I am well and truly confused over the panic that’s currently occurring over the use of tariffs. An acquaintance of mine just posted the following (changed slightly to protect the author, who I didn’t ask before posting this):
“We have to reconstruct the exterior stairs that were ripped off this house before we moved in, so there is a second exit during an emergency. This requires wood. Which comes from Canada. I also sell books, otherwise known as printed paper. Which comes from China. Tariffs, that’s where my money goes.”
I had to ask said person, where are they printing their books? The last price hike I had, via Amazon KDP, was a couple or three years ago, and came to a grand total of about four cents on each of my books. I chose to eat the cost; it wasn’t enough to bother the customers. There doesn’t appear to be any kind of price hike going on at KDP for print-on-demand, and while there’s no definitive answer available (as with all things Amazon related), it appears as if about half their paper is recycled (meaning we recycle it and turn it into more paper here in America), and the other half is “sourced from the cheapest domestic available,” which to me means whatever they have on hand but local if it’s not prohibitive. At the very least, it’s not enough to cost me more per book to print.
Obviously I can’t speak for other companies, but I have to say… if Amazon, the Great Gouger, isn’t raising prices… well, I am going to guess no one else is either.
When it comes to wood, I can speak a bit more authoritatively. In 2024, about 72% of our wood for building (lumber) came from domestic sources. That means it was sourced here in the good ol’ United States. That’s about to change, because of the tariffs on Canadian imports. The cost of new homes will go up. Currently, that cost is NOT up. And it is entirely possible to buy American lumber for making exterior stairs or other small projects. Does American lumber cost more? For the moment, that’s possible, though I couldn’t find an example of it. Once the tariffs kick in, American lumber will go up slightly in price (because we don’t have the huge forests that Canada does, and so we can’t be cutting down as many trees as they do and have it be sustainable), but it’ll still be less than wood from Canada.
I just don’t get it.
A few weeks ago, someone commented about how awful it was that everything they make and everything they buy is going to go up in price and be unaffordable soon. I asked what they were buying that was going to cost them so much, because I have been following the “buy local” thing for years now, because that’s the right thing to do… because that IS the right thing to do, right? To buy local? That’s what the Left has been pushing for years and years, to support your local community and small businesses? Right?
Now, I do have some sympathy for people who make things that utilize “whizigigs” that they get out of China. I have a friend who makes her living sewing corsets and stays. She makes a GOOD living at it, too. She was just informed that some of her materials are about to get hit with tariffs… and there is nowhere else for her to purchase those parts. There isn’t anyone in America manufacturing them (like… at all, not just higher cost). She doesn’t buy enough to support a factory making those parts, so she’s stuck. She buys from China, or some other country, and she HAS to pay tariffs. Luckily she actually understands what’s going on, and simply informed her customers of what was happening, and that she would have to pass on the costs but she’d do her best to keep it down, and that she doesn’t expect it’ll be forever.
Because Americans outsourced a lot of their widgets years ago, we don’t have manufacturers that make many of those widgets anymore. It’s just always been cheaper to have the slave labor in China or Vietnam make them. There was no point in having factories here to make them. Point of fact, even WITH tariffs, it might end up being cheaper to buy out of other countries. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. A robust global economy helps us, and helps everyone else. It does suck that we simply cannot buy local for some of this stuff, though. My aforementioned friend would be buying American if she could, even at the higher price, because she’s that kind of person. But she can’t, because they simply aren’t made here. I doubt that’ll change.
Amazon made a big deal about saying they’d display added tariffs, but I’m not seeing that happening yet. What I’m seeing, at least in my part of New England, is prices finally starting to come down after a long time of upward mobility. Groceries are getting more affordable by the day. I’m excited at the thought of more local and local-ish options. These are GOOD things, not bad things. And if I have to pay a bit extra for some of my gewgaws out of China, because I happen to be slightly addicted to certain types of cheap Chineseum crap, then so be it. Paying a bit extra for my fun (sin tax, as it were) is not a problem. It helps me keep my “bad spending” under control.
So why the panic? I just don’t see the point. No one I’ve talked to has been able to give me anything concrete to explain the panic. I ask people like my acquaintance in the opening paragraphs questions, about why they are having such high prices, and they can’t answer me. Most of the time, they’re projecting, and the prices aren’t actually any higher. The few times they are, I can generally find them much cheaper American alternatives… but they don’t seem to want that. And again, I don’t understand that, coming from the “buy local” preachers I live near. I do buy local whenever possible, and have been for years.
Have any of you seen an up-tick in prices for anything you buy on the regular? I expected coffee prices to go up, but at least so far, that’s not the case. Eggs are coming down. Firewood is about the same. Chicken is about the same. Pork has come down a bit. I’m just not finding anything that’s skyrocketed.
Leave a Reply to curby Cancel reply