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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   30721 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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Assuming for a moment that the purpose of tariffs is to shift consumer spending away from foreign imports and towards domesticly manufactured products,

Shouldn't you want retailers to break-out the tariff cost into a seperate legible line item?

A story broke this morning that Amazon was going to start labeling products with the tariff charged on each item to make the price changes legible to the consumer. From the perspective of a protectionist economic policy, this is a good thing. It makes it unignorably clear which items are made in China and which items are made in America. It also shows the direct monetary incentive for you the consumer to but the Made in America item over the Made in China item.

From the perspective of whatever the hell the Trump administration is trying to do, this is a disaster. I understand that governments would prefer the populace not be particularly mindful of how much money they pay in taxes, but it is another thing alltogether to hear this articulated by the press secretary as something that they think makes the administration look good to the public. The official line from the MAGA infuencer types on Twitter is that retailers are doing this as a distraction from the fact that they sell cheap slop from Asian sweatshops, but this is actually highlighting the fact that they sell cheap slop from Asian sweatshops.

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, Hanania was right again.

I agree. I am strictly more likely to buy the same item MiUSA or from a lower tariff country if I see the tariff cost as a line item than if I see the total cost.

Where restaurants eat the credit card cost or raise prices across the board, I am pretty neutral between using a card and paying cash. Where they charge a fee to use a credit card, I'll nearly always pay cash.

I probably consistently overpay for shipping by paying more for items from stores with "free shipping" rather than paying shipping as a separate line item.

Consumers consistently dislike fees and markups on phones/cars/bank accounts etc.

I think I'm more likely to look at a $35 MiChina hoodie with $20 marked as tariffs vs a $65 MiUSA hoodie and pick the MiUSA product if the tariffs are marked separately. First of all, I as a consumer have a limited understanding of quality, I'll anchor to the idea that the MiChina product is "really" a $35 that they're now charging extra for while the MiUSA hoody is "really" a $65 product. Second, I just don't like paying taxes and fees, and will prefer not to. Third, if I consistently find that shopping on Amazon I don't know what the "real" price is until the I get to checkout, that's a hassle that I don't want to deal with, I'll be more likely to shop on LA Apparel and American Giant where the price is the price.

This seems aimed at making me buy American.

Third, if I consistently find that shopping on Amazon I don't know what the "real" price is until the I get to checkout

How so?

If they list one price when I'm browsing on the website, and then add tariffs in when I go to checkout, I need to constantly do math while scrolling around.

Sales tax is calculated after discounts. How are LA Apparel and American Giant different?

6% difference vs 145+% difference?

Was "Third, if I consistently find that shopping on Amazon I don't know what the "real" price is until the I get to checkout" a reference to sales tax or not? I'm not following you.

No, it was a reference to reports that stores like Amazon are displaying a base price when shopping, and then displaying a "tariff adjustment" at checkout.

So on a MiUSA item it's 50 in the store, 53 at checkout. A MiChina it's 50 in the store, then somewhere between 52 and 120 at checkout.

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