Echoes of ‘Tariffism’ Heard in the Outdoors
LISTEN: (5 min, 23 sec)
RIGHT OR WRONG, many of the on-then-off-then-on-again tariff threats made earlier this year have been carried out, to varying degrees. If these acts of “tariffism” have not yet hit your pocketbook or your business, they will. They have already invaded the sanctity of the outdoors sporting world.
We thought we had survived something fierce and chaotic by living through a global pandemic. The shock and awfulness that COVID unleashed five years ago was more than Twenty-First-Century creatures, sheltered by Miracles of Modern Medicine, could handle. At least at first. Under-reaction and then Over-reaction by federal, state and local governments bred chaos and toilet paper shortages. But time and a lot of scientific elbow grease got us through it (except, sadly, for a million dead fellow Americans and millions more fellow Earthlings).
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You’d think a world, and nation, that survived such a calamity would come out the other side better equipped to deal with chaotic threats to peace and prosperity. And yet, here we are… more global economic panic, more potential anarchy, more chaos.
The administration we chose last November hit the ground at a full run—or, more aptly, at full golf cart speed—tearing down institutions, swatting away legal and constitutional challenges, and brandishing tariffs like they were newly purchased guns in an open carry state.
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Even the hollow threats—delayed or watered down tariffs—have bred uncertainty and contributed to the mounting chaos and despair.
At least during the COVID pandemic, the outdoors provided one of the few alternatives that allowed us to escape life-threatening risk and sanity-threatening isolation. This time, however, a plague of economic disarray and anxiety is even threatening to erode the foundations of the rugged outdoors.
Thousands of entrepreneurs and large-scale companies have invigorated the age-old sports of fishing and hunting with modern innovations. For better or worse, they relied on the globalization of supply chain sourcing to bring those innovations to life. Shelves and gun cases in Academy, Bass Pro and other big box sporting goods outlets brimmed with new and more ingenious gear—at prices that even working men and women could easily swallow.
Outdoors companies, like those in other industries, took advantage of a rise in foreign government investment in engineering and manufacturing infrastructure, as well as local labor that eagerly sought to better their own lives—at much lower costs.
These moves fell in line with a trend that has devastated traditional U.S. manufacturing, mainly in the Midwest. When major manufacturers pulled out and relocated to offshore plants, they left behind the wreckage of whole communities that had grown dependent on local economies fueled by high-wage union jobs. This trend started in the 1970s. As it escalated, with Asia at Ground Zero and other nations getting into the offshoring game, a new economy soon developed. In this new economy, prices on most manufactured goods, along with inflation, remained relatively frozen in the U.S. and other Western nations for more than a quarter century.
Many of our favorite fishing and hunting innovations became possible because the innovators were able to bring their concepts to reality—and to market—by getting them tooled, manufactured, and packaged offshore and transported home (through simultaneous advances in a booming worldwide shipping network) at a fraction of U.S. based production costs.
Obviously, there were plenty of shenanigans behind the rise of this global shift in supply-side sourcing and logistics. Tales abounded of intellectual property rip-offs and shipping delays. Working conditions in many of these nations were horrendous. And the subsidies some nations put behind their new industries, coupled with tariffs on imported American-made products did create some genuine trade deficits.
But this was a global economy that was decades-long in its formation and one that both U.S. companies and consumers happily grew dependent on. Even those unfortunate souls in left-behind Rust Belt communities enjoyed the fruits of Walmart pricing on a cornucopia of imported goods.
“Tariffing” the whole economy in broad swipes has imposed a level of pain no one in this pampered society was remotely prepared to endure. Whether you asked (voted) for it or not, you’re a willing or unwilling participant in a frontal assault on the economic order that has prevailed for the majority of American lifetimes.
Here in the outdoors industry, we see companies struggling to plan for the future, and in more than a few cases, to survive. Federal courts have weighed in—prompting the American Sportfishing Association to issue guidance on “tariff refund procedures.” Of course, for the moment, this only adds to the uncertainty and disarray.
In the end, if tariffism wins and very many of these outdoors innovators go down, it will be bad for us all.
E-mail Roy at rneves@fishgame.com and Ardia at aneves@fishgame.com
