Expect to start seeing effects of Trump’s tariffs this summer, experts say

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods imported into the United States are poised to cause significant disruption to shopping for consumers across the country, experts say.

Axios reported, meanwhile, that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent  said during a White House briefing on April 28: “I wouldn’t think that we would have supply chain shocks. I think retailers have managed their inventory in front of this.”

Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, said the imposition of higher tariffs could actually lead to significant strain on the supply of consumer goods — particularly on goods from China, which is still facing an effective 145% tariff rate, or on some products even 245%. The White House says it calculated the rates by combining a 125% “reciprocal” tariff, a 20% tariff “to address the fentanyl crisis,” and additional product-specific tariffs. China has struck back with a 125% tariff on American goods.

But, as Trump’s tariff policies continue to change day by day, the future remains particularly difficult to predict, Miller said.

“This is just the period of most profound uncertainty since the pandemic’s initial days,” he said. “And right now, in a lot of cases,it’s everybody’s in a wait-and-see approach.”

There are already clear effects in some sectors. Online retailer Temu, for example, has begun adding “import charges” of roughly 145% to products, raising prices across the board of the goods it sells. According to a CNBC analysis, a summer dress previously sold on the site for $18.47, for example, will now cost $44.68 after the addition of a 142% import charge, while a child’s bathing suit that sold for $12.44 will now cost $18.68 with a 150% import charge.

Things are quiet for now, said Rudolf Leuschner, who teaches supply chain management at Rutgers University, because most of the products currently on store shelves arrived before the tariffs were imposed.

“In the short term, unless, let’s say, a retailer is trying to jump ahead of the curve, most of the products we buy for the next couple of months still have not had a tariff on them,” he said.

Miller said he expects consumers will start seeing tariff-related price increases by June or July, assuming Trump doesn’t reverse course on the tariffs or change them substantially.

Leuschner gave it a bit longer: He said he expects the effects of tariffs to become evident during the late summer.

Both experts noted that the volume of imports jumped in March as businesses tried to get out in front of Trump’s tariffs and attempt to mitigate shortages and delay price increases.

“In anticipation of these tariffs, they started bringing in goods a lot earlier than they would have otherwise, especially for the holiday season. So in a typical year, June, July, August, maybe September are the months when most of the holiday season goods arrive in the U.S. from overseas,” Leuschner said. “Everybody who could and had the ability to do so tried to complete that task by now, because of obvious reasons.”

“The thing I keep circling on my calendar is people doing back-to-school shopping,” Miller said. “Some of those items may already be here, though.”

After back-to-school shopping, if tariffs remains in place, Halloween and Christmas shopping will almost certainly be affected, according to Miller.

“The reality is, a lot of importers, they’re having to make decisions today how much they’re going to bring in, and so they’re one of the biggest challenges with this continually shifting tariff policy is nobody even knows what to do,” he said. “It just makes it impossible to plan right now, because we literally don’t know what things are going to be from one day to the other.”

The other uncertainty is how consumers will react to higher prices that result from higher tariffs — there’s simply no precedent in the modern American economy for the tariff rates Trump has set for predicting the economic effects they will bring, Miller said. This, he said, will likely change the calculus for what products companies choose to import.

“Since nobody really knows how consumers are going to respond to higher price points, you’re going to be very cautious in importing,” he said.

Miller speculated that small household appliances, which are largely imported from China, could be one of the first product categories to see price jumps and lower inventory due to tariffs.

“I think the bigger effect we’re going to see at first is not so much all-out shortages, but it’s going to be far less product varieties,” he said. “And so it may not be you can’t get an electric toaster, but you are only getting this specific toaster.”

Miller also pointed out that toys could be another sector heavily impacted by tariffs — something Trump referenced when speaking to reporters on April 30.

“Somebody said, ‘oh, the shelves are gonna be open,'” Trump said, according to Axios. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”

But no one really knows exactly what will happen, Miller said.

“We are in a period where we don’t have any precedent for what a 145% tariff does, or effectively a 10% global tariff on everything else other than 25 here on certain categories. We don’t have a basis for what to work off of.”

Leuschner said he suspects that geography will play a role in which areas are hit first and hit hardest by any product shortages that occur.

“The closer you are to a major port, so near the coast, it is easier to distribute into those geographies. If you’re more middle of the country, based more rural, I think shortages are more likely there,” he said. “But it is very unpredictable at this point.”

Leuschner’s advice to consumers: “If it’s something that’s really essential to you, that you’re planning to purchase over the coming months, or later this year, maybe consider doing it now, just to be sure, because you know what you have now; you don’t know what what will happen.”

Trump has shown no indication that he will back down. He told reporters on April 25 that he doesn’t expect to extend the 90-day pause on higher tariffs for most countries that he instituted on April 9, — which left a temporary 10% tariff rate on goods from all countries other than China. If the pause ends, tariffs will go back up for the rest of the world, based on the tariff formula that, despite Trump’s claims that the rates were set in response to other countries’ tariffs, is actually based on trade deficits.

On the other hand, the president signed an executive order on April 29 rolling back tariffs that had been applied to some auto parts, so it remains far from clear what the tariff environment will look like in the coming months.