They told us tariffs were harmless. That buying American would be enough. And when the April inflation number came in low, they pointed to it like a trophy. See? No problem here.
But something is off. Prices are creeping—not in a way that makes headlines, but in the slow bleed you see at the register. A loaf of bread. A box of diapers. The monthly restock of lightbulbs and printer ink. Inflation isn’t shouting anymore. It’s whispering, every time you open your wallet.
“You don’t see it in headlines. You feel it in receipts.”
Behind the scenes, the shift has already started. Economists Alberto Cavallo, Edgardo Llamas, and Guillermo Vazquez tracked more than 330,000 products from major retailers. The moment tariffs expanded in March, prices jumped: 1.2% for imports. Then 0.6% for domestic goods. April hit harder. By May, the numbers doubled. Tariffs went up, and so did everything else.
And still, most of this hasn’t shown up in official inflation data. Not yet. Stores don’t hike prices all at once—they stagger it. They shield key items. They wait. But while the charts catch up, shoppers already feel the squeeze.
Target’s CEO, Brian Cornell, didn’t dance around it:
“Target … would increase prices over the next couple of days on some seasonal grocery products such as avocados from Mexico.”
And it didn’t stop at imports. American-made goods—the ones we were supposed to be protecting—rose too. Because U.S. manufacturing doesn’t happen in a bubble. It runs on global inputs: foreign machinery, packaging, component parts. When those get hit, the whole chain tightens.
“That’s because U.S. producers rely on global supply chains.”