Originally Posted by smontanaro

Large corporations are in general always ready to exploit a crisis...

In the end, this all goes back to the Trump administration's crazy tariff "implementation." As pointed out elsewhere—either in this thread or a similar one on the Paceline—in normal cases trade negotiations take a good while to complete (years?), and involve lots of negotiations by experts at that sort of thing, back and forth, back and forth. Once all I's have been dotted and the T's have been crossed, the bigwigs (chief trade envoys, prime ministers, presidents, whatever) get together to sign agreements and have a nice photo-op. Everybody knows what's going on at the end and those involved downstream know what they need to do. No matter your opinion on the merits of this trade war, it's pretty clear there wasn't enough thought or time put into the nitty gritty of the process. As a result, we don't know what the tariffs are in many instances and don't know who will collect them.