Trump’s favorite conceit blew up in his face

Mr. Tariff’s well-meaning policies are doing Americans more harm than good.

Contrary to President Donald Trump’s favorite economic claims, US import tariffs are almost exclusively paid by Americans, new research finds.

A study published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think-tank, found that US consumers and importers bore 96 percent of the burden of Trump’s aggressive tariff policy.

Trump, 79, has spent much of his second term boasting that his tariffs will bring billions in revenue from other countries.

“Tariffs are their own goals,” said Julian Hinz, director of research at the Kiel Institute and co-author of the study. “The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth. The statistics show the opposite: Americans foot the bill.”

The research examined more than 25 million shipping records for U.S. imports between January 2024 and November 2025, with a total value of nearly $4 trillion, and found that foreign exporters paid only about four percent of the tax burden, while U.S. buyers absorbed the rest.

Rather than taxing foreign producers, the tariffs act more like a domestic consumption tax, with the report predicting that American consumers will face higher prices in the future.

The data showed that instead of countries lowering prices to offset the tariffs, they reduced their shipments to the US.

“We compared Indian exports to the US with shipments to Europe and Canada and identified a clear pattern,” Hinz said. “Both export prices and volumes to the US fell sharply, up to 24 percent. But unit prices—the prices charged by Indian exporters—remained unchanged. They shipped less, not cheaper.”

“Tariffs ultimately hurt everyone,” he added.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai told The Daily Beast: “Under President Trump, the average US tariff has increased nearly tenfold and inflation continues to cool from the highs of the Biden era.”

“The administration has consistently maintained that foreign exporters dependent on access to the U.S. economy, the world’s largest and best consumer market, will ultimately pay the cost of the tariffs, and that is indeed playing out,” Desai said.

Trump’s obsession with tariffs has raised global tensions throughout his second term, as his unexpected threats and follow-through have led to volatile market conditions.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Saturday, the president threatened to impose a 10 percent import tax against eight European nations that oppose his annexation of Greenland, effective February 1.

“These countries playing this very dangerous game have placed a level of risk in the game that is not tenable or sustainable,” Trump wrote. “Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect global peace and security, strong measures are taken so that this potentially dangerous situation ends quickly, and without question.”

The Supreme Court is set to rule on the legality of Trump’s global tariffs, with Trump saying the US will be “ruined” if the court does not rule in his favor.