Major US retailers warn Americans will pay more because of Trump’s trade war with top partners, report says – live

www.theguardian.com Trump commerce chief says he will meet Canada and China halfway on trade tariffs – as it happened

Top Trump adviser says president will defend his trade war while Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary, says he will find middle ground

The CEOs of two large retailers in the United States say shoppers are likely to see prices rise as a result of the tariffs Donald Trump placed on Canada and Mexico, and his hike in levies on China.

The warnings from the CEOs of Best Buy and Target, reported by CNBC, contradict the president’s assertion that the costs of his trade war will not be borne by US consumers, who rebelled against his predecessor Joe Biden after the US economy was hit by its worst bout of inflation in decades.

“Those are categories where we’ll try to protect pricing, but the consumer will likely see price increases over the next couple of days,” Target CEO Brian Cornell told the network in an interview. “If there’s a 25% tariff, those prices will go up.”

6 comments

Seems like they could’ve brought this up back when it could’ve helped, like in I dunno OCTOBER???
- Straight into mid-Feb, I was seeing journalists at The Economist and Financial Times repeating the "Take Trump seriously but not literally" mantra, insisting he wasn't about to start a trade war.
  Business conservatives were fully bought in on Trump just saying this to fleece the rubes. They assumed he'd be surrounded by the same old Wall Street Republicans that had been running the party since the McKinley Administration.
  But if you've ever actually picked up a copy of The Network State or read a few chapters from Thiel's Zero to One, you'd understand this isn't Dick Cheney's administration. These people really do believe a highly segregated and heavily policed series of balkinized libertarian enclaves is the future of the country. Trump is executing a plan that's so far outside the neoliberal economics we've been growing up under that guys like Cornell couldn't see it coming.

I'd call "leopards," but this is also a good excuse for retailers to collectively raise prices, and lower forecast expectations.
Mark my words, Target and Best Buy are going to have some "good" quarters, maybe fire some people, and the leadership will get pats on the back (and bonuses).
- I was going to say this. Especially since they just gutted the government agencies that would look into it.
- Probably, but the big box retailers have an amazing fall guy for higher prices.

We should all just start taking what we need from these giant corporations.

6 comments