Steve Lamar

But very critically, this whole narrative that tariffs are something that other countries pay, that's not true.

And the ways that we, buyers of stuff, feel the effects of tariffs is not always simply in raised prices.

And there is one category of products that was and is particularly subject to tariffs.

Steve Lamar, our tariff expert, is actually CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

This is what gets tariffed, clothing.

One Bloomberg estimate from 2015 claimed that 75% of tariffs that U.S.

households pay are from apparel.

Ed Gresser, vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

The United States used to make a ton of clothes.

We invented ready-to-wear.

We were cranking out mass-produced clothes for the whole world.

And we also had our domestic cotton and our mills.

We had a whole homegrown industry.

Tariffs were a way to protect our domestic clothing industry by making foreign clothes, at that point usually from England, more expensive.

So it's just inertia.

Clothing is so heavily tariffed, even though we don't really make a lot of clothing in the U.S.

anymore.

But luxury items have almost no tariff, while cheaper items do.

Cheap sneakers have a 48% tariff, while leather dress shoes have only an 8.5% tariff.

Acrylic sweaters have a 32% tariff.