Your 401k is suffering. The billionaires are fighting. The gamers are imperiled. Not even the penguins on McDonald Island, where no humans reside, have been spared.
But at long last, 26-year-old YouTuber and chocolatier MrBeast has weighed in on President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to impose sweeping tariffs on imports.
Jokes aside, the prolific YouTuber MrBeast is probably the most influential public figure among American children — you may not like it, but it’s true.
In an X post, he points out how for some companies, like his chocolate business Feastables, Trump’s tariffs don’t actually incentivize businesses to move manufacturing into the United States.
“Ironically because of all the new tariffs it is now way cheaper to make our chocolate bars we sell globally NOT in America because other countries don’t have a 20%+ tariff on our cog,” the YouTuber wrote.
Currently, Feastables is produced in both Peru and the U.S., but it sources its cocoa internationally and claims to pay farmers a living wage. (Side note: Feastables’ “ethical sourcing” section of its website is followed by another menu option titled “worldwide domination,” which basically sums up MrBeast’s whole deal.)
If Feastables imports its ingredients into the U.S., manufactures the chocolate bars in the states, and then ships the chocolate out for sale overseas, then the company is losing significant money to tariffs. So, as MrBeast says, his company might as well just manufacture any chocolate bar that it will sell abroad in its Peru factory to avoid tariffs.
In other words, MrBeast is saying he feels the president’s tariff plans are shortsighted.
As any MrBeast fan in a middle school history class could probably tell you, one reason that countries have traded goods with one another for thousands of years is because crops don’t grow everywhere. This means that certain American companies, like Feastables, have little choice but to source products like cocoa from other nations.
“Btw we pay our farmers a living income, use fair trade certified beans, etc. so I was already spending a lot on cocoa. A random price hike was pretty brutal ngl,” MrBeast continued. “We’ll figure it out. I feel for small businesses though. Could really be a nail in the coffin for them.”
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