Re tariffs; I found this article to be pretty concise in explaining who pays tariffs, corporate and consumer behavior. (It's not politcal - i don't think it even mentions parties - it focuses on math and explanations.)
Tariff Cash Keeps Rolling In: Record $30 Billion in September | Wolf Street share.google
("The primary goal of tariffs is to change the math in corporate decisions so that production in the US gets prioritized. Manufacturing in the US, and the secondary and tertiary activities that come with it, are hugely beneficial for the US economy and in the process generate large-scale tax receipts for federal, state, and local governments.
But if tariffs don’t change the math enough to shift production to the US, at least they generate tax receipts.
. . . .
Tariffs are taxes paid by importers on their costs of the imported goods. Businesses always try to charge the maximum price that will allow them to achieve their sales goals. So, whether or not businesses can push them back up the supply chain, or pass them on to other businesses and consumers, depends on market conditions.
If consumers refuse to pay whatever, if they shop around and buy from a competitor or forgo purchases, then companies who pass on the tariffs lose sales and end up having to cut prices again. Big companies with online sales do this in real time, minute by minute, consumer by consumer. The goal is always to charge the maximum price possible and still make the sale.
Corporate profits and tariffs. What keeps a lid on price increases in normal times are feisty consumers. But in the free-money era of 2020-2022, consumers were willing to just pay whatever, encouraging companies to charge whatever, and they jacked up prices while sales continued to rise, and corporate profits exploded.
But that period is over. Consumers, still seething over the inflation shock in 2021 and 2022, and the continued sky-high prices of the goods they buy or want to buy, are in no mood to pay more for these goods and are resisting price increases.
So this year, corporate pre-tax profits fell, in part due to the tariffs they couldn’t pass on.") |
