Trump's Tariffs Hit Groceries; GOP Spending Bill; College Basketball and Hockey
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President Trump's tariffs are here, and that means higher prices for many things Americans buy every single day.
We'll tell you what to expect at the store checkout. I'm Scott Simon.
I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News.
Bacon is through the roof. They're all through the roof. The milk, everything is bad. And we're going to straighten it out. We're going to bring prices way down and we'll get it done fast.
That was then-candidate Donald Trump on the campaign trail. We'll look at how his new tariffs are going to affect grocery prices.
We'll also take a look at a Republican spending bill intended to help enact President Trump's domestic policies.
Also, a big hockey record tied and college basketball.
So stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend.
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Lowering grocery prices was one of President Trump's repeated campaign promises.
But shortly after he was elected, the president did admit it would be hard to bring prices down once they have gone up.
Well, hold on to your wallet, Scott, because according to economic experts, the tariffs President Trump just imposed on dozens of our trading partners will make prices on many things go up even higher.
NPR's Scott Newman is looking at which items in our grocery cart might get hit first. Scott, thanks for being with us. Good to be here. What food could see the biggest price increases? Seafood. The U.S. imports around 80% of the seafood we consume. That's fish, but also other things like shrimp and scallops. We get a lot of it from Asian countries that have high tariff rates, India with a 26% rate and Indonesia with a 32% rate. So if these countries pass along to consumers even a portion of their higher costs, the price of seafood could skyrocket. And what else might be affected? Well, I spoke with food industry analyst Phil Lempert. He also edits a site called supermarketguru.com.
I would estimate that probably almost half of the products in a supermarket have some issue that these tariffs are going to affect.
So another item on my list is coffee. Something like 80% of the coffee consumed in the U.S. each year comes mostly from Brazil and Colombia. They only have 10% tariffs, but as most of us know, coffee prices are already high, and this might force us to rethink our morning routines. Then there's alcohol. The U.S. gets a lot of its imported beer from Mexico, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Canada, and a lot of its wine from European Union countries that will now have a 20% tariff. And I guess it looks like a lot of Asian countries will face higher tariffs also. Right. We already mentioned seafood, but another major export from Asia is rice. About a third of the rice the U.S. consumes comes from there. Jasmine rice from Thailand, which will have a 36 percent tariff, and basmati from India, which faces a 26 percent tax. Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor, says some minority communities that rely on imported food are probably going to be affected.
And I expect Asian-Americans particularly, but all of us are going to face a big hit.
Scott, do you have an idea of how much prices are going to rise because of the tariffs? It's too early to say. There are just too many factors at play. For example, you wouldn't immediately think that steel and aluminum tariffs on China would have any impact on groceries. But for canned goods like soup and vegetables, those cans are mostly made out of steel. And of course, beer cans are mostly aluminum. Then there's palm oil. Indonesia, a leading supplier, will have a 32% tariff.
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