New York (AP) – Candy’s shelves in the economy ruins with candies around the world
Standing in the middle of everything, columns of shiny frosts on his left and exotic kats on his right, the owner Mitchell Cohen is fast with his evaluation of how much Shop of more than 2,000 articles are affected by the Historical prices Announced by President Donald Trump.
“I think everyone,” said Cohen in his New York Lower East Side store.
Few corners of US economy are intact, directly or indirectly, by the radical prices imposed by Trump. Even a small store like economic candies.
Cohen had just started to feel an inflation price increase in prices suppliers ease when pricing threats have arrived. For a company with a name like Economy Candy, he wants to remain affordable but fears the height of certain prices to climb In the coming months.
“I think it will be another cycle of this hyperinflation on certain articles,” explains Cohen, 39 years old. “If we put prices everywhere, it will go up.”
Entering economic candies looks like a time chain. Its name is wooded on a sign in a vintage and screaming red script, and crossing its awning with green and white stripes, in front of Smart, Carretter and Lemonheads in the front window, an indecipherable sweetness fulfills the air, the Oldies musical sounds above the head and the Mild customers around the batteries of candy they have forgotten.
It only represents a blow in the candy industry of $ 54 billion in the country. But he already felt the weight of cocoa prices overvoltages and other ingredients before the prices were in diapers.
The prices of candies and gums increased by around 34% compared to five years ago and 89% compared to 2005, according to data from the consumer price index. The price, according to the National Confectioners Association, has become the The best factor in buying consumer candies Decisions, win the mood of a buyer.
About a third of economic candy products are imported, congested on shelves and tables near the back of the store. There is not only “more varieties of German halibo than the Haribo store in Germany”, as Cohen claims, but Gummies that the brand makes in France, Austria and Great Britain.
They have all the milk bars that they can find in Switzerland, all types of Dunes Leone candies as Italy produces and as many exotic kits of Japan that they can adapt.
On products like these, the toll of prices is obvious.
The pistachio snickers are from India, now subject to 26% prices, while the SNICkers of the passion fruit moss come from Portugal, now under the 20% of the European Union samples.
But even an American manufacturing snickers is not immune.
While bars can roll conveyors in Texas, they Count on ingredients around the world. Sourcemap, who follows the supply chains, says that the snickers bars are made with Guyana chocolate, Argentina peanuts and Brazil sugar, wrapped in Canada packaging. All are now subject to different levels of prices.
“There are many ingredients that must come from other countries,” said Andreas Waldkirch, professor of economics at Colby College who teaches a class on international trade. “Unless you talk about something very simple in your local producer market, almost all products are based on ingredients elsewhere. These indirect costs are really what will increase prices.”
History is repeated with American candies through the store – Nerds boxes and bags of sugar babies and smarties are all inextricably linked to the world supply chain.
A table teeming with these national specialties occupies the front of the stage near the entrance to Candy. Cohen took over the store of his parents, who has already taken it over from their parents. He obtained his first haircut in the store. He was behind the register as a child. He took his wife during their first appointment.
As a child, everything on the central table of the American treats store costs 59 cents. By 2020, the price was $ 1.29, but customers who bought an entire box paid a reduced rate of $ 1 per room.
Now Cohen can’t even get them wholesale at this price.
Today, he sells items on the table for $ 1.59. Cohen calls a “losses leader”, but thinks that it is important to highlight the affordability of your store. Once the prices are fully implemented, it is not sure that it will be able to repel price increases.
“When your margins drop and your dollar does not go until the end of the day, you really start to feel it,” he said. “But I don’t want anyone who comes to economic candies and don’t think it’s economical.”
The most important implications of the price Blitz naturally attract the most attention – the thousands of dollars of a car price can increase, the tens of thousands who disappear from a retirement account in one day. But here, among the barrels of root beer and the strands of liquorice, you remember that the articles in small dollars are also affected, just as families sell them.
At birth, the grandfather of Business Cohen began to focus on repairs of shoes and hat. But following the great depression, while few people in a crowded fundraising had money for such corrections, the company swivel.
Candy, once relegated to a cart at the front, took over the store.
In the 88 years that followed, business has not always been laughter and zagnuts. The September 11 attacks distant tourists and have flocked up sales and the pandemic closed the store and forced it to rotate online sales.
If the prices upset things, Cohen does not know how he could adapt again. It sells products that are not manufactured in America and sells American products made with ingredients from around the world. He had just progressed at the start of international sales, but the network of tariff rules could make him impossible.
The average American price could reach almost 25% if the import taxes that Trump put goods from dozens of countries are fully implemented on Wednesday. It would be the highest rate for over a century, including largely blamed prices for the worsening of the great depression.
Trump said the taxation of prices was equivalent to A “Liberation Day” For a country that has been “looted, looted, raped and looted” by a friend and an enemy, insisting that it was “very, very good news” for the United States
Cohen does not know how it can be true for a business like his.
“I can understand that manufacturing and bringing it back to America, but you know, we are counting on raw materials that are simply not from our country,” he said. “And it’s not like I could get a Japanese Green Tea kit from an American company.”
While Cohen was standing in front of mounds of strawberry candy in brilliant packaging and small caramel cubes in cellophane, the first word of the concrete impact of the price on him arrived. A French supplier sent an email by saying that he immediately imposed an overload of 5% due to the prices, expressing his regrets for the move and hope that “the situation will be resolved quickly”.
Cohen still had a smile. He wants it to be a happy place for visitors.
“You return to a time when nothing matters,” says Cohen, “when you don’t worry about anything.”
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Matt Sedensky can be attached to (protected by e-mail) and https://x.com/sedensky.
