No signs yet of tariffs getting passed through to consumers, neither in durable goods nor in clothing and footwear.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
A lot of durable goods sold to consumers are imported or contain imported components or materials subject to the new tariffs. Durable goods are where tariffs being passed on to consumers would show up first. They include new and used vehicles, furniture, appliances, floor coverings, tools, sporting goods, computers, smartphones, audio and video equipment, etc. So we look at the Consumer Price Index for durable goods to see if tariffs – companies paid an additional $23 billion of them in April and May – are getting passed on to consumers, or if companies along the way eat the tariffs with their profits that ballooned during the high inflation era.
The CPI for durable goods dipped by 0.1% month-to-month (-1.3% annualized), seasonally adjusted, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics today. Year over year, the CPI for durable goods was unchanged, with 0% year-over-year inflation.
As this chart of the price level for durable goods shows, durable goods experienced a huge spike of inflation during the free-money pandemic from mid-2020 through mid-2022 when consumers, powered with free money, were willing to pay whatever, and companies socked it to them. Then, as the free money faded, consumers tired of paying whatever, and companies, faced with slowing sales, had to roll back some of the price increases, and the CPI for durable goods declined through August 2024. But starting in September 2024, prices began to edge higher again through January. And then for the past four months, the CPI for durable goods has remained essentially unchanged.
In terms of the year-over-year percentage change, the CPI for durable goods was unchanged, after a long series of ever smaller negative readings back toward the 0% line.
So this is our main monitor of the impact of tariffs on inflation in the consumer prices of goods that are subjected to tariffs.
Obviously, this will take time to play out, it doesn’t happen overnight, and we’ll watch it develop as it moves forward, but so far, there is no sign in the inflation data of tariffs getting passed through to consumers. But the explosion of prices in 2021 and 2022 was historic.
Apparel and footwear are also tariffed if imported. The CPI for apparel and footwear fell by 0.4% month-to-month (-4.9% annualized) and was down by 0.9% year-over-year. The chart shows the price level (not the percentage change). So far, no sign that companies are able to pass on tariffs on clothing and footwear to consumers as consumers are not yet re-willing to pay whatever.
“Core services” CPI rose by 0.17% month-to-month (+2.1% annualized) in May, from April, a deceleration from the prior month (blue line in the chart below). Services are not tariffed.
The 6-month core services CPI rose by 3.2% annualized, a deceleration from April (red).
Core services include all services except energy services and account for about two-thirds of the overall CPI: housing costs, medical care services & insurance, food services, motor vehicle insurance, education, movies, concerts, sports events, club memberships, public transportation, telephone & wireless services, lodging away from home, water, sewer, trash collection, motor vehicle maintenance & repair, etc.
This chart shows the price level of the core services CPI. Unlike durable goods, the CPI for core services has continued to increase as consumers have much less power resisting price increases and shopping for alternatives of essential services.
“Core” CPI, which excludes food and energy components to track underlying inflation, but includes all the goods and services mentioned above, rose by 0.13% in May from April (+1.6% annualized), a deceleration from the prior month (blue in the chart below).
The 6-month “core” CPI rose by 2.6% annualized, also a deceleration from the prior month (red).
The overall CPI rose by 0.08% (+1.0% annualized) in May from April.
The overall CPI includes food and energy. Food prices rose by 0.27% (+3.2% annualized), while prices of energy that consumers pay for directly, dominated by gasoline, dropped by 0.98% (-11.1% annualized).
The 6-month CPI rose by 2.7% annualized, a deceleration of the prior months (red in the chart):
Overall, there was no evidence yet either of tariffs getting passed through to consumers.
The major components of CPI inflation, YoY price changes:
- Overall CPI: +2.4% (yellow), a slight acceleration from April.
- Core CPI +2.8% (red), unchanged for the past three months.
- Core Services CPI: +3.5% (blue), a slight deceleration from April.
- Durable goods CPI: unchanged or 0% (green), after a year-long trend of ever smaller year-over-year declines.
Corporate profits exploded and can absorb the tariffs: Here is where a substantial part of this massive burst of inflation went since the beginning of the free-money pandemic: corporate profits of nonfinancial companies exploded by 140%, or by $1.74 trillion annual rate. This explosion of corporate profits is an essential factor in the inflation-and-tariff machinery now, and it can easily eat the $300 billion or so in annual tariffs if consumers push back hard enough:
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If corporate profits end up being used to pay tariffs, should that impact the S&P or Russel 2000, or both?
I’d assume the linkage would be that tariffs send money from the corporation to the government. Corporate profits and profit growth go down by that much. The Price to Earnings ratio would suggest that prices should fall in relation to how much earnings fell? (Or more because of the lack of growth?)
Probably not “crash the stock market” sized, but 10%? (300 billion in tariffs is ~10% of 3 trillion in corporate profits?)
Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
The dip already happened! Blink and you’ll miss it
well Homeless depot sure got into it
2 months ago making duplicate key was $2.47
just had one made NOW $4.97
—-
I buy irrigation supplies at Home Depot. All the small parts are up by several dollars. Going to switch to Amazon…
Yes, and then you have to return it because it doesn’t work, so it actually costs more. Use a real Locksmith. It really is not more expensive.
@Idontneedmuch
I buy all my stuff from Drip Depot. The quality level is much, much higher than the stuff from Big Orange Box.
The market has already absorbed a lot of the inflation news and most likely all of the 10% baseline tariffs. This is only 10% of product cost on stuff overseas not 10% of profits. Yes, if it was a 10% tax on actual profits then you’d might be correct or if say a political party wanted to tax unrealized gains (Dems) or raise the corporate tax (Dems) then we’d be worse off.
If Stock valuations were at all tied to business fundamentals, sure.
Not particularly wrong but corporate profits (not to mention PE expansion) did pretty damn well for themselves for the past 25/50 years – it won’t be the end of the world if some of that gets pruned back/redistributed to the labor share (re-shoring, etc.) – particularly considering the inherent national security implications of excessive de-industrialization.
Well, Walmart is passing along these tariffs on some of its products. For example, the shampoo I’ve always bought at Walmart has been $6.97 for years. Yesterday I went in and purchased another bottle and guess what? It’s now $8.97.
I left and went next door to Target where the same shampoo was a dollar cheaper.
HotTub – Seriously?!? Where is your shampoo manufactured?
Companies that sell many products are distributing tariff increases across product portfolios. Even if the product is not itself affected by tariffs, a company might choose to increase its price to reduce price increases on the directly tariffed product.
@ Russell: My shampoo is Pentene Pro – V Sheer Volume (23.6 FL OZ).
On the bottle’s back it says “Made in U.S.A. of U.S. and/or Imported Ingredients. Distr. by PROCTOR & GAMBEL, CINCINNATI, OH 45202
So, who knows. Maybe it’s because of the imported ingredients. But I’ve also read on a different site that both Walmart AND Target are raising prices due to the tariffs.
Just for kicks, I went up on Amazon and priced the exact same shampoo. Get a load of this: Amazon’s price (for a two pack) is $19.99, which comes to $9.995 for one. And that’s without tax or shipping, since I don’t do Prime. Sheesh.
So I guess I’ll stay with Target, for now.
And 4hens is correct, in my estimation:
“Even if the product is not itself affected by tariffs, a company might choose to increase its price to reduce price increases on the directly tariffed product.”
Shampoo is made of ridiculously cheap chemicals and a ridiculously cheap plastic bottle. The rest is gross profits of every company involved, with retailers often marking up their costs by 100%. So if the ingredients and the plastic bottle are imported, the tariffs are applied to their ridiculously low costs coming into the US. These tariffs would be just a few cents. Which is why blaming shampoo price increases on tariffs is bullshit.
Amazon usually costs more than cheap stores. I think they even admitted, at some point, that their goal wasn’t to be the cheapest. The cost of shipping is built into their prices, so it makes liquids and large items especially expensive. It’s just icing on the cake for them if you’re dumb enough to pay for shipping on top of it.
Also, Prime is a trap to get you to buy there even when it costs more than another retailer.
Doesn’t this kind of answer the entire tariff thing? Just like Home Depot said, it is a chance to grab market share especially when competitors raise their prices.
And I’m not going to use anecdotal shampoo evidence as a barometer for tariffs
I was reading an article by a Doc saying that while taking shower using Shampoo, Conditioner and Body Wash is not needed most of the time.
This is the marketing hype which has conditioned our mind to use this so that companies can make $$ of it.
Not sure I agree but gone are the days where most of the people are blue collar workers.
White collar workers need more of good wash for their mind then for their body :-)
A lot of things we do are bcaz of conditioning of our environment.
I shave in the shower with body wash suds.
Hot water opens the pours, saves time and money too.
The shocker here is that a Target price beats a Walmart price – something I have very, very rarely seen.
Btw, you can get brand name shampoo at Dollar Tree for $1.25.
I’m not sure of the magic ingredient that makes one shampoo worth 5 times the cost of another.
Goes to show how fat a margin it is in the import business.
You won’t find price increase in big chain store everywhere but you will find less discounts and sales.
Amazon prices won’t move up uniformly but there will be less deals going forward because retailers don’t have the fat margin to hold promotions.
If you look at Aliexpess, the prices did go up by quite a lot but relative to what I pay in Amazon, it is still quite cheap.
For example, I need to buy cats’ tags regularly because my cats keep losing them. A customized tag cost $10 in Amazon but only $2.5 in Aliexpress but it was $1.5 before the tariff. I still buy from Amazon if I just need one tag because it takes forever to get something from Aliexpress. However, if I buy bulk, Aliexpress is definitely cheaper. The tariff shows up immediate in Alexpress because their margin is low unlike other retailers’.
cats don’t like tags – they’re trying to tell you that. maybe try a slide-on tag (see: etsy). the dangling tag thing needs to stop.
Don’t confuse price levels with inflation. Consumers “hate, hate, hate” the price levels of goods and services in today’s economy. Annual inflation could come in at 0% for the next three years, and consumers will still hate what they have to pay for goods and services. Of the 300 months in the past 25 years, inflation has been negative (actual deflation) for only 15 of those months, i.e. only 5% of the time. Anyone who believes tariffs are going to do anything but exaserbate that dynamic is living in la la land.
Not entirely sure what you are trying to say here, but I do agree that Americans aren’t so stupid as to be happy about getting ripped off for 30% in 2021-2022 – only to be told how wonderful it is that inflation has been flat since then.
People don’t forget currency devaluations (internal or external) – which is more or less what happened in 2021-2022.
Wolf, I’ve been re-reading your past analyses and wonder if (even) you’ve been a bit surprised by the relatively benign inflation numbers we’ve been seeing for a while.
Agree. Where is the “I was wrong, inflation is actually taming down”
You’ve never read any of my prior inflation articles. So go read them. They have a big section about durable goods. And they have a HUGE section about services, and you’re clueless what they say, and instead make stupid-ass comments, you doofus.
So here read the one from a month ago and adios:
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/05/13/beneath-the-skin-of-cpi-inflation-services-inflation-bounces-back-no-signs-yet-of-tariffs-getting-passed-to-consumers/
BMW is raising the prices for its vehicles in the US for 2026 by a minimum of $1,700 per vehicle. That has been confirmed by BMWUSA.
Then their sales will tank and they’ll have to start discounting them again LOL. It doesn’t matter what they want; what matters for inflation are transaction prices. They can sell their Mexican-made stuff in Mexico.
Their current vehicle lineup looks like absolute dog poo, I don’t know who would buy their modern junk anyway. The two I own, one is a 2011 and the other is a 2014. 185k and 292k miles respectively. At least you can still turn a wrench on these and make repairs/maintenance then yourself.
‘Biden Free Money Inflation’
you might wanna double check the signatures at the bottom of the $4 trillion in bills passed in 2020
You might want to check the chart when inflation took off… It wasn’t in the summer of 2020, it was in early 2021, by which time new stimulus measures were rolled out one after the other by a new President.
Wolf,
Your charts clearly show inflation taking off in the summer of 2020. Remember the Trump administration started the stimulus checks with $1200/adult and $500/child. Along with PPP loans and federal subsidization of unemployment insurance. Certainly Biden exacerbated the situation, especially as the economy was re-opening and there were historically massive supply disruptions.
They are both guilty!
In terms of the impact on inflation:
Durable goods CPI MoM, data below: There were three months of big increases in Jul-Sep 2020 and then it ended, went back to 0% by Nov and negative by Jan 2021. Then in April 2021, the MOM readings began to explode.
The YOY readings (chart above) maxed out at 3.8% under Trump and then declined again. Under Biden, it took off in Apr 2021 reached 18%-plus and was in the double digits until mid-2022.
Regardless of who passed which stimulus, it was Jerome “Transitory Inflation” Powell with the support of the Biden admin that allowed inflation to rage on for so long.
Inflation control is the Fed’s job. Even if this recent round of tariffs increases inflation, it will be the Fed’s fault for not anticipating it and adjusting rates accordingly.
Wolf,
Respectfully, wouldn’t it be expected for there to be a bit of a lag before inflation takes off after money is printed and PPP loans and stimulus checks are handed out? Repeated lockdowns during fall/winter of 2020 would tamp down on people spending their stimulus money and thus the resulting inflation.
I can’t see how Trump doesn’t shoulder some of the blame for the inflation that resulted from the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheets and PPP loans during the last year of his first term. The resulting inflation may not have appeared immediately, he was very for those measures during his final year. I specifically recall him being mad with McConnell for cutting him off on some additional stimulus measures close to
I will post updates periodically about my tariff-inflation tracker. It will show to what extent the tariffs are getting passed on. That’s why I made it, and that’s why it’s the #1 and #2 charts in the article. If it happens, you will see it.
I’m wondering if your vocation was in Economics. You are so good at explaining what matters and doing it clearly.
NO WAY E: IF Wolf’s vocation was Econ, he would be a master of saying nothing based on extensive re-iterations of nonsense based on opinions based on conjectures based on,,, hope ya got it by now???
He is WAAAAAAY better than that as a communicator, far damn shore!
Wolf please clarify the 28 billion in tariffs total to the amount included in durable goods. Perhaps I lapsed.
It’s not. Companies ate it.
Inflation never was the real problem. The problem was always that the top 10-20% do not spend nearly enough. Yes, they are the biggest spenders, but it is not enough to sustain the economy by a long shot. They sit on large parts of their money, “investing” it by trading assets back and forth, driving asset prices up. That money is lacking in the real economy.
Isn’t that just a consequence of extreme wealth concentration?
Exactly. A consequence of the free lunch for the haves, which may be less obvious than the free lunch for the have nots, but ultimately more destructive. In the long run, you can not get something without giving something (labor that is) in return. Even slaveholders and thieves have put in a little bit of work.
Agree with this. I’ve long thought that much of the asset market is just rich people passing tokens back and forth. It’s not generating wealth, that is productivity, by any means.
You nailed it.
What you say about the top 10-20% has a lot to do with inflation.
Low/zero interest rates as a result of low inflation is what enables those wealthy individuals to play their shell game with assets. It costs them next to nothing to borrow against their assets, so they never need to realize any gains. It allows them to not just speculate on stocks(~8% return), but assets like real estate as well(~4% return). No one in their right mind would speculate on real estate if they could get a similar and safer return from treasuries.
A high number of tariffs are on pause right now or just started I believe? Looks like we’ll avoid the worst of the China tariffs but even the short term impact on that was largely avoided by the importing boom in Feb/Mar. Feels like it’ll be a few months until we know what the full picture is.
Saying that, Bloomberg were arguing similar to you this morning – that the increased prices won’t likely be seen as much by the consumer, and really mostly impact businesses, reducing growth and investment rather than consumer prices. Maybe not the worse thing to slow down the economy some more. If that’s the way it works and interest rates fall to compensate Trump might accidentally pull off an economic marvel, government deficit aside.
“A high number of tariffs are on pause right now or just started I believe?”
The dollars are flooding in, pause or no pause:
……..and wouldn’t the tariffs imposed by China on their imports, soybeans in particular diminish the price per bushel to U.S. farmers? Less demand from China of U.S. farm products.
Check the puny dollar amounts of US soybean exports. It’s always “the FARMERS,” but their soybean export dollars are small compared to total US exports, and compared to imports.
Interesting. The CARES act was passed March 27, 2020 and the fed window rate dropped to 0.25% on March 19, 2020.
I guess Biden incepted Trumps body when he signed the CARES act.
I guess I’m making up Trump pressuring the Fed to lower rates in both terms of his presidency. Let’s just keep calling it Biden’s free money era though.
Political issues aside. I’m fine with corps eat the tariffs. The already inflated S&P should take notice though, because that means net income is coming down.
Bulls can keep gassing though. Makes me richer and lets me rebalance to more stable positions set asset allocation.
There was no surge of inflation in 2020. Get a grip and look at the chart. It came in early 2021.
I think you need to teach a class on how to charts. Embarrassing reading these comments.
Trump pressured the Fed to end the hiking cycle that began 2016 and lower rates in 2019. The average annual YoY CPI in 2019 was 1.8%. The Fed eventually did lower rates and, at the time, it was the right call.
Then Covid happened and the Fed returned to ZIRP on their own. It had nothing to do with Trump.
It was under Biden that “Transitory Inflation” was coined and inflation allowed to run rampant from ZIRP.
Trump is constantly meddling in the Fed’s business. In May of 2020 he was calling on the Fed to drop interest rates into negative territory.
The CARES Act set the seeds for the inflation, but the American Rescue Plan Act was the fertilizer and the water.
What was the velocity of the money at consumer level in 2020 v 2021? Why might those be different?
If you don’t get hot water out of the shower right away, then keep on turning the temperature control higher.
I’m slowly getting used to the $25 breakfast, and none of the parts are imported. Inflationary pressures are across the board unless you’re buying a TV, which only seem to go down in price.
A $16 omelette, $3 cup of Joe, taxes and tip and there you are.
It was half of that price not so long ago.
So eat at home?
I make a pot of coffee for 1.25
An omelette might cost you $2-3 to make
Eggs are expensive
Quit buying them for 8 months
Omelet with four to six eggs? Sounds good to me! A dozen eggs at our Trader Joe’s are $3.99. Safeway might charge you $6.99 for the cheapest dozen, but that’s Safeway.
They don’t have to compete with those down the street who went out of business a few years ago?
Importers may be eating tariffs because:
1. They believe them to be temporary and don’t want to adjust their pricing and risk losing market share.
2. The tariffs imposed under the IEEPA have been found invalid by two Federal courts and thus any amounts paid will be refunded with interest if either of these decisions is upheld on appeal.
From my understanding:
Importers may be eating tariffs because consumers can’t afford to eat up the traffic.
If Importers/retailers increase the prices more, they’d face reduced sales.
The nature of retailers is to sell products at the maximum price consumers can afford to pay.
Actually, retailers (like every other business) sell at the price where marginal cost equals marginal revenue. Econ 101.
Assuming no competition, you’re right. But when one gets to the real world, that equation often does not hold. If a firm’s price where marginal revenue equals marginal cost is higher than that of other companys’ prices, they may have to sell at a price where the marginal revenue is less than marginal cost, until they can somehow reduce marginal costs (or eventually go bankrupt).
So interesting that the Federal Reserve economists couldn’t see that the government free money handouts combined with-0- rates and Fed printing the money would lead to rapid inflation.
And now they predict inflation will go up based on tariffs.
So far it is not happening.
It’s almost if those PhDs don’t understand economics………
They tried to stimulate the real economy by stimulating consumption, and thus production, but conveniently overlooked the fact that most of the production, i.e. value creation was done overseas. China and all the other export nations then invested their dollars into…..US government debt. Which is basically a promise of future generations to pay back the debt, and finally get their act together and produce something of value. That’s why Trump is so adamant about bringing production back to the states. It’s actually not China’s fault, it’s our fault.
LOL! Love it. Remember;
1) Economics is a social science, not a hard science.
2) You cannot spell eCONomics without the CON.
Yeah see you do not understand they had to do a lot of giveaways. The markets were freezing up.
The damage could have been catastrophic, like bread lines and Great Depression catastrophic.
Corporate profits are up bigly. What about corporate taxes? I know my taxes are up another 15-20%…
…people still don’t see a problem with giving corporations individual rights?
Perhaps I need to declare myself a “limited liability person” and just use the same accounting gimmicks the big LLCs do. Would love to see that case make it to the supreme court.
Corporations (I think) only pay 1/10th or 1/5th the taxes that the whole American population pays.
I saw a visual chart somewhere explaining it.
I was really surprised by how little they contribute.
Many companies anticipated the tariff turmoil and loaded up their warehouses ahead of Trump’s inauguration. I look forward to seeing the data in a year.
Look at the 1st tariff episode in the chart. It’s very enlightening.
Speaking for myself & hopefully most consumers, I’m going to push back as hard as I can. Legit!
I stocked up and tried to get 6 months to a years worth of products.
Was hoping to save myself the 10% fee and higher prices on everything.
I’ll put whatever savings into the market, let it rattle around.
One has to save where one can.
I was surprised by today’s data. Will see what tomorrow brings. Russell 2000 failed 2 days in row at its 200 DMA and had a bearish engulfing candle today. No fuel!
Food, services, shelter…. Still high inflation. Too bad I need all of those.
But malt liquor remains flat!
Look at months of inventory on balance sheet of a retailer. That gives you an idea how long the retailer can be selling pre-tariff inventory. Look through the confounding stuff like inventory accounting method.
Or read retailers’ earnings calls for when tariffs will start to impact their gross margins. Almost all saying 3Q and then more in 4Q.
Some will delay raising prices, some will find alternative sources, some don’t actually have that much non-US sourcing exposure (building supplies an example), and most will try to direct price increases to categories with the least effect on sales and not necessarily the category with the most tariff impact.
Given all of this data, how should we think about this type of reporting when trying to understand what the heck is actually going on out there?
Great article. That last paragraph should be in every main stream media discussion of tariffs.
Well, given the corporate main stream media are the ones benefitting directly and indirectly, that is very unlikely.
Wolf – is it possible that we won’t know the impact tariffs have/might have on prices for several months, eg particularly for those who placed orders pre the new tariffs taking effect and whose goods are in-transit? Asking if you think there’s any chance that any price changes show up in durable goods CPI with X months’ lag?
Also we know businesses massively accumulated inventory pre tariff announcement. Shouldn’t that weigh on prices as businesses now try to get of it ?
We know what impact they had in May. See chart. Whatever impact they will have in three months, we’ll see in three months. I will keep my eyes open for any changes in corporate profits. That’s maybe where we’ll see the impact.
Mr. Richter,
Just musing and wondering would tracking the net profit margin of the S & P be a better yardstick for determining tariff effects on corporate bottom lines than tracking gross dollars of Corporate Profits in non-financial Industries?
No, because it would eliminate all the smaller firms that are importing, and there are millions of them. You’d be just looking at 500 companies, and a lot of those are the wrong companies because they don’t ever import anything they sell, such as banks, brokers, social media companies, etc.
If corporations absorb all those tariffs, how will they pay out those wonderful large dividends they have been paying?
/s
Even worse, they might not be able to fund more stock buybacks or those large bonuses that they have been paying there management.
More /s
It’s early days. I think the crunch will come when we approach the festive season, not these summer months.
Those who actually sat in a trade/international economics lecture would know that when an importer has monopsony power then the degree of price flow-through from a tariff is far less than standard trade theory stipulates.
Isn’t inflation a rate of change metric? Dino’s breakfast skillet was eight-bucks in 2020; now it’s twelve. But it’s been twelve bucks for over two years now.
And if you ignore the rhetoric and obfuscation, what are tariffs in the macroeconomic context? Taxes? Taxes on consumption and corporate imports?
The readers here share one common baseline for gauging inflationary pressure; the hundred buck Wolf Street beer mug. Has that changed? And if it does, will you change your consumption patterns? Or seek a more affordable substitute?
Which makes me wonder if there’s one on offer on eBay. A man has to believe in something; I believe I’ll go check the listings.
Best wishes to all. OBC
Wolf told us about the inflationary impact to his beer mug in the comments the other day.
Looks like a tentative deal with China has been reached. Trump already reached one with the UK (though they don’t export as much here as many other countries). Deals with India, Japan, and S. Korea likely coming up in the next month or two, and they are major exporters to us. Others will fall in line, or see their exports go down as the countries who have reached a deal take their market share.
Canada’s biggest problem isn’t that they don’t want to reach a deal, the problem is that reaching a fair deal will really devastate their economy. That is what Trudeau told Trump, and why Trump said that Canada should then just become the 51st state. If Canada’s economy can’t function without unfair trade with the US, then it isn’t really an independent country. Vietnam is in a similar situation: it wants to reach a deal, but because they’re really now simply a finishing point for Chinese goods, it is going to be very hard to do so without really hurting their economy. Maybe they can cut the same deal as China did, but not sure where that will put them.
Canada is ridiculous. They need to wake up and move into the 21st century. They used to joke when Canada was negotiating a free trade agreement with Mexico and the US, that Canada should try free trade between the provinces! Even today there is no free movement of goods and people!
My sister wanted to retire in PEI but she can’t leave Montreal because the provinces all have separate health care systems. She would not be able to continue seeing her doctor in Montreal because the PEI system would not cover it.
It’s unbelievable how many barriers exist within Canada. Idiots!
ESCIERTO. Plenty of USA insurance companies have similar limitations (especial if you are in an HMO). If you are out of network, you pay, and pay, and pay.
If your sister is living in PEI and driving to Montreal for health care, that is the equivalent of me living in Chicago and driving to Cincinnati for health care. Even if she is flying, that arrangement makes no sense. She needs to make a choice.
Unless effective demands (money times transactions’ velocity) are adequate to prevent a cutback in sales, or a diversion of purchasing power to the price raisers, any administered increase in prices, e.g., tariffs, will result in less sales, smaller outputs, less employment, lower payrolls and less demand for products—in other words, depression and deflation in due course.
Total BS. It didn’t last time. Don’t people have eyes in their heads?
No they don’t wolf. These people have some weird fantasy about a depression
Depends upon whether the prices raised are inelastic.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ppi-shows-companies-eating-tariff-costs-bloomberg-finds
The tariff’s if raised, will simply add to the stagflation in the economy now. The Fed may lower short term interest rates, but I seriously doubt the long end (10 year +) will move down much with that Fed move. Look at gold and silver. Those markets are telling us alot about where things are headed.
If our friends in the federal government won’t cut spending/raise taxes and seriously cut the deficit very soon, US treasuries will drop further in price and the stagflation will worsen.
The media is yelling non stop about the economy collapsing and people can’t afford anything.
Then in the real world, the most discretionary of discretionary purchases, Nintendo Switch 2, has record sales despite massively increasing the price of both the system and games (which are now selling for $80 despite $60 being the price just a few years ago). Its insane!
The place where the manufacturers could most quickly absorb a tariff would be in sectors that are labor intensive. Raw materials such as cotton and petroleum plastics are subject to world market prices.
The difference between the local labor cost and the North American labor cost is where the foreign manufacturer is capturing excess profits. We don’t need our people making t-shirts if they can be made for less elsewhere, but if someone’s going to make them for less, then they still have to pay their people appropriately or pay a tariff to offset the disruption they would be otherwise (and have been) causing in our labor markets.
Automation. It’s really good these days, and getting even better all the time, and it reduces the cost of manual labor per unit to such low levels in many modern plants that the cost of manual labor is no longer a significant factor when netted out against shipping costs, delays, loss of IP, etc.
Which is why the US is still the #2 manufacturing power by value added in the world, larger than the next three combined (Japan, Germany, India) .
Completely true.
Friends own a massive food processing business and are finishing relocation out of California. New plant is fully robotic. Built by employees that worked at the old plant and were retrained over years in robotics design, installation and repair. Those that took that path are fiercely loyal to the owners and have rock solid careers, great pay and were happy to move out of California. Now they are finishing the new plant they will run and the new plant workforce is a fraction of the old plant.
Next case:
Had a very successful farmer(more of a CEO) that wanted to buy big land in Hawaii but walked away because the gov’t here is stuck in the old days and balked at approving a fully robotic farm. My former client said “We will only look at farms that can be automated.”
Maybe the CPI readings simply reflect the sale of ‘excess’ inventory arising from front-loaded imports ahead of higher tariffs.
The softish readings indicate that there is more front-loaded (no/low tariff) product to shift. The ”nothing to see here” mirage looks to have further to run. If or when a crunch point arrives, it’s difficult to envisage corporates not at least trying to raise prices.
That’s not how price increases work. Price increases are not based on costs, but on companies thinking they can raise their prices while maintaining their sales goals. Companies always raise prices to the maximum possible level, that maximum that the market will bear, and when sales drop, they cut prices. We have seen a lot of price cuts over the past two years because consumers suddenly refused to buy at those high prices, and bought from competitors at lower prices.
Why are you using “Durable Goods” as your yardstick for tariff inflation impacts? Sure you list a lot of “durable goods” made in China, but overall, most durable goods are NOT made in China. Only 12% of Durable Goods are made in China.
> And if you look at durable goods, two-thirds of durable good products that we buy are actually still made in the U.S. Now 12 percent of the durable goods that we buy are made in China, but only half of that 12 percent is using Chinese inputs. The rest China does by assembling parts that come from other countries.
This means that the Durable Goods category is frankly a bad measure for how tariffs impact inflation.
Nonsensical comment and conclusion.
1. I said zero in the article about “China.” It had nothing to do with China. RTGDFA before posting BS.
2. Yes, the US is still the second largest manufacturer in the world by value added, and bigger than the next three combined (Germany, Japan, India), and so lots of durable goods are produced in the USA, including cars – see my article on it, you goofball — which has been my point all along… that companies can dodge the tariffs by shifting more production and purchases to USA-made products, and they’re doing it.
3. I also use apparel and footwear, in addition to durable goods. That covers the VAST MAJORITY of imported goods.
4. What’s left in the CPI basket that is subject to tariffs is energy, food, and household supplies.
— Energy is a non-issue: the US is the largest producer of oil, petroleum products (gasoline, etc.) and gas in the world and big exporter, and tariffs are a nonissue with energy.
— Same with food. There are some specialty foods and drinks from overseas that people want, not because the US doesn’t produce them, but because of whatever reason. This includes beer and wine. US craft brewers (7,000 of them!) make the best beers in world, and US winemakers make excellent wines, and both are in overproduction, and there is zero need to import, and consumers can dodge tariffs by shifting to US-made products.
— The ONLY nondurable category where imports are somewhat of an issue that I don’t include is household supplies, which is a small category, whose components are dirt cheap and tariffs on the cost of the components, if they’re even imported, would amount to only pennies per bottle of shampoo at retail price, which is how inflation is measured.