US consumers rush to buy big-ticket items before Trump's tariffs kick in

They know what we know, which is suddenly it flips from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market very quickly,

Blackwell said, adding

Ed, I need a car pronto and it’s got to happen by Sunday.”

On March 27, a Thursday, he told his firm’s car broker

One of the things my car broker said was that deals that were already written, some of the dealerships were ripping them up already and renegotiating them because they were afraid that they weren’t going to be able to get enough new inventory at a price anybody would buy,

he said

If you need a new car, if you can get that pre-tariff deal still, you should go get it, ... because who knows what next Wednesday might be like.”

he said

I have been telling my wife that for some time we were going to need to do it, ... and I was watching to see what the president did with tariffs.”

he said

I thought I’d bite the bullet, buy it now, and then that way I’ll have the latest technology on my laptop and don’t have to worry about the tariffs,

he said

I feel wrong raising prices when I work so hard to keep them down [or] lower, ... It feels like I should take on the burden as 'the cost of doing business,' but some items, I just simply don't have the margins to do that for. I'm also afraid that for wholesale companies we buy from, they'll raise prices to cover these extra fees, but the prices will never go back down after the tariffs are removed."

LeRay says, adding

These [tariffs] can't stay forever,

she says

We’ll try to take the brunt of it at first and see how that goes. If it gets to 50% then we’ll see. We’re not really sure if the manufacturers themselves will try to do something and so everybody takes a bit of the hit.”

At Village Apothecary, on Bleecker Street, owner John Kaliabakos said

I get that, ... But the implementation – the ways he’s gone about it – is just awful. I’m definitely worried about a recession, and people spending less.”

said Pulidore’s

I was a bit apprehensive, but he just asked me to pronounce my name, so it was all good,

Copeland said

Our Easter order was over £7,000 [$9,100] more compared to last year and we didn’t grossly increase the quantities,

Pulidore said

The price of chocolate has gone up astronomically,

she said

The main feeling is that [Trump] is completely bonkers,

he said

If applied, the new tariffs could spell the end of Vietnam coffee in the U.S. as it would create significant price gaps with competing robusta origins - a massive 36-percentage-point difference (~$1,944/ton) compared with Brazil,

said a dealer

Following this 'liberation', many trade flows from the most affected producers will now enter a labyrinth in order to find demand in other countries,

said Rabobank in a report that warned the new demand will come 'at an efficiency cost'

It’s just not an industry that is built to be able to manage through a tariff of that magnitude,

Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of the association, told CNN

There's no place for it to go, but to the consumer,

Ahearn said,

You could have anywhere from 35% to potentially even a point-for-point price increase on products depending upon what margin those products run at,

The Toy Association's Ahearn said

Everyone is really in scramble mode,

Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of The Toy Association, told CNBC