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Has anyone here been affected by tariffs?

Don Alaska

Don Alaska

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 10, 2025
Messages
479
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 here have always been high since the day we moved here. But they are about 5% to 10% higher for groceries since the regime change. I was certainly no fan of Biden, and I still believe that a sitting president either gets credit for the good things or is blamed for the bad things that were done in the previous Administration. What they do is almost always spread out over a decade. But I have to say that prices did go up after January 20th...
 
No, not here. I'm sure some prices are increasing but not on things I buy. Nothing outside of the inflation we've been seeing for quite a while.

On the other hand I've bought a couple of bigger-ticket items and found great prices. One product was dropped by $100 to $279.99 and then I waited a couple of days and there was a 50% off coupon bringing it down to $140. That also saved me on sales tax. This was in the last 10 days via Amazon from the manufacturer, not a "markup king" reseller.

The people feeling a pinch are probably those importing loads of Chinese goods, marking them up, then passing them on to another level of middleman who resells it. Very parasitic.
 
Albertsons has an interesting approach that might help prevent dishonest suppliers from running up prices.

www.aol.com

Albertsons tells suppliers to eat the cost of tariffs: ‘We are not accepting cost increases’

The second-largest supermarket chain in America is taking a tough line with its vendors, according to a leaked letter.
www.aol.com www.aol.com

I’m not too worried about food costs since it’s just me. It would be harder with a family. Pork is expected to drop enough to cause trouble for hog producers so maybe that will be a good substitute for some.

Tech prices will go up so I bought some things I was planning to replace soon anyway. Car repair will rise but that’s hard to anticipate unless you buy a new car now. I’m not doing that.

This reaction is interesting too.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1916106062609973377
 
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We have not had price increases here in Alabama, and prices on some things have actually dropped. The prices on some foods have come down, like eggs, and fuel prices have definitely dropped. When we got gas the other day, it was just a little over $2.50 a gallon, and it has been around $3 or more for the last few years. Coffee has not come down, but it didn’t go up either, and I had read before that this was a bad year for coffee crowers and it would affect coffee prices.

I think that the prices also depend on where you live and whether it is a red state or a blue one, at least to some extent. 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 ? I have not noticed prices on amazon going up either; but I did notice that I no longer see Temu adds online like I did before.

I was waiting for the new iPads to come out so the price on the old ones would drop and I could afford one of the older models. However, when they came out last month, the new ones were the exact same prices as the older models, which had been out for over a year, or even longer in some cases.
The regular iPad last came out in 2022, and the new 2025 model was on sale for the exact same price on Amazon as the 2022 model. I ended up buying one of the new ones for the same price as i would have had to pay for an older model.
Some of the Apple products are made in China, but Apple has now said they will do more manufacturing right here in the US now that President Trump is making it easier for companies to set up here.
 
Yvonne Smith said:
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 ?
Click to expand...
It changes every time I buy gas, which is typically only once a month, but how much I buy depends a lot on how many trips to Costco and Denny's that we make. (Not to mention other trips.) Typically I do the bulk shopping at Costco twice a month, with trips to Walmart for the rest about once a week, but most of the time we make the 6 mile round trip to Denny's almost every day and Walmart is on the way.

GasBuddy shows Costco on Rosedale Highway in Bakersfield, about 25 miles round trip for me, and there's another one on Panama Lane that's 5 miles farther, and both are $4.09 a gallon today. Which is up since my last fill up, which was $3.99 at the beginning of April. Since I have a quarter of a tank, that means about 14 or 15 gallons or so which will be around $55 to $60. I wish there was a Costco, Walmart and a Denny's in Edison, but there isn't. Since Bakersfield is just a few miles away, there are no bigger stores of any kind here.

Gas was at $6.50 a gallon when I bought my first tank of gas at Costco here two years ago. It went up to $7.00, but then dropped down to $5.50 before I needed gas again. It's because Los Angeles is just 100 miles away... And I thought Eureka was expensive!

In Eureka, gas comes in by tanker ships, and then gets trucked as far as 100 miles away. Oddly enough the farther away from the Eureka storage facility you are, the cheaper it gets. I never understood that. Logically, the farther you have to ship something, the higher the cost.

In 2010, we went to Lassen Volcanic National Park on vacation, and gas there was Cheaper than in Eureka. That was a first... National Parks are always more expensive.
 
I just checked Gas Buddy and Costco is $2.77 and other stations in my zip code are all $3.15.

Egg prices are interesting. Walmart has large eggs, both white and brown at $4.97. Both Safeway and King Soopers (Kroger) haven’t come down much, if any at all.

Edited to say that we have a cage free law for all eggs sold in the state that keeps our prices higher.
 
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Gas is over $4 a gallon and actually rose after Trump's election. We are entering the "diesel is less than gas" period when diesel is no longer competing with heating oil for those distillates. We don't pay much attention to egg prices since we have chickens, but reports are that those prices are dropping. Beef is rising steadily, but I don't think that has much to do with tariffs.
 
I wonder what the progress is in California with those Driving Mileage Tax experiments and proposals. Black box in each car, or some other way of assessing it?
 
I wish I never heard of that. This outfit called Reform California, which opposes that tax, is spamming people hard. So far it's like 15 emails a week.
 
Susannah said:
I wish you could too. The whole country would be better off if prices were lower for everyone. Btw, I’m in a blue state too but we haven’t been blue as long in Colorado.
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Gas only went up a nickle a gallon over last month. But since I needed over 3\4 of a tank, poof! There goes $65... :mad:
 
Axel Slingerland said:
Gas only went up a nickle a gallon over last month. But since I needed over 3\4 of a tank, poof! There goes $65... :mad:
Click to expand...
That is terrible , @Axel Slingerland ! Maybe they changed the state taxes on fuel there in California ? I was just reading that they are doing this now in Washington State, and maybe other states are doing the same thing, while the rest of us are actually seeing fuel prices drop.
I decided to ask Microsoft co-pilot AI about this and here is what the answer was .

IMG_0417.jpeg
 
Yvonne Smith said:
That is terrible , @Axel Slingerland ! Maybe they changed the state taxes on fuel there in California ? I was just reading that they are doing this now in Washington State, and maybe other states are doing the same thing, while the rest of us are actually seeing fuel prices drop.
I decided to ask Microsoft co-pilot AI about this and here is what the answer was .

View attachment 561
Click to expand...
The West Coast has fewer refineries because the folks who live there want it that way. They are generally willing to pay higher gas prices to keep the nasty refinery business out of their state(s). They also tend to have the highest taxes, and California has the most regulations on fuel. We in Alaska have the lowest gas taxes of any states when I last checked, but we still pay over $4 per gallon. We did have two operating refineries here, but one closed due to inefficiency and a release of chemicals into the ground water. That refinery was built in the 1970s and was the least efficient in the nation due to the fact it was fueled by crude oil. The other may still be operating but is very small. We used to get our oil refined in Washington state, but now a lot has been going to China for refining, then being shipped back to the U.S. That may have bene stopped by the Administration.

We need newer, more efficient refineries to be built, but environmentalism prevents that.
 
There are 11 refineries in California, which produce both the "Summer Blend" and the "Winter Blend" of gas we are required to use, and they make enough to export to Nevada and Arizona. Gas prices are high here due to 59.60¢ per gallon State Road Use Tax and Sales Tax 2.25% for Gasoline and 13% for Diesel, and 18.4¢ per gallon Federal Fuel Tax.

Because, you know they had to get the $1.5 Billion to build a 1.5 mile connection for California SR 58 and California SR 99 in Bakersfield from somewhere...

There are conflicting stories as to where California gets its oil. The locals are here say that Kern County produces 66% of California's oil and about 10% of the U.S. oil supply. But the California Energy Commission says they get it from Foreign Sources...
 
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Apple is not completely leaving China, but it is actively moving some production to other countries to avoid the new Chinese tariffs and still take advantage of low cost labor. This includes increasing manufacturing in India, where Apple is aiming to produce all iPhones sold in the US by the end of 2026. China's labor costs have increased over the years.
 
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