Shoe Prices Dip in June but Tariff Pressures Could Lead to Increases Later This Year, FDRA and AAFA Say
Shoe prices were lower again in June as overall inflation climbed last month, according to the latest data from the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America (FDRA).
In June, retail footwear prices dipped 0.6 percent, the smallest decline in the last four months, the FDRA noted. This comes as prices were mixed across each target market last month. Men’s footwear prices grew 0.2 percent, the first increase also in four months. But, women’s and children’s shoe prices both declined 1.1 percent from the same time last year.
Gary Raines, chief economist at FDRA, told FN that last month’s declines “peg year-to-date footwear prices modestly lower from the same first half of last year.”
“But we note up the supply chain average duties per pair on footwear imports are surging,” Raines said. “These sharply higher duties soon may push the average landed cost of footwear imports sharply higher, which in turn may pressure retail footwear prices to climb later this year.”
Steve Lamar, president and chief executive officer of the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), added that “inflation continues to be on everybody’s minds, particularly with the high tariffs that have been imposed on all our supplier countries.”
“Today’s data suggest that these costs are beginning to work their way through supply chains as cost and price increases on other parts of the economy, just as we expect they will thread their way through our supply chains too,” Lamar said. “Our hope is that new deals, with permanent and manageable tariff levels and rules, can quickly be negotiated and announced so we can get ahead of these expected cost pressures.”
Last month’s drop in retail footwear prices also comes at the same time the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that overall inflation ticked higher in June.
The bureau’s latest Consumer Price Index (CPI), a broad measure of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, saw prices increase 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in June, after rising 0.1 percent in May. Prices were also up 2.7 percent over the last 12 months, after rising 2.4 percent the prior month.
Excluding volatile food and energy costs, the core CPI rose 0.2 percent in June and increased 2.9 percent over the same time last year.