All The Scary Stuff

 

I'd been reading an article about sales on pantry necessities yesterday afternoon and how much of an increase we can expect on each one due to tariffs. 

I woke this morning from a very frustrating dream.  I lived in an older home.  My family was all young and still living at home.  My mother came in complaining over the cost of food items.  John came in worried about a necessary repair that we couldn't afford.  I had been feeling optimistic at the start of the dream but as time went on and each person came in with their burden of worries, I began to feel more and more anxious and upset.

Truth told that is about how I felt last night when I went off to bed, overtired and overwhelmed with all the bad news and the fear mongering headlines and vlog titles with dire warnings.  

Consumers already knew that tariffs would affect our bottom lines.  That's why so many are against them.  

I'm not voicing a political opinion but applying good common sense to a situation that we all need to see clearly.  

Some of the items mentioned will be 10-50% more per can.  For example, pineapple is often imported from Costa Rica.  That country will see a 15% tariff.  If you buy a can now for $1.59 (Aldi price) then you'll likely be paying 23c more per can.  

Is that hard to bear?  Not singly perhaps but if we purchase 4 or more cans a month it starts to run up. If it were just one item we might manage but if it's multiples of items then we're looking at a situation where we, the consumer is going to feel the pinch.

Now in an ideal world, that tariff would be a payment that wasn't passed on to the consumer, but big corporation is not going to let it pass.  I will be the first to say that I don't know all about corporate food companies, but I do know that there is a monopoly, and a very few are getting the majority of the sums we spend.  They are in it for profit.  The monopoly is not the 'brand'.  The monopoly is the big corporate umbrella that has bought up myriads of smaller companies and some well-known brands and it is they who control supply and demand and pricing.  Many are getting tax cuts but they do not pass that along to us.  However, if they must pay more for anything, we can be assured that we too will pay more for it.  Period.

I promise you, I want my home economy to be profitable as well.  If I open my own business, I don't want to go on the principle that I'm in it for love and loss.  I want to earn some money!   But I do think there is danger in letting anyone hold too much power...Just saying. 

Do I think tariffs are wrong?  Inconvenient perhaps, but not wrong, no.  In principle the idea is that they will benefit the country.  

I think our dependence upon other countries to provide our goods was fostered by a business model that would rather outsource where labor is cheaper and environmental practices are laxer and where taxation is decreased rather than upon what we can grow in the states (we DO grow pineapple in Hawaii, for instance).  We have been turned into a nation that is dependent upon others.  I am all for allowing another, poorer country to benefit from our need of product (if only the people/country who really needed that assistance was benefitting and not just big corporation).    

Will those tariffs benefit our country? The tariffs are supposed to be income that is desperately needed to help cover certain program deficits.  It is a surcharge imposed on those goods.  The countries who want to export the goods are meant to pay it.  The corporations, who are earning profit in those countries will actually pay it.  And they in turn will pass their new costs over to us, the consumer.  

Now no one had us fooled.  We all knew that in the end, we'd be the ones to pay the price.  Tariff or taxation, take your choice.  That's the way it stands.  We are going to have to pay more, because as far as corporation and government sees it, we are the only source of income they have.

Of all the items on the list of tariffed pantry items, the blogger didn't mention that only two of these items are not produced in the United States.  If we're going to pay higher prices anyway, we could look at what an American produced product will cost, and we might choose to buy those instead.  Less for big corporations?  It all depends.  So many small brands that were well known and successful (like Hebrew National) have been assumed by corporations (like ConAgra), that finding our way out from under the corporate umbrella while shopping in the same ways as in the past will make it difficult to get away from corporations.  

However, by choosing to buy an American produced item when possible, we can send a message to the corporations that we're unwilling to accept the higher price of the imported items.  That's one way to avoid tariffs.  However, it won't save any of us any money.

So, what else can we do?

We can produce more at home.  In that case we'll be working a lot harder.  In the years when we can't grow due to weather or health, then we'd be forced to buy some things.  If you don't have your own land, you can look for a community allotment project.  We can support farmer's markets and truck farmers.  We can support local butchers and abattoirs if we don't wish to grow our own meats. We can support local farmers and buy locally produced and canned items.  We may have to travel a little further than a run around the block to the store, but we can take those steps.  

For myself, this is something I think I'd like to try to do.  In the past, I foraged for food.  I'm always willing to accept someone's excess garden items, too.

I'll look for affordable resources for locally grown and produced items.  Mind you, I know two or three small farms that do this exact thing that are local to me.  Their meat is higher than in the grocery store, but the animals are raised in a cleaner environment, and they aren't factory butchered.  But yes, you're going to pay for the costs of that operation because they have expenses to cover and want to make a profit as well.  They're not in it for just the warm glow they get at night knowing they worked hard to produce something.  And who can blame them?!  

I'll be frank...We've discussed buying another freezer and using it for meat storage and buying a quarter or half cow and half pig.  But it's also true that I really can't pay $15 for a chicken simply because someone raised it and butchered it on their farm.  I can't see paying $200 for a Thanksgiving turkey from the local farm either.  And if I could afford to pay $10 a pound for beef, well I wouldn't struggle so at the grocery, would I?  Some things, I'll just have to accept are beyond my ability to budget for and keep using the same old source, the grocery store, aka distribution center for major corporate food supplies.

We can learn to eat what we have.  Pineapple is good.  I like it a lot.  But if I can't afford it, I can reserve that for a treat.  I can actually use the measures given in a recipe for vanilla and chocolate chips and cocoa instead of dumping in extra and smirking thinking I've been a genius.  Not true.  I've just been wasteful.

I can buy oranges that are grown in Florida or California and make my own juice at home instead of buying bottles and frozen concentrate that are filled in Argentina and Brazil.  If I can't afford tuna, I'll drop it from the menu.   Right now, I'm good with about a two-year supply on hand.  I didn't buy it because I feared a tariff upcharge but because the last tuna I'd bought two years ago was gone and I came across a decent sale, so I stocked up.

For those items I don't imagine I'll give up, I'll just shop around for the best prices and discover which countries will have a lesser tariff (aka increase).  I don't imagine you're going to see me going coffee free anytime soon, but I can make sure my coffee is sourced from Colombia (10%) and not Brazil (50%).  I'm down to one cup of coffee every morning these days and I reckon our budget can stand that increase.  

What I don't plan to do is sit around worrying, acting fearful and thinking I am a poor victim.  As in all things, I can fuss, and fidget or I can just tuck up my skirts in my waistband and get to work in the field before me.  

And that's my take on it all. 

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