a light manufacturer’s view on tariffs and their impact

Hi folks, I run a light manufacturing firm that imports parts from all over the world (including China) to be assembled here in the USA by American workers.

The Trump tariffs hurt us and we had to pass 100% of them onto our clients.

All of our vendors and other companies we work with did the same.

No one opened USA manufacturing to offset the tariffs because they are not competitive from a cost or supply chain perspective.

The proposed new round of tariffs will also have a similar effect.

Even if Trump raises tariffs to 100% this will not result in injection mold parts being made in the USA for the reasons I noted above.

Four things will happen:

1). prices will rise to encompass all of the tariffs (i.e. the consumer will pay)

2). companies that cozy up to trump (see Elon) will have tariff exemptions just like last time (see the iPhone and other popular consumer goods that were excluded for this specific reason).

3). companies that are large enough will continue to open trans-shipment facilities in Mexico to repackage Chinese imports into small parcel shipments that avoid tariffs entirely.

4). american companies will go out of business and their products will be replaced with imports from other countries.

Targetted tarriffs on specific industries and / or goods can make sense when responding to things like dumping.

Blanket tariffs that affect all goods are inherently counter-productive, hurt american manufacturers and american consumers.