#doom spending

On the corporate side you will owe them money forever, because you continue to buy garbage and accumulate interest on the debt.

Well, that didn’t take long.It has been exactly one week since the national election, and already some shoppers are responding with fear…fear that President-elect Trump will actually impose the tariffs that were such an important plank in his platform. And if he does, many prices are most certainly going to rise.

So what’s a person to do? Simple. Buy now, even if you don’t need it yet, because prices might be higher tomorrow. It’s called doom spending.

If ever there were a prescription for inflation and/or product shortages, this is it. Some might argue they are acting rationally, but others would say that irrationality is causing this reaction. I get it. If Trump imposes 10-20% tariffs on anything and everything, except 60-100% on Chinese-made goods, it’s going to get crazy. And if you know you are going to ultimately need something, it might just make sense to buy it now.

As I look around my possessions, especially the things I buy fairly regularly, I see a bunch of trail running shoes, all sourced from Vietnam. They typically cost $150 a pair, so add $15-$30 to the price. And that new iPhone 16 I told you I was going to get? I never got around to it, but the 1TB Pro Max model could double from $1599 to nearly $3200, since it is made in China. Maybe I better also get a new MacBook Pro while I’m at it, right?

Perhaps you are thinking of a new car. The Ford Edge, a very popular model that you might think is made in the US, is actually made at a plant in Canada. Planning on a new 75” TV? Better hurry, because all the TVs we buy in the US, aside from a handful of specialty TVs designed for outdoor usage, are made overseas. The vast majority of our clothing comes from Asia and Central America. Most of our winter fruits and veggies come from Mexico and points south. Yesterday I noticed the bag of mini sweet peppers I bought at Walmart came from hothouse operations in Canada.

I could go on and on and on. The problem is the US companies, from retailers to manufacturers, cannot reshore operations at the snap of a finger. Furthermore, international investment takes a long time. It’s not like there are empty factory buildings across the country waiting to be fired up again.

What is most likely to happen is that companies will look for ways to shift production from China—if they currently rely upon it—to other nations where the tariffs would be lower. This has already happened in some sectors, long before Trump started threatening his tariffs. It’s a decent stop-gap measure, albeit not perfect.

And as I have intoned recently, the idea that we can absorb thousands of new manufacturing jobs at a time of extremely low unemployment is problematic. Manufacturers would drive up wages overall, and lure some workers away from lowering paying jobs, like fast food and retail. But then those jobs would need to be filled. We need more humans. Or robots.

Meanwhile, we are faced with the very real possibility of a run on popular products leading up to the 20th January inauguration. And if the tariffs are enacted, there would then presumably be a precipitous drop in sales. Well, at least until I wear out all of those shoes and need a new phone.

Panic buying is a phenomenon unto itself. We don’t normally see it very often, except in winter around here. Whenever the “S” word is invoked—meaning snow—it sends people rushing to the supermarket to load up on milk, bread, and eggs. You know. Because I guess they’re all going to eat French Toast for the near term. Come on. This is Texas, even way up here in the Panhandle. Whatever we get will probably be gone in a day or two. I’m pretty sure we will all survive. Then again, maybe the storm will completely fizzle, and then we will have all that food.

We also saw panic buying during COVID, and again this semester when the longshoremen strike was looming. It’s what caused people to hoard toilet paper and other essentials, irrational thinking by seemingly rational people who did not want to risk being caught without.

Think long and hard before you run out to buy things in anticipation of something that may not happen. For all the bluster our President-elect has, his threatened tariffs may pass to the south or north of us, just like a snowstorm that somehow managed to miss us. It’s hard sometimes to use restraint, especially when FOMO is a very real possibility.

I’m keeping my ear to the ground, and if I begin to sense all this saber rattling is going to become policy, I’ll be ready to pounce. But not until then. I’d much rather be out on the trail than on the trail of more merchandise to fill my house.

Dr “Keep Calm” Gerlich

Lately, the term “doom spending” has been making the rounds, and I have to admit, I’ve been feeling a little called out. People are out there splurging on random things, all while worrying about the state of the world. Me? I haven’t been doing the doom scroll on Amazon or impulsively buying things I don’t need. No, my vice is different. It’s like doom spending’s far-flung cousin: “doom travel…