COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – Rising prices at the gas pump and grocery store have become familiar to consumers across the Brazos Valley.
One year after President Trump implemented a sweeping new round of global tariffs, known as “Liberation Day,” businesses say they have felt the change.
Charli Light owns Charli on University Drive. She said some of her jewelry vendors have increased prices since Liberation Day.
“Smaller jewelry companies, I’ve seen it be as much as 20%, which is a lot,” Light said. “Even depending on what it is, like from where it’s made, it’s hard on them to try and do that product.”
Light said she has felt the impact of rising costs and does her best to not pass those costs onto her customers, but that is not always an option for some business owners.
“I think it’s worse now. I think people were trying to absorb it. I didn’t see my prices go up the first, hardly at all,” Light said.
Light said she noticed the increases more in spring than in the fall.
“In spring, like I saw that much more than I did back in the fall, because [vendors] were absorbing a lot of that. So the spring is when I get on the computer and look, it’s like, okay, that’s gone up,” Light said.
Texas A&M economist Dennis Jansen said handbags and shoe prices are also on the rise.
“Shoe prices, I think the estimate is like 15 or so percent. Handbags, I think we’re talking women’s handbags have gone up like over 10%,” Jansen said.
Bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. was a driving factor behind tariffs, but Jansen said that has not necessarily happened.
“That was a claim. We’re going to bring manufacturing back. And the evidence is a little more mixed than sometimes is reported. But in terms of jobs, we have lost jobs in manufacturing,” Jansen said.
For business owners like Light, the goal is to buy American-made, but she also wants a great deal for her customers.
“If [prices] get too high, you go and find somebody else that is more the price range because it’s what the market will bear,” Light said. “If their prices get too high, people won’t buy it. So you have to go and find another vendor that will have that at the price you want.”
Food is also among the items most impacted by tariffs. A manager for Spice World Market in College Station bags of rice they would sell for around $18 or $19 a year ago are now up to about $30 a bag.
Both Light and Jansen said they hope prices level out soon.
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