Tariffs, TikTok, Wine Prices, and Why Nothing Is as Simple as It Seems | Twist Happy Hour Ep. 7

We’re stirring up cocktails and conversation about a topic that might hit your wallet: tariffs.

Keryn and Kate kick off the episode with a Lavender Bees Knees and Empress Gin, then pivot to the rising costs of wine, hidden fees from online shopping, getting your news on tariffs from TikTok and the complex ripple effects of global trade.

From unexpected delivery bills to the reality of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., this episode dives deep into how international policy decisions trickle down to everyday life. The duo also discusses why long-term planning—not quick fixes—is essential if we want to create lasting change for future generations. So pour yourself something strong and join the conversation.

Chapters
00:00 – Cocktails and Conversations: The Twist Happy Hour Begins
04:23 – Tariffs and Their Impact on Wine Prices (plus everything else you love)
12:14 – The Surprising Costs of Online Shopping (and the surprise bill you will get from Fed Ex, UPS, etc.  to get your stuff)
20:10 – Manufacturing in the U.S.: Challenges and Solutions

🍸 Here’s what we’re talking about in this episode:
• Why your favorite bottle of Prosecco may soon cost more
• The TikTok trend revealing surprise tariff bills on online orders
• The hidden costs of importing goods from overseas
• Why rebuilding U.S. manufacturing isn't as simple as it sounds
• How tariffs alone won’t solve the problem—and what actually might
• The importance of long-term planning in U.S. policy and politics
• Why it’s time to rethink our institutions, not just ditch them
• How everyday shoppers and business owners are being affected
• And as always—how a good cocktail makes any hard convo a little easier

🍸 Try our featured cocktail recipes:  https://twistcocktailrecipes.com
 
🌀 Twist Happy Hour is your go-to podcast for short, unfiltered chats about pop culture, parenting, politics, cocktails, and whatever else is on our minds. New episodes every Thursday— perfect for your coffee break, commute, or wind-down walk.

💬 Leave a comment with your favorite good news story of the month—we’ll share our favorites in a future episode!

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:03)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Twist Happy Hour where conversations and cocktails collide usually in a hilarious form especially when you watch Kate turn around her shirt because it's backwards right before you record.

Speaker 1 (00:17)
And now, this time.

Speaker 2 (00:20)
So today let's kick it off with our cocktail, which is going to be a classic bee's knees. And Kate is going to be using Empress gin, which has that beautiful purple color. And I'm just going to use regular old gin. I didn't even have, we'll start unwrapping and I'll start walking us through what we have to do. I'm actually making a lavender bee's knees because I happen to have lavender honey syrup, which is really just a cup of honey, cup of water.

Speaker 1 (00:33)
didn't even unwrap it yet.

I'm

Speaker 2 (00:48)
Mix it all together in, know, tilts nice and warm and simmering. And then I added in some dried lavender to kind of bring out that taste. So good. It's like my happy drink. And it's so easy if you have it. And partly opening a bottle of emperastrine is not easy because Kate is still... Okay. So we're going to do two ounce. We're going to get our little shaker thingies. We'll have to do some of this sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:06)
Okay, got it.

Drink recipe.

Speaker 2 (01:16)
So we're gonna do two ounces of gin. I like low-couge gin for this kind of stuff, but I think I'm really curious about the Empress Gin and how that's gonna differ.

Speaker 1 (01:19)
Okay.

Different

Roku-jin, different than the thing that you make on your or that is on your television.

Speaker 2 (01:32)
Yes, very different from the streaming device you can plug into.

Speaker 1 (01:35)
The

lady at the liquor store was very confused when I said Roku-jen. was like, EV thing? And I was like, no.

Speaker 2 (01:43)
Alright, then we're gonna do this. We do two ounces gin, three quarters of an ounce of lemon juice. Yes, everybody, I'm looking at my notes because I don't have every recipe memorized, although this one's pretty-

Speaker 1 (01:53)
Just going to real quick pick the lemon crud out of mine.

Speaker 2 (01:59)
I worry for you

Speaker 1 (02:01)
Changing colors!

Speaker 2 (02:02)
It is, see? we should have shown how it changes color when you add the...

Speaker 1 (02:06)
It

wasn't that exciting, I apologize.

Speaker 2 (02:08)
Nevermind. All right. I have my lavender honey simple syrup and Kate's going to just use honey simple syrup.

Speaker 1 (02:14)
I don't know how much I'm supposed to use it to

Speaker 2 (02:16)
I'm sorry. Just a half an ounce.

Speaker 1 (02:18)
Okay, well that was way more, mine's gonna be super sweet.

Speaker 2 (02:21)
Okay, so then you're just gonna put your ice in. Sorry, get stuck in my little holder thing. Ready. And then everybody close your ears because we're go shake a shake a shake a.

Speaker 1 (02:29)
Okay. ⁓

⁓ Take your headphones out with maracas. Is that the right amount to shake or no?

Speaker 2 (02:39)
Usually

when I shake, like 15 to 30 seconds, because you're chilling it all down. We do it a little shorter just for the show because it's really lax.

Speaker 1 (02:48)
We don't

Speaker 2 (02:51)
So now you're pouring and I'm trying to pour it. ⁓ my gosh, I love it.

Speaker 1 (02:55)
It's beautiful!

And I'll tell you guys if it's disgustingly sweet, because I put all my honey in. I didn't put it all in. I tried to make honey simple syrup on the fly before we got on air, and I just took honey and mixed it with water.

Speaker 2 (03:09)
So because I have lavender, I'm gonna put a little sprig of dried lavender on mine to make it pretty. I got this from the Long Beach Vintage Mart. It was at Gals, it was her grandmother's and she...

Speaker 1 (03:14)
I like that's a pretty glass. I like that glass.

It's

not sweet. I'd probably get a bit more honey in that bad boy. Maybe a little too much.

It's, I don't know, I just squeezed a lemon. Sometimes you just got to wing it, you know? I mean, for the people that are just going to make this after work, you know what mean? That are just like, I just need to pour one out. Don't overboard on the lemon is my advice.

Speaker 2 (03:36)
Let's do it!

I like it. Speaking of wine, let's talk about tariffs because everybody's been freaking out about tariffs. You can whine about the tariffs, but also the tariffs that will be on wine.

Speaker 1 (03:54)
am I whining about?

god, are they gonna put his online?

Speaker 2 (04:04)
If they don't come to a good agreement, mean, think about it, champagne from France and, you know, supposedly there's some UK deal that is happening or has happened or did happen. I don't know. I feel like they're like, yes, it's done. And they're like, we're still working out that.

Speaker 1 (04:17)
I don't drink champagne from France because I'm not that bougie, but I drink Prosecco from Italy, I want to say.

Speaker 2 (04:25)
That could be, yes, Prosecco's from Italy, Calvis from Spain. But yeah, all of that, there is the potential for more tariffs on that, meaning it will cost us more to get.

Speaker 1 (04:36)
I don't like that. So I don't know if you have seen or if the viewers slash listeners have seen, but TikTok is now blowing up with people who are getting bills from FedEx and UPS and DHL for crap that they bought online, didn't have a weird price that was just priced. They paid shipping, did the whole thing and are now getting bills for like $1,300 for

the government tax and it's the tariffs because I had to look at it. I'm like, well, why would they? Meanwhile, my husband's like, I'm just okay in that. But it is because they incur the cost when it is shipped into the United States and then they are passing as all the economists said, they are then passing it on to the consumer. But there's no, you don't know what it's going to be from

Moments like you know from your order to whenever and people are getting these in the mail like weeks and months like a month up to a month later. Yeah

Speaker 2 (05:39)
Especially so I found out about this today because of Kate. So I quickly did my research because I'm like, surely not. This is a scam. Every time they ask for money from me, I'm like, it's a scam. It's a phishing scheme.

Speaker 1 (05:51)
She literally texted me was like, that's a scam.

Speaker 2 (05:54)
I was like, that's not real. I was just like, no, no, go look at all about TikTok. So I did. But then I also like went down the rabbit hole because I'm like, okay, TikTokers, as much as I love you all and I dance along with You got a fact check. I got a fact check. So I started looking for news articles and I finally found one from Washington Post and I think it was probably reprinted on MSN. It says, no, this is legit. And it's mostly because nobody has any clue what's happening. And so they can't put it on your initial bill saying, yes, this and plus the-

Speaker 1 (06:23)
This

is going to be it.

Speaker 2 (06:24)
government tax until it shows up at your door and then before UPS, FedEx, whoever hands you your package, you have to pay this bill. It's not even this retroactively later on you're getting a bill. It's literally they won't give you that thing that you just ordered that happened to come from China.

Speaker 1 (06:43)
So, and the problem is that we don't know what the number is. Like, it's not like you can mentally calculate the numbers changing daily. So it's like, how do I know if it's going to be 30%, 10%, 20%, 15%, 40%, 125 %? Who knows? ⁓

Speaker 2 (06:59)
was reading with this-

Well, of course. Well, this one gal had ordered some clothes from some designer in Australia or whatever, but it wasn't that. It was $150 worth of clothes, something like that. She got a $1,700 bill. Now, these numbers, I'm not sure if they're exact or whatever, but she had the best point ever. She's like, I could have literally flown to Australia, gone to the store, bought it, come back, and it would have been less because suddenly that $50 t-shirt is now

$375 because of a tariff, which isn't great, but it's also we as people of the US are so used to online shopping and not thinking about where anything's coming from. And suddenly we're realizing, oh, these people have a higher tariff. This has

Speaker 1 (07:45)
This matters. Well, and to your Australian lady point, would she have to pay the tariffs when she brought it back into the United States? You have to pay customs.

Speaker 2 (07:54)
True, but you only have to pay customs after you reach a certain amount.

Speaker 1 (07:58)
Yes, but they waived

Speaker 2 (08:01)
$100 goods for new customs. know they took away that.

Speaker 1 (08:06)
So

don't, I mean, everybody do your own research. But before you like take a vacation to Amsterdam to go thrifting or whatever, make sure that you know is what I buy here going to be tariff free or am going to pay tariffs upon reentry of the United States? Because I mean, really good stores in

Speaker 2 (08:10)
If I check that.

I was

gonna say, I'm like, you know me so well with the thrift shop in Amsterdam, which I haven't done yet, but I've thrift shops in a lot of other countries. But I also like pick up different gins and scotch and whiskey and stuff when I travel and then I throw it in my check bag. But now I'm just gonna always have to do it at duty free, which I will say the Dublin duty free store is like my happy place. And Dublin's the only

airport I've ever been to where I've asked, like, they're like, do you need more? And I'm like, well, no, because I can only fit this in my backpack. And then I'll be over my allowance to like walk on the plane and you know, just for baggage alone. They're like, no, they know you have an airport shopping allowance. So you can literally walk on with a third bag of as long as it's in that duty free stuff. And I'm like, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (09:12)
That's nice.

Speaker 2 (09:14)
And they carry a lot of I really like. Now a couple of them that are like super micro distilleries, they don't, but I'm like, my writers tear whiskey. yeah. Let's do that. If I really feel like I need more dingle gin, although I can find it.

Speaker 1 (09:26)
Well,

you're going to be only in the duty free now because I don't know how that's going to affect because I mean a lot of people go on vacation to, I mean we're supposed to go to Italy next year. I'm going to buy stuff and bring it home for my mom and my brother. You know what I mean? ⁓

Speaker 2 (09:42)
Shopping could just like rip the tags off and be like no like this was mine

Speaker 1 (09:45)
was mine. guess

you do that with any. I don't know. Or then liquor is murder. I mean, I'm sure there's a workaround for all of this, right? So as Brian said, don't just throw it Don't pay it. I don't know if that's legal and I cannot give people that advice. I don't know if it'll affect your credit score. But I think that there are going to be, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to ask a lot of questions about this because a $13, you bought $150 worth of clothes and you got a $1,700 bill.

Speaker 2 (10:15)
think about all the companies like Tino and ASOS and all those other ones, they're like just, I mean, I don't recommend people do that because it's fast fashion and it's really bad for the environment, but people are still doing it. And suddenly that like dollar whatever, okay, well now like that's the fair value, not what you actually paid. You have to pay your value at the product. So even if it's on sale, well, if it's on sale, like say,

Usually $50 and it's on sale for $25, but the product's actually worth $50. That's usually what you have to pay a tax on. I also want to know this also came up

Speaker 1 (10:47)
didn't even think of that.

The sale's not even worth it!

Speaker 2 (10:53)
I know. Well, that's the thing. I'm like, suddenly you're not saving any money. So what's the point? Why would you shop there, which is just going to like.

Speaker 1 (11:00)
I

have seen my entire For You page the last couple of days has been people posting about what they are. And it's both business owners that are getting their stuff that they make their wares with, right? And then it is people who are just like, ordered shoes or whatever it is, and are getting a bill later and are like, but now is later. When did this go into place? Like about a month ago, a couple of weeks ago. So now is when they're going to start getting those bills.

If everybody's gonna get billed a month later, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:32)
and how they're getting billed a month later because they've already received the product. That's what I don't quite get because you could just be like, what are you going to do if I don't pay it? Yeah. Well, if you are being handed the product and essentially being handed a COD, a cash on delivery, before the carrier can hand you over the package. Okay, what if I say, no, I'm not going to pay that? Do they take the package back and then ship it back?

Speaker 1 (11:57)
Either way, even if they ship it back, the tariff still stands. Yeah. Because it was imported into the country. So then it's going to affect companies like DHL and FedEx and UPS. Their bottom line is going to go tank. I mean, I don't know how much loyalty people have to shipping companies or whatever. But again, then it causes mass layoffs. We don't want that.

Speaker 2 (12:08)
So they now

to use it and like even like cargo shipping across the ocean. That's going to be and you know, I used to work for a book publisher and we shipped via cargo ships all the time. And to the point that I actually had somebody asked me to go to a port and pick up their books because they were afraid they'd be late. And I'm like, you know, I'm not actually allowed in there. You know, I really needed like a helicopter. Yeah, I'm like, I can't drop down in middle of the ocean.

Speaker 1 (12:44)
Flash your back!

Speaker 2 (12:48)
Find your container and pick up your 200 books on the...

Speaker 1 (12:51)
You

could Tom Cruise that. Yeah, I think it's going to be a really interesting, you know, the economists all were like, well, it's not going to, you're not going to see it right away. You're going to see it months from now, whatever. And it kind of goes back to what we talked about on the other episode where we were talking about the Constitution, habeas corpus. You have to look at things past point A.

Speaker 2 (12:54)
I would have to

Speaker 1 (13:13)
How is this going to affect, like I said, the UPS drivers? Are they going to all lose their jobs because UPS goes under because nobody's paying for it? People are refusing delivery or whatever the case may be. How is that going to affect business overall? How is it going to affect businesses that are shipping their things into the United States and then selling them? You have to think about things past this initial, yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2 (13:42)
The whole point of tariffs was like, you know, the current administration wanted businesses to come back to the US and be producing here. Well, that's going to take a lot of time. I know we talked about this before. That takes at least what a lot of economists have said like 10 years in order to get a manufacturing up and running, staff it, build it, get all the systems in place. Plus the US is just a very, very expensive place to manufacture.

When I was in book publishing, every single, like we worked with a lot of museums, they always were like, oh, well, like give us a price because we'd like to print in the US. The US was five, 10 times more than Singapore. think the only other place that was on par with the US was like Belgium. We could print somewhere else like in the UK and it would be cheaper than the US.

Speaker 1 (14:27)
And people don't understand why that is. And it's because their pay rate is lower for employment, which people are like, well, why do they work for so much less? Well, their cost of living is lower, so they can. ⁓ And then also their shipping cost, because when you're shipping, when you're in Singapore and you're going to print a book, your paper factory isn't in the United States. We barely have any paper factories left in the United States. No, it's right next door in China.

and they will get it to you quick and easy. And it's funny because everybody keeps saying, well, China's going to rue the day. They're not going to bend on it. They're going to rue the day. And I'm like, China's... one teeny tiny country that China supplies to. You know who China supplies to most? China. they have a huge population and they all buy Chinese products because that's where they're all made. it's going back to the manufacturing in the US. There's two issues with that.

Speaker 2 (15:14)
population

Speaker 1 (15:25)
One, if we keep flip-flopping on these tariffs, everybody that keeps saying, he's going to negotiate, he's such a great negotiator and these guys are going to come crawling and negotiating, okay, great. They're going to negotiate it back down to what it was before he decided to go this route. But then that doesn't bring business back to the United States, because that was what the goal was, right? So that's problematic. And then two, it's going to take, like you said, it's going to take years, the lumber that we get to build the factory.

just an empty factory. The lumber is from Canada, okay? The machinery we need inside of the factory to get the textiles or whatever it is made, all of the pieces for the machinery come from somewhere else. So now we have to build the factory to make the little pieces for the machinery and we have to build the lumber mills.

Speaker 2 (16:13)
We have to grow the forest we already destroyed, everything else we need.

Speaker 1 (16:17)
And you know, I am with the American mindset of we need to bring that back manufacturing to the United States because we don't make anything here. And I think that's a problem for us. However, we've taken such a long time to screw ourselves out of it. It's going to take a long, time to screw ourselves back into it. It's not going to be, it's not a quick fix. And again, if you keep negotiating the tariffs back down, it'll never get like

Speaker 2 (16:35)
This isn't gonna be sex snip.

Speaker 1 (16:45)
to your guns, I guess. I don't know. think it's going to be a much bigger issue much further down the road. It's funny because Brian's uncle was a pharmaceutical, he was a shipping supplier for major pharmaceutical companies. He's like, we don't make any of the stuff that goes into the drugs that we take here at all. The United States makes intelligence.

GDP is based on intelligence, ideas, innovation, know, we are tech, like, ⁓ we're not a factory country anymore. We were and during the Industrial Revolution, but things have changed. And we weaseled our way out of that thinking it was going to be the greatest thing. But now, you know, you're getting outsourced by companies that are by countries that are that are able to do the manufacturing.

Speaker 2 (17:22)
We're not actually.

Speaker 1 (17:42)
I mean, you know, have to look at it as a, ⁓ I don't know, a problem we caused and it took years to cause. So we have to, the solution is going to take years to implement.

Speaker 2 (17:52)
It can't just be, have an idea, we should put tariffs on. needs to be, I have an idea, we need to add tariffs after or while we figure out this plan to bring manufacturing back into the country. Yeah. can't just be like, tariffs will fix it and naturally everything will trickle down. It's not going to happen that way.

Speaker 1 (18:12)
nothing is a quick fix. Everything that, you know, not to go off on a totally different tangent, but if something is broken, which I think that everyone on the right and left can say, like, there's a lot broken in the country before Trump, before Biden, there's just, we have a lot to work on, right? Like we're just, we need to be improving.

Speaker 2 (18:31)
We've been resting on our lawyer too much.

Speaker 1 (18:33)
Like, I think we all agree, you know, Congress is like term limits. every, every single person I've ever talked to was like, absolutely, should have term limits. Like even Mitt Romney was like, yes, we should have term limits. And I was like, me and Mitt. Like, I think that a lot of people agree on those things, but it comes down to like, if we keep arguing these point A pieces, it's never going to improve. We have to have play. You can't just go, well, this doesn't work. Get rid of it.

Speaker 2 (18:45)
age limit term and a

Speaker 1 (19:01)
because you have to have a plan for the long term. And how is this going to affect future generations? How is it going to affect the country moving forward? No one seems to, they're like, the Department of Education sucks, we're getting rid of it. The FEMA sucks, we're getting rid of it. That doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (19:17)
Because there's no backup plan in place to do what those departments are already handling.

Speaker 1 (19:22)
And if my refrigerator and my dishwasher break, I don't just go, I'll just put them out to the curb and then hope my food doesn't go bad. Like you either get them fixed or you replace them. This is the common sense of that. And I think every single American would replace the refrigerator. This is rationality that does not escape them. They're like, yeah, if it breaks, I would either get somebody to fix it I would replace it. We need to do the same with our institutions.

Speaker 2 (19:51)
Well, once again, politics have hyped us up and cocktails have mellowed us out. Thanks for joining us for today's twist happy hour. Remember to follow and subscribe and like and share with your friends who want to talk about everything and anything.

Speaker 1 (20:07)
We're just talking.

We just we're just chatting. We have to break it.

Speaker 2 (20:15)
it. We didn't

fix it. All right, everybody. Well, thanks and cheers. ⁓

Speaker 1 (20:21)
Hopefully it stays cheap.