How are tariffs affecting this economy? Let us count the ways. From American public media,

this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl.

It is Tuesday today, the 15th day of April.

Good as always to have you along, everybody.

Yeah, so I'm not actually going to count the ways that President Trump's trade policy is affecting this economy because the show is only half an hour.

But ways number one,

two, and three for us today are in this order. Supply chains, steel and oil. Supply chains,

of course, are about availability of materials at reasonable costs, both of which tariffs

affect and not in a good way.

Businesses do have some recent experience with supply chain disruptions, so Marketplace's Justin Ho made some calls about lessons learned from the pandemic that might apply today.

Up until this week, Ken Gidden, the owner of Rothman's, a men's clothing store in New York,

would order 20 suits a week from one of his suppliers in China.

But on Monday?

We decided to buy 200 of them.

Gidden says one reason was to get them in before tariffs on Chinese imports take effect.

Another was to buy himself some time, to find other vendors in different countries.

Gidden says all the supply chain congestion that happened during the pandemic taught

him how important it is to have multiple suppliers.

The economic world always evolves.

So if one road is blocked, another one will open up.

That said, the pandemic also taught retailers that having too much inventory can be a drag,

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