The reality is rarely the way politicians describe it.
It needs to be said, since tariffs significantly hurt our business. Why?
Rarely is it possible for small companies (and many times even large companies) to move all of the technology back to the US needed to manufacture a component or material. Tariffs rarely increase jobs in the US; in fact, they often put small companies out of business which destroys jobs.
Tariffs can even force a manufacturer to move manufacturing offshore to recover some of the costs that tariffs impose.
Tariffs are no more than a tax on YOU. This is because they raise prices for manufacturers, who in turn must raise their prices to YOU. Contrary to misinformation being so widespread, they are not a charge-back to the country being tariffed. They are a tax on YOU, period.
As the incoming administration continues to play its rudderless ping-pong tariff game, plan on ALL prices for our products going up accordingly. We saw this in 2019 and it will be unavoidable again.
Some say the benefit of tariffs is that they “force” manufacturing back to the USA. We already manufacture in the USA, and tariffs have hurt us in many ways since 2019. So that argument doesn’t wash. Plus, in retaliation, governments in countries like China will fund industry so they are able to continue the practice of “dumping” (selling products well below the cost of manufacture) into US markets. The result is dangerously poor quality products sold here at prices that US manufacturers cannot compete with. Please beware of this practice.
As with probably close to 100% of the products manufactured in the US, it is true for us. There is ALWAYS some content of components, materials, etc. that cannot be manufactured in the USA, even if the components, materials, etc. we have selected were designed and prototyped from here originally. Economies today are global. We are all dependent on one another, worldwide.
That’s the bottom line.
