A conversation I had with one of these women today:
"Jonah, do you know how a tariff works?"
"In, like, very broad, general terms, yes. Why? Do you need it explained?"
"I was reading something yesterday about it, and I'm not sure if it was right. The article was saying we pay it?"
"Yes, that's how a tariff works. It's a tax on imported goods."
"Okay, but that's a good thing, right?"
"If you're trying to discourage foreign trade, yeah. Or pull in more money for the government."
"But how do we pay for it?"
"Uh. We don't pay for it directly. The company that imports pays the tariff, and then they usually raise the prices on their own shit to make up for the loss."
"But that's going to make shit more expensive. Tariffs are supposed to make shit cheaper."
"They're not. They're supposed to make imported shit more expensive. They're supposed to discourage imports."
"I don't understand this. This was gonna help the economy."
"Well, it might help some parts of the economy, but I don't think you're involved in any of them, so you may not see any of the benefits of the tariffs."
"Okay so. I thought China was supposed to pay them."
"Remember during his first term, when there was all that talk about a big, beautiful wall that Mexico was gonna--"
"No no, hear me out. Remember how there was going to be a big beautiful wall that Mexico was going to pay for? China is going to pay the tariffs in the same way that Mexico paid for the border wall."
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romaincrisis
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