By SIDDHARTH CAVALE Reuters
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SECAUCUS, New Jersey — Pushing a shopping cart down the aisle of a Walmart Supercenter, Thomas Jennings, 53, loaded up on juices, condiments and whatever he could think of.

“I’m buying double of whatever – beans, canned goods, flour, you name it,” he said. His strategy is to stock up as much as possible before the Trump administration’s latest round of import tariffs takes effect on Wednesday.

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Earlier at Costco, Jennings bought flour, sugar and water in bulk. “There’s a recession coming and I am preparing for the worst,” he said.

Like a growing number of U.S. shoppers, Jennings believes retail prices will soon rise because of Trump’s tariffs.

The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group, said 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.

Even as many shoppers take a wait-and-see approach, some fear that any panic would trigger a stockpiling frenzy that intensifies on expectations of even worse inflation, they told Reuters.

Manish Kapoor, founder of GCG, a supply chain management firm outside Los Angeles, said the tariffs are reawakening fears of empty store shelves encountered during the pandemic, when supply chain disruptions led to product shortages and inflation.

“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.

“It’s not to that level, but people are worried that the cost (of goods) is going to go up and, you know, let’s stock up.”

Walmart and Costco did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Angelo Barrio, 55, a retired garment industry professional, said Trump’s tactics of “muddying the water and causing chaos” have worried him and his friends about the economy’s direction.

Barrio began buying goods with long shelf lives in November as he feared retailers would pass on tariff costs to their customers.

At Costco this week, he stocked up on Crest toothpaste, soap, water and rice to fill six canisters already stuffed with canned goods in his temperature-controlled basement.

At Walmart, he grabbed two more bottles of olive oil, bringing his total stockpile to 20 bottles. “You can never be sure how much you’ll need,” he said.

Barrio is sympathetic towards China, which Trump threatened on Monday with an additional 50% tariff if Beijing does not withdraw its retaliatory tariffs on the United States.