“At Steve Jackson Games, we are actively assessing what this means for our products, our pricing, and our future plans. We do know that we can’t absorb this kind of cost increase without raising prices. We’ve done our best over the past few years to shield players and retailers from the full brunt of rising freight costs and other increases, but this new tax changes the equation entirely. Here are the numbers: A product we might have manufactured in China for $3.00 last year could now cost $4.62 before we even ship it across the ocean. Add freight, warehousing, fulfillment, and distribution margins, and that once-$25 game quickly becomes a $40 product. That’s not a luxury upcharge; it’s survival math. Some people ask, “Why not manufacture in the U.S.?” I wish we could. But the infrastructure to support full-scale boardgame production – specialty dice making, die-cutting, custom plastic and wood components – doesn’t meaningfully exist here yet. I’ve gotten quotes. I’ve talked to factories. Even when the willingness is there, the equipment, labor, and timelines simply aren’t. […] We want to be transparent with our community. This is real: Prices are going up. We’re still determining how much and where. If you’re frustrated, you’re not alone. We are too. And if you want to help, write to your elected officials. Ask them how these new policies help American creators and small businesses. Because right now, it feels like they don’t. We’ll keep making games. But we’ll be honest when the road gets harder, because we know you care about where your games come from – and about the people who make them.”
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#us politics #tariffs #2025More you might like
Trump is all like "Australians sell their beef to us, but they won't buy any of ours 😡"
Which.... yeah? Of course???? Why would we import external beef from so far away when we produce more than enough to meet our own needs??
Not to mention that USA still has both mad cow disease and foot and mouth disease, but Australia doesn't -- AND America has increasingly lax commercial-level health and safety standards, meaning the risk of pathogens like MCD/F&M spreading through the US are significantly increased, and we don't have either here in Australia, so of course we don't want to import beef from a country that could conceivably spread the diseases to us???
But even aside from that. There are not that many Australians. But there are a lot of Americans. AND Australians eat an average of 23.4 kilos of beef per year but we produce 2.2 million tonnes. We produce WAY more beef than our population eats. So of course we don't import much????? And of COURSE it's not from America, which is both significantly further away than our current importers (primarily New Zealand and Japan), AND which has significantly lower health and safety regulations than we do????
Meanwhile, Americans average aprox 37 kilos of beef per person per year, but produces around 12.4 million tonnes. USAs population is 12 times larger than ours but only produces 5 times more beef than we do, AND consumes more per capita than we do. Of course USA imports large quantities of beef. Because their domestic production doesn't meet their domestic demand. Meanwhile Australia's production vastly outweighs our domestic demand, so of course we don't import American beef?????
Thats...... that's how imports and exports are supposed to work???? You export excess of what you have to someone who has less of it, and in turn, they export to you the produce/products that YOU don't have. This is fucking basic??????????
"Waahhh, Australia won't import American beef 😭😡" yeah???? Of course we don't????????
PLUS!!!!! Overall, Australia imports 34 billion dollars worth of stuff from America per year. Meanwhile America only imports $16 billion from us.
Putting tariffs on a country that imports more from you than they export to you is uhhhhhhhhh, FUCKIN' STUPID. If america tariff everything we send to them it's on all of $16b worth of stuff. If we tariff everything of theirs then we'll be slapping taxes on more than double what they can tax us.
Trump is such a fucking moron.
Does this man not understand that the point of trade is to swap what you have an excess of for what you don't have enough of
Why would we export masses and masses of beef only to import large amounts of inferior quality beef from the same people we just sold beef to
Does he think the USA is exporting large quantities of oil to Saudi Arabia?
Ko-fi prompt from @liberwolf:
Could you explain Tariff's , like who pays them and what they do to a country?
Well, I can definitely guess where this question is coming from.
Honestly, I was pretty excited to get this prompt, because it's one I can answer and was part of my studies focus in college. International business was my thing, and the issues of comparative advantage (along with Power Purchasing Parity) were one of the things I liked to explore.
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At their simplest, tariffs are an import tax. The United States has had tariffs as low as 5%, and at other times as high as 44% on most goods, such as during the Civil War. The purpose of a tariff is in two parts: generating revenue for the government, and protectionism.
Let's first explore how a tariff works. If you want to be confused, then you need to have never taken an economics class, and look at this graph:
(src)
So let's undo that confusion.
Today in #trumpsofragile, he got a pick-me-up by having his cabinet go around the table and tell him how awesome he is, in front of news cameras. It’s truly sycophantic, over-inflated statements like “we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing to serve your agenda”
from Priebus.
This hardly moves the needle on the Trump bizarre-o-meter, but stop for a second and try to imagine Obama - or any other American president - holding a meeting like that in front of news cameras. None of this is normal. (Unless you’re in North Korea. I’m told it’s very normal there.)
I don’t recall which article it was in now, but someone pointed out that the first rule of spin is that it has to be believable. If you’re going to choreograph a circle jerk for the cameras, you can’t overdo it. Unless your real audience is Donnie himself, in which case you literally can’t overdo it.
In case you wanted to read how truly ridiculous this was, here are the statements ranked by their level of ass-kissing: http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/politics/trump-cabinet-ranked/index.html
“Mr. President, what an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership. I can’t thank you enough for the privileges you’ve given me and the leadership that you’ve shown. It seems like there’s an international flair to the messages that are being delivered. I had the opportunity to represent the United States at the G-20 Health Summit in Berlin and at the World Health Assembly in Geneva. And I can’t tell you how excited and enthusiastic folks are about the United States leadership as it relates to global health security.“ - Tom Price, who is only #2 on the list.
The really important part here is that the woman who issued this order, Cathy Harris, was herself the target of an illegal firing by the Trump admin. That firing was ruled illegal, and so now that she's secured in her position (until 2028) she was able to stop these firings, at least for 45 days while the Merit Systems Protection Board goes over them.
The legal resistance IS working in meaningful ways. Each roadblock slows their plans down in real ways.
This matters because this gives us time to flip musk off in a major way, get him to margin call, bankrupt his companies, and force him out of every seat he's in while he's not able to do the type of damage he was hoping for
Gift link
Many of those convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have celebrated the pardons or commutations that they received this week from President Trump.
Not Pamela Hemphill. A retired drug and alcohol counselor who lives in Boise, Idaho, she pleaded guilty in January 2022 to a misdemeanor offense for entering the Capitol during the riot and was sentenced to 60 days in prison and three years of probation.
She said she did not want a pardon.
“Absolutely not,” Ms. Hemphill said in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s an insult to the Capitol Police, to the rule of law and to the nation. If I accept a pardon, I’m continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about Jan. 6.”
Ms. Hemphill, 71, who was called “MAGA Granny” in some news headlines, has said that she no longer supports Mr. Trump or believes his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. She said that a therapist had helped change her view of the attack by telling her she was “not a victim of Jan. 6; I was a volunteer.”
“I lost my critical thinking,” she said on Wednesday, reflecting on her involvement in the riot and the “Stop the Steal” movement. “Now I know it was a cult, and I was in a cult.”
Her wish to reject the pardon was previously reported by The Idaho Statesman. Ms. Hemphill said she had spoken with a lawyer about spurning the grant of clemency but had not taken any legal action to do so.
It is not clear that she can legally reject the pardon.
“It would be a novel act to file a court case to reject a pardon of a misdemeanor, in part because of the low stakes,” Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, said in an interview.
There is some legal precedent, however, suggesting that any such request could face an uphill battle.
Another person, Jason Riddle, has also come forward and given an interview to explain why he has decided to reject his pardon.
One thing, too – One thing I did not believe in was change before this experience.
Change in what way?
Just change in general. It was actually a quote of Trump that I would carry and repeat. Trump said, 'People talk about change. Nobody ever changes.' And I believed that. And now I believe change is necessary for survival.
This struck me as a poignant statement for a recovering alcoholic and MAGA supporter to make. It's also one that gives me hope that others who, like him, had fallen for Trump's cult of personality, blame, and anger might also eventually recognize Trump's fundamental selfishness and be capable of growth and change.
Tariffs, which the U.S. president has constantly said he would introduce, are a threat to Canada’s national economic security. If Donald Trump follows through, Canada must respond with all economic weapons at its disposal, a key armament of which is intellectual property such as patents. This country has the right, under both Canadian and international law, to effectively suspend patent rights held by U.S.-controlled companies in key sectors, such as pharmaceuticals and artificial intelligence. Doing so would put tremendous pressure on the Trump administration.
Going to be totally owned when I can buy all my medicine and entertainment for dirt-cheap even after massive tariffs from Canada.
In Canada, a group of tech CEOs has come up with a political public relations effort called Build Canada, with the stated goal of strengthening the economy in the face of Trump’s threat to impose punishing tariffs. Trump has repeatedly linked the tariffs to annexing Canada and making our country the “51st state.”
So far, Build Canada’s website offers a series of short policy statements calling for 110,000 jobs to be cut from the federal public service over four years, AI to be used in government services, interprovincial trade barriers to come down and the federal government to step in to compel provinces and municipalities to allow autonomous vehicles and delivery robots. There are also calls for immigration for humanitarian reasons to be sharply curtailed in favour of higher-income and highly skilled immigrants, and to fund content creators to tell inspiring stories about Canada.
But Build Canada is connected to another website called Canada Spends that looks a lot like the DOGE.gov website.
Absolute human garbage.
The Australian conservative party, the Liberal Party, also has similar plans which will be tested at a Federal Election later this year.
There is an election on in Canada. It is absolutely critical, under all circumstances, that Trump's little mini-me, Pierre Poilievre of the Conservative Party, not win.
Here's the voter registration website. Election day is on April 28th. Don't let the fascists win.
#its fascinating to see an idiot's ideas crash and burn in realtime taking the economy and international potlitics with it#and right wingers all around the world going I want some of that too
Right-wingers would saw the nose off their own face with a steak knife if they thought that the poor or "the Woke" would be hurt worse.
She’s not leading that coven, dammit.
Any witch can tell you we don’t lead well. We’re all out here casting spells on Trump 24 hours a day seven days a week individually of our own free will.
Like to charge, Reblog to cast.
Nancy Drew + text posts (86/?) || Nancy x Ace + text posts (17/♡)
feat. tags I love by @pressdbtwnpages 💜
Happy birthday, Kelsey! 🥳