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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

I’m going to tell you a secret that maybe you don’t understand - these tomatoes will be exported to another country and then imported to the US minus the extra costs.

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That extra cost might make tomato exporting to the US unprofitable.

> I’m going to tell you a secret

It is not a secret, and people working in US government agencies are not stupid, they know about this scheme and a thousand others.

It's just a funny way to say. You're killing the humor here.

Being patronising is hardly humorous.

Tomatoes are definitely fungible, but they're unlikely to be trans-shipped as you describe. The strategy you described was used to 'launder' metals through Canada, and the USA caught on, then applied tariffs against Canada.

I'm going to tell you a secret that maybe you don't understand - unless the third party country is turning the tomatoes into pasta sauce, that would be an illegal diversion through transshipment. This is among the sort of thing the Commerce Department watches for, and they will seize the entire shipment.

Now, I don't know how seriously they're going to police tomatoes, but it's certainly not as simple as making a stop over in Manila.

In the case of sanctions against Iran, the monitoring includes not just tracking AIS transponders, and satellite surveillance, but actual naval groups in the Persian Gulf.

They will just get canned elsewhere relabeled and sent here. People are thinking fresh tomatoes where most likely these are used to make ketchup or tomato sauce

Another good reason to buy local produce and demand to know country of origin/manufacture before buying things... vote with your wallet.

That might be possible with tomatoes, that you buy in stores. Frustratingly it's basically impossible with everything bought online these days. Trying to figure out whether, say, a hdmi cord sold on Amazon came from Taiwan or China is practically impossible.

Hence the need for the U.S. to adopt country of origin requirements for ecommerce like India.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/e-commerce-sites-must...

Certainly seems like a pro consumer move but has there been any impact of this on sales of these products.

Consumers will buy something that gives them good value at a cheap price.

For a lot of products it is not even the cost factor, like mechanical keyboards. Somehow the best ones are either brands from there itself like Varmilo or made there like Leopold.

I certainly know people who buy based on location, but I don't know if it's a large enough portion of the market to matter.

Another one -- How will anyone know where in China the imports are from ? I am sure our imports from Manchuria will increase. What is stopping China from hiding the source. The ban should be from all of China, singling out one region will do nothing.

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