What do they mean by Japan’s tariffs? It’s not ours, it’s the stupid Americans that’s imposing them.
No, no, you don’t get it. It’s the other country that pays the tariffs… duh.
In some cases ‘they do’ (they don’t) as the tariffs imposed may well be enough to stop people buying X at 150-200% of normal price, if selling X to US was a big enough chunk of BizY’s business, then that does impact the target country, not just US citizens.
In all cases US citizens hurt, but in a few the target country does too.
That’s basically the point of a tariff; to discourage people from buying foreign goods and to encourage production and sale of domestic goods instead.
The only times it doesn’t work correctly is when too much of the general populace refuses to do the work necessary to create production, domestic regulations make production locally too prohibitively expensive, and/or when domestic product manufacturers raise their prices to match the new higher tariffed prices, effectively cancelling the intended benefits of a tariff.
The USA right now is kinda seeing the effects of all 3. It has been so reliant on imports for such a long time that trying to cut that off all at once is having a more pronounced effect than if its import reliance was curtailed more slowly and started a while ago. And since there is no regulation (AFAIK) saying that domestic good prices cannot raise to match imported good prices when tariffed, that doesn’t help either. Businesses want the most money, and if all the other options for a product are $150 and their domestic one is only $50, without law saying they can’t match those other prices businesses feel like they are leaving $100 on the table.
Affected, not impacted. Never use the word impacted when you mean affected. Use impacted when bodies collide.
At first I was thinking, why not use “impacted”, it sounds a little bit awkward, but I’ve definitely seen it being used in relatively formal situations (or at least that’s what I remember).
But no, I looked it up and “impacted” should not be used in the sense of affected. TIL.
Where did you look it up?
Merriam-Webster defines it as:
the force of impression of one thing on another : a significant or major effect
And lists “affect” as a synonym when impact is used as a verb.
Impact, impacted, impacts are totally fine for these use cases. As a native English speaker, I’d never heard of these rules against using them that way.
But even if there is a rule, it doesn’t matter; if the terms are used this way and fully understood by both the speaker and listeners, then the rule is void.
For sure, I am just curious. Not to lecture others, for my own knowledge. :)
I see where you are coming from, but as someone who speaks several other languages, I would say there can be benefits to lanagauge rules.
That makes sense! I am a rule enjoyer, I guess I was responding more to the thread than to you in particular. It is good to be aware of the rules, but I also think they can sometimes hinder natural communication and create confusion.
The way I look at it, it would be better if we had a nice, consistent language with rules that make sense but… we don’t have that. English is a nonsense language with more exceptions than rules. So if I’m going to have to deal with something that doesn’t make sense in the first place, I’d rather just go with the flow. If Shakespeare can make up words, so can I.
