Buy American goods or order Chinese goods? US company tests consumers: 0 people choose "Made in the USA"
Written by:External Contributions (International)
publishing:2025-04-29 13:58renew:2025-04-29 14:38
According to a report by Canada's The Globe and Mail on the 29th, as US President Trump launched a massive tariff campaign and boasted about the return of manufacturing, Ramon van Meer, the owner of the US shower brand Afina, designed a business experiment in his own online store to try to uncover the mystery of whether the American people are willing to spend generously on expensive "Made in the USA" products.
He set two price tags for the same product: one is the price for a product manufactured in China, and the other is a high-priced option that is fully manufactured in the United States and costs nearly double the price, leaving the choice entirely to consumers. After repeating the test many times, Van Meer got the same result: Made in the USA, 0 people bought it.
According to Canadian media reports, Van Mier was born in the Netherlands and the shower brand he founded, Afina, is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The brand's shower heads are manufactured by a company in China's Pearl River Delta region. After Donald Trump announced the new tariffs on April 2, Van Meer's first reaction was to cancel all new production orders.
He then designed the experiment. He found a US-based supplier to produce the same filtered shower head, but because the production cost was nearly three times higher than when it was manufactured in China, in order to maintain profit margins, they had to raise the price of this US-made product to US$239 (approximately HK$1,738). Compared to the "Made in Asia" version at US$129 (approximately HK$938), the price is almost doubled.
He also added a note on the product page, saying, "Due to the new tariffs, we are working with a small manufacturer in the United States to produce this product," while promising that the quality of the two is exactly the same.
The advertising page was simple and direct: "Same design. Two options. You choose: Made in the USA or Made in Asia." Van Mier thought it would be interesting to know if people were really willing to vote with their wallets.
Although Van Milben didn't have high expectations for the results, he was still surprised when the results came out - in the end, no one bought the "Made in America" version. No American is willing to pay more for products that are not made in China.
According to its statistics, during the trial period, a total of about 25,000 American consumers browsed the purchase page, of which 3,560 added the "Made in Asia" version to the shopping cart, and 584 completed the purchase; while only 24 people added the "Made in the USA" version to the shopping cart, and no one actually placed an order.
“That’s a huge gap. We didn’t sell any [American-made] items,” Van Meer exclaimed. “It was literally zero. We double-checked it several times.”
He told The Globe and Mail that when the team first saw the experimental results, they thought there was something wrong with the data. But after repeated testing many times, the results remained consistent. “The bottom line is that there’s a huge gap between what people say they’re going to do and what they actually do when they spend money on shopping.”
Van Meer added: “This is not a marketing failure, this is a referendum on price.”
When posting the results of the experiment on the social media platform X, he lamented that even if the US manufacturing industry is willing to bring manufacturing back to the US, facing the high prices, American consumers are not willing to bear the additional costs of manufacturing in the US, and this is not a dilemma faced by their family alone.
Ramon van Meer posted on social media platform X (X@Ramon van Meer)
However, Van Mier does not blame consumers. He is well aware that the serious inflation problem in the United States has made ordinary people stretched to the limit in terms of living expenses such as gasoline, daily necessities, and mortgages. "Made in the USA" has long become a "luxury" that most people cannot afford.
"The fault is not with the consumers, nor with us. The root cause is that there is something wrong with the U.S. economy." He said frankly that although small business owners are willing to invest in the United States, decision makers and experts must be aware that if they want to rebuild the manufacturing industry, they need to work on building supply chains, promoting production automation, motivating consumers and other aspects. Otherwise, local manufacturing will only be empty talk.
In fact, Van Meer also hopes to produce shower heads in the United States. Most of the filter materials he uses come from the United States. Local suppliers have more convenient payment terms and can avoid tariffs. Previously, he had to pay about $25,000 in tariffs on each container of cargo he shipped from Asia.
However, after contacting six manufacturers, his plans to try local production repeatedly ran into obstacles. The production of shower heads involves packaging materials, ABS plastics and manual assembly. It takes two months to produce a shower head in Asia. He is not even sure whether the entire production process can be completed in the United States. He reluctantly admitted, "We lack large-scale manufacturing capacity and skilled labor."
According to Canadian media reports, Van Meer still has a few months to find a new production location before its inventory runs out. In order to solve the production difficulties, he flew to China in April to attend the 137th Canton Fair being held in Guangzhou, hoping to meet manufacturers from Asian countries such as Vietnam and India, and also hoping to get in touch with Chinese companies that have already deployed overseas production capacity.
Van Meer added that even if he succeeds in finding a company with production capabilities outside of China, China will still be a key link in his product supply chain: "Most of the suppliers I know, they still source a lot of their raw materials in China."
Speaking of Trump's tariff policy, Van Mier mercilessly criticized it as "terrible" and a "disaster" for many small businesses.
In comparison, Van Mier was considered lucky because he had just received enough inventory to sell for six months shortly before the tariff policy was announced. However, the goods of many of our peers are still trapped in American warehouses, and they are unable to pick up the goods because they are unable to pay the huge tariffs.
In his view, the actual effect of the tariff policy is questionable. Regardless of the fact that his company still relies on China for production, even before the tariffs were imposed, most of his business expenses went to the United States, including the labor costs of port workers, truck drivers, warehouse staff, photographers, accountants and others.
He felt aggrieved. "Business owners like me are criticized for not producing products in the United States, but 60% of my funds are invested in the U.S. economy." "We share these data because even we are deeply shocked, and we think these data are worth discussing."
In explaining the experiment on the brand's official website, Van Meer pointed out that "if policymakers and experts and scholars are determined to rebuild American industry, they have to face a cruel reality: idealism is ultimately no match for the price tag of reality."
In the comment section of Van Mier's social media, many netizens left messages to express their support for him. Some netizens shared that they had conducted similar experiments, and the results they obtained were almost identical to those of Van Mier.
"I also offer customers the choice between overseas and local products. They always choose overseas products. The price of local products is almost three times that of overseas products," wrote a user with an ID that includes an American flag and an eagle emoji.
One person also said, "People will choose the cheaper plan every time. And it's not just consumers who do this, but also corporate customers."
“99.99% of Americans don’t care where a product like a shower head is made. As long as the quality is the same, give me the cheaper one. In fact, I trust Made in Asia more than Made in the U.S. These days, Made in the U.S. usually means inferior products.”
“The fact is that most Americans simply can’t afford American-made products. So rebuilding the manufacturing sector isn’t going to happen overnight — it’s going to take a good plan and good-paying jobs to really work.”
Of course, some people have raised objections to Van Meer's views, and have repeatedly hyped up old arguments such as "China's overcapacity."
However, one netizen's rebuttal hit the nail on the head: "Can manufacturing return to the United States? Yes - but the prerequisite is to make large-scale long-term investments in human resources and infrastructure, and to have a decent national strategy, not the kind of plan that sounds like it was hastily written on a napkin in a Waffle House at 3 a.m."
The netizen further pointed out sharply that the reality is very different from the ideal. "What people are waiting for is just empty slogans, hats with slogans, and a farce of economic cosplay. To be honest, no one is willing to pay double the price for the same product just to let a guy who supports MAGA sleep more peacefully in boxer briefs with the American flag printed on them, even Americans themselves are no exception."
據加拿大《環球郵報》29日報道，在美國總統特朗普大打關稅亂錘，吹噓製造業迴流之際，美國淋浴花灑品牌阿菲娜（Afina）的老闆範·米爾（Ramon van M
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