What should we do to prep for tariffs right now?

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I want to preface this by making a request. I do not want to get into the politics of it. Please refrain from getting into that!

I just want to ask opinions on what things we might need to stock up on with upcoming tariffs.

I remember during Covid, people would kill for a roll of toilet paper. I don’t think toilet paper is going to be a problem, most of it sold in the U.S is made in the U.S.

Something I thought about are batteries. Like for all my BG meters, they use a particular battery - the 2032 battery. I am wondering if that is something that is going to be affected by the tariffs and if I should stock up on them. While Eveready does make batteries in the States, they do import the materials needed to make them.

I don’t know if medical stuff will be affected. But even if it is, you can’t really buy more Dexcoms or insulin than your prescription allows. So that isn’t really something you can stock up on more now than you could previously.

The BD brand alcohol swabs are made in the U.S, so perhaps alcohol swabs won’t be a problem?

So what do you think we should have on hand? Please share your thoughts!

And it doesn’t need to just be 'betes stuff. What should we stock up on for everything? I know coffee is going to be affected, so that might be something to think about getting.

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This is a tough thing to think about. Like it or not we have been in a global economy combined for with just in time inventory.

The 2 largest suppliers of generic drugs are India and China. With the dollar falling internationally these will become more expensive and add tariffs on top.

We’ve gotten used to having fruits and vegetables year round, so much of that is imported.

China has ceased buying soy beans, pork and cotton from the US. There will be a surplus of cotton, but few mills to make it into clothing.

I honestly don’t know what to suggest stocking up on. All of us here depend upon medical devices, insulin and pharmaceuticals.
And there’s coffee. Ours went up 25%. I don’t know the reason considering how much we use that’s a lot on a fixed income.
I hop that some will post more actual positive suggestions as I don’t have any.

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I worry most about the complicated stuff — insulin, CGM supplies, and pump supplies. The latter two are especially worrisome because they are very specialized and probably rely on a single manufacturer.

I can stock up on insulin to some extent, but stocking up on pump and CGM supplies would mean going around insurance, which would be quite expensive.

So maybe I should stock up on CGM and pump alternatives like test strips, syringes, and slow-acting insulin.

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Out of paranoia I’ve stocked up on the cheap ReliOn test strips at Walmart. They are like $9 for 50 strips. I’ve found they aren’t the most accurate but generally within 20 points. Which will do fine in a scarcity situation.

I’ve noticed that the vitamins I have to take twice daily are generally out of stock at Walmart so I do pick up extras of those as well.

As for coffee :hot_beverage: IDK don’t beans go bad after a few months?? But…. Instant can taste pretty good IMO. Starbucks Via singles were on coupon a few weeks ago at Costco and I bought quite a bit. These won’t go to waste for me even if there’s not a shortage.

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Re-reading my thoughts, they may be too long term intended, vice @Eric’s intent; but I’m not sure my answer would differ a lot. First, I think it depends one’s nationality and region of the world lived in. I agree with @CarlosLuis, if I understand him correctly, we have made strides toward becoming a world economy, an inevitable, needed, and natural development if humans are to move beyond this planet. Without any intent to address the politics involved, tariffs are oriented to compensate for a national business first model, antithetical to a world economy. Like it or not, all nations are not created equal, some are blessed with an abundance of natural resources (e.g. rare earth minerals, forests, etc.), area/climate to grow food, etc. People all over the world are dependent on other parts of the world to supply something unless they are satisfied with survival living only. Businesses need the freedom to, and nations need to provide the ability to, rationally develop back-up resources needed to manufacture physical products in order to inhibit the impact of natural/man-made disasters on primary resource providers to the products they make or want to make. Further, in order to remain lean and agile, businesses have become driven to and overly dependent on just-in-time delivery for both critical and discretionary products; so much so that any perturbation in resource delivery becomes a critical impact for critical products and a perceived major impact of discretionary products. Both critical and discretionary physical product businesses need to learn from information/service businesses that back-up sources are essential and must plan for them to avoid these perturbations; the only alternately is for the public or national governments to stockpile and rotate sufficient supplies of physical “must haves” for their populations to ride out these perturbations. For most prescription items, this is not done nationally (even the US Strategic Stockpile is woefully unable to meet the demands except for limited national disasters) nor allowed for by insurances or supply providers, nor does it make rational business sense in a world economy to do so. For the current national business model, most critical supplies for T1s/2s are primarily the drugs and hardware BG determining devices (insulins, GLP-1s, SGLTs, BG meters), with secondary requirements including CGMs, pumps, and tertiary items including AID commercial soft/firmware. In a world economy, the same applies but on a broader scale and with less national impact to business decisions.

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@Eric thanks for asking this question. I don’t have many extra answers, but did want to say that I was listening to a webinar featuring the head of the Brookings Institution (used to be Biden’s chair of council of economic advisors), and she said she was worrying about the same thing on a personal level - what should she be buying more of now before we get shortages.

Just to note, if there are shortages, that would be an institutional, rather than an economic, response. Economics would predict that prices would go up to cover the extra costs of the tariff. Those taxes would go to the government, and we’d all pay more, but no shortages.

Her institutional knowledge implied stuff like - reduced shipping traffic between US and China, for example.

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Just to note that we went to Costco today (Friday) about noontime. Lots of people buying toilet paper!

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I bought a bidet during Covid. Never been happier or cleaner. I’ll survive.
USA is the largest economy on earth and I’m confident we’ll weather adjustments

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That’s based on our sourcing machinery, metals, minerals and more from global markets. This is a partial list of what we import to function.
microelectronics, precision machine tools, titanium, aluminum. Minerals imported Aluminum (bauxite), antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cesium, chromium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite (natural), hafnium, helium, indium, lithium, magnesium, manganese, niobium, platinum group metals, potash, the rare earth elements group, rhenium, rubidium, scandium, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, and zirconium.

There’s specialized agricultural machinery and the essential mineral potash for fertilizer.

Potash is the K in fertilizer

  • Nitrogen (N): Primarily promotes vegetative growth, such as leaf and stem development.
  • Phosphorus (P): Plays a crucial role in root development, flowering, and fruiting.
  • Potassium (K): Enhances overall plant health, including disease resistance and tolerance to stress.
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