I'm reading "How to Tell a Client Their Yoga Gazebo Just Got $10,000 More Expensive/Navigating the tariffs on high-end renovation projects" (NY Magazine).
A rooftop greenhouse for morning yoga and coffee.... yes, this is exactly the point at which I'm going to start caring about the tariffs.
I almost started caring a few days ago when I heard a story about a young woman who ordered 4 dresses because they only cost $8 each and might later cost $12 each.
Are these tariff empathy stories trying to get us not to care?
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68 ટિપ્પણીઓ:
It would suck if aluminum manufacturing were done in the US, but we can't do it here, because then young men who have given up hope would have jobs and what would that do to demand for imported illegal drugs?
4 years of Biden-mob/ tax payer NGO waste and fraud and money printing with actual massive inflation = the collective left had no complaints.
Every contractor marks up the costs of materials.
Do It Yourself for $4500
Dankman was my favorite supervillain. He's in the building trades and fights on the side of mold and mildew.
They ignored inflation for the last four years, but the cost of a yoga gazebo goes up and it's an outrage.
'Some of our clients are understanding the situation; some of them are just expecting us to eat the cost,' says Dankman...."
If you quoted me $55,000 and I had agreed and signed a work order, I'd expect you to eat it too.
Jaq in 2023 us made 850mm metric tons of primary aluminum plus 3.4mm tons of recycled aluminum. We imported 4.8mm tons, mostly from canada
John Henry
… yes, all the newly minted economists were born right after Biden helicopter money and the requisite inflation…
The sad part is if the media would show the new jobs and the changes being made to those people’s lives, we could have a. Honest discussion. But since Trump is always bad means they will not, I don’t care.
A substantial portion of NY Mag readers care about the cost of avocado toast and yoga gazebos.
Well, John Henry, that suggests that the article is a fraud, or that the machining of the aluminum is happening overseas.
Democratic Party economics: Affluent people need stuff cheap, like housekeepers, landscapers, stable hands for their race horses and polo ponies, greenhouses for their rooftop yoga studios, etc, etc...
Wages are suppressed by the millions of migrants who are doing the low skill jobs that men in their late teens and twenties used to do as they acquired value in the marketplace, by people who will be condemned to these jobs for life, like serfs. Meanwhile the Democrats' dark money funders, like Black Rock, buy up thousands of the homes that have traditionally served as the founding investment of young couples, in order to skim that value, so even if a young man does find work that can provide for a family, he is forced into renting by people with ready access to the vast amounts of capital that is created by fiat by the government and shared with the Democratic Party's crony funders.
What is Rich's definition of "economic inefficiency"? Decent wages paid to young people starting out. Don't you know that paying young people enough to live on is "inflationary" and contributes to the "wage-price spiral"?
This is why the young are shifting right. The game has become obvious.
We noticed Friday that NBC had a story about how the tariffs were affecting the Kentucky Derby. How? Because the owner of Churchill Downs was considering making updates and modifications then decided not to because of tariffs. That's it. Some indecisive person continued to be indecisive and now it is national news to be covered, because it can be spun to be negative about Trump.
I cared enough to watch it, while I was waiting for our waiter. Otherwise, I wouldn't care.
https://www.fool.com/research/steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-imports/
The U.S. imported just over 3 million metric tons of aluminum from Canada in 2024, roughly 58% of total U.S. aluminum imports that year. Since 2010, Canadian aluminum has accounted for between 40% and 60%, roughly, of U.S. aluminum imports.
The whole contretemps with Canada should never have happened, but the Liberals there figured that they could win an election that they were clearly losing by running against Trump, so they simple refused to cooperate on fentanyl and illegal migration, and got the whole country angry that that Trump was planning to buy Canada, by conflating the whole Greenland thing, because the Liberals own the press in Canada.
It makes sense to manufacture aluminum in Canada, close to the cheap energy, and Canada is, well was, an ally whom we could count on if things got tough, but the Liberals would rather rule the ruins of the Canadian economy, than lose their grip on power.
This reminds me of the story a few days ago that claimed Amazon was going to institute a 'tariff surcharge' line item in the checkout process until, as claimed without evidence by the DNC stenographers, Trump got to Bezos. Almost everybody who knows anything about retail immediately recognized the idea was quashed (if it was even ever considered) by Amazon retailers because it would have enabled anybody capable of doing multiplication to figure out just how much they were marking up their items if the surcharge bore any resemblance to the actual tariff on an individual item.
Sorry, missed this snippet in my post: In 2024, 47% of U.S. aluminum consumption was from imports
I assume the aluminum used in a gazebo would be extrusion not machined or cast
Grok says 38 us facilities producing ex rusions.
They say good number don't exist by t a lot seems to be domestic. A lot of the imports are Canadian with Mexico and China doing most of the he rest
John Henry
Luxury goods and services made affordable through labor and environmental arbitrage. Ok.
Tariffs under Obama, under Biden, under Trump but with a different purpose. Tariff Laws Matter. Black Lives Matter. Baby Lives Matter, selectively.
..."Trump had kicked off his chaotic tariff spree..."
The NYT and its various subsidiary publications have an evergreen industry, providing low-hanging 'trigger' fruit to their readers so they never have to feel challenged or (apparently) be compelled to think critically.
...and for New York City prices, that must be a suit-case sized gazebo.
Just a reminder that we are making more than ever. Double per Capita since 1950
US manufacturing
Year Total Per Capita
1950 $151,325,798 $1,986
1970 $203,211,926 $2,659
1990 $248,709,873 $3,258
2010 $308,745,538 $3,515
2024 $341,814,420 $4,02
Constant 2017 dollars, 3rd column per Capita to account for population growth
Totals from fed reserve bank of St Louis (I calculated the per Capita)
The main aluminum ore, bauxite, is dirt cheap. Almost all of the cost of raw aluminum is the electricity needed to strip off the oxygen. So, when you have vast amounts of cheap power, it makes sense to produce aluminum. The aluminum B-29's that destroyed Japan in 1944-45 were made possible by the Grand Coulee Dam.
So. You can have aluminum. Or you can have bitcoin.
"If you quoted me $55,000 and I had agreed and signed a work order, I'd expect you to eat it too."
What do you suppose would have happened if the cost of aluminum had dropped by 50%?
The tariffs will likely hit the amateur astronomy industry pretty hard as most of the commodity suppliers are Chinese, from electronics to cameras to optics. There are non-Chinese boutique suppliers ( AP, Takahashi, TEC, Losmandy, Rowan), but a lot of those offerings are pretty unaffordable for most of us. A lot of the retailers will probably be hit hard as supplies dry up from shipment cutbacks and orders dry up due to relatively large price spikes. The de minimus exemption going away will be a fairly big shock as well.
It is a low-volume, low-profit industry, so no one really knows what the recovery will look like if the tariffs stick around in the medium term.
“So, you know, I miss the UK."
Yeah, we all do. Ridiculous, really, but it gave us our language and culture. Too bad the Wogs and Muzzies got it.
Christopher B (11:11am):
I saw a lot of people on Twitter saying a separate line-item for tariff charges on Amazon would be really handy for determining which products were made in China, and therefore crap. The higher the tariff, the more likely it's crap not worth buying, even if the total price is still the lowest.
Mason G said...
If you quoted me $55,000 and I had agreed and signed a work order, I'd expect you to eat it too
Indeed. Unless it wasn't a fixed price contract, but if it wasn't, I expect that to be clear in the contract that the offer was cost plus and clear what your "plus" was.
Jaq at 11:03.
Isn't this covered under a force majeure provision?
A yoga gazebo out of aluminium???? That's not exactly the way to get in touch with the natural world. But I guess that wood isn't good enough for some people. (Plus aluminium is a terrible insulator.)
It seems that most of these higher tariff expenses that people are complaining about are on items that people don't really need. It's stuff they want and they want it at a cheaper price. I personally hate a lot of this cheap crap that comes from China. It just isn't built to last. I went to the store a few years to buy a church key to open bottles and cans and it folded over the first time I went to use it. So I just went on EBAY and bought some strong "vintage" ones.
It does seem like a particularly bizarre TDS exercise. So much so, that it illuminates Trump’s prog-trolling.
If you’re mired in a very specific hysteria, it will inform everything you do. As that hysteria is goaded, your behavior will become more, and more publicly, irrational. Witness the masked driver, alone in a car with the windows rolled up, so certain in their peril that they dismiss the mockery of more rational souls as ignorant and reckless.
Social media makes it virtually effortless to do the goading. And the hysterical want, indeed need, to feel the prod.
It’s Yew Nork… fuhgeddaboudit, Jerry…
How much of that "Canadian aluminum" comes from China?
I understand that's one ploy.
How does the cost if goods jump by 20% when Trump imposed only a 10% tariff on countries other than China (and a way-more-than-20%-tariffs on Chinese goods)?
Are these tariff empathy stories trying to get us not to care?
It seems so. And they seem to be succeeding beyond all expectations. Or so it seems to me.
Did they do all these sob stories when the price of lumber and materials skyrocketed during the COVID lockdowns?
Seemingly the idea is that China will feel more pain (i.e. mass unemployment without a safety net) than US (e.g. 2 dolls instead of 32), and quicker. Maybe, but I don't think it will be that simple.
We imports lots of consumer goods from China, but about $160B (~35%) producer goods (raw materials, components, machinery), which are harder to substitute. Back when I was a slave to neutron Jack, compromising our suppliers was taken very seriously. They were the crown jewels.
On that theme, I knew 2 successful mid-level managers of chinese ancestry who were dispatched permanently to China specifically to hunt up suppliers for the turbine businesses. One, purportedly, went so far as to join the party.
I would pay money to see the gazebo contract. It would be an unusual contract indeed if the purchaser were responsible for the increased costs of materials.
Warren Buffett called tariffs “an act of war, to some degree” and said they amounted to a tax on goods. “The tooth fairy doesn’t pay them,” he said.
The sage has spoken…
So on the one side there is the Sage of Omaha with a lifetime of superlative investment experience and a gold-plated track record, who keeps adding more and more cash to the gigantic mountain of cash that he already holds, because he is deeply unconvinced about the value and valuations in the stock market.
And on the other side is the large and rowdy army of retail investors who charge-in to buy each and every market dip with both hands and feet and who seem to be completely unconcerned about minor details like value and valuations as long as they can buy "cheap".
And somewhere in between these two camps are the hapless professional money managers and investors who are gripped by a cold fear as to what Buffet knows that is making him reduce his stock market exposure but who are also in the grip of a deep angst and repeated painful pangs of FOMO on seeing the boisterous retail crowd again and again BTFD-ing and seeming none the worse for their efforts.
How is this situation going to resolve ? Will Buffet be proven wrong and the retail crowd proven right ? It would be difficult to take such a bold stance, but the market's day of judgement is probably close, given the scope for significant chaos and dysfunction arising from Trump's incoherent trade policy (such as it is).
"The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find themselves in places no one else has ever been." ~ Albert Einstein
“an act of war, to some degree”
Yes, they are reverse sanctions. You have zero problems with all of the sanctions that Biden put on so many countries. But a billionaire who has gotten richer than Croesus under a system that has laid waste to much of the middle class, driving them, or at least their children into gig work, or worse, despair says "no fair changing the rules that made me impossibly rich!" well, now you are worried.
I know, I know; it's economically inefficient and inflationary to pay living wages by which a man can provide for his family, when the going rate overseas is coolie wages and 15 to a house.
🔝 So the American consumer should pay more for it's products .... to finance tax cuts for the very rich?
Tax cuts for the rich, tarrifs for the poor. Got it.
It could be worse. It could require revisiting WWII to reset the economy. Abort, sequester the thought.
tarrif don’t like it
fuckin’ teh ka-ka
fuckin’ teh ka-ka
“It could be worse. It could require revisiting WWII to reset the economy.”
No kidding. The historical ignorance in prog economic theory is staggering. Like a 80-year fantasyland happened just because we were lucky.
And, really, WWI laid the foundations of American economic hegemony. But no one could have guessed that Europe and Asia would empty their pockets for us a couple of decades later.
It's more like Trump Obsession Syndrome. It's very contagious and there's no known cure.
The subject and tone of the article perfectly matches the readership demo of NY Magazine, and that is why it got the green light to be written & published. Now imagine a car magazine article about how the price of tariffed aluminum causing Mr Blue Collar rich guy not to be able to buy his fourth fully loaded F-150 .
The same people who want to raise the minimum wage everywhere in the US want to simultaneously have unfettered access to Chinese slave labor.
You are not even trying, Kaki
Inflation is transitory...
How is the Richweed err..pipeline.. managing?
thats the sad thing he is,
Dankman had been hired on in January and the initial estimate for the project was around $55,000 — $40,000 for materials alone. But by the time he started placing aluminum orders in April, Trump had kicked off his chaotic tariff spree …”
[My emphasis]
If he had placed his order in February, Dankman would be okay, would he not? Trump was talking about tariffs during his campaign so it’s not as though Dankman didn’t know they were coming.
"Trump was talking about tariffs during his campaign so it’s not as though Dankman didn’t know they were coming."
How do you explain to your customer that, because you didn't order materials for three months, you want *him* to pay more?
So, is today's theme something like "Luxury Beliefs"?
* Rooftop yoga studio construction cost may go up 20%
* People are so bored at movies that they text one another, so we're going to lean into that behavior
*The Royals! minus Elizabeth II are still worth caring about
* Finns are happy because their children play chess and no one steals babies for longer than 15 minutes
* What Not To Wear acknowledges that no one gives a f*** about what they think you should wear
* A woman felt so much loneliness that she was moved to invite the entire world into every minute of her life except her private bodily functions
Or is it End Times? Crazy Years?
A lot of the aluminum coils that companies like Tesla, GM, Ford, etc, used to make their aluminum automotive body parts is made in Kentucky and Indiana.
The amount that prices go up is a rough measure of how much money was sucked out of the wages of working class people on account of free trade.
"The amount that prices go up is a rough measure of how much money was sucked out of the wages of working class people on account of free trade."
The "sage of Omaha" is sitting on a huge pile of that value; how do you calculate the tax rate on a man whose decent paying job with benefits and retirement has been shipped overseas in the name of lower prices for rooftop gazebos?
"The same people who want to raise the minimum wage everywhere in the US want to simultaneously have unfettered access to Chinese slave labor."
Even communist countries like the USSR, the PRC, Viet Nam, etc, have learned that you have to respect markets, but not the Democrats. As Ben Franklin said, "bitter experience is a harsh school, but some will learn at no other." (I paraphrase) But the thing is, that they will be in power even after the economic collapse, because, like they are doing in Germany, and all over Europe, they will simply outlaw the opposition. Zelensky has been arresting each and every rival, one by one; his is the model for "protecting democracy."
A townhouse with private roof access in Williamsburg will be worth $2 to $3 mm and would be rising in price by 8 to 10 pct per year. Would she sell for less to help the poor? Property tax went up 9 pct last year there. But tarrifs are the problem?
I was going to go in with my brothers and build a beach house in NC a few years ago but covid lumber price hikes killed that. Boo hoo.
This leaves a lot of room for contractor fraud. I would demand to see the bid from the supplier, and call them to confirm.
Complaining about tariffs hitting your ‘artesian lifestyle’ in true TDS fashion.
Hilarious to me that the same leftists that have railed for years against consumerism are now all for cheap crap from China flooding our shores while being manufactured in environmentally unfriendly ways that would make a 19th century Rockefeller blush.
Some clients expect us to eat the cost? Hahahahaha. Every contractor, subcontractor and day laborer I worked with my entire life knows, as they know that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the contract (written, verbal, or unspoken) has a clause that states increased material costs and increased labor costs will be passed on to the customer in full. They should be glad the traditional profit of 15% is not tacked on to the added, post-contract costs, as has sometimes been tried with me.
Lot of small contractors and remodeling tradesmen here will only work on time and material basis. Since COVID, construction labor and material costs have skyrocketed. Think Ms NYC Gazebo is late to party, missed noting that high home remodeling costs have been around for 5 years already.
And yes, more woes of the rich and famous, courtesy of New York magazine; always a hoot to read. I recommend article from several weeks ago, regarding aging college-educated upper-middle class-origin young-adults, in their mid-30s, still reliant on Mom-Dad handouts and outright subsidies to finance their Manhattan-Brooklyn idle-time lifestyles. Big chunk of this privileged demographic are largely parasitic dependents on their senior citizen baby-boomer parents. Perhaps Ms Yoga Gazebo is part of that demographic too.
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