I have something of a front row seat to this on the consumer packaged goods (CPG) part of the market.
There is still a lot of competitive pricing pressure that has kept companies from preemptively increasing prices due to new tariffs on inventory that is pre-tariff. Any price impact of tariffs won't be felt until existing inventories are gone, which for some products is still months away.
For new inventory, one thing not being accounted for is that container costs have collapsed in response to tariffs. I know of multiple cases where the drop in container shipping costs offset the new tariffs for CPG, leading to flat prices even on inventory subject to the new tariffs, at least for now.
It's an interesting dynamic. Sellers don't want to increase prices, perhaps in fear of upsetting customers / Trump, and so we've got this long delay where they seem to hope Trump wakes up on the right side of the bed tomorrow and changes his mind ...
I would expect prices to be more dynamic but there seems to have been a wait it out approach so far.
Supply decreases when prices can't go up, but need to.
I saw this in my area of the U.S. a few years ago when severe weather events created issues with refineries for a few days, and it impacted gas deliveries to gas stations.
It seemed like gas stations preferred to run out of gas at the pumps instead of raising the prices and be accused of gouging.
Fortunately these were very temporary situations, and it seemed they've been mitigated now I think by temporarily removing limits on tanker truck driver hours when those situations occur.
I have something of a front row seat to this on the consumer packaged goods (CPG) part of the market.
There is still a lot of competitive pricing pressure that has kept companies from preemptively increasing prices due to new tariffs on inventory that is pre-tariff. Any price impact of tariffs won't be felt until existing inventories are gone, which for some products is still months away.
For new inventory, one thing not being accounted for is that container costs have collapsed in response to tariffs. I know of multiple cases where the drop in container shipping costs offset the new tariffs for CPG, leading to flat prices even on inventory subject to the new tariffs, at least for now.
It's an interesting dynamic. Sellers don't want to increase prices, perhaps in fear of upsetting customers / Trump, and so we've got this long delay where they seem to hope Trump wakes up on the right side of the bed tomorrow and changes his mind ...
I would expect prices to be more dynamic but there seems to have been a wait it out approach so far.
Prices are sticky. Which means they generally change less often than expected, but when they do change, they change more than expected.
Couple that with the fact that a shrinking economy like we're currently in generally puts downward pressure on prices.
Supply decreases when prices can't go up, but need to.
I saw this in my area of the U.S. a few years ago when severe weather events created issues with refineries for a few days, and it impacted gas deliveries to gas stations.
It seemed like gas stations preferred to run out of gas at the pumps instead of raising the prices and be accused of gouging.
Fortunately these were very temporary situations, and it seemed they've been mitigated now I think by temporarily removing limits on tanker truck driver hours when those situations occur.