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Nope. Are you an American? I feel anyone with a grasp of the culture here wouldn't be quite so obtuse. Then again, weird times.

Well, the 90-day pause is good - should reduce a lot of suffering for a lot of people, but there really doesn't seem to be an endgame in the tariffs on China. We need their goods a lot more than they need ours - and they know it.

The main camera manufacturing countries just got slapped by Tango-man. China - 34% Vietnam - 46% Taiwan - 32% Japan - 24% Thailand - 36% Hope all the ones who voted for this enjoy their new electronics prices 👍

And about Europe...it is not so far away from the USA insanity as it might appear. The Le Pens got very close to govern France. The far-right is making inroads on Germany. @Emanuelcould talk about the Andre's Ventura "Chega" party on Portugal. Orbán is already in charge on Hungary, as Erdogan in Turkey. Millei (an idiot as crazy as Trump, or worse) is in charge of Argentina - with 55% below the poverty line. And I already talked about Brazil. The far-right is a world cancer now.

Can you explain? As a European I am completely lacking understanding of how American voters make decisions. I did live in the US for two years, but things weren't then how they are now. And it was in Massachusetts, so that may not count. I would think that those who are poor and lower middle class would not want to be swindled and wealth transferred to the ultra-rich, nor can I see any benefit in voting in favor of policies of the current US government (including stock manipulation but also in general, high tariffs).

Thanks, I actually just got a really nice biotar with super minty late type coatings and nothing in the 35-40mm range can match that look so I was hoping the ff38 adapter might.

@eatstoomuchjam thanks, I did shoot him a message but he of course did not reply. I already have posted on facebook as well, but I appreciate your advice regardless! What was the price on it during the last run if you don't mind me asking?

Are you a senator from New York?

The level of condescension in regards to other countries, their leaders and their people, is off the charts. His behaviour and speech is surreal.

When it was dawning on the hard of thinking here that Brexit was a load of old bollocks they just doubled down on the delusion using their weapon of choice, the piss poor home made sign. The weapons of choice for Trump’s disciples when the penny drops might be a bit more problematic for him.

5 years ago I'd have agreed with you, but honestly today, right now, I don't think it's possible to predict how Republicans will react. I mean, this is the same party that rallied around a convicted felon who has spent the last decade trying to destroy people's trust in government and its institutions, and whom from all accounts was happy when his supporters stormed the capitol. They are so entrenched in the Trump cult, it's hard to imagine them going against him. I really do think it's about time people stop giving the Republican party the benefit of the doubt.

Very good point about services. So when Dump talks about terrible trade deficits with certain countries, did he forget about Amazon Web Services, Apple App Store, Netflix, VISA, Master Card and Cloudflare? More to the point.. does he even know what they are? 🙂 Best way to fight fire with fire is for the rest of the world to kick out VISA and to sell all their reserve currency (USD) Then the Americans would come grovelling to us instead of the other way round.

I saw that! I appreciate you coming back to this thread to let me know!

Well, he just announced that at midnight, the tariff on Chinese goods will raise to 104%. I just can't stand all this winning.

We are not talking about pork sausages though are we? This is a topic about tariffs on cameras and cutting edge electronics. So why mention it? Your argument doesn't fit here, and I don't know what the point of it is. So back on topic... The US is a third of the global market for consumer electronics and professional cameras, and actually much more than a third for certain products and companies. If this market was to vanish behind a nationalist, protectionist trade barrier then it won't matter how much you bang on about buying local, the country's economy and jobs will go through a catastrophic breakdown as the Americans are about to find out.

Yeah, it's all quite obvious to us but apparently not to Trump voters, who only know the goal is to promote American manufacturing but don't understand the reality. The reality is that American manufacturing even when it's on US soil requires suppliers across borders, and all over the world. Raw materials that cannot be sourced in the US. Trading partners with cheaper labour - Mexico, Vietnam, China... And supply chains in Canada just across the border for automotive manufacturing and more... So even when you have dismantled all of this, aside from the fact US manufacturing will collapse if you do, there's the clear-as-day problem of wage levels... It just isn't economical to make large volume electronics (or much else consumer-wise) in the US due to the average wage level vs places like China and Vietnam. Foxconn employ a city's worth of millions. It's the big elephant in the room every time Trump bangs on about protecting American jobs and bringing manufacturing back home. What is the cost to the consumer? If he succeeds then consumers won't be buying much as it will be 1000% more expensive. Yeah, can you imagine TSMC bringing their fabs over to the US... The world's most expensive relocation for what... zero political stability, massively higher wage bill, there isn't even the talent pool for stuff like semiconductor engineering - it's mainly in Asia. They will not convince their best people to leave Taiwan and go and live in a hostile environment for foreigners (sad to say that about the US, isn't it?) And the other problem is that the US government, in particular Trump himself are making themselves look TOTALLY economically illiterate and completely untrustworthy in terms of managing the US economy, which scares off the investment even more. He wants maximum leverage for the upcoming talks with 50-odd countries. The danger here is that the damage has already been done. US untrustworthy. Global supply chains and shipping disrupted in similar manner as COVID. Inflation and supply problems beginning to mount up big style in only a short few days. Trillions wiped off stocks. And more shit... All for a supposably 'better bargaining position' in trade-talks. Then there's still the chance that they will just end up fighting with China rather than striking a deal and the trade-war rumbles on for years, leading to a military confrontation and devastating unemployment and poverty all over the world, but especially in the US and China. All because of one idiot and the idiots who thought voting for a convicted economically illiterate crook was a good idea.

Apparently all camera pre-orders in the US will be cancelled in the coming days, most already have. Due to the tariffs, retailers can't predict the unit cost when an item actually ships from Asia. So they can't honour any of the pre-orders. Millions of $ wiped off retailers books. Hundreds of lost customers. And this is the same for everything... cameras, graphics cards, games consoles, Nintendo Switch 2. Nobody has any idea of what the actual price will be from one week to the next. Currently imports are stacking up at the ports. Cars stuck on ships. I feel sorry for those in the US who didn't vote for this. You are in for a shocking time.

The majority of Americans are proudly anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti educated, and anti-ideas.

Nope, they won´t. If social media does not become regulated and co-reponsible for the content they publish, they won't. He had our Trump here in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. He blocked the Covid vaccines for months - Pfizer offered their vaccines for a very low price as soon as it was approved, because they wanted to use Brazil as an example. They sent 101 emails (yep) for all the authorities, NONE had an answer. A congressional investigation after discovered that it was blocked because some of their allies were trying to put some intermediates on vaccines to profit around US$1 per dose. More than 700.000 people died in Brazil because of Covid. A father of a friend and a grandmother of another friend between them, both very healthy, more than 5 months after the Pfizer offer. They probably be alive today. Bolsonaro even tried a coup - in the election day, he sent the federal road police to make blockades "for safety" - but only in places that he was in a major advantage, to try to block people to get to local vote places. In Jan 8th 2023, they incited people to broke into all the major institutions, a version of the USA's Jan 6th; but here it was like the White House, The Capitol and the Supreme Court were invaded and destroyed. It was a plan to force the new president to call the military forces - than the militaries would depose the new government. With some luck, the riot was dissolved, a investigation was opened, an a lot of coup plans were discovered - as with Trump, their allies and dumbfucks lunatics, and coup plans were found handwritten over their desks...plans that included killing the current president, the vice-president and one Supreme Court judge. They tried to explode a gasoline truck in front of the Brasilia airport in the Christmas Eve, since it was full of people. They are prosecuted now, and probably will go to jail (in factm, probably Bolsonaro will fly to Argentina or USA to not be arrested). And even with all this, around 35 to 38% of the population would vote for him. Because a majority of Brazil's population are permanently addicted to social media. Almost all of these 38% reads nothing else than far-right channels in Whatsapp and Telegram - they are bombarded so much by fake news that they believe in no one more than these info. Like Q'Anon guys. I have relatives, that were (and in a good part stills) some of the most honest and caring people that I know, and they firmly believe than now we live in a dictartorship that only Bolsonaro could destroy. That China will invade Brazil through Uruguay. That Bill Gates patented the Covid virus. All bombarded by social media. If I put a video with some copywrighted music in Youtube, in less than a minute I receive a warning. A FUCKING MUSIC - much more hard to pinpoint than words or images. Don't try to convince me that they cannot spot fake news on the fly. But they will not be accountable. And the consequences will be VERY bad - because USA will be hit with a massive reccession, but the far right will say that other countries, or the immigrants, or ANYHTING stupid are the real culprits, and these people will believe. And I see no easy outcome for this.

The problem with what you're saying here, and in other places above here, is that it's actually wrong. Student loan forgiveness, sure, but a lot of Democrats including Kamala didn't run on LGBTQ rights (sure, her platform supported it, but it wasn't exactly a big topic in her speeches), global warming, or whatever other bogeyman your neighbors might think they did. Democrats, including Harris, ran a center right campaign. Their biggest mistake, I think, was in trying to appeal to people like your neighbors and the people in the South and Southwest who will never vote for them. In doing so, they lost a whole lot of people on the left who are already not enthusiastic about voting for them. Anyway. The way Democrats would win some elections would be to actually do something. When they're in power in Washington, they start claiming that they can't get anything done because Republicans are blocking them with procedural shenanigans or other similar stuff. Now they're in the minority and claiming they can't do anything to block the Republicans. Hell, Schumer and some others voted for the budget reconciliation package without demanding even a single concession. Here in Minnesota, they got a lot more popular a few years ago because they finally had the trifecta of state house/state senate/governor for the first time in like 20 years and they decided to actually use their power to do things like add universal free lunch at schools. It's one of the reasons that Walz was so popular that they decided to try to make him the VP. The Republicans lose an election and they're in courts fighting it, on the news claiming that the other side cheated, etc. The Democrats lose an election and they shake the other person's hand and say "good game." Basically, the powers that be seem to think that it's 40-50 years ago and politics as usual.

I don't know it's educational system issue or purely political issue, but it should be clear for anyone with IQ above the "retarded" territory that the whole purpose of the trade, (even since thousands of years ago), is provide the best goods available in the world at cheapest possible price for "our" people. So even from a nationalist point of view, if my people get the best goods very cheap, my country wins. With tariffs, my fellow citizens get worse goods (because of less competition) at higher prices! Its completely opposite of the purpose of the trade. We're living in a timeline that Christians support billionaires who publicly despise the poor, and nationalists support the losing position for the nation.

I've been on a buying spree for the last month to prepare for this coming. I think I've bought like a year's worth of camera gear in a month. Guess I also need to think about which vintage lenses I want to order from Japan on ebay since there's still 1 month before the $800 de minimis exemption ends and those get slapped with tariffs too. I wish that the only thing getting fucked by those tariffs were cameras. This is going to drive up the prices of nearly everything - and all that at a time when more than 100,000 people are suddenly unemployed between government cuts and private companies laying people off when their government contract got canceled without warning. Oh, and they cut a bunch of charity funding for food banks and the like so... yeah. ☹️

It's actually worse. Over 50% on China in sum total of all Trump's tariffs. If you voted for this and think it's a good idea you need your head examined.

I wrote a similar post earlier, maybe in this thread, but a hurdle to overcome in the US is that a significant portion of our population believes that the more credentials a person has, the less trustworthy they are. This includes professors, reporters, researchers, and other experts. It applies especially to those in academia or have higher education. If the head of the IRS with 20 years of experience says that more auditors leads to more revenue, and explains how auditors find discrepancies and why it takes time, and shows historical data to back it up, many Americans will automatically believe the opposite. If an anonymous dude in a Dinesh D'Souza doc says that a person he can't identify dumped 20 extra ballots in a mailbox, it's believed--not in spite of lack of rationality, but because of it. This isn't without analogy in the rest of the world. In some way, it's a logical extreme of believing that "street smarts" is better than "book smarts," which is commonly believed in many places, and is true in some situations. However, many Americans are aggressively uneducated, and ideologically see education itself as wrong. ("Education" here means a thought process that uses data and logic to draw conclusions, not knowledge of specific trivia). Personal truths, often derived from religion and specific personalities/influencers, are held to be truer than empiricism, the scientific method, and data, while any appeal to rationality is rejected as part of the deep state conspiracy that every academic is part of. Once a person intentionally rejects objectivity and rationality, their actions cannot be explained as being out of personal interest. They often actively vote against their personal interest, because their worldview rejects data and analysis. And, to be clear, there are still rational people here, including many Republicans and conservatives. But we've reached a critical mass of the voting public that we now have elected officials at every level, from local to president, who also reject rationality.