Kelsey Wilson, founder and CEO, BlackLines Financial, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss how consumers can best prepare for price changes caused by Trump's tariffs.
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00:00To your point, as a financial planner, you're saying we are in the midst of that turbulence right now.
00:05We are when the flight attendant or even the pilot gets on and says we're going through a rough patch right now.
00:13And if you're sitting there, I mean, where do you expect us to get into a soft landing?
00:19Because right now, when it comes to these tariffs, they're really in three camps.
00:22Everyone has that baseline tariff.
00:24In the other group, the reciprocal tariffs are paused, except for China.
00:30And then when it comes to China, there has been a tit-for-tat trade war, and that's ratcheted up to as high as 145%.
00:36So where do you expect the end result to be?
00:41Yeah, and then when it comes to that, that end result is really based upon that uncertainty.
00:45So it's going to take time for negotiations to happen and things to kind of land and really be in a place where we know what the landscape is going to be.
00:54And that's really where that uncertainty comes into is there is not really a solid answer of when that is going to be.
01:02But when it comes to that, we do know that each country, they want to get to a place of profitability.
01:09So they're both incentivized on all sides to try to get to a resolution to this as quickly as possible.
01:15So just based upon the fact that each side wants to come to the table, they want this to be resolved and want to be into a spot where they can profit in their business and the countries can thrive.
01:27I don't think it's going to take too long for them to come to a space so that way they can get back to the business as usual.
01:35Tariffs are expected largely to raise prices and inflation rates and shrink consumer spending and disposable income.
01:42What is your advice to people, maybe the average consumer or the average investor, to properly prepare for all of that?
01:51Yeah, I think it's just keeping an eye on what you may traditionally purchase and maybe looking into different alternatives or being open to that.
01:59And the reason why I say that is because as these tariffs start to happen, there are some places that consumers go to.
02:08Maybe they're purchasing certain materials for their home where those prices might go up in one at one company.
02:15But the other company may have figured out a way with the tariffs to be able to get a lower price somewhere else.
02:22So maybe you might have an affinity for one product, just keeping your eyes open for other products because that might shift that landscape where certain stuff that used to be higher might be cheaper and stuff that used to be cheaper might be higher.
02:37So just being open to looking at what you have in your cabinets and maybe what you have on your automatic purchases list and being open to essentially change that and seeing if there's something that might be a better fit for you financially based upon what you purchase on a regular basis.