Just curious about how this works out. At scale, would either decision make any sort of impact? I know most people, including me, will end up avoiding heavily tariffed products out of personal financial reasons. But in theory, would US residents buying or not buying tariffed products be the larger anti-tariff statement? I feel like the obvious answer is “only buy tariffed products” which is why I chose this community but I’m not entirely certain.
I would like to stress again that I am asking this hypothetically, and specifically and only in the context of political statements regarding tariffs. I am of course aware that no single person will have any impact on their own, and I am similarly aware that almost everyone will be avoiding highly tariffed products for non-political reasons either way.
Buy it later, if possible. Companies abroad are well aware that costumers won’t buy their products while tariffs are in place. But it’s very likely that those tarrifs will end or be massively reduced after some weeks or months. Buy it then and those companies can sell those products to you just like nothing happened. They can wait some time, it doesn’t really matter to them when you buy it.
The same goes off course for buying before the tarrifs take effect. Like apple fans are right now emptying the iPhone shelfs, before the tarrifs hit the component imports from China.
Of course that only works with certain products, that you can actually afford to wait for.
Which is exactly why the tariffs are stupid at one more level. The only thing they’re good for in theory is to level the playing field for non-tariffed products, to make them competitive to make ‘here’, but no company in it’s right mind is going to invest in the infrastructure it’s meant to drive knowing they aren’t guaranteed in the slightest.