Donald Trump announced Friday that he was scrapping U.S. tariffs on beef, coffee, tropical fruits and a broad swath of other commodities — a dramatic move that comes amid mounting pressure on his administration to better combat high consumer prices.

Trump has built his second term around imposing steep levies on goods imported into the U.S. in hopes of encouraging domestic production and lifting the U.S. economy. His abrupt retreat from his signature tariff policy on so many staples key to the American diet is significant, and it comes after voters in off-year elections this month cited economic concerns as their top issue, resulting in big wins for Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey and other key races around the country.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Remember when grocery store prices wouldn’t decline after covid and the Biden administration started investigating grocery chains?

    Well, fat fucking chance of prices dropping even if the tariffs disappear.

  • BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world
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    The Amazon Prime Day strategy. Increase prices for a while then reduce the prices to “slightly higher than they were originally” and claim you’re doing a favor.

    • LobsterJim@slrpnk.net
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      2 days ago

      It’s not even necessarily unfucking either. When distributors and producers learn a new higher price consumers will pay, it’s very easy for them to default to that price. They can just increase prices to match what it was with tariffs and nothing changes except more profit for the producers. We consumers wouldn’t even realize it since we’re so far removed from the source.

      • Bakkoda@lemmy.zip
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        Or that’s the point. Every crisis is an opportunity. Create crisis, create profit.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        Costs of goods hasn’t been a meaningful part of final cost of a product in a long time. Companies have been using minor cost increases to justify major price increases for a while now.

        • LobsterJim@slrpnk.net
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          Regardless of whether it’s the producer or someone else along the supply chain, the prices are able to stay up because the consumer will pay the increase price. At the source or not, that’s my only point

  • bthest@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Hey dipshit MAGA subhumans, guess what?

    spoiler

    They ain’t going to lower the prices. They’re going to pocket the difference because people are already paying it. You did this. Have a merry Christmas you cockroach filth covered animals.

  • adarza@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    as if that’s all it took to lower prices. companies are gonna look at this as ‘free profit’ and keep them high, pocketing the ‘savings’ for as long as they can.

    • manxu@piefed.social
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      To be fair to corrupt corporations, they already bought the beef and coffee at tariffed prices, so they have to sell that stuff before the prices can go down. Unless they get a refund (not gonna happen), that’s the way things work.

        • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Short Answer: Markets are complicated and full of hundreds of thousands of moving parts. For a very simple example related to beef - we could consider the import of Waygu beef since that’s a commodity you can’t make in the USA.

          Obviously, there’s plenty of other beef products we import. Anyways yeah usually a country is exporting and importing the same stuff in some quantities when it comes to things like beef or pork or simple mechanical widgets or whatever. Just stuff that because of the quirks of supply and demand and logistics makes it so widgets are exported for sale and also sold domestically.

          • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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            This, BTW, is why the deal with Argentina to import more beef will do nothing for prices. Argentinian farmers pretty much exclusively raise very high end free-range grass fed beef that sells for a very high sticker price. This might be good for, say, Michelin star New York restaurants, but it won’t help anyone out in the grocery store.

  • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Weird, I was assuming that adding tariffs on coffee would magically create plantations of coffee in Wyoming

    • Zier@fedia.io
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      Wyoming is already full of bigots, no space to plant coffee trees.

      • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Wyoming isn’t full of anything, the entire state has the population of a mid sized town.

        Why are Republicans always so attracted to rural areas with low population density? So that they don’t have to deal with other Republicans.

  • Bosht@lemmy.world
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    Yeah except the damage is already done. The issue is every time he does this shit the countries that aren’t able to import to America go elsewhere and start up in those countries. If they already established why the fuck would they come back and risk the loss again off the tariff rug pull? It’s not only logical it’s a better business move to just stick where you are where the market is going to be stable. This is what happened to the soy farmers.

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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    3 days ago

    I mean, let’s just sit back and observe the stupidly obvious fact that Trump is lowering tariffs to lower grocery store prices, which necessarily confirms Trump knows that creating tariffs raised the grocery store prices, despite that he has said the exact opposite.

    So tell me, mainstream media: Did we do it? Did we catch Trump in a lie so logically incontestable that your reporters would feel empowered to finally report it as a “lie”?

    [Scans article]

    …sigh.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Joke is on American customers. I bet my ass that prices either won’t fall at all, or at least fall far less than the change of tariffs would warrant.

      • NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works
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        Of course they won’t. Prices never go back down. We’re still paying extra for the ongoing COVID supply chain troubles.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      They can’t say ‘lie.’ It’s one of the few words you can basically never use as a journalist.

      It’s not about the incontestability of the truth. It’s about the fact that a ‘lie’ (as opposed to a ‘falsehood’) requires intent. Basically, unless you have psychic powers, or a written, signed declaration from the person saying “Yes, I intentionally lied,” you can’t prove it’s a lie. And in journalism, you do have to be able to prove the things you say. Potentially in a court of law.

      He could just be stupid. He could just be ignorant. He could just be suffering from serious mental decline. We don’t know for sure.

      I get that’s not a satisfying answer. We all know, intuitively, that Trump lies, constantly and endlessly. He tells himself ten lies in the morning just to get out of bed. I get it. We all know it. But journalism has to be held to a higher standard, and that standard has to be applied consistently, not just when it suits us.

      • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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        Yes, all well and good, and upvoted for the rational response of course.

        I understand there are standards. But the enemy of the good is the perfect, and if journalistic standards require perfect evidence and won’t otherwise represent the best-fit explanation, then they are easily exploited by bad actors like Trump who will intentionally withhold perfect evidence. The public good is served by reporting from a reasonable person’s perspective what the most likely explanation is, including the terminology that goes with it. Here, that is a “lie.”

        I’d also argue their concern in this case isn’t standards, but legal liability for defamation. At least from a legal perspective, reporters and publications have clear defenses at this point to saying “lie” since regardless of subjective momentary intent, the preponderance of people / jurors should accept contextual evidence of intent like his prior statements.

        And even journalistic standards should be addressable by calling it something like an “apparent” lie to allow the possibility of other explanations, while still calling it what it almost certainly is.

      • username123@sh.itjust.works
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        I see the logic, but it’s still just excuses. The intensity of words matter to be accurate or to water down. Currently they are watering down. Saying it’s to keep integrity while the country falls apart and also while being caught with more flagrant absences of integrity is just hypocritical theatrics and people are right to judge them for that.

    • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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      Will it actually bring down the prices or will corps keep the prices and just make a bigger profit?

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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      I don’t think he was lying. I think he’s a fucking idiot who refuses to listen to anyone else and it has taken this long for someone to drill the truth into his stupid fucking head.

  • Xotic56@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 days ago

    Oh so the tariffs aren’t making us rich?

    But I thought that’s what he and his dickheads in charge said!

    Oh well, I am positive all his supporters will find a way to pin this on Biden and the radical liberal left I keep hearing so much about. They just gotta wait for Fox News to tell them how to feel first.

  • TheFogan@programming.dev
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    3 days ago

    Who’d have thought… the recomendations for how to lower prices… were, to stop doing those things everyone told him would raise prices and he swore up and down wouldn’t.