145% tariffs: a three-tier SKU playbook for sellers exposed to China supply
Amazon's CEO just confirmed tariffs are flowing into shelf prices. Blanket price hikes hurt volume. Sitting still drains margin. Retreating hands over share. The correct move is per-SKU tiering.
By WAYAMZ Team
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy publicly acknowledged it this week: tariffs are now flowing into product prices. Not a forecast — actually happening.
US tariffs on Chinese goods hit 145%. More than half of top Amazon sellers source from China. SmartScout’s tracker shows roughly a thousand ASINs raised prices in the second week of April alone, averaging a ~30% hike.
The three wrong moves
- Blanket price hike → volume and conversion both drop
- Do nothing → margin gets eaten
- Retreat → your shelf share moves to a competitor
Most accounts we’ve seen this month chose one of two failure modes: panic-raise everything, or wait-and-see. Both lose.
The right move: tier your SKUs into three buckets
Tier 1 — high-margin SKUs
Tariff absorbed and there’s still headroom. Hold price. Use these to pull traffic, defend rank, and pick up shelf share from sellers who are retreating.
Tier 2 — mid-margin SKUs
Margin is thinner after tariff but still positive. Raise price 5–10% and simultaneously tighten ad efficiency, cut wasted traffic, and defend the margin line.
Tier 3 — newly unprofitable SKUs
Tariff pushed unit economics underwater. Pause ads, clear inventory, stop the bleeding. Don’t let a loss-making product drag the entire account’s cash flow.
Three moves to make today
- Rebuild the SKU-level profit model. Put tariff cost in at the per-ASIN level using the actual applicable rate — not a category average. Category averages hide which SKUs are drowning.
- Watch competitor pricing. Your competitors are raising or retreating too. When they retreat, their shelf slots open. When they raise clumsily, you take their traffic.
- Start evaluating supply-chain diversification. If you’re 100% dependent on China sourcing right now, quietly start working Vietnam, India, and Mexico options. It’s not too early; it’s barely in time.
Last line
Tariffs are structural. They don’t pass by being patient. The last wave of “let’s wait and see” sellers waited three months, watched margin go to zero, and ended up with inventory sitting in a warehouse.
Start now. Run the math, then decide.