Article Summary –
Heading into the back-to-school shopping season, prices for educational books and supplies have risen by 9% year over year as of May 2025, partly due to President Trump’s tariffs. While prices of sports equipment and furniture are also seeing increases, some categories remain insulated due to existing inventory and low baseline prices. The average U.S. tariff rate is now at its highest in over 90 years at 18%, leading to increased consumer spending by an estimated $2,400 annually, although the future remains uncertain due to fluctuating tariff policies.
As the back-to-school shopping season unfolds, parents may be relieved to know that President Donald Trump’s tariffs haven’t drastically affected the prices of most items yet. However, certain categories are already experiencing price hikes.
One such category is “educational books and supplies,” which includes elementary, high school, and college textbooks and reference books. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data indicates a 9% increase in prices year over year as of May 2025.
From lunch boxes to crayons to calculators, families are paying more for school supplies. School supply shopping will be 7.3 percent more expensive this year compared to last year, according to new analysis, with cost increases as high as 42.6 percent for items such as index cards (42.6 percent), notebooks (17.1 percent), binders (12.8 percent), and folders (12.7 percent).1 When asked if tariffs would lead to higher prices, Trump acknowledged they would—and suggested parents should simply buy fewer of the supplies their children need: “They can have five [pencils],” he said. As the CEO of Crayola—which produces all of its colored pencils in Brazil, on which Trump just raised tariffs to 50 percent—recently said, “There is no renewable forest in the United States, so I’m not going to put a plant in North Carolina and make colored pencils. There’s really nothing we can do. It’s just additional cost for us.” (That additional cost, of course, will be paid by the consumer.) As families are paying the price for Trump’s reckless tariffs, his message to America’s school children couldn’t be clearer: don’t expect help, just expect less.
Trump’s spat with China in particular has driven up the costs of school supplies. China is the world’s largest exporter of plastic office and school supplies, and the United States is the largest importer of these goods. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, which act as a tax on American buyers, are 30 percentage points higher than at the start of the year—and Trump has threatened to revert to 145 percent if he fails to reach a deal with the Chinese government.
