The Trump administration has walked back tariffs on China, after businesses and consumers spent several months stocking up on goods to get ahead of higher prices. Those tariffs — and their potential price impacts — are now much lower than they were just a few days ago. But that doesn’t make consumer decisions all that much easier right now.

Here’s the conundrum for consumers: Is it worth it to buy a lot of something now, assuming that it will be more expensive or harder to find in the near future? 

For Yao Jin, an associate professor of supply chain management at Miami University, that something is a certain kind of black vinegar.  

“The vinegar that I bought is Chinkiang. It is a very traditional Chinese vinegar,” he said.

It’s imported. He uses it all the time. And Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese imports totaling 145%, so he bought three gallons of it last weekend.

“Which ironically, a week later, the tariffs got suspended. Yay!” he said.

So, maybe that purchase was a mistake. Or, maybe the price will go up again, and it’ll have been worth it.

That uncertainty is not going away, said Joanne Hsu, who heads the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey.

“I think that consumers are still going to feel like tariff policy is still volatile. They're not going to feel resolution,” she said.

Because the latest tariff pause is supposed to last 90 days. And just a month ago, the last time the Trump administration put a 90-day pause on a different set of tariffs, Hsu’s survey didn’t show any increase in optimism.

“Consumers really are continuing to wait for the other shoe to drop,” she said.

Which could lead to a downturn in consumer spending. But so far, we haven’t really seen that play out, said Ted Rossman at Bankrate.

“People are still going out to eat. A lot of retailers have posted surprisingly strong results lately. The big question has been, will that last?” said Rossman.

And will consumers who did stock up rethink those choices?

“A lot of consumers might be thinking, ‘Maybe I should return some of the stuff that I hoarded, because now I have another 90 days to remake the same decision,’” said Yao Jin at Miami University.

But he’ll be holding on to his three gallons of black vinegar, he said. Because it actually gets better as it ages.