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Comment by fallingknife | Hacker News Reader

That's obvious. I think the question is more one of how long will they be throttled for? Even if there was a domestic or foreign nontariffed supplier for 100% of the goods in question it would still take significant lead time for the new orders to be filled and even more for cases where capacity needs to be increased.

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No one knows, it’s a game of chicken. Will the suppliers eat the tariff cost if they start losing market share? Will consumers just pay the extra cost if they really need the item?

If the latter happens, will a domestic company come in and undercut the international sellers?

If the suppliers decide that it's not worth the risk of letting the consumer to decide to pay the passed on tariff then there simply is no consumer choice.

There needs to exist a domestic supplier to be able to fill the gap. My guess is that for many products, there simply isn't one.

Yeah, standing up a new factory will take five years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Larger businesses like Apple will cut deals. Smaller businesses will just fold.

The on-again-off-again of the tariffs throws another wrench in there. It would be a big gamble to start building a domestic factory right now because you don’t know if the tariffs are going to stick around long enough to make it worth it. Plus you still have the issue of tariffs on imported materials cutting away at any potential margin.

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