Smart Money Podcast — How Presidential Policies Affect Prices: Tariffs, Price Control, Immigration and More

Welcome to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast, where we answer your real-world money questions. In this episode:

Learn how presidential policies on tariffs, immigration, and prices can impact your everyday expenses like groceries and gas.

What can a president actually do to lower prices and fight inflation? Can campaign promises really impact your wallet, or are they just political hot air? Hosts Sean Pyles and Anna Helhoski discuss presidential policies and how they affect everything from the cost of gas to your grocery bill to help you understand the real impact of political decisions on your finances. They begin with a discussion of inflation, with tips and tricks on understanding how inflation is measured, what drives price hikes, and what role the president plays in influencing it.

Then, Anna talks to Derek Stimel, an associate professor of teaching economics at UC Davis, about the economic implications of tariffs and immigration policies. They discuss how tariffs raise the price of imported goods, how immigration impacts labor costs and wages, and what these political policies mean for your everyday purchases.

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Have a money question? Text or call us at 901-730-6373. Or you can email us at [email protected]. To hear previous episodes, go to the podcast homepage.

Episode transcript

This transcript was generated from podcast audio by an AI tool.

Sean Pyles:

What's the first thing you do when you go to the grocery store? Do you run to the produce aisle and look for the freshest broccoli, maybe? Or conversely, are you heading for the candy section? I don't judge. But pretty soon after that, you're probably starting to look at prices, right? The price of, well, everything is a daily question in our lives. So it's not surprising that prices are playing a part in this year's presidential election.

Derek Stimel:

I just find it interesting that both presidential candidates have focused on these highly volatile markets, which we often think they really can't do that much about, and that are often driven by these global forces basically. But both of them have focused on those as their avenues to bringing inflation down.

Sean Pyles:

Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. I'm Sean Pyles.

Anna Helhoski:

And I'm Anna Helhoski.

Sean Pyles:

And this is episode two of our Nerdy deep dive into presidential policy and personal finances. Hey Anna, I don't know if you've noticed, but we've got a presidential campaign underway.

Anna Helhoski:

Hard to miss it. Talk about drama. And every great drama has a storyline. One big part of this year's storyline in the campaign has been prices, specifically inflation and what it's done to our bottom lines.

Sean Pyles:

Yeah. Inflation hit a high of 9.1% back in 2022, and we've been paying a whole lot more for a lot of things over the last few years. And it's not subtle, it's very noticeable. Anna, is there anything specific that has popped up on your radar as more expensive than just a couple of years ago? Something where you said whoa, that is way more than I used to pay.

Anna Helhoski:

Yeah. So I have a bread place near me and a few years ago the prices were pretty reasonable for a big loaf of fresh bread, like $6 a loaf.

Sean Pyles:

Yeah, that's like New York reasonable, I'll say.

Anna Helhoski:

Yeah, exactly. No, that's how I gauge everything. But then flour prices spiked and suddenly the price went up to nearly $10, which is way more than I'm willing to pay. What about you, Sean? Did gecko food get more expensive along with anything else?

Sean Pyles:

Since you mentioned it, crickets for my gecko Ozzy did go up about 12%. I now spend a whopping $2.25 a week for those creepy bugs for the old guy. Of course, it's not just these one-off items, these are just the things that the two of us noticed in spades. Houses are more expensive, cars are more expensive, credit cards are more expensive. It just takes more out of your budget to buy stuff.

Anna Helhoski:

So what can a president do about it? As we heard in last week's episode, the answer is not a lot by themselves. They often need Congress or the Fed or both, and sometimes a lot of luck to have an impact on the economy and specifically on prices. But that doesn't stop them from making all kinds of promises about the changes they'd make if we sent them to or back to the White House. Let's talk about what they can do in reality.

Sean Pyles:

And as we noted in the last episode, we're not here to take sides or fan the flames of an already contentious political season. Our goal here is the same one we always have at NerdWallet, to help you, our listeners, make smart informed decisions about the stuff that impacts your finances. Sometimes that means choosing a new high-yield savings account. Other times that means voting for the candidate who you believe will help you achieve your life and financial goals.

All right, well, we want to hear what you think too, listeners. To share your thoughts around the election and your personal finances, leave us a voicemail or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-N-E-R-D. Or email a voice memo to [email protected]. So Anna, who are we hearing from today?

Anna Helhoski:

We're talking with Derek Stimel. He's an associate professor of teaching economics at the University of California, Davis. So not only is he an expert in macroeconomics, but he's an expert in teaching it. He'll help us parse what presidents can and can't do to affect the price of all sorts of goods that we all buy. Derek Stimel, welcome to the show.

Derek Stimel:

Thanks for having me.

Anna Helhoski:

Presidential administrations tend to take the credit or get the blame for things that happen, at least when it comes to public perception. That means that the Biden-Harris administration has taken a lot of flak from the Republican Party and from many Americans for elevated prices that we're seeing in the wake of the pandemic. And since we are just a few months away from a new administration, can you talk a little bit about how much influence presidents actually have on inflation and prices?

Derek Stimel:

Normally we don't think of them as the major driver of inflation in the economy. Usually, it's things like monetary policy, so interest rates, and the supply of money. Sometimes it can also be things outside of the economy, shocks as we sometimes say in economics. So things that happen globally, for example. Having said that, it's not to say that there can't be some causes that are driven by policy of the government. For example, in the current situation, some people do point to some government spending that took place in the aftermath of COVID and the policies surrounding that. That might've been some fuel for inflation. But it's not usually the first thing we think of. In this particular situation of our recent inflation, I suspect it's not the first number one thing causing the inflation.

Anna Helhoski:

Let's get into some of the campaign promises that each candidate has made. Some of the promises might just be politicking, but some of it could become a reality. Start off with former President Donald Trump's proposals. Thus far, there have been multiple reports and assessments from economists who say that his proposals, if enacted, would be inflationary. And one of the main drivers of that projected inflation is Trump's promise to levy 10% across-the-board tariffs on all foreign goods. Can you explain how tariffs and prices interact?

Derek Stimel:

Tariffs are basically a tax on imported goods. For any tax, it's going to have the following effects on the market, which is, the tax gets levied, let's just say it's the 10% just to have a number. And then the businesses basically have to, in a sense, make a decision about do we absorb this tax ourselves, do we pass it on to the customers, and if so, in what proportion? They may not pass on the full 10%, it's unlikely they're going to absorb the full 10% themselves. So there's going to be a split. So in some loose setting, maybe they raise prices by 5% and they absorb 5% of it to get up to the 10, or maybe it's 8 and 2, or 3 and 7, or what may be. But the point is that basically, it's going to lead to higher prices on those products.

So in this particular situation, we're talking about higher prices for imported goods. And I think as we're all generally aware from our day-to-day shopping and if we ever look at the label of anything, we buy a lot of imported goods in the United States. So it's not unreasonable to think that raising taxes essentially on imported goods would ultimately boost the prices of those imported goods and then on average raise our cost of living at least somewhat.

Anna Helhoski:

Now, Trump claims that his tariffs would spur American manufacturing and domestic competition for production. Is that something that does happen or would likely happen as a result of tariffs?

Derek Stimel:

So it definitely can happen that there could be some... you know, businesses have to make the best decisions based on the rules of the game as they are. Raising tariffs would definitely change the rules and businesses would likely respond to that. And so to the extent that they could and that the U.S. was a major market to them, at least some businesses would try to reallocate or relocate back into the U.S. in order to avoid this tariff, basically. But I think the question is: Would that be enough to counterbalance the effect of this higher tax across the board? I don't have hard data on it, but the likely answer is it wouldn't be enough. So we would still see higher prices as a result, and so we would have to deal with the consequences. But there could be some reallocation or relocation of businesses for sure.

Anna Helhoski:

Another promise Trump has made is to lower gas prices. Under his first administration, he increased oil production and then Biden went further still. So how much can a president impact gas prices?

Derek Stimel:

The gas market or the market for energy more broadly defined is very much a global market, but the U.S. is in a way in a unique position of being the center of that global market. You hear a lot about that the U.S. dollar is this global reserve currency. Oil for example is usually traded in dollars and that sort of thing. So we do have a little bit more power than some other countries. The answer would be maybe a bit different if it was us talking about Canada doing something or whatever. It is also probably true that gas prices or prices of energy in general are really often driven by these global shocks. So in this particular case, the disruptions that took place due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine are really the prime mover probably of energy prices in the recent years. And it's not clear that any president would be able to have done something about that directly. Obviously, it's more of a geopolitical thing than an economic policy thing.

Anna Helhoski:

Switching gears again, I'm hoping you can talk a little about the connection between immigration and the prices that consumers pay for certain everyday goods and services. And note for listeners, as you may know, Trump has promised to use law enforcement and the National Guard to deport many millions of undocumented immigrants. Beyond the humanitarian implications and the logistical questions raised by this proposal, what are some of the economic implications?

Derek Stimel:

Kind of a classic way of thinking about it economically, especially when we're talking about things like inflation, is that we think that business costs basically would drive a lot of inflation, or at least it could be a prime driver of inflation. And inside those business costs, labor costs are often a large portion of those costs. And of course, that has to do a lot with the supply of labor that's available relative to the demand for that labor. And so we live in an aging society, the baby boomers are basically retiring. And of course, this is reducing our labor supply or at least likely to reduce our labor supply in the coming years. So what that would mean economically is that would tend to push up wages all else the same, which of course then could also push up prices. Businesses, when they face these increased labor costs, have to make a choice about how much to pass on to customers in terms of higher prices.

So with that all in mind, if you also cut off the amount of immigration into the economy, you would think that that's likely to put further pressure on wages in the economy. It's going to further, in a sense, reduce or at least not provide any extra slack for the supply of labor, and so that's going to further push up wages and further push up prices overall. That's not to say we shouldn't think about reforming immigration in some way, shape, or form, but that's just to say economically that if you reduce the supply of labor, the price of that labor, the wages, and all the other forms of compensation that come with it is going to go up and businesses are going to pass at least some of that on to customers in the form of higher prices.

Anna Helhoski:

And are there any specific areas of the economy that could be altered if you deport millions of people who were already in the workforce?

Derek Stimel:

There's the initial disruption, uncertainty that would surround it, which could shake out in all sorts of ways, many of which are probably not positive. Imagine the local restaurant down the street suddenly loses half its staff. And what are they going to do? So we would expect a lot of service sector jobs to maybe be impacted by these sorts of things, a lot of things that we interact with daily. And then there's also this issue about if you create shortages in one area, let's say you create a shortage in one service sector, it could spill over to other unrelated service sectors as well. Maybe now the one sector has to basically go poach employees from the other one. And so maybe it starts to spill over into other areas where you wouldn't think of, say, quote, unquote, "illegal immigrants" basically playing a role, but it actually could have this cascade to other markets.

Anna Helhoski:

More of our interview in a moment. Stay with us. I want to talk about Donald Trump's proposal to weaken the power of the Federal Reserve by bringing the central bank under more direct control of the president. And listeners, we've said it before, but the Federal Reserve is nonpartisan and operates independently. That means that the president doesn't tell the Fed what to do and the Fed doesn't make its decisions based on politics. Derek, it seems like the separation is pretty crucial to ensuring public trust in the central bank's ability to make decisions. But if Trump was successful in his plans to more directly influence the Fed's activities, what are some of those economic implications?

Derek Stimel:

Stepping back for a second, we generally think that the Fed's main role is to keep inflation, especially over the longer term, relatively low and stable. And one element that tends to be critical to that is their basically credibility to commit to that policy of keeping inflation low and doing what it takes. None of us liked in the recent years the interest rates going up, but it's seen as this necessary thing to do to bring inflation back down to that longer-term goal. And so the concern basically is that a lot of that comes from the fact that the Fed is independent to some degree from the rest of the government. It's important to understand that they're not completely independent. The president plays a role in nominating people to serve in the Fed. Congress obviously has to approve these things. But this general separation of like, oh, you can't tell us when to change interest rates or you can't tell us we can't do this policy and we have to do some other policy or whatever, that tends to be important as this inflation fighter credibility that the Fed has.

If that gets eroded, I think the concern would be basically that people in the economy start to not believe in the Fed as much as an inflation fighter. That lack of credibility starts to make people think, "Well, they say they want 2% inflation, but given that they're tied to the rest of the government, I think it's maybe going to be more like two and a half, 3%." So expectations start to tick up on inflation. And one thing about inflation is that expectations really play an important role and they tend to be self-fulfilling. We all expect five, we'll get five. And so basically the Fed's independence is one of... There's some others of course, but it's one of the main things that's tying down those expectations because it's helping the Fed maintain its credibility to be there when we need them to fight inflation.

Anna Helhoski:

Well, those are the main things I want to talk about in terms of Donald Trump, but I want to switch gears and talk about Vice President Kamala Harris's plans to battle inflation. She recently unveiled a plan to ban price gouging. So first off, what is price gouging and how have we seen it happen?

Derek Stimel:

So in economics, price gouging doesn't really have a specific definition, to be honest with you, but the loose idea is that it's taking, quote, unquote, for lack of a better term, "unfair advantage of a situation in order to raise prices." Sometimes these situations are obvious, which are... There's an earthquake that happens, let's say, so suddenly the price of gas and water in the surrounding area is going to skyrocket. That kind of idea of taking advantage of other people's misery and something that was really out of their control, a natural disaster, that's really what we see as price gouging. So in this particular context, what we're talking about with Vice President Harris is this view where, say, for example, grocery stores taking advantage of the circumstances to basically raise prices on their products in an unfair way. But it's a bit nebulous once you start to get away from things that I think we all would agree are clearly things out of our control, like natural disasters.

Anna Helhoski:

And is there anything already in place to prevent price gouging?

Derek Stimel:

So states generally have laws that prevent price gouging in the situations we're talking about like natural disasters, so hurricanes and floods and earthquakes, and so forth. What Vice President Harris is really talking about is basically a federal ban across the board on all forms of price gouging. At least that's what I understand it to be. And we don't have that. It's not really clear what the criteria would be for that as well. So for example, if a company raises prices on its products by 5%, how do we decide if that's just normal market forces or is it price gouging in some ways? In other words, how do we decide the fairness of it all? Generally speaking, in our economy, we let the markets work that out, and then everybody individually makes a decision about, nope, that's too expensive, I'm not going to buy it, or I guess I'm willing to pay that price, that kind of thing.

Anna Helhoski:

So some critics of Harris's proposal, including Donald Trump have said that this is a price control. So what is a price control? Why don't economists like price controls and would Harris's proposal to ban price gouging actually be a price control?

Derek Stimel:

Basically, a price control is essentially the government setting a maximum price in a marketplace. So sort of saying, "Hey, you can charge no more than X for this product." And of course, we have price controls in the economy. The ones that people typically talk about classically are certain cities that have rent control. What people are basically saying is that this price gouging idea would in a way limit how much businesses can raise prices. And that would in a way be similar to what happens in a price control situation where the government often does cap how much a business can raise prices.

The good and bad of economics a lot of times is that there's tradeoffs for everything. Concern would be basically that maybe grocery stores, because that's the one that's been central to all this argument, has really been the price of food, is that basically, maybe you wouldn't see as many new grocery stores opening up, or at least in a lower frequency. Maybe you would start to see the quality of what's on the shelves in the grocery stores start to decline a little bit. So on the one hand, you get the prices of the things you buy don't go up as much maybe, but on the other hand, there's less of them available and at least for some of them, maybe the quality of those products might go down a little bit.

Anna Helhoski:

So beyond preventing price gouging, Harris has also vowed to lower prescription drug prices and she wants to do this with price caps by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices, speeding up delivery of generic drugs, and cracking down on big pharma. So how impactful could some of these efforts be in terms of making prescription drug prices more affordable?

Derek Stimel:

Oh, it could. Not surprisingly, the federal government via Medicare is a huge consumer in this marketplace, which basically means they have a lot of power, market power we would call. In this particular case, the technical term is monopsony power. But basically, yeah, they would have a lot of power potentially to negotiate and there would be spillover effects for people who don't have Medicare. In terms of being able to lower, say, prescription drug prices by allowing Medicare to do this giant negotiation basically with the big pharma companies, that honestly could have a big impact on those prices for sure, because Medicare is so huge.

Anna Helhoski:

Right. And you touched on housing earlier, but let's talk a little bit about Harris's big proposals with her plans to make housing more affordable. One that really stuck out to me is a plan to prevent corporate landlords from using price-fixing algorithms.

Derek Stimel:

This is a brave new world that we're in, and there's a lot of times where regulation is behind the technology, where basically a lot of these businesses... And it's of course not just in real estate, it's in a lot of other areas as well, in finance in particular, where they basically use these computerized algorithms to essentially search for the deals that they want to transact. Is it price-fixing or is it the fact that all of these algorithms basically tend to point in the same direction because they often use the same data in order to churn through all their calculations? It's not clear to me, I guess, how that might be enacted and then also what the implications would be.

Anna Helhoski:

And Harris said she would support construction of 3 million new housing units in the next four years, among other plans. And fundamentally, in order to lower housing prices or rent or the supply of homes for purchase, we just need more housing. So could Harris's proposals spur more construction? And also what can a president do to facilitate housing growth?

Derek Stimel:

So much of this is local. I mean, so much of this is red tape based on local housing boards and all these other types of things, the “not in my backyard” kind of stuff. And so it's not really clear what anybody at a national level could really do about that kind of stuff because so much of it is all of the local political machines and so forth that basically drive all these policies. As a general idea, I think the basic point that, yes, the way you have to basically lower housing prices or at least keep them from going up as much is to supply more housing, is definitely the answer. Because the housing market in a sense is unique compared to other markets, in that the supply is basically fixed by the number of units and very, what we would say in economics, inelastic. You're not going to really get around that unless you just simply build more.

Anna Helhoski:

Derek, are there any other proposals from either of the candidates that we're overlooking that could contribute to lowering prices or to increasing inflation?

Derek Stimel:

I think the last thing I would mention, I guess. I know President Trump wants to increase the domestic production of natural gas and coal and all that sort of thing. And I do find it interesting that both Vice President Harris and President Trump have focused on these areas of inflation. In the case of former President Trump, it's energy costs, and in the case of Vice President Harris, it's basically food costs. And these are the things that are specifically excluded by the Fed when they're looking at the longer-term measures of inflation. So I just find it interesting that both presidential candidates have focused on these highly volatile markets, which we often think they really can't do that much about, and that are often driven by these global forces, basically. But both of them have focused on those as their avenues to bringing inflation down.

I think the very last thing I might add in, which is probably too big to really get into, is the extent that the deficit and the national debt might play in terms of inflation in other parts of the economy, especially going forward as it's ballooned a lot. There are some theories out there, for example, that it does play a role in inflation and to the extent that the policies of the two candidates might add to the deficit, and of course, then by extension add to the debt. That could be in a way a hidden inflation factor that we tend to not focus so much on.

Anna Helhoski:

And one we’ll probably pay for in the future.

Derek Stimel:

Yeah, somebody will eventually.

Anna Helhoski:

Derek Stimel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Derek Stimel:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Anna Helhoski:

Sean, there's something else I want to point out that I didn't get to in my conversation with Derek, but came from researching an article on this topic, and that's price tolerance. Right now, people are still pretty price intolerant because so much is elevated from where we remember it being. But if prices actually did drop across the board, it would be a big problem. Economy-wide price drops really only happen when there's a big recession. And I think Trump and Harris's campaigns both know this. They can't bring back pre-pandemic prices, so what they can do strategically is make promises that are most relevant to people.

Sean Pyles:

Right. And last week we talked about how one individual president can't really transform the economy on their own. But your conversation with Derek Stimel illustrates how a president's priorities can make a bigger impact on an issue-by-issue basis. Former President Trump is focused on lowering the price of gas. Vice President Harris wants to make housing more affordable. And we saw how President Biden was able to push for lower prices on certain drugs like insulin. Although we should note, of course, that Biden wasn't able to do that without the help of Congress.

Anna Helhoski:

So Sean, one other thing. Maybe it's obvious but it's worth saying, is that while we have pointed to a lot of ways in which a president cannot really control things like pricing, the president is also the leader of his or her respective political party, and that often means that the party and its political leaders will coalesce around these policies, making them more viable.

Sean Pyles:

Yep. We've mentioned that the president often has to work with Congress to get bills passed that can fulfill their promises. And members of their party, while they don't necessarily march in lockstep, they will frequently work with that president to pursue his or her economic agenda. So no, the president can't wave a magic wand, but if their party also has control in Congress, that makes a world of difference in the ability to make those goals happen.

Anna Helhoski:

And that's a case for making sure you're paying attention to what candidates are saying up and down the ballot. The presidential candidates aren't the only ones to make a difference. Do some research on your congressional candidates, and for that matter, city council and school district, because they all touch public money and that's your money. It always helps to educate yourself on how they plan to spend it. You can find the latest money news updates in NerdWallet's financial news hub, which we'll link to in the show notes, or just search online for NerdWallet financial news.

Sean Pyles:

So Anna, tell us what's coming up in episode three of the series.

Anna Helhoski:

Well, Sean, next time we're using a word nobody likes but matters a lot to your finances: taxes. We'll hear what the current candidates for the highest office in the land want to do with the money that comes out of your paycheck.

Amy Hanauer:

Two-thirds of the cost of making those individual tax cuts permanent would go to the richest fifth of Americans. So to the richest 20% of Americans. So just for a sense of what that will cost, in 2026 alone, that will cost more than $280 billion.

Anna Helhoski:

For now, that's all we have for this episode. Do you have a money question of your own? Turn to the Nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-N-E-R-D. You can also email us at [email protected]. And remember, you can follow the show on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes.

Sean Pyles:

This episode was produced by Tess Vigeland and Anna. I helped with editing. Rick VanderKnyff and Amanda Derengowski helped with fact-checking. Megan Maurer mixed our audio. And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all their help.

Anna Helhoski:

And here's our brief disclaimer. We are not financial or investment advisors. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances.

Sean Pyles: