Heard an interview on NPR of a 'small mother-daughter hair accessories company, working from the dining room table at home...' thats business will be affected by the tariffs because 'we manufacture in China!'!!! And if one good thing comes of these horrible stupid tariffs I hope it stops all these American 'small business owners 🥺' from obfuscating their participation in imperial exploration. And I hope everyone finally processes that all the fanart acrylic keychains and plushies of niche microcelebrities ocs that are just 'supporting small artists!!' are manufactured in the same way everything else is thats consumed by this ugly country is.
I think people often fail to understand that all production within the core--of any kind and for any purpose--is only able to exist as it does because such endeavors are the beneficiaries of systems of exploitation and unequal exchange.
For example: I am an independent craftsman in the US. I have no employees and I make everything I sell by hand, 'by myself.' But without Mexican workers raising cattle and tanning their hides, I would have no leather to work with. Without Chinese workers manufacturing the hardware and without the miners who mined the iron, nickel, copper, zinc, etc, I would have no rivets or dee rings or square snaps. I do not steal the surplus value of those under my employ because I have no one under my employ, and yet without the exploitation of hundreds or thousands of people, I can produce nothing at all. And this is true whether I am producing for the purposes of making money or for the joy of creating or for any other reason.
Nothing can be produced here without plunder.
Getting whiplash from parts 1 and 2 of this and I want to be clear that they're talking about different things
Dropshipping businesses (buy goods, sell with no modification at a higher price), artists who have clothing or goods manufactured with their design printed on it (like an artist using a t shirt printing company to sell shirts with their art on it, Redbubble is broad example), and crafters who rely on purchased supplies and tools (previous commenter) are three different categories with varying levels of reliance on foreign manufacturing in their processes. ALL OF THEM will see price hikes from tariffs. I can see hating on dropshippers, but you need to understand and be sympathetic to the fact that the other two are artists who are legitimately trying to make a business selling goods created from their skills.
No, I am also a fucking bastard who relies on exploitation just as much as a drop shipper or redbubble-type digi artist. The fact that I put my own labor into the physical materials to turn it into an end product does not transmute the end product into being something that was produced without exploitation. The point is that there literally isn't a way for citizens of the core to personally, individually absolve ourselves of the crimes of empire.
You spin your own yarn from fibers you gathered yourself? Okay, where do the crochet needles come from? You whittled your own needles? Where is the knife from? You forged your own goddamn whittling knife? Where's the steel from? Where's the hammer from? Wheres the sharpening stone from?
You write or draw? Where's the cobalt and lithium from your computer from? Okay, you only do it on paper, where's the paper from? Where's the wood, graphite, glue, and paint from the pencil from? You need food to fuel your body, where's that from? Where is the chair you sit on from?
You can't bootstraps your way out of being a beneficiary of imperialism. It's not a matter of personal ethics and I don't even think it's a personal indictment. It is plain fact: on a global scale, even the most downtrodden working people in the core are labor aristocrats. If youre a Yank like me, being against the exploitation of the third world is being against our own immediate interests. It means our lives get materially worse. If the downfall of imperialism means I can't afford to make my leather goods anymore, y'know, I think that's a hit I'm willing to take.
