Tariffs, trade wars, and tropical fish

[danotaylor]

It’s way too premature to predict outcomes as final or permanent.
The EU moved yesterday to negotiate a 0% tariff with the US. Others will likely follow their lead resulting in a lot more free trade globally.
As much as I would like my specific hobby preferences to be unaffected by global trade tariffs, there’s much more going on in the spectrum of things that really matter. As always, us minions get to just watch and see how it pans out

 

[danotaylor]

Well now you will understand Perth Western Australia prices lol. We have had distance and bio security like tariffs for ever lol.

Ryan when I moved from Perth to the US in 2013 I was stunned by the cost of living difference. Petrol was $8/gal in Perth when we left, $3/gal in Ohio when we got here. That’s one of a multitude of things more affordable here. Wages in the blue collar/service spectrum of jobs are less in the US for sure, but with a lot of essential goods being far cheaper also.
Many things have changed in the US since then for sure, but in my experience you can definitely live easier on less here still than back home in Aus.

 

[dogofwar]

Hello; Interesting read but i fear one which is somewhat one sided and also ignores the elephants in the room. The other side, as i currently follow things, is the USA's base tariff is to be 10%. Beyond that 10% the tariffs will be reciprocal for the most part if a country has a tariff of greater than 10%. So any country ought to be able to work with the USA if they want to reduce the tariffs.

China seems to be an exception in the sense of upping the ante beyond reason. Perhaps a nation sized game of chicken in terms of monetary policy. To go back a bit to before April of 2025 the trade balance between China & the USA was not level nor in any way even. Hard to say whose figures are most accurate but a summary was the USA bought tons of Chinese goods while the Chinese bought little to no USA goods. ( A trade deficit) It is not like the new USA tariffs were made up just to be mean spirited. How the game of chicken between the USA and a few countries will play out cannot be known today. I do make one prediction only, that such a trade war game of chicken cannot endure over long. One or both will have to blink before too long. Will it be days, weeks or months? Hope it is not years.
Some depends on ideology beyond trade. Will a country decide to go for broke in hope of causing a financial collapse of the other? That is beyond my paygrade.

To the elephants in the room a bit. That being, in my opinion, a two headed monster the looming disaster of the USA dollar no longer being the fiat currency and the out of bounds national debt/trade deficit. A discussion of these things can follow but let me stick to a point. That point being that while tariffs may hurt some, the elephants are on a path to inflict much worse pain. The status quo was not going to last a lot longer even without this tariff event. The addition of a trillion dollars of national debt every 100 days has neared a point of no return. We may cry a bit over current spilt milk from the tariffs but an ongoing status quo seems destined to kill the cow. A collapse of the USA economy will reverberate around the world.

To the cost of imported fish. Personally, I will not be bothered. A selfish stance to be sure. I stopped buying wild caught fish years ago. I try to keep tank raised fish. If even that market starts to dry up, I know how to induce spawning among a few species so i can have fish for my tanks.

Do you (wrongly) believe that only wild caught fish come from overseas? Aquarium equipment? Reality is that all of it - as of now - will cost consumers more.

 

[stratos]

To the cost of imported fish. Personally, I will not be bothered. A selfish stance to be sure. I stopped buying wild caught fish years ago. I try to keep tank raised fish. If even that market starts to dry up, I know how to induce spawning among a few species so i can have fish for my tanks.

If you have not seen this movie yet, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9OvsFHfn6N6nZ0igIWa7OV6-rzmuGttV

I was recently on expedition with www.projectpiaba.org and learned how sustainable and important the wild caught fish trade is - for both the people and environment - of the Rio Negro bioregion in Amazonia.

 

[danotaylor]

Reality is that all of it - as of now - will cost consumers more.

“As of now”?
Reality is, consumer prices ALWAYS increase d/t changing costs of production, pay increases, energy production & supply increases, and inflation, and the list goes on and on and on….
The consumer ALWAYS foots the bill. Always has, always will.
The thing that frustrates me having lived on 3 continents and visited 26 different countries around the world, is that people want to earn the most for the least amount of effort & risk, and simultaneously pay the least for the things that they buy. Reality check, those 2 worldviews cannot coexist!

 

[HUKIT]

The thing that frustrates me having lived on 3 continents and visited 26 different countries around the world, is that people want to earn the most for the least amount of effort & risk, and simultaneously pay the least for the things that they buy. Reality check, those 2 worldviews cannot coexist!

I don’t know if I agree with that entire statement but yes, since money for most people is finite getting the most out of the dollar is a universal practice.

 

[skjl47]

Do you (wrongly) believe that only wild caught fish come from overseas? Aquarium equipment?

Hello; My decision to try to keep only tank raised fish had nothing to do with where they come from. More from my over 60 years of keeping freshwater tropical fish and learning about how they are captured, handled and shipped. In my youth I was drawn to the new and exotic. I sought out new to me and often the hobby wild finds. As I discovered the conditions and death rates of the hobby I began to retreat from involvement. Not ethical enough to walk away from the hobby. Just participating at a hypocritic level some easier to live with. But this thread is not about the ethics of the hobby.

Truth, being I do not know how much equipment is made overseas or outside of the USA. A guess is, like most things, plenty is not made here. I think one of my points is being made. Just saw that tariffs on over 70 countries which did not retaliate are having the increase rate paused for 90 days so as to work things out. Still too early to call but perhaps the sky will not fall after all.

 

[skjl47]

The consumer ALWAYS foots the bill. Always has, always will.

but yes, since money for most people is finite getting the most out of the dollar is a universal practice

Hello; Truth in these statements. A thing is if we restrict the scope of the discussion to only keeping aquariums, then in the end such is merely an interesting hobby. Something done for fun but is not critical for living. If the scope is widened to things such as food stocks or medicines a very different story. I have been down to only one small tank at times in my life. One short spell of no set up tanks. Fortunately, I managed to have regular meals.

 

[danotaylor]

I don’t know if I agree with that entire statement but yes, since money for most people is finite getting the most out of the dollar is a universal practice.

I certainly agree with not overpaying for things, and maximizing the stretch of our hard earned money. Unfortunately we are at the mercy of governments of every type globally in that respect
I was actually speaking more to a “do less, get paid more, pay less” mentality.
At the end of the day each worker has got to bring more value to the business they are getting paid by in order to justify the position they hold. I have worked with countless people who wanna come to work for someone else, spend their whole shift on tic toc or IG and whine and complain about having to be there as “a slave to the man”. So tiring…

 

[danotaylor]

Still too early to call but perhaps the sky will not fall after all.

bingo!