AILSA CHANG, HOST:
So how much have the prices in your shopping cart changed in the past year? Well, NPR has been doing a reality check on this. In fact, for several years now, we have tracked the cost of dozens of items at the same Walmart in Georgia. We do this every single December. NPR's Alina Selyukh is here now fresh from this huge shopping trip. Hi, Alina.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Hello, hello.
CHANG: Hello, hello. OK, so what was on your shopping list? And how exactly did those prices change?
SELYUKH: This year's list was 114 items.
CHANG: Ooh.
SELYUKH: That's everything from Kleenex and Band-Aids to Coca-Cola and Campbell's soup. People can see all of our work at npr.org/shoppingcart. Putting that plug there.
CHANG: (Laughter).
SELYUKH: The big takeaway is that about half of the items got more expensive in the past year.
CHANG: Surprise, surprise.
SELYUKH: That's more than double the share of items from the year before. And the average price increase was about 5%.
CHANG: Wow. OK, so what do we know about why prices went up?
SELYUKH: Some of the biggest culprits had to do with climate events, like droughts and floods. Specifically, I'm thinking coffee, beef, chocolates. They're all dealing with shortages caused largely by weather. Though, there's one other factor, which is tariffs. They've raised the cost of imports last year.
CHANG: Of course. OK, so how did tariffs affect the price on the store shelves?
SELYUKH: It's hard to pin any price increase on one thing specifically. But many imported items saw some of the biggest price jumps, especially stuff from China and Vietnam. Like, paper folders made in China, they cost only about 50 cents. But that's a price increase of 46% in one year. I did reach out to every company whose items got more expensive and most of them did not respond. But of those that did, several mentioned tariffs as a factor. For example, Dole says its pineapple chunks use fruit from Southeast Asia - affected by bad weather and tariffs. Or Reynolds says its foil is affected by rising costs in the aluminum market, including tariffs.
CHANG: OK, rising costs for them. But in the end, shoppers are the ones feeling it, right? Like, affordability, I feel like that was the word of the year...
SELYUKH: Yeah.
CHANG: ...Last year.
SELYUKH: Definitely. I talked to Greg Reyes outside of this Walmart. He was a shopper loading groceries into his car. And he said his usual receipt had gone from $40 to $60 in about a year, and he can't afford it to keep rising. So I asked this.
So what gives? What else do you not spend on now?
GREG REYES: Like, ice cream. We don't buy ice cream no more, because it's expensive, or even get a hamburger from McDonald's or something like that. We don't get it anymore.
SELYUKH: And Walmart certainly knows people are watching their budgets more, which is why the company told me it's focused on keeping the cost of its goods overall as cheap as possible. Walmart absorbed a lot of the tariff costs. It pushed suppliers to do the same. And I definitely noticed on this visit the store was offering a lot more discounts than in years past.
CHANG: Discounts. OK, we're getting to some good news in this conversation now.
SELYUKH: Yes. (Laughter) Yes. The headline on that is eggs are finally cheaper by 30%.
CHANG: Oh, wow.
SELYUKH: We got a break from the persistent bird flu. Butter is also cheaper, and milk. And prices finally stopped rising on a lot of the packaged goods after years of price jumps on things like chips and cereals. This time, they stayed the same. And Cheerios actually got cheaper by 19%. We've started hearing from companies like General Mills, which makes Cheerios, and PepsiCo, which makes a ton of different chips, that they are actually working on lowering prices. That's pretty rare. And it seems to be a clear response to shoppers switching to store brands or just skipping their snacks to save money.
CHANG: Never skip snacks.
SELYUKH: (Laughter).
CHANG: OK, before I let you go, was there anything that surprised you during your shopping trip?
SELYUKH: I think I have to mention shrinkflation. That's when companies shrink the package without raising the price. And this year's one case of shrinkflation was Tide laundry detergent. So this one jug of original Tide stayed the same price in the past three years. But it shrank from 92 ounces to 84 ounces, and last year again to 80 ounces. But Procter & Gamble, which makes Tide, told me this was the result of, quote, "the most significant upgrade to its liquid formula in over 20 years." Tide apparently got boosted with active ingredients, so you need a smaller amount per wash. Maybe check your dosage instructions on laundry detergent.
CHANG: I had no idea. I will check. That is NPR's Alina Selyukh. Thank you, Alina.
SELYUKH: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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