“Imports are essential to the kits that Levi and his one employee assemble in a warehouse near Charlottesville, Virginia. For example, a kit that teaches kids how to build a small theremin requires a circuit board, resistors, capacitors, bits of wire, and plastic molding to hold batteries and other pieces in place.
“I don’t have millions and millions of dollars to spin up my own circuit board assembly line, and plastic mold injection, and everything,” Levi says.
Though he is running a small, niche operation, Microkits is in many ways a microcosm of American manufacturing. Levi provides the ideas and designs, and he oversees the final assembly of his products in America, but those products combine parts sourced from around the globe.”
Trump inherited money and business from his dad, and made a lot of money through his celebrity, but as far as his actual businesses, he mostly spent a lot of money and then used courts to not pay debts he owed. He was a bad and dishonest businessman, and his image as a successful businessman is mostly false.
“Skype’s consumer service was shut down by its parent company Microsoft…Though President Donald Trump’s overzealous antitrust enforcers think popular platforms with large user bases imbue firms with incontestable market power, the rise and fall of Skype contradicts this theory. Federal trustbusters should keep this case in mind before deeming Big Tech companies monopolies, breaking them up, and decreasing American innovation, growth, and dynamism.
Skype launched in 2003 and had 150 million monthly users by the time of its acquisition in 2011. Microsoft bought the internet calling service for $12 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars in May 2011, which the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved in June of that year. Salvatore Cantale, a professor of finance at INSEAD, a global business school, explained in 2013 that Microsoft paid “roughly ten times Skype’s revenues in 2010 [and] around twice its recent valuation.””
“Considering the network effects—which Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown explains as the advantages that accrue to tech platforms that already have a strong user base—experienced by telecommunications services, many would predict that this dramatic increase in demand would increase Skype’s market share as new users flocked to the most-used videoconferencing platform. But the opposite happened: In 2021, Skype’s market share fell to a measly 6 percent while Zoom’s skyrocketed to nearly 50 percent. Skype’s market share recovered only seven percentage points by 2024 and was discontinued by Microsoft, which transitioned accounts to Microsoft Teams, an application that facilitates workplace communication and collaboration.”
“Google is not a charity; it’s a business. If it cannot generate revenue to make a profit through the combination of its advertising products, user data, and contracts with device manufacturers, it may have to raise prices on products that are presently enjoyed for free by consumers.”
“Expropriating billions of dollars from American businesses is injurious and capricious. Citizens of the E.U. benefit from the American technology sector; siphoning capital from U.S. tech firms leaves them with less to commit to research and development, stymieing further innovation. The E.U. should stop penalizing American firms that outcompete their European counterparts.”
Trump’s China tariffs are destroying this small business.
When starting the business she looked into manufacturing in the U.S., but no U.S. factory would accept such a small order. Today, the price, requirements, and availability of source materials make manufacturing in the U.S. prohibitive.
After Trump’s election, she prepared for 20 percent tariffs, but Trump’s 100 plus percent tariffs are destructive.
“As ugly as the stock market losses have been, the big hit from Trump’s tariffs probably haven’t even arrived yet. As always, the stock market is not the economy—it’s an aggregated indicator of what investors think the economy will look like in the future. Right now, they think it will be bad. Really bad.”
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“In addition to crashing Americans’ retirement accounts and wiping out huge amounts from American companies (Apple and Nike were among the biggest losers in Friday’s rout), Trump’s move will soon raise taxes, wreck supply chains, and make basic goods more expensive or difficult to obtain.
In other words, even if you aren’t affected by the stock market sell-off, you’ll feel the effects of the tariffs before long.
Take each of those things in order. First, the tax increase. Tariffs are a form of taxation. According to the Yale Budget Lab’s analysis, Trump’s tariffs will reduce the average household’s income by nearly $3,800 this year. That’s because lots of things will get more expensive. Tariffs could triple the cost of a new iPhone, for example.
Second, the supply chain chaos. Ryan Peterson is the CEO of Flexport, a tech platform that helps companies with global logistics. He reported last week that 28 percent of the companies in Flexport’s system are “pausing all ocean freight bookings from Asia until there’s more clarity on where tariffs will end up.”
That means that even if some American companies are willing to pay the tariffs to keep supply chains flowing, they may not be able to find importers and shipping services right now.
Finally, the tariffs (and the associated supply chain disruptions) will have an immediate impact on prices and the availability of goods.
“A trade war triggered by Trump’s chaotic tariffs is the same type of aggregate shock as the Covid crisis, but worse,” warns Ben Golub, a professor of economics at Northwestern. As the tariffs degrade the ability of modern international supply chains to function, he wrote on X, the results will be “supply shortages and price spikes.”
To give just one example, consider the morning cup of coffee you might still be nursing. Americans consumed 1.6 billion pounds of coffee last year, but the United States produces only about 11 million pounds annually (all of it in Hawaii).
America also exports a lot of coffee—more than $900 billion of it last year. That’s possible even though we don’t grow very much here, because America-based coffee companies can buy beans from other countries, roast them, and then export them abroad. What are those middle-of-the-supply-chain companies supposed to do? Coffee-drinkers are screwed and coffee exporting companies that employ American workers are doubly boned.
Now repeat that same process for every industry connected to global supply chains. It’s grim.”
Companies don’t know where to make investments because they don’t know what tariffs will be in the future. The uncertainty of Trump’s tariff policy is horrible for the economy.
Stable protectionism is bad for the economy, but unstable protectionism is much worse.
“On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to put a tariff of between 10 percent and 20 percent on all imports to the United States, along with a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods and a 25 percent import surcharge on Canadian and Mexican wares — at least, until our neighbors choke off the flow of all migrants and drugs across America’s northern and southern borders.
This protectionist agenda is far more radical than anything Trump attempted during his first term. It threatens to hamper American tech companies by increasing the cost of semiconductors, depress stock valuations by reducing economic growth and fueling a global trade war, and disrupt the US auto industry, whose supply chains were built around the presumption of duty-free trade with Mexico.
Thus, American investors, executives, and entrepreneurs watched Trump’s first day in office with bated breath: Would his inaugural address and initial executive orders prioritize corporate America’s financial interest in relatively free global exchange — or his own ideological fixation on trade deficits?
Trump’s Day 1 actions did not fully clarify his priorities on this front. In his inaugural speech, the president reiterated his broad commitment to protectionism. Meanwhile, his administration prepared to launch federal investigations into America’s trade deficit in general, as well as the trade practices of China, Mexico, and Canada in particular.
Nevertheless, Trump did not actually establish any new tariffs on his first day in office, as his administration’s arch-protectionists had hoped that he would.
Investors interpreted Trump’s caution as a sign that he would be heeding his advisers’ push for a more limited and incremental tariff policy; stocks rose Monday while the US dollar fell (stiff tariffs would increase the value of America’s currency).
Wall Street’s relief may be premature. Trump appears as ideologically perturbed by America’s trade deficit as ever.”
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“Imposing even a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods would not only harm various business interests, but would also likely increase costs for consumers. Thus, such a duty would harm both Trump’s donors and voters.
If Trump’s first term is any guide, his universal tariff would not even redound to the benefit of American manufacturers, who would be vulnerable to higher costs and retaliatory tariffs from foreign nations. Generally speaking, presidents seek to avoid enacting policies that harm the bulk of their coalition, to the benefit of a narrow band of ideologues. And this is what implementing Trump’s grandest visions for trade policy would likely entail.
Second, the imposition of a universal tariff would roil stock markets. During Trump’s first term in office, he monitored the markets’ performance obsessively, tweeting about it incessantly and suggesting that stock values were a barometer of sound policy, warning in 2018, “If Democrats take over Congress, the stock market will plummet.”
Finally, Trump has recently shown some sensitivity to the interests of his newfound friends in tech, even when those interests conflict with the tenets of rightwing nationalism. Over the holidays, Elon Musk feuded with their co-partisans over the desirability of high-skill immigration and the H-1B visa, which help American tech companies to hire foreign talent. Trump ultimately expressed support for Musk’s position.”
“The FTC’s stated motivation for challenging the merger was to avoid “higher prices for groceries and other essential household items for millions of Americans.””
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“Kroger and Albertsons would still only account for 9 percent of overall grocery sales, as C. Jarrett Dieterle has noted in Reason, belying the FTC’s concerns that the merger would grant them significant market power. The FTC’s overly narrow definition of the grocery market is the actual cause of concern: The Commission’s definition includes traditional supermarkets and “hypermarkets” like Walmart and Target, but excludes Amazon and Costco, the second and third largest grocery retailers, respectively.
Considering Kroger’s and Albertsons’ single-digit shares of the properly defined market, and competition from other grocers not recognized by the FTC, the merger was more likely to save Albertsons from insolvency, not afford them enough market power to increase prices. Kroger and Albertsons projected the merger would create $500 million in cost savings—at least some of which would be passed onto consumers. The pair also planned to invest $1.3 billion to improve customer service, according to Nate Scherer, a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit research institute dedicated to the promotion of consumer welfare.”