r/Jamaica • u/Sensitive-Pie-6595 • 3d ago
Economy Tariffs shouldn't really Hurt us
Those who live in Yard know that for so long we have been creating our own products, and buying from anywhere but the US. This goes back to the 1980s when America would give us 'string loans'... that is... they loan us $X but it can only be used to buy American products.
There was a time when in a supermarket big loooong aisles full of US stuff.
Over the years we started to quietly replace them with local products so that we didn't those loans.
We also started buying from other islands so that we had stuff from T'dad and of course, China.
Just before Trump did his tariff thing I looked at where my stuff came from.
Okay, everything that plugs in comes from China. Almost all my clothes come from China.
Now, my groceries.
I buy local stuff and stuff that comes from T'dad and every where else. Like this yogurt I use on my cereal comes from France, the other from Spain and the cereal is Jamaican. The coffee is Jamaican and I use Lasco instead of coffee mate.
The kind of flat breads/wraps i use are made in Jamaica as are the vegetables, soup, porridge, chocolate... in fact... I read labels before purchase.
if you look on the roads we have Toyota, Sukuzi... I haven't seen a US car since some years ago this Dodge.
I think Jamaica is not going to suffer very much because we wisely moved to standing on our own.
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u/Environmental_Tooth 3d ago
You also don't understand how tarrifs works. Or how Jamaica shopping for essentials has been moving. Everyone's shopping online for clothes and shoes because of the astronomical prices here.
Look at glasses. The eye wear companies are complaining. Because no one buys their over priced shit.
Not many people buy clothes here anymore. I don't remember the last time I did this. Prices are too crazy. They buy it on Amazon, Amazon gets it from china or Vietnam. It's shipped from the US to your door it will be affected by tarrifs.
Almost anything with a chip in it originated in Taiwan or Korea. China makes small appliances and TVs that sell well in Jamaica. Your computer your cellphone the car your average person owns has chips from Taiwan. Now increase the cost of of that chip by 35%. Buying anything with a screen or that has a chip means the cost is gonna increase two fold.
You have to also remember for the scale of most of our Jamaicans most of our vendors can't go directly to China. Not enough scale. So we go to resellers where? In the US. That will be affected by tarrifs.
So we're fucked on many fronts. I put in the order last week from some computer parts because I knew prices were gonna sky rocket after this fuckery. But let's see if they actually go through with these crazy increases in cost for everything.