allows them to, but ENCOURAGES fleecing people as much as possible to maximize profits for shareholders.

That profile picture looks EXACTLY like I picture those people... I hope this is a joke.
- He looks completely normal. Don't be an ass.
  
  He meant they look happy. (this is a joke)

Because it's very hard to search online for "how tariffs work". This is why Trump got elected, because idiots like this who have no capacity to fact check things voted for him, no questions asked.
To make answer short, YOU pay the tariffs dummy. You do!
- DID YOU DO YOUR RESEARCH?
  I DID MY RESEARCH.
  GO DO YOUR RESEARCH.
  OH MY RESEARCH IS BETTER THAN YOUR RESEARCH THAT'S WHY.
- It’s not even because it’s hard to search, they lack the capacity to think critically. Even if they were smart enough to do a google search on the workings of tariffs, they still wouldn’t do it. They take everything they see on their feed and Newsmax at face value.

If someone explained to him what tariffs are and how they work without mentioning the president at first, and how it will impact his spending money, there's a chance he might finally admit to Trump making a mistake.
- Almost everyone is in favor of the Affordable Care Act, but as soon as they hear “Obamacare” it’s suddenly evil.
  Or like how ~~Burger King~~ A&W’s 1/3 pound burger never took off because Americans are too stupid to realize 1/3 is a bigger number than 1/4 so they go to McDonald’s instead.
  
  That wasn't burger king, that was a&w.
  
  Maybe americans should start calling these "Trump Tax"
  
  They should have really come with the 1/6863 tonne burger
- No, initial reaction would probably be that "you're wrong", and the importer is trying to stiff him and/or is a Biden's supporter trying to make Trump look bad or some other shit. After some time, he might come around, but the principle of a cult is no matter what fact and evidence you provide, they will dismiss them and refuse to change their minds.
  
  You're probably right, sadly.
- No he wouldn't.
  
  The true Trump Derangement Syndrome
  
  It's worth a try. It's better than insulting them and screming at them, which for sure isn't going to work.
  But I'm pretty certain you're right though. It's pretty much became a cult at this point.
- Doubtful.
  “Not muh prezdent”

The PFP is giving wife beater vibes..
- PFP? What does that stand for?
  
  Profile Picture

One of the stupid 30%.
- *60%
- ~~30%~~ 80% - it's called the 80/20 rule

Oh no not YOUR president! 🙄

....for millenia there has been an axiom, a truism, if you will, that has persisted among the many, and applied to very few..."you cannot fix stupid"

Ok, ok. Trump absolutely loves you just as much as you love him, double if you're uneducated. He told all of the businesses that they should lose money on sales and go out of business instead of raising prices. It's those businesses who are assholes. They haven't even started manufacturing in US, and hiring white Americans to make t shirts yet, and its been a whole week! If you support Trump, then boycott businesses who pass on tariff costs, because they just don't love you/America as much as he does.

This is why I'm hesitant to believe the tariffs will be the death knell of MAGA.
It might be enough to get the idiots who voted for him because they don't understand how markets work and blamed Biden, but these committed idiots will look the truth in the face and spit in it's eye because it doesn't line up with what they've committed themselves to.
Maybe I'm pessimistic. We've got almost four full years and the one thing this idiot has been committed to where it comes to economics is tariffs, namely on the biggest producer of our shit and that's a long time to be paying a thousand dollars for a cellphone, but I have really lost faith in the ability of human beings to put narrow self interest over blind prejudice.

Just cultist things.

Is it ok that I want the all to outright die? I want them to decay slowly, like the living manure they are. They deserve nothing else.

You don't pay the import tax if you buy goods from within the country.
The goal seems to be to drive sales to American businesses with American goods. Until it's cheaper to buy American goods than it is to buy Chinese goods. Reversing the roles.
- Yeah but you need to have some sort of industrial policy in place as well - to build infrastructure and subsidize onshoring. He's doing the opposite. He even cancelled the CHIPS Act, which was aimed at onshoring semiconductor production. No company is going to open manufacturing facilities in the US under this enormous economic volatility and without any government help to get started.
  He's an abject fucking moron who, I'm convinced, is trying to reset wages and create a class of low paid wage slaves while funeling huge amounts of money to the wealthy. He's certainly going to cause stagflation and astronomical wealth inequality. If he succeeds fucking with interest rates he may cause hyperinflation. If the US loses global reserve currency status, they are proper fucked.
  At this point, it can only end one way. Even if he's out of the picture, the damage he's done will last for a generation at least. He may have already torpedoed US economic superpower status.
- That's the face value goal, if they were being honest and following classical economics. It's entirely moot when tariffs are put on goods that can't sufficiently be brought stateside.
  For example, coffee and chocolate.
  
  Yeah shifting production to the US is much more complicated than just making it more expensive to import things. Even when it's on goods that can be produced here, I'm skeptical that any of these tariffs will result in increased production here.
  
  I was taught that was the point of free trade. Not offshoring human misery and environmental destruction.
- Of course you pay it - just not directly - because there is basically no good from "within the country" whose inputs are not affected by the tarrifs.
  The idea that the US is suddenly gonna massively ramp up its production of coffee, electric machinery, shoes and other products that are produced by countries with a massive competetive advantage is just ridiculous.
  
  Also don't forget greed!
  There are going to be so many business raising their prices across the board ("you know, because of tariffs, we have no choice"), like the greedflation you saw during the worst of the pandemic ("supply lines! Everyone's hurting").
  Some of it is genuinely to offset the cost of tariffs (fair), others will be trying to keep steady income levels in a cooling consumer economy (less fair), and yet others will be just an excuse to extract more profit from consumers (these are the bad guys).
- That is the goal. But, he is also targeting countries that already put tariffs on things we ship to them. So, its also to try and put an end to that.
  
  The reciprocal tarifs aren't. He mostly calls trade deficits other countries changing us which it isnt and uses that to compute the rates.

I always try to bring it back something they can relate to.
You know how when you go to some small mom and pop shop, and they charge you a small % to use a credit card, or give you a discount for using cash? Its the same principle. The credit card companies charge them a fee, and they dont want to (or cant afford to pay it), so they make you pay it. Tarrifs are the same. Either you pay the fee via surcharge, or your cost of the product went up to pay the fee

Tariffs are sales tax
- Slight correction: Tariffs are an import tax.
  
  Technically correct, but most Americans understand how sales taxes work, so calling a tariff a sales tax works as a metaphor to explain tariffs.
  
  If they’ve gotten this far while not understanding that then I don’t think they will understand that

Congress can take the power to set tariffs away from the president. But will they? Highly doubtful.
- I hope we learn the lesson by the midterms. Unlikely, but possible.
  
  I'd be surprised if midterms happen. I'd be even more surprised to not see massive and blatant meddling

"My President" ? What is he ? a yandere ?

Terroriffs am I right
- Terror Riff sounds like something you'd hear in a doom metal album.

https://youtube.com/shorts/GHHvAy7Jk5M
This is quite good. Sorry it's a short.
- That guy was really patient while explaining to the magat. I'm disappointed in it being a short, and accept your apology 100%. At the same time I'd like to say thank you for posting it. Just sent it on to a family member.
  
  The clip was quasi sanitized by that scummy channel by not mentioning the original creator. If cult-members would google him they would not watch the short: his name is Walter Masterson and he did some, genius IMO, parodies on MAGA-ralleys and gained access as a speaker to events from groups like Moms for Liberty, I believe.
  https://youtu.be/xwZT_nisxsQ
  I think he did way more videos over the years than shown on the channel and I wonder if he got censored.

Every time I think the level of dumbness can’t get any lower someone like this guy appears and proves me wrong.

Even the administration admits that it will make things more expensive. The "passthrough" of 0.25 in their equation means Americans will pay 25% of the tariff amount. And it's in the denominator, so if it was 0, the (limit of the) tariff rate would go to infinity, which means no amount of tariff would be effective.

i wish it was less embarrassing to be wrong so that people like this wouldn't feel compelled to (checks notes) do whatever comes after octuple down

Wtf