Shoppers who enjoyed a brief pause in price hikes may want to brace themselves. After several months of relative calm—and holiday discounts—companies are again bumping up prices on everything from jeans to spices to software, the Wall Street Journal reports. The increases, often in the high-single-digit range, appear steeper than a typical January reset in prices, particularly for electronics, appliances, and other durable goods, economists say.
Levi Strauss, Columbia Sportswear, McCormick, and a host of smaller firms report they’re paying more for tariffs, wages, health insurance, materials, and shipping—and passing at least some of that along. Online data tracked by Harvard’s Alberto Cavallo and Adobe show the largest monthly jump in web prices in more than a decade, led by big-ticket categories.
Small businesses, facing thinner margins, are raising prices across the board or cutting products they don’t think customers will pay more for. A recent Vistage survey found more than half of small-business leaders plan near-term price increases, mostly in the 4% to 10% range, even as they worry higher tags could scare off buyers. Last week, economists at JPMorgan predicted that “inflation will re-accelerate for a time this year,” citing tariff-related costs being passed on to consumers and the “potential pass-through of the sustained weakening of the trade-weighted US dollar over the past year,” reports Reuters.
The president of Structural Systems Repair Group, a Cincinnati-based construction company, tells the Journal that tariffs pushed up steel prices 10% last year and healthcare costs for employees increased by around the same amount. “It’s not sustainable for us to tolerate that kind of increase without some sort of concession from our customers,” Bryan Erickson says.
