I’m a Boomer: The 6 Impacts of Tariff Uncertainty on My Retirement

Jordan Rosenfeld

Sat, Apr 12, 2025, 9:00 AM 5 min read

The uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s increased tariffs on many American trading partners has caused volatility in the U.S. and global stock markets. While the impacts of tariffs will affect every American, retirees are the most immediately affected, especially those who currently draw their income from the retirement accounts that have been significantly affected by recent tariff-related stock market dips.

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Rod Pintello, age 79, a retired former director of materials in hospitals who is based in California, has watched his retirement accounts lose around $14,000 in just the past couple of weeks alone.

Pintello considers himself and his wife among the luckier of retired people — they both have pensions from their former jobs, withdraw a monthly sum from their 401(k) and receive the maximum they’re eligible for from Social Security. Yet he finds himself “nervous” about the future of his retirement accounts, which not only support him and his wife’s retirement, but are intended to be passed on to their adult children.

This isn’t the first time Pintello has seen a sharp drop in his 401(k) related to government policies, either. “Unfortunately, during the first Trump administration, [my 401(k)] dropped about 30% during the first six months he became president. It took all this time to claw its way back up to the top again to where it was, but now [Trump’s] doing it with the tariffs…”

He credited former President Joe Biden’s administration with bringing his retirement accounts back up to normal.

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Pintello is concerned enough about future drops in his 401(k) that he’s considered more drastic moves with his retirement funds if the market continues to wobble.

“I’ve done all the math. If right now I took the full payment of my 401(k) and and paid the taxes on it, then I could put it in CDs and get enough money in there so that I wouldn’t lose anything. I also wouldn’t gain.”

It’s not the move he wants to make, but it’s hard to know what the future will bring. “We’ve held our breaths and just lived through the failures like this over the years, and then I have to wait for another administration to come in to build it back up. And they do.”

Fears of even higher costs of living as a result of tariffs have Pintello and his wife doing something he never thought “at this late age” that he would be doing: “stockpiling stuff.”