Mack Truck laying off 100s in PA & MD
- Thread starter Foreman04
- Start date
- Status
The great misconception. There are 8 billion people on this planet and 350 million Americans. While we do have more money per capita to spend, there are 22x more people out in the world to buy products other than Americans.
No it is not. What other countries currently run a trade deficit? Not China or Germany or Canada or Mexico. This notion they will just go sell to someone else is laughable. Were the net marginal buyer.
If there were demand somewhere else they would already be selling there also.
Basic economics.
The average person in the UK doesn't even have a garage , basement etc . A good percentage of the people in the world can't even feed themselves and provide themselves the basics let alone buy anything . If you're selling your product globally you have to be in America .
That's all based on current demand with no tariffs...we are talking about the effects of tariffs here. Watch companies focus on other countries once Americans are unwilling to pay 25 or 50 or 100% more. Some companies will move manufacturing but many won't and while it may not be easy, lots of companies will adapt to the new environment if these go on long enough.
I don't see your point, not every American treats there house like a Costco warehouse. My garage has one car which can be parked outside, some lawn tools that can be stored in a shed, and some home gym stuff that was a one time purchase during CV-19. I've spent a fraction of my income on what's in my garage or basement and everything in there were one time purchases made years ago. People in the UK spend plenty of their income on things that don't need a garage or basement.
I guess this is where we disagree, from what I can tell most Americans don't even use their garage to park their vehicles because they have so much crap in there from their addictive shopping behavior . Costco does a hell of a business . I don't believe Costco has any Chinese stores .
Good point. Upcoming, tariffs, or even the threat of tariffs, allow sellers to capitalize. Businesses are in the business of making money.
Do you really think a CEO of widgets made in China sits around and says "I am not going to focus on selling more widgets to Canada, Mexico and Germany because Americans buy enough". Really? Of course not, they want to sell all the widgets they can, everywhere.
If you do trust me, not how it works. Manufacturing is all about economies of scale. The more widgets the lower cost each one becomes. Its different for commodities priced at the margin, but not for widgets.
So there is no where else to focus on, and even if some company didn't in the past, there is no other market with consumers that have the free income to buy most of this junk.
For 30 years the China apologists used to say "just wait, China is going to become consumer economy and they won't need to sell to us". Never happened. Not going to happen now either - there population is in decline.
Were the junk buying landfill filling consumer of last resort - for the world.
So what happens when Walmart's shelves are empty? Everybody loses.
Again, targeted tariffs are a strong tool. What we are doing is insanity and possibly fostering a world wide recession.
I believe Subaru and Hyundai are scaling back US manufacturing that delivered cars to Canada, etc.
Depends on what its empty of. Most of those things are not neccesities.
And BMW is building more. Maybe its just the car business?
https://www.reuters.com/business/au...artanburg-plant-analyst-note-says-2025-04-10/
So what do you think the solution is. Keep sending $1T of our wealth off shore every year knowing it will never return. I asked you this a couple times. You have not offered any alternatives?
I agree, certain things (ESPECIALLY our pharmaceuticals) should be made in the USA. I would be very comfortable with that. But other things like the plastic bags we use to hold like soil samples can't really be made here cheap enough to compete.
However, not that long ago we saw how bad the public reaction can get when day-to-day things but not critical get swept up and cannot be restocked. Other countries don't have to permanently stop sale to the US, they just need to stop it for a month, or four years, and we'll be on our knees.
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
No, they just opened a new plant secured back during (fill)
and announced another $21B a few days ago …
Deals are coming in left and right and many trade agreements will land at low/no tariffs - but carry on …
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
Where do you get $8/hr? I've seen several sources state the average factory worker in the highest earning region is $3.70/hr.
I know...I own a small business. Here's what a 20% tariff means to me. I raise me fees to compensate but private insurance does not raise my reimbursement at all or not proportionately so I stop accepting these plans. This means losing patients, which I'm fine with because I'm not going to pay patients to come see me. This also means I don't need 5 docs and 26 employees so here come some layoffs of really well-paying jobs with benefits including 1 or 2 that make +6-figures. Not only does Medicaid not increase my fees, but cuts to Medicaid mean they decrease it, and so I can't afford to accept Medicaid either. These are mostly kids with special health needs and poor kids and there is already a severe access to care problem. I have a patient with a disease that has only been identified in 200 other people world wide and I have to work really closely with Boston Children's hospital to manage this kid - something your average dentist in corporate dentistry or a health center isn't trained to do. This also means another round of layoffs as I try and get my overhead drastically reduced. The $250K renovation we were going to do is now on hold. The $70k in equipment upgrades is on hold. We were going to replace 28 computers for $60K but we were also given an option to just upgrade the hard drives to solid state for $5K and so that's now the plan. We will replace individual computers as they die. Probably going to have to stop offering heath insurance to employees, short-term disability which every female employee who has given birth has used during maternity leave to supplement their lost income, and stop the 401K with the match. Even with these cuts, I will still likely make significantly less income too, but I'll get by and be fine. But it means less spending on my part too. After tariffs, you took a $5M thriving practice that was employing 26 employees with heath care benefits, 401K match, short-term disability, and you turned it into a $3.0-3.5M practice with maybe 12 employees with no benefits that left a bunch of impoverished and sick kids high and dry.
Yes, small business is savvy, but that doesn't mean it's painless.
Do they? Does the math always say more is better and do economies of scale always scale with more production? What do companies at capacity do when demand exceeds capacity and raising prices is no longer an option, but the return on capital of increasing more production is negative, and projections about the future support a longer than comfortable timeline before RoC is positive? The whole concept of the minimum efficient scale. For LOTS of companies there is a "sweet spot" where price per unit is as low as it can go to maximize profits and increasing production actually increases price per unit and decreases profitability. Eventually, you get to a diseconomy of scale. This is basic corporate finance - I've never seen a single example where EoS scale indefinitely with even with capital investment because that concept does exist in the real world. Now throw in the sudden arrival of tariffs and the uncertainty of how much or when or even if they are going to happen and those CEOs you are talking about our paralyzed.
4WD
$50 site donor 2025
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked