I've only seen a small portion of the chaos from my side of the market, but that's been chaotic enough.
All of this chaos has actually slowed down our US manufacturing buildout. We'd like to build US factories, but we're having to slow them because of the uncertainty. A foreign factory only has the uncertainty on the US import/export, while a US factory has uncertainty on all imports/exports.
Anecdotes __are__ data. How much weight you ascribe to it as being representative is different. But you cannot disqualify it as 'not data'. It is usually a leading indicator of what could potentially show up in these more robust datasets.
In other news, we’re still trying to backfill a reason for the Iran War.
One theory is that we’ll starve China for oil, so their navy won’t be able to hold Taiwan. (Projections show the US losing a war like that badly due to them have orders of magnitude more naval yards than us.)
Anyway, while enumerating all the ways in which that is a dumb plan, it occurred to me that the intentional slowdown in EV and solar uptake in the US is turning a manufacturing gap into an actual present day strategic gap.
China imports a lot of oil, but, as a percentage of their economy, they are way less dependent on fossil fuels than us, and tariffs on solar/batteries are basically equivalent to us shipping them free energy production and distribution infrastructure.
It's hard to overstate how screwed hardware design and prototyping would be if companies like digi-key went under. There's only a few electronics distributors like them around and most of them are centered in the US.
When I order from Mouser (a Digi-key competitor based in Dallas) they plainly charge a 10-15% tariff fee. I'm struggling to understand why this solution isn't obvious. You have to pass the cost onto the consumer, or your margins dwindle. It's trivial math.
> People are also having to intervene in once-automated tasks. Thousands of orders that used to auto-flow directly to the warehouse floor for same-day shipping now often miscalculate tariff costs.
It seems that no one ever mentions that every dollar given up to tariffs is that much less for growing staff, equipment, facility and R&D expansion. It's literally a drag on the entire GDP and ecomomic growth.
More subtle is that every dollar saved in buying components from China is more money for all of the forementioned.
If only the people responsible for the tariffs, who miss no chance to (miss)quote Reagan, would take the time to listen to his actual words regarding tariffs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t5QK03KXPc
I remember ordering parts from Digi-Key in 1980 or so when I was in high school. The catalog was less than 1/4 inch thick, and listed various surplus things on the back.
It was cool to see them grow into a real competitor for the big distributors.
Does North America have some supply of those electronics components, or are we totally depending on Asian producers? I assume if prices hike up it will improve local production — or it was suggested since the introduction of more tariffs.
Anyone who works in the semi industry has been hearing management try to be politically correct when trying to explain how badly tariffs are screwing everyone over every quarter. Tying themselves in knots to avoid saying how idiotic the trump administration is. And here we are trying to wait him out until the us gets a president with a brain. Good luck I hope all can outlast this.
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All of this chaos has actually slowed down our US manufacturing buildout. We'd like to build US factories, but we're having to slow them because of the uncertainty. A foreign factory only has the uncertainty on the US import/export, while a US factory has uncertainty on all imports/exports.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RC1Q027SBEA
US Factory build out investment increased from $80B/year to $240B/year under Biden.
Trump's economic policy has managed to undo $30B of that so far, and the trend is accelerating.
One theory is that we’ll starve China for oil, so their navy won’t be able to hold Taiwan. (Projections show the US losing a war like that badly due to them have orders of magnitude more naval yards than us.)
Anyway, while enumerating all the ways in which that is a dumb plan, it occurred to me that the intentional slowdown in EV and solar uptake in the US is turning a manufacturing gap into an actual present day strategic gap.
China imports a lot of oil, but, as a percentage of their economy, they are way less dependent on fossil fuels than us, and tariffs on solar/batteries are basically equivalent to us shipping them free energy production and distribution infrastructure.
> People are also having to intervene in once-automated tasks. Thousands of orders that used to auto-flow directly to the warehouse floor for same-day shipping now often miscalculate tariff costs.
Charge a blanket tariff fee like Mouser.
More subtle is that every dollar saved in buying components from China is more money for all of the forementioned.
It was cool to see them grow into a real competitor for the big distributors.