Consumers Say Merchants Shifting Blame for Higher Prices to Tariffs

Getting married this summer? Know someone who is? A wedding dress will set you back on average $2,100, according to The Knot. While that’s roughly on par with prior years, the stasis may not last, due to the administration’s fluctuating tariff policy against most countries, including China, where around 90% of wedding dresses are made.

As the CEO of David’s Bridal, Kelly Cook, told Karen Webster just last week (June 17) the company acknowledges the financial anxiety facing brides and their families, noting that David’s Bridal’s scale and supply chain control allow it to offer competitive pricing, both to end consumers and wholesale partners, which Cook sees as a buffer against economic softness.

“We learned that financial anxiety was [their bride’s] number one problem for 18 months. How the heck am I going to have my dream at this price?” Cook told Webster.

Cook told Webster that supply chain control has allowed David’s to pivot and hold the line on pricing. But overall, the dream is going to be more expensive. Unpleasant surprises are already unfolding as American consumers see first-hand the impact of tariffs against the U.S.’s major trading partners on prices on everything from groceries and beauty supplies to furniture and electronic gadgets.

A forthcoming PYMNTS Intelligence report reveals that one-third of U.S. shoppers are being directly told by retailers that the levies are behind the rising costs of everyday goods, with younger and financially vulnerable households feeling the brunt of the squeeze.

It all means that abstract discussions of global trade policy are no longer confined to policy papers or Washington, D.C., boardrooms. For millions of Americans, the consequences of tariffs have materialized directly on store shelves, translated into steeper price tags on a wide array of products, from basic groceries to household essentials and apparel.

This shift from geopolitical abstraction to concrete personal financial strain is particularly acute for households already navigating tight budgets. As tariffs continue to reshape product pricing, U.S. consumers find themselves on the front lines of an evolving trade war.

The report, drawing on a survey of 2,262 U.S. consumers conducted May 21–June 6, 2025, underscores a critical finding: Trade wars aren’t just headlines; they’re demonstrably hitting wallets.

Economists turn themselves inside out trying to model the impact of tariffs on the prices consumers pay for imports of everything from avocados to running shoes. It’s not an easy calculation, in part because the sticker price of an imported good reflects not just the levies but also domestic costs for warehousing, transportation and marketing.

Also confounding things: factors unrelated to tariffs, such as consumer expectations of inflation (more on that later), geopolitical disruption to supply chains, energy costs and tight labor markets that drive up wages and make labor-intensive goods more costly. Almost 1 in 4 consumers surveyed in the forthcoming report has encountered merchants citing “increased costs” without specifying tariffs as the cause.

Spillover

An unpublished June 16 paper from three economists at Harvard and Universidad de San Andrés found that the cost of imported goods had risen about 3% since early March due to tariffs. It said that price increases for Chinese goods were both larger and more persistent than those for products from Canada and Mexico. Even sectors not directly affected by tariffs, such as nail salons, have shown gradual price increases, suggesting that levies affecting one sector can have broader strategic pricing and supply chain spillovers.

The report highlights that financially vulnerable shoppers and younger generations are disproportionately shouldering these levy-related price hikes. Millennials and Gen Zers are more likely to hear that tariffs are pushing up prices at the point of sale. Ditto individuals living paycheck to paycheck with difficulty covering monthly bills. Such consumers report hearing tariff-related explanations for food price increases 60% more frequently than their non-paycheck-to-paycheck counterparts. They also encounter those explanations 54% more often for household goods and over twice as often for health and beauty products. The likely reason: Crimped consumers tend to rely more frequently on lower-cost items, which tend to be imported, rather than made in the U.S.

And shoppers don’t expect things to get better. Nearly half of U.S. consumers anticipate tariffs will drive price increases on essential and discretionary goods at double the current inflation rate.

Read more:

Fed’s Powell Tells House Committee Tariff-Based Inflation Will ‘Show Up’

Consumers Temper Spending Plans as Confidence Slides in June

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