Business
EXCLUSIVE: Blue Collar Companies Share Thoughts On Tariffs
To investors,
The Pomp Letter
published: Apr 13, 2025
To investors,
The media is dominated by the perspective of Wall Street right now. These investment managers are freaking out over tariffs. Every TV station, newspaper and podcast has a bunch of finance experts pontificating or fear-mongering, yet they haven’t stepped foot inside an industrial or manufacturing facility in years.
Honestly, many of them have probably never been inside one of these facilities.
You can’t learn the ground truth unless you get your boots on the ground. You have to get close to the problem. You need to talk to the people who spend the most time with the issue. Get intimate with the pain or you are left with a spreadsheet to understand something that can’t be explained with math.
I only know this because I accidentally went and did the work necessary to understand this problem over the last two years. I have been working with a friend to look at acquiring potential industrial or manufacturing businesses during that time period. Here are some of the businesses that we physically went to visit or we spent significant time with the business leaders to better understand their companies:
Highway sign manufacturer in South Florida
Rock crusher manufacturer in South Carolina
Electric harness businesses in Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky
Traffic cone business in Pennsylvania
Line striping business in New York
Pallet distributor in Georgia
Steel brokerage in Alabama
Janitorial product distributor in Illinois
Aggregates distributor in Louisiana
Tool manufacturer in Arkansas
Nothing can replace the lessons you learn walking around a factory floor. For example, the electric harness business in Michigan had a lot of women working on the assembly lines. This surprised me, so I asked the owner to explain it. He told me they found women had more dexterous hands, which meant the assembly line was more efficient and less prone to errors.
You aren’t going to learn about that in a spreadsheet.
There was the time the manufacturer of rock crushers had his 87-year old father get into a skid steer to do a live demo of their product. Or there was the realization that pallets are the operating system of the physical world, which came after I spoke to an immigrant owner in Georgia.
These business are made up of real people. People who just want to live their lives, deliver a good product or service for their customer, and put their family in a better financial position. But many of these people feel like the US economy has left them behind. It has created a situation where everything gets more expensive around them, yet it becomes harder and harder to sell their products each year.
So I am doing something today you won’t find anywhere else — I reached out to a bunch of these blue collar business owners and their commentary is below. I asked them what they thought of the tariffs and how the tariffs will affect their businesses. Here is what they had to say:
“I agree with them. It’s time to level the playing field with the world. For my business I don’t think it’s going to affect us much for now. Gas prices have come down a little. Nothing extreme yet.” - Highway sign manufacturer
_________
“Tough to say. For [Redacted Company Name] I don’t think it matters that much since most gravel is produced in the US. Although the market getting hammered doesn’t help. We are seeing a little bit of a slow down in new projects being put out I think from DOGE.” - Aggregates distributor with numerous government contracts
_________
“Suppliers are wait and see. [Very] few have passed on large increases but are expecting to announce any day.
Our industry (janitorial) is going to get hit hard if it does go through. Even so called “manufacturing” here really just private label from overseas, or a lot of the raw materials come from oversees. We sell tons of items like toilet seat covers, mops, gloves, etc. Almost everything is made oversees and it doesn’t make financial sense for it to be made here. I am all for bringing back manufacturing, but I think we need to manufacture the right stuff in this country and not items like disposables…
We should focus pushing the rest of the world to buy our military tech, military equipment, our aerospace tech, medical equipment, chemicals, food and beverage. Those are the first that come to mind. Our country has amazing intellectual capability.
We are essentially too smart and too advanced to be setting up shoe factories, low end clothing factories, disposables.” - Janitorial product distributor
_________
“Our business has an import component as well as US-based manufacturing. For US manufactured product, we expect to see stable/increasing demand. Tariffs should be helpful since we compete with lower cost overseas labor.
For imported product, we will push suppliers to eat some of the increased cost. We will also look for alternate sources where tariffs are high. Our goal is for the business to preserve or gain share while passing along lower-than-tariff prices to our customers where we have to. This is a one time impact.
However, tariffs create uncertainty in the short term. The longer uncertainty lasts, the harder it will be to plan and run our business. Overall, I think tariffs will cause us to adjust course but lead to more demand for our US-based products. It may push us to restore certain product lines as well” — PEOperator
_________
“Everything arrives to our contract manufacturer in NH at a facility that also does ITAR work (military/gov, customers like Lockheed). Components are assembled on the circuit boards on mostly automated process with pick-and-place machines. We do final assembly, provisioning, test, and fulfillment from NH.
It will be possible for us to find suppliers for some of these components from other Asian sources like Taiwan (eg LCD screens), and maybe better domestic options for packaging, but it will be a struggle. I think tariffs will help push many of these companies to the USA.” - Hardware security device manufacturer
_________
“Tarriffs are incredibly good for American manufacturers, especially automated ones like Hadrian.
The simple reason is that 80% of American manufacturing was offshored to china between 1980-2010 and therefore removed the majority of revenue from American factories.
Much of this was done intentionally to deindusturalize the nation by the CCP artificially subsidizing energy labor and raw materials to use price as a lever to draw capability outside the US.
Tariffs balance that out so that prices increase of imports build factory demand in the US.
Due to the lack of skilled tradespeople in the US we expect most of this demand to aggregate to automated companies like Hadrian. Our TAM just went from $100B to $500B, if the tarriffs stick into law.
Secondly - and most importantly - this will bring hundreds of thousands of good jobs back to the American middle class, and reindustialize the country ahead of a China conflict in the 2027-2032 window.” - Hadrian CEO Chris Power
_________
So there you have it — most of the blue collar business owners I know are supportive of the tariffs. They understand there will be changes in their business, but they believe the overall effort is worth pursuing. On top of that, many of the US manufacturers are looking forward to the tailwind that tariffs provide their business — including onshoring of suppliers, protection against unfair trade practices from foreign competitors, or increased demand for their American products.
Again, this is information you can’t get sitting in an office or staring at a spreadsheet. You have to get out and talk to people who are living this reality daily. And those people have a very different view than the Wall Street crowd.
Because there is one hidden truth that the blue collar workers know that is completely missed by Wall Street — American manufacturing is the envy of the world. Here is a select list of products we are the leading producer of:
Reusable rockets
Defense weaponry
Suburban mansions
Advanced aircraft
Industrial machinery
Pharmaceuticals
Anyone saying America doesn’t know how to make things is an idiot. The United States of America is a leader in technology. We make things no one else in the world can make. And there is a crop of brand new companies that are leading the charge on the Industrial Revolution 2.0 — there is even a conference for it already.
I am an investor in some of these companies and a fan of others. Here is a short list of a few:
Varda Space - space manufacturing of pharmaceuticals
Cover - modern home builder
Base Power - fast-growing, modern energy company
Durin Mining - automated mineral extraction
Somatic - Commercial cleaning robot manufacturer
Rainmaker - cloud seeding startup
HelloGravel - national aggregate distributor
The tariffs have three goals — raise government revenue, reshore manufacturing, and drive fair trade practices in bilateral trade. Plenty of people doubt the likelihood that America can become a strong manufacturing company again. They simply don’t think it is possible for America to make things.
I completely disagree. And I wouldn’t bet against the American entrepreneur. They are winners who can figure out solutions to any problem. The tariffs are going to pull many of these smart people into the fight to reestablish our dominance in manufacturing.
It will be glorious to watch. Hope you all have a great day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
- Anthony Pompliano
Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management
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Will Tariffs Crush Bitcoin & Stocks?
Polina Pompliano, Author of ‘Hidden Genius’ and Founder of The Profile, and Anthony Pompliano, Author of ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’ and CEO of Professional Capital Management, discuss everything that is going on with tariffs, why the tariffs will work, what the tariffs will accomplish, and what Wall Street and the media do not understand.
Enjoy!
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