It’s genuinely amazing how cheap anew TVis these days.
That’s the deal American consumers have begrudgingly made over the years.
Healthcare is wildly expensive.
College tuition is nuts.
Navigating the housing market is panic-attack-inducing, whether you’re trying to buy orrent.
What’s still accessible is the cheap stuff.
The cost of consumer goods such astoys, clothes, and electronics has gone down.
But now, that grand bargain is changing.
Inflation has made the cost of once accessible stuff a little hard to stomach.
Andtariffsthreaten to blot out the last of what’s affordable.
Unfortunately, it’s the whole shebang, or at least what it’s become.
And even that might be about to be taken away, too.
It didn’t used to be this way.
Throughout most of history, consumers weren’t inundated with things.
The consumer economy is a driving force in the American economic engine.
We spend money to keep the wheels turning.
The ability to spend on what we want when we want is viewed as a pillar of American freedom.
“Now, there’s no shame in being materialistic.
The churn of stuff cuts across income levels, too.
And in uncertain economic times, everyone’s feeling a little price-sensitive.
Retailers such asBest Buy and Targethave begun to warn of price increases.
The stream of super-low-cost inane items fromShein and Temu could be cut offshould President Donald Trump get his way.
“We don’t have that experience of contraction.
That’s the whole point of it.
And so in no sense are people prepared.”
I’ll go back to the example of TVs the great American escape.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, television prices have decreased by 98% since 2000.
Much of this activity, however, is taking place outside the US.
Now, around 60% of American TV imports are made there.
And, again, no one knows what Trump’s next target could be.
The context now is different.
It’s not a bad thing to contemplate the end of the era of cheap stuff.
It’s not our fault we’re like this.
Corporations and marketers have turned us into stuffmongers, and even our political leaders encourage us to keep buying.
Goods aren’t going to become higher quality overnight; tariffs will just make them costlier.
Like it or not, the American dream is a little bit about access to cheap stuff.
It’s a repeat pair of those sneakers that wore out suspiciously fast.
And now, that all might be ripped away, too.
Emily Stewartis a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
