Nearly 90% of Trump's Tariff Costs Fell on Americans, Report Says

Tariffs are taxes. That sentence shouldn't need saying, but here we are.

Last Wednesday the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a study using eleven months of US Census trade data, and the conclusion was about as gentle as a brick through a window. American firms and consumers paid for nearly 90% of the tariffs imposed in 2025. Not foreign governments. Not Chinese exporters quietly eating the cost. Americans, at the checkout, paying more for sofas and nappies and dishware because their own government taxed the imports.

For January through August, the pass-through rate was 94%. It dipped to 86% by November. The researchers didn't mince it: 'US firms and consumers continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden.'

The maths is grim. A 10% tariff prompted foreign exporters to lower their prices by just 0.6%. The rest landed on American wallets.

A Thousand Dollars You Didn't Notice

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimated the tariffs cost the average US household about $1,000 last year. That figure is projected to hit $1,300 in 2026 — enough, as the Foundation's Erica York told Fortune, to wipe out the benefit of the administration's own tax cut. Give with one hand, take with the other.

But nobody got a bill marked 'tariff'. That's how this works. The sofa is dearer. The plates cost more. Electronics creep upward. You feel poorer and can't quite say why — which is precisely the kind of pain politicians are counting on you not pinning on them.

Living room and dining furniture rose 9.5% in a year, BLS data showed. Procter & Gamble hiked nappy and skincare prices in July. General Motors took a $1.1bn profit hit. Walmart warned customers to brace. Trump told Walmart to 'EAT THE TARIFFS' on Truth Social.

They did not eat the tariffs.

The White House Says Otherwise

The administration doesn't accept this. Trump wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on 30 January that the burden had 'fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen'. Spokesperson Kush Desai insisted inflation had cooled and profits risen under the tariff regime.

There is a sliver of truth in that — January 2026's CPI came in at 2.4%, and the economy grew 3.7% in Q4. But tariff-sensitive goods are running well above the headline. The Kiel Institute calculated 96% of the burden fell on American buyers. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper estimated tariffs added 0.7 percentage points to inflation — modest-sounding until you remember the Fed spent most of 2025 trying to squeeze out exactly that amount.

Growth and harm aren't mutually exclusive, mind you. The economy can expand while lower-income households quietly absorb a cost they did not vote for. York put it plainly on X: 'Lower-income filers are, on average, worse off under the combined effect of the tariffs and tax cuts in 2025.'

36 Hours

The New York Fed published at 10am on Wednesday 12 February. By Thursday evening, six House Republicans had crossed the floor to vote against Trump's Canada tariffs. The measure won't become law — Trump would veto it — but the crack was real enough to draw a threat: 'Any Republican that votes against TARIFFS will seriously suffer the consequences come Election time!'

Whether that rebellion grows depends on how soon $1,300 per household stops being an abstraction and becomes a kitchen-table row. The Supreme Court is expected to rule shortly on whether the president even has the authority to impose these levies. The current average tariff rate — 16.9% — is the highest since 1932.

The study came out on a Wednesday. The revolt started on a Thursday. Draw your own conclusions.