This past Monday, Trump once again took to Twitter to threaten yet more tariffs against China, and these ones, according to CNBC, could result in “massive store closures” (here in the USA, that is).
For context: early on Monday, China responded to the tariff’s Trump threatened last week by “raising tariffs on about $60 billion of U.S. goods,” promptly causing the Dow to tumble 617 points.
In response, the White House “released a fresh list for about $300 billion in Chinese goods that President Donald Trump has said he’s contemplating hitting with tariffs as high as 25%.”
The list includes clothing, sneakers, sporting goods, and just about everything else found in already-struggling malls. So, while last week’s tariffs mostly hurt American agricultural workers, this week’s will hit American retailers the hardest.
And I do mean hard. Before Monday’s announcement, UBS said “it was already calling for nearly 21,000 stores to close by 2026 in the U.S.” Now, “it said a new round of tariffs could cause more than 50% of those closures to happen within the course of one year, rather than four.”
“The market is not realizing how much brick & mortar retail is incrementally struggling and how new 25% tariffs could force widespread store closures,” one UBS analyst said in a research note. “We think potential 25% tariffs on Chinese imports could accelerate pressure on these company’s profit margins to the point where major store closures become a real possibility.”
It’s almost like Trump doesn’t understand how the economy works…
You can read more about it at CNBC.
