With tariffs set to raise food prices 2.8% to 4%, consumers are stocking up on canned goods at big box retailers including BJ's, Costco and Target, a report from Consumer Edge found.

In the two days following the announcement of the Trump administration’s tariffs, April 3 and April 4, sales of canned and jarred vegetables rose 29%, instant coffee sales spiked 21%, ketchup sales were up 18%, and beer, 3%, from the Thursday and Friday the week prior.

Likewise, Placer.ai found shoppers looking for a wide variety of goods to beat the tariff price hikes. During the week of March 24-30, warehouse clubs saw visits increase 9.7% compared to the same week last year. A similar pattern was observed for electronics (3.8%), home improvement (9.5%), luxury department stores (7.9%), and clothing stores (5.6%).

Further, U.S. auto sales likely inched higher in the first quarter of the year on steady demand, according to Cox Automotive.

Whether the impulse to buy shelf-stable food ahead of the tariff prices increase is a blip — or the early stages of a change in consumer behavior to buy food in bulk and at discount — remains to be seen, said Michael Gunther, head of insights for the Consumer Edge Insight Center.

Tariffs are reigniting fears of empty store shelves as seen during COVID, when supply chain disruptions led to widespread product shortages, said Manish Kapoor, founder of GCG, a supply chain management firm outside Los Angeles.

"We saw this during COVID as well, where everybody frantically went and grabbed everything on store shelves, whether they needed it or not," Kapoor said.

Consumer Edge is also seeing a “noticeable uptick” in the amount people are spending per discount store visit.

Food prices are expected to rise 2.8% overall from Trump’s tariffs, including 4% for fresh produce, Yale University’s Budget Lab estimates.

Customers will see their grocery prices increase “in the next couple of weeks,” John Ross, the CEO of IGA, a chain of grocery stores told CNN. “Shoppers will start seeing it at scale across the store in the next 90 days.”

Source: Reuters

Consumers can also expect prices to increase between 10% and 37% on many other big-ticket consumer items, from television sets to clothing, according to S&P and UBS. (see chart above).

Clothing prices will rise 28% to 37%, while toys and videogames could cost 30% more. Smartphones are likely to be 27% more expensive.

The new levies will cost Americans $3.1 trillion over the next 10 years, amounting to a roughly $2,100 tax increase per household in 2025 alone, according to The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group,