Did anyone mention how the 1930 tariffs sparked a wave of retaliatory tariffs by other nations, greatly reducing international trade, pushing a natural resources poor Japan to conclude that in order to survive it needed an empire, so it invaded other countries, committing such atrocities that even Nazi Germany was like “whoa dude, chill”, which lead to their participation in WWII, Pearl Harbor and the deployment of nuclear bombs? No?
There’s a lot of oversimplification. But the US embargo on Japan in 1940 led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The US embargoed all oil to Japan. Japan calculated it had less than 2 years worth of oil before it ran out, so it needed to capture the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia, more or less) because they were a major source of oil. The American puppet state of the Philippines was between Japan and the Dutch East Indies, so they had to deal with that somehow. Their decision was to preemptively attack Pearl Harbor and hope that they could consolidate their gains in the Pacific by the time the US was able to counter-attack.
Japan’s actions in WWII weren’t directly about tariffs, but they were about spheres of influence, like the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
A lot of Trump’s posturing seems to be about bringing back these spheres of influence. The US wants to control North America, taking over Greenland and Canada, and leave Europe to become part of the Russian sphere.
Japan was expanding long before 1930’s. Korea, Mongolia, and parts of China were already under Japan long before 1930.
But, the full scale invasion of China by happens around 1931, which then lead to the conflict that get China involved in WWII.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_incident
Yes, full scale. But they already occupied parts of China before 1930. It wasn’t tariffs for Japan. It was sanctions on oil to force them to stop invading. Their response was to speed up invasions to secure oil.
So you’re saying that Japan threw a shit fit because it wasn’t allowed to trade with other nations. Japan.
Fucking love it.
It’s also wrong on every account; Japan was already doing imperialist shit for decades and it wasn’t tariffs but oil sanctions to try to stymie their fuel supply that sent them raging.
It wasn’t American tariffs, we didn’t fucking matter nearly as much to the world before WWII as after
The whole plan was to move production back to the US. The thing though is, that you can’t make Americans sit and sew Jeans that sell sell for $15 or assemble electronics for $6/hr
Maybe you could 100 years ago, but there is s a reason why we trade across the world and its not because we are kind. It is because it makes companies more money.
This will be mostly messy for the US. The rest of the world now has tarrifs on the US. But US now has tarrifs on the whole world. Any other country can look into expanding in new markets now, but the US has shut all its doors
Yeah we can’t make everything.
Not only do most of those low level factory jobs suck we simply don’t have the workers, we’re at less than 5% unemployment.
Nor does the US need to make everything.
The US is a service economy. It makes money through capital and intellectual property. Being the first to innovate means also having the opportunity to wedge yourself as a permanent middle man and charge people around the world to pass go.
Think Uber eats for example. If I order food in Toronto from a Toronto based restaurant fulfilled by a courier in Toronto, 30% of my payment is going to them in silicon valley for managing that order.
Similarly, when you purchase an app on Google or Apple store, they are collecting 30%.
If I am in Norway purchasing a game on Steam from a Norwegian developer, you guessed it, 30% is going to Steam.
This is America’s strength now, not making t shirts, shoes or cars entirely domesticallty.
Most of the world was ok with paying the markup for convenience.
Since the US have gone rogue, many are calling for an end for respect to US intellectual property. Perhaps each country should have its own Uber, app store etc so that the cut can stay within our borders.
One case: Uber was charging 30% commission for managing rickshaw rides in India (a country with relatively low purchasing power per capita).
It was only after domestic options like Rapido or Namma Yatri undercut them that they moved to a subscription based model, charging drivers 20 to 40 rupees daily, rather than taking an exorbitant commission of 30% per ride. To India’s credit, it has a robust IT sector located in one of its major cities (Bangalore) which helps promote competition in this case.
This is the thing that makes no sense. All the thinking stops at bring jobs back to the US.
Okay, raw material issues aside, what are these jobs?
They are jobs that left because it was so cheap to do it overseas that it still makes financial sense to ship the product here after it’s made.
NOONE IN THE US IS DOING THAT JOB FOR THAT MONEY HERE.
My Trump voting uncle had nothing to say when he was talking about how all the jobs were going to come back to the USA and I asked him if he wants him or any of his kids picking peaches in California for $7.50 an hour. Who exactly does he think will do these jobs when all the immigrants who are trying to establish themselves here are gone? He did not surrender the point being a good MAGAt but you can tell he had not thought about it in the slightest.
We could theoretically figure out some way to do it with automation. The problem is it would take a decade to figure out and there’s zero chance these tariffs last that long.
Oh they know that Americans won’t work at factories. That’s not their goal.
They want to bring manufacturing back the the US, it just won’t be humans doing the manufacturing, it will be robots.
Not if you have prison labor. Then robots are less needed just jail more peeps and send em to the new gulags.
if anyone has any questions about getting out of the country, ask away.
I’m a long-term traveler.
at this point, visas are very easy to get in general, but Thailand is still one of the easiest and is one of the friendliest and most affordable countries around.
if you’re a US citizen, you have visa-free travel in Thailand for 60 days.
if you need a visa, go to the evisa website, thaievisa.go.th, fill out the form, pay the fee, they’ll email you the visa in a couple days.
I usually recommend Thailand or somewhere in Southeast Asia as a first destination. good food, great healthcare, cheap living, great people, beautiful environment, and they’re very used to travelers so there are local and expat support systems nationwide.
another nice thing about Southeast asia is that there are tons of other friendly places close by.
it’s about as easy to live there as anywhere else, but the support systems and the country being very used to travelers might make first time travelers more comfortable.
oh PS thailand has a lot a lot of really good all you can eat buffets for 3 to 10 dollars per person.
Many European countries allow you to visit a maximum of 90 days within a 180 day period, so if you’re rich enough, you can technically live there half your life.
I’ve read in some unsubstantiated comments that the state of the authorities of Hungary is so fucked up, they barely check if you can bribe a family tree researcher to make up some BS that your grandparents were Hungarian.
Pretend they were 1956 refugees that never had papers in the US, find some people who actually got lost in 1956 that have birth certs in Hungary - like maybe killed by the Soviets - learn some elementary Hungarian, be white, and boom, EU citizenship.
I take no responsibility for this harebrained idea and reiterate that this is just some ridiculous thing I read back on Reddit way back when.
Hungary itself is leaning quite heavily into an authoritarian vibe these days. If one were to go this route, I’d recommend taking advantage of your new EU-citizen status and find permanent residence in a country with stronger democratic traditions.
I’m a white American that’s been living in tijuana, Mexico for the last 9.5 years. I drive north to the US to go to work every day and drive south again to go home. The Mexican border police only check maybe 5% of cars that drive from US to Mexico, and when they check me they’ve only ever checked my car registration and/or passport. It’s an extremely open border crossing when going south.
If you wanted to actually be legal, a temporary tourist visa to visit Mexico can be purchased for about 25 usd and allows you to stay for up to 6 months inside Mexico 🤷♂️ and when it expires you can buy a new one.
Cyprus sells passports, so if you have the money you can instantly become an EU citizen
Three big ones are:
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There are lots of international families, so they’ll have company, support networks and infrastructure.
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There are tons of safe, affordable countries with easy access to good education.
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Native English speakers are all but guaranteed jobs as ESL teachers, so the parents will have access to available, steady income abroad.
A lot of people don’t know about international schools, which is where most international families send their kids.
Other than the first two points, there are not many differences between my individual and family advice. For many families, moving from the US to a country like Thailand means safer, more affordable lives with a better quality of life.
Any advice on how to move all my shit without it getting stolen?
I’ve got a collection of a shit load of Legos from childhood that hold a lot of sentimental value, but it’s easily worth a shit load of money. In particular I’d be looking to move to Costa Rica. My fiance is from there, but she said stuff like that would be likely to get stolen by customs.
people usually ship their belongings by sea or air(ocean freight is cheaper and slower, but I’m not sure by how much with Costa Rica being so near) with a company like DHL, I’ve used them and found them to be a reliable international shipping company, FedEx and UPS are also options.
I wouldn’t worry about customs taking your stuff, especially if you have insurance or tracking or anything like that on the ticket, and especially with a wealthier country like Costa Rica where paper trails are more important.
I’ve actually never heard of customs taking anything legal in real life from anyone who’s shipped belongings overseas(my friend’s yak jerky got confiscated because it’s illegal to import a lot of international meat products into the US) so I personally don’t believe customs pocketing things is very common.
Legos aren’t apparently valuable on their face and with the paper trail of receipts/documents I wouldn’t think you have to worry about anything getting lifted by customs. plus, if you add some fragile notices and insurance on there the agents responsible for transporting the packages will be a lot more careful, for sure.
I wouldn’t worry about customs taking your stuff, especially if you have insurance or tracking or anything like that on the ticket, and especially with a wealthier country like Costa Rica where paper trails are more important.
It’s something my fiance warned me about. Her and her family has known customs agents to take shit. Recently they tried to send some chocolates and small gifts to us here in the U.S., and about 1/3rd of the chocolate got stolen. I’m not sure which company it was with, but it is something that happens, and to my understanding is just a culturally known fact of life.
Legos aren’t apparently valuable on their face and with the paper trail of receipts/documents I wouldn’t think you have to worry about anything getting lifted by customs.
Sure, but by weight I’m looking at about $2k worth of misc boxes, before accounting for built sets that are in good condition with all their pieces.
if you add some fragile notices and insurance on there the agents responsible for transporting the packages will be a lot more careful, for sure.
I’ll have to look into this then. Thank you for the help!
There was also the McKinley Tariff of 1890 that is taxed foreign imports at almost 50% and caused increased prices and consumer backlash and lead to Democrats winning Congress in a landslide.
There’s in general no way this can work long-term. When nations cooperate, they both benefit. If you’re the only nation not cooperating with everyone else, then everyone else will surpass you until you’re North Korea levels of yesteryear.
Looking at this through the lens of “how can the oligarchs benefit”, it makes complete sense - Strip all government assistance, remove social nets, add tariffs that will basically kill most small businesses (think also farms, mom and pop shops, etc). Lead to depression, billionaires swoop in and buy up land/homes/business for pennies on the dollar (or just basically crush small businesses to get them out of the way). One couldn’t design a better way to fuck over everyone and enrich the oligarchs