(The Hill) — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) signaled she’s not only concerned by the sweeping tariffs President Trump ordered on imports from world trade partners, but also by the opportunity it creates for “price gouging.”
During a Wednesday appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” she weighed in on how businesses could react to the increased import taxes.
“There are businesses that are already saying quite publicly, yep, they’re worried, and so they’re raising prices now, and this is actually one of my most serious concerns about the tariffs,” Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, told the outlet.
She has previously referred to Trump’s tariff plan, unveiled a week ago, as “the dumbest trade war in the history of this country” and lambasted the White House over its possible impact on foreign trade and the American economy.
“By putting across-the-board tariffs with virtually every nation, on virtually every product, with no planning and no rhyme or reason to the numbers, is just creating economic chaos,” she said Wednesday.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell warned earlier this week that the increased taxes on imported goods could cause inflation to rise.
Warren said inflation creates opportunities for higher prices to pad businesses’ bottom lines.
“Costs are going to go up across the board, for everything that consumers buy,” the senator said. “That creates the environment for businesses to be able to say, ‘Oh, well, we’ll just go ahead and increase our prices now. We will increase our prices more than the cost of the tariffs.'”
“And so, you get the one-two punch of passing along costs from tariffs, but also price gouging,” she added.
The Massachusetts Democrat pointed to the 50-percent tariffs Trump levied on washing machines in 2018 during his first term as part of an effort to encourage domestic production as proof of how businesses could respond with increased prices beyond the direct tariff impact.
“The shocking part is, the price of dryers went up as well, even though there was no imposition of tariffs on those,” Warren recalled.
“You tell me what that is, except for price gouging,” she said.
