Mr. Tariff’s eponymous policy is causing Americans more harm than good.
Contrary to President Donald Trump’s favorite economic claim, U.S. import tariffs are almost exclusively paid for by Americans, new research has found.
The study, published on Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think-tank, reports that American consumers and importers bear 96 percent of the burden from Trump’s aggressive tariff policy.
Trump, 79, has spent the majority of his second term boasting that his tariffs are bringing in billions in revenue from other nations.
“The tariffs are an own goal,” Kiel Institute Research Director and a co-author of the study, Julian Hinz, said. “The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth. The data show the opposite: Americans are footing the bill.”
The research examined over 25 million shipment records for U.S. imports between January 2024 and November 2025, totaling nearly $4 trillion in value, and found that foreign exporters paid only about four percent of the tariff burden, while U.S. buyers absorbed the rest.
Instead of taxing foreign producers, the tariffs serve more as a domestic consumption tax, the report says, predicting that American consumers will face higher prices going forward.
The data showed that rather than countries reducing their prices to offset the tariffs, they reduced their shipping to the U.S.
“We compared Indian exports to the US with shipments to Europe and Canada and identified a clear pattern,” Hinz said. “Both export value and volume to the US dropped sharply, by up to 24 percent. But unit prices—the prices Indian exporters charged—remained unchanged. They shipped less, not cheaper.”
“Tariffs ultimately disadvantage everyone,” he added.
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai told the Daily Beast: “The average tariff imposed by America has increased by almost tenfold under President Trump, and inflation has continued to cool from Biden-era highs.”
“The Administration has consistently maintained that foreign exporters who depend on access to the American economy, the world’s biggest and best consumer market, will ultimately pay the cost of tariffs, and that’s exactly what’s playing out,” Desai said.
Trump’s obsession with tariffs has heightened global tensions throughout his second term, as his unpredictable threats and follow-through have led to volatile market conditions.
In a lengthy post to Truth Social on Saturday, the president threatened a 10 percent import tax against eight European nations that have opposed his takeover of Greenland, which would take effect on February 1.
“These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable,” Trump wrote. “Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question.”
The Supreme Court is set to rule on the legality of Trump’s global tariffs, to which Trump said the U.S. would be “SCREWED” if the court did not rule in his favor.
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