We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA

Just imagine the money you could make if you could induce such events on demand, with only you and your friends all being prepared for it!

Just a thought. Purely hypothetical. No one would do that. Surely.

Americans call this "separation of powers" for some quaint reason. In practice all three branches of government do what he says in executive orders.

EU for example bulged for exactly this reason and accepted 15% one-way tariff for access to US market. Before the deal the uncertainty about the level of coming tariffs was deemed worse for European companies trading to US than the negotiated tariff itself.

European political leaders including the head of NATO have also practically turned to giving rimjobs to Trump's ass wishing he would not throw tantrums at them in important meetings: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17wejpw79qo

Ultimately this all just strengthens US hegemony and makes other countries weaker, which is the explicitly stated goal he keeps repeating..

It’s a power/money grab, nothing more, nothing less.

Trump has one ideology - trump first.

Olimex sells kits, kits made by others.

They don't know how much copper is in the MPS430F5438 because Texas Instruments made the MPS430F5438.

> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product. This is a prime example of unnecessary complexity in international trade.

Also why would they go through all that trouble? Easier to not sell there anymore.

It's also fair for a company to say 'f- that, even just doing that eats away at our bottom line, we'll concentrate on more profitable markets' (which is the intention I guess. Go and build it in USA,USA,USA).

There's your problem. It enables selective enforcement, because the authorities can decide at any time "if you're off by 0.1% we'll consider you in violation".

The problem isn't creating a reasonable estimate, anyone can do that. Most cheap consumer PCBs are going to be 2-layer FR4 with 1oz/sq. ft. of copper, minus some etched away, with negligible copper in parts like chips. That indeed should get you fairly close.

But there are also 32-layer PCBs, and even PCBs with a solid copper core. And your PCB could be filled with copper inductors! Similarly, it could also be a solid aluminum-core PCB. If I were a malicious customs officer, I would insist that the only valid upper bound is a 100% copper PCB, which is also 100% aluminum, and 100% whatever else. Don't want to pay that? No problem, just provide a certified lab analysis report!

Simple things rapidly get complicated when the goal is to frustrate the process as much as possible. You don't live in a modern economy focused on global trade anymore, you are now living in a Kafka book.

("History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes," attributed to Twain)

  Plaintiffs plainly lack standing when they fail to provide evidence that the statutory provision has ever been enforced against them or regularly enforced against others.  

So if you think the law is bullshit the judge can just say you probably won't be prosecuted so you have no imminent fear of prosecution and you can't challenge it.

There is no logic to it, it’s make believe for the narrative machine.

Price I pay is not getting my $20 fairy lights that made my backyard look cute. The price foreign factory workers pay is that they’re out of a job. I don’t think Americans pay the most, but they do pay.

Edit: Clearly people are missing the point Im trying to make here. I’m trying to address the viewpoint that Americans will somehow lose the most, which i don’t think is the case. This isn’t a pro tariff argument. American consumer is the biggest market there is on the planet. Pretending we can just find other buyers is ludicrous. Yes, there will be some jobs affected domestically, but that number will be much higher elsewhere.

For example, the US has some of the largest lithium deposits in the world, but it's not being exploited because extraction is dirty and polluting, generally the compliance for opening a new mine is very complex (takes 7-10 years), and catching-up on refinery capacity will take an enormous investment (China does almost all Li refining now).

Similarly, developing the techniques to boost oil extraction (fracking, EOR...) took significant and sustained government support of different kinds until it became competitive, it's unclear if market pressure alone would have done it. This made the US again into the largest exporter rather than the largest importer of oil.

There are many such cases.

Note: I'm not from the US, and I'm not particularly pro-US, I'm not saying that tariffs are a good mechanism to support these industries, and I'm not necessarily in favour of such anti-environmental policies. But those are the facts as I understand them.

It's not the most productive but for all the pain their "opinions" create, the least I can do is make them feel the group believes their opinions to be ridiculous as the group all laughs.

I don't think they should get civility outside of the voters booth if they're uncivil within the booth.

voters have essentially zero influence over policy and overwhelmingly vote on "vibes". also most people don't care about policy at any level of detail until it directly affects them. is this good? no. true nonetheless. much of why i'm not much of a fan of democracy and i think it's a sham.

i don't think contributing to increased polarization, especially at the level of your neighbors, is something to be proud of.

Here is the official link:

https://www.post.ch/en/about-us/media/press-releases/2025/us...

Pretty crazy if you ask me

Obama pointed straight at call-out culture as a losing strategy 5 years ago; NYT article: https://archive.is/Di4uG . The Democrats need to start divorcing themselves from "allies" like the parent poster immediately and loudly if they want to build a voter coalition strong enough to win the midterms.

The tl;dr of the current conundrum is that we have two corrupt political parties, and a system that's so rigged that it's nearly impossible to elect someone outside of them. Modern society's problems are complex to reason about and nearly intractable to solve. The people in power are not capable of even trying to reason about, let alone solve them.

I grew up in Nevada. Most of the people I grew up with are lowercase-L libertatian: they believe the government exists to arbitrate between the conflicting rights of individuals; that it should be as small as possible and let them do what they like unless they're harming someone else. Because of the aforementioned duopoly, these people tend to count as Republicans (in the style of Reagan). (This is true generally - the more geographically isolated a place is, the more it skews libertarian. The more urban, the more it skews liberal.)

The national Republican party was weak after Bush and got taken over by the Trump personality cult. The people I grew up with don't believe in instituting tariffs and arresting immigrants; yet if you force them to choose an R or D label, most of them are still going to count as R.

The world is a nuanced place. If you ignore that nuance and force everyone you're willing to converse with to pass your litmus test, you end up with two tribes ostriching themselves into bubbles of partisan-approved groupthink. That begets more yelling, less mutual understanding, and makes it even harder to solve problems. All of this empowers the extremists who control the major parties to continue making the world a worse place in service of their own power.

Yes, everything about politics sucks, and the people in charge are unfathomably awful. But if you refuse to share ideas with people you might disagree with, you're contributing to making that even more true.

I understand

I urge you to reconsider

The purpose of the policies are to create division that can then be exploited.

So fight them by building bridges and maintaining relationships

It is hard work, but it is the most effective way to fight these people who would sacrifice general peace and prosperity for the sake of their personal greed

https://hts.usitc.gov/search?query=8534

...and has been that way for a long time. Only thing that might be different now is that the de-minimus import exemption is going away for (certain?) countries? (and of course the tariff rate changing).

bureaucracy tends to make processes that are complicated but still straightforward to complete, even if they take decades for skmethjng that shiuld only be a couple minutes

But wow, are tariffs (and other micro taxes) disruptive on getting things done efficiently.

Disadvantaging local producers is how tariffs work! Local producers would then turn to local suppliers who don't have any additional taxes applied. Tariffs are a very blunt instrument, and clumsily attempting to assuage 2nd order pain points will only give rise to 3rd (and higher) order effects.

The lesson here is: don't fuck around with multivariate dynamic systems that have achieved stability: there won't be any one knob you can twist to get a result you want on a single parameter. It'll be worse if you pick one knob and turn it all the way to 11.

Don't some tariffs motivate people to do processing offshore?

If I import 1kg of copper and machine/etch/whatever it down into products, with some wastage, maybe I should just do everything offshore and only import the final articles with 500g of copper in it.

At some point, higher tariffs on input materials will overtake the higher value of finished goods and you might as well just manufacture the whole thing offshore anyway.

Because they didn't use the right specificity in the announcement (used an 8 digit HTS vs 10 digit), there was some confusion for a few weeks if Beer in glass bottles was subject to it as well.

There is now an FAQ on CBP's website clarifying it is not [^2]. And they've updated to the right specificity in the new lists.

> Is HTS 2203.00.0030, Beer made from malt, In containers each holding not over 4 liters, In glass containers; subject to Section 232 duties? > No.

But yes, effective 18 August, they broadened the list a whole lot more and added things from condensed milk to deodorant to both steel and aluminum lists. An absolute nightmare for FMCG supply chain to have to figure this out.

You can agree or disagree with the current administration's trade policy but hopefully, even the staunchest proponents will admit that the execution has been sub-par. With u-turns (sometimes leaving partner countries fuming because the final published tariffs were not what were negotiated[^3]), lack of clarity and changes that land on Friday night after work hours and go into effect on Monday midnight.

[^1]: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-05884.pdf

[^2]: https://www.cbp.gov/trade/programs-administration/entry-summ...

[^3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/business/japan-tariffs-us...

In fact this should be a sales tactic for fedex or whomever "we bullshit the numbers for ya!"

This is more a reversion to the mean/making them more equal. Which is a big deal.

And also, letting new batshit insane things slide is just complying in advance. If we're ever going to get back to a sane society (a big "if"), we can't accept the insanity until then, or it'll stick.

"Tarrifs" are paid by the importer.

These are being charged to the exporter

These are not tarries. But novel arbitrary taxes

Batshit crazy does not come close

What do you use to ship money overseas then?

There is a lot more direct consumer ordering from international vendors now than there was 20 years ago of course, for obvious reasons.

Note Aug 29th is also the end of the "de minimus" rules for import duties, where a shipment worth less than $800 was exempt from import taxes and duties. Some tariffs and other import taxes have always existed, but that's why you rarely saw them when ordering consumer goods internationally to the USA, if it was worth less than $800 they were skipped. That's going away, you'll be paying import taxes on every international shipment you order directly as a consumer, even if it's a $25 t-shirt -- exactly how you pay these, at what point they are calculated by who (even how to calculate them?), and who invoices you how and when as a consumer -- well that's what nobody including international shippers have figured out yet, which is what the OP is saying means they can't really ship internationally to consumers in the USA for the time being. it's gonna be a clusterfuck.

Turns out maybe there's a reason there aren't usually major changes to whole structure of import taxes made with only months notice, and tweaks and changes to them still being made only weeks/days before implementation, with no real implementation guidance provided?

The Trump tariffs are the biggest tax increase in the lower and middle classes ever.

Historically I buy a lot of high-end goods from the US on an annual basis, but after this incident I'll be actively avoiding doing so and the surprises that entails, until things get sane again.

In the latter two cases, it’s up to the domestic supply chain to decide how and and how much of those costs get passed on to consumers.

I'll repeat this for those in the back:

TARIFFS ARE PAID BY THE CITIZENS OF THE COUNTRY DOING THE TARIFFS.

TARRIFFS ARE NOT PAID BY OTHER COUNTRIES.

This is excessive and illegal taxation without representation. Congratulations, party of low taxes, you now have socialist-like taxes without any of the socialist benefits.

1: You don't add up and pay the tax board every month right? In fact this is the central theme to successfully collecting taxes, never collect them directly from the public if possable. That is a hard thankless task. It is much easier to steal them from the much more easily policed companies, before the public sees the money in the form of income tax or when they buy in the form of a sales tax. As a specific example remember the "use" tax, you were supposed to do just that, add up and pay the sales tax for things you bought out of your sales tax jurisdiction, this proved impossible to collect so with the massive increase in sales out of the tax jurisdiction(cough, amazon, cough) the courts ordered that each company had to now keep track of and pay the sales tax for every infernal piddling little sales tax area, a huge hassle for them, but that's not the states problem and it is much easier to enforce than having each person do it.

So yes, I will pay for my country's tariffs and you will pay for yours.

It's a bad scenario where things are more expensive and both manufacturers and customers get harmed. The only ones winning are, as always, intermediaries.

Funny that this time this started from the right side of the political spectrum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

Makes perfect sense to make ordinary Americans pay tariff/taxes on imports in return. Sucks to be them.

> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product.

In later comments on their blog they admitted they didn't even file the paperwork and left it up to the customer, who obviously wouldn't know how, causing the part to get stuck in customs.

It's a frustrating situation for them but there's no way CBP is making people break out lab equipment to import a PCB.

I seriously wonder if Digikey lost money on that order, shipping alone must have cost 20-30€, and on top come all the antistatic bags, handling costs, payment costs.

The mega-wealthy individuals will not suffer from any economic downturn, so it doesn't matter if their policies harm the economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries

There must be some other reason Temu is able to sell goods at lower prices, especially now that China is not a particularly low-wage country.

(FWIW I assume this was a language barrier issue leading to a misunderstanding, perhaps with a customer service rep that didn't review my past messages. I don't think DeepComputing intended to trick me.)

For example, the split between:

1. The willfully-culpable Republican party.

2. The inept/uninspiring Democratic party.

3. The lazy/clueless non-voters.

I'm not sure how to solve that problem... maybe arguing over prioritization is necessary.

________

P.S.: For something more-actionable, how about this: Many problems exist, individual humans aren't built to consider them all simultaneously and coequally, be kind to well-meaning allies that are focusing on a particular piece.

We have laws on the books and they have to be enforced equally, whether you're shipping in entire containers or thousands of small direct mail packages.

For them, "success" involves feeling that a particular social arrangement has been solidified. It involves an exploitative hierarchy (which they believe is both inevitable and required) where they aren't obviously on the bottom and where "the right people" are on top.

They simply do not care how much it costs to raid people's attics looking for Anne Franco, or even the odds of finding her family, as long as The Authority is taking Firm Steps and people like Anne Franco are afraid.

Again, I'm not a Trump voter and I think this is the clumsiest, most dangerous way to bring manufacturing back to the US, but that's my understanding of what their goal is. I'm not even going to touch the Christian nationalist side of the plan.

It’s on the whole product not just micrograms of aluminum, which could break the bank based on how much you order.

Stuff like flea medication and rabies vaccine comes to mind.