What affects consumer prices?

In our economy, there is a “balancing act” found within projected, planned and/or implemented wholesale-retail cost increases. Just as there is a “balancing act” with tariffs.

Wholesale price increases, retail price increases and tariffs. Each being a conversation piece relevant to how price increases could/will affect consumer demand. Since as prices increase, consumer demand may well in turn decrease. Yet companies reducing prices at the retail level in order to increase demand – if demand had indeed diminished – can be made all the more difficult in an era of higher-than-planned-for rising wholesale prices. As would be reflected through an increasing – or in a stubbornly consistent higher-than-planned-for – Producer Price Index.