will not be slowing down anytime soon, as the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on April 8 an additional 50 per cent tariff on top of the previously imposed tariffs of 20 and 34 per cent, bringing the total tariff on Chinese goods to 104 per cent.  The move went into effect at noon Eastern time on April 8, with tariff collection set to begin on April 9.  “The president’s message has been simple and consistent from the beginning to countries around the world, bring us your best offers and he will listen,” stated Leavitt. “Deals will only be made if they benefit American workers and address our nation’s crippling trade deficits.”  However, retail experts like Melissa Minkow, CI&T’s global director of retail strategy, think the latest round of tariffs placed on Chinese-imported goods will be less than “liberating” for US retailers.  How the latest round of tariffs affects US retailers On April 2, President Donald Trump announced the implementation of tariffs on imports from other countries, including China, Mexico and Canada, to reduce the reliance on foreign goods.  “A strong America cannot be solely dependent on foreign countries for our food, medicines, and critical minerals, and America must always maintain a robust defense supply chain,” Leavitt stated.  However, as Minkow pointed out, it will take a considerable amount of time for the US to make the necessary changes to compensate for its past reliance on China.  In the short term, many US retailers will need to raise prices to compensate for the costs incurred by the tariffs.  “If retailers consider a long-term solution in attempts at avoiding these raised costs, that will likely mean pursuing domestic vendors and suppliers. Since that would be an extremely long-term solution, it simply couldn’t happen overnight,” Minkow stated. In the meantime, US retailers may look for alternative ways to reduce costs throughout the businesses in order to compensate. Methods include strengthening data optimisation strategies to improve demand forecasting, reducing returns, deadstock and stockouts, as well as finding ways to optimise the workforce.  Neil Saunders, Global Data’s managing director, said that most retailers cannot absorb these costs as the increases would more than wipe out their profit margins.  “As such, they will have to find ways to mitigate… [such as] negotiating with suppliers, reformulating products, trying to optimise production to lower tariff locations, finding savings and efficiencies within the business and leaning more heavily into automation,” he said. “On the price front, there is no doubt that higher prices to consumers will be a part of the solution. However, the consumer isn’t really in a good place financially nor emotionally, so they will, in turn, respond by changing their behaviours.” On April 4, Coresight Research reported that 55 per cent of US consumers expect new tariffs to have a negative impact on them personally, with 62 per cent of them citing potential higher prices as their greatest concern around new tariffs.  Only 29 per cent of US consumers remarked upon tariffs positively, with beliefs that US companies will bring back factories and jobs to American workers.  As Saunders explained to Inside Retail, “They will buy less, they will shop around more and they will delay buying things until sales periods. The net of all of this is that margins will get squeezed, some retailers will lose out, and demand will soften.” Coresight Research referred to a statistic from the Tax Foundation, the world’s leading nonpartisan tax policy nonprofit, that existing US tariffs could lower gross domestic product by 0.8 per cent over time.  As the fallout from the latest move in the US-China trade war becomes clear, retailers should brace themselves for a year filled with compensatory moves and shifting consumer spending habits.