Gadgets sold without batteries. Toys sold in slimmed-down boxes or no packaging at all. More household goods that shoppers need to assemble themselves.
These are some of the ways consumer product companies are retooling their wares to reduce costs and avoid raising prices as President Donald Trump levies new import taxes on key trading partners as well as some materials used by American manufacturers.
The economic environment in which the president has imposed, threatened and occasionally postponed repeated rounds of tariffs is more precarious than during his first term. U.S. consumers are feeling tapped out after several years of inflation. Businesses say tariffs add to their expenses and eat into their profits, but they are wary of losing sales if they try to pass all of the increase on to customers.
Instead, some companies are exploring cost-cutting options, both ones that consumers likely would notice in time—remember “shrinkflation?”—and ones that exist too far down the supply chain for them to see. The changes may help minimize price increases yet won’t be enough in every case to offset them completely.
