The author contends that Trump's tariffs will negatively impact consumers' lives far more than previous tariffs. The increased costs extend beyond simple price hikes, forcing consumers to make suboptimal choices impacting time, resources, and overall well-being.
The article uses examples like washing machine prices increasing due to tariffs, leading families to use older, less efficient machines. The increased cost of vehicles due to tariffs prevents families from buying a second car, creating logistical challenges. These are presented as illustrations of how tariffs impact consumer choices across multiple aspects of daily life.
The author argues that the negative consequences are not limited to individual consumers, as tariffs also distort business decisions and resource allocation. Businesses are forced to adjust their production, ultimately harming economic efficiency.
The article concludes that the pervasive nature of these tariffs will negatively affect consumers' purchasing power and decision-making across various aspects of their lives, from household appliances to transportation. The resulting adjustments to manage increased costs will lead to overall economic inefficiencies.
These tariffs are going to hurt. A lot. By my calculations, this round of tariffs may be 50 times as painful as the ones Donald Trump instituted in his first term. That means they are going to reshape your life in much more fundamental ways.
To illustrate how, let’s look at a prosaic example: your washing machine. In 2018, Mr. Trump’s relatively modest tariffs caused washing machine prices to rise by nearly $100. As a result, many families elected to stick with their aging machines longer than they otherwise would have. But that choice incurred a new set of costs: late-night thuds from unbalanced loads, wads of scrunched cloth still dripping wet after a cycle and higher energy and water bills.
In other words, the total cost of a tariff isn’t just what comes out of your checking account. The time you spend to rearrange the stuff in your washer is a cost. The time you spend wringing out sopping wet T-shirts is a cost. Tariffs are costly not just because they raise prices but because they force you to make different decisions that will extract a different kind of cost from you over time.
Small tariffs create small problems. Big tariffs create huge ones. Take Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariff on vehicles, which is expected to raise their prices by roughly $4,000. Many families, like mine, will probably decide not to buy a second car. That creates far bigger problems than an aging washer. Now, we’re constantly juggling how to get our kids to all their activities, and ourselves to work, with only one set of wheels.
And it’s not just cars. These are across-the-board tariffs, so they will distort virtually every purchase you make. In each case you’ll have to stop your baked-in calculations, recalibrate and find a way to make do — perhaps substituting frozen vegetables for fresh vegetables, a less effective medication for a higher-priced import, or corn syrup for sugar. And in each case, you’re worse off.
By the way, tariffs don’t distort just your buying decisions, they also distort what businesses make. Just as tariffs lead you to buy less desirable alternatives, they lead businesses to channel labor and capital into less desirable — that is, less productive — activities.
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