How Americans should prepare for Trump’s tariffs

With less than 10 days until the presidential inauguration, America is beginning to prepare for the arrival of the new administration. With that comes pricing. President-elect Trump ran his 2024 campaign promising to implement tariffs upon his return to the White House. Will the country face an increase in prices of imported products in the coming days? Let’s get started.

In this week’s episode Capitol Gainsanchor Rachelle Akuffocorrespondent in Washington Ben Werschkuland main columnist Rick Newman talk with Joanne Hsu, director of consumer surveys at the University of Michigan, about the potential impact of President-elect Trump’s tariffs and how Americans reacted to the impending legislation in the days leading up to this new administration .

Overall, there is a lot of uncertainty as the timing of tariff implementation could vary. For now, Hsu says there has been an increase in the number of people mentioning their motivation to buy goods before prices theoretically increase. Hsu also claims that a similar pattern of behavior occurred during the first Trump administration.

“Interestingly, in 2016, when Trump was elected, he also campaigned on tariffs,” says Hsu. “Right after the (2016) election, we also saw a wave of consumers saying, ‘buy now, avoid future price increases.’ At that time, it took about two years for the rate increases to take effect. When the tariffs weren’t actually implemented from day one, fewer people were saying “buy now”, but of course when the tariffs came into effect in 2018, everyone was worried about prices again. which rises. »

To learn more, listen to the full episode of Capitol Gains here.

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Capitol Gains is Yahoo Finance’s unique look at how U.S. government policy impacts your bottom line long after the presidential election closes.

This article was written by Lauren Pokedoff.