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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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A lot of them think that the country with the tarrifs levied against them needs to pay the country they are exporting to to sell the goods there like a "If you want to do business here" tax on the country exporting.
But in all honesty even if it did work that way, the exporting country would just jack the prices up to cover it. The end result for US citizens would be the same.
This. It doesn't matter whether the exporter or importer is payign the tariff, the result is the same - it increases the cost of goods, and that cost is going to get passed down the line, plus margin.
I think it actually can't work that way at all if he does that. Theoretically, it'll work upto 100% tarrifs but it's way worse.
Imagine mr T says 100% tarrifs on product X, that costs $20.
If consumers pay it then it just costs $40 and it's over. If the original country pays it then they have to pay $20 to sell $20 product, which is not profitable at all. But if they jack the price to $40, then they have to pay $40, again not profitable. So this system only works for smaller % tarrifs so that they can raise the price to cover that.
Suppose you have $2 profit (10%) on $20 item, and 20% ($4) tariffs. You can't pay more than your profit, so you increase the price from 20 to 26, now you have 30% ($8) profit, you pay 20% ($5) tarrifs and get total 10% profit. So you see with 20% tariff you get 30% increase in cost. So this would work worse than consumers directly paying 20% tariffs.
You're right on the math front, what I'm saying is that the exporting company/country isnt going to take a loss to sell their goods.
The question is "How do they think it works?"
I agree. I was just mentioning that what they think not only didn't make sense but rather becomes mathematically impossible in some cases unless the countries are taking huge losses.