The Verge: If you’ve ever been to an anime or any fan convention, you know that the place that’s often the busiest is artists alley. There, creators sell their wares ranging from commissioned artwork to stickers, enamel pins, stuffed toys, apparel, food, and more. Often these goods are made with the artist’s own hand. Other times, merchants are resellers, importing goods that are hard to find domestically, like gunpla kits, from markets where they’re more abundant. But with the Trump tariffs in effect, artists alleys might soon become ghost towns.
3 comments:
This was the craziest part about the tariffs to me. You’re tariffing something that just simply doesn't exist at all as a product that anyone in the United States makes. factories can't go up overnight, and this isn't any sort of key American industry that there is any real political reason to encourage the use of existing American corporations over their overseas counterparts. Furthermore, even assuming that you do want to somehow be able to make every product in the world in the United States, it takes time to get those things to happen and there's been no sort of thought given to what should happen in the meantime while an entire industry is getting built from the ground up. Additionally, if you can't source the materials, you are sort of destroying some parts of American labor that ARE in America, working in America, but can't get all of the necessary raw materials or something because it's simply not something that our natural resources have.
Politics have always had an effect on art but it’s sad to see how this presidential term is affecting people in terms of costs. The economy hasn’t been great for a while but. It’s sad to see that things have gotten to the point where businesses won’t be able to afford materials anymore due to these tariffs, there is literally no feasible way to avoid costs rising and most will have to get their wares from other sources which will be difficult to do in a small amount of time. China is the biggest manufacturing power in the world so nearly all of avenues of business in America will be affected by these tariffs, including a lot of art. A lot of the materials artists use do come from overt seas and can’t be sourced in America which is why these tarrifs won’t bode over well
Donald Trump is acting like a toddler who just learned a new word and wants to use it constantly. There is no way this man actually understands how tariffs work and who pays them. Then again, this move is absolutely on brand for him, as these tariffs have less effect on the already wealthy companies who can afford to take the cuts to their revenue, and are threatening to drive small businesses and lower corners of the market out of business entirely. I fear what this means for an already monopoly based economy and for the diversity of product options in the future. The effect that these tariffs have on Americans goes far beyond losing trillions of dollars in the short term, but the loss of the small business sector, which is inevitable if this insanity continues, will take decades to undo, and may lead to a cultural shift away from small scale industry that favors the uber wealthy and destroys yet another part of the already in shambles american dream.
Post a Comment