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8note 16 hours ago

I doubt it. It's much easier to either launder or manufacture the goods in a third country, that benefits from most of the same incentives that made Chinese manufacturing go through the roof.

Americans will be buying Chinese goods with "made in Vietnam" or "made in Mexico" stamped on it. The American profit will be in setting up those laundering schemes

seanmcdirmid 15 hours ago | parent [-]

If the Trump tariffs are based on country of final assembly, then yes, final assembly will just occur somewhere else, but it will take a couple of years to setup, and the inflation shock by that time will have done a lot of damage to the economy (recession likely, depression possible). It makes sense that it took Trump forever to find a treasury secretary willing to go along with this.

csomar 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can bribe officials in Vietnam/Mexico. So they'll be your country of "final assembly".

seanmcdirmid 12 hours ago | parent [-]

I doubt the Americans will let them do that so easily.

phil21 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They already are. Just one tiny well-explained example, although it's utterly rampant:

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/23/1197961495/the-trade-fraud-de...

No bribery required though, at least in most cases.

seanmcdirmid 9 hours ago | parent [-]

They tried stockpiling aluminum in Mexico during the Trump ban and that was shutdown quickly. I guess they just have to be more convoluted about it. I wonder if Trump will do something like “tariff China and any country that doesn’t tariff China itself (transitive)”, but it feels like it might be futile to do that.

torginus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The alternative is having empty shelves in stores.

Yeul 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Trump tariffs will turn the entire world to China. America may no longer be interested in free trade and go full isolationism but many smaller countries can not. A painful truth is that for Europe the millions of containers with goods from Asia are a lifeline.

omeid2 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Couple of years for a western enterprise maybe, but in the east, things move fast. Really fast.

seanmcdirmid 12 hours ago | parent [-]

It depends if Trump tariffs just China or everyone. He promised high tariffs for China, but tariffs on all imports besides.