Saul Sadka Profile picture
Apr 5 11 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Why is Heinz Ketchup Called "Tomato Seasoning" in Israel—and How Trump's Tariffs could end up being great for Israelis.

The victims might be the monopolies, Netanyahu and the public might be the victors. This presents huge opportunities for the savvy. Here’s how: (1/8)Image
When Israel announced a few days ago that it was cancelling all tariffs on American goods, it was essentially bluffing.

There have been virtually no tariffs on American goods for over 30 years. The total amount collected annually was around $40 million — about 0.02% of the Israeli government’s budget. (2/8)Image
One of the major issues with Israel’s otherwise thriving economy is the high cost of goods, especially groceries, which are on average 50% more expensive than in other OECD countries.

So why hasn't anyone taken advantage of the obvious arbitrage opportunity? If there are no tariffs on American goods, wouldn’t enterprising individuals flood the Israeli market with American products, bringing prices down to U.S. levels (plus shipping and local distribution)? (3/8)Image
Because the problem was never tariffs it’s the myriad other trade barriers, implemented by a government heavily lobbied by local conglomerates (who also happen to be the biggest advertisers in Israeli media).

Two examples: (4/8)
Imagine you're a local ketchup producer — say, Osem. Your ketchup doesn’t taste great, and you can’t compete with Heinz, which benefits from global economies of scale. Then Heinz lands in the market. What do you do? Compete on price? Improve your formula?

Of course not. Instead, you use lobbyists and friendly bureaucrats (some of whom wouldn’t mind a future seat on your board) to create a new legal definition of "ketchup" — one that only your product fits. Heinz, suddenly, is no longer allowed to market itself as ketchup. If they want to stay in the game, they have to relabel as “Tomato Seasoning.” And so it was. (5/8)Image
Now imagine you're one of only two small farms in Israel growing pineapples. The climate is poor for growing pineapples, and pineapples are labor-intensive, so your costs are high. But then how come big, juicy pineapples in the UK (with higher labor costs and worse weather) sell for $3, while scrawny, sad pineapples in Israel cost $12?

You guessed it: you’re not in the pineapple business. You’re in the lobbying and bureaucracy business. For 30 years, you’ve fought to make pineapple imports as complicated and expensive as possible — and you've succeeded.

(After much public pressure, the pineapple market was opened up partially, leading to an instant halving in the price of pineapples.)

And these are just two examples out of thousands. In each case, the result is the same: a quiet, steady transfer of wealth from consumers to producers, bureaucrats, and conglomerates. (6/8)Image
Often, it doesn’t even protect local jobs. In many cases, the beneficiaries are merely exclusive importers.

Tariffs were never the issue. The real barriers are the bogus certification requirements and restrictive import licensing, which vested interests use to block foreign competition. Simply allowing American or European certified goods (whose standards are generally higher anyway) to enter Israel freely and without limit would revolutionize the Israeli market — to the enormous benefit of consumers.

The Israeli Standards Institute replicates the work of EU and US standards bodies, but for the tiny Israeli market. This is great for its well paid employees, but bad for Israel. (7/8)Image
The government could eliminate most of this nonsense tomorrow, and over 90% of the public would support it. The only reason it doesn’t happen is because a huge share of Israeli lobbying power — and media ad revenue — is tied to keeping things exactly the way they are.

Netanyahu is, at heart, a free-marketeer. Interestingly, the major conglomerates are mostly aligned with his political opponents. Passing a law that would let Walmart, for example, open 100 stores and sell its full range of products at 30% of what Israelis currently pay would make him wildly popular.

The Trump tariffs might just be the excuse needed to finally make this happen. Vested interests that have blocked this for decades could be told: “Sorry, Trump forced our hand.”

As a bonus, here is a hilariously prescient article from @rntamir in 2021... (8/8)Image
One option to butter up the Ameircan admin might be to cut the duties and luxury tax on American imported cars—perhaps specifically or especially on ELECTRIC CARS 😉—this would please all the right people in all the right places without any major shock to Israeli producers...
Not a bad summary from Grok. Image

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More from @Saul_Sadka

Jun 20
A week into one of the most audacious military operations in history, what is the state of play? Iran is petulantly lashing out, flailing, while Israel is tearing its way through the regime, inflicting 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more damage on Iran than vice versa. 🧵(1/7) Image
Their attacks are simply depleting their remaining stocks, exposing their launch sites, but doing no damage at all to Israel’s military apparatus. They have killed 22 Israeli civilians, as well as 5 Ukrainians, and done perhaps $50 million worth of property damage.

The cost to them of these attacks, when all is said and done—including the sanctions they forced their people to bear over decades, the R&D, the opportunity cost? Certainly hundreds of billions of dollars. Most of what they built up over 40 years has disappeared in a week. (2/7)Image
Almost comically, they have sent over 1,000 drones against Israel in the past week, and not a single one has made it through. On their drones, they are zero for a thousand. (3/7)Image
Read 10 tweets
Jun 19
MEHDI: "Wow! All you had to do to make me like Nazi-apologia fan, & fellow Qatari teet-suckler Tucker, was to stop the IRGC, who promised for 50 years to genocide the Jews, from getting the tools to actually do it! It's almost like a horseshoe!" (1/6) Image
This is not a coincidence: you can learn a lot about what really matters to someone by what they are willing to compromise on. For example, Netanyahu and Lapid are bitter rivals—but faced with the threat of nuclear annihilation, they come together, because that is the most important issue.

And so too with Mehdi and Tucker: they can also come together around the issue of the nuclear annihilation of Israel. Because that is the true core of their belief systems; everything else is peripheral, secondary. (2/6)Image
They didn’t realize that their patron in Qatar was just playing a game. Qatar is more threatened by an Iranian nuke than anyone. It isn’t a real country in the traditional sense—it has no real army—and a nuclear Iran would mean the disappearance of the American base that protects it, and the arrival of Shia domination over their Sunni statelet with just 0.5% of the citizenry.

Qatar only wanted Iran to play the bad cop in its great game against Israel, the West, and its Saudi and Emirati rivals. Part of that strategy included Tucker and Mehdi—useful idiots they hired—who genuinely dreamed of a nuclear Iran, not realizing they were merely being used as one of Qatar’s many instruments.

But just as Hamas didn’t realize it was meant to be only a proxy for Iran and went rogue—bringing down the entire Axis of Resistance—the influencers didn’t realize they were just pawns on the chessboard. (3/6)Image
Read 6 tweets
Jun 16
It's a landscape of broken glass here at the end of my street in Tel Aviv where my friend, the journalist, @ShannaFuld had her apartment trashed by an IRGC missle, as she explains to CNN's Jeremy Diamond. Iran attacks random civilians, Israel eliminates generals.
Some photos from the scene, edited to remove any information about the precise location. Image
As @ShannaFuld told me, if she hadn't been inside the concrete safe room she wouldn't be alive. If these innacurate terror weapons were fired at the average wood build American city, the devastation would be massive. Image
Read 4 tweets
Jun 13
Nobody has noticed Netanyahu’s deeply symbolic choice of the name “Rising Lion” for the operation he’s dreamed of for 30 years.

Iran, like Israel, has been a symbolized by a lion for 2,500 years. And now history comes full circle: it was Persia that, after 50 years of Israelite exile, enabled the restoration of Israel in Jerusalem. Now, 2,500 years later, Israel—reborn—repays the favor with perfect symmetry. Persia’s great civilization will be restored, and its occupiers vanquished, after 50 years. Isn’t that beautiful?Image
So, Sinwar's attack will indeed achieve its stated goal: It will end the occupation... of Iran... Image
The next domino is the IRGC: Sinwar's folly will end with Reza Pahlavi coronated on his father's throne, returned to the land he was exiled from as a boy, with the Israeli prime minister in attendance. Bookmark this.Image
Read 5 tweets
May 22
What did y’all think "globalize the intifada" meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? 🧵

It meant this sweet young couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, gunned down at an American Jewish Committee event at the Jewish Museum by radicalized monster Elias Rodriguez, chanting “Free, free Palestine.” (1/20)Image
We need to know how it came to this—how did Jew-hate become so normalized that the killer can be assured of widespread support from certain quarters? And what future awaits Jews in the West? TL;DR: It's grim. (2/20)
Already, voices blaming Jews and Israel, rather than the killer or the people who radicalized him, are spreading across the internet. Naturally, the people spreading these lies are the ones who incited such actions. (3/20) Image
Read 20 tweets
May 8
It took 23 years, but India has brought justice for Daniel Pearl. His last words, "My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish." Image
Big respect to all the people like @indemtel, @IsraelinIndia, @indianaftali, @Litalsun and all the others who help to bring Indians together.
Read 5 tweets

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