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Comment on Bernstein Posits That A 10 Percent Baseline US Tariff On Raw Semiconductors Is "Not Going To Do All That Much," But PCs, Servers, And Smartphones Are About To Get Pricier By ~40 Percent

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InvertedParallax@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

He wasn’t successful at anything.

He slashed the corporate income tax and due to an effective amnesty on repatriation many large MNCs brought stashed offshore cash and cut R&D to register massive earnings for his last 2 years.

Ironically, this started to dry up right around Q1 2020… Then COVID drowned out everything.

His response was to just pump $4T to employers with almost no documentation, thank god we didn’t see a massive wave in inflation out of that.

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NikoWantToGoBowling@lemm.ee ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Okay this post reeks of not understanding basic accounting. Bringing back cash doesn’t affect profits for firms. The earnings were already earned. Having money over seas and bringing it on shore does not increase your profits, it just frees it up for investment (or giving to shareholders).

Also cutting R&D does not change profits in the short term. Any amount of R&D doesn’t change profits in the short term (either less or more). R&D is treated as an asset and depreciates over time (which does affect profits) but that’s clearly not what you’re saying here.

The rest of your post I’m not arguing with but your understanding of accounting and how offshore money works is factually incorrect.

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- InvertedParallax@lemm.ee ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  bea.gov/…/direct-investment-country-and-industry-…
  
  The TCJA generally eliminated taxes on dividends, or repatriated earnings, to U.S. multinationals from their foreign affiliates. Dividends of $776.5 billion in 2018 exceeded earnings for the year, which led to negative reinvestment of earnings, decreasing the investment position for the first time since 1982. Tables 3 and 4 provide information on the country and industry breakdown of dividends.
  
  By country, nearly half of the dividends in 2018 were repatriated from affiliates in Bermuda ($231.0 billion) and the Netherlands ($138.8 billion). Ireland was the third largest source of dividends, but its value is suppressed due to confidentiality requirements. By industry, U.S. multinationals in chemical manufacturing ($209.1 billion) and computers and electronic products manufacturing ($195.9 billion) repatriated the most in 2018.
  
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  - NikoWantToGoBowling@lemm.ee ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Right and at no point are you saying that earnings/profits were impacted by the tax amnesty and money being brought back on shore.
    
    Your link says that the most predictable thing happened- all that money sitting over seas was given back to its owners (shareholders).
    
    Absolutely none of this affected profits for that year. Mind you, that money was not being used for R&D anyways - it was sitting in bank accounts or bonds waiting for a moment like this to come back and be handed out to shareholders.
    
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    InvertedParallax@lemm.ee ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s literally what I’m saying.
    
    Are you being semantic?
    
    They realized the revenue as dividends, which is exactly what the link says.
    
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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
lets not forget browbeating the fed to drop interest rates before covid hit.

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sploosh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

thank god we didn’t see a massive wave in inflation out of that.

Where are you that hasn’t seen massive inflation since COVID?

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- fouloleron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I think that was the joke.
  
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