It's Been a Minute
Fast fashion vs. Trump: why women may pay more in the tariff wars
Wed, 02 Apr 2025
At the beginning of the year, Brittany spoke to ELLE Fashion Features Director and author, Véronique Hyland, about the growing trend of underconsumption content online. No-Buy January, buying secondhand, and mending old clothes seemed to be taking hold amongst some of the most popular influencers - even though the guiding principle of underconsumption is something we've been doing for a long time. Then, Trump started implementing tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada - and now even the European Union. That made Brittany think: how would fast fashion be affected by this? And would underconsumption move from a hashtag to a lifestyle? To find out, The Indicator's Wailin Wong joins the show to break down how tariffs will affect Americans who love to shop... when the prices drop.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who are the guests and what is underconsumption core in fashion?
That is Veronique Hyland. Thank you for having me. Fashion features director at Elle and author of Dress Code, unlocking fashion from the new look to millennial pink. She's followed online fashion trends from Mob Wives to Vera Bradley's TikTok revival. And after watching Emma Chamberlain's closet clean out, she noticed the latest shift in online fashion. Under consumption.
I was seeing people sometimes refer to it as underconsumption core. And I thought, well, this is something that a lot of people have been doing for a long time because there are people who are doing no buy January or even no buy years. And then there are sort of more low buy or shop your closet, as we called it during the recession.
Chapter 2: How has fast fashion affected clothing production and quality?
According to McKinsey & Company, from 2000 to 2014, clothing production doubled, and the number of garments purchased per capita increased by about 60%. That's in part due to the rise of fast fashion. And now, some consumers are seeing the fallout of that.
People have remarked that there's been an overall decline in clothing quality, or that when they're getting vintage pieces, even sometimes from a specific brand, the quality is better than before. the newer and people talking about relying on natural fibers like wool and cotton more, looking at tags very closely to see if things will last.
At the time of our chat, we wondered if the shift would stick in the post-New Year's resolution shuffle. It's no secret that Americans are deeply concerned about the economy, and there are numerous concerns about what fast fashion is doing to the environment. But that hasn't stopped the rise of places like Shein or Taimou.
However, there's one other piece of the puzzle that may influence the way we buy.
It'll be interesting to see how potential tariffs impact all of this if things get even more expensive because there have been rumblings about that in both fashion and beauty and obviously other realms too. I wonder if that'll push people more towards either secondhand or lower priced alternatives.
I chatted with Veronique in January, right before President Trump took office. And since then, we've seen that Trump has decided to go forward with imposing tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico, and China. So now you might be wondering, what does that have to do with underconsumption? Actually, what does that have to do with fashion at all? Well, everything.
What's really kind of remarkable about this current trade war that we're finding ourselves in is that it's so broad, right? It means that a huge amount of stuff that we kind of take for granted is going to be affected. And, you know, that includes clothing and includes footwear, includes handbags, you know, the stuff that makes the consumer economy run, you know?
That's NPR's very own Waylon Wong from The Indicator. I want to make sure everyone's clear. A tariff is a tax that American businesses or consumers pay on imported goods from overseas. So as tariffs on goods from China or Mexico go up, our prices go up. But then you have to ask, if our prices are going to go up, why is the Trump administration doing this in the first place?
The economic rationale for tariffs is typically that it is meant to stimulate domestic production or protect a domestic industry. So basically, as Chinese steel or Mexican avocados or whatever get more expensive because of tariffs, American shoppers will turn to American businesses for those things. The problem with this rationale, especially as it applies to clothing or apparel, is that the U.S.
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Chapter 3: What are the impacts of Trump's tariffs on fashion and consumers?
People were already having trouble affording groceries and eggs and all the rest of it. And when you think about if our produce from Mexico and Canada get more expensive, that does potentially cut into people's discretionary budgets around stuff like clothing.
Today on the show, Waylon helps break down how tariffs will affect Americans and what these taxes can reveal about who's actually footing the bills in this country.
Music You know, what's interesting is that this is not our first go around with tariffs under Trump. He also did a version of this trade war when he was president the first time, although it wasn't quite as extreme and chaotic as this current round has been. And
I think that the bigger response we've seen from the business community, from apparel makers, et cetera, in response to tariffs has been to move production to countries where there aren't tariffs. So I think that is the bigger business move that you've seen.
So perhaps moving your production center out of China, out of Mexico, out of Canada.
Exactly. So Shein, which, you know, has really popped up in the last few years as a huge purveyor of extremely cheap clothing from China. Shein has been shifting production to countries like Brazil and Turkey. And so these are the kinds of workarounds you're seeing from especially a lot of apparel or fast fashion companies, is looking for production in countries that are not going to be tariffed.
And sometimes even rerouting shipments in this kind of like circuitous way. So when it comes into the U.S., it's coming in from a place that's not tariffed.
Jeez. I mean, I imagine it's less complicated for a much larger company to make a big change like that than perhaps a smaller one.
Oh, absolutely. Like, for example, Zara's CEO was recently asked, what do you make of all this uncertainty from the tariffs? And the CEO said, basically, we can adapt because we have production in 50 countries, right? So this is a CEO of Zara's parent company. So they are a massive corporation, production in
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Chapter 4: How do tariffs influence fast fashion production and pricing strategies?
I mean, depending on your budget, that might be a no-go for you, right? So in economics, you... Talk about the, you know, elasticity of demand and how much does it change in response to movements in prices. For luxury items, demand is generally considered elastic. Basically, a person's demand for luxury goods expands and contracts based on how much money they have to spend.
That's different than their demand for a necessity like food or utilities. But for people on the really high end of the income spectrum, they're not price sensitive. So their demand for luxury goods can be inelastic, meaning they keep buying this stuff even if prices go up.
Okay, okay. So back to President Trump. When he was reelected, there was already some preparation from the fashion industry in anticipation of the tariffs that he may propose. Now that we're here, right, the tariffs are in effect. How have fashion retailers, particularly in fast fashion, reacted to this?
Well, you know, what's interesting is we had this strange little experiment around something called the de minimis loophole. Do you know what this is? No, I don't know anything about it. OK, so this relates to tariffs because there's this longstanding loophole where shipments worth under $800 are allowed into the U.S. duty free, no taxes. And this saves Shein and Timu millions of dollars.
They have taken full advantage of this wiggle room. And that's one reason why their clothing is so cheap for American consumers. It's because there's this loophole that allows their shipments to come in duty free because it's always under this threshold. Now, in February, Trump. try to close this loophole. And so in response, Timu raised prices on its website.
Like people who shop on Timu or people who are monitoring the website for an effect saw the prices go up basically like right away after Trump announced that he was closing this loophole. Then there was this whole thing where he was like, never mind, we're not closing the loophole. I'm going to ask the Commerce Department to set up a system to process and inspect all these shipments.
So now the loophole is back in effect. And so that means that this stuff from Shein and Timu can still come in duty-free because of this threshold. But this is something that affects fast fashion companies like Shein and Timu in a way that would not affect a luxury clothing maker.
Coming up.
What if people are responding to higher prices for clothing by saying, you know what, I'm not going to give away my clothes like I used to or try to sell them secondhand. That's potentially taking supply out of the secondhand market. And then if you have more demand for secondhand clothing because people are looking for cheaper clothing.
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Chapter 5: Why do tariffs affect luxury goods differently than fast fashion?
And when you think about the rest of the tariffs that are in effect and if our produce from Mexico and Canada get more expensive and if, you know, the cost of all these other products that we've come to rely on, become more expensive, you know, that does potentially cut into people's discretionary budgets around stuff like clothing. Right.
Like if I can't afford groceries, I'm not I'm not at the mall. I'm not at the mall buying a new outfit for the weekend. I am saving my pennies because I need to be able to buy milk, you know.
But the thing about these tariffs, though, is that they're not applied equally to all goods. In researching for this episode, our producer Alexis found that this depends on lots of things. Like, for instance, gender. In the US, as far as we know, the US is the only country that has gender-based tariffs on clothing, meaning women's wear has higher tariffs than men's wear.
Yes. And, you know, what's interesting is I saw something from the World Bank that found a couple other countries that also do a version of this. I think the World Bank mentioned Botswana, South Africa. But the U.S. is a very prominent example of an economy that does gender based tariffs.
And an example of this is a men's jacket that comes from overseas, might get taxed because, remember, a tariff is a tax. that we pay as the consumer, a men's jacket might get taxed at 8.5% and a women's jacket of, you know, comparable type, category, whatever, will get taxed at 14%. So it's... Oh my gosh, that's almost twice as much. So it's a difference, yeah.
And there was, Texas A&M University did a study that they published in 2015 that found that on average, the tax for imported women's clothing is three percentage points higher than imported men's clothing. Wow. So that does make a pretty big difference if you think about what your budget for new clothing purchases might be.
And if you think about, you know, maybe you're working in a profession where you as a woman do not make as much as a man working the same job. So now it's this double whammy where you're not earning as much and your stuff costs more because of these gender based tariffs.
Gosh, gosh. Okay, so that makes me wonder, though, how the secondhand and vintage reseller market will be affected by these tariffs. The resale market has been hot for years.
And if there's this idea that consumers are moving toward more sustainable practices, or even just this idea that consumers need to perhaps save money for other reasons, I wonder how the secondhand market will adjust to all of this.
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Chapter 6: What is the de minimis loophole and how does it affect fast fashion retailers?
That's potentially taking supply out of the secondhand market. I didn't even think about that. And then if you have more demand for secondhand clothing because people are looking for cheaper clothing, and less supply, then that means that prices for secondhand goods could also rise.
Now, are they going to rise so much that that then creates kind of an affordability problem for people who really need to be shopping secondhand because they can't afford to buy new? I don't know. It's like this is what's so complicated about trying to game out the impact of these tariffs. And it's like that kind of uncertainty ripples throughout the entire economy.
My gosh. I mean, I had anticipated that the demand for secondhand items could go up, but I hadn't even thought that there could be a possibility that the demand for them may go down. I wonder who are secondhand shoppers or like, is it a niche market or... Is this group going? I know that there's a variety of motivations for why people shop secondhand. Some people, it's cost.
Some people, it's preference. Some people, it's sustainability or looking for something specific. Some people are like vintage collectors. But I wonder, like, I don't know, who makes up this group? Yeah.
I think that from what I've heard and read, your resale shopper, your thrifter falls into kind of two broad categories. From what I've heard and read, thrift store shoppers tend to fall into two broad categories. One is the shopper that needs to shop secondhand because they're looking for a more affordable alternative. This is kind of where their budget is.
And then there's a second category of shopper that's hunting for something trendy or unique. Now, this group also includes people who are looking for a cool find that they can flip and resell. And that's an activity that's gotten pretty big. You might even notice this if you go to your local Goodwill or something like we have out by me.
I live outside Chicago and further out in the Chicago suburbs, you have to kind of drive kind of far out. There's a Goodwill outlet store, which is like the Goodwill of Goodwills. It's like where this stuff goes that like didn't sell and like the regular Goodwill. And it is like total. Total chaos. I mean, it's just these like huge tables. Nothing is folded.
And it's all like every size is just like dumped on a big table. And then you just kind of like go splunking in these like big, messy tables. And the one time I went to the Goodwill outlet, it was so interesting because you could see who the professionals were. You know, you could see the people who were They would position themselves by a table when the new stuff was coming out.
And then you could see they were just laser focused. They were looking for whatever, like Jordans or, you know, like they knew which brands to look for.
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