Yes. But the tariffs are on the import price, not the shelf price.
The shelf price went up as if it were on the shelf price, because consumers won't realize/understand the distinction. (Hell, a good proportion of the population still thinks someone else eats the costs entirely.) We saw the same thing during COVID - "it's because of COVID / supply chain issues" was the magic wand you could wave around to raise prices. Some of those increases were warranted, for sure. But all? Almost certainly not.
But what do you mean by “warranted”? Businesses are free to set their prices as they see fit (with some caveats), and you generally expect them to do so in a way that maximizes profits.
The prices before these tariffs were arrived at by some confluence of factors such as cost and competition, it wasn’t some universally agreed “fair pricing” scheme that determined them. So what does it mean for a price to be warranted?
Now businesses have to raise prices because of the aforementioned tariffs, and, you speculate, they will add some extra margin because they think the customer is primed to accept higher prices right now than they’d normally be.
First of all, is that the end of the world? If this is only made possible because the wool has been pulled over the customer’s eyes, then at some point there will be a correction in the other direction - unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such). This particular mechanism on its own won’t cause prices to spiral out of control or anything.
Secondly, even if you think it is bad and don’t want it to happen, how would you prevent it? I can’t come up with a single feasible approach that isn’t basically halfway to socialism (which is fine if that’s your preference, but then that’s a larger conversation).
In this case, I believe many companies raised pricing more than they needed to, because people misattributed the source of those increases. If, say, ice cream doubled in price in normal times, people would cry foul. COVID gave an ironclad excuse.
> unless you’re saying that there is actual and widespread price-fixing (which is illegal and enforced as such)
I see very little evidence of this. We're great at innovating new ways to price fix without attracting (or successfully fighting off) regulatory attention.
Like outsourcing the price decisions to a third party…
Import price + margin (and that covers a lot of ground) = shelf price.
So the one is necessarily influence by the other. I'm not sure where the breakdown in your understanding is. Trying to make a distinction doesn't really make sense. Somebody IN THE UNITED STATES is taking the brunt of this. More often than not, it will be the end-consumer.
"We saw the same thing during COVID" hints that you might understand the larger picture. You're on the right track: This comes down to supply chain costs.
Yes. But the tariffs are on the import price, not the shelf price.
The shelf price went up as if it were on the shelf price, because consumers won't realize/understand the distinction. (Hell, a good proportion of the population still thinks someone else eats the costs entirely.) We saw the same thing during COVID - "it's because of COVID / supply chain issues" was the magic wand you could wave around to raise prices. Some of those increases were warranted, for sure. But all? Almost certainly not.