Fashion and apparel brands from Steve Madden to Under Armour, e.l.f. Beauty, and Ralph Lauren are preparing for President-elect Donald Trump’s promised tariffs.
Summary
Following Donald Trump’s election victory, proposed tariffs of 10%-20% on general imports and 60% on Chinese goods are raising concerns across the fashion, beauty, and footwear industries.
Companies like Steve Madden, Under Armour, and e.l.f Beauty are assessing impacts, with some, such as Steve Madden, planning to reduce reliance on Chinese suppliers.
Tariff fears have already affected retail stocks, and executives acknowledge the industry is now more prepared for trade disruptions.
Many brands, including Ralph Lauren and Tapestry, have diversified sourcing in anticipation of restrictive trade policies.
We don't. The infrastructure just isn't there to start major manufacturing in the US at the whim of a moron. There needed to be some kind of plan in action to build something out before he tries to fuck everybody with tariffs.
The plan was to continue to buy cheap stuff from China and forget about the problems that it created. No evidently our infrastructure does suck, what is going to make that change, price.
Maybe it's more that they're being realistic about USA manufacturing capacity and costs of spinning up new production lines.
Not to mention the cost of everything going up and wages being stagnant so when things get more expensive it will be harder for everyone. Not like people have a bunch of extra money laying around.
If you really think it's that easy you're very naive.
Say you've been purchasing from China but now that's looking too expensive. You bust out your Excel sheet and find out you can spin up an American factory and still crank out the goods for just a bit more than before. Great!
But you already know what's going to happen. The tariffs will cause high prices, turn out to be wildly unpopular, fuck up the economy and get rescinded. You want to get caught holding the bag with your brand new factory? Best just to ride it out, Trump will be out of office in 4-years, if not sooner.
The tariffs are on everything, not just clothes. But even just looking at the clothes aspect, how do you think increasing the price of clothes, which people need, will be good for the American people?
Forcing people to spend more money on stuff is not going to help them.