The LAB budget of the University of Yale estimates that Trump’s customs tariffs would cost the average American household between 965 euros and 1,160 euros in annual purchasing power.
Whether it is an ice merchant in California, a medical supply company in North Carolina or a t-shirt seller in the suburbs of Detroit, American companies are preparing to undergo the back Taxes imposed on Saturday by President Donald Trump On imports from Canada, Mexico and China, the three largest trade partners in the United States.
25 % taxes on Canadian and Mexican products and 10 % on Chinese products will come into force on Tuesday. Canadian energy, including oil, natural gas and electricity, will be taxed at a rate lower by 10 %.
The LAB budget of the University of Yale believes that Customs duties imposed by Mr. Trump would cost the average American household between $ 1,000 and $ 1,200 in terms of annual purchasing power.
Gregory Daco, chief economist of the EY consulting and tax firm, estimates that customs duties will increase inflationwhich amounted to 2.9 % in December, 0.4 percentage point This year. Mr. Daco also plans that US economywhich experienced growth of 2.8 % last year, will drop by 1.5 % this year and 2.1 % in 2026“because higher import costs slow down consumer spending and business investments”.
The company Penny Ice Creamery of Santa Cruz, California, had to increase several years on several occasions the prices of its icy creams, including popular perfumes “pink pepper” and “sea salt caramel chocolate”, due to ‘An inflationary thrust that has increased the cost of its supplies.
“I feel bad to always have to increase prices,” said Zach Davis, co -owner of the company. “We were impatiently awaiting a drop in inflation and stabilization of the economy in 2025 (…). Now, with customs duties, there is a risk that this will leave again”.
According to Mr. Davis, Trump’s customs duties threaten to increase the cost of refrigerators, freezers and mixers, mostly manufactured in China, which he will need if Penny Ice Creamery continues his projects to enlarge his six stores. He has a painful memory of additional equipment costs that the company had to absorb when Mr. Trump imposed massive customs duties on China during his first mandate.
The new customs duties will also increase the price of one of the favorite products of customers, sprinkles (vermicelli or sprinkling), which Penny Ice Creamery imports from a Whitby, Ontario company. The application of an import tax of 25 %, even on such a tiny product, can harm a small business like its own.
“The margins are so thin,” he said. “Being able to offer this supplement can perhaps generate an additional benefit of 10 cents per scoop. If a customs rate reduces this nothingness, it can really make the difference between being profitable and reaching the profitability threshold, or even being underwater at the end of the year “.
In Asheville, in North Carolina, Casey Hite, CEO of Aeroflow Health, expects to undergo damage because his business obtains more than half of his supplies, including the pullers, with Chinese manufacturers, And provides them to American patients through insurance plans. Aeroflow Health is paid by insurers at pre-negotiated rates, set up before Mr. Trump decides to impose customs duties.
Mr. Hite said that the Chinese import tax would affect the finance of the company, forcing it either to buy cheaper and lower quality products or to pass the higher costs on health insurance premiums. According to Mr. Hite, it may take two years for these measures to materialize, but they will end up weighing on the consumer budget.
“It will have an impact on patients,” said Hite. “Over time, patients will pay more for products.
Even the absorbent protections for incontinence made in the United States that Aeroflow Health buy is not immune to the import taxes imposed by Mr. Trump. They may include pulp from Canada, targets customs duties, as well as plastics and packaging from China, according to Aeroflow Health, which warns against the “turbulence” caused by customs duties .
“Will this affect our activity? Of course yes,” said Linda Schlesinger-Wagner, owner of Skinnytees, a women’s clothing company in Birmingham, Michigan, north of Detroit, who imports Chinese clothes. She said the 10 % tax would increase its costs, although it plans to absorb additional expenses instead of passing them on customers.
“I don’t like what’s going on,” she said, referring to the broader impact of customs duties. “I think people will be really shocked by the prices they will have to pay for cars, wood, clothes and food. It will be a real mess.
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William Reinsch, a former US trade official who is working today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said many companies had stored products imported in advance in order to avoid customs duties. They can draw from their stocks accumulated for weeks or months, which will delay the painful consequences for their customers.
George Carrillo, CEO of the Hispanic Construction Council, a group for the defense of industry interests, said that construction companies had accumulated materials in anticipation of Mr. Trump’s actions, but he is concerned about the possibility of a Fleece of inflation in three to six months.
“Once stocks are starting to decrease, we will start to feel the effects,” Carillo said at a telephone interview on Saturday, before the decision was announced. “Promoters and entrepreneurs general must keep up with the pace and they will start buying more products, at higher prices”.
All this will be exacerbated by the emergence of immigration repression measures which already frighten the reservoir of labor industry, he said.
ADVERTISEMENT“Customs prices and the instability of the workforce will lead to significant delays in projects. This will lead to a price increase due to the lack of availability,” said Carrillo.
There are also industries that do not have the luxury of making stocks, including supermarkets whose agricultural products are spoiling. The impact of customs duties will therefore be felt on the shelves of grocery stores in the space of a few days.
We don’t store lawyers, “said Reinsch.” We don’t store cut flowers. We do not store cut flowers. We do not store bananas “.
In Nogales, Arizona, Tomato trade hub, the fruit and vegetable seller Rod Sbragia, who followed his father in this profession almost forty years ago, fears that taxes importation do not push certain distribution companies to bankruptcy and “do not harm the American consumer, to the choices he has in the supermarket“.
ADVERTISEMENTMr. Sbragia voted for Mr. Trump in the last three elections and considers himself a “convinced republican”. According to him, the president must not have been correctly advised on the issue.
“While we are concerned about the cost for consumers, inflationary pressures and the overall health of our population,” he asked, “why are we going to make access to fresh fruits and vegetables more difficult?”
American farmers are also likely to be taken in Mr. Trump’s commercial showdown with Canada, China and Mexico. Supporters of the president in rural America constitute a tempting target for retaliatory customs prices. This is what happened during the first term of Mr. Trumpwhen other countries, including China, rippied the president’s customs tariffs By imposing their own rights on products such as soybeans and pork. In response, Trump spent billions of dollars of public money to compensate for sales losses and lower prices.
Many farmers are now counting on the president to protect them from reprisals.
ADVERTISEMENT“The Trump administration has provided a safety net,” said the former tobacco farmer Lee Wicker, deputy director of the Cultivators of Caroline du Nord, a group of 700 farms which legally calls on workers foreign temporary to work in the fields as part of a federal visa program. Many farmers of the association “trust him and think that he will take care of all those who are injured by customs duties, and that’s really all we can ask”.
