Bracing for impacts from Trump Tariffs
The Trump Tariffs are already causing damage, with shipments in American ports beginning to dry up. This will cause higher costs and scarcer goods, with ripple effects comparable to the early-pandemic supply chain shocks of 2020. Some have already been suggesting that the Trump Tariffs will bring about another Great Depression.
Let’s dig a little bit into how we can get through what’s coming at a day-to-day level.
What tariffs mean
First let’s back up. Since Trump’s inauguration, his Administration has been jerking us all around by threatening to impose some tariffs on imported goods frem certain countries, then backing off, then imposing some tariffs and not others, etc.
We won’t attempt to recap the current state of American import tariffs because it’ll change in a week or two anyway. Rather, let’s go over the consequences of the tariffs that exist now, the tariffs that may exist in the future, and the uncertainty that exists because we don’t know what the tariff schedule will be two weeks from now.
First: Importers pay the tariffs. That’s what a tariff is: a tax on importing goods. Customs and Border Protection now has to screen shipments coming into the United States, figure out what’s in them and what it’s worth, and charge tariffs accordingly. For a long time, many shipments were not tariffed under a rule called the de minimis rule, but that’s over now and Customs will need to scale up their processing of imports and assessment of tariffs.
Of course, the importers don’t want to be out that money so importers will pass the cost along to whoever hired them to import it in the first place.
Eventually, the cost will be passed along to you, the consumer. This is already happening; for example, in tech, Logitech raised their US prices by up to 25% to try to accommodate the tariffs, laptop manufacturer Framework adapted repeatedly as the situation evolved, and ergonomic keyboard manufacturer Keyboardio is adding a surcharge starting in May.
The Trump tariffs are also affecting farmers. While some may take part in schadenfreude of “ha ha, you got what you voted for”, the reality is, we’re all in this boat together and laughing at people who fell for propaganda isn’t helpful.
With higher costs, some companies will go out of business or consolidate, and some products (especially lower-end and imported goods) will be discontinued or simply hard to get. Even products made here will be affected if they rely on any imported parts or materials.
So, we’re heading into a situation of scarcer goods and higher costs. What can you do about it?
Reduce and reuse
These were always important, even if Reduce and Reuse often got passed over in favor of Recycle, but they’re even more important now.
There’s a saying that got popularized during the 20th century’s Great Depression (some web-searching suggests it may be older but we haven’t been able to pin down an exact origin with a reliable source):
Use it up.
Wear it out.
Make it do,
or do without.
Let’s take those in turn:
Use it up (also phrased as Eat it up when about food). Don’t waste excess. Buy what you need and no more. Plan your grocery buying around combining a limited set of versatile ingredients that you buy in quantities you can use up before they expire, so you can use up your groceries instead of throwing out expired stock. Also, save and reheat leftovers.
Wear it out. Use things until they are literally unusable. That shirt is stained but otherwise clean and still wearable? Wear something over the stain. It’s trousers or a skirt? Wear it on Zoom calls if you work from home. Don’t throw things out unless they can’t be used or would be unsafe to use.
Make it do. Repair things. Learn to repair more things. Cannibalize spare parts. (More on this later.)
Do without. Buy less stuff. Higher prices and scarcity are going to force this issue, but you should also cut back voluntarily. Use what you have instead of spending frivolously on things you don’t need and might never use again.
Some of this may mean replacing disposable products with reusable counterparts, as with shopping bags or food-storage bags. Products that are meant to be reusable may also be more repairable (which, again, we’ll get to).
For some things, it may be safe and feasible to wash and reuse even some disposable items. You would not be the first person to wash out a zip-lock bag or sour cream tub in order to reuse or repurpose it.
However, we should note that some products are not feasible to clean or otherwise not safe to reuse. Look for opportunities to reduce waste, but don’t put your health at risk.
Exchange used goods
Again, this already exists but this is about to become more important.
Freecycle and buy-nothing groups exist where you can put up things to give away that are more or less usable but somebody else is more likely to want to use it. You can also do this informally within your friend groups.
There’s also donating to thrift stores, of course, which cuts out the matchmaking aspect and makes getting rid of stuff simpler. Try not to just dump trash there, though. If nobody’s going to want to buy it, all you’re doing is making it somebody else’s job to throw it out.
Another way is to host swap events. These could be closed events for your friends and friends-of-friends, or larger public events you organize and then advertise on the aforementioned buy-nothing groups (if they’re OK with such things), your social media, Craigslist, utility poles in your neighborhood, and so on. You could limit it to certain kinds of things (e.g., books, electronics) or make it a free-for-all. Do be warned that you might have more folks coming to leave stuff behind than to take stuff off your hands, so you’ll need to have someplace to put all the stuff when the event is over.
Learn to repair
This already came up under “Make it do”, but it merits its own section.
Repair is a diverse skillset. Find a specialty and get into it.
A relatively easy and well-documented one is mending clothes and other fabric items (including reusable bags). You can try for subtle fixes or lean into repair-as-embellishment (called kintsugi in pottery) with more visible or even contrasting patches.
Electronics repair is a whole industry, spearheaded by iFixit. If you take up electronics repair, you might want to buy one of their toolkits (and a soldering iron, desoldering equipment, etc.) before that stuff gets more expensive, if it hasn’t already. Learning materials are available online, though they’ll tend to focus on the nitty-gritty of soldering and electrical engineering; schematics and troubleshooting of specific products tends to be a sparser field.
3D printers can be used to replace some plastic parts. Even if you don’t own a 3D printer, some public libraries have them available for patron use.
The SF Environment Department has a webpage with upcoming repair events for clothing and bicycles. You might also consider classes from WorkshopSF (particularly their sewing classes)—most of them are about making something, but if you know how to make it, you’ll also be able to repair it.
Make the Trump tariffs visible
If you’re selling new imported goods, this one’s for you.
You’re fully within your rights to pass the tariff cost along to the end consumer. What we might suggest is that you don’t just quietly fold it into the price, but add it as a separate line item, like a reverse discount: “$59.99 plus $XYZ in Trump Tariffs”.
This is already happening and it really helps customers understand where the blame belongs. If anything will get the tariffs reversed (or, at least, more exceptions made), this will be a critical piece. Don’t let this be another source of inflation that Just Happens; make sure the buying public knows that Trump specifically raised prices on (damn near) everything.
What about manufacturing in the US?
This is, of course, the stated purpose of the tariff endeavor, and is about as unrealistic as anything else Trump says.
Corporate offshoring of manufacturing has been taking place over decades. Businesses contracting out to foreign companies and closing US factories and laying off US workers; the consequent brain drain from those workers finding other work or retiring; the withering of trade education (in tandem with the drying-up of jobs for them to take after being so educated). It’s a lot of damage over a long period of time—it won’t be easy or quick to reverse it and rebuild an American manufacturing sector.
Manufacturing, like any economic sector, needs three things:
Real estate. Factories are buildings that need to exist on land. Buildings and land are large up-front and ongoing costs.
Parts, materials, tools, equipment, supplies, and utilities. These are further ongoing costs. Many of the physical goods in this category are themselves manufactured abroad, and so will be affected by tariffs—like so much else, the costs will climb higher than they already are, and availability will dry up.
Labor. Other countries have not only lower wages (much lower than our $7.25 federal minimum wage) but also a cycle of greater manufacturing education and greater job availability. You can’t have a factory without factory workers—and the United States has not been cultivating the new generation of factory workers that a renewed manufacturing sector would need.
What would help, especially with the up-front costs, would be federal assistance like what the CHIPS And Science Act provides (or provided, with the Trump Administration impounding Congressional appropriations). The government could also help with trade education to bring up the workforce that domestic manufacturers would need. Both of these would take years to deliver new domestic manufacturing capacity, even if companies start now.
So rebuilding manufacturing in the United States would be a big lift even with federal assistance. With the Trump administration actively making it harder, it’s even less realistic to see it anytime soon.
We may see some onshoring by a few companies in a few industries. They will still have to deal with tariff costs and some of those efforts will fail eventually. A more enduring manufacturing renaissance remains out of the near term.
In the meantime, we need to do what we can with what we’ve got.