Graphic Media Alliance

08/07/2025

Tariffs, Tactility, and the Future of Print: A Survival Guide for the Bold

Source: BoSacks, July 17, 2025

The story of print has always been a tale of resilience. From Gutenberg’s movable type to the meticulously designed issues of The New Yorker, print publishing has endured revolutions, industrial, digital, and now geopolitical.

As of July 2025, we find ourselves facing another reckoning. It's not wrapped in flashy tech buzzwords or flashy new platforms. It's wrapped in bureaucracy, tariffs, and economic whiplash.

This latest blow isn’t as flashy as the digital migration or as public as the collapse of ad revenue; it’s quieter, more insidious. But it’s just as destabilizing. The culprit? Tariffs.

This hits close to home. In the 1970s, my first newspaper, The Express, was blindsided by a paper price hike that wiped us out. Back then, we were twenty-somethings with plenty of passion, but no cushion. Paper fluctuations aren’t theoretical to me; they're personal.

Fast forward to 2018, when the U.S. imposed tariffs on Canadian groundwood paper. Prices spiked by as much as 30%, and the aftershocks were brutal. Community newspapers folded. Indie publishers cut frequency.

The Weekly Standard, Redbook, Cooking Light, once regular fixtures in mailboxes and on newsstands, either scaled back or shut down. Even legacy publishers with deep pockets couldn’t avoid the pinch.

Though those tariffs were eventually repealed after fierce lobbying from every corner of the publishing ecosystem, the damage was done. Paper mills shuttered or pivoted to more profitable packaging materials. Supply chains frayed. Publishers learned that certainty was now a luxury.

And here we go again.

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