Comment on The Switch 2's price won't be impacted by Japan's new tariffs, but its games might
ms_lane@lemmy.world 1 day agoIn some cases ‘they do’ (they don’t) as the tariffs imposed may well be enough to stop people buying X at 150-200% of normal price, if selling X to US was a big enough chunk of BizY’s business, then that does impact the target country, not just US citizens.
In all cases US citizens hurt, but in a few the target country does too.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That’s basically the point of a tariff; to discourage people from buying foreign goods and to encourage production and sale of domestic goods instead.
The only times it doesn’t work correctly is when too much of the general populace refuses to do the work necessary to create production, domestic regulations make production locally too prohibitively expensive, and/or when domestic product manufacturers raise their prices to match the new higher tariffed prices, effectively cancelling the intended benefits of a tariff.
The USA right now is kinda seeing the effects of all 3. It has been so reliant on imports for such a long time that trying to cut that off all at once is having a more pronounced effect than if its import reliance was curtailed more slowly and started a while ago. And since there is no regulation (AFAIK) saying that domestic good prices cannot raise to match imported good prices when tariffed, that doesn’t help either. Businesses want the most money, and if all the other options for a product are $150 and their domestic one is only $50, without law saying they can’t match those other prices businesses feel like they are leaving $100 on the table.