John Gruber linked last week to this Reuters story about Anker—a China-based electronics company—raising its prices in the face of the crushing 145% tariffs Donald Trump has petulantly imposed on China. Gruber writes:

Tariffs driving up consumer prices is as sure a thing as rain making you wet. But it’s worth pointing to the evidence as it comes in, because unlike rain’s wetness, the “emperor sure does have clothes” MAGA contingent is trying to argue that tariffs don’t have this obvious effect.

This report of higher prices comes from “e-commerce services provider” SmartScout, and references an investor call on which Anker reportedly talked about raising prices, but the story provides no product examples or pricing differences.

Anker raising prices is distressing, partly because higher prices is rotten for consumers in general, but in particular because Anker makes great products, often best in class—and therefore I buy a lot of stuff from them! I’m pretty sure I’ve bought more Anker products than any other brand—with the sole exception of Apple.

I purchase most of my Anker gear through Amazon, so, being the curious sort, I checked my order history to see what I last paid, and compare it against current prices.

I’ve ordered 33 Anker products since 2014; my first one was, fittingly, a 5-port USB charger. Many of those items are no longer available. In 2024, I bought seven items, all still for sale (surprisingly, no Anker purchases in 2025—yet):

(Amazon links make me filthy rich when you click on them. Here’s more about my use of affiliate links.)

Prices can fluctuate daily, so this is merely a snapshot in time, but as I’m writing this, four out of my seven items are selling for less than I paid for them last year. The two items showing significant increases (the 150W USB-C 4-Port Charger and 24,000 mAh Portable Charger) appear to be the result of especially good deals when I bought them, as they seem to regularly sell right around the current prices, as tracked by CamelCamelCamel.

I used the CamelCamelCamel browser extension to spot-check about a hundred more Anker products, both “new arrivals” and “best sellers” (as determined by Amazon’s algorithms). Prices seem to follow the general pattern shown in the two charts above: mostly steady, with the occasional dip. Some products have above-average recent prices, but current selling prices remain at or below the average.

(If you’re interested in tracking prices for Amazon products, I recommend CamelCamelCamel. You can get notified when prices hit desired levels, and the browser extension is especially handy for bringing up historic pricing charts for the item you’re currently eyeballing.)

I’ll acknowledge that most of these items were likely produced, shipped, and warehoused long before Trump started his ill-advised trade war, and may therefore remain untouched by tariffs. New items—possibly with name changes to thwart easy price comparisons—are certain to become more expensive, because that’s what tariffs do. My very unscientific survey shows little evidence of this happening yet—but the increases are coming. It is, as Gruber writes, “as sure a thing as rain making you wet.”

On Friday evening, reports emerged that the Trump lottery ball dispenser—I mean administration—would exempt a range of electronics from tariffs. For example, from Bloomberg (paywalled; Apple News+ link):

President Donald Trump’s administration exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from its so-called reciprocal tariffs, representing a major reprieve for global technology manufacturers including Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp. even if it proves a temporary one.

The exclusions, published late Friday by US Customs and Border Protection, narrow the scope of the levies by excluding the products from Trump’s 125% China tariff and his baseline 10% global tariff on nearly all other countries.

The exclusions apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives and computer processors and memory chips as well as flat-screen displays. Those popular consumer electronics items generally aren’t made in the US. 

There was much rejoicing, with many excited people who, as one friend noted, now “expect tech stocks to rise Monday.”

On Saturday, The New York Times wrote these changes “spared smartphones, computers, semiconductors and other electronics” in “the latest flip-flop” from Trump, before noting:

Still, any relief for the electronics industry may be short-lived, since the Trump administration is preparing another national security-related trade investigation into semiconductors.

Sunday morning brought the Sunday talk shows and this report from ABC News:

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday that the administration’s decision Friday night to exempt a range of electronic devices from tariffs implemented earlier this month was only a temporary reprieve, with the secretary announcing that those items would be subject to “semiconductor tariffs” that will likely come in “a month or two.”

“All those products are going to come under semiconductors, and they’re going to have a special focus type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored. We need to have semiconductors, we need to have chips, and we need to have flat panels – we need to have these things made in America. We can’t be reliant on Southeast Asia for all of the things that operate for us,” Lutnick told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

He continued, “So what [President Donald Trump’s] doing is he’s saying they’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two. So these are coming soon.”

Then, on Sunday evening, Donald Trump posted to “Truth” Social the following (as part of a long, tariff-related ramble):

There was no Tariff “exception” announced on Friday. These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff “bucket.”

No idea what “Fentanyl Tariffs” means in this context, nor why electronics are subject to them.

He also wrote as part of that ramble:

We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.

So, in the span of not quite 48 hours, we learned that electronics will be exempted from tariffs; will be exempted but tariffed in a month or two; that there was never an electronics tariff exemption; and that the entire electronics supply chain is now under investigation for what tariffs will apply—eventually.

Senator Elizabeth Warren said on ABC’s This Week:

There is no tariff policy – only chaos and corruption.

Spot on. Wall Street hates instability and inconsistency. Prices rise when the markets know what to expect, and crash when they don’t. These vacillations primarily serve to sow confusion and instill fear.

They also serve one more purpose: To drive down the prices of stocks and provide Trump’s billionaire buddies more opportunities to buy low.

This isn’t new. It’s not a secret. Trump openly brags about his friends making money off the tariff chaos. Did any of them know ahead of time the tariffs would be paused last week? People with advance knowledge could have made a fortune, observed economist Dean Baker.

Trump’s latest “Truth” Social post is a not-so-subtle signal to his cronies—less nose-tap, more bullhorn—that they should wait a bit, because prices can be expected to drop again.

Apple, for example, after crashing dramatically following the initial tariff news, rose equally dramaticallyon the news of a tariff pause, only to again sink when those hopes seemed dashed. On Friday it closed at almost $200, and was poised to rise again on Monday on the exemption news, potentially significantly. Similar stories for Nvidia and other tech stocks with China export exposure.

That cannot stand—not all of Trump’s buyers got in on the last manipulation—sorry, opportunity—and there’s still money to be made here. Will this uncertainty push Apple’s and others’ stock prices higher, or drag them down? Either way, Trump and his friends undoubtedly plan to enrich themselves further.

I’m writing this ahead of Monday’s opening bell, and I expect the market to be a rollercoaster. Just remember: you must be ‾This Rich‾ to ride.

CNBC, Thursday:

Stocks plummeted Thursday, sending the S&P 500 back into correction territory for its biggest one-day loss since 2020, after President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs, raising the risk of a global trade war that plunges the economy into a recession.

A recession would be an unfortunate but necessary step on the way to all-out depression.

The broad market index dropped 4.84% and settled at 5,396.52, posting its worst day since June 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,679.39 points, or 3.98%, to close at 40,545.93 and mark its worst session since June 2020. The Nasdaq Composite plummeted 5.97% and ended at 16,550.61, registering its biggest decline since March 2020. The slide across equities was broad, with more than 400 of the S&P 500′s constituents posting losses.

China, one of the hardest hit, retaliated, as expected, leading to even steeper declines in the market today. Since Trump’s announcement, the major indices have nosedived:

• DJIA: -9.26% (-3,910.46 points)
• Nasdaq: -11.44% (-2,013.26 points)
• S&P 500: -10.53% (-596.89 points)

That’s not a month, or a year. It’s two days.

Apple, the company I follow the closest, got walloped Wednesday after the tariffs were announced, plunging over 9% in after-hours trading. As of Friday’s close, they’re down over 16% since Wednesday, and off over 27% from its Boxing Day high.

These tariffs are being described, wrongly, as “reciprocal”—Trump said “That means they do it to us, and we do it to them”—yet are being imposed on places that have no tariffs on the US, or even little to no trade with the US at all.

Mike Masnick writes in a fantastic piece for Techdirt, headlined “Trump Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic”:

This is the core problem with Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade policy: it fundamentally misunderstands what trade deficits are. And if you think that’s bad, just wait until we get to the part where this policy declares economic war on penguins and our own military base.

The policy, unveiled yesterday afternoon, is called a “reciprocal tariff plan,” which is a bit like calling a hammer a “reciprocal pillow.” The premise is that since other countries have high tariffs on us (they don’t), we should have high tariffs on them (we shouldn’t). But that’s not even the weird part.

At the heart of this policy is a chart. Not just any chart, but what might be the most creative work of economic fiction since, well, Donald Trump launched his memecoin. Trump proudly displayed these numbers at a White House event, explaining that they showed the tariffs other countries impose on the US. He emphasized repeatedly that the US was being more than “fair” because our reciprocal tariffs would be less than what other countries were charging us.

There was just one small problem: none of the numbers were real tariff rates. Not even close. Vietnam, according to the chart, imposes a 90% tariff on US goods. This would be shocking news to Vietnam, which does no such thing.

It’s hard to imagine that a man who’s gone bankrupt six times—with casinos!—would lack such a fundamental grasp of basic economic principles.

James Surowiecki (former financial writer for The New Yorker, author of The Wisdom of Crowds) is credited as the first to crack the administration’s math:

Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us.

So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.

The White House tries to dress this up with fancy math symbols and academic citations, but if you follow the numbers, it pencils out just as Surowiecki surmised: deficit divided by exports, which has nothing to do with what a country is “charging” us for our goods.

It gets worse. Dominic Preston, at The Verge:

A number of X users have realized that if you ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok for an “easy” way to solve trade deficits and put the US on “an even playing field”, they’ll give you a version of this “deficit divided by exports” formula with remarkable consistency. The Verge tested this with the phrasing used in those posts, as well as a question based more closely on the government’s language, asking chatbots for “an easy way for the US to calculate tariffs that should be imposed on other countries to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of its trading partners, with the goal of driving bilateral trade deficits to zero.” All four platforms gave us the same fundamental suggestion.

These politically preposterous, mathematically farcical tariffs, which have already tanked the nation’s 401(k)s, are poised to do even greater damage:

J.P. Morgan on Monday had predicted that the probability of a recession stood at 40 percent, citing “heightened trade policy uncertainty” as “weighing on sentiment.”

A day after Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs, J.P. Morgan predicted the probably [sic] of a recession now stands at 60 percent.

Wiping out trillions of dollars of individual and corporate wealth is an acceptable outcome though, because it’s a useful negotiating tactic:

“The tariffs give us great power to negotiate,” Trump said, adding that “every country has called us.”

“If somebody said that we’re going to give you something that’s so phenomenal, as long as they’re giving us something that’s good,” Trump said.

No doubt many companies are also seeking remedy. By levying these punitive taxes against countries crucial to the bottom line of many American businesses, Trump can offer “relief” by demanding compliance or payment.

Apple, for example, has certainly reached out to the administration in hopes of an exemption, as it faces prices so high it threatens sales of their flagship iPhones. The $1 million Tim Cook “personally” donated to Trump, and the $500 billion US investment Apple announced was clearly insufficient. What will Trump demand of Apple next?

It seems remarkably like extortion and bullying.

On “Truth” Social, Trump blathers on about another aspect of these tariffs:

TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE. THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!

He just can’t help himself, he must make sure his grift is transparently obvious to everyone: I’m destroying the American and global economy so we can all be filthier rich.

How many of his people sold the stock market short the last few days? How many are salivating at snatching up stocks at a massive discount?

Meanwhile, the retirement savings of millions of Americans have been decimated.