Proposed Trump tariffs hit consumers
Americans would ‘feel’ the impact through higher priced goods
Washington — Now consumers are in the cross-hairs.
Americans could soon find themselves paying more for goods they might not have known were imported from China. It’s a potential consequence of a new round of tariffs the Trump administration is proposing to slap on Chinese imports as soon as September.
And it marks a new phase in the U.S. trade war with China. Before now, the administration had deliberately avoided imposing tariffs on consumer goods in order to spare U.S. shoppers from direct economic pain. But late Tuesday, when the administration issued a list of 6,000 products worth $200 billion that it proposes to hit with 10 percent tariffs, it included consumer items ranging from baseball gloves to seafood, vacuum cleaners, toilet paper and burglar alarms.
The administration will hold hearings on the proposed list late next month. President Donald Trump is threatening to impose the tariffs in retaliation for duties that China slapped on $34 billion of U.S. goods on Friday. Those duties, in turn, were a response to new tariffs the United States had imposed on China.
If China were to back down, the Trump administration might hold off on the newest tariffs. But economists say Beijing is unlikely to do so.
“Consumers will feel it and perhaps as early as Christmas,” said Mary Lovely, an economics professor at Syracuse University who studies trade.
On Friday, the administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese imports. Consumer goods made up only about 1 percent of that.
But Tuesday’s list includes food and agricultural products, handbags, hats and furniture — a group of items that, by themselves, account for nearly one-quarter of the $200 billion in Chinese goods that would be subject to the new proposed tariffs, according to data compiled by trade research firm Panjiva.
Other products that would be affected include window-mounted air conditioners, Christmas lights, car parts, refrigerators and roughly $350 million of frozen tilapia filets, according to data from Panjiva. Of all the frozen tilapia the United States imports, roughly 83 percent comes from China.
The tariffs might even affect some of the “Make America Great Again” — or MAGA — hats sported by many of Trump’s supporters. David Lassoff, a company manager for California-based Incredible Gifts, is stockpiling the hats because importers have told him that the MAGA hats might be affected by the tariffs. Incredible Gifts buys the hats from China and embroiders them in the United States.
Lassoff said he has tried to acquire the hats from American manufacturers, but customers are unwilling to pay more. Incredible Gifts sells the hats for $16.99 on Amazon.com; Lassoff said they might cost twice that if they were made in the United States. If the tariffs were imposed on Chinese-made hats, he said, he would consider acquiring them from another low-cost country like Vietnam.
For now, Lassoff is hoping that the big companies that sell them, like Walmart and Amazon, are lobbying against the tariffs.
So far, many Americans are enjoying a solid economy and haven’t felt an impact from Trump’s trade fights. Nor have there been noticeable political consequences, though some Republican senators have sharply criticized the administration’s embrace of tariffs.