I was at a fundraiser tonight for the local hospital.
Spoke with dozens of business owners, many had different stories about how tariffs are impacting their business:
1 - Logistics exec: "One of our big box customers has stopped taking new imports from China altogether."
2 - Community banker: "We are requiring all home builders to bring more equity due to higher anticipated costs. This will have a big impact on new home builds later in the year."
3 - Wholesale distributor: "Overseas suppliers have changed payment terms, requiring payment up front. They've had so many US orders refuse to take delivery due to tariffs, now they view US customers as a credit risk."
4 - Toy retailer: "A large number of our domestic suppliers have cancelled all incoming containers and are not placing new orders until they get some direction, which will impact this coming holiday season. Toys will be in short supply all over the country."
5 - Staffing in manufacturing: "We had a lot of momentum coming in this year. Our manufacturing clients have mostly paused all new placements. We are talking hundreds of would-be jobs that have disappeared."
6 - Investment banker: "We had several deals in process that have stalled, including one large ($300M+) transaction that fell apart literally on the day of closing. The private equity fund got cold feet."
7 - Hospital exec: "We have a few months of inventory of PPE available. We can't pass on price increases, because most of our prices are fixed with the carriers. We aren't placing orders for anything that comes from China."
The COVID-19 virus caused the supply chain to collapse five years ago. Unemployment skyrocketed and the government was handing out money hand over fist to keep the economy from collapsing.
This time, the virus has a name: Donald Trump.
3 comments:
“We need to run the country like a business. And for that, we need a businessman.”
No, dumbasses, we need to run the country like a country. And we certainly don’t need a failed businessman to ruin a strong economy that was handed to him.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-biden-administration-handed-over-a-strong-economy/
Everyone is/will suffer from the idiocy of this administration. Walking away from a negotiation in business with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude may work when one is in a position of strength. Using the same strategy when negotiating with other countries just alienates them and drives them to seek alternative solutions. See: China’s increased purchase of soybeans from Brazil.
I’m guessing that most Magats won’t change their support until they get kicked in the pocketbook hard enough. But even that may not be enough for the hard core sycophants..
Dale
I used to play this game on a dumb terminal in school.
Moon Rocket Lander was a simulation game in which you are challenged with safely piloting a lunar lander to the Moon's surface. When the game starts, you are 500 feet above the Moon and falling at 50 feet/second. You have 60 units of fuel. You have to tell the program how much fuel to burn to try to make a soft touchdown. After entering your fuel units, the calculator would display your new altitude, speed, and remaining fuel. Then you would enter a new fuel unit value and press enter. You'd repeat until you landed. If you landed with a velocity of anything other than zero, you lost the game.
It was hard to win, and there were many ways to screw up. If you ran out of fuel before you were very close to the surface, the rocket would slam into the moon, and you would die. If you used too little fuel, the rocket would accelerate toward the surface, and you would crash and die. If you used too much fuel, the rocket would accelerate in the opposite direction. I eventually came up with a winning fuel-burning strategy through many trial-and-error attempts.
https://boingboing.net/2021/01/20/in-1974-i-played-the-lunar-lander-game-on-a-pocket-calculator-for-hours-on-end.html
Novices were known to make big craters and have their next of kin notified. How big is this crater going to be? Once people stop spending, it's hard to get them going again. Been there, done that, have the merit badge.
Ah, Jon, but iterative learning only works if you want to learn. True Believers don't until the bullet has left the gun and is spinning towards their head...when it's too late...and then the Rest of Us are left to mop up the blood and brain fragments.
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