A Gap Salesperson Explains Global Trade to Me

I just had a very detailed discussion about tariffs, global trade, the economy and America vs. China with a salesperson at the Gap!

It all started when I wanted to buy a belt.

When I walked into the Gap store on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District, the salesperson explained that they didn’t have very many belts and they wouldn’t be getting any more in until November. He said I could go to the Gap flagship store in Times Square and, furthermore, they were converting the Flatiron location into a “Gap Factory” store. (It sounds like an outlet store but it basically just means they’d be selling cheaper merchandise.) I explained to him that I was a longtime Gap customer, but that recently I found that their prices had gone up while their quality had gone down and that’s why I now shopped at Men’s Wearhouse. (I’m also no longer a teenager.)

The salesperson went on to say that that was the trend in the clothing industry in general: more merchandise at cheaper quality. (Think Shein and Temu.)

I told him that there was a story in the New York Times that day about how President Biden was imposing more tariffs on China, which was surprising to me because I had just tweeted that those costs are passed on to the American consumer after the last presidential debate. A recent story on the PBS News Hour said that tariffs don’t really work because not that many jobs are saved and prices still go up.

The salesperson compared what’s happening in the clothing industry to what was happening in the auto industry. He said that in the future we’d all have to buy electric cars and unless we imposed tariffs on China, they’d take over the auto industry (as they’ve already done with the clothing industry). Furthermore, he went on to compare both these industries to the real estate industry, which he claimed China was also taking over, and that ultimately the goal was to make the dollar obsolete because China only wanted to trade in gold. (He emphasized that it was the Chinese government that was at fault, not the Chinese people.)

I’m not an economist, but a lot of what he said made sense to me.

All I know is that if I want to buy a belt, I now have to go to Times Square.

UPDATE: Success! (See photo above.)