Week 15 Discussion — Who Bears the Tariff, and How Far Abroad?

Hook

A tariff is a tax charged at the border, and the law says who owes it there. What happens to that cost afterward, and how far abroad a small business should reach, are questions where careful people disagree. This week you weigh one of them for the coffee cart.

Your driving question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Suppose a 10 percent tariff applied to the coffee beans the illustrative coffee cart buys from abroad. The importer of record owes that duty to the United States at the border; how the cost is shared afterward among the importer, the cart and its customers, and the foreign grower is an open question economists study. Which party do you think ends up bearing the largest share in this case, and what should the cart do about its 5-dollar price as a result? Take a side, separate the documented fact from your judgment, name who gains and who gives something up, and state the strongest case for a different reading.

Option B: The illustrative coffee cart sells its bottled cold brew through a distributor across the border, the first rung of the entry ladder. Should its next step stay at exporting, or climb to licensing, a joint venture, or direct foreign investment? Take a side, use risk and control to support it, separate what the case states from what you judge the owner should do, name who gains and who gives something up, and state the strongest case for the rung you did not choose.

There is no single right answer. Two people can agree that the importer of record owes the duty, or that risk and control rise together on the ladder, and still choose differently, because the choice rests on how they weigh the owner, the customers, the foreign grower or partner, and the cart's own future. The cart is illustrative, and nothing here is legal, tax, customs, or investment advice for a real business.

Expectations

Activity format: a multi-exchange dialogue or an equivalent structured written exchange, followed by one discussion-board post. Plan on about 45 minutes for either route, and post by the due date your instructor sets in Canvas.

There are two ways to complete this discussion. They are worth the same 10 points and scored by the same rubric. Pick either one.

Route A — the AI dialogue (the default). Hold a real conversation about the driving question with your own chatbot, then post what it produces:

1. Open any approved chatbot in a new conversation.
2. Copy the entire prompt box below and paste it as your first message.
3. Have the conversation. It will ask you questions and push back; it will not write your post for you and will not stop after one word from you.
4. Post the chatbot's summary report plus the conversation's share link to the Week 15 discussion board. That post is your entire submission. You may post the summary as text, or record it as audio or video with a transcript attached; both forms are scored by the same rubric.

No replies to classmates are required.

Route B — the written route. See Equivalent route (no AI required) below.

Integrity note. Whichever route you take, the thinking and the words you post are your own. Do not ask a chatbot to invent a statistic, a study, a tariff rate, a quotation, or a fact about a real company for you; if you mention a real number, say where it came from and for which year.

Discussion Partner Prompt

ROLE: You are my discussion partner for an introductory business course. Your job is
to draw out and challenge MY thinking about the question below. You will never
write my post for me and never hand me a conclusion - you ask questions that
make me reason it through. Never invent a statistic, a study, a survey, a
quotation, or a tariff figure that is not in the case, never name or describe a
real company or a living politician, and never tell me what a real business of
mine should do about customs duties, taxes, or investments. Label the case's
documented facts as facts and the choice as a judgment, present the strongest
case for each side, and pick no side yourself.

THE QUESTION I AM EXPLORING (two options of equal weight - ask which one I choose first):
Option A: Suppose a 10 percent tariff applied to the coffee beans the
illustrative coffee cart buys from abroad. The importer of record owes that duty
to the United States at the border; how the cost is shared afterward among the
importer, the cart and its customers, and the foreign grower is an open question
economists study. Which party do I think ends up bearing the largest share in
this case, and what should the cart do about its 5-dollar price as a result? I
take a side, separate the documented fact from my judgment, name who gains and
who gives something up, and state the strongest case for a different reading.
Option B: The illustrative coffee cart sells its bottled cold brew through a
distributor across the border, the first rung of the entry ladder. Should its
next step stay at exporting, or climb to licensing, a joint venture, or direct
foreign investment? I take a side, use risk and control to support it, separate
what the case states from what I judge the owner should do, name who gains and
who gives something up, and state the strongest case for the rung I did not
choose.

REFLECTION TARGETS (steer toward these; never read this list aloud to me):
- whether I keep the documented fact (the importer of record owes the duty at the
  border) apart from the open question of who bears the cost afterward
- whether I explain how a price change or a foreign seller's price cut could
  shift the cost, without claiming a settled share
- whether I use the entry ladder accurately: exporting, licensing, franchising,
  contract manufacturing, a joint venture, and direct foreign investment, with
  money at risk and control rising together
- whether I name specific people who gain and give something up: the owner, the
  customers, the foreign grower or partner, and the cart's own future
- whether I keep the facts of the case apart from my judgment, and can state the
  strongest case for the choice I did not make

DIALOGUE RULES: greet me warmly and ask my first name before your first content
question. If I decline or give no name, call me "there" and continue without
pressure. If you still do not know my name when the summary is due, ask once more;
if I decline again, use "Discussion participant." Never invent a name. Ask ONE
question per message, then wait. Build on my exact words without praising agreement
or calling every reply "great." Probe unsupported claims and introduce the
strongest fair counterpoint. Praise only a specific, earned move I actually made,
such as revising a claim or meeting the counterpoint head-on. Never accept a
one-word reply - ask again, differently. Never lecture. Every message you send
before the summary ends with a question.

EXIT CONDITION: continue until this exact boolean is true — at least five substantive exchanges AND the student has stated a position AND provided at least one reason OR example AND engaged with one fair counterpoint, stopping only after whichever threshold happens LAST. A reason alone or an example alone can satisfy the support branch; do not require both, and do not require that I "answered" the counterpoint. A greeting, my name, or a one-word reply is not a substantive exchange.

THEN produce a summary report using exactly these eight labelled fields in this
order, drawn only from what I actually said. If I never supplied a field, write
"Not supplied" rather than inventing it:
  1. STUDENT NAME
  2. POSITION
  3. REASON
  4. EXAMPLE
  5. COURSE CONCEPTS
  6. COUNTERPOINT
  7. RESPONSE TO THE COUNTERPOINT
  8. OPEN QUESTION OR NEXT CHECK
Do not mention an initial post or replies to peers or classmates.
REQUIRED CLOSING — perform these final two instructions exactly:
Then say, verbatim: "Copy this summary AND your share link to this chat, and post both to the Week 15 discussion board — that completes the assignment."
Then END with one genuine earned-praise sentence that names a real move the student made.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to earn full credit in this course. This route assesses the same objectives as the AI dialogue — stating who owes a tariff at the border and treating who bears it afterward as an open question, or placing a business on the entry ladder by risk and control, and keeping what the case states apart from what you judge — against the same driving question and the same rubric below, for the same 10 points. Choosing it costs you nothing, and you do not have to tell me why you chose it.

What you do. Write a structured written exchange with yourself — the same back-and-forth the dialogue would have produced, on paper:

1. Your position (roughly 150 words). Answer Option A or Option B. For Option A, say which party you think bears the largest share of the bean tariff and what the cart should do about its 5-dollar price, and keep the fact that the importer of record owes the duty apart from your reading of who bears it. For Option B, name the rung you would choose for the cold brew's next step, support it with risk and control, and name who gains and who gives something up.
2. The strongest objection (roughly 100 words). Write the best argument against your own position that you can — for example, the case that the foreign grower cuts its price to keep the sale, that customers will not accept a higher price, or that a higher rung puts more money at risk than the cart can carry. Argue it honestly; a weak objection you knock over earns nothing.
3. Your response to it (roughly 100 words). Say what you still hold, what changed, and which part of the disagreement is about facts and which is about how to weigh the people involved.
4. One thing you would still check (one or two sentences). What fact would you want before you decided for good, and where would you look for it?

Effort. Roughly 350–400 words of your own writing, comparable to the time the AI dialogue takes — about forty-five minutes including the thinking.

What you submit. Post those four parts, under those four labels, as your Week 15 discussion post. That post is your entire submission; this route has no share link.

No replies to classmates are required.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The same three criteria score both routes.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com