Is America in the grip of Empty Shelves panic?

The morning of President Trump’s 100th day in office brought fresh tariff melodrama with the coffee, eggs and toast, as a report emerged suggesting Amazon was considering listing the exact cost of a US tariff surcharge next to all goods purchased on the site. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately snarled from the podium that this was a “hostile and political act,” though it was really neither hostile nor political. Regardless, Amazon immediately rolled it back, claiming the story had been misreported by Punchbowl News. 

“The team that runs our ultra low-cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products,” a spokesman said. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.” 

OK, crisis averted. Everyone take three deep breaths and fold back into child’s pose. But Tuesday’s historical footnote was also instructive. It shows how on-edge people are about the tariffs – specifically, about how much Things Will Cost once full implementation takes hold.  

Fears are being mongered online, raising the spooky prospect of Empty Shelves returning to American shores. We’re all still suffering from the residual trauma of the first two weeks of Covid, when supply chains frayed and it was suddenly hard to find toilet paper and other basic goods, until capitalism found its equilibrium and we all settled into a cozy routine of panicked lockdown. Now, that bell has struck again, or so we hear. Empty Shelves are about to return.  

The exact moment that our shelves will empty remains unclear. Tweet after tweet says “people have no idea what’s about to hit them,” carrying with it a spirit of vengeance against the MAGA voters who have forced us to contend with the Donald for the next (and possibly last) four years of our lives. But what’s going to hit, exactly, and when?  

According to liberalish economic pundit Noah Smith, who remembers reading about the tariffs “just 26 days ago, sitting at the kitchen table in an Airbnb in downtown Tokyo, getting ready to go to a book event,” the pain will start in a few weeks, possibly in two months. Andrew Yang says it will be five weeks. The estimates are all over the place. I got very upset reading one tweet from some random guy which went viral a couple of days ago in which he said the tariff “pain” would begin in seven to ten days. He encouraged people to quickly splash on a “year’s worth of electronics and appliances,” whatever that means, and to stockpile 100-pound bags of rice because forced government starvation was coming.  

While that seems a bit doomsday-prepper extreme – even insane – it’s not that far off from what we’re seeing from more sensible sources. The tariffs have turned us all into wing-flapping Chicken Littles. Here is normally sensible Bloomberg Opinion columnist Conor Sen, being extremely unhelpful on X: 

There’s probably going to be some key item with relatively inelastic demand that we run out of that creates political pain well before the general lack of stuff on shelves leads to GDP-style problems. 

There you have it again, the looming specter of Empty Shelves. We will know the Shelves Are Soon To Empty when we run out of backyard barbecue grills or pool floaties. After that will come bread lines and SIM card rationing.  

Empty Shelf panic shows no signs of abating. National Review contributor Jeff Blehar joined the prophecy parade by tweeting “my feeling is that Trump’s presidency is over if/once shortages hit.” There is no “if”, Jeff, only “once!” He added, in a spirit of vengeance, “Americans can tell themselves any story they want right now, but if store shelves start going bare voters will rebel.”  

A New York Times story invoked the most fearsome Empty Shelves of all: Empty Christmas Shelves. Factories in China, it said, produce almost everything that people buy for Christmas. The head of the American Toy Association said, “We have a frozen supply chain that is putting Christmas at risk.” A Los Angeles man who makes his living selling $1,000 fake trees from China says, “There won’t be a Christmas industry here.” The story neglected to quote an Ohio boy named Ralphie, who’s worried he won’t get his “Official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time,” but the gist is clear. The tariffs are going to bring us a year without a Santa Claus, and Trump is a Grinch and a meanie. Trump even confirmed that he was willing to steal Christmas during Wednesday’s cabinet meeting when he said, speaking to a potential toy shortage, “Somebody said the shelves will be open. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30. Maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.” You’re a fine one, Mr. President. 

The first sign of Empty Shelves, according to Empty Shelvers, is Empty Ports. Liberal Fox pundit Jessica Tarlov, riding shotgun on the panic at midnight, linked to a Seattle Times article headlined, “Empty port in Seattle raises concerns of empty shelves in coming weeks.” She wrote, “And so it begins?” Yes, Ms. Tarlov, evil President Thanos snapped his fingers, and now half the stuff on our Shelves have vanished.  

A TikTok from some Sarah Paulson-looking lady with a bad case of vocal fry consumed my feed, warning us that the Ports are Empty, soon the Shelves will be Empty, and we will all starve. It serves us right for voting for Trump, she implies even if we didn’t. Soon, we’ll all know what it means to truly suffer.  

As always when the online heat gets too hot, I actually ventured out into the real world to see if the shelves still stood. I went to Costco to cheaply gas up the car and to pick up a few bulky items. Predictably, the store was packed, the shelves were full, and the most ethnically diverse array of people you’ll see this side of a street-food carnival was buying whatever they wanted. 

Mind you, a trip to a quasi-urban Costco might not be the best indicator of Empty Shelves. Anyone who has a Costco membership is at least a modest winner in the life lottery. The company tends to shield its customers from pain with $5 preservative-filled rotisserie chickens and $1.50 hotdogs. And maybe two months from now, it will be different; prices could double, and the shelves could empty. But there were so many people, so many shelves, so much stuff.  

In the checkout line, I noticed that a woman in front of me had a 50-pound bag of rice in her car. Those rice bags fly out of Costco faster than Monster energy drinks at a 7/11. I asked a bold, Thomas Friedman-style question: “Did you buy that big bag of rice because you’re afraid of the tariffs?” 

“Well,” she said. “I don’t like the tariffs. But I also have seven grandchildren.”  

There you have it. This is America, a bottomless pit of consumerist energy. Everyone: freaking chill. As FDR once said, the only thing we have to fear is Empty Shelves.