John Q Developer's Blog

US Economic Policy Problems

https://www.catalystgamelabs.com/news/tariffs-rolling-against-american-game-publishers

Until New Product is in your warehouse, you have nothing to sell and no way to recoup anything you’ve spent along the way. Manufacturing may be (much) cheaper overseas, but shipping containers from China is incredibly more expensive than shipping them across the States. Sometimes it’s a choice. More often it’s mandated by the market.

COGS is COGS.

And because this is true, every dollar spent on cost of goods will (almost always) result in that same 8x multiplier. Yes, I’m oversimplifying, but not by much.Because here is another truth:

China is NOT paying the tariffs(5).

I don’t know how much clearer I can say that. And yet—I expect someone will argue this exact point;I’ve seen it declared too many times on other websites. Apply ten seconds of reason here: If the US could force China or Chinese manufacturing to pay these tariffs (it can’t) Chinese manufacturing would simply raise its cost on the American publisher, forcing it back on us. Capitalism at work.

I am now losing $.80 per game sold .Assuming I sell every one of them, it will cost me $4,800 to bring happiness and joy to 6,000 lucky gaming groups.

As it turns out, I was very fortunate. I built Catalyst Game Labs to withstand such a (temporary)crisis. I didn’t have to take out a loan, or ask my crowdfunding backers to pay more for the rewards they were already due. I didn’t even raise prices, not right away. I honored my prices for several months even though I was taking losses on some of my newest (and bestselling) product. I had enough existing inventory to balance out the shortfall. Not all companies had that luxury.

Still, no business can afford to take losses forever. So, eventually, I did raise prices, but in a measured and fair reaction to the market as it slowly returned to a“new normal.” I believe Catalyst bought a lot of goodwill in that period, delivering product despite the losses at a time when we all needed a little extra fun in our lives. It wasn’t easy, but our sales in subsequent years tells me that our fans appreciated it.

And here is the critical part

By the time my containers made port and got through Customs I was taxed $240,000 for games I had been working to produce for the past year, a good measure of which were already sold.

Now tariffs are at 145%. I have friends in the industry who are in the same place I was back in March. New Product on the ocean. When they arrive, there is no asking for a do over. No waiting for the tariffs to return to something sane. They will be taxed. Immediately. And that hypothetical New Product? Landed cost just rocketed to $12.25.[$5+($5*145%)]

COGS just went up $7.25.

Please refer back to the previous section, where the likely profit margin was $4.

Because of the capricious and frankly incompement implementation of the tariffs, businesses are eating losses for stuff they already sold. There is a reason most taxes in a normal political environment are implemented 1-2 years later. This gives businesses to charge market appropriate prices in the new business environment. This is a straight forward economic assault on the Republican's percieved "enemies" who do business outside the country. Or such amazing incompetence that it makes no difference in terms of intent.

And the end result is:

Game publishers are raising prices.They have no choice. Likely, it won’t be enough. Not against 154% taxes.

We will need to make some hard business decisions, even if tariffs come back down to something reasonable and sustainable. At the moment, I know many companies are looking at loans, layoffs, salary reductions and shutdowns. These are the realities of running a business and, yeah, it may feel overwhelming. So I’ll return to my first piece of advice:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/07/business/jamie-dimon-tariff-warning/index.html

“The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession,” Dimon warned in his annual letter to shareholders. “Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth.”

“America First is fine, as long as it doesn’t end up being America alone,” Dimon said. “If the Western world’s military and economic alliances were to fragment, America itself would inevitably weaken over time,” he said.

Dimon also pointed out that these forces are inextricably linked. “It is extremely important to recognize that security and economics are interconnected – “economic” warfare has caused military warfare in the past,” he wrote.

“We face the most perilous and complicated geopolitical and economic environment since World War II,” he said.

The basic truth being spoken here is quite simple:

America was getting something for printing pieces of paper that was required to do business in America. The world agreed to do a nearly limitless amount of business priced in American dollars where we simply printed money and handed it out for things that had value beyond their investment utility in the American financial markets (i.e. treasuries, stocks, commodities).

If we were an individual, we would be white collar criminals stealing from people on a multi trillion dollar global scale before the tariffs brought this system into question.

But because people are clueless about how the economy really works and voted for economic suicide, the world (and especially Americans who thought they got a raw deal) will suffer. The end of the free market is here because the US Government is picking winners and losers.

This, frankly, is modern Chinese economic policy (i.e. Communist) and not Capitalist.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-tariffs-exemptions-pet-lobbyists-asbestos-confusion-secrecy

The administration’s lack of transparency about tariff exemptions has experts concerned that some firms might be winning narrow carve-outs behind closed doors. “It could be corruption, but it could just as easily be incompetence,” one lobbyist said.

After President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs earlier this month, the White House released a list of more than a thousand products that would be exempted.

One item that made the list is polyethylene terephthalate, more commonly known as PET resin, the thermoplastic used to make plastic bottles.

But its inclusion is a win for Reyes Holdings, a Coca-Cola bottler that ranks among the largest privately held companies in the U.S. and is owned by a pair of brothers who have donated millions of dollars to Republican causes. Records show the company recently hired a lobbying firm with close ties to the Trump White House to make its case on tariffs.

The resin’s unexplained inclusion on the list exemplifies how opaque the administration’s process for crafting its tariff policy has been. Major stakeholders are in the dark about why certain products face levies and others don’t. Tariff rates have been altered without any clear explanation for the changes. Administration officials have given conflicting messages about the tariffs or declined to answer questions at all.

I honestly have no idea how we went from a Free Market Capitalist country to "Hey, why don't we just turn privately owned businesses into privately owned profit centers for political parties?" Btw, we are China now in terms of economic policy because that is how things work there. The State determines the blessed businesses who operate on a national scale in exchange for revenue for the party/government.

I never realized Republicans were in favor of Communist economic policy.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/31/economy/tariffs-largest-tax-hike/index.html

White House aide Peter Navarro said Sunday that he expects President Donald Trump’s tariffs to bring in $6 trillion in revenue in the next decade, which could amount to the largest tax hike in US history.

Even when adjusting for inflation, that amount would be triple the tax increase put in place in 1942 to pay the cost of fighting World War II.

This is the reality.

But the conservative influeners keep repeating a lie that makes it sound like this will fix the average American's problems

“The message is that tariffs are tax cuts, tariffs are jobs, tariffs are national security,” Navarro said on Fox News Sunday. “Tariffs are great for America. They will make America great again.”

That will be the end of American capitalism. All because a bunch of conmen have convinced their voters that economic historical facts leading up to the Depression is just a fiction made up by the media and Democrats.

If I manage to sort out a few things, frankly, I would be financially better off in a number of other countries once things stabilize and it becomes clear if I need to leave to stay financially solvent and afford my life saving medication. Because that is the reality, I run out of medication, I will be dead within the year.

So for me, financial harm, is quite literally a survival concern given the state of the American medical system where I need to pay money to get life saving medication on a regular basis. Sure, I could go bankrupt paying medical bills and hope the American taxpayer would bail me out. But that is an insane idea given how much America hates helping the poor.