Has anyone here been affected by tariffs?

[Yvonne Smith]

Apparently, Governor Newsom is going to raise fuel prices by 65 cents per gallon on Tuesday, which is the first of July. Most of the local gas stations here are around $2.50 a gallon, so prices have been coming down bit by bit.
Eggs are now much cheaper, although most other groceries that we buy are about the same as they have always been for the last year. We used to see T-bone steaks advertised on sale for $4.99 lb, but now they are not being on sale this summer, but other meat is about the same price still.

 

[Don Alaska]

Apparently, Governor Newsom is going to raise fuel prices by 65 cents per gallon on Tuesday, which is the first of July. Most of the local gas stations here are around $2.50 a gallon, so prices have been coming down bit by bit.
Eggs are now much cheaper, although most other groceries that we buy are about the same as they have always been for the last year. We used to see T-bone steaks advertised on sale for $4.99 lb, but now they are not being on sale this summer, but other meat is about the same price still.

Newsom seems to want California to drive off a cliff. I just don't get it. I guess it is TDS taken to extreme, just as the New York City Mayoral primary seems to be. Our gasoline is till expensive even though we produce a lot of oil and have the lowest gas taxes (I think) in the country. The world-wide beef shortage has little to do with tariffs, but seems to be part of a manipulation scheme of the food supply. Someone somewhere wants to get us to stop eating meat and wants more GMO veggies and grains consumed. We have our own chickens, so we don't notice egg price fluctuations, although the feed grains have risen in price in the past few years. Covid may have been designed too alter society--the worldwide reaction certainly was. The way we operate and interact with other may never be the same.

 

[Marie Mallory]

Has anyone here been affected by tariffs? I am hearing complaints about parts--machine and auto--but not much else yet. I doubt I will be affected since we are pretty much self-reliant due to where we live. I suppose lumber could affect us unless they allow us to restart the lumber business here. I could also just mill my own trees, but that is a hassle. Foods that may be affected are apple juice and apple sauce, orange juice, and some canned foods since they are mainly processed in China now.

Has anyone been affected?

Prices were rising before so I can't really see any difference. I suppose prices went up, I just didn't notice.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Prices were rising before so I can't really see any difference. I suppose prices went up, I just didn't notice.

That is interesting, @Marie Mallory . We live in a state that borders Florida, and both are conservative states, and now Governor Desantis is giving Florida people another tax break even.
I am wondering why your food and fuel prices would be going up when ours are definitely coming down, for the most part ?

Gas is around a dollar per gallon cheaper now than it was back in January when President Trump took office. Eggs are now under $4 for the 18 count carton, and they were over $8 for the same amount earlier this year.
Even the protein powder has been coming down in price. Bread and milk are about the same as they were before.

About the only thing I noticed is that the weekly ads do not seem to have steak on sale as cheap as we had before, but the cheaper cuts of meat (which is what we buy anyway), are still about the same price.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

I read that gas in California was still around $5 a gallon, but maybe @Axel Slingerland can give us an update on whether fuel in California is now cheaper or more expensive ?

The last three times I've bought gas (once a month, typically) the price has gone down. And soon our winter prices will kick in after the refineries don't have to make the "summer-blend" of gas, required by state law. It supposedly has less costly additives, like butane.

The highest price for gas in California since 1998 (when I moved to Eureka) was when I was in the hospital in 2023. It hit $7 a gallon up in Eureka, and some the higher priced stations here like Chevron were close to that. But by the time I got out of the hospital prices were back to the way they were before all that. Personally, I've only paid $5 a gallon once. And because of Cindy's Supershopper skills, we got a tank of gas for 11¢ a gallon once. (But that was after she bought a new freezer and three memory foam mattresses.)

Oddly enough, prices in Eureka were higher than in Lassen Volcanic National Park a few years ago, a first for all the parks I've been to. (And I've been in all of the major parks in the western half of the US, except Sequoia, which is now only 100 miles away.)

Here's the GasBuddy list for Bakersfield, which chases on the fly as new price reports come in. I have no idea why Costco isn't on it, as they are usually the best price in the area. Costco's website says the gas there is $4.07 a gallon, but who knows how old that is. They are pretty slow on updates. But as you can see on the GasBuddy list (if you look on the day I'm posting this), $4.07 a gallon would be the opposite end of the spectrum, as it would be the highest price in town.

 

[Nancy Hart]

I ordered 3 mos of a prescription drug from Canada and they added on an $85 charge due tariffs, or about 15% of the total. I don't know if that's due to a Canadian tariff or the country of origin, or both.

 

[Mary Stetler]

My brother has some income property and said water heaters we up a lot. I had to get a sump pump and it was up 50% from the last one I bought but I think it is just inflation over the years(Biden's or otherwise). I have watched Aldi food prices for years and they have gone up, once again probably inflation driven. The egg fiasco was from killing all the birds over bird flu. We don't buy much food but I don't know how normal folks EAT.

 

[Don Alaska]

My brother has some income property and said water heaters we up a lot. I had to get a sump pump and it was up 50% from the last one I bought but I think it is just inflation over the years(Biden's or otherwise). I have watched Aldi food prices for years and they have gone up, once again probably inflation driven. The egg fiasco was from killing all the birds over bird flu. We don't buy much food but I don't know how normal folks EAT.

I don't know that tariffs raise the cost of food much, but the cheap stuff from China and elsewhere definitely has gone up some. However...does anyone remember how much things cost BEFORE we started buying everything from China? American-made stuff is more expensive that stuff made in countries using slave labor or paying near slave labor wages. Quality was better in most cases, but paying Americans to do work does raise the prices.

 

[Mary Stetler]

I don't know that tariffs raise the cost of food much, but the cheap stuff from China and elsewhere definitely has gone up some. However...does anyone remember how much things cost BEFORE we started buying everything from China? American-made stuff is more expensive that stuff made in countries using slave labor or paying near slave labor wages. Quality was better in most cases, but paying Americans to do work does raise the prices.

Yes, China brought prices down for a lot of things but most of them did not last as long as American made products. People may squawk about prices if and when they start building things here but the world may want those products if they are much better quality and last. I for one, am oping for a tough washing machine, or anything, made without mother boards.

 

[Don Alaska]

Yes, China brought prices down for a lot of things but most of them did not last as long as American made products. People may squawk about prices if and when they start building things here but the world may want those products if they are much better quality and last. I for one, am oping for a tough washing machine, or anything, made without mother boards.

Appliances especially have been taken in by the Green Movement. One DIL bought a house with an old dishwasher and was amazed at how much cleaner the dishes came out and how much quicker it was done. It was an old machine that was designed to be repaired and was not afraid to use a little more water than the new one she had left in her previous house. Eventually, the old machine dies and parts were no longer made, so she had to go to a newer, "more efficient" model. Same goes for washing machines. In the old days, a front-loading machine beat the top-loaders hands down as far as cleaning clothes went, but they just had dials, as did the top-loaders. Now most of the front-loaders have mother boards and take 1 1/2 hours to run a load which doesn't come out as clean as either one of the old machines. I think and old wringer washer probably cleaned the best, but were much more work for the user and much harder on the clothes it washed. The wringer washers used less water overall than even the "efficient" new models though, as I remember everybody reusing the water and detergent/soap by pumping it into a laundry sink and back into the machine, and washing the cleanest clothes first and progressing down the dirt profile to the dirtiest farm and grease mechanic's clothes last.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

The latest news online is that President Trump is planning on helping the economy with some of the tariff money. He is saying that what he hopes to do is to give low income and middle income American citizens a $2000 dividend from some of the tariff money, and the rest will be used to help pay down our national debt.
Rather than use the money to bail out corporations and banks, which is what other presidents have chosen to do, President Trump wants to give the money directly to the American people. Since it could happen during the holiday season, most of that money will be poured right back into our economy, as well as helping out people who have been struggling with all of the Biden inflation for the last few years.

 

[Mary Stetler]

The latest news online is that President Trump is planning on helping the economy with some of the tariff money. He is saying that what he hopes to do is to give low income and middle income American citizens a $2000 dividend from some of the tariff money, and the rest will be used to help pay down our national debt.
Rather than use the money to bail out corporations and banks, which is what other presidents have chosen to do, President Trump wants to give the money directly to the American people. Since it could happen during the holiday season, most of that money will be poured right back into our economy, as well as helping out people who have been struggling with all of the Biden inflation for the last few years.

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I hope he explains it well as almost a gift to the citizens of the US from what he has accomplished. I, however, would rather all of it all went to pay down our debt. I thought he also said he was going to use it to pay the military during the shut down.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

I hope he explains it well as almost a gift to the citizens of the US from what he has accomplished. I, however, would rather all of it all went to pay down our debt. I thought he also said he was going to use it to pay the military during the shut down.

He is calling it a “dividend”, which is like companies pay out to people, usually once a year, but sometimes, more often. So, it is possible that this is something that he would do more than once, unlike the stimulus checks, which were mostly just a temporary thing to help people get back on their feet after the covid thing happened to us.
President Trump was the only one who really gave much for those checks, too.

Now that the government is going to open back up, paying all those back wages and salaries will happen from out of the budget, and the government workers all know that this is how it works when the government gets shut down. It just usually is not for as long as happened this time, thanks to the holdout Senators.
It sounds like there will be plenty more coming in to pay down our national debt, but helping the economy right around the Christmas holidays will do a lot of good for all of the US.

 

[Don Alaska]

I hope he explains it well as almost a gift to the citizens of the US from what he has accomplished. I, however, would rather all of it all went to pay down our debt. I thought he also said he was going to use it to pay the military during the shut down.

I think the Democrats sued him to stop using the tariff money to pay the military, but I am not sure. I know the Dems were considering that action. They may have been right, as it strictly isn't legal for the President to use money that has not be allocated by Congress, the same reason he couldn't pay SNAP benefits during the shutdown, but it made the Dems look bad among those who were aware of what they were doing.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Expecting a package mailed from Canada on November 14th. It spent 2 weeks sitting in Customs in Chicago. USPS tracking claims it left there 7 days ago but never got to another destination yet. I know it's near Christmas, but generally packages from Canada arrived almost as fast as if mailed in the US. Could be tariffs or layoffs of personnel in Customs?

 

[Don Alaska]

Expecting a package mailed from Canada on November 14th. It spent 2 weeks sitting in Customs in Chicago. USPS tracking claims it left there 7 days ago but never got to another destination yet. I know it's near Christmas, but generally packages from Canada arrived almost as fast as if mailed in the US. Could be tariffs or layoffs of personnel in Customs?

No idea for sure, but it could be the "New Efficiency Standards" in both the USPS and Canada Post. I read tales of all kinds of stuff going on with the mail in both countries. I read the story of several packages going from the center of the U.S. to San Francisco and then to Hawaii back and forth several times. I think the original origin was Denver and the destination was somewhere in northern California. There was also a story of a package being mailed from D.C. to a Philadelphia suburb that got to Phila. then went to Boston twice before it went the the suburban destination. I think that is some of the new AI stuff in the post office to reduce personnel and make things more efficient. I have read of similar things in Canada, but I can't recall the details.

 

[Mary Stetler]

I have had a few weird routings of packages this year when I went to tracking. I complained to Iherb once and they sent me to the shipping company to find out what happened to one package. They claimed package had been delivered. I said it had not. They sent me a picture of the package on my porch only it wasn't my porch. But I did recognize the porch and the people were away on vacation or they would have brought it over to me. So I went to fetch the package in the neighborhood. Maybe a lot of disgruntled delivery people around?

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

Even Powell at the Fed now admits there has been no "tariff inflation" and he had been quite a critic. Economists have been saying this for many months,

 

[Don Alaska]

Even Powell at the Fed now admits there has been no "tariff inflation" and he had been quite a critic. Economists have been saying this for many months,

The tariffs overall haven't really contributed to inflation, but some individuals and small companies may be affected. I just asked the question. Probably the ones most affected are the ones who were getting things directly from China and bypassing the customs regulations previously.

 

[Nancy Hart]

Expecting a package mailed from Canada on November 14th. It spent 2 weeks sitting in Customs in Chicago. USPS tracking claims it left there 7 days ago but never got to another destination yet. I know it's near Christmas, but generally packages from Canada arrived almost as fast as if mailed in the US. Could be tariffs or layoffs of personnel in Customs?

I found the explanation:

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July 2025: An executive order was issued to end the de minimis exemption (packages valued at less than $800) for all countries, effective August 29, impacting cheap shipments from Canada and elsewhere.

Impact on Packages: This forced U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to process every package, leading to massive pile-ups, like a million-package backlog at JFK.

Shipper Response: Global shippers, including those handling Canadian mail, temporarily paused deliveries to the U.S. due to the uncertainty and potential for massive delays.

Canada Post & Duties: Canada Post used third-party programs to collect duties, but the increased scrutiny and potential tariffs (around 35% for many goods) created significant slowdowns.

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