It’s not complicated. We also imported a lot of really cheap, high quality food from China. And now we don’t. Even if you personally were not buying Chinese tomatoes rebadged as Mexican in Grocery Outlet, the fact that they were one tenth the cost lowered prices on the produce you’ve been buying from Costco and Whole Foods. Indeed, the giant corporations have been litigating the tariffs issue as the single greatest cause. I think people just don’t comprehend that everything was imported, not just clothes and technology.
If you're referring exclusively to tariffs from the current admin, that doesn't really line up with the timeline on this, which started closer to the beginning of covid. I don't have a firm evidence-based take on the causality, but the vibes based take is a combination of actual input cost shock and bullwhip from covid, plus a lot of opportunism and greedflation/shrinkflation from corps that used the cover of the legitimate (BOM-driven) cost increases to squeeze hard on comparatively illegitimate cost increases. This situation was totally F'd way before 47 took office.
And then the tarrifs hit, which certainly does hurt. I was making desserts w nice belgian chocolate that went from $65 per 5lb to $90. So I'm not discounting the pain there, but the bulk of this effect seems to predate the tariffs, unless there are some from 46 admin or before that I'm not aware of.
COVID was a trade shock too. It's trade shocks. That's the word - I carefully did not say, tariffs are to blame. Trade shocks are. We are in full control of tariffs, today, so that matters, don't misunderstand me. But it's a 100% consistent story with COVID and tariffs: trade shocks.
Of course, if given the ability now, finally, to charge whatever retail wants, you could say it's opportunism. But they didn't have the ability to do that until the trade shocks.
The thing people are in denial about is that it's everything. You are saying Belgian chocolate. Some people say iPhones. Blah blah blah. I'm saying, literally everything. Everything physical had prices that had to compare to lower priced, high quality imports from China and southeast Asia. They think that a sticker that says Mexico on their fruit means Mexico. They think stickers don't lie! Do you see?
