Posted on 04/04/2025 6:24:00 AM PDT by daniel1212
There are exports and there are exports on paper. You place the order with me and we "buy" it from our international affiliate to reduce the amount of taxes the U.S. government will collect. Instead of playing "whack-a-mole" and chasing firms from country to country, just line all the countries up and put the tariffs in place.
For example, Ireland serves a major role in tax strategies of US multinational firms who defer US taxation of foreign income. Prior to 2000, few international corporations had affiliates in Ireland. By 2020, more than 60% of multinational assets and pretax income are generated by firms that have disclosed the existence of at least two Irish affiliates.
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2024/10/14/the-end-of-the-double-irish
But these actions are not exports. They are shell accounts and a different concept. Those countries who do this need to be addressed directly as tax shelters, not as exporters to the U.S.
These aren't foreigners who are playing this game. General Motors has been doing this for decades.
You will have to wait a while because the published tariffs are not the ones that will be in effect in a few weeks.
Most of the “reciprocal” tariffs are about 1/2 what they charge us, but the HBM (Has Been Media) tries to push this as Trump being incredibly mean because the premise of all of their stories is “Let’s hate Trump”.
‘ Most of the “reciprocal” tariffs are about 1/2 what they charge us, but the HBM (Has Been Media) tries to push this as Trump being incredibly mean because the premise of all of their stories is “Let’s hate Trump”.’
That’s not how it was calculated.
‘ The tariffs were calculated using a formula that takes how much a given country sells to the U.S. (exports), subtracts how much that country buys from the U.S. (imports) to calculate the trade deficit, and then divides the trade deficit by that country’s exports to the U.S.’
Nothing reciprocal about it, so we change it to compassionate reciprocal
trade. Sad to see this administration adopt the secret naming tactics so often used in DC to hide the truth of what they are doing.
The nerd in me transferred all of those numbers into Excel, threw out the ones that charge us only 10%, then averaged the rest. It comes out that we're going to charge 50.49% of what they charge us.
Over 50 years ago, worker earnings and top executive pay were a lot more balanced. In big corporations the top executives were earning around 40 times the pay of their low level workers. Around 1983 the executive salaries began to explode by 10 and 20% increases year after year. Also many businesses found they could get their manufacturing done a lot cheaper overseas. And they could magnify their salaries to obscene levels and since the labor costs were so low the stockholders would not even notice.
Now big biz guys are complaining to Trump they don’t want to come back to the US, can’t they get a deal on their tarrifs?? They must realize that located in the US, an executive can no longer get away with a $10million salary when paying American wages of perhaps $50,000. That is NOT a 40 to 1 ratio, that is a 200 to 1 ratio, and will cut into any dividend for stockholders. They will begin to protest and the POOOOR beset CEO’s may have to learn to live in everybody elses real world.
In 2008 Goldman Sacks stockholders were very upset their top 3 executives were paid around $65million a year. 43% of the stockholders voted FOR a STOCKHOLDER ADVISORY on executive pay. While they did not win, that vote was scary enough that in 2009 the CEO lowered his salary to a poverty level of a mere $25million. Poor guy.
I owned a small amount of GE stock when it took a big dive from $50 a share to $5 a share. I was really pixxed when I read the next annual report which showed 11 top executives STILL being paid more than $10million each.
I for one can’t wait to see how this all turns out, and if there is any chance that top executives will learn that they can live quite well with far fewer $millions in salary. In fact, if Trump wants to encourage that he should make sure that companies can only deduct a maximum salary of $ONE MILLION as business expenses for any employee when filing their corporate income taxes. Then the stockholders can decide if any of these top guys is worth $10, $20, or $65 MILLION, because it will come out of their benefits, not from us the taxpayers.
I calculated what the national aspirational wage of $15.00 an hour would be for a year. Multiplying $15 by a 40 hour week, times 52 weeks gives a figure that when compared with a $1 million salary is actually close to the 40 to 1 ratio we had back when times were good more than 50 years ago.
So the multi-billionaire is going to stop others from making tens of millions?
I was wrong - it was a week
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2025-04-08/trump-tariffs-stock-market-updates
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