Made in America

When you buy made in America, does that mean all the items that are included in the product are all from America?

“My Pillow” man claims that his cotton sheets are made from certified Gaza Egyptian cotton from Egypt. He also claims that all his products are made in America. Basically, they are assembled in America but they still import the cotton.

Many if not most American products are comprised of other imported materials to complete the finished product. Will the new tariffs cause these companies to lower their prices?

President Trump and others in his cabinet think that raising tariffs will make more foreign manufacturers want to make their products in America. In some cases that will be true, but because we now live in a world economy there are even more choices than ever.

No one is forced to buy from a country that imposes unreasonably high tariffs. If they need our market they will have to lower their prices to meet any demand.

It’s still supply and demand. If they can’t sell their supply and others won’t buy, then they will have to lower prices to compete.

Thinking back to my years of asking advertisers to buy ads on our radio stations, we could ask for any price we wanted but were subject to what the competition was doing and if we wanted or needed the business we would have to lower our rates. Prices were also based on availability. The lower the availability, the higher the price. The higher the availability, the lower the price.

Just as in other industries, when demand for our product grew, our rates grew…when demand waned, our rates lowered.

Is this similar to tariffs?