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American importers and consumers bear the cost of 2025 tariffs: analysis
- SoftTalker 9mo agoThis is the case with any tax, it's mostly paid by the consumer.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> This is the case with any tax, it's mostly paid by the consumer Not true. Tax burdens can fall incredibly unequally depending on market dynamics.
- rmu09 9mo agoWho else is paying the taxes if not the customer? Who else is paying anything if not the customer in the end?
- JumpCrisscross 9mo agoWikipedia article would be a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
- ungreased0675 9mo ago> Event studies around discrete tariff shocks on Brazil (50%) and India (25–50%) confirm: export prices did not decline. Trade volumes collapsed instead. What if that was the intended result?
- philk10 9mo agoyour question implies that the person in charge of tariffs has any idea of the effect of using them...
- nozzlegear 9mo agoBob Woodward's book Fear: Trump in the White House made it pretty clear that Trump (in his first term) either did not understand how trade works between countries or did not care. At the time he was singularly focused on "trade deficits," especially the one between the US and South Korea, because on paper it seemed like the US was "losing" or "being taken advantage of" by South Korea. That was all he cared about, reducing that trade deficit so the US came out on top.
- ta988 9mo agoWhat if the idea was to add a tax without calling it a tax so they would have more revenue to apply their plan?
- the_gipsy 9mo agoOr to tax the poor.
- __s 9mo agoI've heard this defence plenty from other Americans. & the campaign pushed "built in America" as a goal, so it seems likely the person in charge had this idea
- philk10 9mo agoso as stupid an idea as the tariffs then
- dsr_ 9mo agoThen it was a big win for Putin and his agent in the White House.
- diydsp 9mo agoIve done a lot of analysis on the Trump as Putin agent topic. I found he nearly as often acts agents Russia as with. What's more likely is he treats Putin as an inspiration, wrt to converting the country to an oligarchy and offshoring national funds for himself.
- quakeguy 9mo ago*acts against
- Sharlin 9mo agoYeah. The idea that he's a Russian asset, although tempting, has always seemed to me like a coping mechanism of sorts – externalizing the evil, like blaming the devil for one's bad deeds. And, of course, Hanlon's razor is very much relevant here, although certainly it doesn't apply to everybody in Trump's inner circle. Some of them are very much competent and malevolent.
- lobsterthief 9mo agoWhy not both?
- enaaem 9mo agoI found Vlad Vexler’s take interesting. Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder. Not a narcissistic trait that many elites have, but an actual disorder. He looks up to Putin and wants to bask in Putin’s glory to elevate himself. [1] https://open.substack.com/pub/vladvexler/p/we-need-to-talk-about-trumps-narcissism?r=1s0icc&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay https://open.substack.com/pub/vladvexler/p/we-need-to-talk-a...
- bryanrasmussen 9mo agois the acting against Russia and against American interest, in a way that helps Russian interests, of equivocal effect? For example if I shoot Batman in the back when he's fighting The Joker (because Batman is a vigilante so that's illegal, gotta take him down), and later make a statement to the press after Joker has been sent to Arkham "You know I think Arkham is a good place for that guy, he got what he deserved", I have acted for and against The Joker's interest, which is a good cover for me as an agent of The Joker. I have often seen Trump doing stuff that is counter Russia's interests, but stuff that seems extremely weak sauce in contrast to weakening Nato, as just one example. It is spycraft 101 that you give your assets some simple stuff they can do against you, to make them seem trustworthy.
- speakfreely 9mo agoIt certainly was to anyone who has been paying attention. I would highly recommend that anyone who thinks the tariff strategy is irrational to read through Michael Kao's substack and his analysis of the administration's 2.0 playbook [1]. There's good news and bad news, but overall there's glimmers of hope. [1] https://archive.ph/kLxw3 https://archive.ph/kLxw3
- nkmnz 9mo agoHow can one come to the conclusion that US consumers suffered from the US trade deficit with China? They’ve effectively received free stuff every single year, manufactured by Chinese workers, without paying them. I don’t get it.
- stavros 9mo agoIsn't that exactly the point of tariffs? To decrease import volumes so local industry can fill the gap and compete?
- rjrjrjrj 9mo agoNot so much compete as being protected from having to compete.
- nathan_compton 9mo agoTalking about competition between places with good labor standards and environmental regulation and places without those things is bullshit. I would be 100% pro free trade between nations with identical labor rights and environmental protections, but that really isn't what free trade is about, is it?
- rjrjrjrj 9mo agoThe EU and Canada have better labor standards and environmental regulation than the US. Perhaps the US should charge them negative tariffs until it gets up to snuff.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoEven if it was, the problem is that this is a classic trap where protecting your own market will result in overpriced goods in the home market. We would be paying extravagant amounts for everything. Most other countries wouldn’t have that problem and would result in being stuck in time like a lot of the former Soviet Union.
- carlosjobim 9mo agoWhy should something be cheaper to produce in China than in the United States or Europe?
- ChromaticPanic 9mo agoAutomation. Ability to innovate without made up IP BS .
- dyauspitr 9mo agoLabor laws, PPP and standard of living.
- carlosjobim 9mo agoThen maybe it's morally right to tariff their goods? (As all countries already do, not only the US) Otherwise, what's the purpose of labor laws within the US or Europe?
- dyauspitr 9mo agoEconomics doesn’t go well with gut feels or idealism.
- postflopclarity 9mo agowho could possibly have foreseen this
- yabones 9mo agoAmerican trade policy has gone so far in the direction of Mercantilism that both the Neoliberal and the Keynesian economists can agree on something. That's not a good thing.
- energy123 9mo agoMercantilism is bad in itself, but the unpredictably is another special factor, leading to lower business confidence and lower investment. Why would anyone do anything when the rug might get pulled? Better to save and wait a few years. It's no surprise the US is seeing weak manufacturing investment.
- corimaith 9mo agoKeynsian economists are in favour of reducing global imbalances. While tariffs are a crude and disruptive tool to achieve it, the US ultimately can unilaterally close the gap. What is misleading is labeling a global system marked by large, persistent imbalances as benign or indicative of "free trade". A healthy free trade system should have balanced trade, and the reasons that are not are unfortunately the fault of surplus nations like China or the EU. I know, its unintuitive, but going back to Bretton Woods to IMF analysis will back this point. P.S if one wants to note the grocery shop analogy, a better analogy is that if you count up all your transactions, your income should exceed your spending, or else you're probably in trouble. That's roughly the problem here, but made more complex with the shenanigans of the US dollar.
- duxup 9mo agoWe will see if SCOTUS majority decides tariffs are a tax or not and push the absurdity of their position even farther. I fear that they already decided that issue when they chose not to intervene and now have the excuse of "lol well can't undo it now" ready to go. Edit: It appears Trump & Co intend to replace SCOTUS if they lose the tariffs ruling ... https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/us/politics/trump-tariffs-supreme-court-greer-trade.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FlA.mCnd.Kd7wiohmhTxL&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/us/politics/trump-tariffs... -------- There does seem to be indications that the actual tariffs collected seems far lower than the actual tariffs promised, likely just half of what was promised: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/business/economy/trump-tariffs-prices-impact.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BlA.6K0l.ymD6cvhHh0Jy&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/business/economy/trump-ta...
- FrustratedMonky 9mo agoI remember the justification for Obama Care was by calling it a 'type of tax'. Which actually was the reason to negate the rights argument at the time, they were using to cancel it. The government is allowed to create 'taxes', and since it was a 'type of tax', it is allowed.
- duxup 9mo agoI think the opposition wanted to toss the entire ACA system calling it a tax. However, SCOTUS took a more piecemeal approach than the opposition wished and removed the bit they felt was a tax and left the ACA unaffected generally.
- titzer 9mo agoSCOTUS has been reasoning backward from their blatant partisanship for a couple decades now. It used to have a bit of randomness with some justices defecting with "reasoned arguments", but that's basically over now.
- lotsofpulp 9mo agoWhat part of ACA did SCOTUS remove? In this ruling, it was only the Medicaid expansion that was struck down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Sebelius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen... The 2017 TCJA removed the individual mandate. Presumably, that is what FrustratedMonky and kccqzy are referring to. Obviously, the ACA made it so all health insurance premiums have a large "tax" component, due to the extremely narrow underwriting criteria health insurers are allowed to use. The individual mandate had previously applied a tax to all taxpayers, but after TCJA 2017, the tax is only paid by people with health insurance. https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/ https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/ https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-families/questions-and-answers-on-the-individual-shared-responsibility-provision https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-fami... >Enacted in December 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced the shared responsibility payment to zero for tax year 2019 and all subsequent years.
- sensanaty 9mo agoIsn't this literally economics 101? How did we ever even end up imagining that tariffs are somehow paid by the exporter??
- protoster 9mo agoMany problems in the world would be solved if people actually read Economics 101.
- energy123 9mo agoAgreed, and the intention here isn't to block any particular policy outcome, it's to ask that you narrowly scope your tools to what can work, instead of being the 20th failed attempt at price controls or tariffs. (And Econ 101 will teach you when tariffs can make sense, too)
- mekdoonggi 9mo agoSurprisingly few Americans can read, and surprisingly fewer at a college level.
- Insanity 9mo agoI get your point, but literacy rate is high in the US, so most Americans can, in fact, read. However, they rarely read books and indeed most don’t read at a university level. Rarely reading books is also not tied strictly to the US.
- dghlsakjg 9mo agoStudies consistently find about 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate, depending on what is meant by functionally illiterate. Typically this means that they can read, but frequently cannot grasp the meaning of what they read. The US is actually pretty illiterate compared to peer countries.
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- empath75 9mo agoHow could that possibly have not been the case. A tariff is no different from the cost of any input into the price of a finished good. There is some sense in which price increases are limited by supply and demand, but if the market won't pay for the production cost of the good, then the market will cease to provide that good. There are only two possible outcomes, long term -- either the price goes up, or the product becomes unavailable. There's an argument that domestically produced goods would substitute for imported goods leaving the market, but markets are so global and intertwined now that even domestic goods have imported inputs that are also affected by tariffs, and there often are no domestic goods or not enough domestic goods produced to act as a price-competitive substitute, and companies are not going to invest a ton of money into expanding domestic capacity, when tariffs are imposed on the whim of a lunatic and will probably be eventually tossed out by the supreme court or congress.
- senorrib 9mo agoSupply elasticity. China’s exports did see a reduction in price by exporting to other countries.
- dfee 9mo agoAmericans will rightly be suspicious when a think tank in Germany writes about tariff relief that benefits them. Of course, we should all be critical always – that's the first word in the term "critical thinking".
- nomercy400 9mo agoIn contrast to what other country? If a think tank from a non-tariffed country would write this piece, they risk getting tariffs tomorrow. And would Americans trust a (US) think tank in the juristiction of the US government right now?
- nosianu 9mo agoFor the sake of quality of discussion, you should least least attempt to write something about the actual study, instead of basing your argument completely on superficial information outside said study. If you add that information, if you really think it adds any value, after discussing what's actually in the study the comment would be sooo much better.
- stavros 9mo agoI find this comment suspicious, and rightly so: We should be critical of it.
- dfee 9mo agoYou should! Think critically about everything, friend!
- uniqueuid 9mo agoNitpick: The Kiel Institute is not a think tank in the sense that people would understand the word. It is a federally funded research organization (part of the family of Leibniz institutes) similar to a university but without teaching. Here's a list of the others [1]. These are independent, high-quality research institutions without political money or a designated political agenda. [1] https://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/institutes/leibniz-institutes-all-lists https://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en/institutes/leibniz-in...
- daft_pink 9mo agoIf you look at the decline in the Chinese producer price index, it doesn't seem like that is accurate.
- gpm 9mo agoIt's stayed perfectly flat across Trump taking office? Consistent with the tariffs not changing the price at which China sells goods at all and the US consumer bearing the entire cost of the tariffs. Click to, say, 3 year view of https://ycharts.com/indicators/china_producer_price_index https://ycharts.com/indicators/china_producer_price_index
- tln 9mo agoThat declined more in 2023 110.6->107.9 and 2024 107.9->105.4 than 2025 105.4->103.6 Looks like around ~2% a year https://tradingeconomics.com/china/producer-prices https://tradingeconomics.com/china/producer-prices
- maxglute 9mo agoSome PRC manufacturers uniquely exposed to US market probably ate/split tariffs, but US like 5% of PRC exports, so it only matters so much. And after initial shock, most figured out to tranship/reroute and arbitrate lower tariff rates elsewhere and preserve margins. Otherwise "broad" producer price index down primarily due to coal prices getting creamed by renewables, also cheap RU gas. When fossil/input prices drop, PRC PPI always drops. Industrial profit index for manufacturing sectors up 5-10%. Note broad industrial profit index down because it heavily weights state owned / SEO fossil sectors (aforementioned coal+oil dropped by 20-40%). Decompose industrial profits and story is PRC manufactures getting cheap energy and cheap inputs while growing profits more than they lower prices, aka why PRC winning trade game in the first place.
- dwroberts 9mo agoCan the title be changed to match some of the content text (eg America’s Own Goal: Who Pays the Tariffs?) ‘US Americans’ makes it sound as if a distinction is being drawn between Americans inside and outside of the US or something
- owebmaster 9mo agoAs an american not from the US, I'm glad they used "US Americans"
- seszett 9mo ago> ‘US Americans’ makes it sound as if a distinction is being drawn between Americans inside and outside of the US or something "US Americans" is routinely used to name "people in the US", since "Americans" is ambiguous, and "US citizens" is more restrictive and explicitly excludes residents that are not citizens.
- Forgeties79 9mo agoAmericans across North/South/Central America are feeling the impact of the tariffs in various ways. This report is talking specifically about the impact on US citizens, so the distinction is ultimately warranted IMO
- fnands 9mo agoUS Americans is usually used outside the US to differentiate inhabitants of the US from citizens of other countries in the Americas (e.g. Mexico, Canada, and all of central and South America). E.g. in Germany, inhabitants of the US are usually called "US amerikaner", so this is a direct translation (the Kiel institute is in Germany). It's just Germans being stereotypically precise about things (and reminding citizens of the USA that they aren't the only people in the Americas).
- stratocumulus0 9mo agoUS-American is a Germanism and the authors are German.
- pseidemann 9mo ago
- shevy-java 9mo agoI actually think Trump is going to lose big soon. One turning point was the death of Renee Good. Past this point the ICE stormtroopers may kill anyone else too, no matter who that is - just step in front of a car and shoot when the car moves. For serious penalty, all those TechBro cronies need to have all assets seized. They are imcompatible with democracy.
- boplicity 9mo agoIt's not just Renee Good. Unfortunately, this didn't get a lot of attention, but they also threw a flash-bang grenade and tear gas at a car filled with six children. A six month old baby had to get CPR from her mom. Two kids were hospitalized. None of this is acceptable. And their overtly violent behavior has nothing to do with enforcing the law.
- BanAntiVaxxers 9mo agoIt’s acceptable to a lot of Americans, but because they specifically voted for it. Finally the “right people” are getting hurt. That is how they see it
- Trasmatta 9mo agoI do think Trump and the rest of his cronies have way overplayed their hand. They've been ruling like they have 60% public support, when it's nowhere close to that. A lot more damage is still to come, but the pendulum is swinging back. That's why Trump is so scared of the midterms.
- TimorousBestie 9mo agoThere’s no solidarity movement coalescing around Good’s death. When the local police chief invoked “say her name” in a public statement on it, it caused a bunch of acrimony and resentment instead. I think Americans past the point where individual instances of police violence can shock us into taking political action (which is extremely risky in any case). It’s going to take kilodeath crimes, I imagine.
- 9mo ago
- jmyeet 9mo agoThe most depressing thing about the tariff fiasco is how stupid and gullible many people are because a significant number of them thought that the other country was somehow going to pay the tariff. I don't mind people being ignorant. We all are at some point. We all learn. But what's really depressing is that people who wear their ignorance and intentional unwillingness to learn like it's a badge of honor. In the early 2010s I had discussions with people who pushed the idea of the resurgence of anti-intellectualism in the US, which I dismissed at the time. I think about that a lot.
- strgrd 9mo ago“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
- anovikov 9mo agoWhat's the problem about it? Trump cuts one kinds of taxes and introduces others in place. I see it reasonable because it means going from taxing good things (people making money, people holding property) to taxing bad things (imports that drain cash from the country). Direct net result is perhaps zero, but indirect one is what it's for.
- timeon 9mo ago> to taxing bad things Yeah no need for coffee beans in USA. Seems more like from taxing companies to taxing citizens.
- anovikov 9mo agoCorporate taxes have always been a drop in the bucket (not counting payroll taxes, which are effectively individual taxes too just the company is a tax agent)
- pseidemann 9mo agoImports are needed and important, not "bad". Most countries import goods. Why? Because not everyone produces everything. That is how society started and still works today.
- zkmon 9mo agoIn India, every tax imposed on a business goes straight to consumer. The consumer receipt even mentions some of those taxes item-wise. I thought American consumer also might see this on their shopping receipts? Who thinks businesses would swallow taxes?
- wtmt 9mo ago> In India, every tax imposed on a business goes straight to consumer. The consumer receipt even mentions all those taxes item-wise. As someone in India, this statement is incorrect. There are no consumer receipts in India that show the import duties (which is what tariffs are) as an amount or as a percentage. There are plenty of goods sold in India that are imported, duty paid, and the costs are passed on to the consumers (with no explicit mention of that in the invoice or receipt). You may be confusing these US tariffs with local taxes in India like GST. In the US, sales tax is shown in the consumer receipts (if or as applicable in the state, county, city, etc.). In India and in the US, import duties are not shown in consumer receipts, except in the case where an individual is importing something and is liable to pay the duties and levies directly. Indians would probably revolt if they actually knew how much customs duty they’re paying for all the goods they buy individually.
- zkmon 9mo agoI was looking at GST and other state taxes etc, that are simply passed to customer. Anyway, the whole point of tax on sales is that, the business would pay the tax out of its pocket without burdening the consumer. But that is blatantly and openly violated.
- moogly 9mo agoAmazon planned on doing it. Trump got mad. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg7xpr2j0o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxg7xpr2j0o
- nkmnz 9mo agoYour speaking of VAT. And even though it’s pointed out on the receipt, it doesn’t mean that the consumer pays all of it compared to a scenario without tax: just imagine you’re a businessman and a VAT of 20% is introduced. Would you be able to increase the prices of all your goods by 20%? For some, maybe. For others with fierce competition and hesitant buyers? Maybe not. The same shows the other way around: imagine a VAT of 20% is abolished. Would you lower all your prices by ~16.6%? Probably, but only for those items that you know your competitors will reduce the price for as well. The terminology to look up is elasticity of supply and demand. There are nice graphs that show the effects of different kinds of interventions.
- agumonkey 9mo agoThe issue is that the USA are in 100% post truth and 0% of the recent potus voters are able to reflect on economic policies level-headed.
- treis 9mo agoI think it's the opposite. These were announced 9 months ago and none of the doomsday predictions have come to pass. There's been major impact to some things but for the most part the economy has hummed along without a blip. Certainly not the everything in Walmart is going to get 34% prognostications that some were making: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43561253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43561253
- rafterydj 9mo agoWhat are you saying? "None of the doomsday predictions have come to pass." -> nothing is wrong and the USA is fine "There's been major impact to some things" -> so bad things have happened "but for the most part the economy has hummed along without a blip." -> so despite bad things happening, just plug your ears and sing loudly? As for prices in Walmart, they HAVE gone up. Several companies have had press releases stating they need to increase prices because of tariffs: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/31/trump-tariffs-here-are-the-retailers-raising-prices.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/31/trump-tariffs-here-are-the-r... "Retailers like Costco and Best Buy said they have already raised some prices, while Walmart, Target and Macy's plan to follow suit" I'll be the first to say that given the circumstances our underlying economy and people have held up better than complete collapse. But you can't pretend this is not happening.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoPrices are wild right now. Meat has almost never been at $9-10/lb. Just a few years ago they were at $3-4/lb
- treis 9mo agoEggs were the same way. Now they are at their lowest point since 2019 and cost 5% of what they peaked at. There's an inherent volatility in food prices that can't really be helped.
- nickpsecurity 9mo agoAmericans using foreign inputs or buying from companies that do. If you phrase it like that, then there's obvious solutions to reduce the effects of tariffs.
- bartread 9mo agoI'm glad they've done the work here and put a figure on it - the impact absolutely needed to be quantified - but I also have to say... to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function. People, lots of people, lots of people who have a really deep understanding of national and global economics (unlike me), have been warning about this since talk of tariffs became common currency a year ago. I wouldn't like to comment on HN's political leanings in the round and, obviously, there are a large portion of non-US readers/commenters on the site (including me), but will say this: there are a portion of you who voted for this. Exactly this. What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. EDIT: Wow... well, having asked the question, it looks like I now have a lot of answers and perspectives to read. Thank you all for taking the time to comment.
- amelius 9mo ago> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious. See also Brexit.
- hirako2000 9mo agoIt isn't US specific and what goes into people's head is what propaganda wants it to be. Economics tell people the clear impact, but it doesn't make the news. We get fed with whatever the political influencers decide to tell us. Did the brits expect the consequence of brexit? No but that's because they deemed whatever the news said to be unreliable on this topic. Which for once happened to be true.
- PaulRobinson 9mo agoActually, it's pretty clear to those who have been paying attention that the main influence that swung the polls by about 4% from Remain to Leave in the last 2 days was a £10m advertising campaign on Facebook packed with lies, paid for by a Brexiteer who can't quite explain to the Electoral Commission where that money came from, but it did seem to just "appear" a few days after he allegedly met with the Russian ambassador to the UK. I'd get out more, but my tinfoil hat doesn't like the rain.
- pembrook 9mo agoObviously this was always going to be the case. But here’s the hard truth: the US has needed to raise taxes for decades given its inability to reduce spending. Hence they massively inflating runaway deficit. If this is the only way Americans will accept tax increases, and they aren’t willing to decrease spending, then this policy will ironically end up being the only way forward to climb out of the financial hole.
- disgruntledphd2 9mo agoExcept that the budget post tariffs completely messed up that plan.
- mrtksn 9mo agoI always thought that this tariff stuff is about restraining American consumerism first and coerce export oriented countries. Also, this obsession over the importance of accessing US consumers feels ridiculous. If Americans aren't buying then it means more stuff for everyone else. EU/China etc. sends actual things to US and US sends back dollars that are created out of thin air. It must be a restructuring pain more than anything since US doesn't actually export much goods. With the proliferation of cheap and available solar energy the trade with US can halt, endure the pain of restructuring came out of the other side with using the produced goods domestically instead of sending them to US and replace the US services with domestic ones. Then US can produce their things that they consume and have 350M market for the US companies instead of 7B. It almost looks like Trump is Pushing for US irrelevance, its vey strange. Why would US be looking to abandone such an advantageous position? The people in the rest of the world are working their asses off, breathing toxic air just to obtain dollars.
- gostsamo 9mo agoThe issue is that the EU and China are not structured to rely on internal consumption. We just cannot buy everything we produce. Fixing that would require years of carefully managed policies and at least for the EU, I've lost confidence that the national governments can work well-enough together to manage such a project. The rest of the world is in a similar situation, so it will be fun times until things settle, hopefully, not on a lower equilibrium.
- shaky-carrousel 9mo agoThere's an entire world to trade with. If the Americans choose to shoot themselves in the foot, we won't be the ones paying for the bandage. Also, it's deeply naïve to assume tariffed countries would absorb the cost. Why would they? It's like going into a shop and asking for a discount because you just took out a loan. Why would the shop give you a discount for something you inflicted on yourself? And what makes you think other customers wouldn't ask for the same discount?
- nutjob2 9mo agoI bought a mini PC today. On the US website, it goes for $460, on the German website it goes for 360 euros or $420. But that price includes 20% tax so its actually $335. Prices for the same product are about 37.5% higher in the US. It's nuts and the reverse of how it used to be not long ago.
- omnifischer 9mo agoThe only thing I worry is DJT will ask Google Apple Amazon etc to impose a 10 % fee on sale in Rest of world to fund his bank accounts. In a sense I am happy. All empires decline. This will decline USA forever.
- adrian_b 9mo agoI was intrigued by what you have said, because I have also bought an ASUS NUC mini-PC today, in Europe. I paid EUR 510, which means $593. This is with all taxes included, so the price without tax would be about $490. I have searched now the ASUS mini-PC on Newegg, and its cost is $679, around +38.5% more expensive. This is wild, because indeed, until recently the price of electronics devices was significantly lower in USA in comparison with Europe, while now it is the reverse. This is not a "Made in China" mini-PC, which might have been affected by worse tariffs. Moreover, I have equipped the mini-PC with 32 GB DDR5 & 1 TB SSD, while cursing the more than triple price of DDR5 compared with last summer, so that now the DRAM has been more than a third of the price of the complete computer. This configuration has cost me the equivalent of slightly less than $900, without taxes. The same configuration has a price on Newegg of almost $1200.
- __MatrixMan__ 9mo ago> export prices did not decline. Trade volumes collapsed instead. That is its own kind of burden. We are shooting ourselves in the foot here, but but I think we're getting the other guy's foot to the tune of a bit more than 4%. It's mutually assured destruction logic. I hate everything about it, but this seems like a mischaracterization of its efficacy.
- al_borland 9mo agoTrump has floated the idea of eliminating federal income tax completely, which would balance things out. I think I’d rather pay taxes in the form of tariffs than through income tax. The tariffs can help protect jobs from being outsourced, which has been a big issue over the last several decades. With everyone talking about out AI coming for our jobs, having more options for employment seems like a good thing. I suppose the issue would be for those on the lower end of the earnings distribution, as they pay little to no federal income tax, but would be hit by a consumption tax. Though I do wonder if we could see wages increase when we don’t have to compete as much with low production costs in China.
- JimmyBuckets 9mo agoUS federal income tax raises vastly more revenue than tariffs ever have. Eliminating income tax would require tariffs at levels high enough to dramatically raise consumer prices and would certainly trigger retaliation. Also, reduced competition from China does not imply higher wages unless labor has bargaining power and firms pass gains to workers. Historically it has been passed to shareholders not workers. Finally, tariffs mainly protect manufacturing jobs. AI threatens white-collar and service work
- reducesuffering 9mo agoOur current deficit is $600B. Individual income taxes are $2.7B. Where is your $3.3T hole going to come from?
- tt24 9mo agoIdeally it would be Medicare, Medicaid, and social security.
- reducesuffering 9mo agoGood luck getting the US' elderly anti-socialists to vote away their own socialist benefits.
- 9mo ago
- mopsi 9mo ago"Tariff" is indeed a beautiful word; one that led the most virulent anti-taxation crowd to passionately support new taxes. It's a fantastic example of how much the choice of words matters.
- shigawire 9mo agoI'm not sure. If he called them "Freedom Taxes" or "Patriot Taxes" or "Foreigner Taxes" I'm sure the base would have supported them.
- mopsi 9mo agoThat's the beauty of it: the base refuses to even acknowledge that it is a tax, and that it is paid by Americans. The word "tariff" bypasses decades of anti-taxation programming with astonishing ease.
- tgtweak 9mo agoFew thoughts/observations on Tariff impacts now that we have a decent amount of time/data to look at: Suppliers in China are dropping prices to offset the tariff impact - this is what I see in my direct industry and also in many adjacent ones. This is benefitting other countries that don't have Tariffs on Chinese goods since they can buy cheaper as well. I suspect this is a significant factor in the GBP/EUR strengthening in relation to USD. There was a point where there was such a pronounced impact to imported goods that the cost of shipping a container from China to US went from ~$3500 to <$1500 pre/post Tariff. Large manufacturers (automotive certainly, but also raw materials production and component production) are actually moving facilities to the US, which was one of the intended effects. US manufacturers are enjoying some price relief as landed costs of chinese-produced goods are increasing. Hard to quantify what this means but the frustrating part is that they are not reducing their prices just enjoying higher margins. Countries outside the Tariff zone are enjoying more trade - Canada is a very real example of this policy backfiring - they just walked back the Chinese Automotive Tariffs in exchange for relief on agricultural reciprocal tariffs. Mexico is entering into similar agreements with non-US trade partners. Some products are releasing in non-US markets first and at lower costs than they are in the US. US-sourced chipmaking is accelerating - Intel's new fabs are probably the most prominent example of this (albeit they are slow to pick up volume - I expect this will shift with TSMC rationing production to brands like Apple and Qualcomm). I think the increase in cost to consumers is painful and that the current Tariff rates are excessive + there is a lot of "cheating" where Chinese suppliers are declaring lower cost of goods on import to reduce the landed cost of Tariffed goods - there doesn't appear to be enough resources to police this policy fully. All in all an interesting economic experiment and it will certainly take years for any of these realities to have a measurable positive impact domestically.
- ASinclair 9mo agoThere are tariffs on every country, not just China. This isn’t like his first term in office. Can you speak to the impacts of those tariffs?
- tgtweak 9mo agoLooking purely at import volumes, most of those other countries haven't experienced drop-offs like China. Canada exports about the same amount of goods to the US today as they did in early 2024. Mexico is in a similar trend. What I see is that when Chinese buying dipped due to exorbitant tariffs, Canada and Mexico spiked until they were also hit with tariffs, returning to their previous levels.
- Archelaos 9mo agoIf customs duties act like a domestic tax, wouldn't that mean that they should initially be considered neutral? They would then be another type of consumption tax. Any assessment would have to be made in the context of the tax system as a whole. Are consumption taxes too high overall? Too low? Or just right? Who pays the taxes? Is that fair? Who and what are the taxes collected spent on? Etc.
- the_gipsy 9mo agoThat's the neat part, you don't. Neat as in fantastic - it literally can't get any better - for the oligarchs. Tax the poor, and tell them we're collecting money for them, from the foreigners. Raise and lower the rates willy-nilly, no need to really justify why you're squeezing who.
- drstewart 9mo agoHas this institute done an analysis of the VAT own goal by Germany? What percentage is paid by EU Germans?
- fnands 9mo agoAll of it? There's no question about who pays VAT, and there never has been. You can have whatever opinion you want on VAT, but there's never been any messaging that anyone else will be paying for VAT.
- alex_suzuki 9mo agoValue added tax, to the best of my knowledge, is always paid by the end customer/consumer. Is somebody claiming otherwise?
- fnands 9mo agoAlso, you mean the VAT that was introduced into (West) Germany in *checks-notes* 1968? I'm pretty sure someone has done an analysis on VAT since it was introduced 58 years ago... It's a really destabilising policy as you can see.
- drstewart 9mo agoTariffs were invented in 2025?
- blurbleblurble 9mo agoExactly as planned? We've got to start questioning the assumption that the US federal government is driven by collective interest.
- BrenBarn 9mo agoStart? That's been clear for at least a decade if not a few decades.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- BanAntiVaxxers 9mo agoPerhaps American men would understand this better if you put it in terms of an NASCAR analogy. Tarrifs are a restrictor plate on a big block V-8 engine. Take it away and you get more power, more noise, more freedom. Don’t you want more freedom?
- threethirtytwo 9mo agoWell the purpose of the tariff is to control US Americans to rely less on foreign goods. So of course to control something you would enact policies that affect the thing you’re trying to control. If the importer took on most of the burden that would defeat the purpose of the tariff.
- _diyar 9mo agoThe report states that US customs revenue surged by $200Bn (of which the US consumer pays 96%). That does not breath confidence into the idea of lower reliance on foreign goods.
- gordonhart 9mo agoYour conclusion is a non sequitur. Of course Customs revenue boomed, that’s what tariffs do. To assess impact on the country’s reliance on foreign goods you’d need to see how the volume of foreign imports changed over time.
- Mithriil 9mo agoWhether foreign companies pay or not for the tarrifs is clear here. However, I want to point that not receiving income from reduced trade is an impact of its own. An indirect way to pay for the tariffs, so to speak.
- jacquesm 9mo agoLadies & Gentlemen, the President of the United States of Amerca: “Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT” Given that, should it be any surprise at all that Trump has been gaslighting America on who pays for his tariffs? And guess what mechanism he's brought to bear on the countries that do not see things his way when it comes to Greenland?
- notahacker 9mo agoIt is quite amusing watching people try to argue that there's a very serious plan behind Greenland whilst Trump privately lobbies for it with the arguments of a young and very spoiled child. His tariff preferences have the same level of thought behind them, at least until the people that have the slightest idea of how things actually work can tone them down and put his ideas on the shelf for long enough to stave off serious damage and unwind their TACO trades. It's entirely possible he's not even informed enough on the issue to be intentionally lying.
- jacquesm 9mo agoWhat amazes me is that all of the checks and balances have either failed or have been disabled. The US is always full of their 'Founding Fathers', I can't help but think that they'd be horrified to see the situation as it has developed so far and that's with a serious note that I suspect it will get a lot worse still.
- cdrnsf 9mo agoThe heritage society has worked for decades to tilt the ideological balance of the judiciary and the Supreme Court specifically. The GOP base’s cult-like devotion to Trump and his power to target the reelection prospects of individual representatives and senators has lead to them sidelining themselves. Unlike Trump’s first term, his cabinet and agency heads are little more than loyalists and yes men. Checks and balances are gone. Independent thinking is gone. The president has long been an incompetent racist and malignant narcissist and the country (and world — for now) are suffering as he unleashes whatever cruel, imbecilic impulses that cross his mind. Add to that the fact that he’s quite clearly unwell.
- Fokamul 9mo ago"If Americans could read they'd be very upset!"
- kryogen1c 9mo agoAlmost all the comments acting like this is some truth bombshell, like people in trumpistan all thought raising tariffs magically made the us economy better. This is a straw man, no? Tariffs are a mid-long term strategy to encourage onshoring business, for reasons including military, national security, and political influence on foreign powers. This is a complicated topic involving the global economy and evolving intercountry landscape. All these slam dunk takes are incomplete to the point of being wrong - and inflammatory.
- 3vidence 9mo agoThat argument seems completely nullified by the fact that the president unilaterally changes his mind on tariffs every other day and setting up a manufacturing basis can take 10+ years. Seems safer for many business to just continue to operate outside of the US and get a more consistent business relationship with every other country in the world.
- id34 9mo agoThe use of tariffs as a mid-long strategy, in my view, would require a stable, long-term communication that the US government will implement careful, strategic tariffs alongside incentives to strengthen chosen domestic industries where they believe a domestic alternative is feasible. We haven't seen anything even close to that at any point in this tariff rollercoaster - tariffs for products that cannot be produced at scale domestically (coffee, bananas), tariffs for grudges, tariffs that only exist for a week, tariffs that are written post-hoc after a Truth post to fit what the president said. There's an argument to be made for domestic protectionism, but the people currently at the levers are not serious policy-minded folks.
- kryogen1c 9mo agoIm inclined to agree with most of what you say, although I dont follow economics or current events closely enough to have a strong opinion. My point is that your thoughtful response about reliable continuity, both inter- and intra- president, is not present in a lot of the comments.
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo agoI'm not sure any knowledgeable person thought otherwise. Tariffs are like a military tactic, its not good for the domestic economy, its good for the military.
- cratermoon 9mo agoSide note: US Americans still strikes me as a weird Europeanism, even though it's accurate. Only people living in the US think the work American refers only to them and their fellow countrymen.
- cmrdporcupine 9mo agoCanadians don't use the word Americans for themselves at all, and consider the term Americans to refer to US residents. The broader term is "North American"
- quesera 9mo agoFWIW, every non-US American I've ever known or worked with (from Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Canada) has been more amused than bothered when I've asked how they feel about US Americans calling themselves "American", and excluding non-US Americans. Non-US Americans don't seem to care, and they think it's silly that I'd wonder whether they did. It still feels dismissive and rude, so I try to avoid it -- but evidently it's not a significant or widespread concern among those with standing to be offended.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- api 9mo agoI remember predicting years ago that if MAGA got in again they'd raise taxes massively and sell it through some kind of deception that convinced people it was actually a tax cut or something else. I thought what they'd do is push for a national sales tax (which would be regressive) with the promise of repealing the income tax, but when it came to the last part they'd just kind of conveniently forget about that and we'd end up with a huge national sales tax on top of existing income tax. But this works too.
- samiv 9mo agoOne thing after overlooked about the tariffs is that since the financial market is completely parasitic into the US when a tarif on the imported competitive product makes it more productive the local producer can also increase their prices and their profits without having to do anything. The consumer is really the loser here.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- andy_ppp 9mo agoThe point of taxing goods made elsewhere is to make building equivalent goods in your local economy competitive for locals to purchase. I am pretty sure they are not putting a tax on EUV Lithography machines from ASML or at least you can have an exception if you bow down to the king... How did the US become this insane this fast - I'm not even against tariffs but you need to decide which industries to use them on e.g. steel, drones, maybe electric vehicles - blanket tariffs by a mad king are really difficult to fathom. When will congress wake up and will it be too late?
- wyck 9mo agoThey are funding alternatives to ASML. ASML has hit a wall and it co-insides with a new innovation based policy, to bring America back to a tech leadership role. This is a critical economic and security policy, they are pouring billions into this tech as we speak. To think that ASML will continue to have a monopoly would be the actual insane thing.
- andy_ppp 9mo agoI did some research and you are right there is some interesting stuff being developed but to say the whole stack will be available in the US soon - even 3-5 years is ridiculous. ASML is still going to be producing the best lithography machines in said timeframe I suspect. It's also extremely hard to pick winners which is why the Chinese just fund everyone and let the winners cannibalise their less successful competitors. I'd be more confident of Chinese semiconductors being ahead over the medium term than US without ASML.
- wyck 9mo agoIt's become a national issue, I think China will be at the forefront with the USA, and ASML/Europe will certainly stay in the mix. I'm no expert, but Russia is lagging in this industry, this has a very direct effect on their capabilities moving forward. Have a look at https://substrate.com/ https://substrate.com/
- oulipo2 9mo agoTired of "winning", Americans? Meanwhile, he puts all your tax dollars in his and his friend's pocket...
- ho_schi 9mo agoTja. Chuckles in German.
- ndsipa_pomu 9mo agoThe U.S. economy could get a lot worse if Europe decides to sell their U.S. bonds in retaliation for the Greenland nonsense. https://fortune.com/2026/01/18/europe-retaliation-8-trillion-sell-america-us-debt-bonds-stocks-trade-war-greenland-trump/ https://fortune.com/2026/01/18/europe-retaliation-8-trillion...
- giardini 9mo agoBFD. The reason for tariffs is NOT to reduce prices but to bring production (jobs, capacity) home. (Don't take some British newspapers' word for it - most of them are extremely anti-Trump - and they're really, really good at tabloid journalism. Our economy remains robust (down jackets moving like mad in Minneapolis) and the number of native-born Americans and legal aliens working is higher than ever. Illegal aliens are either heading for the door or being pushed out the door. USA increased payroll employment (+584,000 jobs in 2025). Unemployment rate has decreased to 4.4%. We show gains in food services, healthcare, and social assistance, but retail trade has declined (necessarily). The labor market is stabilizing and expanding more slowly than before. Private payrolls have risen an average of 43,000 jobs/month over the past six months. Wage growth eased and average hourly earnings are up 3.8% over the past year. We're much better off and it is showing: the US economy grew by 4.3% in the 3rd quarter of 2025, while Germany's GDP grew by 0.2% for the year. The German economy is so far down, some websites quit updating website statistics years ago, e.g.: https://georank.org/economy/germany/united-states https://georank.org/economy/germany/united-states The Kiel Institute may be trying to draw German voters' eyes away from their government's poor economic policies, e.g., "Germany’s economy is so bad even sausage factories are closing" https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/01/15/germanys-economy-is-so-bad-even-sausage-factories-are-closing https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/01/15/germanys-economy... Of course that is another "tabloid" journal of the British strain. Told you they're really, really good at feeding the flames with their journalism. [Strains of Carly Simon's "Nobody does it better,... makes you feel sad for all the rest..."] https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=nobody+does+it+better+ https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=nobody+...
- 3D30497420 9mo agoA few notes: > The reason for tariffs is NOT to reduce prices but to bring production (jobs, capacity) home. Tariffs can be used for many purposes. I would say this is administration is clearly not using them to bring jobs home. Earlier tariffs were lowered/dropped when trade deals were signed, and the current ones are clearly a way to strong arm Europe to giving up its territory. > Unemployment rate has decreased to 4.4%. Decreased from where...? Not including the pandemic, 4.4% is the highest rate in almost a decade. Unemployment is clearly rising: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...
- IgorPartola 9mo agoHere is the thing that makes me really pissed off about these tariffs: if SCOTUS finds that they were imposed improperly (and I suspect they will), then companies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. get to sue the government to get the tariffs refunded. The consumers to whom the costs were passed on will never see any of that money.
- windowpains 9mo agoWe also pay the counter tariffs. As Americans, we basically pay for everything, even for other Americans. I read Modi was going to tariff lentils at 30%, idk for Putin’s oil or something (?), didn’t really read it closely since it could be an AI fake anyway. Pretty sure my lentil costs will skyrocket as a result. It’s tough being the global leader.
- phkahler 9mo agoThis was expected. The point was (allegedly) to encourage production in the US by making foreign goods more expensive. Its still a dumb idea since any following administration could reverse the policy, so why invest in local manufacturing?
- buckle8017 9mo agoThen explain why anybody outside the US even cares?
- whodidntante 9mo agoThe article was written by "Europe’s preeminent research institute for global economic affairs" which is based in Germany. Europe, and Germany, saw a significant drop in its trade to the US since the tariffs started. Seems like they care.
- buckle8017 9mo ago> Europe, and Germany, saw a significant drop in its trade to the US since the tariffs started. Well yes that's the point of tariffs. So far you're arguing against this paper being credible.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dfadsadsf 9mo agoGiven the relatively low inflation in 2025, I’m skeptical of the claim that consumers bore 96% of the tariff burden. With CPI inflation at 2.7% and roughly $18,000 in goods consumption per person in US, total price increase in goods work out to ~160B. A $200 billion increase in customs revenues would exceed the total price increases attributable to inflation - which makes little sense if 96% of that was paid by consumers. Essentially tariffs did not increase inflation in any meaningful sense which means that somebody else paid the bill - not consumers.
- sowbug 9mo agoNPR says the figure is more like 5 percent. As far as we know, they haven't fired employees who produced numbers they didn't like. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5638908/walmart-prices-inflation-affordability-shrinkflation https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5638908/walmart-prices-...
- seizethecheese 9mo agoThis is a single Walmart and clearly dominated by outlier price swings. No, NPR didn’t make their own CPI. Surely there are other independent price baskets that actually attempt to do this, why choose this article, as interesting as it is?
- sowbug 9mo agoI am not the one making the original assertion. I was pointing out that it relies on historically trustworthy statistics that the current administration is openly influencing. Call the NPR methodology a canary or smoke test, if you will. Feel free to grab the brass ring if you want sources that you find more credible.
- whodidntante 9mo agoWhile consumers are paying for pretty much the entire tariff (according to the article), the volume what they are buying has "collapsed" (according to the article). Consumers are just buying from other sources (domestically or otherwise) or not buying because it is no longer worth it. There are a lot of reasons why these tariff's are bad, but economically, it is not a bad thing for people not to buy things they do not need, or to buy them from a domestic producer. Consumer spending actually increased last year, and inflation is low.
- Arubis 9mo agoYes. This is how tariffs work.
- mylifeandtimes 9mo agoOne thing that is interesting to me: In Europe, prices show the price INCLUDING sales tax (VAT, typically 20%). What you see is what you pay at the register. In the US, prices show the price BEFORE sales tax (national average circa 7%). You pay 7% more at the register than what you saw. I wonder if we could update US pricing so that the tariff was collected at the cash register, just like sales tax is, so that people could see that they were the one paying the tax. yes, I see the obvious practical difficulties with this. It is a though experiment, nothing more.
- yalogin 9mo agoYeah but the average cult voter doesn’t care. Let alone the cult voter, most voters won’t see it as they may not tie the price increases directly to tariffs. We are already in an inflationary cycle when the tariffs are put so the administration will just claim the issue is not tariffs and that the tariffs are helping somehow and the base will believe it. We are in a world where the administration has fully doubled down on “never accept failure, never apologize and always double down” strategy and unfortunately it’s working
- fleroviumna 9mo ago[dead]
- fedeb95 9mo agono way?
- andrewclunn 9mo ago"Were they absorbed by foreign exporters through lower export prices, or were they passed through to US importers and ultimately consumers?" Go actually read the pdf. Their methodology conflates any and all price increases of foreign goods as being a burden bore upon Americans. No talk of purchasing habits changing towards domestic products. Nope. Oh and does it account for recent price increases across the board related to inflation? Nope. It (I would argue intentionally) does not control for that at all. Pure propaganda from a foreign think tank to convince you to go back to policies where American exports got taxed, but theirs did not.
- cs02rm0 9mo agoI think there's an implicit assumption here that because Americans pay the costs of tariffs it means there isn't a knock on impact (where for instance goods from other countries aren't bought, in preference of US local goods), in turn affecting the other economy. And that therefore Trump's tariff plays are without impact, whereas I'm not convinced that is the case.
- jlarocco 9mo agoIt definitely has knock on impacts. Most directly, when foreign products become more expensive, people may choose a local product that was previously seen as too expensive. So it generally has a negative effect on the foreign economy and boosts local production. Unfortunately, it also drives the foreign companies to become more efficient so they can get their prices back down, while giving the local producers a crutch to justify higher prices and stagnate. And there are other side effects, and all of the side-effects have side effects of their own. Economies are complicated.
- tmp10423288442 9mo ago"The 2025 US tariffs are an own goal" Without an opinion on the actual claim here (although I'm skeptical of a claim of 96%, given the relatively moderate inflation in the US in 2025), I think this quote by itself (first bullet point of the abstract) should disqualify this as a serious analysis - no academic paper uses this language, only biased think tanks, and the fact that it's a German think tank doesn't change that.
- sys32768 9mo agoSome please write a web plugin to use AI to analyze comments so we can filter partisan comments and only read the truly engaging and intelligent comments by more objective people. I will contribute $$$.
- jcims 9mo agoSame. tgtweak has a good one in here.
- whodidntante 9mo agoI feel that many of the reactions to this paper is misplaced. To be upfront, I am not a fan of tariffs because I am pro free trade, pro capitalist, and feel that tariffs do not promote good will between countries. First of all, the summary of the article (I did not read the article) clearly states that foreign exporters did not eat the tariffs, instead they held their prices, American consumers paid for the tariffs, and that trade volumes collapsed. "trade volumes collapsed" - so, Americans did not buy foreign goods that they did not need/want at those prices, or found an alternative (presumably American) product to substitute. American consumer spending increased in 2025 and inflation settled down to a reasonable level. It seems that consumption shifted to domestic products. That does not appear to be a good outcome, economically. . Second, tariff's are a tax. No sh-t. But so are VAT taxes, which are very high throughout many countries, and no one seems to believe they are the downfall of these countries. You can argue which is "better" or "fairer", but from the consumer point of view, VAT makes everything more expensive and tariffs make only foreign goods more expensive. You can say that VAT forces everyone, foreign and domestic to compete and be more efficient, while tariffs penalize foreign production and rewards domestic production, even if some domestic production is less efficient. But both are taxes, and at least the American consumer can choose whether or not to pay that tax. While I disagree with tariffs, and especially disagree with how they are being wielded, the economic effect that they have had on Americans in 2025 is to shift away from foreign imports, buy more domestic products, and they have not increased inflation. Neither did the tariffs on Tr-mps first term on China. If a 20% VAT was instituted, I would think that that would have had a much larger "tax" effect, and would have taken away peoples choice on whether or not to pay that tax. Yet, the VAT would be considered "good". I think the biggest issue here is the serious negative impact on our relationships with our allies.
- greenchair 9mo agoSure man sure. Germany has grown by 1% in last 10 years. Guys should focus on their own country's economic problems instead of displaying their TDS.
- citrin_ru 9mo ago> Foreign exporters absorb only about 4% of the tariff burden—the remaining 96% is passed through to US buyers. Unfortunately (for sellers) tariff decrease trade volume so even if only 4% absorbed by a seller they have much bigger losses from sell volume decline. Economy is not a zero sum game - almost everyone looses from tariffs - consumers no longer can afford the same some things they did buy in the past because tariffs increased prices. Sellers cannot decrease prices because in many cases it will make their business unprofitable but they still loose on the volume.
- ComputerGuru 9mo agoOf course they do. That’s how tariffs work but people somehow have been deluded into thinking otherwise. Everyone that’s ever lived in a non-western country with import duties knows that.
- lpeancovschi 9mo agoYou don't need any reports to understand this. Right after the initial tariffs were introduced I compared the prices on Amazon for some items I was buying from EU - the prices increased by 20%.
- m101 9mo agoIsn’t the point that US individuals pay it in order to incentivise them to make products locally?
- dariosalvi78 9mo agowhich is why retaliating with import tariffs is the exact opposite of what should be done, but go tell politicians that they need to give up their dick measuring games...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- tsss 9mo agoIs this supposed to be some sort of "gotcha"? The whole point of tariffs is to increase prices so that there is a chance for more expensive domestic producers to establish themselves against foreign competition. It's working as intended.
- quantummagic 9mo agoIt's the same thing when people call for corporations to pay taxes. It's the consumer who ultimately pays.
- QuiEgo 9mo agoI can hear the retort of “fake news” before I get past the headline. When people are living in a different reality, facts from the “other” reality no longer have influence.
- claudiacsf 9mo agoTrump's owners greenlit his pet policy because they knew exactly who'd pay: not them.
- beloch 9mo agoA full analysis needs to look at the downstream effects as well. e.g. Exports and retail. As a Canadian, I now avoid American products and retailers as much as possible. This isn't just political (Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada). This is about filthy lucre too. Anything manufactured in the U.S. with tariffed inputs (e.g. Steel, Aluminum, softwood) is more expensive now. Foreign goods that merely pass through the U.S. on their way to Canada are not supposed to be tariffed, but many U.S. retailers simply don't do the paper work necessary to make that happen, no doubt because the Trump administration has made that paperwork so chaotic and difficult to do. The upside is that Americans aren't just paying for 95% of these tariffs, they're losing export business from the rest of the world too. On top of this is the additional cost of unpredictability. Is the U.S. about to slap additional tariff's on the EU because of Trump's Greenland ambitions? If you're planning a project in Canada, you'd be wise to avoid any U.S. products that use EU inputs for the foreseeable future too.
- K0balt 9mo agoShocking that retailers raised their prices when the cost of goods sold jumped sharply! So bizzare, who would have thought.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9mo agoWasn’t part of the goal of tariffs to penalize the importers? To make it economic viable to use American sourcing instead?
- benmathes 9mo agoin 2020 we lived through the extreme left's remedial lesson in public safety. Now we're living through the MAGA right's remedial lesson in trade policy. (Most MAGA right know this, don't care, see tariffs as a hammer. But they are hitting all of us)
- Dirak 9mo agoToday the S&P500 is at an all-time high, energy prices are at all-time lows, and there is no clear indication of recession. This, all in spite of the fact that for the last decade, economists have been crying that tariffs would ruin the American economy, trigger deep recession, etc. The claim of this analysis is a significant backpedaling on the narrative they've been wrong about regarding the effects of tariffs. Instead of trying to reposition the goal posts on the effects of tariffs, it would be far more productive to simply acknowledge that the original dire predictions of tariffs did not manifest.
- noIdeaTheSecond 9mo agoWhile it seems obvious to many here that americans pay the tarrifs should we also conclude that given the drop in exports to the US (mentioned in the article), our european/german/indian economies are worse off i.e. we're losing money compared to how things were before. Does anybody have reliable figures on how much money are we losing?
- hereme888 9mo agoIgnatenko et al., 2025 found the 2025 tariffs could yield modest U.S. welfare gains through improved terms of trade if partners don't retaliate. Concrete data shows $236 billion in revenue, a 25% drop in Chinese imports, and $1.7 trillion in announced manufacturing investments. So the debate isn't who pays (both sides agree Americans do), but whether reshoring and revenue gains justify the cost.
- mmooss 9mo ago> $236 billion in revenue That's a tax increase, using a regressive tax. It would strain belief in their seriousness if Republicans suddenly thought tax increases are a good thing. > reshoring A tax on ordinary people that goes to welfare for US corporations.
- rf15 9mo agoI once was in the same shoes, but moved on. All of it reminds me of what people now consider more of a LLM-assisted coding fallacy: the speed of writing code and the speed of your tools (unless its abysmal) is usually not the time bottleneck for writing a good program.
- freakynit 9mo agoLLM analysis: https://hn-discussions.top/tariffs-burden-americans/ https://hn-discussions.top/tariffs-burden-americans/
- tmaly 9mo agoI experienced the cost first hand. I bought some used items off Ebay that shipped from Japan. I had to pay like 20% of the cost of the item before DHL would even deliver it.
- gigatexal 9mo agoBasic facts taught in economics 101 validated. News at 11. And yet everyone who voted for the pumpkin idiot don’t believe it. They think 2 plus 2 is 30T enough to pay off the debt. Idiots. The lot of them and anyone here who voted for this. I said it. And I’ll say it again. The man is enacting project 2025 and ruining the country and some of you are laughing giddily while it burns.