According to a study, several US companies also use the massively increased import duties to maximize their own profits.
“End consumers are increasingly increased than the import costs, especially for coffee, drinks, consumer electronics, clothing, sporting goods, toys and jewelry: internal prices in the USA,” said head of corporate research at Allianz Trade, Ano Kuhanathan.
According to estimates by the credit insurer, consumers for goods such as furniture should pay 3.6 percent and for cars, clothing, jewelry and shoes up to 2.3 percent more than was expected due to the import costs. Even with wine, consumers paid: almost one percent more than import prices would suggest inside.
Profits in US retailers are increasing
Accordingly, the profits in the US retail have increased significantly. The operational margins of the US wholesalers climbed to 3.7 percent in the second quarter – after only 1.8 percent in the first quarter. The food retailers: inside, in turn, increased their profits from 3.5 to 4.6 percent. In contrast, American discounters recorded hardly any changes in their profitability in the past quarter.
This shows that “parts of the supply chain simply pass on higher prices – at least over a certain period of time – to preserve or expand their own profits,” said Kuhanathan. He assumes that due to the market structure in particular, US wholesalers: inside can enforce their higher margins longer and thus to benefit twice.
Losers are US consumers: inside and foreign exporters
“The clear losers in the trade war are US consumers: inside and foreign exporters. In most cases, they ultimately pay the colliery,” said Kuhanathan. This affects 77 percent of cases.
On the other hand, US companies assume higher costs for only less than a quarter of the products- mainly in the agricultural and food sector such as sweets, cookies and dairy products. This should be due to the strong domestic competition and the price -sensitive consumers in these categories. In some cases, the competition and the assumption of costs by the study importers led to the fact that the actual price increases remained below the forecasts, for example in the case of medicinal products.