Days of our Tariffs
Planet Money uses producer James Sneed's surprise tariff bill on a collectible Arthur toy to illustrate how modern tariffs hit individual consumers, including unexpected brokerage fees and customs processes. Trade lawyer Lenny Feldman explains how changes to the de minimis exemption and importer-of-record rules push more tariff and processing costs onto buyers, while economist Alberto Cavallo shows, using large-scale price data, that recent tariffs have raised imported-goods prices by about 6%, domestic-goods prices by about 3.5%, and overall inflation by roughly 0.7 percentage points. The episode concludes that U.S. consumers are clearly paying for tariffs, often in ways that are not visible at the time of purchase.