Posted By RichC on September 28, 2025
Even though I follow the business news closer than most, it is tough to predict exactly why prices continue to put financial stress on most families. Brenda and I are likely 
not going to starve, but our grocery bill is now higher then when we had more mouths to feed.
I’ve bellyached about inflation since prices shot up during the Biden administration and watched as their irresponsible government policies pitched every American family’s budget. Now that supposedly fiscally responsible Republicans are running things from Washington DC it is better, right? Hm … don’t answer that.
The big government and debt spending continues no matter who is in charge since nobody wants to cut back or even try to balance the budget; you would think it would be easy to at least go back to pre-Covid budgets and spending levels … which were still way out of wack in my opinion. This all leads me to worry about something other than the Fed’s money printing and weakening the value of the U.S. dollar further: Tariffs.
Personally I’m not a big fan of the Trump tariffs, but I do understand just how our trading partners have manipulated markets and taken advantage of the U.S. consumers for years. Instead of fairly trading with us they’ve restricted products for one reason of the other, added taxes and tariffs and protected their own workers (not in every case … but in way too many). This has lead to job losses and a hollowing out of the middle class in America over the years and we no long manufacture ask we once did. Instead have become increasingly reliant on foreign trade for essentials (noticed during Covid). How do we correct this besides renegotiating trade deals and using tools like tariffs? I don’t know, but the Trump administration has decided to use the tools that they have. In this case tariffs.
Brenda has noticing prices in the grocery store, especially on items we import to the United States. Nearly everything is higher and hasn’t really come down much, if any. A perfect example has been that of Coffee prices. Shockingly small bag of premium coffee we used to buy has gotten smaller, while the price has gone higher. The other day at Costco, Brenda found a bigger bag of premium Starbucks coffee on sale for a much, much lower than the Dunkin’ Donuts brand that we’ve been buying for years. So she bought a bag for me to try and it’s very good — even it if is from Starbucks. So she bought SIX more. Overkill? 😊
Category: Financial, Local, Politics, Shopping |
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Tags: coffee, costco, grocery, inflation, sale, starbucks, tariffs
