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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

This would be a valid concern if businesses got $1 in additional tariff costs and passed on $1 in price increases. This categorically did not happen, and businesses absorbed the vast majority of the blow through both stockpiling and taking the bullet.

Prime example is Mercedes. The RRP for post-tariff Mercedes vehicles was identical to the pre-tariff RRP.

Food prices also rose significantly less than the tariff increases.

Importantly, journalists in media, classically inept at any economic analysis, implied that 10% tariff = 10% RRP rise. They never corrected themselves, nor for the economists who falsely claimed the economy would collapse.

When you pay $10 for a widget at the store, the cost price of that widget is likely $2. A 10% additional tariff (if passed along fully, it wasn't) would mean the widget goes from $10.00 to $10.20.

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Zero businesses passed on the additional costs onto the consumer? None?

>Zero businesses passed on the additional costs onto the consumer? None?

That wasn't the claim made. OP said:

>and businesses absorbed the vast majority of the blow through both stockpiling and taking the bullet.

Which so far as I can tell, is approximately correct, even if the "vast majority" part is suspect. A goldman sacs from last year estimated consumers will pay 55% of the tariffs by end of 2025. However that only includes the tariffs paid, whereas OP also included "stockpiling".

https://abcnews.com/Business/new-tariffs-effect-us-consumers...

OP also says "This would be a valid concern if..." so, no need to defend these poor massive businesses who also screwed us with shrinkflation for five years.

Yeah, that was quite a claim. I didn't realize that businesses were were so altruistic?

Why those particular five years and not always?

  > Importantly, journalists in media, classically inept at any economic analysis, implied that 10% tariff = 10% RRP rise. They never corrected themselves, nor for the economists who falsely claimed the economy would collapse.

This is irrelevant to the discussion in the article, which is specifically about refunding a portion of whatever amount a company receives back from the government to customers.

It's also pretty vague without any examples of what specifically deserves corrections.

> Prime example is Mercedes. The RRP for post-tariff Mercedes vehicles was identical to the pre-tariff RRP.

If your prime example is a luxury car with a ton of margin built in, you need a better example. Tariffed commodities absolutely had the costs passed on, and far more of those are sold than high margin luxury products where manufacturers had the option to compress margins vs passing on the cost.

Also, there are lots of products that go through multiple middle men, the tariffs were included and marked up at every stage. Very few things go from manufacturer to retailer with no middlemen.

I’d guess about 1/4 to 1/3rd of tariff costs were absorbed and the rest passed along to the eventual end consumer.

I suspect you work nowhere near the money at work, the closer you get to the money, the more you realize exactly what is built into a price.

"I’d guess about 1/4 to 1/3rd of tariff costs were absorbed and the rest passed along to the eventual end consumer."

Where do you see that in the inflation numbers - I expected a noticeable impact, but it just isn't there in the data.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...

Substitution with lower cost items happens when prices go up and that is factored into CPI data. I’m not sure how the basket of goods has changed over the past year, but substitution of goods does happen when prices go up.

Corporate profits grew throughout the tariffs, if they were absorbing the majority of the tariff cost instead of passing it on, it would’ve affected publicly traded company earnings, but it hasn’t.

FRED chart of S&P500 earnings shows a large increase in growth in 2025: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=QwW

> Importantly, journalists in media, classically inept at any economic analysis, implied that 10% tariff = 10% RRP rise. They never corrected themselves, nor for the economists who falsely claimed the economy would collapse.

Lovely strawman.

> journalists in media, classically inept at any economic analysis

It’s just the NYT. Let’s not demean the rest of the media for the faults of the NYT.

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