Politically-motivated tea tax, what could go wrong?
AYO is that what they’re doing‽
Who’s doing this‽
“No tariffs without Harris”
Chocolate, cinnamon, vanilla, pepper, tea, bananas, and a fuckload of other things that are completely integrated into our regular diets are almost exclusively imported.
Sugar too. That ain’t healthy and is kinda fancy but… Can you see them losing their shit over sugar prices? I do.
Tomatoes imports were 2.5B in 2023.
Apparently the us imports 15% of it’s food supply.
That can’t be right. Corn can’t be only 85% of our food.
But seriously, there’s so much goddamn corn. Our meat is fed corn. Our processed foods and drinks are pumped full of corn. Even our fucking cars eat corn. We’re up to our fucking ears in ears of corn.
Based on what I find online, the us import about $2B in raw-sugar, while some (about 100M) is exported again.
Source: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-sugar/reporter/usa
How much “processed” sugar leaves the us again? I am not sure. Maybe all of it.
Sugar is fancy now? Man my grandpa would be thrilled were he alive. There’s a colloquial term for the farm-houses of sugar beat farmers in Northern Germany, “beat castles”, as they quickly made a lot of money growing the beats in the late 19th century. When sugar became more accessible due to the processing of the beats to refined sugar. The wealth is long gone now, similarly to how salt used to be a luxury good.
No. That is the point.
Sugar is “fancy” as in “you don’t need sugar for your diet”.
There’s plenty of corn syrup to replace it with unfortunately.
I understand your perspective but I want to ask a question, not to you, but for you to think about it. What motivation causes the imports?
If corn syrup is a replacement for whatever they are doing, why are they importing raw sugar? If raw sugar is cheaper than you would expect them to already use sugar for everything and not corn syrup, and switching to corn syrup would be an increase in cost . If raw sugar costs the same, import is additional paperwork, why import? Raw sugar is more expensive, why would they pay more?
Raw sugar can’t be replaced easily in their use case? Now that makes sense.
Sugar tastes better than HFCS. Ask anyone who drinks Mexican Coke. “Tastes better” doesn’t matter when there’s no other option.
And the rest is farmed here by undocumented workers.
Avocados for your avocado toast. Smh.
A lot of fruit/veg is grown in places they can get away with slave wages and then shipped here because that’s how little labor costs. Less than our already super low paid fruit/veg pickers that are primarily the people who escaped the countries and situations that put them in those even lower slave wage places.
Coffee, tea, and everything you’re wearing right now.
A ton of parts of what you are driving, all your maga hats, a ton of stuff that’s in your house
Your mom wears maga hats.
Oh no, but I need to buy a new buttplug every day!
Wait, I’m not American, nvm.
Most buttplugs can be washed. Just a money-saving tip for you there.
Nah, it’s not about single-use, it’s about the collection. You can’t take some og the rare ones out of their original packaging or they lose value!
I hear it’s all about the blind box butt plugs today. That way you have to keep buying them and getting duplicates until you get a rare one.
A shiny!!
Some people have never even looked at a dang banana
It’s one banana Michael. What could it cost, $10?
In trump’s economy, maybe?
The joke will take on a new meaning when $10 is the good old days.
That’s the thing I find most depressing about a trump presidency, there will be a time when the rational Left looks back on it as “when things weren’t so bad.”
Like, when I was a kid I, and many others, never imagined there could be a president dumber than Bush…
Chocolate also. Lol I hope you fucking like corn syrup and candy corn you little shits.
Removed by mod
I usually fly in to buy it locally. Important these days to know your farmers
I like to talk to the grain harvesting robot every once in a while, really lets me feel like I’m part of a community
I pictured this together in a bowl and it’s making me feel a hair nauseated
Classic American breakfast 🤌
The syrup helps the little corns slide down better.
Also: I can’t feel my toes but I’m sure that’s unrelated.
Who are we kidding? Trump’s going to enforce it selectively to nefarious ends and enrich himself off exemptions that he’s hand picked to be subservient. Free market my ass.
100% this. I see tariffs on foreign cars coming quick.
So nothing and it’s just a money grab
No. Everyone who doesn’t have money for him to grab is fucked.
People listing Hawaii like they could meet the total US demand, even if they could scale to maximum production overnight.
Most of the corn we eat is Brazilian. Most of the corn we grow is feed corn for cows and process corn for HFCS and other processed food ingredients.
As an American born and raised in Illinois I can also inform the rest of the populace our corn also gets used to make ethanol, an alternative fuel source.
Ethanol is incredibly inefficient as a fuel source.
If not for the massive subsidies it would not exist.
Still, ethanol is a better fuel additive than lead. (Both reduce knocking)
Still, the far better use is to grow food.
Im guessing they also never seen how much the coffee from there cost. Plus supply and demand you dumb fucks. The cost will skyrocket. Kona coffee ranges from $30 to $100 a bag. Think of a massive increase of demand. Are we going to pay $100 a bag for low end stuff?
Hawaii does have the largest coffee growing industry in the entire US but they are severely limited by the amount of available land. Compared to other coffee-producing nations, the Big Island is microscopically tiny, so they mainly focus on high quality, artisanal product sold at extremely high prices. Not that I would mind if all the coffee sold everywhere would be replaced by Kona coffee overnight, but it just isn’t feasible.
Well, the US turning into a banana republic will at least solve the problem for bananas.
It sure would help if Americans weren’t generally ignorant about uh… tons of stuff and especially anything that involves other countries. All sorts of fruits and vegetables are imported - green beans, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, lettuce, berries, bananas, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant. And then at the same time, the Trump bros want to crack down on groups of people who make up a large portion of the domestic agricultural workforce? It’s difficult to see some conservative policies as intended to do anything other than just fuck people over and cause chaos.
They are going to blame the deep state or some marginalized group other than the one they just deported
It’s those darn liberal environmental and labor regulations
They would blame Biden, Harris, Obama and Hillary Clinton for these things and more.
Jokes aside, people will only start being outraged when Starbucks and Dunkin’ start selling their favorite drinks for $15+. I only hope that when things get to that point people start taking the streets in protest.
and I’ll probably just pay the tariffs and move on because half the time stuff made in the US falls apart or is laced with pesticides banned elsewhere
Yep. If you’re rich enough to can profit off the economy tanking
I think thats what the crypto people are banking on. Rapid inflation. You’re better off just buying imported goods now though, you can always sell them the crypto people at a markup later. Real goods have far more intrinsic value.
I just remembered that Coca-Cola requires denatured coca leaves from South America.
So enjoy that $8 Coke can, America
Finally a real cure for American obesity.
We’ll just drink mountain dew, instead. It has bonus brominated vegetable oil.
Ah, well, if the vegetable oil has been brominated by the council of bros, it should be all good, bro.
Some folks were a little late to figuring out what tariffs were okay!
I feel like most people I have heard talking about them while supporting Trump seem to know that tariffs are taxes, but have no concept of how they play out in a real economic situation. Most fall into one or both of two camps:
A) Tariffs are taxes, but they’re taxes for companies not individuals, and they’re only applied to importing, so they won’t affect me.
B) Tariffs are taxes for foreign companies, to level the playing field and keep American business competitive. Since the companies that have to pay it are foreign, it won’t affect me.
Spoiler alert, guys: no matter where the tax is levied in the system, the consumer is the only person who ever pays for it, since they’re the only ones that can’t pass that cost on to anyone else.
Also, while this can make domestic competitors more competitive, it’s important to remember two things: first, if it works, it’s only working by making things more expensive for consumers, and second, this assumes that the domestic competitors want more business, have the ability and posture to increase their production to meet the new greater demand, and will operate in good faith. Much more likely is that they simply also increase their prices in reaction to the tariffs, so they’re not producing or selling any more volume and aren’t creating any jobs… they’re just padding their profit margins at the corporate/shareholder level while doing nothing for their employees, all while having the average consumer foot the bill.
That’s exactly what happened with the steel tariffs in the first Trump term and that’s exactly what will happen now…the only difference is that this time it seems like there will be significantly fewer economic buffers between the tariff and the consumer, so more people will more directly feel the sting here…and presumably the mental gymnastics from the MAGAts will be even sadder in their attempts to somehow make it not a criticism of their orange leader’s incompetence.
Tariffs are taxes, but they’re taxes for companies not individuals, and they’re only applied to importing, so they won’t affect me.
Typical Magoo (literally my dad in 2016): “you can’t tax business owners, they’re going to just make everything more expensive for us! They pass on the burden to us!”
Also Magoo: “Yay tarrifs! They are a tax on business but that won’t get passed on to me!”
The Magoo motto: Whatever words I need to use to suit my purpose I will use, to hell with reality.
“Surely the company that sells a product for $100 will keep selling the product for that price once tariffs mean that it costs a $125 to produce and import!” - crazy people.
Wanna bet that the search trend spikes again when/if they come into affect?
Have you seen the Brexit graphs??
Guyyyyssss, the vote was yesterday!
Also how was that mess over 10 years ago and they still are in the “Finding out” portion of FAFO?
You think it’s going to be bad when people find out coffee prices are shooting up? Wait until they find out about chocolate.
I will literally cry if Trump takes coffee from me
Thankfully they only placed tariffs on covfefe imports.
Thank you for reminding me there is at least some comedy coming in the future
Invest in Hawaiian. Maybe Trump can add a few more islands out there so we can compete and export.
Peter Theil coffee farm ships
Rabbit hole time.
Apparently, caffeine in soft drinks is synthetic. I thought they just used caffeine that is extracted from decaffeinating coffee beans - not so. Also it’s barely produced in the US (anymore), and we mostly import it from China.
Neat part is: it doesn’t look all that complicated to synthesize and requires some common-ish organic compounds and solvents to make. As a bonus, the “the raw synthetic caffeine often glows - a bluish phosphorence”. If anyone is on his Patreon, please give NileRed a nudge to give this a shot; I think it would be right up his alley.
So we can get by without coffee, but short of running your own chemistry lab, it’s going to be a bit before industry can ramp up production of the synthetic stuff. Meanwhile, caffeinated beverages across the board would be more expensive were synthetic caffeine a part of any tariff scheme.
More here:
Finally, the Step Too Far.
Maybe? We also import a shed-load of tobacco. Combined, that’s not gonna be pretty.
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/raw-tobacco/reporter/usa
It would be interesting to see the first bipartisan riot.
They can’t get out of bed for it without their coffee.
