I'm surprised how resilient / inflation resistant the market has been to both tariffs and the uncertainty around them ... but I wonder how much as been companies willing to eat costs or just avoid them with on and off tariff threats and etc.
I suspect (but cannot prove) that companies were willing to eat the costs in the short term. They can't in the long term (nobody has profit margins to eat 50% higher cost of materials). But in the short term, nobody wanted to take the customer relations hit from raising prices and then find out that the tariffs were cancelled, postponed, or dramatically reduced, and their competitors who didn't raise prices had taken all the customers.
[Does anyone else get tired of stuff like "the highest rate since February"? Dudes, that was four months ago (because it's data for June). You'd expect a "highest rate in four months" about every four months or so. That in itself does not make this the kind of outlier that you are trying to make it sound like it is.]
Further, the tariffs have not be implemented across the board. There were only the threats. If and when they are implemented, we will see how all of this falls out.
The article is careful to avoid strong cause/effect statements though it strongly implies that tariffs will cause inflation. Leaving aside the wisdom of tariffs in general, I am not sure that is the inevitable outcome.
Well, it will cause either 1) much greater efficiency, 2) lower profits, or 3) higher prices. American capitalism being what it is, 3 is the most likely outcome.
And higher prices are exactly what the inflation statistics measure. The difference is that, if tariffs go to 50%, say, and stay there, then prices rise corresponding to 50% of the foreign content, but they don't keep rising (unless either the tariff rate rises or the foreign content rises). So it would be more of a one-off bump in inflation rather than continual inflation, which is what most people mean.
I'm surprised how resilient / inflation resistant the market has been to both tariffs and the uncertainty around them ... but I wonder how much as been companies willing to eat costs or just avoid them with on and off tariff threats and etc.
I suspect (but cannot prove) that companies were willing to eat the costs in the short term. They can't in the long term (nobody has profit margins to eat 50% higher cost of materials). But in the short term, nobody wanted to take the customer relations hit from raising prices and then find out that the tariffs were cancelled, postponed, or dramatically reduced, and their competitors who didn't raise prices had taken all the customers.
[Does anyone else get tired of stuff like "the highest rate since February"? Dudes, that was four months ago (because it's data for June). You'd expect a "highest rate in four months" about every four months or so. That in itself does not make this the kind of outlier that you are trying to make it sound like it is.]
Further, the tariffs have not be implemented across the board. There were only the threats. If and when they are implemented, we will see how all of this falls out.
The article is careful to avoid strong cause/effect statements though it strongly implies that tariffs will cause inflation. Leaving aside the wisdom of tariffs in general, I am not sure that is the inevitable outcome.
Well, it will cause either 1) much greater efficiency, 2) lower profits, or 3) higher prices. American capitalism being what it is, 3 is the most likely outcome.
And higher prices are exactly what the inflation statistics measure. The difference is that, if tariffs go to 50%, say, and stay there, then prices rise corresponding to 50% of the foreign content, but they don't keep rising (unless either the tariff rate rises or the foreign content rises). So it would be more of a one-off bump in inflation rather than continual inflation, which is what most people mean.