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Americans are planning to spend less money this summer due to the impact of Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, according to surveys, polling, and media reports.
In a survey by the personal finance company WalletHub, 45 per cent of respondents said that tariffs were affecting their travel plans, while nearly two in three said they planned to spend less money this summer than they did last year.
A survey of 1,516 U.S. consumers by the accounting giant KPMG in April found that 50 per cent were cutting back spending due to tariffs and more than 70 per cent expect a recession within the next 12 months.
The next month, 56 per cent of respondents told pollsters commissioned by Bloomberg News that their household finances would be better off without Trump’s tariffs, with 69 per cent saying they expected higher prices.
“The tariffs are making high prices even more unreasonably high, to the point where… what you’re charging is not even close to what this is worth,” Raina Becker, a freelance copy editor in New York state, told NBC News.
Mei Wu, a 31-year-old content creator in Los Angeles, likewise told the outlet that she had recently given up on buying a coveted new dress after it more than doubled in price due to tariffs.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia father-of-two Brad Russell, 40, told Bloomberg that his family would be taking more modest vacations this summer because they expected costs to rise, taking weekend car trips to nearby attractions rather than week-long spells at major resorts such as Disney World.
Since retaking power this January, Trump has used emergency powers to impose steep new taxes on a wide range of imported goods, including a 30 to 50 per cent tariff on goods from China and a blanket 10 per cent tariff on all imports from anywhere.
Courts are still untangling whether or not he actually had the legal authority to do so, with one federal judge recently ruling that the president cannot “unilaterally impose… tariffs to reorder the global economy”.
As of April, Trump’s tariffs did not appear to have increased inflation. Nevertheless, many consumers and businesses are evidently worried that worse is yet to come.
Big retailers including Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Shein, Ford, Volkswagen, Best Buy, and Nintendo have signaled that they will probably raise prices in the coming months.
“[Price hikes] are happening right now, and they’ll become more obvious,” Walmart’s chief financial officer John David Rainey told Bloomberg last month.
U.S. airlines have also reduced their flight schedules because they anticipate lower demand from both domestic and international travelers.
Trump and his allies have argued that tariffs will incentivize companies to source more of their products within the USA, which he claims will kickstart a manufacturing renaissance.
But many experts and business leaders have said it would be difficult or impossible to manufacture most modern consumer products without using any imported components or foreign labor.
Trump himself reacted with anger to Rainey’s prediction, demanding that Walmart “eat the tariffs” by refusing to pass on the extra cost to their consumers.
“All I’m saying is that a young lady — a 10-year-old-girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old-girl — doesn’t need 37 dolls,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One last month. “She could be very happy with two or three or four or five.”