It is if it delays the impact long enough to convince people that news media and major retailers were lying about the impact of tariffs. Which of course is part of the point. They are betting on Americans having very short memories and attention spans, and if the price increases and shortages roll out in fits and starts, maybe you won’t remember what things were like a year ago. Eventually you’ll just pay the tariffs and generate all that extra income for wealthy tax breaks, and forget they were ever not a thing.

And to the first point, retailers are gamboling that you’re too addicted to shopping to stop, and ordered more goods at far higher prices than normal betting you’ll still buy them. So some of the shortage evaporated when even a few products are sufficient to meet the drastically reduced demand due to high prices. There’s no shortage even if there’s far fewer products on the shelves, if people aren’t buying them. The products are there - they just cost 30-75% more. There’s lots of my favorite coffee on the shelf but the same size package that was $12 late last year is currently $20. So maybe it’s more appropriate to talk about a “shortage” of normally priced products.

But check out the layoffs across a lot of consumer product brands and their first quarter sales reports. Sales are down. Not everyone can ignore massive price increases. Consumer behavior, at least at lower incomes, is shifting.

I guess it’s good news in the short term if you have income to spare. We can still get the things we need and want, which is better than I thought would happen. But the impact on people without income to spare is devastating. Lines at the food bank I volunteer at have more than doubled. And the impact on the economy of the government shifting all that profit away from retailers and to themselves to dole out as tax breaks exclusively for the wealthy, can not be good. Like I said, layoffs, at a minimum.