by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Yesterday my sister (a diehard Walmart shopper) sent her only sibling (me - who has not been inside a Walmart store in over thirty years) a copy of an internet news article from the Daily Mail. The article covered a statement by Walmart CFO David Rainey in which he said that due the anticipated increase in tariffs on imports by the incoming presidential administration, consumers might see price increases on some items at Walmart.
Mr. Rainey appears to be a master of the art of understatement.
The article that my sister forwarded further stated that the President-elect is talking of imposing an across-the-board tariff of ten-percent on all imports and a sixty-percent tariff on all imports from China. Tariffs are not paid by the exporting countries, but rather by the companies that import the goods - and those companies recoup their costs by raising the prices that consumers pay.
According to the statement Mr. Rainey made yesterday, one-third of the items Walmart sells are imports, so yes, if there is an additional fee (tariff) placed on everything coming in from abroad, prices will undoubtedly be going up at Walmart - and at Best Buy - and at Dollar General - and at all of the other stores in the United States which sell imported items.
And just how deeply will this new de facto sales tax reach into our pockets? According to the Daily Mail article that my sister forwarded:
"A May report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a non-profit think-tank, estimated that these levies (tariffs) will cost middle-class families at least $1,700 a year."
$1,700 is a significant amount of money in my household.
Or, as Jim Bob says, "Tariffs will learn them foreigners not to mess with America! MAGA!"
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