Buy or wait? Americans wrestle with how tariffs will affect their shopping

WASHINGTON - Mr and Mrs Phil and Charlene Willingham had been thinking for a while about replacing their 20-year-old kitchen appliances, but with the sudden prospect of rising costs, they decided that this was the moment.

The Willinghams turned up at a store in the suburbs of Chicago on April 4 with a long shopping list: stove, refrigerator, microwave oven and dishwasher.

“We were going to take our time to get new appliances, but now, because of these tariffs, I want to get them before any price increases take place,” Mrs Willingham, 64, said while shopping at the Abt Electronics store in Glenview, Illinois.

Of the Trump administration’s sweeping announcement of tariffs around the world last week, she said, “It sort of set the fire.”

In grocery stores, car dealerships, malls and big discount chains around the country, interviews with more than two dozen Americans at the weekend showed that many were racing to figure out how to get ahead of the new tariffs plan, quickly making calculated purchases, big and small.

“The panic is enough to make me want to buy,” Ms Shali Santos, 28, said, after stocking up on essentials in bulk at a Costco Wholesale store in Marina del Rey, a community in Los Angeles County, and noticing that many people around her seemed to be stocking up more than usual on similar staples.

Others said their shopping habits were unchanged by the tariffs announcement, largely because they had patience and trust in the President’s long game, and figured that any short-term pain, including potential cost hikes, would work itself out.

“I’m confident it will recover,” Mr Gregg Harris, 61, said as he shopped at a Walmart in Nashville, Tennessee.

Nearly all, though, expressed lingering uncertainty about exactly how these tariffs – at least a 10 per cent government surcharge on nearly all goods imported into the United States as well as higher rates on goods from many countries – would play out in their daily lives.

How and when might prices be affected by US President Donald Trump’s moves? What items might be most hard hit? Even if they knew the answers to such questions, some asked, could they really afford purchasing big-ticket items right now to avoid higher costs later?

Many shoppers said the prospect of tariffs simply added to anxiety about an already unforgiving economy. Even if prices had yet to surge, uncertainty about what was ahead and sudden declines to retirement savings accounts were worrying signs. NYTIMES