If you've recently loaded up at Safeway and noticed your paper bags feel flimsier — specifically, missing those little handles that make carrying three bags of overpriced organic yogurt possible — you're not imagining things.

Safeway's paper bags have lost their handles, and the culprit is a cocktail of tariffs and supply chain disruptions that are quietly making everyday life just a little more annoying. The handles, apparently sourced through a supply chain now tangled up in trade policy, have become a casualty of the ongoing tariff regime. And while this isn't exactly a national emergency, it's a perfect little case study in how trade policy doesn't just hit abstract economic charts — it hits your grocery run.

Let's be clear: tariffs are taxes. They're taxes on imports that get passed along to consumers and businesses in ways that are often invisible until suddenly your paper bag doesn't have handles anymore. Nobody in Washington sat down and said, "You know what would really stick it to our trade rivals? Making San Franciscans carry groceries like cavemen." But here we are.

Now, one Bay Area commenter put it plainly: "Bring your own reusable bags and this will never be an issue." Fair point. And honestly, good advice. But the broader principle still matters. Every tariff has downstream consequences, and they almost never land on the people who designed the policy. They land on grocery store shoppers, small business owners, and the supply chain workers caught in between.

San Francisco shoppers are already paying some of the highest grocery prices in the country. We're already paying ten cents per bag thanks to local regulation. And now those bags are getting worse? That's the kind of lose-lose that should make everyone — left, right, and center — question whether the tradeoffs of aggressive tariff policy are actually worth it.

The handle on your paper bag is a small thing. But small things add up. And when government policy makes your daily life incrementally worse in ways nobody voted for, it's worth asking: who exactly is this helping?