Sammie Ellard-King I’m Sammie, a money expert and business owner passionate about helping you take control of your wallet. My mission with Up the Gains is to create a safe space to help improve your finances, cut your costs and make you feel good while doing it. Facebook The UK property market just hit an unusual bump. Average asking prices dropped by 0.3% in June to £378,240. That’s a £1,277 decrease from last month. What’s […]

Back in the Before Times, we published an article titled Ethical Consumption: How to Pollute the Planet and Exploit Labor Slightly Less. Since then, times have, uh… changed! Because tariffs! And while much of our advice on ethical consumption still holds true, today I’m going to be revisiting that advice. My goal is to shine a light on how we should all approach shopping during The Stupidest Trade War while still maintaining our morals and savings rates. We really know how to have fun here, don’t we? Let’s kick things off with a question from a follower called Blossom: Hi Auntie Bitches! I have a question regarding an impasse of ethics and finances, so of course I figured you’d be the experts! I live in the USA, and absolutely hate the direction things are headed in. I’m inspired by hearing that Canada and a ton of countries in Europe are boycotting absolutely everything American made. This is genius because the only way to hurt the greedy pricks at the top is to hurt their bottom lines. I really want to join in and buy as few goods that are made in the states as possible. However, I also live here and my household budget is already pretty tight. With this ridiculous trade war going on, imported goods will become even more costly. I’m stuck between a possibly unlivable budget if fully switching to goods that aren’t made here; or being a tad more financially sound but forced to feed the fascism machine by using American goods. Please, I’d love some advice on how to navigate this? – Blossom, alert citizen of Bitch Nation Blossom is clearly paying attention. We couldn’t be more proud of them for considering activism in the face of personal hardship. We should all be more like Blossom. But I think there’s a fundamental flaw in how they’re approaching the problem. Nevertheless, I think we can come to a solution that does the least amount of harm to Blossom’s bottom line… while still supporting the changes they want to see. Let’s unpack that! [embed]https://youtube.com/watch?v=-IWYzncCepc&feature=oembed[/embed] What are tariffs and why do they matter? A tariff is an import tax. It’s paid by the importing country, to the importing country. The importing country can only impose tariffs on good coming across its own borders. It cannot force another country to pay tariffs. Blossom’s whole question is based on the Trump administration’s sweeping new tariffs on goods from nearly every country and penguin-inhabited island on earth. So it’s worth going over what tariffs are, how they work, and how this self-imposed economic hardship is affecting us. I will now explain this in a very serious fashion using very real and important economic policies. A case study in self-defeating tariffs Narnia regularly imports vibranium from Wakanda. It’s a crucial ingredient in the manufacture of magical wardrobes. But Narnia, a notably lion-worshipping society, gets offended at Wakanda’s panther-centric culture. So Narnia decides to encourage