ROYAL OAK, Mich. (WXYZ) — Along Main Street in Royal Oak is a sneaker lover’s paradise. Brand-name shoes line the walls and from China to Vietnam, you’d be hard pressed to find a tag that says "Made in USA."
Roland Coit, the owner of Burn Rubber, says most of the shoes he sells are made oversees.
"Maybe 100 (percent),” Coit said. “The only brand that does made-in-U.S. items is New Balance, and we don't carry much of the made-in-U.S. product because the price is so high and it kinda prices out the majority of our customers.”
Coit started the local boutique shop 18 years ago and recently opened another shoe store, Two 18, in Eastern Market. He’s been following every news update about tariffs because he knows what it means for his product.
“The prices are going to go up — that’s the short end of it,” Coit said.
Coit orders directly from the shoe companies roughly every three months and lists their suggested retail price. If that price goes up substantially, he worries his sales will go down, especially because the shoes he sells are brand name and sometimes limited edition.
“When you’re penny-pinching and you're watching your dollars, you’re going to cut the things you want, not the things you need," Coit said. "That’s the scary part because I have a daughter that's in college, I have a wife, I have a whole family.”
“The consumer is tired, they’re worn out and doubling the price of goods on certain items is not something they’ll be down for,” said Matt Priest, president and CEO of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America.
Priest says 99% of shoes sold in the U.S. are made overseas and the majority are made in China, where President Donald Trump recently increased tariffs to 125%.
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"You can better believe we are going to be one of the industries most impacted because as you said, it’s a product you have to buy, and you have to buy it from overseas sources,” Priest said. "Because this is so broad based, the sneaker collector is going to be hit, the single mom of three kids is going to be hit, the executive who needs to find a good pair of leather shoes is going to be hit. No one is safe from it.”
Priest says its unlikely tariffs on shoes would eventually lead to the creation of sneaker making jobs in the U.S.
"The idea we’ll have thousands and thousands of Americans assembling shoes for the U.S. market, I think that ship has sailed because we’ve matured out of it as an economy," Priest said. "We’ll continue to look for higher value production that drives more exports and growth opportunity for jobs here in the states.”
If anything, Priest worries the tariffs will put hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs that work on designing, developing and selling shoes at risk. It's a fear that local shop owners like Coit feel firsthand.
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"You forget about the people we employ. Not just me. I'm talking about the big stores like the Foot Lockers of the world, they employ a lot of people. And then you start thinking about the designers designing these shoes, they’re not over there (overseas,)” Coit said. "It could get to a point if sales drop, we may have to lay people off. There's a lot of things that go into it that a lot of people don't think about."
