Michael Olson

A friend of mine runs a denim brand. His jeans cost $300 because they're cut and sewn in Los Angeles using premium Japanese denim. He tells me that Trump's trade war has done three things: 1. They've raised the cost of his inputs. He can't substitute his Japanese denim with American denim because doing so would lower the quality of his product. If he's going to make premium jeans, he has to use premium materials. And the best stuff right now comes from Japan. 2. They've made his products more expensive abroad. In Canada, for instance, the price of his jeans has gone up because of the trade war. 3. He's seen a decrease in overseas sales. He tells me that a Canadian store reduced its orders this year because, as they told him, customers now come in and explicitly say they won't buy anything made in the US. Of course, if the tariffs encouraged Americans to switch from their cheap $50 imported Levi's to $300 made-in-USA jeans, then that would be great! But that has not happened. People who buy $50 Levi's may pay $60, reducing their purchasing power elsewhere, but they don't switch to made-in-USA jeans. Hard to see the point of this trade war with Canada.