You’re Not Imagining Things. Beauty Products Are Getting More Expensive.

Tariffs. They started a revolution—the one involving King George III, John Hancock, and a duty on tea (OK, sure, there were other grievances). And though tossing all your South Korean glass skin serums into Boston Harbor might not work this time, emotions are likely to run high as the Trump administration continues to tax imports to the U.S. and leave American consumers with the tab. To date, a 20 percent tariff has been imposed on some Chinese imports (the country has announced retaliatory tariffs on US imports), and prices are likely to go up at a similar rate. Proposed tariffs on Mexican and Canadian products (25 percent for each country) have been put on a temporary hold as policy negotiations proceed. A proposed 25 percent tax on car imports is set to take effect on April 3.

The latest salvo, announced the day prior at the White House, is a 34 percent tariff on goods from China, 20 percent on those from the EU, 46 percent on Vietnam, 25 percent on South Korea, 26 percent on India, and a host of other country-based import taxes that, at least for now, are pretty opaque—along with a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries. How that might impact the Mexican and Canadian tariff proposals is for the moment unclear.

Financial markets don’t like this kind of uncertainty—as their current volatility demonstrates. Politicians are already angling for exemptions for products that benefit their constituencies. And the horse trading has only just begun. What does it all mean for the beauty consumer? In late 2024, we dug into just how steeper taxes on beauty imports could impact the industry and our own shopping carts.

What is a tariff?

Tariffs are taxes paid to a government on goods imported from abroad. They’re not particularly novel in our country, even in recent history: In 2018 and 2019, Trump—who nicknamed himself “Tariff Man”—imposed tariffs on $380 billion worth of certain products and materials imported from a variety of countries, including many from China. During his 2024 campaign, Trump said he’d enact even higher tariffs on imported goods. He has suggested putting in place 10 to 20 percent tariffs on all imports, and 60 to 100 percent tariffs on imports from China. Though no one can say for sure what will ultimately come to pass during the rest of this administration, many of the numbers it has put forth are nearly 10 times more than the tariffs Trump enacted in his previous term, according to Wendy Edelberg, PhD, senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution.

The general thinking behind tariffs, on both sides of the aisle, is that taxing foreign goods will boost the American economy by increasing domestic jobs and sales on domestic-made products. They can also be used as leverage in negotiations with other countries. Over the past four years, President Biden kept most of Trump’s tariffs in place, discontinued others, and created some of his own. The tariffs under the Biden administration, however, were much smaller than what Trump has been suggesting in recent months, says Edelberg, who notes that these could be the first average double-digit tariff rates for all imports since the 1940s.

Why should you care about tariffs?

Because a higher cost of goods can mean higher prices when you check out. Sellers have a few ways of responding to tax increases on imported products, says Edelberg. They can try to negotiate with the supplying foreign companies for lower costs, but that’s not likely to fly. They can elect to eat some or all of the extra costs in the interest of maintaining market share and consumer loyalty. Or they can pass the pain onto consumers. Looking forward to the potential tariffs coming in 2025, “the prediction is pretty unambiguous, and it’s that prices would go up,” says Philip Rothman, PhD, professor of economics at East Carolina University.

Though a big motivation behind taxing imports is encouraging sales of American-manufactured goods, economists say tariffs don’t necessarily do that because when foreign-supplied products go up in price, American-made ones often follow suit. For instance, in his first term, Trump introduced a tariff on foreign-made washing machines, which increased their prices. It wasn’t long before domestic washing machines became more expensive, too. (If a foreign company can charge more, why can’t we?) Even though Trump didn’t enforce tariffs on dryers, perhaps you can guess what happened. “People think of washing machines and dryers as going together,” says Edelberg. “So when the dryers look cheap next to the washers, companies can get away with raising their prices too.”

The U.S. imports trillions of dollars of goods each year—in 2023, nearly $4 trillion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Given the huge volume of imports from overseas, this means tariffs are likely to affect items we purchase every day, from clothes and groceries to car parts and medical supplies. And, yes, beauty and personal care products.

How could new tariffs affect the beauty industry specifically?

Depending on the origin country of the goods, Americans could pay up to a significant premium—from 10 to over 60 percent—on imported skin care, makeup, and other personal care items. If you’ve been buying a $60 moisturizer that’s imported from Europe, for example, it’s reasonable to speculate you’d pay $12 more, or $72, for that item under a 20 percent tariff. “Evidence suggests prices would likely go up by the amount of the tariff,” says Rothman.

But just because a product is manufactured in the U.S. doesn’t mean it’s totally American-made and immune from tariffs. Many non-imported items use foreign “input,” economics-speak for things like ingredients and packaging. Betsey Stevenson, PhD, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan says that even if a product is manufactured domestically, sellers may end up paying (and charging) more due to tariffs on other parts of the supply chain.

In a TikTok video, cosmetic chemist Javon Ford said beauty companies who use patented ingredients manufactured abroad could be affected because they can’t buy that exact ingredient at a lower cost elsewhere. A concealer, for example, could use a material that’s made by a European company—under tariffs, their options would be to pay more for that ingredient, or to reformulate.

For the most part though, beauty brands are sourcing the ingredients for products sold in the U.S. from American suppliers, says independent cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski. One exception are plant-based ingredients like coconut oil or palm oil—commonly used in foundation, concealer, lipstick, and more. Romanowski says products that contain those ingredients are more likely to see price spikes—the United States simply doesn’t grow that many coconut palms (which produce both oils). The same is true for products made with exotic ingredients, like a perfume with a note from vanilla only found in Madagascar.

A jump in the prices of China-made packaging is where both Romanowski and Ford think the beauty industry could take the real hit, though. “Packaging is already a substantial portion of the cost of making a cosmetic,” says Romanowski. And many, many brands get their packaging from China, where it’s produced much more cheaply. “It’ll affect makeup, hair care, skin care—anything sold in a bottle,” says Romanowski.

And in all of this, as you might imagine, small beauty businesses could be disproportionately affected. They don’t have the leverage of the larger conglomerates to enlist the legal resources and Washington lobbyists necessary to navigate tariffs or get exceptions from the federal government, says Edelberg. In Trump’s first term, for example, it was reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook was able to lobby the administration to secure exemptions on the China tariffs for the iPhone and other Apple products.

When could these potential price hikes take effect?

It depends. Some companies may spike prices as they sense consumer stress about product cost and availability and thus anticipate a higher demand. “As an extreme example,” says Stevenson, “if you knew we would never be able to import Chanel lipstick into the U.S again, the price would go up immediately because people will realize they should buy it before it’s gone.”

Some changes for consumers may not be immediate. Many imported goods have lengthy supply chains, which means it takes time for your favorite eye cream or highlighter to make it to store shelves. Some sellers don’t share the price burden with consumers until they truly can’t afford to pay rising costs anymore. “Even if the short-run effect isn’t to push up the price, we eventually see prices go up in the long-term,” says Stevenson.

How will beauty businesses address tariffs?

Many beauty companies have already dealt with tariffs. Tarang Amin, CEO of e.l.f. Beauty—which has been facing a 25 percent tariff on imports since 2019 due to an earlier Trump policy—told Yahoo Finance that any new policies wouldn’t affect the company or consumers until 2026. In a Business Insider article, Amin explained that he doesn’t like tariffs, because they tax the American people. “[In 2019], we pulled all the levers available to us to minimize the effects to our company and our community,” he added. When Allure reached out to Amin for further comment, he said in a statement that if e.l.f. is subject to new tariffs, “we’d use a similar playbook to 2019. At that time, we took a well-balanced approach with a combination of select pricing updates, cost savings, FX [foreign exchange], supplier concessions and manufacturing diversification.”