Tariffs will boost prices a lot — here's how much

Consider This from NPR

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🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

After a week of market turmoil, President Trump announced he would reset his most extreme tariffs to 10 percent across the board, with the exception of China — which he boosted to a 125% tariff rate. Even at the reduced level, the tariff rates are the highest the nation has seen in many decades.

And higher tariffs translate to higher prices for American consumers. Martha Gimbel of the Budget Lab at Yale takes an imaginary walk through a big box store to look at how much more people might pay for t-shirts, rice, medication and other staples.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Here's a tale of two campaign promises.
0:02.9	The first is from back in August.
0:05.3	Then candidate, Donald Trump, delivered it at a lectern flanked by tables full of groceries.
0:10.2	You're looking at things behind me.
0:11.9	They did a nice job.
0:13.6	Wow.
0:14.2	He started listing price hikes.
0:16.0	Look at that.
0:16.9	Up 46% eggs.
0:18.5	Wow.
0:18.9	That occurred under the Biden administration.
0:21.1	I haven't seen Cheerios in a long time.
0:22.8	I'm going to take them back with it.
0:24.8	Bacon is through the roof.
0:25.9	They're all through the roof.
0:26.9	The milk, everything is bad.
0:28.9	And then Trump promised to fix it.
0:31.0	And we're going to straighten it out.
0:32.3	We're going to bring prices way down.
0:34.3	And we'll get it done fast. But his promise to cut inflation and bring down prices has run headlong into another campaign pledge.
0:42.6	You know, the one that's been completely dominating the news for the past week.
0:46.5	He talked about that one in August 2.
	...

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