Fox News Anchor Makes Clear Trump’s Tariffs Would Drive Up Prices: ‘It Is Going to Cost More Ultimately’

Fox News anchor Julie Banderas spoke to financial expert Gene Marks on Thursday about President-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats and warned that it could certainly lead to rising prices for American households.

Banderas began the segment by reading from a recent Wall Street Journal article that noted, “Mr. Trump is going to use this threat often in his second term. Mr. Trump campaigned as the tariff man, and he aims to impose them early and often get ready for what could be a wild ride.”

“Gene Marks, the Mark’s Group CEO and a small business expert, joins me now. It’s going to be a wild ride. I mean, we’ve already been through a wild ride, so let’s let’s bring it on. What do you expect these tariffs to do?” Banderas then asked.

“But there are sort of different impacts on different companies. Julie But just keep in mind, you know, if you’re running a business and you’re looking to see how these tariffs are going to impact you, you know, you know, if you are buying American and you’re selling American, you’re not going to be impacted by tariffs,” Marks replied, adding:

Right now, I’m not saying that’s the case for most businesses or every business in this country, but that really is the simple way to put it. If you’re running a business, if you keep it domestic, you will be fine and therefore you won’t have to raise your prices or face those kinds of price increases.

For those companies, though, Julie, that are still getting supplies from overseas, they’ve got to be doing some things. And I’ve got to tell you, I have a lot of clients right now that are making moves right now to make sure they’re protecting themselves.

“Yeah, I mean, but let’s be realistic. I mean, a lot of American companies do not buy American. They do rely on a lot of merchandise that is purchased from other countries. So, I mean, while this is going to it’s set to punish other countries that don’t voluntarily cooperate with President Trump on his immigration plan, such as Mexico and Canada, could it hurt American business owners at the same time and backfire?” Banderas followed up.

“It’s difficult to provide a challenge to these American businesses. And by the way, these are not just large corporations or a lot of small businesses. There are a lot of merchants that buy stuff from China and then resell them, you know, on their websites or on Amazon. So they will certainly be affected by this. But, you know, like anything else that comes across, any challenge, people have to pivot,” Marks replied, adding:

So right now I’m seeing a lot of my clients buy right now from their overseas suppliers and store these goods in advance of this sort of tariff war that’s coming, because the more that they can buy now, the less than they will be subject to those price increases later on. And by the way, their cost of doing that is higher interest rates for working capital.

There’s higher storage costs that you’re going to have to incur. But that’s what a lot of companies are doing. And I’ll tell you another thing that companies are doing, Joy. They’re looking for alternative suppliers. You know, maybe you have a chance to buy American. Even if you can’t, you can still move and pivot to another country other than China, which is going to face the largest level of tariffs and try and pivot and use alternative suppliers as well. Is this going to increase prices to you and me?

“Oh yeah,” Banderas interjected as Marks added, “It could. It could. It just depends on how the businesses decide to absorb those price increases. Maybe they invest in technology or they reduce overhead.”

“I think if American companies are forced to buy American, it is going to cost more ultimately. And then who’s going to pay for that? We are. I mean, we are going to be buying the merchandise that they are going to have to raise the costs on because they’re not going to be buying from foreign countries. So ultimately, it does come down to the taxpayer dollar. We’ll see how that works,” Banderas concluded before turning to some recent commentary from Steve Forbes.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.