A Green Lining to Tariff Tumult? Slowing America’s Shopping Addiction.

There hasn’t been a lot of good news coming out of Trump’s onslaught of tariffs. While there’s been a great deal of back and forth on if/when and how the tariffs will be implemented, one thing’s clear: the market isn’t happy and neither are many of the American people, nearly two-thirds of whom say they disapprove of the tariffs and are worried about their impact on their economic futures.

But as many of us start buckling down and preparing for possibilities, including an elevated grocery budget and delayed retirement, there might just be a little bit of a brighter side to focus on. What if higher prices and slower global supply chains give Americans an opportunity to do something we’ve been unable to accomplish under sunnier circumstances: reimagine our national obsession with cheap and convenient consumer goods?

American Consumption

It’s well known that Americans live less sustainably and consume far more natural resources than people from any other country in the world. Over the course of their lifetime, a single American uses as many natural resources as 35 people from India and consumes 53 times more goods and services as someone from China. With less than five percent of the world’s population, we use a third of the paper, a quarter of the oil, and almost thirty percent of the aluminum used by the entire globe.

A large part of this impact, as you might expect, comes from our love for the private car—with only 3% of Americans using public transit for their daily commute. But we also consume a lot more across multiple sectors, accounting for over 30% of all global consumer spending. We have bigger houses than most of the world and we love to buy new stuff to fill them. When we run out of room in our big houses bring on the storage units, with 38% of American households reporting that they used off-site private storage to house their belongings.

Why are Americans so consumption driven? There are multiple theories, ranging from our higher levels of disposable income compared to global averages to societal factors like competition and community norms around consumption and spending. Whatever our motivation, the fact is that American consumption habits are incompatible with the prospect of a greener future. So far, they’ve only been accelerating year by year, but that might be about to change.

How Experts Predict Trump’s Tariffs Will Hit Spending

It’s difficult to anticipate what the exact impact of Trump’s tariffs will be, in part because there has been so much back and forth about what they’ll actually entail. What we can say for sure though, is that they’ve already had a major impact on the American economy. The stock market has alternately been crashing when tariffs are announced, and then beginning to recover once the White House seems to back down.

Whatever the ultimate outcome, experts agree that all this back and forth will have a tremendously negative effect on the average American’s budget. According to Wharton’s budget model,  the Trump tariffs will reduce long-run GDP by about 6% and wages by 5%, resulting in an average $22K lifetime loss for a middle-income household. Analyses by the Center for American Progress and Yale’s Budget Lab estimate that the typical household will have its annual budget reduced by between $3,800 to $4,700.

The result? Gun-shy consumers are starting to rethink their habitual comfort spending. As the price of essentials climb, and once cheap imported goods become pricier, the average American family will likely tighten their belts and come aboard with a greener pace of consumption, whether or not they’re entirely enthusiastic about the idea.

Shopping (and Saving) in Times of Crisis

This wouldn’t be the first time that facing a crisis has brought out the American consumer’s prosocial side. Back during World War II the country rushed to plant victory gardens, and women moved out of the home and into the workforce en masse, a societal shift that had reverberations for generations to come.

If the tariffs make us reconsider our spending habits, the best-case scenario is this kind of long-term shift in socially acceptable behavior. Perhaps higher prices on imported goods might inspire some Americans to think and shop local, building on a small scale the kind of economic return that Trump is hoping to inspire in the world of manufacturing.

Sourcing our splurges locally might not only be kinder on our wallets during this era of pricy imports, it also helps to keep money circulating within our communities to support their growth. In fact, according to some estimates, if every household in the U.S. spent just an extra $10 per month at local businesses, it would inject over $9.3 billion into the economy – a staggering boost that strengthens the foundation of local economies

Being forced to think twice before hitting that add to cart button isn’t entirely a bad thing either. Accumulating unnecessary items is bad for the earth, our budgets, and even our household organization. Bringing Americans in line with the consumption typical of other nations would do a great deal to keep us on track to reduce emissions and preserve critical natural resources.

As we look forward to a slower tariff, impacted holiday season, there’s a chance to reconsider how times of crises have historically brought us together as a nation. Perhaps this reset might be the thing we need to inspire deeper reflection to align our consumption habits with the necessities of climate change and a greener future.