Two-thirds of Americans think Trump tariffs will lead to higher prices, poll says
Summary
A Harris poll reveals that 69% of Americans believe Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs would increase consumer costs, with many planning purchases ahead of his inauguration to avoid price hikes.
Trump has championed tariffs as a key policy to boost domestic manufacturing, but economists and corporate leaders warn costs will be passed to consumers, potentially adding $2,600 annually to household expenses.
While Republicans are more supportive of tariffs, only 51% think they will benefit the economy.
The poll highlights widespread concern over tariffs’ economic impact, especially amid lingering inflation and financial uncertainty.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/26/trump-tariffs-prices-harris-pollOpen linkView original on lemmy.world571
Comments137
So 1/3rd of Americans don't understand how economies work or what a tariff is.
US has lead pipes, piss poor education standards with not enough funding, environmental pollution, bought out media that perpetuates toxic culture
Wut that has to do with anything there saying??!! *cough and wheeze*
The Democrats want to take your guns!
"We're going to take the firearms first and then go to court, because that's another system. Because a lot of times by the time you go to court ... it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures. I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man's case that just took place in Florida; he had a lot of fires [and] they saw everything. To go to court would have taken a long time, so you could do exactly what you're saying but take the guns first, go through due process second."
Nancy PelosiDude! This is Trumpland! We don't do reality!
Egad, you're right! Here, we let reality do us!
Gotta be the same 30-40% that vote trump no matter what he does.
And 20% do, but voted for him anyway...
That assumes that everyone who answered this poll bothered to vote
At this point, with him announcing to all and sundry during the campaign that he was going to do this, not bothering to vote was still a vote.
But you see, the leopards won't eat their faces!
Tariffs were barely talked about until the day after the election for some reason. So a lot of people learned after the election....
Tariffs were talked about constantly before the election. A lot if people weren't listening.
But muh eggz
And the other .001% is former president McKinley who Trump assumes is still alive.
They just go with whatever Trump says.
If 2/3 of people seemingly understand the truth, how tf was he voted back in? Can they get rid of the outdated electoral college system yet?
Electoral college was irrelevant this election. Trump won the popular vote because people don't think voting is important. Kamala Harris was a shit candidate, but Democratic voters weren't given a primary to pick a better one.
While the Electoral College did not directly factor into this election it could have indirectly factored in due to minority voters in solidly controlled states simply deciding not to vote due to their votes having no impact on the outcome. If for instance you were a Democrat in a state that Republicans have won by double digit percentages for the last couple decades you might rightly assume that whether you vote or not the outcome remains unchanged.
If we had a straight popular vote rather than the EC then literally every vote would count, unlike the current system where that's only true in battleground states. In this case the EC is just another in a long list of voter suppression tools.
Mandatory voting?
Make not voting cause you to be chosen first for jury duty.
Personally, I've never minded jury duty, but people seem to lose their minds over it.
I don't want to potentially be judged by people who can't even be fucked to vote, thank you very much.
Do you want to be judged by someone who isn’t smart enough to get out of jury duty?
I'd agree, except do we really want to emphasize the least engaged citizens for jury duty? That's still someone's freedom on the line, and while for some select few people finding a chance to vote is extremely difficult due to registration fuckery in Republican states, with the rise of early voting and vote by mail, the primary demographic of non-voting adults is people who are apathetic or intentionally ignorant to the political process. My fear is: "This is a waste of my time, and 30 days isn't that long; just send them to jail." And there won't be anyone who cares strongly enough to object because the jury is packed with these apathetic citizens. To clarify, I see this as more of a problem with small-fry misdemeanor or less serious felony cases, not like murder or rape trials. But that's most trials.
You could argue that politically engaged Republicans can be much, much worse on a jury, that this could help them develop a sense of engagement with politics, and that they might care if they can see their choice directly affecting someone else, but it seems sketchy.
When we don't get paid because we miss work and are dependent on that money, it can be annoying. In theory, I think it would be cool to be on a jury, but its a luxury to be able to afford to be on a jury.
I guess it depends on where you are. In my city, you get 150% of minimum wage/hour of jury duty, so $18 an hour. Though of course if you make more than that and are paid hourly, it's a definite loss.
My state pays $20/day. The last time I was summoned, the estimated cost of the commute using the IRS average is $35 (granted, that's a high estimate) and not reimbursed or compensated. Also the $20 is taxed. So it effectively cost me money to go to jury duty in my old county even before accounting for lost wages.
Oof - yeah, that's garbage.
I never understood the hatred over jury duty. Except for people who work minimum wage or don't get paid jury duty.
Jury duty is the most direct way a normal citizen can affect democracy.
I vote in every primary and every election and have never been selected for jury duty.
Which implies I have no peers.
While I too want more people to participate, I think we should also recognize that choosing not to vote is protected speech. That's probably not why people don't vote, so we should probably find other ways to encourage voting (holiday, more access to polls, etc.) Unfortunately, some repulsive people prefer it when fewer people vote.
For protected speech, I'd prefer if people would go in, take a ballot, and submit it blank. Essentially, making a statement that there is no one on the ballot who would represent them. It would be more meaningful than not going to the polling place at all. It sends a more significant message than just staying home.
I do agree that we need to make it easier, not harder, to vote.
Automatic registration, election day holiday, laws forcing employers to facilitate voting by their employees.
"If you are going to protest at least do it exactly the way I think you should."
Well, perhaps you should do it in a way that doesn't appear exactly like you actually can't be bothered to do anything.
Matter of perspective. Its not important that you think their action has no effect, its important that they think their action has effect.
Neither perspective is really wrong or right absolutely. We won't know which is right for so many decades that its useless to declare one perspective entirely baseless.
The new suppressed it, or the democrats restricted who could run, or anything else, but stop telling me the primary I voted in didn't happen.
It did happen, it was just irrelevant. No serious competition was allowed (Sorry, Dean Phillips).
This is fair. It was a bad primary
Was Kamala on your ballot? If the results of an election are ignored, was it really an election?
I'm not going to say that people were so stupid that they didn't realize a vote for Biden was really a vote for Kamala.
What a weird reality you live in. Especially funny given that Kamala came in almost dead last in the 2020 primary that Biden won.
Democracy depends on an informed public. The Democrats concealed Biden's mental decline so, arguably, a vote for Biden wasn't even a vote for Biden.
Also, an election without adequate media coverage and no debates makes a mockery of the idea of an informed electorate. That's how they run elections in Russia or North Korea, not in a functioning democracy. If you don't have higher standards than that, you don't deserve democracy.
Less than a third of eligible voters voted for him, so it tracks. Close to half the country not voting suggests they understand tariffs, but either just fine paying 20% extra for everything or don't believe he'll actually do the things he's been most vocal about doing.
The guy didn't even get the majority of the votes.
Trump won with less than 20% of the vote if you count all eligible voters, he won because most people stayed home.
GM's stock price is down 8% today.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate automotive union workers who voted for Trump.
It’s not like the actual workers see any of the money when the stock price goes up…
Yeah, but they are the ones let go when the stock tumbles.
Sounds like a pretty dumb system if the people who actually make the product are only exposed to downside but don’t benefit from the upside. We should probably tear that whole system down.
They get profit sharing checks. Those profit checks go down when the company is less profitable. Those profit checks go to $0 and their paychecks go to $0 when the company is losing money and has to let people go.
Gee, sounds like those same people are currently having issues with face eating leopards \○/
It amazes me that Republicans can be supportive of what is a blatant tax grab by the federal government. Trump is basically saying "I'm going to add a federal sales tax on top of the majority of everything you buy to the tune of 25% or more. With China, a lot of that is manufactured consumer goods. But with Canada and Mexico, we're talking food products, automobiles, natural resources needed by American industries, etc.
Somehow he'll still have a deficit.
The plan is to have a disturbing deficit, and interest payments are getting really big now.
This is like climate change, it's not apparently hurting anyone tomorrow so... no one cares anymore.
Pro Tip: If you have any large purchases to make in your life, now is the time.
Also, probably buy a gun because there's about to be a lot more desperate people out there.
I would guess your amazement is because GOP are understood to be in favor of small government, when actually they are favor of doing w/e the fuck they feel like to enrich themselves because their voter base is so fucking stupid they would vote for a rock if you said it would be thrown through a liberals window once elected.
My biggest concern is what will happen when the party that runs on christian nationalism and prejudice (redundant), that has majority control of the entire government, and is flush with tax revenue, is going to accomplish over the next 2-4 years...
The other 1/3 of people probably don't even know what a tariff is.
2/3 don't know. They've just heard enough negative press to agree.
I mean it's very simple. A tariff is what you pay the government to get stuff released from the port of entry.
You buy a $1000 DJI quadcopter that was manufactured in China, if Trump does his "60% on everything from China" tariff the US government says you have to pay them $600 or it goes back on the boat.
The complicated part of tarrifs is stuff like "are X-men action figures human or non-human toys" because those get different rates. Not what tariffs "are".
It's not hard, the country's just full of uninterested idiots.
The part they refuse to think about is the DJI is just going to raise the price to $1700 to cover. And the fact that there aren't going to be any local drone manufacturers for competition.
To cover what? DJI isn't paying anything extra.
If they raise the price to $1700, then the tariff would be $1020 to the US government, again by you, and you would pay $2720 total to get your thing, split between DJI and the port authority.
After they put it on the boat DJI doesn't care. They have their $1000. If they feel like it they can add the tariff charge and handle that for you, that's how it usually happens now, but they don't have to. You'll just get a letter from the port authority about the charges needed to release your item.
You're talking about direct to consumer from an overseas store, whereas I think the person you're replying to is talking about the pricing at a US store?
What's the difference?
Somebody has to pay the tax to get the items off the boat. Spoiler alert, everyone will pass the cost on to the final consumer.
I believe you're conflating tariffs and customs duty.
Why didn’t they hear this before the election?
They should have heard about it during his last presidency. They're too busy playing politics like it's sports.
shrug
Let it all burn. The worse it is, maybe they'll get a clue.
There are 258 million adults in the USA. Almost 77 million people voted for Trump. Which is about 30%.
I think we can all deduce which 1/3 of Americans are too fucking dumb to understand Trump's tariffs are a bad idea.
What about the rest who were too dumb to vote at all and got Trump as a free gift?
They suck, but not as bad as the people who actually voted for trump? Trump voters are the real evil assholes.
But 1/4 has to be bigger since 4 is more than 3!
I'm guessing you already know this... but that is literally the reason why A&W's 1/3lb burger (launched to compete with McDonalds' 1/4 pounder) failed lol
They should have called it the 2/6th as 2>1 and 6>4!
I'm still amazed the party that preaches tax cuts, are vocally adding taxes, and they still got votes.
"He didn't mean it. He was joking."
"He's not gonna hurt me, I'm white..!"
"They're only going after the bad ones."
All quotes come directly from family that will be affected by Trump's shit. They couldn't care less though, because they believe the shit they say. They'll be fine, it's just everyone else that's fucked.
Alternate headline: 1/3 of Americans Functionally Didn't Receive High School Education
Tbf, I was very ignorant regarding tariffs as a young adult post highschool. But also, we have the Internet, and Google, and as of now we have fucking AI that can ELI5 literally any topic you are interested in knowing more about if you aren't an ignorant piece of shit. But here we are, America is full of ignorant pieces of shit. Shocker.
This comment is both fucking hilarious and shittily depressing at the same time. I don’t know which emotion is stronger.
This one. It's definitely this one. 🙁
Maybe they should have bothered to vote? Crazy idea, I know.
No, blah blah blah, not prefect candidate, blah blah.
Can't blame them for being lazy shitheads. Of course it's someone else's fault.
So where were you on Nov 5th?
Russia, lol. I'm not representing anything there tho.
This may seem odd, but remember: greater than 2/3 of eligible voters did not vote for Trump.
True... but the non voters are dumber than Trump voters. At least the Trump voters understand that voting matters.
Representation also matters, and it's understandable why someone might not want to vote for a candidate that they don't feel represents them.
Edit: be sure to downvote this comment if you think large portions of people don't deserve representation.
Pretty sure I wasted my vote since Harris lost (I'm in California)
I was told that Trump got elected because of the economy.
By people who don't understand the economy.
Or bother asking or listening to an economist.
Or who even pay attention to actual news
But eggs expensive
"bUsInEsS mAn GoOd!!!!"
Man, if only they could read they'd know how not good at business he is.
These dipshits only know what Trump's name looks like. That's how they find him on a ballot and fill in the box.
Not just yourselves... it will probably send Canada and Mexico into a recession as well.
Yeah. It will probably suck for Canada too, but hopefully our government does the right thing and strengthens our ties with other markets in Europe, South America, and Asia. Really sucks how the past few years the Canadian government has torpedoed a lot of good international relations that would be really beneficial to have going into the Trump administration.
As per some other thread I hope we seriously consider trying to join the EU (or at least the EEZ/Shegen area)
Do you think the EU would let the USA in? Even Australia isn't part of the EU even though they compete in the Eurovision song contest.
No way the USA would try to join the EU any time soon. Canada might though. Don’t know if they’d be allowed in.
I think the EU would refuse if only because it'd be extremely likely that the US would brexit themselves as soon as the government flipped.
Canada's move to expand our trade agreements began back in 2003 with the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) crisis when our cattle exports to the USA (and other nations) were shut down.
But you're right that we haven't worked hard enough on further expansions.
How would that happen? Aren’t most things sold in Canada NOT from US and probably from China?
Idk about food tho
The Canadian economy is tied at the hip to the US. A lot of our agri is US produced and while most consumer end products are Chinese a lot of Canadian manufacturing uses US intermediary products. Our resource export market is also US focused right now especially for hard wood, dairy, maple syrup, and oil/natural gas.
I don't think we actually have the facilities to handle Alberta's production through the Atlantic provinces or BC.
Right so some industries that sell to the US would see slowdowns but the things we buy from US won’t be affected by tariffs unless Canada retaliates. Right?
My question was more about our cost of goods, our economy overall is not doing well and tariffs are not the only reason.
Imo this has been brewing ever since our country somehow decided house price growth means economic growth.
Headline should read "One third of Americans have no idea how a tariff works"
And most of them showed up and voted for Trump. 1/3rd of adults voting for fascism is all it takes to destroy a country when 70 million people stay home and don't vote
New cars coming from Canada or Mexico? 25% more expensive. American cars
madefinal assembly in USA with tons of parts from Mexico/Canada will be $$ too. And about every piece of electronics 10% more expensive too.Does Trump know that drugs like fentanyl is being made in USA? Does he thin
gk drug manufacturer/dealer all come from mexico/canada/china?Yes. That's the racism.
While I don’t quite believe this connection, I want to point out that legacy car manufacturers heavily depend on imports, especially from Canada and Mexico ….. but Tesla does not
The other 3rd are just that braindead
Well now hold up, a little more than half of the 2/3 knew better but voted for it anyways. Id say they're pretty braindead too.
A little more than half knew better but didn't bother to vote.
This has been common for so long and 2020 was a fluke with voter turnout. You're totally right here, people did just not vote but it's also a result of not giving people incentives that get them to vote. Voting isn't really easy in much of the US, especially for those working long hours at the start of the holiday season. Biden ran on stimmy checks and student loan forgiveness, Harris ran on small business tax incentives and building a wall. Just like with plastics, it's easy to look at individual blame here and get upset with the people who didn't vote but it's the system that made them not want to vote.
Trump ran on "I'm going to be a dictator" and a third of Americans didn't consider that reason enough to vote.
Because they voted away the problem in the past right? Hell, it doesn't even matter that a third of American's didn't vote because most of them live in like 4 states. You say that as if it has any real measurable weight when in reality it is a handful of states that had maybe a million or two combined not participate. The type of base you could inspire instead of parading around you're endorsed by a war criminal.
but they are more likely to vote than the other two thirds.
They are more likely to vote for the wrong team
Maybe they should have voted appropriately on Nov 5.
It doesn't matter what they 'think'. Tariffs will fuck everything up for everyone involved. People's opinions on this mean nothing. It is like asking people if they think that being thrown into a deep body water with a heavy chain around around your feet will kill. The answer they give is irrelevant. That action will kill you because you will drown. End of discussion.
I love how people are debating this as if it's not a well understood concept. Can't wait till we get headlines like "1/4 of people belive a bullet to the head might possibly be fatal in some cases".
https://phys.org/news/2014-02-americans-unaware-earth-circles-sun.html
One in four Americans unaware that Earth circles Sun
Give the pets a bit of credit, even they saw this shit coming...
I like how the headline says 2/3 of Americans "think" tariffs will lead to higher prices. The other 1/3 aren't thinking at all.
Tariffs are passed on straight to the consumer and the main outcome is that Americans will need to pay more. Demand for products from other countries isn't going to suddenly disappear. Some things can't be easily made in the USA, and sometimes the items made overseas are a higher quality product.
It's like rebates - they very rarely benefit the consumer. Having a 30% rebate for solar panels is fine, but it means the prices are at least 30% higher than they should be, which is obvious if you compare US prices to European and Australian prices for identical systems.
The illegal tarrifs on Canadian softwood lumber raised the price of a single family home in the US by more than $10,000 while Canadian lumber companies enjoyed record profits because demand remained high. The tarrifs are intended to allow less cost effective American companies to charge more by making more cost effective foreign products more expensive. It's about raising prices.
Trump voters voted to pay more to make rich people richer.
So, at least a 1/3rd of them voted for higher prices? I mean it's fine if that's what they wanted I guess.
I upgraded my GPU and bought a bunch of audio stuff that I was gonna wait to pull the trigger on til later. Not taking the chance of not being able to afford it later.
ITT 1/3 of Americans are fucking morons
Lol.
We're such an unforgivably stupid society.
It doesn't matter what politicians we choose. It doesn't matter if the "pendulum swings back". We're stupid. Wherever the pendulum is, we're still stupid. So we're still going to trend downward, because that's the only direction a stupid society can go.
Galaxy brain economics.
I mean when they drew it up they showed commuter costs were up hundreds of dollars a piece. If he does what he says he was planning to do every company's IT budget is shot. If people thought they had old computers before, no chance they are getting upgraded if that happens. Instead of saying new laptops every 3-4 years and desktops 5 years they'll likely just switch back to desktops and say every 6 years, cutting out paying for docks/port replicators, and having more reasonsl to force users into office to get people to quit and cut payroll costs as well. Bottom line still goes up, CEO and stocks go up, quality of product/service... Goes down
Note obviously that cuts into the network infrastructure and all software licensing as well. You have to renew licenses, maybe can cut some cost if you cut staff, but it means forcing more users to cheaper software, and likely holding off all wireless access points upgrades/installs, new fiber runs etc
Doesn't need much thought. When has a tariff or import tax ever not resulted in higher prices? How could it NOT??
Well, the other 31% will learn it the hard way.
Would Canada also put tariffs on things made in US? Would things in Canada that are American companies but made overseas be affected?
Hopefully we start doing like last time and put tariffs on specific things to hurt Republican States only.
Jesus, this is so fucking contrarian.
Yes, taxing goods imported from countries with poor labor laws increases their price.
Yes, we should increase the cost of goods that are made with unfair labor practices (or ban them entirely)
Yes, Trump is still a criminal even if he accidentally does the right thing every now and then
Not all imported goods are made with unfair labor practices.
Tariffs are a necessary tool, and can be positive in the long run to create revenue and lower trade deficits. They are a regressive tax, but there is some positive to making some imported goods more expensive in the US. It does discourage companies from importing everything. In moderation targeted tariffs can be good.
The debt is projected to be $50 trillion by 2034, so revenue does need to be increased somehow. Otherwise on the current track the US will be unable to service it's debt.
Ideally they should just tax billionaires, but politically this is a lot easier for them.
The problem with tariffs is moreso on what they're going to do with the revenue. The surplus will almost assuredly be used to give tax cuts to the rich, and the debt will likely be $50 trillion by 2028, not 2034.
Not as long as virtually all commodities trade in USD and USD remains the world's reserve currency. I do get your broader point about any "revenue" raised by tariffs.
The next 4 years in the US are going to bring instability to the forefront.
US debt to GDP ratio is already an insane 120% . At some point along this path of ever increasing debt, people are going to see that USD is no longer safe and choose other currencies, or possibly crypto. Bank runs tend to happen all of a sudden when no one expects it. The same situation could theoretically happen in the US.
The reserve dominance shouldn't be relied upon when we could simply raise a small amount of revenue with taxes on the wealthy to balance the books.