U.S. shoppers' orders canceled as world shuts down some American-bound shipments
The end of the “de minimis” exemption for cheap parcel shipments, nearly a century old, is prompting countries everywhere to suspend shipments to the U.S.
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This may sound stupid and petty/personal given the very large scope and seriousness of this, but whoo boy when I first saw this news a couple of days ago, I finally jumped on buying new sticks and button pads for my Steam Deck.
I've been using it a lot, and the sticks were drifting, buttons/dpad got mushy... so yeah, pulled the trigger on getting replacement/upgrade parts (hall effect sticks with more resistance, 'clicky' button boards and replacement gel pads) that are only made in China, arrived a couple days ago.
If the de minimus exception is fully going away, I think the import tariff/shipping fees on these would... be more than the ~$50 cost of the actual things.
But anyway... yeah, this is uh... very, very bad for everyone in the US who is used to buying ... anything not made in the US... which is basically everything.
Back to Great Depression style re-use/repair everything, or die broke and starving.
Online stores like Amazon, other large e-tailers like Walmart... they're still gonna have some stock left in their domestic warehouses... but that won't last probably more than about a month, depending on the kind of product.
I’m a fan of repairing broken things. Too bad it’s basically impossible to get parts and repair most things anymore.
I have a buddy who (we are around 70) repaired anything and everything. Had a booming business repairing circuit boards for many different products. Then they started putting blobs of glue all over boards so no repairs. All the other stuff he would repair, similar thing. Business’ locked it up. Pretty much destroyed his business. So sad to watch it happen over all those years.
Edit typos
I recently got a soldering iron to repair a Logitech mouse because I was frustrated buying new ones so frequently when the switch stopped working.
The two cheaper models were really easy to desoldier the switches. But the expensive one seemed to have some kind of metal heatsink that made it really hard to melt the solder.
After some time, I got it though.
Nice. Not only is it fun but you get to stick it to the businesses by not having to replace their stuff every 5 mins.
Why repair?
Just toss that shit in a landfill and buy another one!
Hooray for literal dumpster based consumerism and a capitalistic production paradigm.
EDIT:
Perhaps amusingly, I have a cheap massage gun that uh, the head got wobbly, starts knocking around off the center line.
Solution?
Fucking duct tape, just basically narrowed the uh... neck hole? of the thing? I dunno what to call it, the aperture for the massage head.
Doesn't knock around near as much now lol.
Why use a landfill when you can toss it in the ocean? You can never fill that up completely.
He says as the ocean is completely filled with water. Smh my head
Sounds like a new achievement for Factorio or Satisfactory.
Possibly Dwarf Fortress? RimWorld?
"Wormwood, Blight the Sea."
The age of the 3d printer is arising.
MAGA, have the day you voted for.
Sorry for you. You might be able to make it yourself with a 3d printer?
I was able to get the parts in time... but uh, 3d printer?
Not unless your 3d printer prints PCB computer boards, as well as injection molded gel and plastics, screws, springs...
You could maybe 3d print uh... possibly the back and faceplates for a Deck, maybe the L/R 1/2 triggers bumpers, maybe some other of the buttons?
But they'd be rough, low quality, you'd have to sand them and such afterward.
Maybe clip on grip embigenners for those with larger hands might be a reasonable use case for 3d printing Deck stuff? Kickstands/Non electronic docks?
But uh generally speaking, 3d printing ... it has its use cases, but its far from a cure all multi tool for producing everything that you'd likely need to replace on a Deck, or many other things.
I don't think you can uh, 3d print hall effect joysticks, lol.
Oh yeah excuse-me for some reason I didn't registered you needed advanced parts.
All good lol!
But yeah, this... bodes very badly for anyone who wants to repair or modify basically any electronics.
Almost none of that shit is made in the US ... been a while since RadioShack was a thing.
Maybe we will eventually get a domestic mfg base and supply of such repair parts...
But I don't know enough about the specifics to give a .... financial viability or timeline estimate.
I also know that the vast majority of US 'Custom PC Assemblers'... basically are already absurdly overpriced and inefficient, with very manual processes.
I dunno. Maybe somebody in a laptop repair shop somewhere will figure out what types of little connectors and doodads can maybe be actually made here?
You will just have to buy for more money through a company that imported it in bulk I guess, it's not the end of the world, just another big beautiful Trump price inflation.
Well, when the entire economy is crashing, no one has more money, other than the corpos, who will only use that money to figure out how to make everyone else have... even less money.
I guess it depends on if by end of the world, you mean closer to: dramatic shift in social norms and living standards... or... earth gets eaten by a black hole.
Excuse-me I was trying some lighthearted irony, but yeah the situation is shitty for you guys. I'm watching from the sidelines (them being another country) so I can only imagine the stress you feel.
Honestly at this point and seeing how the protests that are organized are insufficient and/or ineffective I'd advise to leave that mess before it's too late, but not everybody can uproot themselves.
I hope things get better. And if you need specific help to try to emigrate to Europe you can reach out to me if you want.
... do you know anyone I can sham marry?
Basically not joking.
I am currently disabled, basically broke, all I can do is PT full time untill I recover more, and yeah, if disability benefits get slashed, I'll be homeless and dead in about 3 months...
Or possibly interned in some kind of camp.
Personally no, sadly, but I'll DM you maybe we can find way.
