Trump’s Tariff Hikes Are HERE! Walmart, Apple & Ford Say Prices Will Jump Now
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Here come the tariff price hikes. Yeah, they’re on their way on my way Yeah, there was a few announcements that we told you about the the MAGA influencers and People that that again support anything that Donald Trump does we’re out there see there’s not gonna be any inflation everything that’s gonna be great, right? sure anyway,
Walmart, Walmart said that they’re planning to raise prices on goods beginning later this month. And I quote, we will do our best to keep our prices as low as possible. But given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this past week, we are not able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins.
This is what’s gonna happen. Again, most people don’t understand. That’s part of the problem. Most people don’t understand business. They don’t understand what margins are. You’re gonna get ready, you’re gonna start hearing a litany of Trump supporters on social media, on Fox News basically say, well, Walmart makes a lot of money. They shouldn’t do this. They make enough money. And like I said,
Full socialist. All-out socialist is how they’re gonna act. But mark my words, you’re gonna see it. The lack of clarity that exists in today’s dynamic operating environment makes the very near term exceedingly difficult to forecast. And he basically said, said, you we can deal, we can deal with price increases that go up by 3%, but 30? He’s not wrong.
He’s not wrong. It’s a very, very difficult thing that they’re going to have to be dealing with. And Walmart is one of the greatest in the world at this supply chain management, managing costs, understanding what’s on their shelves. mean, everything. They’re great at keeping prices down. That’s one of reasons why they’ve been so successful. Again, we talked about some of the other companies. We talked about Ford.
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Apple, others as well announcing that they’re going to be raising their prices and you’re going to continue to see it. It’s going to happen. And again, I try to get across to people and I don’t understand, know, I’m still trying to get my arms around the MAGA brain. Like I said, it’s the flip side of the coin of the blue hair brain. It just.
No, you take logic and reason and you throw it out the window. Yeah, I want the president to do well. This tariff policy is a failure. It’s a failure and he’s walking it back, but he’s got to walk it back much, much faster. A tariff is tax. It’s tax. And you know, once you come to grips with that, understand that again, the left
doesn’t understand when I explain corporate taxes. Goes one ear and out the other. Looks like the people in the MAGA camp, don’t understand that tariffs are a tax. They seem to think that every business out there is just gonna absorb them and not pass them on. Not understanding business at all. It’s interesting. It’s like they like certain businesses when things are, you know.
They’re going along with them in a certain way, but then don’t like them when, you know, their fearless leader is telling them something else. Again, there’s no logic and reason behind that. You need to understand that, you know, the person that you’re voting for works for you, is a human being and is fallible. And you need to call them out when they are wrong. You do not pledge allegiance
to a president or a political movement. That’s dangerous. Anyway, I give a breakdown here of what we’re looking at when it comes to tariffs. The estimates right now is they expect the overall US tariff rate to increase by 13 % this year to the highest level since the 1930s. The ultimate level, not
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sure, but it’s going to remain elevated for the foreseeable future. Okay. So you’re taking a look at that 13 % increase in domestic and foreign tariffs. It’s going to lower US real income by 1 % in the long run. The simple efficiency losses from reduced trade
are amplified by the existence of differentiated goods, global supply chains, and fixed costs to engaging in trade. Higher tariffs will likely shift resources away from the most successful firms, which engage in international trade much more intensively than the typical firm. One way a company could adjust to higher tariffs would be to reshore production back to the US. To gauge
Whether reshoring is plausible at a significant scale, we construct measures of production costs for 40 countries and 24 manufacturing sub industries. The results suggest that country specific tariffs are unlikely to result in much reshoring because production costs for alternative suppliers of US imports are well below the US’s for most products. Again, Donald Trump today called out app.
for moving production of the iPhone to India. Not happy about that. Dude, are you serious, man? Are you serious? We’re not gonna be making iPhones here in the United States until we have the bloody robots that could do it.
We also estimate that domestic production of more differentiated goods like medical equipment and semiconductors is relatively less responsive to cost shocks, suggesting a higher hurdle for tariffs to boost production in these sectors. In addition to the standard efficiency losses from reduced trade, higher tariffs could weigh on output in three ways. Higher tariffs will likely raise equipment costs and discourage investment, lowering the capital stock and GDP in the long run.
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We estimate that this channel could exert a three quarter of a percent drag on output over time. Second, higher tariffs could also weigh on innovation by reducing the most innovative firms access to export markets and raising input costs. Third, economic studies suggest that higher tariffs could lead to increased rent seeking by businesses attempting to secure protection from foreign competition.
Together taken, we expect higher tariffs to weigh on U.S. real income by 1.5 % to 2 % in the long run. If tariff policies we accept this year become permanent, that’s much lower GDP, much lower growth. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
