President Donald Trump recently opted to rollback some tariffs to try to bring down prices on things like coffee, fruit and beef, but CNN analyst Matt Egan says the average U.S. household isn’t even going to notice.
“This would be like if your landlord raised your [monthly] rent by $200 bucks. And then, to make up for it, handed you a gift card for $35,” Egan told CNN anchor John Berman.
The White House claims the tariff rollbacks will address the affordability crisis, and research does show some items may get less expensive. Egan said the cost of bananas could drop by almost 3 percent, and coffee and nuts could get 7 percent cheaper. But Egan said there’s no guarantee stores and markets will pass those savings back to customers because stores “are reluctant to lower prices after raising them.”
But, more importantly, the rollback is not enough to register with straining households.
“But, let's just say [stores] do share the savings with consumers. Peterson Institute research shows that this will lower prices by about $5 billion per year. Now that sounds like a lot — but it's a big country,” Egan said. “When you break this down per household, we're only talking about an annual savings of $35 bucks from these tariff rollbacks. Just $35 bucks. That's against estimates from the budget lab at Yale that the impact of the tariff hikes are costing households $1,700. So, $35 savings $1,700 in cost.”
Enten showed footage of White House Economist Kevin Hassett claiming “prices for goods … weren't necessarily going up just because of tariffs," and that “prices will go down … because the supply of the goods into the U.S. is going to increase” with the rollbacks.
“This is just another example of the disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality on prices," Egan said. “The president says there's no inflation. Clearly there is. He says that grocery prices are down. They're clearly not. And, yeah, rolling back tariffs could help a little bit on the edges. but this is really just a drop in the bucket.”
