My snail mucina is trapped in a trade war

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When Korea’s skin was in the United States a few years ago, it became a legendary thing among beauty fans. They said about the sunscreen of the Korean brand of Joseon, who used advanced UV filters and did not leave behind any white movie; Currently, it costs $ 18: His nearest -American counterpart would be about $ 40 and Gloopier. The Korean snail mucina promised to moisturize the skin and improve the thin lines and caused a purchase frenzy, during which I dropped my own American dollars in a facial “essence” made from the snail secretions. It has made my skin softer and only removed me twice.

Now my snail mucina is trapped in a trade war. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s announcement of almost world rates included a 25 percent rise on the goods imported to the United States of South Korea; Its administration has also repealed a customs lagoon used by certain K-Beauty exporters based in Hong Kong. Some skin care fans had prepared for possible commercial interruptions: “I was spent payment on Korea’s skin because these rates are about to go crazy,” a person published in December. But now, they are in action. “If you like brightness, get it now,” said a skin influencer in Tiktok. “This is your last chance before it becomes inaccessible.”

Americans’ love adventure with K-Beauty was fostered by many years of free trade with South Korea, when our mucina was released from additional rates. The new rates will be “a good test to see how powerful is the K” in America, Andrew Yeo, a leading colleague at the Brookings Institution studying North -American Relations in South Korea, he told me how much he has accumulated “soft power” here. If people have been buying K-Beauty products because they love K-Beauty (or K-Pop or K-Drames), a price increase may not matter. But if they decide that Korean products have not done this Very for their skin, maybe they will go to neutrogena.

Beauty fans have sometimes gone to great lengths for importing Korean Serums, facial masks, moisturizers, solar filters and the like of exporters who are usually based on Korea or Hong Kong. When Joshua Dupaya, a beauty influencer, first put himself in Korean products in 2016, for example, he obtained them mostly from “trusted eBay vendors,” he told me. Cosmetics have become a significant part of Korea’s exports: $ 10 billion worldwide last year, almost $ 2 billion, of which they went to the United States. And some K-Beauty brands are more loved here than in their country of origin. A co -founder of Beauty of Joseon said in a podcast in December: “We are not really popular in Korea, I must recognize.” (His Korean brand name means “beautiful woman to Joseon”, referring to the old Korean dynasty Joseon, long-lasting. He said that Koreans think the name is “so attractive”.

Part of K-Beauty’s attractiveness is its price: $ 15 for a high quality moisturizer is compared favorably with a Bottle of $ 20 Cerave, and extremely Favorably, with $ 390 the mere “crème” that encompassed the upper step of the influential and celebrities of skin care. Korean beauty products also contain rare ingredients in U.S. skin care, but some North -American consumers swear …Centella Asiatica (Asian Pennywort), rice water, ginseng extract and, of course, snail mucina. Your sun protection is also objectively better. The FDA is slowly slowly to approve new UV filters, which has made sun protection generally worse than in Europe and Asia. The formulations here feel more severe and higher, and can leave behind white waste, because North -Americans have a smaller palette of UV technology to remove. For $ 12, someone could buy north -American solar protection in inspiring packaging that makes them look like a ghost. For the same $ 12, they could buy k-Beauty sun protection in expensive appearance that will not make them look like a ghost. When my friend returned from South Korea with a complete transport full of Korean skin, we applied drops of sun protection, feeling as a royalty with our advanced protection against UV. For skin care enthusiasts, K-Beauty was an ideal trifect: a luxurious product, it seems effective, and It is relatively affordable.

Read: You don’t have permission to have the best solar filters in the world

The rates will test if a higher price exceeds the other benefits. Yesterday, the founder of the Korean company Kravebeuty announced to Tiktok that the rate will reach his next shipping to the United States and will have to pass to customers. “We still calculate the implications of this new trade policy for our business, but this will change almost everything,” he said, for his company and others. He said the rates could increase the policy of their brand of maintaining all their products less than $ 28; Those who responded to the comments were already talking about K-Beauty in the past tense; Many included crying emoji.

Trump’s rates of course only apply to imported K-Beauty. In recent years, a good handful of leading K-Beauty manufacturers have opened factories in the United States and will be able to avoid rates, Yeo told me. But it hopes that other Korea-based companies will wait about a year to see if these rates will last and how American consumers respond to the rise in price before they are planning to move to America. “I don’t know if the Koreans want to invest so much,” he said. “It depends on how bull believes you are the United States market.” K-Beauty’s US demand has grown a lot, but brands will have to decide if they think it will continue to grow. The United States is not its only market and companies can choose to focus on countries like China.

But if the rate is successful and more k-Beauty is made soon in America, the industry could lose its important point of sale: it is not made in America. These non -users are the whole attractiveness of using Korean beauty, “Dupeya told me. The beauty of Joseon began to make versions of his beloved sun protection specifically for the United States Market, which meant that he could only use UV technology approved by the FDA. Fairly or not, North -American users seem to think that they have the same problems as us.” the skin on one of the US formulations.