President Donald Trump's trade wars have injected uncertainty into the U.S. economy, forcing business owners to stock up on supplies in hope they can outlast costly tariffs, and one business owner startled a CNN host with a blunt response to how she's dealing with the stress.
The president and other administration officials say the tariffs are meant to encourage domestic manufacturing, but Virginia bridal shop owner Christine Greenberg told "CNN News Central" host Sara Sidner that plan was impractical no matter how laudable the intentions might be.
"We would love that," said Greenberg, who owns Urban Set Bride in Richmond. "My dad served in the Army proudly for 24 years, we're a proud military family. I would love to be able to buy American-made wedding gowns, but that's a 10- to 15-year plan that I haven't seen, and I think bringing manufacturing back not only means early education for teaching us in middle school and high school on how to make clothes, how to sew beading onto corsets and even how to grow some of these materials that we use, like silk and beads and plastic bones for building the corsets for support of these gowns. We just don't make things like this in this country, or either if they are made here, all of those materials that go into building a wedding gown are imported, so the cost is still going to be the same."
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"To echo what I've been feeling from my colleagues and how we feel in our bridal shop is, I would love to buy American, but where is it and where is the plan to completely change our economy and our infrastructure to bring full-scale manufacturing back to this country?" Greenberg added.
Sidner asked how she was navigating the uncertainty, with Trump announcing 145-percent tariffs on Chinese imports and then backing those down to 30 percent, and now a trade court has stepped in to block his authority to impose those duties without Congress.
"We drink a lot of wine, to be honest," Greenberg said, and Sidner laughed, "and we are transparent with our customers, and our whole business model has been transparency from the beginning. So this pivot hasn't been challenging, but it's being communicative with our designers and our clients and taking a lot of deep breaths and just hoping that this will all shake out or maybe his attention will move to something else and he'll forget about us, and we can go along as business as usual."
Sidner commented on Greenberg's matter-of-fact response to her question and wished her luck.
"I think that was probably the most honest answer we've had on TV today, drinking a lot of wine to deal with the worries," Sidner said, chuckling. "Good luck, good luck to you and cheers to you."
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