If the us china trade war happens in earnest, it will look like a messy divorce.
I'm wondering if we'll notice a fluctuation in the price of cheap goods from china listed on amazon? If weeks or months from now I look at my amazon wishlist and there isn't a noticeable difference in prices--maybe it won't be a big deal after all?
There could be some exaggeration as to how much the cost of goods will increase. Unless a business has a monopoly or heavily centralized market with a dominant marketshare there is a limit to how much the cost of tariffs can be passed on to consumers. While there is some negative commentary in the media, it is possible tariffs will be hiked and the damage to consumers will be negligible. Chinese enterprise could be forced to eat a substantial portion of tariff hikes.
It will be interesting to see what the effects are as I remember the cost of 2 liter bottles of soda at the store roughly doubling from $1 to $2 over the past 10 or so years which would seem to indicate near to 10% price inflation per year. Will we likely price hikes anywhere near approaching that? I wonder.
I think what will happen is that a lot of manufacturing will just relocate to other countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Bangladesh. No one country will get all the business, but all will get some, the cost of goods will remain low, and only China will lose out.
