Best Buy and Target CEOs say prices are about to go up because of tariffs
258 comments
·March 5, 2025captainkrtek
throwaway48476
Volatility is profit for insiders.
neilv
Is the market actually disciplining?
Or are Wall Street actors gaming the volatility for further profit?
Or both?
esalman
Strongly believe it's the second.
Just learned from Twitter tariffs will be rolled back in a day or two.
idkfasayer
[dead]
MrMcCall
"It used to be simple: vote for the guy you liked the most. Then it became vote against the guy you disliked the most. Now it's vote for who you dislike the least." --A Whitney Brown
I remember seeing that on SNL in the 80s; it has always stuck with me.
leptons
> Now it's vote for who you dislike the least.
For 1/3 of eligible voters, it's "I don't care about voting".
ToucanLoucan
For a substantial portion of those third:
1) They can't vote, either because of local politicians meddling in their election process/with their polling places, being convicted of bullshit non-crimes, or simply being unable to get to a polling place. Shock of shocks, majority of political fuckery involved in taking away people's right to vote is brought about by conservatives. Even more shocking, the groups that tend to be disenfranchised trend progressive in their voting habits, wow, such a weird coincidence.
2) They have no desire to vote, because as much as I understand voting for the lesser of two evils (and doing it with regularity) that just isn't motivating, and neither is choosing which party you want to join that's going to leave you for dead the second the election is over. To be clear: this is not "both sides are bad." Both sides are bad, but one is just useless bad, and the other is actively tearing down the state to sow chaos that it can use to consolidate power and bring about a theocracy. And while both of those are bad, they are not even remotely comparable.
wnmurphy
I heard he used to be _The_ Whitney Brown.
bamboozled
It was a nice 4 years...
bamboozled
It was a nice 4 years
galimalint
[flagged]
esalman
4 out of those 5 headlines you listed are basically empty promises. Otherwise known as clickbait.
johnnyanmac
The 5th one is just outright misinformation. The title:
>DOGE says it's saved $105 billion, though it's backtracked on some of its earlier claims
toast0
> Illegal crossings at U.S.-Mexico border down 94% from last year, Border Patrol chief says
Economic migrants stop appearing when the future of the economy starts looking bleak. You can also make housing affordable by encouraging murders on the street.
scarface_74
TSMC announced investments in the US in 2020 and 2022.
It later came out that the DOGE numbers are innacurate. Even if they were accurate, the US budget is 7 Trillion. The tax cuts that Trump is proposing is much more than all of the cuts.
galimalint
the $100 billion investment in 2025 is new. the first investment in 2020 is also from trump first term.
doge has only been at work for 45 days, give it time. it's starting to look into military and medicare already.
zeroonetwothree
What year was that? 1999?
jameslk
This could be an interesting topic, but inevitably these posts devolve into politics and it’s always about the same thing. Yet this is the type of comment at the top. Why bother leaving a comment like this?
kadoban
You appear to be asking people to keep politics out of politics. What am I missing?
pfannkuchen
More like asking people to focus on the economic considerations because the political discussion is boring and repetitive, I think.
jameslk
Straw man
Ar-Curunir
You realize that the only reason this is a topic of discussion is because of politics, right?
jameslk
No? I see comments here discussing things other than politics
MichaelZuo
There rarely seem to be any substantive discussion in these types of threads, beyond vibes or repeating tautologies and talking points.
Over the past few months I doubt there have even been 10 discussions total with some non-circular, credible, arguments along with some coherent logic backing them…
Sabinus
Any bets on how this will be justified by Trump voters?
I'm thinking at first it'll be 'playing hardball negotiating tactic' and when it looks like the tariffs are here to stay 'paying more is patriotic'.
throwaway657656
"These are external taxes paid by the exporting countries. Beautiful tariffs will allow the US to eliminate the IRS and replace it with an ERS".
Basically no point in even having a conversation about it. The same way you don't discuss evolution with someone who thinks the universe is 6000 years old.
tombert
This is so frustrating, because of course manufacturing countries aren't going to operate at a loss, so whatever price increase that happens will be paid for by the consumer eventually.
And if they eliminated the IRS because the ERS covers all our expenses, that would effectively mean that we have shifted all of our income tax revenue away from relatively wealthy high-earners to the poor (who currently pay little to no income tax), since the poor have to buy items at the price they're listed.
throwaway48476
Who pays the tariff depends on the relative elasticity of supply and demand.
crazygringo
It is extremely rare for manufacturers to absorb the tariffs.
Profit margins in most industries simply aren't high enough to cover it. A business can't absorb 20-25% tariffs if its profit margin is only 5%.
And manufacturing is particularly known for its low profit margins.
So no. I mean, in theory you are technically correct. But the way elasticity works in practice is that the buyer is who pays the tariffs in virtually all circumstances.
mitthrowaway2
Is your reasoning that the supplier has the option of eating the tariff by cutting prices, such that the price paid by the purchaser remains the same?
If they had that much margin headroom available to cut prices by 20% and remain profitable, wouldn't that basically prove that they weren't dumping product in the first place?
insonable
sure, and a good baseline assumption for most consumer goods is that price elasticity of demand is pretty low in the short term, so consumers pay most of the tariff. then in the long run perhaps things change and more non-tariffed substitutes become available resulting in maybe a 50/50 split of "who pays" (after all, the substitutes didn't have comparative advantage before, so are probably a bit more costly to produce). in any case, total quantity sold will be less, consumers benefit less, and suppliers benefit less... but the government does get revenue.
baby_souffle
Can you give a few examples of this?
throwaway48476
Its very very stupid. Tariffs can work but not like this. A good tariff policy would be targeted at a strategic industry, have a long phase in period, and have a guarantee that it won't be removed quickly. Businesses don't like risk, especially if you want them to commit to building a new factory in the US with a decade long payback period.
johnnyanmac
well, going to r/conservative, top answer in a tarriff thread:
>To influence companies to produce their goods domestically instead of internationally. What is so hard to understand about this?
So they are stuck in Just World Land.
another top comment linked this: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-pr...
So they more or less buy into "The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl"
P.S. more than happy to take suggestions of a better forum representing conservative opinion
tmpz22
r/conservative is a bad litmus test. Between AI-driven bots (read comment histories!), flair-only posts, and chronically online users it's a terrible reflection of the average American who identifies as conservative.
We need to stop reaching for the easiest data source just because we're desperate for a data source. There's a reason great research is hard - mostly because it requires stupendous effort (and funding!) to get reliable results.
johnnyanmac
>We need to stop reaching for the easiest data source just because we're desperate for a data source.
I agree. Pretty much all internet sources are inherently biased due to response bias, so there's no fixing that without talking to such people face to face (which is a bit hard in my area).
But if you aggregate enough data you can at least start to see some sort of prevailing trends and sentiments. So I am open to better sources and some biased/compromised forums are still better that choosing to be trapped in an echo chamber. I have browsed around on other comments sections from news sources and the results unfortunately make Reddit look like a think-tank.
JeremyNT
> r/conservative is a bad litmus test. Between AI-driven bots (read comment histories!), flair-only posts, and chronically online users it's a terrible reflection of the average American who identifies as conservative
Sure, the average American who identifies as conservative just shows up every 4 years and hits the R without giving it much though. Thinking about them doesn't really give us much either.
I think /r/conservative tells us a lot, even if it's not representative of the constituency. The President is driven by memes and is extremely online. The "vibes" in /r/conservative (and on X, The Everything App) are extremely relevant, because these are the audiences Trump plays to.
bluGill
What ever happened to the free market consevatives? The ones who were proud to work with Clinton to pass NAFTA in the first place.
klipt
Heck Trump himself negotiated USMCA his last term and is now apparently reneging on his own agreement?
"A Trump never keeps his word"
"A Trump never pays his debts"
I don't know if it's dementia or if Putin has compromising info on him, but he seems intent on speed running the tearing apart of the west.
guyfromfargo
[dead]
balls187
They got tired of nonsensical progressive social policies and threw in their hat with a politician that wins, a lot.
Pre-Trump the 2nd, it seemed to me that conservative view-points were being “shouted down.”
Anecdotally I recall even on HN conservative views weren’t looked too kindly.
Remember that Google engineer who had an odd-take about less qualified Googlers, and getting ostracized for it?
llamaimperative
Nothing says “I need to relocate my supply chain” like 24 hours of tariffs
roshin
I didn't formally verify it, but during the Russian internet blackout, r/conservative was very quiet. I assume that the responses you read on that forum are not from actual US conservatives. After reddit purged most conservative subs (in 2 waves, when Trump 1 began and when Trump 1 ended), I don't think you'll find any conservative subreddits.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a forum that's accessible and with lots of conservatives. You have some on X and you have YouTube channels. Both are harder to engage with.
jeltz
Reddit purged them due to infections by what you complain about for /r/conservative.
SSchick
Plenty of videos around, default rethoric is to 'give them time, they said it would hurt at first' which sounds awfully close what people in abusive relationships would say now that I think about it.
MrMcCall
Or just very stupid, hateful losers.
cmrdporcupine
There's already talk about the tariffs being curtailed tomorrow. Which got the stock market all hopeful at end of day.
Which I'm sure if this happens, will be accompanied by some bullshit claims of some concessions he supposedly obtained.
And a lot of people in-the-know who made easy coin on the stock market today.
And his followers will eat it up. Last month there was all sorts of blather on social media about how "Trudeau caved" because "Trump strong" etc. despite Canada simply re-iterating the same position it had had since December.
slavik81
It's hard to overstate how pissed off Canadians are about Trump's threats to annex Canada through economic bullying. People I know who have never boycotted anything are now boycotting US goods and services. There will be long-term consequences even if it's walked back tomorrow.
klipt
100 years of friendship thrown away by a demented Russian asset president.
throwaway48476
Its a brand equity bonfire.
cmrdporcupine
Yeah I am generally not a nationalist by conviction or intellect but this stuff has me tearing up to the national anthem and putting stuff back on the shelf at the grocery store.
plagiarist
Classic Elon Musk securities fraud to publicly declare things, whether true or false, which move the market.
throwaway48476
[flagged]
jmyeet
Oh, we've already seen it. I believe Fox News has already come out and said it's "patriotic" to pay higher egg prices.
We live in a post-fact world. There are no principles in play. The key organizing principle of this society is cruelty. Truth is simply what powerful people say it is.
And there's no opposition to any of it. Our supposed political opposition is way more interested in crushing progressive sentiment and voices within their party. They are completely complicit in what's now going on.
TheOtherHobbes
Fox - remarkably - were explaining that it would in fact make most things much, much more expensive.
I think support is ambivalent, at best.
A few people are going to short hard and make out like bandits. But all-party social unrest on a huge scale is going to kick off long before they can fulfil their dream of buying up the entire country for pennies.
Cooler heads understand this.
tayo42
R/conservative on reddit has some real time spin on everything
My irl interactions make it seem like they're not even aware of what's been happening
MrMcCall
[flagged]
inverted_flag
Not sure about the higher prices, but the coming recession is being talked about in MAGA circles as a correction and a fault of the Fed.
aussieguy1234
What's the impact here on inflation, by extension interest rates and funding available to startups?
msy
Near term inflation but more broadly increasing paralysis of business investment of all stripes in the fact of a wildly unpredictable political landscape.
rogerrogerr
The general path of the country is fairly clear at this point - business that manufacture closer to consumers will have fewer issues with the government. Even Biden kept a bunch of Trump1 anti-China policies in place.
If I was directing investment at a large business, onshoring manufacturing would be a no brainer in many businesses. Mexico might be the happy medium, but I’d really push for US manufacturing facilities with high automation levels to hedge against labor cost.
throwaway48476
Most of the post 2016 China exit investment was to other cheaper southeast Asia countries. My phone was made in Vietnam.
verdverm
If it is half the cost to produce it over seas, 25% more is still much less than on shoring. On shoring is more than just the CoG, it requires capital investment which may no longer be needed in a year or four. It's not a simple or no brainer decision for most of the tariff targets with them being so broad
tmpz22
Massive wealth redistribution to the ultra-wealthy over the next 4 years. The ultra wealthy will need to find new places to invest their capital, so some form of startup funding will remain available even as research funding dries up.
Creating startups will be easier as more Americans will be looking for work, leading to depressed salaries.
trhway
other thing which may happen is that businesses would start to behave like the ones in say Russia and the likes - utilizing long opaque subsidiaries and shell corp chains, some being just a paperwork, to "manage" the tariffs . The double Dutch would look like a child play. Once such [quasi]corruption starts it would be pretty hard to wean companies off it if/when things get back normal.
mlinhares
Nah, you just pay the powers that be to exclude you from the tariffs, Apple has been excluded from the current ones. So only those that are not friends with the kleptocracy are really at risk.
As for the rest of the population, it's the usual FAFO, not much to do.
tombert
Who would have thought that increasing the price of goods will lead to higher prices?
I'm not necessarily against tariffs, but I think it's idiotic to think that raising the price is going to somehow lower grocery prices.
Aloha
I'm pro tariff - but 25% tariffs are absurd, at most you need 10%-12% in narrowly targeted categories to ensure re-onshoring of production.
emodendroket
They're clearly thinking much bigger, like returning to a model where tariffs are the primary mode of funding the government, and nuking whole sectors/devaluing the dollar to make US exports more competitive with a desperate potential workforce. Not a particularly compelling plan in my view but it has its own internal logic.
Aloha
The issue with trying to do this is tariffs are both extremely regressive and wont generate enough revenue to move the needle.
It'd be one thing if we were combining tariffs with a UBI - that can balance out most of the regressive effects of it, but we're not doing that.
chii
why would tariffs make US exports more competitive? It would make other countries under tariff to retaliate, which makes US exports less valuable.
Unless, of course, the US has some sort of monopoly on an export that others have no choice but to take. I dont think the US has such a resource.
Marsymars
I’m curious - I wouldn’t describe myself as “pro tariff” at all, but I can see a good case for them in a couple circumstances; 1) in cases where production is important for national security - e.g. sufficient production of Calories and 2) in cases where off-shored production isn’t meeting standards around human rights, environmental protection, etc.
Do you see a case for tariffs otherwise?
Aloha
Cost adjustment tariffs is my argument -
You use tariffs to equalize actual costs plus a little (environmental/climate rules, labor costs, regulatory environment, human rights, etc) between the US and a foreign country. It doesn't have to be a huge amount of increase either, 5-12% - and probably wouldn't apply to most developed countries, because it is based on that matrix of total cost of doing business.
As far as rationale here - I personally want to onshore as much production as I can - but you can't start with finished goods necessarily, you often have to start with the base supportive industries needed - but even I acknowledge that may not be practical for everything.
But, to do what I want to do is a decades long process and must be done strategically and carefully - blanket tariffs dont do that, and are just a blowtorch to the delicate interconnections of a modern economy. Like targeting agricultural goods is absurd, for example - and will just raise prices for no tangible good.
aninteger
I guess it's time to print out those "I did this!" stickers of Trump and put them next to the price tags.
defrost
There's always John Walker's OG
The One, The Original, The Prophetic (July 1990), The Authentic “Evil Empires: One down, one to go…” bumper sticker, anticipating the obsolescence of railroad era continental-scale empires in the information age.
Too soon?
zoklet-enjoyer
Haha yep, I designed one when he announced the tariffs the first time but never got around to printing them.
tombert
Would you mind sharing the design?
JKCalhoun
You can just purchase them: https://www.amazon.com/200pcs-Tariff-Stickers-Merchandise-An...
quelup
Honest question - can you not get these products from other stores or do all of them source products from Mexico and China? If so, it does seem like DOGE and other price saving initiatives will be closer to a net 0.
acdha
The supply chain has been global for decades, especially with the countries he targeted. It’s really messy with the North American free trade area since parts are shipped around a lot as they get made and assembled and all of those supply chains break in odd ways if there are customs delays. People are predicting that will add something like $3-10k to the price of a new car:
https://apnews.com/article/tariffs-cars-automakers-trump-can...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/04/business/econ...
In many cases, the U.S. no longer has manufacturing capacity in certain markets so the most likely outcome is simply that prices go up or manufacturing shifts to other countries like Vietnam, especially in an uncertain economic climate where companies aren’t jumping to take on debt chasing demand which could disappear at any time.
One other area where we don’t have alternatives: Mexican agriculture - their growing season is longer and that means American consumers either aren’t getting things out of season or are paying more for things like greenhouse crops.
verdverm
Or could be net negative if there are a bunch of wrongly termination suits and settlements, or it actually costs the govt more because they now have to outsource work to private companies be wise they fired too many people who were in fact doing useful work
You cannot go into a large org and understand what is and is not working in a few weeks. DOGE has been sloppy and largely more political theater this far
scarface_74
The entire supply chain is global.
declan_roberts
I don't know if tariffs are the right answer but I want so much less Chinese junk in this country. We are absolutely overflowing with low quality junk.
warkdarrior
Given the current MBA approaches to business, I doubt that bringing all manufacturing back to US would improve the quality of products.
s3p
Consumers in the US constantly complain of inflation and things becoming unaffordable, so much that it's become both a GOP and dem talking point. They definitely want to encourage US-made goods, but that would mean prices go up. and realistically consumers buy the cheap stuff from china en masse, knowing it's low quality, just because they want to save money. Or at least that's my 0.02 on the situation. I don't know how we solve it either.
antifa
Customers also want to buy once while companies want to replace products that have good reviews with lower quality revisions.
scarface_74
You mean like every piece of electronics that is manufactured in China?
johnnyanmac
Best of luck. Companies want lower costs to make stuff, customers want lower costs. We did indeed fall from being a superpower when we outsourced all out labor overseas.
lawn
Soon you'll be overflowing with expensive low quality junk instead.
Entuaka
A solution to that would be the exclusion of China from Universal Postal Union as a developing country.
beefnugs
I wish humans were better at coordination, or instead of "social media" people got addicted to social bargaining: because this would be the perfect time for a united consumer front, demanding that that big companies take more of a hit from their profit margin than from employee wages or raised prices. Threatening to starve out a company if it doesn't implement these tariff increases in a more reasonable way than the entirety of capitalism history would be the only way to turn around the avalanche it has been
slavik81
If the citizens of the United States were capable of coordinating to threaten anyone, it should be their government into recinding these new taxes.
rsynnott
> Threatening to starve out a company if it doesn't implement these tariff increases in a more reasonable way than the entirety of capitalism history would be the only way to turn around the avalanche it has been
I mean, depends on the industry, but for instance take Target. Its profit margin is 3-4%, and that was in 2024, which was, really, pretty good times, all things considered. It doesn't have much room to absorb source price increases. Few industries dependent on imports do.
anthuswilliams
I'm no fan of tariffs, but oh please. Last time their prices went up because of COVID and because of supply chain disruptions. Now they are going up because of tariffs. All of their earnings calls are filled with analyses of their "pricing power" i.e. the degree to which they can pass on these costs to customers. But when the costs decline, they are happy to keep the prices inflated and pocket the profits.
benced
Costly events occurred… so costs went up. Best Buy’s profit margin hovers around 3% and Target’s around 4%, they’re not raking in money.
rsanek
low net profits margins are simply how retail works, it's not news that retail requires scale. and in fact both target and best buy did see record profits shortly after the pandemic started.
johnnyanmac
Yeah, that's the trap many people don't realize. price almost never come down after inflation.
If you want that, you need deflation. And I'm not sure at this point if that's a better move than what's going on now.
Workaccount2
Consumer spending was shattering records during the pandemic.
If consumer spending was dropping as prices were going up, then sure, greed. But prices were rising and consumers were relentless. Which is totally logical. Even more logical when the "spending class" was getting massive raises/offers and rock bottom credit.
null
darig
[dead]
Sure miss the days where there wasn’t headline generating chaos from the White House resulting in market volatility. Make Government Boring Again.