Trump merch (and his supporters) will be hit hard by tariffs
Nothing says “America first!” than cheap Chinese-made crap at Trump stores throughout MAGA country, amirite?
The Charleston Post & Courier of South Carolina, in an inspired bit of journalism, decided to check in on a handful of such places. There is a lot of resignation of having to raise prices, knowing full well that the MAGA faithful are now the lower-rungs of our nation’s socio-economic ladder —they don’t have the money for expensive luxuries.
“Most Republicans understand what tariffs do and why President Trump is using them,” said one of the shop owners. “He wants manufacturing. He wants our workers. He wants America first. He wants these companies to come back to America instead of going to China or Mexico and building factories there.”
Yeah! Bring back manufacturing to the United States! Problem is … just about everything he sells is made in China. The reporter pushed the guy on that question. The answer is really something:
“I have some products that were designed in America, but the blueprints were sent to China,” he said. “But the labor is cheaper there, obviously, right?”
He continued, “If I sell an American flag, a three-by-five American flag, and I buy it in this country and I go to Alliance, my cost is $45. Nobody is going to buy a flag from me and spend where I can make a profit, right? They aren’t going to spend $55 or $60 bucks, they’re not going to do it,” he said. “But if I can get flags from China that cost me $5 and I can sell them for $15 or $20, then they’re willing to do that. I wish it wasn’t that way, but there’s certain things we can manufacture and there’s certain things that we can’t.”
The logic seems to go something like this:
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Yay! Trump’s bringing manufacturing back to America!
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American manufacturing is too expensive!
The second is absolutely true, which is why global trade exists. It’s why offshoring exists, it’s why people don’t buy American if they have other options.
One thing the pandemic taught us is that people hate inflation more than anything else. Lawmakers literally gave people cash. All that stimulus money overheated the economy, drove prices higher even as unemployment fell to record lows, and rather than be happy at that situation, people could not get past the higher prices. Governments all over the world, from across the political spectrum, have been punished by voters for higher prices.
Politicians have thus learned—it is better to let people starve, than it is to foist higher prices on them. That is, all politicians but one: Donald Trump.
Related | People are already losing their jobs because of Trump’s tariffs
In Trump’s telling, tariffs will usher in a glorious new era of American manufacturing. He’ll fail for numerous reasons, but even if he succeeded, all he would do is dramatically raise the price on everything, making life that much more expensive.
Those on the MAGA rung of the socio-economic ladder won’t be able to afford anything, even if they notched some of those sweet-sweet new minimum-wage manufacturing jobs (and to be clear, factories would go to the lowest-labor-cost states). So can Trump escape voter fury that no other politician in the world was able to withstand, especially since it’s self-inflicted, coming in on the heels of a Biden economy that was inflation stabilized and growing?
Take this example, which I wrote about back in February:
This Trump voter was furious that her $100 shipment of cheap Shein crap was facing a $42 tariff. “And before anyone wants to add their blame Trump for everything bs and say that’s what you get for voting for Donald J. Trump I know what Trump said he said the tariffs would be on China New Mexico and Canada not on American citizens,” she concluded, because nothing is ever Trump’s fault.
Shein and Temu had benefited from a tariff carveout that exempted parcels under $800. Trump closed that loophole in February, but it led to thousands of parcels getting backed up in American ports, as customs officials were ill-equipped to handle that kind of volume. Trump caved and rescinded that edict starting May 2 , with the White House claiming that “adequate systems are in place to collect tariff revenue.”
And the 45% tariff that Trump supporter was furious about? She’ll wish it was that low moving forward. “Shipments under $800 that are sent through the international postal network will be “subject to a duty rate of either 30% of their value or $25 per item (increasing to $50 per item after June 1, 2025).”
No one seems to know what that means, but given that a Shein dress costs $10-20, there’s a big difference between a $6 tariff on a $20 dress, or a $50 tariff. Knowing Trump, I’m betting on the latter.
Amazon, which is replete with Chinese drop shippers, will take a serious hit. Dollar stores, already bankrupting themselves out of existence , will be dead-dead. And forget about moving production facilities out of China—Trump has targeted all of Asia’s low-cost manufacturing hubs.
And no, no American company will step up to provide Trump flags. As one of those South Carolina MAGA shopkeepers said, “They’re not going to pay any price. People got to eat before buying Trump. They have to buy food.”
And that goes for everything else … perhaps even food. Tariffs are about to make agriculture exponentially more expensive .
The Wall Street Journal editorial board, that bastion of free market capitalism, calls the tariffs “one of the largest [tax increases] in U.S. history.”
Voters don’t like taxes, and they don’t like inflation. “We wonder if the working-class voters who are supposed to be the vanguard of the new GOP will feel as good about the pain as they try to make ends meet paycheck to paycheck,” wrote the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Good question. If Tuesday night election results in Wisconsin and Florida are any indication, they won’t be happy about it. And the real pain hasn’t even landed yet.