Gray market imports into the US from China have already been big business, especially among counterfeiters and drop-shippers. Idk about getting a full-sized SUV over the border. But designer bags, electronics, and the like have been coming over for at least a decade.
Idk how much retail buyers save, though. Much like with the drug trade and human trafficking, there's inevitably an enormous mark-up for this kind of smuggling. And because it is functionally unregulated, you get a ton of refurbished, low-grade, and outright fraudulent sales. Smuggling tends to accrue money to the smugglers and the various officials you need to bribe to move the merchandise. You rarely see retail level discounts, unless the market is so glutted with knock-offs.
Do they? If anything, I believe China's been exporting the high-end luxury items because they have absurd margins in western markets. Meanwhile, the good-enough goods stay at home, because it isn't worth the time or effort to sail them across the ocean and market them.
I guess Temu and its peers have changed that, to a degree. But so much Temu crap just gets bought up by local American drop-shippers, marked up to American prices, and rebranded as western equivalent merch that it feels like much the same.
China is a major consumer of RAM. If they can supply it domestically, that has the potential to reduce the volume of global imports and subsequent price pressure.
If their competitors can't keep up, you will eventually see Chinese RAM get out onto the secondary market in the same way Chinese EVs and Chinese cell phones and Chinese solar panels and Chinese steel have depressed global prices for these commodities.
Sort of the joke in the modern US attitude towards Taiwan. They see a break-away province and have no actual respect for their sovereignty. Independent small nations are just colonies-up-for-grabs in the eyes of the US State Department.
Im not saying liberals have literally backed maga into a corner with no escape.
I agree. If anything, they've done the opposite. The MAGA crowd has received every out, second chance, and pardon legally possible.
Are you seeing maga declare themselves liberal in droves?
Plenty of #NeverTrump Republicans have been piling in to the Liberal Party for over a decade. Then they show up and complain that the party has too many liberals in it.
But if there is a blue wave id think it’s because maga are upset and not going out to support trump, not that they’ve all become liberals.
Years when Trump isn't on the ballot tend to see depressed GOP turnout.
I worry we’ve created a world where its not possible to change your stance on something or admit you were wrong.
Are you kidding? It is comically easy to just change sides, announce you have always believed everything about the side your own, and begin heckling the people on the original side by calling them idiots and assholes. Just roll up another account. Or be Tucker Carlson.
Nobody will care, so long as your caustic remarks and smug self-aggrandizement and self-pitying doomerism jerks your audience off the right way.
Like something from the Art of War that says you shouldn’t surround your enemy completely or they will fight harder since escape isn’t an option.
The problem isn't that Liberals have somehow backed Conservatives into a corner. The problem is that Conservatives effectively make up a Liberal to be afraid of and regularly sell their voter base on being terrified of the Dark Brandon Ultra-Left Anarcho-Chinese Muslim Tankie hiding behind the milquetoast corporate centrist who agrees with them on 90% of public policy.
When you've built a fantasy world for your voters to live in, the best way to keep them there is to tell a bunch of horror stories about what's outside the echo chamber.
The funny thing about jobs is that demand for the job tends to scale with pay. Of all the IT positions in an office, the guy fixing the printers is probably earning the least.
In my experience, poll working is about as dangerous as watching paint dry. Also, about as exciting.
Even when something does pop off - the Brooks Brother's Riot because the only genuinely dramatic incident I could think of in the last 30 years - it's highly localized and ultimately uneventful (from a violence perspective).
You can tell everyone who has their eye on the White House in 2028, based on who is getting on board with this.
Abbott in Texas, Shapiro in Pennsylvania, DeSantis in Florida, Beshear in Kentucky, Hochul in NY. I'm amazed AOC hasn't brought a data center bill up through her House committee, yet.
Gray market imports into the US from China have already been big business, especially among counterfeiters and drop-shippers. Idk about getting a full-sized SUV over the border. But designer bags, electronics, and the like have been coming over for at least a decade.
Idk how much retail buyers save, though. Much like with the drug trade and human trafficking, there's inevitably an enormous mark-up for this kind of smuggling. And because it is functionally unregulated, you get a ton of refurbished, low-grade, and outright fraudulent sales. Smuggling tends to accrue money to the smugglers and the various officials you need to bribe to move the merchandise. You rarely see retail level discounts, unless the market is so glutted with knock-offs.