TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — President Trump says his tariff plan will bring manufacturing jobs back to America and he’s conceded there might be some pain in the meantime.
If you want to get a better idea of the impact of tariffs in your life, just take a personal inventory of what’s around you. Your phone could have been assembled in China, India, Vietnam or Brazil.
Your computer may be from China.
Tariffs on goods from Mexico or Canada would affect cars, lumber, fresh fruit and vegetables, and plenty of manufactured goods.
Tariffs could stimulate higher prices for that stimulating cup of coffee, because except for beans from Hawaii and a few spots in California, the U.S. just does not have the climate to grow coffee.
If you need new eyeglasses to watch all this economic news, there’s a strong chance you’ll pay more.
Tariffs are a real worry for Lesco Optical, where Sergio Guayante works to keep glasses affordable by negotiating with suppliers in China, Singapore and Mexico.
He says, “It's a big concern for us, because we don't like raising our prices, and we try to keep our customers comfortable with the pricing. They've got rent now, and price increases on rent, on groceries, I mean, just everything has gone up. We want to try to hold our prices and be at the minimum the last one that does any increases.”
At Bicycle Ranch of Tucson, Tyler Morganstern says most of their bikes come from Taiwan and a lot of their popular new electric bikes come from China.
He was just in a phone conference with one of their biggest suppliers.
“They're basically, by the end of the month, there's going to be a price increase on bikes from that brand, and that just means everybody else would probably follow suit, because e-bikes is one big thing, because a lot of that stuff is from China. So it's going to be a big, big increase, because it's not only 20% but then there's another exponential, like 20, 30% on top of that, and it's getting close to 70 to 80%.”
He says suppliers tell him to stock up now to delay the higher prices they expect for the next shipments that come from overseas.
And if all this talk of higher prices makes you want to relax with a nice long walk, understand new shoes could cost more too. Most major sneaker brands come from China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia.
