Re: OT: Greenland

On 31/03/2025 11:18 am, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com> wrote:

On Sun, 30 Mar 2025 22:22:57 +0200, Klaus Kragelund
<klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:
>

On 29-03-2025 23:42, bitrex wrote:

On 3/29/2025 1:44 PM, Cursitor Doom wrote:

Well, I thought DT was joking about seizing Greenland, but it appears
he's serious! That's quite a bold move to say the least! Leaving aside
the right/wrong debate over such a move, does it not now give China a
free pass to seize the territory first - if it can act fast enough -
since the unthinkable has not only been thought, but spoken aloud as a
stated plan as well? I mean it kind of confers legitimacy on arbitrary
territorial seizures if the US can do it, wouldn't you say?
>
Your pal,
>
CD

>
If the US losing to Vietnam and Afghanistan felt bad, imagine how bad
losing to Denmark will feel..

Greenland is a part of NATO. So Trump will be losing to the rest of the
alliance, which he doesn't believe in anyway
>
A guy that thinks a tariff is something the country exporting pays, well
that says it all.

>
Fair point. I was just wondering if anyone on this group might be
affected one way or the other by these tariffs. I don't believe I am,
at least not directly at any rate.
>

 Who winds up  paying what proportion of a tariff depends on price
elasticity, like any other cost.

A tariff is paid when goods enter the country that has imposed the tariff. Trump like them because he sees them as tax income that his government can spend.
Economists don't like them because they take money out of the economy in a way that makes it more expensive for consumers to buy specific items that they might want or need.
Price elasticity is just the process of spreading the pain between the exporter of the tariffed item, the importer and the eventual customer.
The rational argument for tariffs is to protect domestic sources against international competition, and the counter argument is the economy of scale - stuff gets produced at the lowest unit price when it is produced in the largest possible volume. The usual rule of thumb is that increasing production volume by a factor of ten halves the unit cost.
There are lots of specific cases where this doesn't work, but solar cells are an example where it has done.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney