Tires, tariffs and Trumpflation: Pointless trade war ‘liberates’ us from our money | Opinion
Well, I just got my first tangible taste of Trumpflation.
And it doesn’t taste too good.
This past weekend, I watched the price of imported tires for my car go up 14%, literally overnight, between when I started shopping Saturday and when I bought them on Sunday.
So here’s my consumer tip for the week: If you need to buy anything that’s made in another country, I suggest you do it now. Because of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, prices are only going up from here.
Since last week’s “Liberation Day,” where Trump announced his trade war on the world, the focus has been on the stock market. That’s understandable. It’s not very often the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashes 4,200 points in three trading days.
But too much focus on stocks tends to mask the real impact of tariffs and trade wars on the Average Joe.
Contrary to what you may have heard someplace else, tariffs are taxes. Countries don’t pay them — the companies that import products do. And guess who they pass that along to.
So, you might be saying, “Hey, Dion, why don’t you just buy American tires?” To which I’d answer, when you raise the price of imports, domestic manufacturers raise their prices too, because they can.
My tires are just a small example illustrating what’s happening to the world’s economy, and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
Tale of the tires
The front tires on my Smart car are worn down to the wear bars, so I went online to see where I could get the best deal on some new ones.
My Smart, built by Mercedes in France, is one of those rare vehicles with different size tires front and back. While the back tires are a pretty common size, the smaller front tires are kind of hard to find.
In my research, I’ve only found three brands available in the United States, none from a U.S.-based company.
There’s Continental Tires, headquartered in Germany; the South Korean brand Kumho; and Haida, a Chinese company. The Continentals and Kumhos were slightly over $100 each; the Haidas were $58.
A lot of people don’t trust Chinese tires, but my cousin has a tire shop in New York and he swears by them. Still, having never heard of Haida tires, I decided to do a little research before hitting “buy now.”
When you want to compare tires, the most important thing to look for is something called the UTQG, which stands for Uniform Tire Quality Grade. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requires standard test results to be stamped on every tire: There’s a number representing tread wear, followed by a one- or two-letter code for traction, and then a one-letter code for temperature, which is basically blowout resistance.
The rating on the Haidas, 400AA, was comparable to the more expensive tires, 400AAA.
What that means is the wear and temperature grades were the same, but the Continental and Kumhos were a little grippier in a wet-pavement test. I’ve had both AA and A tires, and they’re about the same, unless you’re into racing or hard cornering (which isn’t exactly a priority when you drive a Smart).
By now, you’re probably tired of listening to my TED Talk on tire-buying, and I can’t say I blame you (someday you’ll thank me).
Liberation Day? For who?
The takeaway is this:
The cost of making tires didn’t suddenly change between Saturday and Sunday.
The only thing that did change was that Saturday was the day the first of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect — a 10% markup on basically everything from everywhere.
In the one day it took for me to research Haida tires, they went from $58 to $66 per tire. The Continentals and Kumhos went up a similar margin.
Granted, an extra $8 per tire isn’t the end of the world.
But multiply that kind of increase by all the foreign products you buy in a year, and I can pretty much guarantee that’s going to sting and sting hard.
Even worse, it’s about to get worse.
The Trump tariff on Chinese products is currently set to rise another 34% on Wednesday. China’s punched back, announcing that it will match that with 34% tariffs on American imports.
So Trump had another tantrum Monday and announced that if they don’t back off, he’ll levy another 50% tariff on Chinese imports.
If that happens, products you buy from China would cost approximately twice what they did before Trump’s trade war.
So as our leaders keep raising the stakes waiting for the other guy to blink, it’s 340 million Americans and 1.4 billion Chinese consumers getting stuck with the bill.
The only thing Trump’s “Liberation Day” is liberating us from is our money.
This story was originally published April 9, 2025 at 8:07 AM with the headline "Tires, tariffs and Trumpflation: Pointless trade war ‘liberates’ us from our money | Opinion."
