Tariff Impact on Glass Pipes Made in USA

Regarding Tariff Impact on Glass Pipes Made in USA, we’ve received a litany of congratulations from our customers about the application of Tariffs on China. “You Guys made it!” “Finally an even playing field” and “Y’all are going to crush it now”. We appreciate the sentiment, Thank You!

No one hopes that more than we do, but it is simply not a big deal for glass pipes. Don’t take it from me on experience, fact check things on chinese online marketplaces like ‘DHGate’, ‘madeinchina’, ‘temu’ and ‘Shein’.

You will see all of the AMINO (American Made in Name Only) Glass copies that look an awful lot like they were ‘Shipped from Texas’ or ‘Designed in California’ and as we know, that’s all just marketing double talk to sound Made in USA, when it’s actually made in china.

And, everyone actually knows it but rationalizes purchasing a Made in Chimerica piece of glass because it saves an extra couple bucks. And, because it’s only a couple bucks, most people would rightly imagine that those AMINO companies would struggle now. Except they will not because it’s not a ‘couple of bucks’.

That suspiciously similar piece on DHGate is…that can’t be right, it says $0.59 USD. Wait, what? Yes, that ‘dimpled’ steamroller is available on DHGate and it is NOT expensive. That item is going to be slapped with huuuuuge tariffs approaching 200%. $0.59 x 200% =  $1.77. The shipping costs on a container of hundreds of thousands of them becomes negligible when cost is spread over the number of units. That item is now sold on a well known ‘manufacturer’ website for $18 plus shipping.

Yesterday: $18 – $0.59 = $17.41 profit

Tarriffed: $18 – $1.77 = $16.23 profit

And the Tariff Impact on Glass Pipes Made in USA? Wow, they are going to take a hit! Oh, yeah, they’re shaking in their boots and Chameleon will return to glor…..yeah, no, it’s not going to change a damn thing folks. Oh, but Ken, those In-cyclers are …. even worse. Again, on DHGate for $4.78 each with a tariff applied at $13.44 and available to you for purchase at $127.49. Quick math: $127-13 = $114 profit.

Margin% = 127-13/127 x 100 = 89.8 . That is 90% pure profit. 90% of what you paid for is profit. Don’t get me wrong, profit is necessary. Most small businesses and Small Cap industrials book around 7-11%. 90% seems excessive, no? No. Not when you buy at china cost and sell like you are Made in USA. Made in USA means USA wages, USA rent and USA taxes (Fica, Futa, Suta, Med) to name a few. Regardless of your view of taxes, roads do not fix themselves. 

Reality check: Production of borosilicate (Pyrex) still exists in the USA, but it is pharmaceutical grade precision from a Japanese multi-national, not full melt/art. All of the tubing our functional art industry uses is made overseas. Most is, you guessed it, chinese. Most of the clear and ALL of the production colored tube is from china as well. A small amount of global clear production (what we use) is made at the Schott Boroartistic Furnaces in Czechia. It is roughly 3X more expensive than the chinese tubing product.  

Even the domestic color producers (Northstar and Alchemy) are going to get beat up and pass it on to us. Reciprocal tariffs on Rare Earth elements (say it with me, From where? china) play an outsized role in making colored borosilicate. ‘Rare Earth’ are only called rare because of the small % of them in everyday deposits. They’re actually plentiful, but the nasty processes to extract them have been shunned for very negative environmental impact, which is why it’s been greenwashed and sent to … china. 

The pipes we make here in the USA are going to be tariffed through all three channels, Czechia (clear), china (colored tube) and US color (rare earth from china). If, and that’s a big If, the tariffs are not merely a negotiating chip and they remain in place, costs will increase more on US Producers than producers in china. If chinese producers use chinese raw materials and then export at chinese prices, tariffs at this level (not a car or an aircraft engine … we’re talking about glass pipes) are almost negligible (see ‘math’ above) and will not impact how they are sold in the US market.

I’m not wading into the esoteric back and forth over tariffs, my economics are limited to guns and butter. I CAN comment on how they will counter-intuitively impact Made in USA producers more than the importers. These tariffs also ignore the root issues of what has created this imbalance, which until resolved will continue to make life difficult for those of us still blowing glass in the US. china steals our intellectual property, invests enormous capital into new factories, leverages incredibly low cost labor (1/20th of USA) and then dumps the product in the US market under cost to eliminate domestic competition. 

It took us 30+ years to get where we are at and it’s not going to magically fix itself without a great deal of pain in the consumer sector. Necessary pain? Yes. Maybe not for glass pipes and those of us trying to eak out a living making them here in the US, but for vitally important National Priorities and Necessities, yes, reshoring manufacturing is necessary and there will be pain. Our forebears gave away too much to china, buying it back is going to be expensive.