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What If Tariffs?

https://www.swatch.com/en-en/what-if-tariffs-so34z106/SO34Z106.html
140•Erikun•2h ago

Comments

brightbeige•2h ago
Only available in Switzerland

Here’s a link to the Swiss store which has more details, like price: https://www.swatch.com/en-ch/what-if-tariffs-so34z106/SO34Z1...

Quarrel•2h ago
I like the "Hopefully, just a limited edition." line too :)
isoprophlex•2h ago
So... they swapped 3 and 9 numerals. Does it run counter clockwise then, as a horological commentary on our present age of backwardness?
brightbeige•2h ago
That you can find around southern South America

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28013157

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9rica_Invertida

isoprophlex•19m ago
Fascinating, thanks
nunorbatista•1h ago
no, it's a regular quartz movement.
bbno4•2h ago
absolutely brilliant, one of the greatest things i have ever seen. shame its only available in switzerland.
immibis•2h ago
how is a watch with 3 and 9 swapped brilliant in any way at all?
jagrsw•1h ago
Reminds me of the Orange Alternative movement in communist-era Poland. A group would wear t-shirts, each with a letter, spelling an innocent phrase.

When one turned away, the message would instantly become different, like changing "Down with the heat" to "Down with the cops" - https://sztukapubliczna.pl/pl/precz-z-u-palami-pomaranczowa-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Alternative

the whole world is a work of art, so even a single policeman standing in the street is a work of art

mndgs•1h ago
True that
Kwpolska•2h ago
It looks so terrible I thought the idea behind it was “this is what the US can manufacture without importing foreign materials”. But nah, it’s just an ugly watch with a pretty dumb marketing stunt that makes it less usable as a watch.
louthy•2h ago
Swatch watches are all ugly tbf (imho, of course). But let’s face it, this is more of a statement than a product
watwut•2h ago
Like, seriously and not just Swatch. I wanted to buy myself a watch that would look good. Ended up with nothing because good looking watch dont seem to exist.
nunorbatista•1h ago
taste is subjective. Are you sure you know what you're looking for?
golem14•1h ago
I find the Tissot Seastar pretty. I wish it came with a spring drive. My Seastar has terrible accuracy.
InsideOutSanta•1h ago
Swatch makes thousands of different watches in all kinds of styles, from 80s-inspired neon fever dreams to understated mechanical watches. What type of watch are you looking for that they don't make?
louthy•1h ago
> What type of watch are you looking for that they don't make?

I’ll stick with my Patek Philippe Nautilus 5811 [1], thanks ;)

Also Swiss btw.

[1] https://www.patek.com/en/collection/nautilus/5811-1g-001

robjan•1h ago
It's like comparing a Fiat to a Ferrari
InsideOutSanta•1h ago
I guess beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder :-)
nunorbatista•1h ago
agree with your comment, but to be honest, I'm not sure there's any Swatch I would wear: which model would you choose if you wanted to dress business casual?

Ok, I can give you a Skin Irony, but then you would be paying +200 for a Quartz, why not buy an Orient Bambino or a Hamilton Khaki? much better bang for the buck.

Not to mention the clicking noise of a Swatch quartz. In silence, it drives me nuts.

The most understated watch they make is the Swatch Pay!. Super useful, never fails.

InsideOutSanta•53m ago
It depends on what you consider a Swatch. If it has to say "Swatch" on it, yeah, any Skin Irony is fine for business casual. Or a Swatch Essentials. I'd probably wear something like Boxengasse for business casual, but that's just me; I like complications. Maybe it's too much.

Whether the quartz movement bothers you depends on why you bought the watch. It doesn't bother me, but it's certainly true that you can get similar watches for much less money.

brightbeige•2h ago
It’s a part of a collection: “WHAT IF?”

https://www.swatch.com/en-ch/bioceramic-what-if.html

tjpnz•29m ago
Should be called "WATCH IF?".
kleiba•1h ago
De gustibus non est disputandum - I actually like the design, but then again, I don't wear watches.
louthy•2h ago
Do the hands tick counter clockwise? I am assuming so to make 3/9 swap work, but it’s not mentioned.
dalmo3•1h ago
It can't not be clockwise.
louthy•1h ago
It ticks, therefore it is
hshdhdhehd•45m ago
Locally clockwise
layer8•5m ago
It could be clockunwise.
intermerda•2h ago
The number 39 refers to the 39% tariff rate on Switzerland.

Kind of insane that the American President just made up a lie that tariffs are paid by foreign countries and rest of the administration just went along with it. It flies in the face of any common sense.

croisillon•2h ago
it's thanks to the lying that he was elected in the first place, and no one around him dares to contradict him, what would be the incentives to stop?
charcircuit•1h ago
>It flies in the face of any common sense.

The consumer paying the tariff is merely an optimization over the exporter paying the tariff such that the tariff money passes through one less hand. Practically they seem pretty similar.

exe34•1h ago
The exporter gets paid the same as before. The buyer pays more. There's a subtle difference, can you spot it?
xyzzy123•1h ago
Without knowing what the product and market structure is, you cannot tell if the cost of the tariff will be borne by the seller or the buyer.
jakewins•1h ago
This isn’t actually how it works though. Who pays the tariff is the same as who pays a tax: it depends on the price elasticity of supply and demand.

If the demand curve is very price sensitive - like people might stop buying wool blankets if the price went up 50%, and buy cotton blankets instead - then the tariff will be paid by the suppliers, because they must lower their prices to make the final price the same.

And similarly, if the buyers are inelastic, they will pay the tariff. Like for baby formula, maybe parents are willing to stomach significant price hikes without changing how much they buy.

thesumofall•53m ago
As with many things in economics the effect of a measure often depends on the timeframe one considers. Honestly, anything could be true if one just chooses the appropriate timeframe. However, the tariffs clearly introduce an inefficiency which - globally speaking - will be net negative. Locally speaking, though, who knows …
vasco•48m ago
> However, the tariffs clearly introduce an inefficiency which - globally speaking - will be net negative.

Nobody can predict this. Tariffs are used by trump mostly as a negotiation and distraction tactic. In that sense they've been extremely effective.

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exe34•40m ago
> they've been extremely effective.

yes, as a pump and dump scheme. He and people in his administration have made a lot of money with tariffs!

Borealid•1h ago
Let's imagine, hypothetically speaking, that demand is perfectly inelastic. The price of a good is $10, and buyers will absolutely refuse to pay more than $10 under any circumstances.

Before a tariff is imposed, the seller sells the good for $10 and keeps $10 in revenue.

If a tariff of $1 is imposed under these hypothetical circumstances, does the buyer pay more? Does the exporter get paid the same as before?

Clearly, it's neither guaranteed that the buyer will "pay more" nor that the export will "get paid the same as before". In reality because demand is neither 100% elastic nor 100% inelastic, what tends to happen is that the cost of the tariff is split in some ratio between the buyer and seller.

I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case.

vasco•50m ago
>I find it mildly amusing that there are so many people claiming that it's 100% on one side or other, when it's trivially easy to see why that can't be GUARANTEED TO BE the case.

To be fair most people on one side think they know better than Adam Smith and the people on the other side usually never opened a book, so it's a tough bargain.

lucianbr•46m ago
Isn't your example actually perfectly elastic? It does not change the conclusion at all, of course.

One problem with this analysis is that I can't imagine Trump doing it, or even understanding it. Well, it's not a problem with the analysis, but with the overall situation.

femto•46m ago
The exporter may sell less to the US, but typically they will then sell the difference into non-US markets, reducing the impost. This is exactly what happened in a lot of (not all) markets a few years ago, when China tried to intimidate Australia with trade restrictions [1]. When Chine dropped the restrictions, they found that they were now competing with more buyers and so paying higher prices.

[1] https://www.ussc.edu.au/chinas-trade-restrictions-on-austral...

exe34•42m ago
Losing sales isn't the same as paying the tariff. The person importing the item pays the tariff. Their item won't be released from customs if they don't pay. They pay to the US government.

The correct thing to say is that the tariff has an effect on demand because of the impact of adding a tariff on top of the price.

charcircuit•5m ago
I don't see it.

Exporter pays: Consumer ends up paying price + tariff.

Importer pays: Consumer pays price, then later pays tariff.

In both cases the consumer is paying price + tariff. A small difference is that some consumers could be psychologically tricked by the lower price tag in the importer pays model.

mrep•42m ago
Depending on the circumstance, the burden of tax can fall more on consumers or on producers based on the elasticity of supply and demand.

Microeconomics 101: https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

landgenoot•2h ago
I like that it's priced at 139
Nextgrid•1h ago
For a "statement" piece and limited edition with otherwise no notable features I'm surprised how cheap it is.
input_sh•1h ago
It's a Swatch, their prices don't go much higher.

If it were a Rolex or a Patek Philippe that did the same, I'm sure there'd be another zero at the end.

shikon7•1h ago
For full effect, it should be priced 100 in Switzerland and 139 in the US
ainiriand•1h ago
139 CHF is 174$, you have the punishment right there.
comrade1234•2h ago
Gotta be careful making fun of trump and the tariff situation lest you get another 10% added, which will make this watch irrelevant.
nunorbatista•1h ago
He would actually be working against his interest: he has been seen wearing multiple Swiss watches - Patek's, Rolex, Vacheron, etc,
simmerup•1h ago
You don't think they're gifts for services rendered and therefore tarriff free?
nicois•1h ago
This would be more impactful if we could see the cost to US purchasers was actually 39% more. Sadly some manufacturers spread the cost across all consumers, which actually means non-US customers are actually paying some of the tariff costs too.
MadDemon•1h ago
The tariff is applied to the import value. For many products you'll get a significant markup on top within the US for distribution, which is not affected by the tariffs.
onion2k•1h ago
I imagine some manufacturers used tariffs as a reason to lower the price of their products that imported into the US while also raising the price outside of the US to balance that change, but that doesn't mean the manufacturer or their customers outside of the USA are paying anything towards tariffs. The entire tariff transaction is between the customer and the US government, and it's all transacted within the USA.

Tariffs are a tax, paid on the value of imported good, by US citizens who are buying things from outside of the USA. That's it. They are not paid by anyone outside of the US.

exe34•1h ago
The manufacturer are subsidising the tariffs if they lower their price in the us to counteract part of the tariff. When they charge other markets more to make up for the cost, they are making those markets pay for the subsidy.
bigfudge•53m ago
That might be a short term strategy to avoid losing market share in the states and it’s rational if you think the tariffs are temporary. For goods like iPhones which are truly global that might last. But It doesn’t look like a stable equilibrium in the long term for any food which can support multiple suppliers because manufacturers who don’t do this will be more competitive in non us markets.
watwut•1h ago
Afaik it was distributors not manufacturers who sacrificed margin.
d1sxeyes•1h ago
Let’s say I’m a widget seller in the US, and my widgets cost $100 to import from Switzerland before tariffs. I retail them at $150 USD in the US, but I sell internationally. In the UK for example, I retail them at £113 (simple conversion, obviously it doesn’t really work like this).

Now tariffs are imposed, my import cost per widget is $139. Not only do I have to jack up my US price to $189, I have to jack up my UK price to £142, meaning UK customers are also paying the tariff now.

Even if you’re a bit smarter about your logistics and use an FTZ or drawback against the import duties, imagine you sell two widgets, one where you don’t pay import duties (bound for the UK) and one where you do (remaining in the US). Your total cost to import is $239.

Instead of making your US customers eat all the cost of the tariff, you might instead adjust your retail prices to $170 and £128 respectively. Again, now your British customers are paying an increased price due to the tariffs.

amanaplanacanal•27m ago
That only works if you have no competition in the UK. Why would your customers there continue to buy from you when you are now more expensive than the competition?

Edit: for that matter, if you could raise your prices without losing any customers, why did you wait for the tarrifs? You should have already done it.

duxup•1h ago
> spread the cost across all consumers

Did they lower the US import price before the tariff is applied in the US?

bootsmann•57m ago
This was a big worry initially when the tariffs were announced but it doesn’t actually seem to be happening. Most manufacturers are not adjusting their price structure because the effects are super hard to estimate (don’t forget that the US is still just 20% of worldwide demand)
cybersquare•21m ago
This might have been true three months ago, but it isn't any more. Narrow margin business like independently owned coffee shops are already seeing consumables increase in price by up to 3x, which then leads them to have to add "tariff surcharges" that show up on their POS devices.
bootsmann•18m ago
I think we agree?! I’m arguing that the tariff is being passed on to US prices and not distributed onto the worldwide customer base. A manufacturer that doesn't adjust their price structure is passing the price on because the tariff is applied by the government and not by the company selling the product.
tjpnz•11m ago
Seems to have been the case with PS5 and Xbox consoles. The rest of the world was effectively subsidizing US gamers for a while, until prices there were jacked up even higher there.
bmacho•1h ago
Missed opportunity to initiate a global switch to clocks that go positive direction
bmacho•1h ago
Maybe next time 39 becomes relevant for any reason
rapnie•1h ago
Tangential. It is fun to note how in ads showing watches the time is usually 9 past 10 as shown in the image. This apparently gives the most pleasing balance of the watch dials for the eye, while not covering the time indicators below.
kitd•1h ago
It makes the watch face look like it's smiling.
hshdhdhehd•47m ago
10:09:30 is probably the closest to 120 degree equal separation.
verytrivial•1h ago
Haha but seriously, Trump is just starting to ramp up full kleptocracy mode. Each tariff change is going to be associated with billions in trades made with foreknowledge of the move. His robber baron friends will fund him and his regime forever. They can do whatever they want now. We might as well tear down the White House and replace it with a Putin style gilded palace for Oligarchs. Oh wait.
seydor•1h ago
Ironic that it can't be tariff'd
kitd•57m ago
Whoever said tariffs were bad for business? There's a whole industry springing up of people taking the piss out of the POTUS.
mohas•46m ago
Do we still remember that Tariffs are supposed to raise the price of foreign goods and make domestic goods more reasonable for buyers? it targets buyers and this is how it works regardless of how it is presented to the public, I don't imagine lots of supporters if presented as it is.
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