Americans are still paying more for shoes, luggage and hats after Biden left Trump’s tariffs in place

Washington CNN —

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump put new tariffs on a variety of Chinese-made goods, including baseball caps, luggage and shoes – and Americans have been paying the priceever since.

For example, a suitcase that was $100 before Trump imposed the tariffs now goes for about $160, and a carry-on that was $425 is now $700, said Tiffany Zarfas Williams, who owns the Luggage Shop of Lubbock in Texas.

As a small, independent retailer, she had no choice but to raise prices on consumers to keep up with what she was charged by the brand name distributors, which paid the tariffs on the imported goods.

Shipping containers from China and other Asian countries are unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles as the trade war continues between China and the US, in Long Beach, California on September 14, 2019. (Photo by Mark RALSTON / AFP) (Photo by MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

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“It’s a real challenge having to pass those kinds of price increases to the consumer,” she said.

Tariffs aren’t the only reason prices went up over the last five years, but Zarfas Williams said she hoped President Joe Biden would lift the duties – which he previously criticized – to help alleviate some of the upward pressure on prices.

“Trump doesn’t get the basics,” Biden said in apost on X in June 2019. “He thinks tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.”

But after a multi-year review of the duties was released last month, the Biden administration decided to keep them in place and raise the rate on arelatively small share of the impacted imports, including things like