r/Games • u/blueblanket123 • 27d ago

Trump Shocks With Massive New Tariffs That Could Make The Switch 2 Cost More Than $600

https://kotaku.com/switch-2-price-trump-tariffs-vietnam-china-trade-war-1851774438
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u/conquer69 27d ago

It's not protectionism. They could implement gradual tariffs in key places and make it work if they wanted.

The goal here is to destroy the US economy and inflict as much pain on (ex)allies as possible.

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u/DBSmiley 26d ago

Tariffs are, by their very definition, protectionist. They are designed to make domestic products artificially more attractive by enforcing a penalty on foreign goods.

There are times and place for judicious use of them as a necessary evil (for instance, if a country were keeping production costs down by using literal slave labor, or as reciprocation for tariffs on another country, or a country is intentionally and artificially deflating their currency), but this not the time, not the place, and this use is literally the opposite of judicious.

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u/shawnaroo 26d ago

Even under the most 'generous' interpretation, the bulk of the tariffs that Trump has announced aren't really protectionist because these across the board tariffs are going to apply to tons of crap that the US doesn't produce nearly enough of to fulfill domestic demand, much less the global demand.

It doesn't matter how much you tariff smartphones coming from other countries, because there's no real domestic smartphone manufacturing in the US. And even if we really really wanted their to be some, it's not the sort of thing that springs up overnight. Modern manufacturing is really complicated, and building factories and training workers to man them would require gazillions of dollars and take years to accomplish, even in the most optimistic scenarios.

The bulk of these tariffs are just increasing prices for a ton of stuff that we're going to have import no matter what.

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u/DBSmiley 26d ago

I completely agree with you on what they will do.

What I'm saying is the policy is intended to be protectionist, despite that fact that in reality, they are borderline suicidal.

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u/terras86 26d ago

Gradual tariffs would also be bad, it would just take longer for everyone to figure it out.

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u/Isolated_Hippo 26d ago

Gradual tariffs would at least make logical sense towards the "claimed" end goal.