If you're a business used to selling at a certain price point, and the value proposition is established with your customers .... do you bother risking shattering that expectation if the future is unknown?
Do you risk customers saying "Oh crap my hobby that I did with Adafruit is now untenable ... well I'm out." vs "Well they're low on stock, I'll check back when this is all over."
I don't know if it is all or nothing but it seems like there's a lot of risk either way.
But this is new for US consumers. My hope is that US companies will add temporary price increases if they can't eat the tariffs in their existing margins and then reduce when tariffs are reduced. But my guess is that most companies will increase prices, blame the tariffs (rightfully so), but then not fully reduce prices if/when the tariffs decrease.
It's similar to what happened with tipping for takeout food during Covid. It's now a permanent tax.
Only if you buy from a foreign store directly which is relatively niche. It's much more common for an importer to pay the duties and then put the product in local stores.
The reality, of course, which they reveal when interviewed, is that they know they're completely powerless. In the best case, all they can do is delay the inevitable and they know it. This approach exists purely to keep themselves from being made into the enemy. As you noted, some business owners admitted to considering if they should just shutter their business too.
It is fair, and the consumer deserves to know.
Consumers ... going to have to learn something new.
Also if there's a lot of "I'm out" you just bought a lot of stuff nobody wants to pay anything near the cost of.
If you're small enough I guess you might get a way with it, if you're big enough you'll be threatened into compliance.
Either way the US customers and the rest of the world lose, everyone is a little poorer because of these tariffs.
Why doesn't Wal-Mart or whoever make a loud pronouncement that they'll fund primary campaigns against any congressperson who supports these tariffs? These companies got Citizens United passed so they can spend unlimited amounts of political money, so why don't they use this power when their business is threatened like this?
That's how autocracies work, my friend, you can't rules lawyer your way out of one, because the rules can always be changed to fuck you over some more.
Like always, the morons who carry water for the fascists think they can "control" them, or radically underestimate the damage a moron with no accountability can do.
Amazon tried to barely show consumers the tariff hurt them, and Trump called Bezos directly, and that plan went away instantly.
Companies are rightly afraid of an administration that demonstrably has nobody stopping them from doing outright criminal and illegal things, and has a rabid fanbase ready to plan bombings of whoever is the target. They know the courts can't protect them. They know the law means nothing right now. They know an entire board can be murdered and the culprits pardoned if Trump feels like it.
Trump's entire shtick is that people who go against him in the Republican party already get primaried. He doesn't even need to ask his supporters, because loyalty is an expected and intrinsic part of the MAGA movement.
This is also assuming that future elections are free and fair, or at least follow previous US rules.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/business/scott-bessent-wa...