Buy American or buy China? This business tested shoppers’ readiness to spend more – with surprising results

In the aftermath of U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of punishing tariffs on China, Ramon van Meer had an idea.

American voters sent Mr. Trump back to the White House in part because they wanted to revive U.S. manufacturing. What would Americans do if they had the choice to buy a locally-made product — in this case, a shower head with a copper-zinc-based filter to scrub out chlorine and heavy metals — even if the cost was higher?

“It will be interesting to know if people actually are willing to vote with their wallets,” Mr. van Meer thought.

He was not optimistic they would. Even so, he was surprised at just how few Americans had any interest in paying more for something not made in China.

“It was not even close. We sold zero,” he said.

Mr. van Meer is a Netherlands-born serial entrepreneur who successfully pitched a colour-changing kitty litter on the television show Shark Tank last year.

Today, his energies are primarily devoted to Afina, an Austin, Tex.-based brand whose shower heads are made by a company based in China’s Pearl River Delta, a region that forms the heart of the country’s manufacturing colossus.

Mr. van Meer’s first reaction to Mr. Trump’s new tariffs was to cancel any new production. By a stroke of luck, he had taken delivery of six months’ worth of stock shortly before the April 2 announcement of new border levies, Mr. Trump’s so-called Liberation Day that quickly escalated into 145-per-cent tariffs on U.S. imports of Chinese goods.

Then Mr. van Meer concocted an experiment to see how consumers would respond. He created a new purchase page for the Afina filtered shower head, offering a “Made in the USA” option for US$239, with a note that “due to the new tariffs, we’ve partnered with a small manufacturer in the United States.” He promised identical quality to the “Made in Asia” version, which he sold for US$129.

Then he paid for ads on Facebook and Instagram to drive traffic to Afina’s web page. The pitch was clear: “Same design. Two options. You choose: Made in USA or Asia.”

The ad campaign worked. More than 25,000 people clicked through to visit his sales page. Of those, 3,560 added the Asian version to their cart – and 584 completed the purchase.

Only 24 added the U.S. version to their online shopping carts. Not one bought it.

“Literally zero. We triple, quadruple checked,” Mr. van Meer said.

“The conclusion is, there’s a huge difference between what people say, or say they will do – or think – versus when they actually have to pay for it.”

That conclusion has obvious implications for the White House, as Mr. Trump continues to pursue tariffs even as polling shows his economic agenda is unpopular – and his own approval ratings are softening.

But it has wide-reaching implications, too, for anyone selling goods to consumers in the U.S.

“As a business owner, I have to find solutions that are not in the U.S. and not in China,” Mr. van Meer said.

For many reasons, he would prefer to make his shower heads in the U.S. The Kinetic Degradation Fluxion filters he uses in the product come from a U.S.-based company. Local manufacturers offer better payment terms. They also offer an escape from tariffs, including the 25-per-cent tariffs Mr. van Meer had already been paying – about US$25,000 for every container he brings from Asia.

But his attempts to build the shower heads in the U.S. have not succeeded. He reached out to a half-dozen manufacturers. He would need packaging, ABS plastic and manual labour to put it all together. In Asia, a single shower head takes two months to build. He’s not certain it’s even possible to do it in the U.S.

”We don’t have the manufacturing available at scale. But then also the skilled labour force,” he said.

Last year, Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute estimated that nearly two million U.S. manufacturing jobs would go unfilled over the next decade if major change is not made to find new workers.

Mr. van Meer now has a few months to find new places to build new product before his current inventory runs out. To help, he flew back to China, to the Canton Fair, where he is hoping to meet manufacturers from Vietnam, India and other Asian countries – but also Chinese companies that have built international facilities.

“My hope is that some of them will have manufacturing capacity outside of China,” he said.

Even if he succeeds, he expects China will remain a key part of what he sells. “Most suppliers that I know, they still buy a lot of their material in China,” he said.

He has other grounds, too, to question Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Their sudden imposition was “horrible in my opinion – and devastating for a lot of small businesses,” Mr. van Meer said. He knows of people whose product is stuck in U.S. storage, where it can’t be retrieved until they can pay customs bills that are now enormous.

It’s also not clear how much those new tariffs will achieve. With Afina, Mr. van Meer relied on China to make the shower heads. But even before the new rounds of tariffs, the bulk of his corporate expenditures were in the U.S., including payments to port workers, truckers, warehouses, photographers and accountants, in addition to his own employees.

”People like myself were villainized for not making the product in the United States,” he said. But ”60 per cent of all my money is invested in the United States economy.”