Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed store shelves will be full and Americans won’t have to pay the bulk of the tariffs—despite President Donald Trump‘s admission that shelves may have fewer “dolls.”
Lutnick claimed on CNN’s State of the Union that the United States would broker enough trade deals—such as the agreement announced last week with the United Kingdom—so Americans won’t have to worry about empty shelves come summer.
Lutnick’s comment came after suppliers told The Washington Post that tariff hikes on China could imperil summer staples such as beach umbrellas, barbecue grills, and flip-flop sandals.
“Of course, all these countries are going to come and sell their products to us,“ Lutnick said. ”Of course, we’re going to have our shelves full of wonderful products made around the world.”
But his comments on Sunday appeared to contradict Trump’s admission that stores may be impacted by the brunt of his aggressive tariffs, which could force families to limit how many toys their kids can have. Toy distributors have said the current 145-percent tariffs could imperil this year’s holiday season.
“Somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are gonna be open,’” Trump said during an April 30 cabinet meeting. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”
Trump doubled down on those comments last week, telling Meet the Press that the U.S. had to stop buying “junk” from China and that children could do with fewer dolls and pencils.
“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls,” he said. “They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
Lutnick also claimed that the 10-percent tariff rate would be the “baseline” for future agreements—though Americans wouldn’t have to pay the bulk of the tariffs.
“Don’t buy the silly arguments that the U.S. consumer pays,” he said. “Businesses, their job is to try to sell to the American consumer. And domestically produced products are not going to have that tariff. So, the foreigners are going to finally have to compete.”
He added, “What happens is, the businesses and the countries primarily eat the tariff.”
Economic analysts have said companies have already begun passing the cost of tariffs off to consumers, and they expect inflation to rise over the next few months as the impact of the levies becomes clearer.
The added taxes could cost each U.S. household as much as an extra $5,200 a year, according to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
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