Yea that’s the problem with trade controls without capital controls. You can still pay China pretty easily.
I guess Trump could expand the bureaucracy to catch mismatch between foreign currency transfers and trade but that will be “expensive” in that Government spending will go up.
you don’t have to do any fraud. Tariffs don’t harm the exporter and if it is still cheaper to import with the tariff than to produce domestically the company can pass the full cost of the tariff on to the customer, or even additional to obscure the actual cost now that they have cover.
I mean if demand is high enough one might make offshore companies to process payments in untraceable manner for 5 % (at least that’s around legal rate i believe). I just pay shp2usa, they pay someone else, they convert money to euros and pay in singapore, and my stuff arrives with printed price 0.3 $ per pound, customs are a joke due to speed of process
Literally every time I’ve bought something of reasonable value from an Asian country the seller asks something like “what value do you want us to put on your import invoice?”
I think there will be some serious import undervaluation if such tarrifs were implemented.
Oh yeah, this crate of plushy animals totally cost 30 bucks
china export will collapse (on paper)
Yea that’s the problem with trade controls without capital controls. You can still pay China pretty easily.
I guess Trump could expand the bureaucracy to catch mismatch between foreign currency transfers and trade but that will be “expensive” in that Government spending will go up.
you don’t have to do any fraud. Tariffs don’t harm the exporter and if it is still cheaper to import with the tariff than to produce domestically the company can pass the full cost of the tariff on to the customer, or even additional to obscure the actual cost now that they have cover.
I mean if demand is high enough one might make offshore companies to process payments in untraceable manner for 5 % (at least that’s around legal rate i believe). I just pay shp2usa, they pay someone else, they convert money to euros and pay in singapore, and my stuff arrives with printed price 0.3 $ per pound, customs are a joke due to speed of process
Literally every time I’ve bought something of reasonable value from an Asian country the seller asks something like “what value do you want us to put on your import invoice?”