Alternatives to Tariffs: Part One

 

Editor’s note: this is the first in a two-part series

 

My coworkers at Confer Plastics and I are in the trenches of the global trade wars. Literally every day, we are competing against Chinese manufacturers that copy our products. The marketplace here in the States holds quite a few lookalikes of our swimming pool products and there is a growing number of knock-offs of our hot tub steps – in just the past two years alone, nine of them have appeared.

 

To keep that competition at bay we devote a lot of time, energy, and money into protecting our products, place in the industry, and people. We investigate every new product that looks similar, issue cease and desists to retailers carrying definite infringements, engage our legal representation on a regular basis, and put a princely sum of money into developing and locking up our intellectual property in its various forms.

 

You would think that would make me the poster child for tariffs; after all, those added costs could be a deterrent to the overseas scoundrels and scofflaws and the domestic distributors who put their products into US markets.

 

That’s not me.

 

I hate tariffs.

 

Tariffs add to the cost of living because the foreign producers and their networks here aren’t going to eat the charges, they are going to pass them on to their US consumers. In this era of endless and frustrating inflation, I don’t want to see my customers – who are decidedly middle class – or any family losing their purchasing power to this propagandized, incognito form of taxation. Many of those consumers adore tariffs because the government has them believing they are sticking it to the outsourcers, importers, and bad guys, when, in reality, it’s they who are being penalized.

 

It’s especially maddening when tariffs are thrown around indiscriminately and applied to everything -- as President Trump has threatened to do -- including things our economy is incapable of making in the volume we need or at all, such as Canadian aluminum and energy, or Mexican produce that keeps our nation fed outside of our growing seasons. The burden becomes inescapable and indisputable. You can’t temper an increasingly higher cost of living by only adding to it. It’s no different than his predecessor, President Biden, jacking up the duty on Canadian softwoods used in construction to nearly 15% while also saying there’s an affordable housing crisis in the United States.

 

I would prefer that our federal government abandon tariffs and instead work on foreign and domestic policies that make US-based mining, manufacturing, and agriculture more attractive and more affordable.

 

I have many suggestions to make that so, but I’ll limit it to my Top Five. This week I’ll address two of those ideas, with a focus on intellectual property.

 

Create an international culture around intellectual property.

 

Why do Chinese producers so shamelessly copy products and engage in corporate espionage? It’s because they are indifferent to the value and importance of intellectual property. Protecting and preserving designs, copyrights, trademarks, and trade dress is of little interest to them likely due to cultural issues: By living under numerous communist philosophies and dictates they devalue the individual – and there’s nothing more individualistic than ideas.

 

Rather than expending so much effort in creating friction with our nation’s third largest trading partner, federal officials should find ways to temper the sources of frustration with that relationship and develop a universal understanding and appreciation of IP and a protective framework around it.

 

Provide IP support to the little guys.

 

As a mid-sized business we have the resources -- and the hunger, knowledge, experience, and outside partners – to fight infringements, every one of them, and develop armor for our goods beginning at the earliest stages of product development.

 

Smaller businesses aren’t in that position. Maybe they don’t have the revenues. Maybe no one has ever educated them on how to do it. Maybe they aren’t aligned with good legal representation. Maybe they don’t believe their idea is unique. Maybe they don’t have the time.

 

Whatever their reasons may be, we need to remove the obstacles – and the threats, foreign and domestic -- that could inhibit their business’s growth.

 

My suggestion is that the federal government go one of two routes. One, empower the US Patent and Trademarks Office to create a consultation or legal service that will engage small manufacturers in all phases of IP and help them develop, file, and maintain it. Or, two, allow smaller manufacturers to get substantial grants that would apply to the utilization of outside legal services in the protection of IP. Under both scenarios, I believe a threshold for annual revenues should be $5 million because it’s the little guys who need the help in fighting knockoffs so they can one day become the big guys.

 

In next week’s column, I’ll look at three other alternatives to tariffs in hopes of keeping those surcharges away while still emphasizing the competitiveness of America’s makers of things.  

 

 

From the 25 January 2025 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Wellsville Sun

Exploring the Western NY Wilds: Be on the lookout for light pillars this week

 

It’s been a cold winter but the arrival of really, really cold arctic air to Western New York this week is being looked at as a most unwelcome experience. Those painfully-cold temperatures and brutal wind chills make appreciating the outdoors impossible for most. Even if you do brave the elements, you won’t see much in the way of wildlife as they’ve hunkered down, too.

So, you end up appreciating Mother Nature in other ways. You take the beauty as it comes.

One of the more interesting sights might appear in the next few days if the wind calms down – and that’s a big “if.”

That would be the visual phenomenon or optical illusion known as “light pillars.”

Some nights or early mornings while driving you might see what appear to be the lights from street lamps and parking lots stretching hundreds of feet into the sky as individual columns (or pillars). Even the headlights of oncoming vehicles might have light pillars going a few dozen feet into the night.

The sight is more pronounced as you drive from the rural areas into a city or village. If you are in the village limits you won’t get to appreciate them as much as the effect will be drowned out by so many lights being around you.

Light pillars are extremely beautiful, as they take on the color of the light source and a small commercial district can send dozens of these multi-hued spires skyward. They are created by ice crystals being present in the atmosphere near ground level. Ice crystals are normal to the highest parts of the atmosphere and rarely make themselves known near the ground in the Lower 48. But, the coldest of air can make “diamond dust.” Diamond dust is actually a ground-level cloud that typically forms under clear or nearly clear skies, and some meteorologists call it “clear-sky precipitation.”

Diamond dust is uncommon in most of WNY (during a “typical” winter you might see it 1 to 4 days per year), but in Northern Canada, bouts of diamond dust may continue for a week at a time and are common for more than half the year. As you get close to the North Pole, it can be found almost all year long.

That said, light pillars appear only in the most frigid of weather. I typically don’t see them until air temperatures get below 12 degrees. Anything higher than that is too close to 33 degrees — especially
when you consider the heat radiating from buildings and roadways — to create the environmental conditions necessary. There cannot be any wind, either, as it will displace the cloud and/or change the angle of the ice crystals within it.

Angle is critical. The plate-like ice crystals in diamond dust are actually falling and remain almost perfectly horizontal, which causes the lights below them to both reflect and refract across millions of crystals to make the pillars. What you see as the visual effect is not directly over the light source — the mirage, if you will, is actually between you and the light source.

It should be noted that while light pillars are rare throughout most of WNY, they can be somewhat of a regular sight in Niagara Falls. That’s because the mist from the falls becomes ground-level ice clouds on a regular basis. There pillars are so pronounced that UFO reports are a thing in Niagara Falls because unknowing tourists don’t know what to make of the strange, colored lights in the sky.

So, while you may struggle to find some sort of positive to come out of these bone-chilling temperatures, enjoy the sights they bring to us. Light pillars are unique, attractive, and, as some tourists have shown, maybe even a little creepy.


From the 24 January 2025 Wellsville Sun

New York requires retailers to fix what it broke

 

The state legislature is known for lacking nuance and failing to roll out reforms in an incremental fashion. Our lawmakers, especially those from downstate, tend to go all-in with their ideas and legislations and worry not about domino effects and unintended outcomes. That’s why local taxpayers are on the hook for so many unfunded mandates and businesses are saddled with so many regulations.

 

Consider the latest set of rules to be placed upon employers – the Retail Worker Safety Act.

 

This act came about because of how the Senate and Assembly totally transformed, even gutted, public safety in recent years. Lawmakers instituted a variety of changes to criminal justice with the primary goal being social justice reform, that have had, in many circumstances, considerable unwelcome consequences despite the best of intentions. You’re familiar with the culprits like bail reform and raise the age which have lead to culprits on the streets -- criminals are now more emboldened than ever because of catch and release and other slaps on the wrist. They know they can get away it. You can understand that most viscerally in the fact that the Governor had to send the National Guard to the subways of New York City and is now having 750 more police officers stationed on NYC’s subways and platforms during the overnight hours.

 

Rather than addressing this situation properly by going back and making some reforms to the reforms that they went all-in with, the legislature, which is not one to lose face and admit failure by doing so, has sought bandages – like those deployments of potential force on public transit -- to cover the wounds. The Retail Worker Safety Act is another one of those first aid measures.   

 

Since the advent of criminal justice reform, retail theft and violence have gone out of control. Larceny offenses in NYC have spiked by 51% since 2017 while robberies, grand larceny and petit larceny in the Big Apple are up by 86%. And, the value of those thefts and brutality of that violence have become more disgusting. Retail workers are put, in many places, in harm’s way, something that had been unheard of just a few years ago.

 

So, the state is now mandating that retail businesses – not so much the police and courts they relied on before – ramp up the security and protection of their workers.

 

Effective March 3 of this year – or June 1 if a chapter amendment goes into play – any retailer with 10 or more employees in the state must comply with the act (it does not apply to retail businesses that primarily sell food or beverages for consumption on the premises).

 

It requires retailers to create and distribute to all employees a workplace violence prevention policy. It must address the situations that place employees at risk such as working late at night or in the early morning, exchanging money with the public, working alone or in small numbers, and uncontrolled access to the workplace. The policy must provide methods that the employer can use to prevent workplace violence while giving remedies to employees who are victims of it.

 

The act also requires retailers to provide violence prevention training to all employees when hired and then again every year (if the business has 50 or more employees in the state) or every two years (if employing less than 50). The training has to be interactive and include measures that employees can use to protect themselves when faced with violence, such as de-escalation, active shooter drills, emergency procedures, security devices, and training on previous and specific incidents of violence.

 

Then, on January 1, 2027, retail employers with 500 or more workers statewide must provide access to panic buttons on the premises -- or wearable, cellular-based panic buttons -- that request immediate assistance from local law enforcement (a proposed amendment would include a change to the recipient of the alert to a security officer, manager, or supervisor).

 

It’s said that the New York State Department of Labor will provide samples of policies and training that can then be tailored by the employers for their specific workplace. Those samples are not yet available. Regardless, retail businesses should start developing their plans now in the event the act goes into effect just 6 weeks from now (though June is still a possibility). Consult with your employees, lawyers, and trade organizations to ensure compliance.

 

It’s no doubt frustrating to shop owners and store managers, especially those just learning of it now, to face yet another in a long line of piles of paperwork and policies and hours of training to appease the state...a state that absolutely broke retail safety and now wants that industry to fix it.      

 

 

From the 17 January 2025 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Wellsville Sun

The winter of the ice volcanoes

 

Cold winters like this – with temperatures in the teens and twenties being the norm -- tend to make some people question why they live so far north. Those who stay know that, despite their nastiness, our winters are interesting in their own right and beauty can found in such harsh conditions.

 

One of the coolest sights of the winter months is out in force this year after a few warmer winters that weren’t conducive to their best development: Niagara County’s Lake Ontario shoreline is now home to countless ice volcanoes and more are being made.

An ice volcano is not a true volcano since it’s not a geological phenomenon. But, they are called volcanoes by laymen and scientists alike because there is no better way to describe what happens when the conditions are right and they are in their full fury.

When the waves come roaring in with heights in excess of 5 feet, they will go under ice sheets that have formed along the shore. The power of the waves will plow through a weak point in the ice – a hole or a crack – and spew through that spot.

Done repeatedly, that hole will grow in size and it is not uncommon to find blowholes up to 4 feet in diameter. Most become much smaller over time (and after subsequent freezes), but the waves still must seek the point of least resistance, so the water continues to break through the ice sheet in that spot in varying amounts of pressure and spray distance -- in a really good wind you can see eruptions 10 feet in height.

In a sustained storm, small conical mounds (over 5 feet in height) can appear over a day’s time because of this ... the spewing water creates its own mountains. Over days of good wave action, working ice volcanoes can make mountains up to 20 feet in height and they will continue to shoot water until the waves come to an end and the volcano becomes capped due to the lack of water exploding out in volume and consistency.

Ice volcanoes can be found anywhere along the Lake Ontario shore, but the best in Niagara County are to be found at Golden Hill State Park and Olcott Beach. That is because the shoreline in those places is somewhat protected by Thirty Mile Point and the breakwall, respectively, which inhibits a great deal of the predominant westerly winds and allows for a certain calmness which in turn allows substantial ice sheets to form along the shore. When the wind shifts to the north or northeast, that’s when the volcanoes will appear.

To see them in all of their glory, you will want to be there on the windiest, nastiest day possible, so prepare for the occasion — dress warmly and bring a facemask or scarf. You do not want to go on a calm day or one with a southwest wind as you will not see any eruptions (although you will still get to marvel at the size and shape of the volcanoes).

At Golden Hill, the best spot to see them is in the area near the boat launch, which is the entrance a quarter mile east of the main entrance to the park (where the campsites and lighthouse are) on Lower Lake Road in Barker. There is a spacious parking lot at the boat launch (and there is no admission fee charged even in-season). In Olcott, park in the hamlet or along Krull Park and walk to the area of the swimming beach.

 
A word of advice: do not venture out onto the ice sheet to look at or climb the volcanoes or mountains. The areas around the volcanoes can be incredibly strong from the build-up of ice or they can be very weak (there’s a reason water is blowing through that area) and they can easily cave in, and often do, just from their own weight.

So, the next time Mother Nature turns on us and you don’t mind taking the ride out to the lake and facing the elements head on, get out and enjoy the ice volcanoes. If you are there at the right time and under the right conditions, they can be pretty awesome ... and in the future you’ll be hoping for more cold and windy winters.

 

 

From the 11 January 2025 Greater Niagara Newspapers