average U.S. household<\/a>, as importers raised prices to offset higher import taxes \u2014 especially on clothes, shoes and electronics from China and other Southeast Asian nations.<\/p>\nConsumers, Gonzalez said, should budget over the next six months \u201cfor essentials.\u201d<\/p>\n
Priyaranjan Jha, an economics professor at UC Irvine, said historically trade policies since 2018 have shown that for every dollar of duty imposed, consumer prices rose by about 90 cents.<\/p>\n
Even if tariffs are reduced or reversed, and pressure is relieved on importers, consumers shouldn\u2019t expect lower sticker prices right away, he said. \u201cFirms do not always reduce prices as quickly as they raise them, especially if contracts or inventories are involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richer San, a former banker and business owner in Long Beach, said he\u2019s in regular talks with shops across the city\u2019s historic Cambodia Town that have been crushed by the increased prices of imported ingredients.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of these are family-owned businesses operating on very small profit margins,\u201d he said, adding there is little to no margin to \u201cabsorb higher costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many companies managed to avoid price increases last year in part by stockpiling inventory in the first half of the year to be sold through Christmas and the start of the year. As stock dwindles, many businesses might be less willing to eat the cost of a new set of tariffs.<\/p>\n
Marc Sullivan, president of Long Beach-based Global Trade and Customs, said his logistics company saw a brief boom last year in ordered goods, mostly medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n
But by June, orders dropped 35%, a trend that continues today. It\u2019s forced him to freeze any new hiring in the past year and at least through the next six months as he waits for federal officials to settle on tariffs that will determine the cost of shipped goods.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the companies that I work with that are importing into the state here, it\u2019s just \u2018hold on and let\u2019s see what happens,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to hire a salesperson to go out and chase new business, \u2026 but it\u2019s just a bleak outlook,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In the interim, he\u2019s received a steady flow of calls (that started \u201cwithin minutes\u201d of the ruling) from importers looking to claim refunds or recoup their tariff expenses. The U.S. Treasury had collected more than $140 billion from tariffs enacted under emergency powers, and the Supreme Court left the decision of how to appropriate the refund proceedings to lower courts.<\/p>\n
His response: They might be stuck waiting for a while. \u201cCustoms doesn\u2019t pay anything back quickly,\u201d he said. \u201cIt could be a year before you ever see anything back to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sullivan said he knows of companies that spent upwards of $20,000 per shipment for months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to want that money to be able to reinvest it,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
But some experts say that consumers, as well as small businesses, deserve a share of refunds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe importer may receive a refund even though consumers bore much of the cost,\u201d Jha said. \u201cCourts generally refund the statutory payer, not downstream buyers, but that opens the possibility of follow-on litigation. Small businesses that directly imported goods and paid tariffs should qualify for refunds.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite taxes on imports at levels not seen in a century, Long Beach\u2019s seaport had a good year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[6899,4249,3003,131,133,132,91754,3429],"class_list":{"0":"post-196990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-imports","9":"tag-businesses","10":"tag-consumers","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news","14":"tag-long-beach-port","15":"tag-tariffs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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