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Comment by commandlinefan | Hacker News Reader

Did they actually raise prices, though? I haven't noticed any significant jumps; my understanding was that they were absorbing (for the most part) the tariffs for the time being, but planned to raise prices in the near future.

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Tariffs don't work like that.

These are taxes that businesses have to pay and as a result, they pass on to the consumer.

Larger companies have some room (in some cases) to absorb some of these costs. While smaller companies do not. These can literally put people out of business overnight.

Here is a specific example: https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/us-news/idaho-business-owner-c...

Average family paid 1000 more last year due to tariffs. I definitely noticed things that jumped in price.

A large cap company I totally dont work at paid 4% of revenue in tariffs last year. Our bonuses were cut in half. I dont have visibility into our customer pricing. It is fucking obscene how stupid this tax is. And all for what? So billionaires can get a bit richer? How did this help us, like at all???

Judge actions by their outcomes, not by their stated purpose.

POSIWID, the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. A quick way to cut through bullshit and "But I meant for X to do Y"

All this fuckery makes it hard to keep track of financial inflows and outflows, which in turn makes it easy to commit graft and corruption. Especially coupled with the forced retirement of those principled people formerly in bureaucratic positions, and the lack of consequences for lying and scheming on behalf of the kleptocracy.

Source?

Joint Economic Committee a good enough source? https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2026/2...

Or Tax Foundation? https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs...

Look at the CPI chart and draw a trend line ignoring recent years. You'll see we're living under 2034 price levels currently.

It depends on if one thinks 10-20 percent is significant. Do you cook your own food - some food items are imported during USA winter months and those items went up noticeably, also items that are not grown/harvested in significant quantities in USA went up. The only things I did not see a price increase were US sourced oatmeal, rice and flour, stuff where they are selling stuff that could be from before tariff times. Coffee went up due to bad harvests but the tariffs added to that, and now that harvests are back to normal, prices haven't gone back down commensurately.

I get more or less the same items from the grocery store every week. My grocery store shows me purchases going back a year.

3/9/25 - 45 items - $178.98

3/15/25 - 40 items - $187.13

3/22/25 - 59 items - $315.29

3/29/25 - 45 items - $131.36

...

2/14/25 - 48 items - $238.15

2/21/25 - 17 items - $117.49 (used $45 in coupons from store loyalty points, actual cost $162.49)

2/28/25 - 27 items - $165.27

My grocery bill definitely is feeling it, now is it 100% tariffs, probably not. But research points to it being some what related to tariffs [1,2,3] You'll notice in the most recent shops, I have been trying to skip the non-essentials when possible to keep my bill lower.

I don't have any other regular purchases with history to look back on. It's not like I replace all my consumer electronics every 6 months-1 year. Closest thing that I have to consistent historical data is 3D printer filament, which has gone from $15.99 to $16.99 on Amazon for my brand of choice from April 2025 to my most recent order last week.

[1] https://taxfoundation.org/blog/trump-tariffs-food-prices/

[2] https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-june-17...

[3] https://www.edelmanfinancialengines.com/education/life-event...

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