90% of Trump’s tariffs are paid for by American consumers and companies, New York Fed says

Despite President Donald Trump insisting it’s foreign businesses paying for his raft of tariffs, mounting data indicates that, actually, American households and businesses are footing the bill for his import taxes.

A Federal Reserve Bank of New York report released Thursday, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Foreign Trade Statistics through November 2025, found Americans paid for nearly 90% of the tariffs in 2025, including 94% of the levies from January to August of last year, 92% from September to October, and 86% in November.

“Our results show that the bulk of the tariff incidence continues to fall on U.S. firms and consumers,” the economists wrote. Americans “continue to bear the bulk of the economic burden of the high tariffs imposed in 2025.”

The report authors—Mary Amiti, Chris Flanagan, Sebastian Heise, and David E. Weinstein—explained in their report that over the course of 2025, average tariff rates quintupled from 2.6% to 13%. If foreign firms were the ones paying for the levies, it would be reflected in those companies having to lower prices in order for them to remain the same on American soil once the taxes were applied. Instead, their data reflects that companies exporting to the U.S. have only modestly decreased their prices, leaving it to domestic companies to absorb the increased costs or pass them down to cons...