Varun Srinivasan
@v
Talked to a few people in India who manufacture and export clothing to US brands. The most likely outcome if tarriffs stick for a year is that manufacturing still stays offshore, but the average American gets lower quality stuff for the same price. https://x.com/balajis/status/1907645443221463105
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
What's happening at the negotiating table is that: - Higher end brands are staying with the same manufacturers, and passing increased costs onto customers. - Low end brands are pushing manufacturers to absorb costs. They can't raise prices without losing customers to other low-end brands. - No one is realistically considering moving any manufacturing to America.
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
The low end outcome is the most interesting. Brands won't raise prices, so they end up pushing manufacturers to lower costs. Manufacturers can't run at a loss so they cut costs somewhere - either by reducing the process (less likely) or by using cheaper goods (most likely). What will brands do? Some of them will explicitly accept this, and other will do so implicitly. There is a lot of corruption in the buying process, and its not unrealistic that money changes hands and certain quality checks are ignored.
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Varun Srinivasan
@v
The bottom line for the average American is that stuff is going to be more crappy for a little bit. And these jobs aren't coming back to America anytime soon.
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Brenner
@brenner.eth
And some people then say I don’t like this brand quality anymore so I’m gonna buy a higher quality brand and some of them might happen to be American made
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osama
@osama
i think there's an even deeper issue beyond costs. eg Sialkot, Pakistan is one of the largest exporters of surgical goods. imagine doctors not being able to cut you open b/c of supply chain costs. happened during covid so precedence. there's no way to grow south east asian tea/rice or make scalpels locally within months/2-3years
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