By Siddharth Cavale
SECAUCUS, New Jersey (Reuters) – Pushing a shopping cart down the aisle of a Walmart Supercenter, Thomas Jennings, 53, loaded up on juices, condiments and whatever he could think of.
“I’m buying double of whatever – beans, canned goods, flour, you name it,” he said. His strategy is to stock up as much as possible before the Trump administration’s latest round of import tariffs takes effect on Wednesday.
Earlier at Costco , Jennings bought flour, sugar and water in bulk. “There’s a recession coming and I am preparing for the worst,” he said.
Like a growing number of U.S. shoppers, Jennings believes retail prices will soon rise because of Trump’s tariffs.
The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group, said the new levies will cost Americans $3.1 trillion over the next 10 years, amounting to a roughly $2,100 tax increase per household in 2025 alone.
Even as many shoppers take a wait-and-see approach, some fear that any panic would trigger a stockpiling frenzy that intensifies on expectations of even worse inflation, they told Reuters.
Manish Kapoor, founder of GCG, a supply chain management firm outside Los Angeles, said the tariffs are reawakening fears of empty store shelves encountered during the pandemic, when supply chain disruptions led to product shortages and inflation.
“We saw this during COVID as well, where everybody frantically went and grabbed everything on store shelves, whether they needed it or not,” Kapoor said.
“It’s not to that level, but people are worried that the cost (of goods) is going to go up and, you know, let’s stock up.”
Walmart and Costco did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Angelo Barrio, 55, a retired garment industry professional, said Trump’s tactics of “muddying the water and causing chaos” have worried him and his friends about the economy’s direction.
Barrio began buying goods with long shelf lives in November as he feared retailers would pass on tariff costs to their customers.
At Costco this week, he stocked up on Crest toothpaste, soap, water and rice to fill six canisters already stuffed with canned goods in his temperature-controlled basement.
At Walmart, he grabbed two more bottles of olive oil, bringing his total stockpile to 20 bottles. “You can never be sure how much you’ll need,” he said.
CHINA TARIFFS
Barrio is sympathetic towards China, which Trump threatened on Monday with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing does not withdraw its retaliatory tariffs on the United States.
“They are simply getting penalized for no fault of their own,” he said. “I have always been happy that they are able to provide us things at such low prices.”
Maggie Collins, who is in her mid-60s, said she is “shaking in my boots” as she worries about Trump’s tariffs and their impact on senior citizens.
At a Walmart in North Bergen, New Jersey, Collins filled her cart with items like shower gels and sanitary pads, favoring Walmart brands that are cheaper than those from Procter & Gamble and Unilever.
“I look at all the prices closely because I live on a fixed income,” said Collins, a health aide at a senior living facility. “Paying a higher price somewhere means making adjustments to some other budget.”
On a recent visit to Shoprite, where Collins bought chopped meat to cook for her grandchildren, her typical 3 lb (1.36 kg) meat purchase cost $16, forcing her to take the $8 version instead.
How would the younger generation cope, she wondered. “They are just getting out into this world where it has become so tough to survive.”
At Valley Subaru in Longmont, Colorado, business has spiked in recent weeks. General Sales Manager Nic Chuenchit said he was unsure how much of that was due to consumers’ concerns about the 25% tariffs, which took effect on fully imported cars on April 3.
“Customers are talking about the tariffs, customers are asking us questions about them,” Chuenchit said. “I do think some of our customers who were planning to buy a car have done it sooner rather than later because of the talk about tariffs.”
Chuenchit was optimistic as he recalled selling cars after the 2008 recession and during the pandemic.
“This business is resilient. Car sales have always been there,” he said. “People will still buy cars, even if there are tariffs. It’s just going to cost consumers more.”
(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale in New York and Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; Editing by Richard Chang)
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