Governments ask for something like a metal spectrometer analysis of components. They might even say each batch needs to be analyzed and we trust analysis from spectrometers manufactured and/or operated in US. Each condition raising the price for certificate/analysis even more.
Or directly from the post
> U.S. customs is demanding a Certificate of Analysis (which could cost thousands of dollars and to determine what exact amount of Aluminum, Copper and Steel are in the product), otherwise they assume the entire PCB consists of copper, aluminum, and steel, and charge a 100% tariff on the whole product.
I don't believe your claim that governments ask for something like a metal spectrometer analysis, especially since Digikey hasn't reported the same disruptions. There's no way Digikey did this for all 16.5 million parts.
In later comments on their blog they admitted they didn't even file the paperwork and left it up to the customer, who obviously wouldn't know how, causing the part to get stuck in customs.
It's a frustrating situation for them but there's no way CBP is making people break out lab equipment to import a PCB.
Yes, that's how the math usually works with properly-functioning global trade.
Now prove that your math is correct. Can you hand over paperwork proving that it is indeed a 4-layer PCB and not a 32-layer one? Can you prove the 1oz copper isn't secretly 2oz? Can you prove it isn't a copper-core PCB? For all we know that PCB is a 1.6mm-thick solid chunk of copper!
And what about all the parts on it? Do the manufacturers of all the components on top of that PCB provide an exact per-element writeup? How many grams of copper are in that power inductor, or the ethernet jack's magnetics?
We're still not entirely convinced your paperwork checks out. Could you please have a testing lab run it through a mass spectrometer, just to remove any doubt?
Yes, we know it's a $1.50 board. No, we don't care. Yes, you really have to do it again for the next one-off shipment - you didn't go through the proper year-long type approval process, after all.
It was easiest to do some napkin math than throwing their hands in the air and writing a blog post.
I suspect this is more about politics than it is about international trade. If you've ever done imports you know that there's a substantial amount of paperwork and compliance, demanding that products state their composition doesn't seem extraordinary at all. Maybe OP should try consulting what regulations food exporters must follow.
What are the most notorious offenders for hard to cancel services? I heard lots of horror stories in the early 2000s (AOL!) but I have not ran into this recently.
I buy a lot of plugins for WordPress sites, and there are definitely some companies in that ecosystem known to utilize dark patterns and have difficult cancellation processes.
What is alarmist or anti-tech about them? Are you objecting to massive budget cuts being described as causing a "full meltdown"? Is any article about the flaws of LLMs or failure of privatized space companies inherently anti-tech?
It’s not actually a fuzzy concept. CBP determines it at the port of entry and they basically have this huge list of every type of product. Fraud is taken extremely seriously so its not something companies mess around with.
The fuziness mentioned comes from when outside firms try and estimate the % domestic content. Unlike CBP they’re largely making estimated guesses, but luckily that’s not how the tariffs are calculated.
This headline is misleading because it makes it seem like tariffs are a step function that activate below 85%, which isn't true.
The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 * MSRP * (percent foreign content - 15)
Companies with 84% domestic content will pay a 25% tariff on 1% of the MSRP, companies with 70% domestic content will pay a 25% tariff on 15% of the MSRP, etc.
This is a common sense way to incentivize companies to make parts here without requiring perfection.
> This headline is misleading because it makes it seem like tariffs are a step function that activate below 85%, which isn't true.
> The formula is a simple, linear equation: tariffs = 0.25 * MSRP * (percent foreign content - 15)
Um... unless I'm missing something, agree it's not a if/then rule, but in practice, that's exactly how the formula works?
84% domestic = 16% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (16-15) = 25% tariff on 1% of MSRP
85% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (15-15) = 25% tariff on 0% of MSRP - which is nothing
86% domestic = 15% foreign = 0.25 * MSRP * (14-15) = 25% tariff on -1% of MSRP - but let's assume the Gov't isn't going to pay companies so effectively 0% again
So yes, it's a tariff that effectively activates below 85% domestic content.
That tarrif may be 1 cent or $100,000, the headline doesn't say anything about that.
Given the need for transparency though it would be best if every item bought in america highlights the exact cost of the tarrif, same as it highlights sales tax. Indeed America is fairly unique in advertising pre tax prices (buy a can of coke for $1, it comes to $1.07 at the store), it would make sense if prices were also advertised pre tarrif too, in terms of transparency. I wonder how the administration could encourage that.
This is extremely low quality data, if you can even call it data.
They used survey results from the Nurses Health Study (NHS), which are decades long studies, still running, where participants fill out a food frequency questionnaire once every few on how often they ate various foods.
Not only do these questionnaires rely on memory, they rely on memory of a perception, because people don't actually measure how many cups of broccoli they eat each day. It's the worst quality of data. It's a memory of a guess, there is no measurement involved whatsoever, which is why I hesitate to even call it data.
Not only is the data itself low quality, it is compounded by lifestyle factors that are impossible to fully correct for. As an example, people that eat red meat are more likely to smoke and have diabetes, more likely to eat fast food, more likely to exercise less, etc etc. Eating foods that are perceived as healthy is correlated with healthy lifestyles. Butter has been "unhealthy" for years, so it is almost certainly correlated with an unhealthy lifestyle.
The nurses health study has led to many incorrect conclusions for these very reasons:
- It suggested hormone replacement therapy reduced heart disease risk, but randomized trials later proved it increased it due to confounding factors like healthy user bias.
- It linked vitamin E to lower heart disease risk, but trials found no benefit, showing the association came from health conscious behavior.
- It linked beta carotene to reduced cancer risk, but trials revealed supplements could increase lung cancer risk in smokers, not prevent it.
Many weak associations from the study, like diet and disease, were overstated as causal but didn’t hold up in trials due to confounding and noise.
If you are interested in how often studies like this are wrong, see "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by Ioannidis (spoiler: 70%).
I think it's an elegant design decision, because it allows the use of a more compact and readable function definition for nested functions. The 'fn' allows you to omit names and types, and so the shorter keyword (fn vs func) indicates the function definition may also be shorter.
Dimensions: 85 mm x 56 mm
Area: 4760 mm^2 or 7.38 in^2
Copper: 4 x 1oz layers
Copper Weight: 0.205 oz = 0.013lb
Copper price: 0.013 * $4.50/lb = $0.0585
And that doesn't include the copper removed by etching. So if they paid a 6c tariff on each raspberry pi board, they'd be overpaying.
Can they generate a certificate claiming each board contains no more than this amount of copper, overpay the tariff by a few pennies, and carry on?