Traitor Watch - The 45 & 47 Thread

[wonko the sane?]

Literally. The 30% tariffs are only for 90 days. Afterwards it's supposed to go back to the 145% line: in which case (if walmart did what it was told and just ate the costs.) they would be losing money on literally every single sale.

But of course, walmart won't: the single point of access for millions cannot just give up and die. It would literally kill hundreds if not thousands of small towns that are trapped in walmarts thrall.

 

[Axaday]

At TEN % they'd be losing money on literally every single sale.

Man, I get in the comments on Facebook and discuss stuff with total fools and there are people out there saying business will eat a 145% tariff and I just really, really don't even. How high would your profit margin need to be to pay 2.5 times as much for your wares and say "Oh, that's fine!" Maybe if I'd been charging 10x what my wares cost me.

 

[Axaday]

Literally. The 30% tariffs are only for 90 days. Afterwards it's supposed to go back to the 145% line

I THINK that "temporary" is a face-saving term for Trump. If it is anything other than temporary you are just saying you made a mistake. But in 90 days of this administration there will be plenty of other things to talk about he can just not turn it back up. It won't go UNNOTICED and he'll get some heckling for it, but it is still easier that way.

 

[Cybersnark]

But of course, walmart won't: the single point of access for millions cannot just give up and die. It would literally kill hundreds if not thousands of small towns that are trapped in walmarts thrall.

You say that like anyone at (the C-Suite level of) Walmart actually cares about actual people.

They do, OTOH, care about their bottom line, and that's they they won't accept losing money on this. They're not the kind of cultists who will burn down their own houses because the orange messiah orders them to; their obedience is conditional.

 

[Pocket]

How high would your profit margin need to be to pay 2.5 times as much for your wares and say "Oh, that's fine!" Maybe if I'd been charging 10x what my wares cost me.

There are definitely a lot of people across the political spectrum who believe that's actually what the profit margin is on most goods, and that it's mostly going to the CEO and shareholders. And maybe for a few products out there, it is somewhere in that neighborhood, if you tally up the profit margins of every single company that touches the product from the extraction of its raw materials to the drive home from the store.

The only way to really know would be if Trump had any interest in actually enforcing these ridiculous demands of his, instead of just making it known that he wants certain things to happen and that we should not blame him when they don't.

 

[Covert Agent Rodimal]

Honestly, I hate to say it, but Walmart and companies like it might be our best chance at stopping all of this before it gets any worse. Scary thought.

 

[Axaday]

And maybe for a few products out there, it is somewhere in that neighborhood,

There used to be posts here every time ExxonMobil posted earnings. I looked across other big companies to compare stats and stumbled upon one that was actually pretty obvious in retrospect. Coca-Cola. They don't make as much money as ExxonMobil, of course. Nowhere near. But in relation to how much money they invest, they blow them out of the water. Coca-Cola is mostly water. They add in a few very cheap ingredients and put it in a plastic bottle and sell it for WAY more per gallon than ExxonMobil can sell the stuff they make from an expensive ingredient that you have to get permission to look for, drill into the Earth to catch, and extensively refine. A 12-pack of coke at my local Walmart is showing online at $7.92, spot on 5.5 cents per ounce. That's $7.04/gallon for sugar water. The Google AI Summary thinks it costs $.50 to make a gallon of Coca-Cola. I don't know if that is correct, but assuming it for the sake of argument and then also pretending that they have to get their water and sugar from China (I think the coca extract is probably imported??) then they could definitely eat that tariff if doing so got them something. They aren't going to do it out of civic pride, but it would look good in a marketing campaign.

 

[Dekafox]

One thing to keep in mind running those figures is that Coke doesn't get that potential $6.50. there's also the middleman and logistics bringing that down, and everyone taking their cut.

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This is a podcast from a couple people who publish 3rd party RPG books, and they aren't afraid to talk about the business side of things. This section, if the timecode works, should put you right at where they were talking about the whole distributor price breakdown, using their products as an example. In Coke's case, they make it up some in volume, but they still have these issues because almost no one among the general public buys directly from Coke.

This was recorded before the dial-back-down to 30%, but it makes for a interesting conversation to hear from the manufacturer side of things. I think the full tariff discussion starts around 1:18:45 if you want to get the whole thing. They also discussed this in one or two of their other streams, but this was the most recent one that talks about the distributor and retailer issue for people making things.

 

[wonko the sane?]

You say that like anyone at (the C-Suite level of) Walmart actually cares about actual people.

They do, OTOH, care about their bottom line, and that's they they won't accept losing money on this. They're not the kind of cultists who will burn down their own houses because the orange messiah orders them to; their obedience is conditional.

It doesn't really matter why they won't just suck up the costs, they just won't. But the reality of the situation is: walmart creates and created massive sinkholes of poverty in the US, especially in the small towns they functionally now own because there is no other game in town. For millions of americans: that's it, there is no choice. Wally's or you don't eat.

Frankly: given how anti "any government interference at all" trumps cult is, I'm surprised they aren't screaming at him for daring to dictate terms to a corporation. Surely telling walmart what their profit margin would be is bridge too far.

 

[Axaday]

Trump's crowd are not anti "any government interference at all" though. They were, but they believe that Trump has come along to set things right and the actions he takes will not be interference. They will be corrections.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

A lot of them probably work for Walmart and would end up fired if they spoke out against it on social media.

 

[Axaday]

One thing to keep in mind running those figures is that Coke doesn't get that potential $6.50. there's also the middleman and logistics bringing that down, and everyone taking their cut.

Right, but the difference can still be seen in net margins. ExxonMobil's net profit margin is 9.43%. Walmart 2.71%. Coca-Cola 29.92%.

Those numbers are just a summary of all the things going and it is impossible for me to factor the tariffs in with actual math, but it is enough to let you see that Coca-Cola could weather have ALL of its costs go up 10%. ExxonMobil maybe could. Walmart, whose wares we know are mostly imported, clearly cannot.

I looked things up a different way and found:

The Observatory of Economic Complexity

The world's leading data visualization tool for international trade data.

oec.world

It is a little gross. Walmart got 17% less shipments from overseas in March than the March before. Those things will transfer through in shortages, not price hikes. I don't know how high toys USUALLY are, but I kind of suspect that they make up a lot of the drop because they are less likely to sell at double price. What did come in was mostly clothing. Next highest was...insect resins, which apparently are bug secretions that go into food.... (Edit - I'm really not getting a lot of clarity on exactly what the insect resins are, but it COULD be candy coatings)

 

[Pocket]

They aren't going to do it out of civic pride, but it would look good in a marketing campaign.

I've been seeing commercials from Hyundai claiming they're not going to raise prices. Best of luck to them on that, or maybe they plan to secretly do it anyway and hope customers blame the dealerships.