Linked List: April 11, 2025

Friday, 11 April 2025

Anker, a Chinese Company, Has Already Started Raising Its Prices on Amazon ★

Reuters:

China’s Anker, one of Amazon’s largest sellers offering products from power banks to phone cases, has raised prices on a fifth of its products on the U.S. platform since Thursday, in a sign that tariffs on Chinese goods are being passed on to U.S. shoppers.

Some 127 Anker products have seen an average increase of 18% since Thursday last week, with the majority of those occurring after Monday, April 7, when U.S. President Donald Trump added an extra 50% import duty on Chinese goods, according to data from e-commerce services provider SmartScout.

Tariffs driving up consumer prices is as sure a thing as rain making you wet. But it’s worth pointing to the evidence as it comes in, because unlike rain’s wetness, the “emperor sure does have clothes” MAGA contingent is trying to argue that tariffs don’t have this obvious effect.

European Travel to the U.S. Plummets ★

Financial Times reporter John Burn-Murdoch has a summary on Bluesky of his co-bylined report for the Financial Times:

Visitors from western Europe who stayed at least one night in the US fell by 17 per cent in March from a year ago, according to the International Trade Administration. Travel from some countries — including Ireland, Norway and Germany — fell by more than 20 per cent, an FT analysis of ITA data showed.

The trend poses a threat to the US tourism industry, which accounts for 2.5 per cent of the country’s GDP. Some airlines and hotel groups have warned of waning demand for transatlantic travel and a “bad buzz” about visiting the US. The total number of overseas visitors travelling to the US dropped by 12 per cent year-on-year in March, the steepest decline since March 2021 when the travel sector was reeling from pandemic restrictions, according to the ITA data.

Well, I’m sure it will turn around when the April figures come out, after Trump’s tariff madness and the news that Secretary of State Marco Rubio — supposedly one of the few sane voices in the 2.0 Trump kakistocracy — has signed a two-page argument that noncitizens can be deported for their beliefs, a.k.a. thought crimes.

“In just two months [Trump] has destroyed the reputation of the US, shown one way by diminished travel from the EU to the US,” said Paul English, co-founder of travel website Kayak. “This is not only one more terrible blow to the US economy, it also represents reputation damage that could take generations to repair.”

We need more clearheaded statements like this from business leaders. Just state the truth plainly. The only side English took with this statement is the side of the truth.

Chinese Finance Ministry Calls Trump’s Tariff Hikes ‘A Joke in the History of World Economics’ ★

Reuters:

“The U.S. side’s imposition of excessively high tariffs on China seriously violates international economic and trade rules, runs counter to basic economic principles and common sense, and is simply an act of unilateral bullying and coercion,” China’s Finance Ministry said in a statement. [...]

“Even if the U.S. continues to impose even higher tariffs, it would no longer have any economic significance and would go down as a joke in the history of world economics,” the Finance Ministry’s statement added.

“If the U.S. continues to play a numbers game with tariffs, China will not respond,” it added. However it left the door open for Beijing to turn to other types of retaliation, reiterating that China would fight the U.S. to the end.

None of this is funny at the moment, but Trump has beclowned himself with these impulsive nonsensical tariffs. No matter how this ends up, he will go down in history looking like a fool for this. In terms of history, what will be remembered in decades to come, he’d have far less embarrassed himself by shitting his pants in public. He came into office less than three months ago with the US economy being the strongest in the world, by far. Everything that’s happened since has been the direct result of his mad-king magical-thinking nonsense and the Republican party’s refusal to stand up to him.

If Joe Biden had imposed these exact same tariff policies a year ago, for the exact same stated reasons, Republicans would have impeached him and called for his immediate ouster through Section 4 of the 25th Amendment — and their actions, for once, would have been justified. These tariff policies are nuts and are endangering the United States’s economic supremacy while simultaneously hurting the entire world economy. No one in their right mind would do this, and the President of the United States needs to be a person in their right mind.

Democrats and all other Trump opponents should immediately begin calling into question Trump’s mental fitness for office. This whole tariff saga is proof that he’s nuts. Just keep repeating that. He’s always been a little nutty but now he’s gone off the deep end. Don’t forget to reiterate that Trump’s father was suffering from severe dementia when he was Trump’s age. Throw Biden under the bus: remind people that we just saw what happens when a mentally enfeebled 80-year-old^* serves as President, and that under Trump it’s far worse. Biden was sleepy but steady; Trump is agitated and erratic. That’s far worse.

Hammer the points — all true, all obvious — endlessly: Trump is too old; these tariffs are proof that he’s lost his mind; he’s hurting America badly; dementia runs in his family. Hammer it.

* Keep calling him “80”; make his sycophants correct you that he’s “only” turning 79 in June.