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Key Takeaways
- Americans are paying for 96% of the cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, a new study shows.
- The findings contradict Trump’s claims that tariffs are a tax on foreign countries and they do not cost the United States.
- The research by economists at Germany’s Kiel Institute is the latest in a series of analyses that have yielded similar results.
Americans are paying nearly all of the cost of President Donald Trump’s import taxes, another analysis has found, contradicting his claims that foreigners are footing the bill.
American businesses and consumers are paying 96% of the cost of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, according to a study released Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank. Researchers at the institute analyzed 25 million transactions valued at almost $4 trillion to reach their conclusions.
“The tariff functions not as a tax on foreign producers, but as a consumption tax on Americans,” wrote the researchers, led by Julian Hinz, a professor at Bielefeld University. “Every dollar of tariff revenue represents a dollar extracted from American businesses and households.”
What This Means for the Economy
The latest findings shed light on the economic impact of tariffs, just as Trump threatens a fresh round against Europe in a bid to seize control of Greenland from Denmark.
The president has repeatedly claimed foreign exporters are absorbing the import taxes, which raised more than $200 billion in revenue in 2025.
“A tariff is a tax on a foreign country,” Trump told supporters in Pennsylvania during the 2024 presidential campaign. “A lot of people like to say, ‘Oh, it’s a tax on us.’ No, no, no. It’s a tax that doesn’t affect our country.”
Other economists have different estimates for how much of the tariff cost has been passed on to U.S. businesses and consumers, but they have mostly concluded that Americans bear a significant portion of the cost—if not all of it. In October, economists at Goldman Sachs estimated U.S. customers were paying 55% of the tariff costs, rising to 70% this year.
