MrBeast bemoans Trump tariffs, his Feastables chocolate bars are the real victims here

Donald Trump‘s tariffs are steadily wreaking havoc across the world. As markets crater, there are frantic attempts to make deals, with peoples’ jobs, pensions, and homes on the line. Right now it’s chaos, particularly as Trump’s attempt to bully China into submission with an eye-watering 104% tariff hasn’t worked.

But beyond all that, there’s a real victim here: MrBeast and his Feastables chocolate bars. Taking to X, he posted that the tariffs look set to force him to move production of them out of the United States, as reciprocal tariffs now make domestic production uneconomic:

Ironically because of all the new tariffs it is now way cheaper to make our chocolate bars we sell globally NOT in America because other countries don’t have a 20%+ tariff on our cogs 😅

— MrBeast (@MrBeast) April 8, 2025

He has a point! The long-term theory behind Trump’s tariffs is that by making it expensive to export products into the United States, there’ll be an economic incentive to create domestic factories to avoid that tariff. It sounds simple enough, but there’s a ton of wrinkles: what if the raw materials or components you need can’t be obtained domestically and you need to import them?

Who would have thought that placing tariffs on countries that produce the raw materials needed to make your products, from food to aerospace, would make it cheaper to move production abroad? Perhaps avoiding electing a buffoon would have helped avoid this situation.

— Mormaer (@Mormaer) April 9, 2025

Or, in the case MrBeast’s Feastables, a company that exports products out of the country now finds the United States harder place to do business. He goes on to say that his company will “figure it out”, though the tariffs could be a “nail in the coffin” for small businesses. Plus, specifically for chocolate manufacturers, cocoa doesn’t even grow in the United States, so everyone will be importing it, be hit by tariffs, sending prices skyrocketing.

This is just cocoa and chocolate manufacture, but most major businesses that make products will be facing their own set of headaches as they decide how best to navigate this tangled thicket of new tariff costs and import rules. The full impact of these might not be apparent immediately, but if profit margins begin shrinking, employees will inevitably be laid off, so when you’re collecting the meager sum of what’s left of unemployment social security, remember that there’s only one spray-tanned tyrant to blame.