With global trade falling apart, this respect for IP is in grave danger. Robust IP protections contributed significantly to America's wealth.
The short-sighted focus on tariffs and re-shoring manufacturing completely neglects the whole balance and will damage America's position long-term.
Quite the opposite, the US didn't enforce IP protections during the first few years of industrialization, exactly because they were stealing IP from England.
We’ve all heard of IP theft from China but if Meta doesn’t face domestic punishment for its wholesale theft I really see no legs left to stand on.
I hope not, at least not in it's present form. As far as copyright goes a return to the Statute of Anne or something similar would provide time for authors to profit from their labours while putting them in the public domain within a reasonable time.
The conclusion is: "We'll see".
One might argue that the sight in question tends toward the Trumpian side of things in general, I suppose.
I should have thought this site a little better than "guilt by association".
Every flavour of economics enjoys some level of widespread support, there are still a bunch of people who profess a commitment to Marxism. Nobody listens to them (hurrah!) but they're still there. If we had Marxists in charge their articles would probably get a lot more traction though because people want to know what is going to happen next. Ditto things like the gold standard, fiat currency, ultra-low taxes, ultra-high taxes, globalism and economic independence strategies.
TLDR; there is probably a strong selection bias here.
None of these arguments were presented in a reasonable way, with numbers, ahead of a policy decision that made a considered attempt to find an optimal balance.
No, we elected an administration that had been shouting "Tariffs!" during the campaign, then enacted "Tariffs!" once in office, then engaged in a quite frankly pathetic flurry of increases/decreases/suspensions/delays to try to fix the critical problems being introduced by the "Tariffs!". Most of which have been to other nations' benefit, even.
It's a bit much to look back after three months of this madness and try to pretend how reasonable it was all along. We're still in the madness (Q2/Q3 numbers haven't landed yet to show actual effects, it's going to be a rocky year, folks).
For instance, any time System76 is brought up for Europeans, VAT is immediately mentioned, along with why they don't have a European distribution center.
Why would opening a European distribution center be relevant if you have to pay the same VAT either way?
A few examples:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2204089
https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/1c9djrj/taxes_on_...
BTW, it's not just the EU that wants you to pay the sales tax when bringing items across the border, but the US also. It just so happens that it's rarely if ever enforced.
EDIT I should add that the key difference of the VAT and tariff is that VAT is not made to advantage one product over another. It's simply a sales tax on nearly all products, just like the US sales taxes.
It seems to be the customers asking for one, not System76. They were planning to open one, though.
> VAT is not made to advantage one product over another.
Like sales tax, there are different (and often zero) rates depending on product (same link as before)
> Like sales tax, there are different (and often zero) rates depending on product (same link as before)
But those different rates depend on the product category, not the product manufacturer or place of origin. The whole point of tariffs is to base rates on place of origin.
They do, though:
- Staple food (rice, basically? Probably flour too) as well as healthcare: 0%.
Food and common, staple products (soap, condoms, probably other), some cultural products (books, theater tickets, probably other), electricity, water: reduced rate (5.5%)
'vacation' rate: camping bookings, alternative healthcare, zoo, movies, restaurants (10%).
Everything else is 20%, whatever the brand or the producer. I know because I actually checked my transaction tickets for a long time (and my first journey b was writing an OCR to automatically analyze those tickets to ask for VAT reimbursement)
So now I gotta be home 100% to receive the package, instead of it getting it dropped off at a neighbors if I happen to be out/at work/...? And I hope they picked a shipping company that takes card/allows online payments and not someone who expects me to pay in exact cash.
And that's the happy path where everything worked correctly, and not one where something in the paperwork is wrong or got messed up and now you get to try figure out what exact proof the shipping company wants to release your package/believe that they got the amount wrong/... Or it gets shipped in a way where it ends up stuck with actual customs and you get to deal with them. If a seller has their shit in order it's relatively unlikely to happen, but well, random small-ish companies not necessarily do, and if it goes wrong its really annoying.
+ of course if the seller has an actual legal presence here it makes it clear consumer rights as I expect them apply.
I'm not someone who absolutely won't order from abroad if I want something, but a local source or a known distributor just avoids a whole category of potential issues. And computers are the kind of high-value item where people really want to avoid them (and some of the simplifications aren't available, e.g. I think the most straight-forward pre-payment mechanism for sellers is restricted to low-value parcels).
We do not have any of these considerations in the US, which is perhaps part of why so much stuff comes directly from abroad.
But $800 (I think that was the value?) de-minimus indeed makes a lot of cases easy.
But again, that's not what's happening in US policymaking right now. They don't want tariffs, they want "Tarrifs!", and splitting hairs over the precise definition isn't going to change their mind.
TFA is the transcript of an historical overview lecture, not a formal economic thesis on the topic, much less, a journal article.
Your point, while valid, might be enhanced by some counter-linking.
No. It is an attempt to sanewash conservatives, because that is the whole reason for being for this university.
The part about Germany and cars is also crap.
So, could you suggest a link to a solid refutation?
People who work in these institutions lie, they are paid for lying and they do it to project their ideological agenda.
VAT is paid regardless of who manufactured the car. It is something the final customer has to pay regardless of whether the product was made in EU or abroad. If you are buying BMW, you have to pay VAT. If you are buying Toyota, you have to pay VAT. If you are buying an American car, you have to pay exactly the same VAT. It is sales tax, basically, just managed differently to make tax fraud harder.
Also, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have great reputation and fit into European roads. Ford and General Motors do not have comparatively great reputation. Germans were buying Teslas tho, before those became associated with support to far right.
Article author is lying, plain and simple.
... is somehow completely objective and obviously unrelated to the giant shitstorm of contemporary US tariff policy is just laughable, sorry.
We both know what this is.
[1] The presentation might have fooled you, but John Steel Gordon is absolutely not an "economist" or "historian" in any professional sense.
It's an historical overview. Was there a substantive rebuttal on offer, or just what sounds like innuendo?
The point isn't that he's wrong (though multiple people here are indeed pointing out things that are). It's that (1) his not being wrong doesn't remotely justify current policy and (2) who he is and where he spoke was very clearly intended to justify current policy. I mean, duh, as it were.
I mean, please. Link me another dry historical lecture hosted by Heritage. I dare you. Everything they do is political.
Some claims are just out and out misleading, like:
> One of the provisions agreed to by the U.S. in the early GATT negotiations following World War II was differential tariffs: the U.S. lowered its tariffs more than its trading partners did. Again, the purpose of this was to speed the economic rebuilding of allies and former enemies who had suffered devastation during the war.
Perhaps that was a purpose of those tariffs, but this ignores the more general purpose of US policy which was, at the time, to reduce trade barriers, by more closely integrating all these economies (see European Coal and Steel Community), and creating a customs union (see the Paris and Rome Treaties), all in service of preventing another world war.
> The U.S., for instance, has a 2.5 percent tariff on cars imported from Germany, while Germany has a ten percent tariff on American cars.
Hard to believe, in the age of Trump, but tariff rates are generally negotiated for provisions, as part of a broader trade agreement. TTIP, a new EU-US agreement, was dropped by the US without a deal in 2016. Guess why.
> As a result, while the logos of Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen are seen all over American roads, those of Ford and General Motors are a rare sight in Germany.
MB and BMW have a long history making cars, longer in many cases than the American companies. That is -- this is a mature industry, and, in general, Ford and GM are not regarded as making cars of the same quality both in the US or in Germany. So -- the reason you don't see many Cadillacs in Germany is because MB and BMW and Porsche make a better alternative, and the consumers know it.
Japan for instance has a 0% tariff rate on US cars and the Japanese still don't buy them.
It's not even true that Ford is a rare sight. Ford outsells Toyota in Germany, employs 28 000 people in Germany, and has been incorporated there since 1925.
US Fords are of course a rare sight but that has nothing to do with tariffs, it is simply that most buyers don't want them.
* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/when-are-tariffs-good
It's just that generally speaking, most of why they're being implemented by the US now are not valid.
To put it kindly a lot them are chaos apologists.
Tariffs can work, but only if they are targeted towards certain industries/sectors. They can't just be slapped across the board and be expected to work properly. Furthermore, they must be attached to certain KPIs such as exports (i.e., the ability to effectively compete on the international market). Joe Studwell's "How Asia Works" argues that Japan, Korea, and Taiwan all used tariffs and subsidies to promote their own "national champions". In turn, they forced those companies export their products rather than just sell domestically in order to compete. If they didn't meet those export targets, those companies were cut off from state support. Ha Joon Chang, a Korean developmental economist, likens this to raising a child: you spend their initial formative years supporting them until they are able to support themselves without your help.
Sadly there has been zero discussion of doing targeted industrial policy (like China's) in the US. The irony is that Trump's approach benefits China tremendously.
Garbage in, garbage out.
It’s an island right in the middle of the entrance to Charleston Harbor.
For comparison, China applies the minimal amount of economic protectionism it deems necessary to achieve its industrial policy goals. The crucial fact about China's approach is that China's leaders do not make silly claims to sell the idea to a naive public, they cite specific, highly targeted industrial policy goals and interfere in the economy as little as possible. They acknowledge the sacrifice that tariffs require and assert that the industrial policy goals are worth it, they do not make false claims about who pays for tariffs.
On the contrary, protectionism in the US is a blunt and emotionally wielded instrument that is deployed haphazardly and then suddenly repealed, then deployed again amid rhetoric that the US is a victim and has been taken advantage of, and the emotionally reassuring and politically priceless falsehood that foreign companies pay the cost of tariffs.
The costs of recent tariff antics in the US is clear as the economy must now price in the risk of unpredictable and haphazard tariffs along with other systemic risks. Absent from the discussion of tariffs in the US is any coherent idea of industrial policy, any forward-looking or coherent perspective on what should be done to prepare for the future, etc.
US tariffs are a purely emotional ploy meant to build up nostalgia for bygone days of US heavy manufacturing. The "us against them" rhetoric and the victimhood rhetoric is just a bonus that (sadly) sells well politically in the US these days.
It is not only counter-productive and directly harmful to the US economy, it is also deeply embarrassing that the world has to witness the US self-immolating in this way, hitting our own knee-caps with a hammer, destroying wealth and trust that many people worked so hard to create.
Economists don't favor tariffs for one simple reason: Economics is a science and there is overwhelming evidence telling us what will happen. Better policy ideas exist such as targeted industrial policy (such as that done by China) but the US ignores them in favor of the most emotional and reactive posturing imaginable.
It should already be clear what happened. Trump made a lot of claims about "deal making" and tariffs. Many of the claims were contradictory from the beginning, meaning if one was true the other could not be true. Supporters are not bothered by that because the appeal is emotional rather than logical. Now we've seen many tariffs get deployed, we've seen markets tank, companies cancel orders, reverse course, hold back on investment decisions. Then we've seen the tariffs get walked back amid bluster and rhetoric. Some economic numbers improve in response to this but not all. It's like the last spasms of a dying creature -- is it an attack or a retreat? Neither or both?
All this stems from a deep misunderstanding of American power and American greatness. Misunderstandings like this are easy in a society so heavily influenced by just-so stories and propaganda, societies like ours in which the state religion, American Exceptionalism, is irresistable to so many.
What does that part about VAT have to do with this? VAT is essentially a sales tax with a more involved collection process.
The big difference in collections is that VAT is collected at each step of the chain of manufacture and distribution but refunded if the next step is not to a consumer, whereas in sales tax it is only collected on the final sale to a consumer.
As for why VAT is remitted on exports, it is the same reason why if GM builds a Tahoe in their factory in Arlington, Texas and sells it to a dealer or consumer that is not in Texas they do not pay Texas sales tax. Sales tax and VAT are both destination based. Exports, whether from Texas or Germany, are not to the final consumer and so VAT and sales tax are not owed.
Saying that VAT has anything to do with why BMW is more common than GM in Germany makes as much sense as saying that sales tax is why GM is more common than BMW in Texas.
Another important difference has to do with the size of the VAT tax compared to single-stage taxes. For example, in the US if you taxed 19% on inputs every step of the way, no one would be able to afford the final sticker price. Instead, the US taxes a much smaller amount but does not refund this like the VAT system, and the end consumer tax is the same small percentage. VAT can be much higher because it avoids the cascading tax effect. In the end maybe 19% tax was collected on the manufacture and sale in both the US and Germany, and all you changed was one having a higher tax versus cost but the sticker price evened out in the end.
Because of this difference in the two tax systems, VAT can be, and is, much higher than US state/local tax. But then, this means that differences in tariffs creates a compounding effect. A German manufacturer can sell to a US end consumer on average about: 100% cost + 2.5% tariff + 102.5% * (8.5% consumption tax) = 111% after tax cost. On the other hand, if Ford builds in the US and sells to a German end consumer, then the calculation goes: 100% cost + 10% tariff +110% * (19% VAT) = 131% after tax cost. So while Germany's VAT is 10.5% higher than the average US sales tax, and equal to the VAT any German would pay in Germany, its actually almost double that amount when you take into account the compounding affect of Germany's higher tariffs.
In short, the differences in the two tax systems result in systemically higher tax rates for VAT. And this means that EU car manufacturers do see a trade advantage in terms of selling to EU end consumers compared to US manufacturers selling to EU end consumers (when compared to either selling in the US) since the final after-tax cost calculation is multiplicative.
I actually dislike all consumption taxes, but I find myself defending VAT way too much on this platform :/
crossroadsguy•5h ago
(Though I wonder how much they contribute? 30-40%? Or more? How does one find this out?)
Anyway, I am sure there are other factors like colonialism and what not. But even if you manage to rob someone else and then by the end of next week your money is gone in the various waterholes of your neighbourhood then you are right where you started ready to rob again until you can’t rob anymore. Are there other, from past, “robber” nations that squandered their loot in watering holes?
I wonder how “meteoric” the decline would be if those same academic institutes are undermined and are stifled, the ones that contributed to the rise.
PS. When I was applying to unis in mainland Europe (because US/UK was too costly) any place below at least a hundred year old was “too nuvo” for my academic taste ;-)
mustache_kimono•5h ago
Hillsdale is a college founded expressly to be a conservative alternative to the Ivies/older liberal arts schools. And its graduates have been very influential in the recent American conservative movement.
crossroadsguy•5h ago
0xB31B1B•5h ago
xienze•4h ago
0xB31B1B•4h ago
f30e3dfed1c9•3h ago
"An introduction to the vast diversity of life from prokaryotic forms to the eukaryotic vertebrate mammals. This course introduces the beginning biology student to all the major groups of organisms and to their fundamental taxonomic relationships."
"This vast diversity exists because that's the way God made them" is perfectly compatible with that description.
Also, from the description of an event held April 11, 2025:
"Are the special creation of Adam and Eve and the evolution of humans over millions of years compatible? 100 years after the Scopes Trial, the debate continues."
So "they actually teach a course on evolution" seems to fall well short of a full description of exactly what they teach there.
f30e3dfed1c9•2h ago
"Emphasizes the fundamental evolutionary concepts that provide explanations for the diversification of life on Earth. Specific topics include the evidence for evolution, adaptation by natural selection, speciation, systematics, molecular and genome evolution, and macroevolutionary patterns and processes."
xienze•2h ago
“They would never teach about evolution at a Christian college”
“OK it says evolution but I bet they don’t mention it”
<- YOU ARE HERE
“OK, they talk about evolution but I bet in a dismissive manner”
f30e3dfed1c9•2h ago
Do you? I have obviously not taken the class. Have you? What exactly do they teach in it and how do you know?
f30e3dfed1c9•1h ago
This is not correct. Hillsdale was founded in 1844 at a time when the contemporary so-called "conservative" movement in the US didn't even exist.
f30e3dfed1c9•18m ago
I don't really understand this comment. Are you saying that there are not many colleges or universities in the US founded in the twentieth century? That's not really true. I haven't done this exhaustively, but I took the lists of US colleges and universities for just three US states (CT, ME, MA) from wikipedia. 101 of the 167 listed were founded after 1900.
I don't know exactly how this would work out for all 50 states but I am sure that we'd find many more, likely a large majority, founded after 1900.
There are around 4,000 or so postsecondary degree-granting institutions in the US. I think what's going on here is that you never hear of the vast majority of them.
Or are you saying that you rarely find US academic institutions founded before the 1800s? In that case, well, yeah, the vast majority were not.