Tariffying For Some, Good News For Others

Depending on the logistics

I keep seeing reports from the media blowhards, nationally and locally, decry these tariffs as being horrible for the small businesses and common man.

Killing grandma by not wearing a mask, and killing grandma’s business by supporting tariffs, I guess.

So I’m typing away to offer a counter point - how these tariffs are going to help small businesses, by sharing experience of my own.

Side note: yes, I know this tariff situation is going to be hard for some - it’s unfortunate, and I feel for them. Hopefully the honest folk it will impact can find a way to work through this and the collective discomfort we feel is short-lived.

Feel free to post any small business you have in the comments so we can support each other.

As for myself, I’m stoked. I’m in two “industries”, I guess you could say - one side is digital and one physical. There’s the citizen journalist/small film/shitposting/social media I do (whatever you want it call it), and then there’s supplements. The digital isn’t affected - although it may be if I need to upgrade my computers or filming equipment. So far there’s nothing I need in the foreseeable future. The supplement side is what’s relevant.

I’ve been in the supplement/nutrition industry for 15 years, seeing a lot of trends come and go. One that’s about 10 years in the making is the purchasing of viral supplement brands by giant MegaCorps like Nestle, Bayer, and Clorox. Another is how distributors, large and small, are sourcing their products from cheap Chinese manufacturers and importing the products into this country.

Proteins, greens powders, mushroom, herbs, all kinds of things. I’ve done some Badlands shows on this and educate on smart buying decisions in my Skool coaching group.

The process goes something like this.

> Company sources cheap products from Chinese marketplaces like Alibaba and Temu, or direct from manufacturer. Imports here.
> Company runs ads on TikTok and Instagram
> Customers get fed into TikTokShop or Amazon to purchase product
> Cycle repeats

The flooding of the American market with cheap China supps, especially over the last 5 years with social media and primarily TikTok, has watered down the market and made it much more difficult for domestic, U.S. sourced companies to compete.

I have a couple dozen products available on Conscious Strength, and 95% of them are manufactured here in the U.S. I get a couple things from Canada, so we’ll see how tariffs from there may affect me, but I’ve largely kept everything here in the States.

I think I once glanced at my shipping material and it comes from China, though. So I did some back of the napkin math and even if my extraneous costs doubled - boxes, labels, tape, packing paper - it would only affect my overall business by about 1-2%. If more people start buying American Made products due to prices getting more competitive with the foreign versions and my sales grow by just 5%, it will easily make up for the extra costs incurred.

Plus, more domestic manufacturing and supply may lead to lower costs from the manufacturers I source from here. Foreign things go up, local things go down. Might be cheaper in the long run anyway.

And I expect over time, not just due to prices becoming more competitive but also the overall sentiment of people wanting to support U.S. made - these tariffs are going to be great for people in similar situations.

Might not be so good for some of those companies listed in Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart though.

Here are the main issues:

- These tariffs are a necessary thing to even out the playing field. It should have been done decades ago. This is the blame of every president (and whoever controlled them) since basically the 1970’s.. until now. Other countries tariff us, but we have barely tariffed them. Outsourcing our wealth in the name of “free trade”, am I right?

- We had it too easy for too long, relying on cheap foreign goods (mainly Chinese) produced with cheap labor. I don’t want to have my crap made by child labor in the sweatshops of communist nations, do you?

- If we didn’t CONSUME so much, it wouldn’t be such an issue. The U.S. consumes 35% of the world’s goods, meanwhile we’re only 4% of the world’s population. How much do we really need?

- Many countries have already come to the negotiating table and their tariffs have been lowered substantially. 70+ countries. So it’s looking like this was an Art of the Deal play and worrying about a bunch of prices going up might not be needed. Now, China has retaliated, but they have said want to work out a deal as “long as it’s based on equality”. (ok bro)

The blame for this rests on those previously in power… and us, unfortunately. We let ourselves get sucked into relying on stuff from other places to run our businesses.

Going to be an uncomfortable process for some to unwind the globalism and get back to national/local reliance. But in the long run, it will pay off - bigly, because….

DOGE + tariffs = no income taxes.

We’ll all be richer soon, just have to put in some work to get there.

All My Links »