Consumer Cost on Tariffed Washing Machines Up Double Digits
New York, NY, August 24, 2017-Washing machines were one of the first categories tariffed in January, under President Trump’s direction, and the category has seen a 17% rise in consumer cost in the months since the tariffs were imposed, reports The Wall Street Journal.
“While tariffs are formally paid by whomever imports the goods, the importers can pass their costs along to consumers,” the publications reports. “In the case of washing machines, that happened quickly: The index for laundry equipment in the Labor Department’s consumer-price Index, the nation’s main gauge of inflation, shot up by about 17% over the past three months.”
It continues, “That is by far the biggest three-month gain in laundry equipment in data going back 12 years. But it comes at the end of a period in which prices had mostly declined for years. Those price declines, driven by foreign-made products, had placed domestic appliance producers under pressure to begin with.”
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