CBS News’ Megan Cerullo reports that consumers are now facing “tariff surcharges” for some goods as companies pass along costs. To be sure, tariffs are a real concern for businesses and consumers alike. Businesses must adapt to survive, which in this case means either adjusting supply chains to source products from less costly countries, raising prices, or some combination of both. What this moment is NOT is a time to make political points. Whenever companies stick their noses into politics, it rarely ends well.
Enter Dame, a “sexual wellness brand” (a maker of sex toys — no judgment, lets just call it what it is). According to CBS News:
Dame, a sexual wellness brand that makes adult toys and personal care products, has implemented a $5 “Trump tariff surcharge” that is automatically added to customers’ online shopping carts at checkout.
Dame CEO Alexandra Fine said the fee doesn’t cover all of its extra costs and that the company is analyzing its pricing given that most of its products are made in China. “Our whole industry is in China, so we’ve already seen the impact,” she told CBS MoneyWatch.
As if tacking on a “Trump Tariff Surcharge” to your customer’s order didn’t make enough of a political point, they even put a Trumpian blond coiffure on it to really drive the point home.
Regardless of one’s personal feelings about the matter, as a CEO you have a fiduciary duty to do what’s best for your business. Often that means making hard decisions. Alienating a big percentage of your customers based on politics shouldn’t be one of them.
In business there are ALWAYS tough problems to navigate, no matter which political party holds power at any given moment. This author’s own business struggled with not being able to get the basic supplies we needed during the Covid pandemic; we struggled even more under the inflation of the Biden years, having to raise our prices to consumers numerous times. The tariffs Trump is proposing may very well force us to raise prices again. We will do everything we can to reduce costs, and we will raise our prices whatever we must to stay in business, hoping that customers will continue to buy.
What we won’t do is try to make cheap political points. We didn’t put a “Biden inflation surcharge” on during the last administration, and we won’t put a “Trump tariff surcharge” on during this one — because that would be a STUPID BUSINESS DECISION.
One reply on “How NOT to handle rising costs due to tariffs”
I love how Dame misspelled “tariff” in the URL of their silly page. Crazy lefties think they’re so much better than everyone else, yet don’t know how to spell!