Enjoy it while you can: The era of cheap goods made in China exchanged during the holiday gift season could be ending. On the other hand, during previous trade dustups, some Chinese manufacturers simply laundered their exports through a second country to make up for the loss of easy access to customers in the United States.
A recent story on Bloomberg.com outlined how, in 2018, a Trump tariff on imports shifted exports from China to Cambodia. Before the 2018 tariffs, China supplied more than 75 percent of Christmas lights. After the tariffs were in place, that fell to nearly zero. Meanwhile, Cambodia’s share of U.S. Christmas light imports jumped from about 10 percent to about 70 percent, as Chinese producers found ways around the higher duties. The tariffs produced few to no jobs here stateside.
Not all products can be moved as quickly as twinkling lights from one country to another, though. If President-elect Trump’s sky-high tariff pledges on China actually happen, the cost of plenty of consumer goods in the U.S. will rise. More complicated electronics, such as televisions and laptop computers from China would carry higher price tags. Even Christmas trees would not be immune. Additional duties on Canadian goods would increase the price of imported firs, affecting the cost on the street in the U.S., which would push up the price of domestically grown trees.
Buying nothing is not an option for most Americans. Though “Reverend” Billy Talen and his performance group the Stop Shopping Choir earnestly preach to the holiday crowds in Times Square from time to time, few people actually change their habits.
It would be great if manufacturing could come back to the States for a lot of reasons, but it seems unlikely. A U.S.-produced pair of jeans might cost $200 instead of a foreign-made pair for $60. Not that that would affect me all that much — I do my shopping at the Ladies Village Improvement Society shop on Main Street most of the time anyway.