By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most Americans are bracing for higher prices on a wide range of consumer goods following President Donald Trump’s move to impose sweeping new tariffs on imports from most of the world, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The three-day poll, which concluded on Sunday, found that 73% of respondents said they thought prices in the next six months would increase for the items they buy every day after the new taxes on almost all imports took effect.
Just 4% of respondents thought prices would fall and the rest expected no change or did not answer the question.
Trump’s announcement last week of the biggest U.S. tariff increases in decades shook Wall Street as many economists predicted they would push prices higher and could trigger a recession in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Some 57% of poll respondents – including one quarter of respondents from Trump’s Republican Party – said they opposed the new tariffs, which include levies of at least 10% on imports from almost every country.
Some 39% of respondents supported the new tariffs, and 52% said they agreed with the Trump administration’s argument that other countries have been taking advantage of the U.S. when it comes to international trade.
Trump frequently cites that view as a reason to enact new trade barriers, saying they will lead to a boom in U.S. manufacturing. Forty-four percent of respondents said they disagreed with that view.
Americans have mostly split along partisan lines on whether higher tariffs are a good idea. Half of respondents – including almost all Republicans – said they agreed with a statement that “any short-term economic pain is worth it to make the U.S. stronger in the long term.” The other half – including almost all Democrats – disagreed.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online and nationwide, surveyed 1,027 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Howard Goller)
