Trump’s Favorite Boast Expensively Blows Up in His Face
“Americans are footing the bill,” Kiel Institute Research Director Julian Hinz said.
Mr. Trump’s tariff policy is doing more harm than good to Americans.
Contrary to President Donald Trump’s favorite economic argument, a new study reveals that U.S. tariffs on imports are borne almost entirely by Americans.
The report, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, indicates that American consumers and importers bear 96% of the burden of Trump’s aggressive tariff policy.
The 79-year-old Trump spent much of his second term boasting that his tariffs were generating billions of dollars in tax revenue from abroad.
“Tariffs are counterproductive,” said Julian Hinz, research director at the Kiel Institute and co-author of the study. “The claim that foreign countries are paying these tariffs is a myth. The data shows exactly the opposite: it is Americans who are footing the bill.”
The study analyzed more than 25 million shipping documents related to U.S. imports between January 2024 and November 2025, totaling nearly $4 trillion. It found that foreign exporters bore only about 4% of the tariff burden, with the rest being passed on to American buyers.
The report indicates that instead of taxing foreign producers, the tariffs act as a tax on domestic consumption, and that American consumers should therefore expect to face higher prices in the future.
The data showed that instead of lowering their prices to offset the tariffs, countries reduced their exports to the United States.
“We compared Indian exports to the U.S. with those to Europe and Canada, and we found a clear trend,” said Haines. “The value and volume of exports to the United States have plummeted, by as much as 24%. But unit prices—the prices charged by Indian exporters—have remained unchanged. They exported less, not for less.”
He added: “Ultimately, tariffs hurt everyone.”
White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai told the Daily Beast: “Average tariffs imposed by the United States have nearly tenfold under the Trump presidency, while inflation has continued to fall from the highs reached under Biden.”
Desai added: “The administration has consistently argued that foreign exporters who depend on access to the American economy, the world’s largest and best consumer market, would ultimately bear the cost of these tariffs, and that is precisely what is happening.” Trump’s obsession with tariffs fueled international tensions throughout his second term, his unpredictable threats and their implementation causing significant market volatility.
In a lengthy post on Truth Social on Saturday, the president threatened to impose a 10% import tax on eight European countries that opposed his plan to annex Greenland, with the tax set to take effect on February 1.
“These countries, by playing this very dangerous game, have raised the stakes to an unacceptable and intolerable level of risk,” Trump wrote. “Therefore, to preserve international peace and security, it is essential to take decisive action to quickly and definitively end this potentially dangerous situation.”
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the international tariffs imposed by Trump. He stated that the United States would be in a “catastrophic” situation if the Court did not rule in its favor.
