| A GREY SWAN PUBLICATION | Monday April 21, 2025 | Ripple Effect — April 21, 2025
As it turns out, that fancy $800 designer handbag was stitched in the same Chinese factory as the $80 knockoff—same hands, same materials, different markup. The Trump tariffs have suddenly ripped back an unexpected veil. China’s OEMs—Original Equipment Manufacturers – are the source of an enormous amount of Western wealth.
For decades, they toiled in white-label anonymity, making the actual products behind the world’s biggest brands, watching silently as Western firms slapped on logos and inflated the price tags into the stratosphere. Now, with tariffs biting and margins shrinking, they’re going direct-to-consumer, and the illusion of “brand premium” is crumbling like a stale cookie.
Enter the “Veblen effect” —a paradox where the more you charge, the more people want it. Price becomes status. But if your status symbol now ships in a brown box from Shenzhen for a third of the price, what exactly are you buying?  Amazon, meanwhile, could find itself gasping in the shaft.
With roughly 60% of its product flow tied to Chinese goods, a tariff-triggered disruption threatens over $216 billion in annual revenue. And it’s not just Amazon. Walmart, Target, even Macy’s—their margins are perched on the same brittle branch.
Tariffs were supposed to bring jobs back. Instead, they’ve lit a fuse under the entire global retail supply chain; one that AI-powered systems may be required to snuff.
-Addison P.S: As always, your cheerful reader feedback is welcome: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com (We read all emails. Thanks in advance for your contribution.)
How did we get here? Find out in these riveting reads: Demise of the Dollar, Financial Reckoning Day, and Empire of Debt — all three books are now available in their third post-pandemic editions. You might enjoy one or all three. 
(Or… simply pre-order Empire of Debt: We Came, We Saw, We Borrowed, now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or if you prefer one of these sites: Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million or Target.)
Please send your comments, reactions, opprobrium, vitriol and praise to: feedback@greyswanfraternity.com |
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