Here's why
some of the best,
most affordable skin
care is about to
get more expensive.
The Trump administration
recently proposed a 25 percent
tariff on goods
coming into the U.S.
from South Korea,
which means fans of Korean
skin-care and beauty
products, or K-beauty,
may have to start paying more
for what used to be cheap,
high-quality skin care.
When Korean
beauty products
came to the U.S. several years
ago, beauty fans were obsessed
with how affordable
and, honestly, better
they were than U.S.
products,
especially our sunscreen.
Our FDA is notoriously slow
at approving new
sunblock technology, so
compared to
a lot of other countries,
our sun care is outdated.
It's usually a lot
gloopier, harder to rub in,
and more expensive.
But K-beauty
sunscreen has newer filters
that rub in more easily.
They don't leave a white
cast on your skin,
and they usually round about $15,
when the closest
counterpart in the U.S.
would be, like, $40.
So skin-care
enthusiasts like me
have been importing K-beauty
to get access
to that better sunscreen
and to products that use ingredients
you wouldn't normally
find in U.S. skin care,
like snail mucin.
But now that snail mucin
is caught in a trade war.
With this new tariff,
one expert
I talked to said K-beauty
brands will probably wait
at least a year before
figuring out their next moves—
so whether that's to just stop
focusing so much on U.S.
markets
or maybe to double down
and move their factories
into the United States,
where they'd be able
to avoid the tariffs.
But ironically,
even if the tariffs do succeed
and bring more manufacturing
into the U.S.,
in the case of K-beauty,
that'll mean that the products
have lost their strongest appeal:
that they aren't made in the USA.
One really famous K-beauty
brand, Beauty of Joseon,
moved their manufacturing
to the U.S.
a while back,
and beauty enthusiasts
have been less
than impressed with the products
they've designed
for the U.S. market.
Their sunscreen,
which they formulated
with the older filters approved by
the FDA,
has been criticized,
fairly or not, by beauty reviewers
as just not being as good
as the Korean version.
So when it comes to tariffs,
"Made in
the USA"
might not mean you're actually
getting the best
skin care out there.