Buyer Beware... If you're non-American, think twice before purchasing from the US

[LightBright]

Agreed. Capitalism and choice in a free market is very rational but the stock market is not. That’s what people are seeing right now.

One thing I do know is that my elderly father, nor most others like him, didn’t pull his money from his retirement fund. The stock market crash is from people gaming I mean speculating on the market. There are all kinds of tricks used by professionals (who get away with it) to manipulate our stock market and monetary system. There are even market professionals that benefit from crashes.

There are even trolls on Twitter right now trying to start a run on the banks.

 

[freddyboston]

IDEX is jumping today....

http://www.idexonline.com/diamond_prices_index

 

[LightBright]

Oh, and the market lost 2 trillion in value as he was speaking. It took about 20 minutes. Tomorrow will be historic, keep an eye and ear out.

Who do you think made money on the crash? The same financial industry that will make money on the highs make money on the lows. It’s almost always reflexive and taking advantage of fear based behavior. They have designed the system for finance to profit nearly instantly either way. Predatory expertise drives these crashes and things will right themselves, because that also benefits the predatory system.

 

[Sunrises Sunsets]

We're only speaking of policies.
THIS policy will hurt us. Right now.
The last 4 years were quite nice in so many ways....I don't really understand when people say it was so bad.
We're pushing countries into China's hands..isn't that pretty clear?

OMG, the last 4 years were quite nice? I must have blinked. We lost a lot of ground not to mention the destructions in cities, overrun borders, drugs and violence against one another for a start.

We are in China's hands now, we're trying to get away from them. How is this being missed? Policies? If other countries find comfort in China's arms rather than make a trade adjustment with the USA and continue to align with us, that would be their choice.

I know all great governments collapsed after just so long and I thought the USA would beat those odds. But our past leaders have led us into an unrepayable debt for which no citizens want to sacrifice for all the steps required to heal that wound.

 

[Rockdiamond]

OMG, the last 4 years were quite nice?

Yes.
The "destruction" of NYC? Has more to do with income inequality...which has definitely tarnished it... definitely not destroyed.
People have been convinced how bad immigrants are...open borders!! Yet here in NYC, we don't see any sort of issues based on this.
Do you live near the border? Have problems??
Drugs were here before, and still here after.....
Part of the problem with this tariff policy is that those in power need to convince people things are really bad- we're getting "ripped off" ( not my words) to get them to swallow the horrid things being done to our allies and reputation.

2021 to 2025 were very good years for me. Sorry if they weren't for you.

 

[Rockdiamond]

Just in from GIA....no one really knows what's going on....but this has some definitive info:

Important Information Regarding U.S. Tariffs on Shipments to the United States

Dear Client:

On Wednesday, April 2, 2025, the U.S. government announced that it will implement broad tariffs on the import of many items, including gems and jewelry, into the United States in the coming week. There is a baseline 10% tariff on goods being imported into the United States beginning Saturday, April 5, 2025. Additional tariffs for products from specific countries, including India, South Africa, Thailand and others, will begin on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. These tariffs will apply to gems being shipped to a GIA laboratory in the United States, even if only for laboratory services and not for sale.

Tariffs are based on the declared value of a shipment and are specific to where the product was manufactured, not where the item is shipped from.

Due to these circumstances, GIA laboratories outside the United States will temporarily no longer accept items outside the local service criteria that would have been shipped to the U.S. for service. Also, temporarily, clients outside the U.S. should not send items directly to GIA in the U.S. for services.

We recognize that these changing conditions may cause confusion. It is important that all clients and their shippers understand and comply with the U.S. government requirements.

GIA is working to understand the impact of newly announced tariffs, what operational changes may be needed and how we can continue to provide services in other GIA locations. We will communicate with our clients as soon as possible with further details.

The submitting client is responsible for paying any bills issued by a shipper or U.S. government agency related to tariffs. If GIA receives any bills via a shipper or U.S. government agency, GIA will bill the charges back to the submitting client.

Please note that U.S. Customs defines the country of origin on shipping paperwork (commercial invoice, airway bill, etc.) as the country where the rough diamond was substantially transformed into a faceted diamond. We suggest you seek guidance for proper country of origin classification.

These procedures are subject to change at any time by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. If you have any questions, please contact your local Client Service Representative.

 

[Sunrises Sunsets]

Yes.
The "destruction" of NYC? Has more to do with income inequality...which has definitely tarnished it... definitely not destroyed.
People have been convinced how bad immigrants are...open borders!! Yet here in NYC, we don't see any sort of issues based on this.
Do you live near the border? Have problems??
Drugs were here before, and still here after.....
Part of the problem with this tariff policy is that those in power need to convince people things are really bad- we're getting "ripped off" ( not my words) to get them to swallow the horrid things being done to our allies and reputation.

2021 to 2025 were very good years for me. Sorry if they weren't for you.

I consider this a whitewash of all the issues of the past four years. Horrid things being done to our allies, our reputation, the destruction of NYC? You need to turn the channel.

I find it interesting that NYC was begging for relief in handling the illegal immigration into their city and yet there were no issues... please!

 

[Rockdiamond]

I consider this a whitewash of all the issues of the past four years. Horrid things being done to our allies, our reputation, the destruction of NYC? You need to turn the channel.

I find it interesting that NYC was begging for relief in handling the illegal immigration into their city and yet there were no issues... please!

You brought up destruction in cities. Our reputation was just fine till 2025. What horrid things done to our allies? Ukraine, yes. But we were standing shoulder to shoulder with them
What issues with allies?
I know one station that plays people charging the border. On a loop.
YES CHANGE THE CHANNEL

 

[Sunrises Sunsets]

NYC has major issues and not in 2025. How come so many people deserted and left that city during the problematic 4 year period? They couldn't wait to get out and such a shame for a wonderful city.

 

[Rockdiamond]

NYC has major issues and not in 2025

Very true. I guess I made it sound like Shangri-La.
Lots of issues.
But virtually ALL are related to policies made by local officials. Big fight over Congestion pricing, for example.
Try finding a decent apartment for less than $3k a month.
It's dirty. Crowded.
Smelly at times......but I love NY

 

[Sunrises Sunsets]

Very true. I guess I made it sound like Shangri-La.
Lots of issues.
But virtually ALL are related to policies made by local officials. Big fight over Congestion pricing, for example.
Try finding a decent apartment for less than $3k a month.
It's dirty. Crowded.
Smelly at times......but I love NY

As well you should, it's a great city.

 

[Rockdiamond]

My lovely wife just let me know the gold suppliers have to increase prices by 25%.
Most of the chains we buy are Italian.
ooops.
I wonder if raw gold used in casting, and hand forging will be tariffed.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

Who do you think made money on the crash? The same financial industry that will make money on the highs make money on the lows. It’s almost always reflexive and taking advantage of fear based behavior. They have designed the system for finance to profit nearly instantly either way. Predatory expertise drives these crashes and things will right themselves, because that also benefits the predatory system.

The rich, of course. It will devastate millions permanently. We haven't even begun the fallout. This is the beginning of the largest wealth transfer in history.

 

[LightBright]

My lovely wife just let me know the gold suppliers have to increase prices by 25%.
Most of the chains we buy are Italian.
ooops.
I wonder if raw gold used in casting, and hand forging will be tariffed.

I can’t imagine why they would not be. A lot of us search EBay and real real and I notice there’s fewer yellow gold and platinum items listed now (just anecdotal). RealReal has many rose gold items. But fewer yellow gold. Years ago I noticed a dip in precious gems/ items after the real estate bust too, for several years. Again, anecdotal.

 

[LightBright]

The rich, of course. It will devastate millions permanently. We haven't even begun the fallout. This is the beginning of the largest wealth transfer in history.

I don’t know if we know yet. I lived through the real estate bubble market crash. That one was caused in part by policies of our fed gov. Then our fed gov didn’t correct the market to benefit the middle class who lost their mortgages. Things crash and then get better. Yes, the wealthy can afford these dips and usually find a way to profit from them.

Also found on Twitter - I’m not going to do political quotes but please look it up. The salaries and economic and societal clout of one side of the political spectrum is different than the other by far. One side is characterized by “under $100k” households.

It’s a marked change from yesteryear when the reverse was true.

 

[Starstruck8]

This is real, right? If so, it's really helpful. I don't necessarily understand everything about tarriffs, but this *looks to me* like we (the US) are starting to levy tariffs on places where we didn't have them before, but that those places already had levied them on goods from the US. So honestly this seems kind of like common sense to me. Am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing something very important. The claimed 'Tariffs charged to the USA including currency manipulation and trade barriers' have not been calculated from actual tariffs at all. For each country, the claimed 'Tariffs etc.' are simply the trade deficit of the US with that country as a percentage of the imports from that country, with a floor of 10%. The 'reciprocal tariffs' that that the US is imposing are half the claimed 'Tariffs etc.', again with a floor of 10%.

This was quickly discovered by internet sleuths. It has also been officially confirmed. Here is an NYT article, ungated for me, not a subscriber. Here is the official story.

This is a weird way to calculate effective tariff rates. The implicit assumption seems to be that in the absence of tariffs or other trade barriers, trade between every pair of countries would be balanced. So if the US has a trade deficit with country X, country X must have been cheating. This is not just my surmise. Quoting from the NYT article: 'The official added the model was based on the concept that the trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all the unfair trade practices and “cheating” that country has done.' But this idea is nonsense. As @Texas Leaguer says:

I think your understanding of a trade imbalance and "parity" is flawed. Let's pretend Rockdiamond and I are doing business and he is buying some things from me and I am buying some things from him. If I happen to buy alot more from him than he does from me we have a trade imbalance. But if we are both getting getting the products we need and making sales as well, there is no problem. It's all good.

@Lovedogs, leaving aside how the reciprocal tariffs were set, it's not all 'common sense' that imposing tariffs on countries that impose them on your country is good policy. Conventional economic wisdom is that tariffs are usually bad, whoever imposes them and for whatever reason, because they reduce the opportunities for beneficial trade, Of course, conventional wisdom is not always right and there are lots of ifs and buts and exceptions. But I'm not seeing that they apply here.

 

[ItsMainelyYou]

I don’t know if we know yet. I lived through the real estate bubble market crash. That one was caused in part by policies of our fed gov. Things crash and then get better. Yes, the wealthy can afford these dips and usually find a way to profit from them. Also found on Twitter, “ 65% of rich Americans are D. 75% of hedge fund managers—you guessed it!—D!” It’s a marked change from yesteryear when the reverse was true.

The trouble with our country is that we look at politics like sports teams.
We are the only country that does this.
Red and blue instead of rich vs poor. That is by design to ignore the income equality gulf that has emerged in the last 50 yrs, which accelerated in the last 30yrs.
The rich are the rich and will always benefit, our system is geared to it. It is too early for fallout to be assessed other than this crash is on par with the Covid collapse.
The real and likely danger long term is the eventual abandonment of the dollar as world currency. We will lose the advantage of being the 'world's bank'.
US job cuts hit 275+ for March, the highest since the pandemic peak.
The third highest monthly total on record.
That's worse than the 2008 recession.

What it all in effect amounts to is yet another massive permanent wealth transfer. The percentage is so high as it stands now that it doesn't even fit onto a graph to illustrate it. See those dots I left in the space? That's to illustrate roughly where the wave peaks. Just mentally shuffle them over the dark green.
The combined wealth of America's richest 12 people is now 2 trillion dollars.
12 people.
.
.


The 0.1% have a combined worth of 22 trillion. The bottom 50% 3.8 trillion.

one of the most significant factors that made us the world power was our relative stability and goodwill with our global trading partners. We are no longer stable. We have no more goodwill to draw from.
It is impossible to prognosticate what the outcome will be other than we, the people, will lose most of our collective wealth to the richest among us. Permanently.

On the world stage? Who can say? It is a dire place to be.

 

[Rockdiamond]

25% tax on gold. Or butter.
Think about that.
People who are in favor of tariffs.
Who’s going to pay ? We are. You are.
Think about it from a practical standpoint. If you are selling gold, you have inventory. Tariffs just increased the cost of new gold by 25%
The value of your inventory just went up 25%.
This is unlike normal variance in the price of gold.
I guess if the merchant has a lot of inventory they just made a nice chunk of change.
Of course as @ItsMainelyYou points out, as the stability and prominence of the US dollar falls, the unintended consequences may vastly outweigh some quick additional gains.
It’s terrifying if you’re paying attention

 

[Texas Leaguer]

US job cuts hit 275+ for March, the highest since the pandemic peak.
The third highest monthly total on record.
That's worse than the 2008 recession.

Apropos comparison to the pandemic. The difference being no stimulus coming for those hardest hit, and no vaccination for this self-inflicted virus on the horizon.

 

[AllAboardTheBlingTrain]

Yes, you are missing something very important. The claimed 'Tariffs charged to the USA including currency manipulation and trade barriers' have not been calculated from actual tariffs at all. For each country, the claimed 'Tariffs etc.' are simply the trade deficit of the US with that country as a percentage of the imports from that country, with a floor of 10%. The 'reciprocal tariffs' that that the US is imposing are half the claimed 'Tariffs etc.', again with a floor of 10%.

This was quickly discovered by internet sleuths. It has also been officially confirmed. Here is an NYT article, ungated for me, not a subscriber. Here is the official story.

This is a weird way to calculate effective tariff rates. The implicit assumption seems to be that in the absence of tariffs or other trade barriers, trade between every pair of countries would be balanced. So if the US has a trade deficit with country X, country X must have been cheating. This is not just my surmise. Quoting from the NYT article: 'The official added the model was based on the concept that the trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all the unfair trade practices and “cheating” that country has done.' But this idea is nonsense. As @Texas Leaguer says:



@Lovedogs, leaving aside how the reciprocal tariffs were set, it's not all 'common sense' that imposing tariffs on countries that impose them on your country is good policy. Conventional economic wisdom is that tariffs are usually bad, whoever imposes them and for whatever reason, because they reduce the opportunities for beneficial trade, Of course, conventional wisdom is not always right and there are lots of ifs and buts and exceptions. But I'm not seeing that they apply here.

To add to this, even though as a non-American I’ve stayed out of commenting on this thread thus far, it is generally understood that running a trade deficit on goods is generally a sign that your economy is stronger, not weaker than the other country. To illustrate why:

Every single person who goes to a grocery store to shop runs a “trade deficit” with that grocery store. You pay them money, they give you goods. If you wanted to run a “trade surplus” with your grocery store, you can invest in purchasing farm land, equipment etc (an expensive proposition), grow your own crops, and then sell them to the grocery store. Except you’d have to do it at a low enough price to make it worthwhile for the grocery store because they need to earn a profit as well, and there are suppliers out there who can sell it at the price they need, so you don’t bother; because you’d earn far more money at your desk job. Your neighbour, on the other hand, perhaps doesn’t have the skillset for the desk job that you do, or has some of the resources already, or for a host of different reasons wishes to grow those crops and sell it to the grocery store for that lower price. Everyone here is a winner, especially you, because you have more money in your bank account (because you earned more money at your desk job, and spent less at the grocery store; the grocery store turned enough of a profit to make it worthwhile to stay in business, your neighbour earned money on the sale of crops that’s enough for them to be happy).

Now, if there’s a tariff in place, the government swoops in and says that they will take 25% of the cost price that the neighbour is charging in taxes. That means the neighbour will simply price the crops at 1.25x (they aren’t going to starve themselves). The grocery store isn’t running a charity either, so they’ll add that increase to the final price as well, because they don’t get to keep a penny of the extra money. That means now YOU have less money in your bank account, because the goods got more expensive in the grocery store. Of course, the option to quit your desk job and produce the crops exists. But even after the tax, you will STILL make more money from your desk job, because that job is SO MUCH MORE LUCRATIVE than growing crops. So all that happens is that you’ll pay more for the same goods as you did before.

Logically speaking, a country like India, which has a GDP per capita of ~$2.5k (versus America, which has a GDP per capita of ~$80k), cannot afford to purchase American-made goods no matter what you do because your labour is just too expensive. Obviously in this case you are going to run a trade deficit with India. You can easily afford to buy our stuff, we can’t do the same for you. And wages are so low here, that even if you slap a 27% tariff on Indian-made goods, it’s still cheaper than the American-made equivalent. Americans would likely en masse still buy the Indian made goods.

The only way to get people to buy American-made goods, especially internationally, would be to slash wages so so so low that the prices become competitive internationally. That would turn your trade deficit into a surplus. But that causes far more problems than it solves.

ETA - let’s make the comparison to a different, more developed economy as well. It’s still a lose-lose proposition. Let’s assume there’s a good that is being only produced in a high-labour cost economy like the EU, so it’s an expensive product. Like German cars, for instance. Slap a tariff on German cars, make them more expensive. USA also makes cars, which are now cheaper than the German cars in their own domestic market. This should push American consumers to buy American cars right?

Let’s assume German and American cars both cost $1000 at the moment, pre tariffs, and these are the only two options in the US market for ease of explanation. German cars are superior so people buy them more. After tariffs, the German car is now $1250. But the American car manufacturer is not obliged to keep his prices at $1000. They also want to make profits. Maybe they raise their car price to $1100. Or $1200. They might still keep it less than the German car, but the net cost to the American buyer will STILL go up.