from Hacker News

Trump tariffs have little impact on prices so far, defying grim forecasts

by TheFreim on 5/14/25, 5:00 PM with 8 comments

• by legitster on 5/14/25, 5:14 PM

  I don't think the real primary concern was prices - no one was actually going to buy the $3000 iPhone. The primary concern was ultimately "decontenting" America - fewer products on shelves. As if it would matter at this point, actual tariffed inventory was just about to start hitting shelves when the tariffs were paused.

  The real metric to watch would be consumer spending and purchasing power. Heck, there's a risk of deflation as the economy scales back and consumers hold onto money waiting out the tariffs.

• by taylodl on 5/14/25, 5:17 PM

  Ironically, I think the tariffs is what led to inflation not being as bad as thought, but in a roundabout manner.

  Because the majority of Americans understand how tariffs work, they expected and prepared for an economic slump - which is happening. Part of that preparation involved increasing savings, which means spending had to be lessened. That's a decline in demand. A decline in demand will lead to prices lowering, or in the short-term, prices staying steady. We're seeing prices staying relatively steady.

  The issue is someone in this administration is going to get the wrong takeaway from these events.

• by duxup on 5/14/25, 5:05 PM

  Based on logistics related data it seemed more like folks just didn't order ... so yeah you don't raise prices on stuff you didn't order right?

• by tracker1 on 5/14/25, 5:43 PM

  I'm not really surprised. Most things most people buy most often (food) is largely domestically produced. It also takes a while to fully affect supply chains and the announcements were well ahead of the actual tariffs. Beyond this, we trade with a lot of countries that aren't china, where 10% isn't that hard to split the difference between margins and consumer pricing.

  Some products either are/were or just starting to see the effects. Another month or two and there might have been some interesting changes. Personally, I'm mixed as I've thought for a long time that tariffs would be better than income taxes. While a $3000 iPhone example may seem really bad, it's not something people should be buying every year even... Appliances used to measure their lives in decades and people expected that. Heavy tariffs may have reset those expectations a bit, and given room for more domestic options with time.

  I was pretty sure it was mostly about taking an obscene position in order to negotiate to something fair. If you start off negotiating from a "fair" position, you will lose in the end.

  Just my own take.

• by almog on 5/15/25, 8:20 AM

  PPI (producers price index) that is to be released this morning would be another data point to assess how much inflation is or isn't building up upstream from the consumer.