‘I sell millions of Halloween costumes to Americans. Mr. President—here’s my takeaway from the wild tariffs ride’ |
‘I sell millions of Halloween costumes to Americans. Mr. President—here’s my takeaway from the wild tariffs ride’
For pranksters of a certain age, Fraser Smeaton is a hero. With his brother, Ali, and former roommate, Gregor Lawson, the Scottish business leader is the founder of Morph Costumes. Morph is a UK costume company that launched a twist on the zentai full-body spandex suit in 2009 and spawned a legion of viral videos. When the GAP store on Fifth Avenue was ‘morphed’ by a band of improv-artists in 2018, the police had to be called. The accompanying video received millions of views.
Morph Costumes’ biggest market is America, particularly around Halloween, when children from Detroit to West Palm Beach like nothing better than ghost outfits and fake blood. Smeaton—who runs the company from its Edinburgh headquarters—is now an expert in global tariff policy and the negative impact of economic volatility and barriers to trade. The President should give him a call.
Morph Costumes is a Main Street example of tariff effects. It makes its costumes in China, which has a 30-year start on the rest of the world in the business of clothing production. Moving production elsewhere is prohibitively expensive.
Since Donald Trump entered the White House for the second........