The U.S. just threw a tariff curveball, and Ralph and Lauren are here to break it down. Will this economic shake-up spell disaster, or is there hidden opportunity for marketers and business owners? They dive into the chaos, debunk tariff myths (spoiler: consumers pay the price), and explore how brands can pivot, whether you’re selling whiskey in Canada or running ads in the U.S. If you’ve got skin in the game, this episode is a must-listen. Get ready to turn uncertainty into your next big win!
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 – The Perpetual Traffic Takeoff
- 00:01:57 – Tariffs, Taxes & Turmoil
- 00:03:33 – The Hidden Tax Nobody Talks About
- 00:05:19 – When Prices Go Up, Who Pays? (Hint: It’s Not Them)
- 00:08:02 – Finding Gold in Market Mayhem
- 00:09:55 – Business Survival Mode: Activated
- 00:12:37 – Marketing Gymnastics in an Economic Earthquake
- 00:19:04 – The Next Big Shockwave—Are You Ready?
- 00:20:22 – Mic Drop, But Not Really—Your Move!
LINKS AND RESOURCES:
- Tier 11
- Mongoose Media
- Tier 11 Jobs
- Perpetual Traffic
- Marketing Performance Indicators™ Checklist
- Perpetual Traffic on YouTube
- Tier 11 on YouTube
- Connect with Lauren on Instagram
- Connect with Ralph on LinkedIn
- Follow Perpetual Traffic on Twitter
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Mentioned in this episode:
AppSumo – 13% off with code traffic13
Read the Transcript Below:
Trump’s Tariffs: The Marketing Opportunity & Impact Revealed
Ralph: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the perpetual traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, the founder and CEO of tier 11, alongside my amazing co host.
Lauren: Lauren E. Petrulo, the founder of Mongoose Media.
Ralph: The reason I say amazing, because we’re going to be talking economics here today and tariffs. And the impact on you, the marketer, what is all this tariff talk? How is this going to impact you, a business owner and a marketer all at the same time? And obviously we’re going to have to see how it all shakes out here.
Ralph: We just got word that, within the last 24 hours that the original tariff for Mexico, Canada. And, well, China is still in play, but Mexico and Canada, there has been a 30 day, now a 90 day potential, postponement. We’re not exactly sure, but the point is, is that [00:01:00] this is something that you as a business owner and you as a marketer are going to have to deal with, whether it’s the threat of this happening.
Ralph: my opinion, it’s really, it’s a threat more than anything else, or whether it’s actually going to happen because it’s just economic suicide. If it’s actually done, in my opinion, however, it’s something that you need to deal with on a regular basis because uncertainty in the market is kind of what we talk about all the time here.
Ralph: The algorithms are constantly changing. Business environment is constantly changing. you got Trump in his first two weeks of office, like. Continuously changing like news headline after news headline.
Lauren: So we’re here to talk about how our tariffs going to affect you as a business owner and how you can respond to it. And this might even create some opportunity for you in the marketplace due to this level of uncertainty and chaos. That the United States is creating in the worldwide marketplace.
Ralph: So Lauren E. Petrullo, I know you have some very, very strong opinions on this.
Lauren: So before we get into our opinions on how this will impact use the business owner and as the [00:02:00] marketer, let’s just establish what a tariff actually is and how it impacts business just in general.
Ralph: Before we get into how you might be able to take advantage of this, or at least how Respond to it in a positive way. So Lauren E. Petrillo, MBA, I’m leaning on your economics part of that MBA, which I know you did a little macro and micro in there somewhere to define
Ralph: exactly what a tariff is.
Lauren: we’ll just use like Oxford Dictionary Investopedia Simple Basic. A tariff is imposed by one country on goods and services imported from another country. so essentially it’s a tax. It makes you more expensive whether a product or a service depending on how the tariff is imported.
Lauren: So, your candle might cost a dollar today, but when a tariff is imposed, it might cost you a dollar thirty two. And that implication doesn’t mean that you’re getting thirty two cents more, it means that the government entity that imposed that tariff is collecting an additional thirty two cents.
Lauren: If you studied any U. S. history, [00:03:00] you know that the taxes on tea led to the Boston Tea Party, which is where you live.
Lauren: And so that didn’t go over very well.
Ralph: You know that the American revolution was not about freedom. It was about money if you really do the core of it all, it’s like the rich guys were getting
Ralph: taxed
Lauren: yeah, every
Ralph: hundred percent.
Lauren: war,
Ralph: World conflict,
Lauren: yes, revolves around money. They’ll say it’s religion, but that’s very rarely actually true. there’s financial ties to it, and I’ll, pull a cost and I’m like, I’ll fight you on that conspiracy theory.
Ralph: I agree on that. so there is misinformation, however, on who actually pays the tariff. And this is the part that I think is confusing to a lot of people. A lot of people, maybe even who voted for our current president, is that he feels it is paid or trying to position it that it’s paid by the country being taxed, which is not the case.
Ralph: A hundred percent, not the case. Let’s be
Ralph: very taxes are paid by an individual.
Ralph: correct. And they are paid by the company, American [00:04:00] companies pay the tariffs and that money then is then sent to the U S treasury. Okay, so the company, you as the business owner, pay that tariff. China doesn’t pay that tariff. Canada doesn’t pay that tariff.
Ralph: Mexico doesn’t pay that tariff.
Ralph: You pay that as a collective, it’s assumed that the Governing body is going to be paying that tariff and in the event that they provide a subsidy, then yes, say, for example, if Canada were to cover the 25 percent tariff increase and they subsidized products so that the tariff increase doesn’t change the price. of the goods sold then in that case, but I don’t know history well enough economic history to understand if that’s a common case, but at the end of the day, if the person who’s going to be paying the tariff is the end consumer
Ralph: So the company pays the tariff. But unless there’s a subsidy issued by the government, which as of right now has not occurred, if that occurs, great. However, Right now it’s being paid by the company itself, and that company is not going to not pass that along. [00:05:00] That’s two negatives, by the way, that company is therefore going to pass that along, typically in higher cost to the customers or their customers in the form of higher prices.
Ralph: So us as consumers pay that tariff, not the country
Lauren: not even just that, like sometimes like my friend Lee kitchen lives in Ontario and he is From Florida and was telling me how his local grocery store in Canada due to this assumed 25 percent tariff increase that’s now on pause for 30 days, his local grocery store pulled all American bourbon and all Napa California wines, so they didn’t even just pass it along.
Lauren: those are brands. that have product that have a wholesale partner that has now shut down reordering a product. Not only do they, they’re not going to reorder if they pull it from shelves, they’re just removing it from circulation. So the implications of that, when I hear him say that the grocery store, which is not an individual one off, it’s a chain grocery store.
Lauren: [00:06:00] Has now X products that come from America from being available to Canadian consumers. That implication is the wholesale division of that California or American whiskey brand. The jobs of producing that extra volume. There’s going to be inventory that now either the American brands are going to have to buy back, or they’re going to sit on storage not being shelved, which will hurt the reorder, which reminds me of like when we talk about that honey scandal, how the real damage was not done to the affiliate commission.
Lauren: influencer missed out on, but it was the non renewal of a contract because the attribution to their success of the campaign was deemed as non relevant to renewing the contract. So you lost out on money on commission, yes, but you lost bigger money out when your contract wasn’t renewed. So that’s what’s going to happen here.
Lauren: You’re going to have contracts that are not going to be renewed because products are being pulled off of shelves.
Ralph: Well, I mean, Okay. Amending what I said earlier is that this has passed along to the consumer. I mean, this could potentially hurt foreign countries by in this case, Canada, [00:07:00] Mexico, China, by making their products pricier and harder to sell in the U S that is a fact, a potential fact. There. So if our esteemed president is trying to hurt these other countries in some way, shape or form, which in the case of Canada and Mexico, I think it’s merely a, having read his book many, many years ago, this is like classic Trump, negotiation tactics where you just take this incredibly hard line stance and then try and get as much as you possibly can, which.
Ralph: They have rescinded to a certain degree, or they have both Canada and Mexico have supposedly given
Lauren: Promises to
Ralph: Promises to
Ralph: the United
Lauren: and reduce the tariff implications. So there’s a 30 day delay and a follow through that commitment. So there’s the assumption from the American side, the U. S. side, that they’ve won in some capacity because they’ve earned more today than they had before the tariff threat was implemented.
Lauren: But you can only threaten someone for so long before they’re going to, like, Bark back, but you’re right. implications are going to go both ways. Canada is going to pass [00:08:00] tariffs equally in measure to the U. S. , I think just in general tariffs really never win out for at least the marketer and the small business owner But where there is an opportunity and at least in the whiskey department, right? When there’s a tariff incurred, I, we’re going to talk about this amazing subject, whiskey, right? Because American bourbon has its own specific flavor, taste profiles, and all that stuff. But Canadian whiskey can hold its own. So now in Canada, You’re going to have local brands. So if you’re listening and you’re in a country where you have products that are being sold to a country where these global implications are going to have ramifications on your brand or service, if you’re a Canadian brand with Canadian whiskey, and you now have less competition on the shelf space, you have the opportunity to acquire new customers.
Lauren: And promote buying local, because if they are still on the Shell space, they might have been cheaper than you before, but with the tariffs imposed, now that product is more expensive than you. So you’re appealing to a whole new demographic of people who are choosing you [00:09:00] alternative. It’s like when you’re at the corner and you’re choosing which gas station to go to.
Lauren: Shell is a cent cheaper, but across the street. Do you make that decision or you go for convenience? You’re given an opportunity now, especially if you are a local product, to emphasize why your product is better and potentially even cheaper now, and if you are a non local product, the opportunity is if your product is still on the shelves, you have to double down on your brand messaging to prove why your product is better than the Now more affordably priced local one.
Lauren: So you have an opportunity to put yourself in a sense of prestige, but not every brand can do it. And if you’re not foundationally set up with a really good product and a solid customer service plan of action, if you don’t have good communications with your prospects and subscribers. This is going to be hard for you.
Lauren: But in chaos, crisis comes and opportunities arise. Just these are conversations we have like, when I worked at Disney, like these are global conversations that affect that these fortune 500 companies have teams and have budgets [00:10:00] to support. How do we make shifts when something Overwhelming occurs to your business, but with a I with conversations that you’re having, like there’s ways to adapt.
Lauren: Similarly, recently with the Californian fires, right? We had accounts where we had to de escalate ad spend in specific areas because it would have just been wasted spend. This is not something that different geographical locations are thinking about buying. So you have to be mindful
Ralph: cases we shut off California altogether.
Lauren: 100 percent same as we did it with Florida when we had hurricanes coming through, we had a client where we had done a special campaign where like, Hey, if you’ve been affected or, you know, someone, we actually made something free for the weekend and it ended up resulting in over 10 million worth of given away products kind of thing.
Lauren: And so that was a huge successful story. More people who were interested in this product before we came aware about it, long story short. When there’s a crisis, you have to be mindful of how is this affecting your end consumer? What is your end user thinking [00:11:00] about? And how can you leverage that situation in a way that you’re winning without being Insensitive to the realities of something’s going on because your consumers might be severely impacted by this.
Lauren: They may have a job for a brand like the American bourbon brand. If all of a sudden now they have all this extra bottles, all these extra things, it’s going to cause cuts. And what if your end user is someone that is going to be impacted financially because of the tariffs? You just, you have to be super mindful of what your end user is going through, whether it’s a act of God.
Lauren: Like weather crisis or, an act of. Ego and a political crisis. you just have to be able to be foundationally set up and mindful of your end consumer to weather the storm because there’s a hundred percent chaos or crisis from chaos, but also equally opportunity from this. So if I’m hearing you correctly, the learning Petrillo take on this is that local businesses and domestic based businesses, this is an opportunity for you to
Lauren: oh [00:12:00] yeah,
Ralph: share because now all of a sudden your competition is less competitive
Ralph: than those domestically
Lauren: competition from countries with imposed tariffs
Ralph: Correct? Those three countries and specifically in particular, China has not
Ralph: been
Lauren: and who knows what’s next. There was Columbia like a week ago where they were also going to be thrown into this mix. So depending on where it is know who your competitors are
Lauren: for sure.
Ralph: So this is a marketing opportunity for domestic businesses potentially.
Lauren: Yes,
Ralph: how would you position that? I know we’re doing a short episode here today, but how would you position that without coming across as crass or seemingly manipulative and opportunistic? Sort of to
Ralph: a negative
Lauren: marketing always has a layer of manipulation into it.
Lauren: it’s like the Ryan holidays book. Trust me. I’m lying. Still one of my favorite
Lauren: marketing books
Lauren: ever, but
Ralph: At the end of the day. It can be done ethically or unethically.
Lauren: if you are a local brand to do it, at least in my opinion, the way of not doing sleazy is like you emphasize local.
Lauren: [00:13:00] You emphasize who are the people who are going to be impacted by this. You emphasize the opportunity for the end user to save money. Everyone wants to save money. Everyone wants to save money. And now if your product is perceived with the same level of value, but now at an even cheaper cost, it’s like they’re getting a discount code without having to pay for it.
Lauren: but the other component is like, by supporting local, you’re hyper emphasizing, again, especially if you’re in Canada or Mexico, because they’re the ones that we’re going to get hit the hardest, because the U. S. pushed on the tariffs first. If you have a brand that’s local to Canada or local to Mexico, you’re allowing the patriotism to shine through.
Lauren: Supporting local will always do well, because you’re bringing to the forefront, the human aspect of your business, you’re not a foreign entity that doesn’t have a face. You have farmers, you have personality.
Ralph: I would caution businesses and marketers to be overtly opportunistic, because even though you might have a [00:14:00] competitive advantage, the consumer themselves are going to be at an overall disadvantage because of these, if they take place in 30 days.
Ralph: So. By bringing it to light, you might actually elicit a negative reaction as opposed to highlighting the positive
Ralph: of
Ralph: it.
Lauren: Fair. If your consumer isn’t aware of this. that’s a really
Ralph: Well, yeah, I mean, everyone’s going to be aware of it at some point. Like I, I saw a statistic today. This is what I sent this to my kids earlier this morning, because they’re always complaining of gas prices.
Ralph: And. Uh, I read this morning that 80 percent of New England, I live in New England, I live in the Boston area, I live in the Cape, Cape Cod, like I’m overlooking the ocean right now and I see oil tankers coming from Canada going by my house into the Cape Cod canal down towards New York and to places like Providence, Boston, et cetera, et cetera, 80%.
Ralph: Of New England’s gasoline and diesel comes from Canada,[00:15:00]
Lauren: 80 percent comes from
Lauren: Canada?
Ralph: primarily the Irving oil refinery in St. John, New Brunswick, nearly 90 percent of the jet fuel at Logan airport. The only airport that I ever use comes from Canada.
Lauren: 90 percent of
Ralph: 90%?
Lauren: fuel comes from Canada.
Lauren: So now I’m thinking,
Lauren: I’m
Lauren: Venezuela. I’m another country. Oh, shoot.
Ralph: Yeah,
Ralph: everything.
Ralph: I, if it. Takes place in 30 days. However, I actually believe that this is all just a big ploy. We’ll see in 30 days. But, and it’s a way for Trump to make good on his campaign promises with very little, uh, validity and, and actual substance behind it, because he knows he’s a smart enough guy to know that this is going to have a negative impact on the U S this has a potential recession label on it.
Ralph: If it’s done in the way in which [00:16:00] it’s laid out right now, I don’t think, even though he seems like a crazy bastard, most of the time he is now our president. The point is, is that I think he’s smart enough to know what the real impact is, as opposed to the spouting off a lot of the, half truths about what tariffs really are.
Ralph: But I think we’ve sort of set that straight here on today’s show, so I don’t think it’s actually going to take place.
Ralph: That’s my core
Lauren: don’t think it’s going to be either. I think he’s a businessman and he’s got ideally a team of economic advisors that will express. I mean, again, the, component, I think you said there was like, Oh, Canada bent the knee was the language he was using. Canada has made promises today that are more than what we had.
Lauren: The day before. so if it’s a scare tactic,
Ralph: however, if you looked really deeply into it, it’s like a lot of the things that they promised they’ve already been doing, they’ve enacted into the
Ralph: Biden administration. However, but it’s PR it’s a show of force that people are like, yeah, Trump’s strong, you go U S U S first. I get it. I understand the game he’s playing here.
Ralph: I’m just thinking like the [00:17:00] impact of this. I don’t think it’s actually going to happen at day 30. However, if it does. You’re listening to the show here and be opportunistic in a positive way, especially if you’re domestic and or nationalistic, if you’re coming from some of those countries that the terrorists have been levied on.
Ralph: So I think there’s opportunities on
Ralph: both sides of the
Lauren: And if you’re, I would say on the other component to leave it at, this is if you are a brand that’s being impacted, if you can leverage prestige appropriately, then you get to become a more luxurious brand, because what happens if your consumer sales aren’t dramatically impacted and they’re used to the new price that could become an opportunity as soon as.
Lauren: Tariffs are rescinded that you increase your pricing because maybe you go from 39 instead of going back to 32, your original price, you’re not 33 50 and you’ve made a buck 50 per unit more like there’s a lot of opportunity. You just have to make sure that foundationally you have a really good product and that right now you’ve set up comms.
Lauren: So that you can be mindful of your end user because a lot of people aren’t going to take the [00:18:00] necessary steps to communicate how to mitigate these challenges well, but those that do are going to win really, really well. And if you’re not, maybe if you have a product that’s unrelated, like you talking about 90 percent of fuel for Logan Airport comes from Canada.
Lauren: If I have any fuel whatsoever, I am doing whatever I can to negotiate 5 percent of that deal to say like, hey, you have an over reliance on Canada right now. Would you like to diversify? Your resources. I’ve got oil at the ready, so there’s a lot of opportunity, even if you’re not directly connected to it.
Lauren: Like if you have a brand or service that’s outside of these markets, you can introduce it as an alternative solution without being seen as like can’t do the local perspective, but you’re cheaper than the American one. And so now you have an opportunity like, hey, we’d like to introduce a new product to your store so that you don’t have only Canadian.
Lauren: You have diverse products. Would you try ours out? There’s so much opportunity that could happen right now. And I hope that anyone that’s listening is mindful how to mitigate this stuff, because if you don’t, it’s going to hurt
Ralph: Well, hopefully today’s show shed a little bit of light on how you [00:19:00] can potentially leverage some of the current events that are going on right now. At the very least, get into the mindset of, okay, I need to start thinking about my plan is, should this happen? Worst case scenario, best case scenario. And how do I market my products and how do I manage my business?
Ralph: in light of these types of events, which you should always be thinking about. The worst case scenario when it comes to business. I know that’s like, you know, I tell my team all the time. It’s like my job is to mitigate downside risk of this organization and to protect the company at all costs.
Ralph: And that is the first thing, because without the company, there really is no employees. no margin, no mission. I mean, the whole thing, so you have to sort of think of these things, and I think, this is obviously is going to be maybe one of many different things that are going to send some shock waves through the business world in the coming weeks and months.
Ralph: So stay tuned here at perpetual traffic, for our take on it and [00:20:00] make sure that you’ve got a plan in place. And so you’re not. completely, shocked by these changes and that you can sort of roll with the punches and look for opportunity where it potentially
Ralph: exists. So,
Lauren: because more changes are coming. It’s a fact. There’s always going to be another crisis.
Ralph: yeah, change is the 1 constant in life as dad always used to say. So, wherever you listen to podcast, make sure that you do leave us a rating or review. We really do appreciate that, especially the 5 star ratings, which we do love. We just got a few more of those, which is great. We’re gonna have to read those on air.
Ralph: Of course. And of course, watch us over on our YouTube channel, professional traffic. com forward slash YouTube. So on behalf of my awesome cohost, Lauren E Petrulo till next show. See ya.
