Trump’s Tariff Policy Raising Prices of Coffee, Clothing and More

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For months, economists have predicted that Trump’s tariff policy would crash the economy. While that has not yet happened, leading economic indicators, like inflation and jobs numbers, do indicate that the economy is slowing despite a strong stock market. We’ll talk about how this latest round of tariffs is impacting consumers and businesses, and hear how your spending and savings habits have changed. Guests: Neale Mahoney, professor of economics, Stanford University; former special policy advisor for economic policy, White House National Economic Council Corazon Padilla, director of coffee quality and sourcing, Andytown Coffee Roasters Tracy Alloway, financial journalist and co-host of Bloomberg's "Odd Lots" podcast Bastian Schoell, owner, The Spanish Table Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves.
0:07.9	When you keep your money with Star 1, you keep more of your money. Star 1 credit union in your best interest.
0:14.6	Here's the truth about AI. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. Service Now puts AI to work for people
0:22.4	across your business, removing friction and frustration for your employees, supercharging
0:28.0	productivity for your developers, providing intelligent tools for your service agents to make
0:32.8	customers happier. All built into a single platform you can use right now. That's why the world works with
0:39.6	ServiceNow. Visit ServiceNow.com slash UK slash AI for people. From Kikwiti in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:02.5	You've heard a lot about tariffs over these first six months of the Trump presidency.
1:07.5	They've been up, they've come down, they're off, they're on.
1:19.6	But slowly things are settling out and the tariffs are very substantial for goods American companies bring in for many countries. We zoom in today on the coming consumer impact of the tariffs, talking with experts and small business owners about what they're seeing,
1:28.1	working its way down the supply chain to the rest of us.
1:31.8	It's all coming up're talking tariffs this morning. And here's the thing. From the moment President Trump announced massive tariffs back on so-called Liberation Day, the vast
2:02.7	majority of economists predicted they would be bad for U.S. consumers, businesses, and the economy
2:08.4	as a whole, as economists have said about tariffs for decades. It's been months now, and while
2:13.9	recent economic reports have not been great, the bottom hasn't fallen out of
2:18.8	the U.S. economy either.
2:20.8	We dig in today on what businesses who import from abroad have been encountering and try
2:25.7	to make sense of the current moment in the economy.
2:29.7	Up first, we're joined by Neil Mahoney, who's a professor of economics at Stanford, the Trione director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a former special policy advisor for economic policy with the White House National Economic Council. Welcome.
2:46.8	Good to be with you.
2:48.3	We're also joined by Tracy Alloway, a financial journalist and co-host of Bloomberg's
2:54.3	celebrated Odd Lots podcast. Welcome, Tracy. Oh, celebrated. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from KQED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of KQED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.