SAVANNAH, Georgia — Not all tariff stories are the same.
Just over 12 years ago, while on active duty, Tyler Merritt founded Nine Line Apparel out of a garage, creating a brand of clothing dedicated to honoring service members.
It soon became a smash hit that didn’t resonate with just veterans and their families, but with millions of Americans who wanted to celebrate the sacrifices, grit, and selflessness of those who stepped up and served.
As the brand began taking off, Merritt said he set about learning to cut fabric and sew. Merritt, a now-retired Army Apache pilot and former mission commander, named the brand Nine Line after the military code word for getting wounded soldiers off the battlefield.
The first retail store was on a cobblestone street in Savannah, and in a couple of years, Nine Line began producing apparel out of a 60,000-square-foot facility. The company’s mission was not only to produce apparel that celebrated the United States and its service members but also to hire military veterans to make their products. Merritt was also committed to making sure Nine Line’s products were ethically sourced.
It is apparent that Merritt is successful and ethical about what goes into whatever he is making on any given day. This mindset is at the very heart of why Merritt thinks differently from the headlines about tariffs.
“The general practice of supply and demand is under the assumption that you’re on an equal and level playing field, that fairness, and everyone is abiding by laws equally,” he said, adding that if some retailers are relying on products made cheaply using slave practices it isn’t just an unfair advantage, it is unethical.
“Their supply is pennies on the dollar to our supply. The demand hasn’t changed for the finished goods, right? Everyone needs their T-shirts. They need their raw materials for manufacturing facilities. That demand is not diminishing. It’s only growing, but everyone is looking for that least expensive option,” he said.
Merritt said if the U.S. does not enforce legal practices or create a fair playing field, “everyone will continue to migrate these jobs and this demand overseas.”
If a consumer chooses a shirt from Shein, a popular Chinese e-commerce site known for its low-cost items that come in through the de minimis loophole and pays zero penalties for import tax purposes, it’s a nonstarter because the general populace right now is on a constrained budget.
“They’re looking for a way to put costs anywhere they can,” Merritt said of U.S. consumers recovering from Bidenomics.
“Unless you are in their face, kind of like they way were are with cigarette warning labels were you cant go and buy a cigarette now without the huge warning label, there’s no warning labels from Shein that it was imported under this mini exception, and that the product itself originates from slave practices,” he said.
Merritt said no indentured servant or child manufacturing the goods is pictured on these companies’ apparel.
“It just says $5, and then next to it is this shirt that says $10. And they look and feel and fit very similarly, almost identical. But if you don’t have an administration that’s willing to say, ‘Hey, these loopholes that were created decades ago that have been exploited and caused all of our shift in manufacturing, a shift in production overseas,’ then nothing will change,” he said.
“The loophole is if the ‘goods’ are worth less than $800, they can enter the country duty-free,” Merritt explained.
Merritt said he would laugh at the brilliance of the Chinese scheme if it didn’t have such a damaging effect on U.S. manufacturers for decades.
“The rule says that if you import a certain value of $800 or less, your product can enter the country duty-free, and you can essentially receive $800 worth of product per day without paying import taxes,” he said.
“It has been going on for nearly a hundred years, and it remains mostly to China’s benefit. That’s where you have cheap, poorly made products like Shein and Temu that take advantage of these loopholes,” he said.
Merritt said they’re not paying any import duties or taxes.
“They’re circumventing the tariff by saying, our products are so cheap, you can’t possibly add tax to it because we’re selling it for $5 and it only costs $2. So there’s really no need to charge us 30% tax on something that is so inexpensive,” he said.
However, they are sending tens of millions of packages that don’t get taxes, while ones that Merritt uses that are ethically sourced from Central America do.
President Donald Trump’s April 2 executive order said shippers in China have used the loophole to “hide illicit substances and conceal the true contents of shipments sent to the United States through deceptive shipping practices.”
Shein notes on its website that price adjustments will go into effect later this week, thanks to “recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs” causing its costs to rise. So did Temu.
Merritt said that while he watches experts agonize over the tariffs, he is shoulder to shoulder with the steelworkers, ranchers, shrimp boaters, and other manufacturers who have been affected by China’s practices and are looking toward trade laws that level the playing field.
In 1970, 26% of American workers held jobs in the manufacturing sector. Then, American manufacturing started moving overseas as it became cheaper to make things there. We stopped encouraging our young people to take shop classes and pushed them toward college and not a trade. The end result was inevitable. Towns were hollowed out. Men and women who were naturally skilled artisans were left without opportunities to use their skills. Today, just 8% of our workers are in manufacturing.
THE CASUALTIES OF LOSING GLASSWARE MANUFACTURING TO CHINA
“I think this is a step in the right direction to creating fair trade and more job opportunities for US manufactured goods,” Merritt said, adding, “And companies that are completely reliant on non-US manufacturing to reduce their labor costs and to reduce their infrastructure costs they might be so scared and so concerned that they bring those jobs and factories back to the United States.”
“You are going to have the Sheins of the world taking a hit and you’re going to have the Nine Lines of the world celebrating,” Merritt predicted.