05/01/25 Afternoon CommStock Report – What will Consumers Think?

What will US consumers think when store shelves empty and retail prices for many goods increase? China appears willing to wait to find out. That is why president Trump has been so antsy to get trade talks started and the Chinese are not. Amazon said that they were considering posting the amount that tariffs added to product prices on their platform which sent president Trump off the deep end blasting the proposed company action as “a hostile political act”. That caused Amazon to quickly reconsider as their stock dipped on the threat. His response will not be lost on other companies thinking of doing the same. He wants that cost hike covered up as if it didn’t exist so that consumers cannot specifically identify it. That is how he does business. He said that companies as large as Amazon should not be raising prices but, given a tariff rate of 145% on goods coming from China, how much margin does he think that they have? Companies tried to prepare, anticipating a disruption of trade, by stockpiling inventories of key items, but this pause in trade will exhaust inventories. Then the question becomes if and how much and how quickly supply…