One of our Spartan Armor team members pointed out a recent update he received from a U.S.-based meat company. It’s no surprise that our people would be on that kind of email list.

The update was about tariffs, which have been a hot-button issue in the news lately. What are tariffs? What purpose do they serve? How will they affect the local and global economies? We’ll get to those questions in just a minute.

You may be wondering what a meat company wants to communicate about tariffs. For that matter, what could a body armor company want to say about them? Well, there’s significant overlap there.

This U.S.-based meat company is currently standing out from other meat suppliers because they have a 100% American supply chain. So, whatever the effect tariffs have on imports, they can assure their customers will be insulated from volatility.

Likewise, we've been telling our customers for years about the importance of American-made body armor. Now, we get to show you the importance in real time.

Put simply, a tariff is a tax a government places on imported goods. Depending on the unique reasons and goals, the government can levy that tax on a country as a whole or on specific companies. The purpose of tariffs can vary.

Regardless of your position on tariffs, our current situation involves the Trump administration attempting to use tariffs as leverage to bring other countries to the negotiating table. How long will they last? That remains to be seen. But in many cases, U.S. consumers will feel the effects at least until the negotiation processes are complete.

We're not opposed to importing certain raw materials when necessary. But as we've made clear in the past, the more reliant you are on foreign-made products, the more vulnerable you become to global instability.

If you're buying body armor assembled in China or somewhere else overseas, there's a good chance you'll see prices shoot up while tariffs are in place. This may even make your usual purchases cost-prohibitive in a couple of different ways. We’re not picking on China in particular, but they’ll be our sample country in the example below.

If the U.S. imposes a 25% tariff on imported finished products from China, you'll see a 25% price hike on completed armor kits from China. This tariff will result in a price advantage for domestic sellers over body armor imports.

If the product is assembled in the U.S. but the raw materials, like ceramics or polyethylene, come from China, the result of this tariff is an increased production cost. The manufacturer still passes on the price hike to the consumer based on the tariffed materials.

Clearly, there are too many variables to predict what will happen accurately. But in these uncertain times, one thing is sure: being tariff-proof is a very good thing.

Spartan Armor has been sounding the alarm on foreign dependence for some time now. You may remember our blog post on the benefits of USA-made body armor. Or maybe you’ve read our post explaining the concept of vertical integration. 

Though we’re confident in our position, we specify that we’re virtually tariff-proof for a reason. Even entirely U.S.-based companies are affected to some extent. U.S. steel manufacturers use steel ingots as raw materials, which are currently subject to a 25% imposed tariff at the time of the writing of this article. Even if the manufacturer sources those steel ingots from a previously exempted country, the 25% tariff now applies.

Since the pandemic, we've been planning and moving toward independence from foreign entanglements. So, when something like a trade war comes along, we continue business as usual to the best of our abilities. Since we control our local supply chain, we have no new costs to pass on to our customers.

At Spartan Armor Systems, we’ve learned from experience and adapted to keep serving our customers as the most reliable body armor manufacturer in the industry. We get all our supply line shipments from American mills, source our materials in the USA, and manufacture everything in-house at our Tucson, AZ, operations facility.

While these may be unpredictable times, we encourage others to consider how they can insulate themselves and their loved ones during future events.

Buy American made. Support local supply chains. Protect what’s yours.