“Everything is more expensive” is a feeling, not a shopping strategy. The 2026 increases are concentrated in identifiable categories, and knowing which ones is the difference between recognising a real discount and being pleased by a price that was normal two years ago.
Categories with documented tariff exposure
Board games and tabletop products. Tariffs on Chinese components reaching up to 145% cut publisher margins by 3–5 percentage points in early 2026, with about 23% of small US publishers indicating possible closure.
Building and renovation materials. Lumber, roofing materials and imported tile have seen significant increases; roofing tariffs range from 10% to 60%. Cabinets, steel and appliances also carry exposure.
In these categories, a sale price is more likely to be genuine relief, because retailers are discounting against a raised base rather than a promotional fiction.
Where the headline and the shelf disagree
Chocolate is the clearest example of a gap worth understanding.
Cocoa futures fell roughly 67% from their December 2024 peak, yet US chocolate prices in early 2026 were still running about 14.4% higher than a year earlier. The reason is multi-year hedging: manufacturers buy years ahead, so they were partly shielded on the way up and are locked in on the way down.
Practical implication: a chocolate discount now is a retailer promotion, not a pass-through of falling commodity prices. Those will arrive later, gradually.
Olive oil shows a similar pattern. Prices fell 12.09% in Greece between January and March 2026, but a bottle that cost €15 in 2020 is €40 today. A 12% cut off a nearly tripled price is real but modest.
How to judge a deal in 2026
Check whether the category is tariff-exposed. If it is, discounts are likely genuine because there is little margin to fake them with.
Distrust discounts on hedged commodities. Coffee, chocolate and cooking oils move on contracts signed long before the price you see.
Watch pack size. When input costs stay elevated, the common response is less product at the same price. Compare price per unit, not price per pack.
Time appliance purchases separately from projects. Appliances carry tariff exposure and go on sale predictably. There is rarely a reason to buy them on a contractor’s schedule.
Buy larger formats where storage allows. With olive oil, tins of three to five litres carry meaningfully lower per-litre cost — and store better than a clear bottle.
The general principle
Inflation is uneven. Treating it as a single number produces bad decisions in both directions: overpaying in categories that quietly stabilised, and delaying purchases in categories where prices are not coming back down.
The categories with structural cost increases are unlikely to return to 2020 levels. The ones with temporary spikes will ease — on a delay measured in quarters.
