Two years ago, tariffs polled fine. In an August 2024 Journal poll, 47% approved and 40% didn't. Today, Greg Ip writes in his Capital Account column, the word has become one that candidates run from. How that happened is a story about the cost of living. It has a lesson for anyone planning a big purchase.
Economists mostly dislike tariffs, Ip notes, but they've long understood why voters often don't. A protected factory is easy to see. A few cents more on a thousand small purchases is not. That held up until the broad levies of April 2025. Then opinion turned, and it turned hardest among the people tariffs were meant to protect. A poll by Echelon Insights and the Economic Innovation Group found blue-collar voters went from net 3 points in favor in August 2025 to net 22 points against last month. Echelon also found the public blames tariffs more than the war with Iran for inflation.
The price effect was smaller than the mood
Here's the part that matters for your wallet. Ip says the link between tariffs and inflation is real, but too faint to see without a study. New-car prices have barely risen since the start of this term. Carmakers are absorbing tariffs of up to 25% on imported vehicles instead of passing them on. Many studies that blame tariffs for higher prices measure against a world where prices would have dropped, Ip notes. So the damage, in Ip's telling, came from how and when the tariffs landed. Scott Lincicome, a tariff critic at the Cato Institute, told him the policy raised prices at a moment when the public was already sore about prices. Ip draws a parallel to the Biden climate agenda, which hit the same wall when energy prices rose.
Where it goes from here is the planning question. Republicans running this fall mostly don't mention tariffs. Democrats attack them in ads, and their House leader says the party would repeal them, though he hasn't said which ones. A president can veto. Repeal also gets harder by 2028, once industries get used to protection and the Treasury gets used to almost $200 billion a year. Ip's read is that the odds the sweeping second-term tariffs survive this term are shrinking, while the narrower first-term ones look likely to stay. On the same page, the Journal reports the U.S. moved some Canadian goods on and off a 50% tariff list on Friday, effective next Friday. The list changes on a week's notice.
Our read
Cash Flow (M5). A tariff is a tax you pay at the register, spread across a lot of small purchases. The planning lesson is about time. Rules that arrive by announcement can leave by announcement. Don't build a long-range plan around them staying, and don't build one around them going. If a tariff is the main reason you'd rush a car purchase, that's a weak reason, since carmakers are eating up to 25% right now. If a tariff is the main reason you'd skip an import, same answer. Buy the thing when your plan says you need it, at a price you've checked twice.
The one thing in your plan this touches is any big purchase you've penciled in for the next year or two. The one check this week is to ask what price you assumed and where it came from. If the answer is a headline about tariffs, replace it with a real quote from a real seller. Bring the list to the next review and we'll price it together. Politics will move. Your plan should sit on numbers that don't. You don't shop for an umbrella because the forecast got loud. You buy one because you walk to work.