With less than 10 days until the presidential inauguration, America is starting to prepare for the incoming administration. With that comes tariffs. President-elect Trump ran his 2024 campaign promising tariff implementation immediately upon his return to the White House. Is the nation set to face increasing prices on imported goods in the coming days? We get into it.
In this week’s episode of Capitol Gains, anchor Rachelle Akuffo, Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul, and Senior Columnist Rick Newman speak with University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu about the potential impact of President-elect Trump’s tariffs and how Americans are reacting about the impending legislation in the days leading up to this new administration.
Overall, there’s a lot of uncertainty since the tariff implementation timeline could vary. For now, Hsu says there’s been a surge in people mentioning motivation to buy goods before prices theoretically increase. Hsu also says a similar behavioral pattern happened during the first Trump administration.
“Interestingly when you look back to 2016, when Trump was elected at that time he also campaigned on tariffs,” Hsu says. “Right after the [2016] election we also had a surge of consumers at that time saying ‘buy now, avoid future price increases.’ At that time it took about two years for the tariff hikes to go in. When the tariffs did not actually hit on day one, fewer people were saying ‘buy now,’ but of course when tariffs hit in 2018 everyone again was worried about prices going up.”
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This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff.