Palo Alto High School glassblowing teacher Mike da Ponte turns his phone to show an email he has just received from a small art supply company in Seattle, called the Olympic Color Rods. The email announces that, because of the recent increased tariffs on goods imported to the United States, they will have to raise their prices. In an apparent effort to keep prices down, customers will only have to bear 50% of the cost of the tariffs. Meanwhile, the company will have to absorb the other 50% of tariff-induced costs.

This story, of companies having to sacrifice both profit and affordability, has been happening all across America during the past month due to new tariffs on imported goods implemented by President Donald Trump.

Da Ponte is grateful companies are considering the needs of consumers.

“At least companies are thinking about the overall picture rather than just themselves,” Da Ponte said.

On April 2, Trump announced a 10% tariff as a baseline for all goods imported into the U.S., with certain countries, including China, having much higher rates according to PBS. In response, many nations have imposed tariffs on the U.S. in retaliation. For example, China has imposed tariffs on U.S. exports reaching up to 147.6%, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Immediately following the 2024 election up until President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the stock market was booming. Trump’s pro-business reputation had investors feeling positive about the future of the economy, according to CNN. However, in the first 100 days of his presidency, the stock market has dipped 7%, the worst start to a presidency since Gerald Ford in 1974, although it has largely recovered in recent weeks, partially due to delays in implementation of tariffs.

The cause of this? Tariffs, which according to Ryan Cummings, chief of staff of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, have been the Trump Administration’s primary economic strategy.

“Tariffs are generally a quite literal tax that is paid by a firm which is importing a particular type of good, or alternatively, maybe service,” Cummings said. “But here, President Trump is really talking about goods.”

Cummings said tariffs are generally not advised as a broad economic strategy because the price is passed to consumers.

“Economists typically believe that tariffs are ultimately born not by the firms themselves, but by the consumers, and certainly not by the countries,” Cummings said.

Since his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump’s rhetoric has been unclear. His tariff strategy has targeted numerous countries without distinction.

“I don’t think that Trump is playing 4D chess,” Cummings said. “I think it’s much more likely that his advisors are trying to get him to stop eating the pieces.”

Cummings said tariffs will negatively impact the economy for multiple reasons. A more immediate effect is higher prices, which will impact a broad group of consumers — including Da Ponte and his work in the Paly glass studio. Da Ponte said the tariffs would increase the price of glass that is imported into the U.S.

“A lot of the ingredients to make glass are imported from all over the world, and companies are going to have to keep up with the tariffs and still make profit on their products,” da Ponte said.

Paly junior Dylan Chen will also be impacted when purchasing everyday things. Chen said he worries about the increased costs of international products, which he said he buys frequently.

“I order a lot of Chinese products from sites like Weee!, and recently they have spiked their prices,” Chen said. “I like to drink this Chinese herbal tea called Wang Lao Ji, and last time I checked, their price has practically doubled.”

But according to Cummings, the more drastic impact of tariffs is the high uncertainty that comes along with them.

“There’s so much uncertainty around what the tariffs will do or what they even will be.” Cummings said. “This issue is like, Trump wakes up, he says tariffs are high. He goes to bed, he says they’re low. … Nobody knows how to plan, … so you’re going to scale back on investment.”

Beyond the initial scaling back of the U.S. economy, tariffs may have a recessionary effect on the economy in the long run. This means that the tariffs will decrease global output of goods.

“We get in this vicious cycle where firms retract a little, they lay off labor, [which] lowers demand,” Cummings said. “Then that goes back to the firm, and we start the cycle over again.”

Cummings said tariffs will especially impact Palo Alto’s tech industry.

“Palo Alto in particular, I would say we have bigger exposure from tech,” Cummings said. “A company like Nvidia that makes semiconductors, they’re going to rely a lot on China for a lot of different kinds of imports.”

Though Palo Alto, and Silicon Valley in general, is known for its technology, Cummings said that the tariffs would also impact the prices of general goods in Palo Alto.

“[Prices of] things like your surfboards are going to increase, your soccer balls, like common goods, a lot of that comes from China,” Cummings said. “Toys [will increase in price] for people with young kids. Just little everyday things [like] going to the grocery store.”

While some of Trump’s policies are reversible, his first few months have had some irreversible and negative effects on the economy, according to Cummings.

“Typically [for Christmas], those orders are from all over the world,” Cummings said. “So what we’re seeing is a bunch of people cancel orders. … We’re seeing container volumes decrease, so that means they’re not being produced. Come Christmas time, that’s going to have an impact whether or not he [Trump] reverses.”

Despite some irreversible supply chain issues, Cummings said that the economy could still be fixed.

“I do think you can undo a lot of it.” Cummings said.

Following his initial flurry of tariffs, Trump has scaled back in some countries, increased tariffs in others and imposed special carve-outs for certain products such as energy commodities, according to Reuters.

As uncertainty continues to rock the economy, only time will tell whether Trump’s strategy will succeed, but the negative effects are already clear.

“How bad do you want it to get so we can stop it from getting worse, but it doesn’t mean we can naturally go back from where we are now,” Cummings said.