Boarding Air Force One on March 12, President Donald Trump quipped, “We’re going to raise hundreds of billions in tariffs; we’re going to become so rich we’re not going to know where to spend that money.” Despite hand-wringing from CEOs, the stock market tanking, and widespread condemnation from our trading partners, the President is forging ahead with his trade war. In doing so, he’s counting on big windfalls from these import taxes, along with the savings he boasts will flow from Elon Musk’s DOGE campaign, to fulfill his promise of sharply reducing America’s yawning fiscal deficits. But in examining five facts about how tariffs actually work, it’s clear that they will have a huge effect on the economy—just not the one the President is projecting.
Fact 1: Tariffs are a tax that will be mainly, if not wholly, borne by U.S. consumers
Trump has always insisted that other nations or foreign companies will pay the full cost of the tariffs that the U.S. collects on imports. During campaign stops in September, he stated, “It’s not a tax on the middle class. It’s a tax on another country,” and “It’s not going to cost you, it’ going to be a cost to another country.”
As a first step, it’s important to understand who actually makes the payment. When a Chinese or Canadian exporter ships components or finished goods to one of the 328 US ports of entry, the U.S. importer purchasing the goods—not the exporter or another nation—pays the tariff, also called an “import tax,” to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. The tariff is assessed as a fixed percentage of the price the exporter’s charges pre-tariff. That charge gets added to the price the U.S. importer pays.
The real cost of the tariff, however, can fall in part or whole on three parties. If the U.S. just increased tariffs on auto parts by 10%, the overseas producer could reduce its price by a like amount to maintain its sales to Ford or GM. Or, if the exporter tacks the 10% duty onto its selling price, the automakers could absorb the extra expense; they’d keep their car prices the same, and accept lower margins. In theory, if between them, the foreign exporter and the U.S. importer swallow the tariff, the cost won’t fall on the U.S. consumer. On the other hand, a U.S. importer shouldering the charge would be making a lot less money, and gain less earnings for building new plants and expanding its workforce.
But that’s not how it works in practice, according to studies of the real-world impact of past tariff increases. In a paper on the Trump tariff regime of 2018 and 2019 published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the four economist-authors analyzed the effect of the increase in tariffs during Trump’s first term from an average of 3.7% to 26.8% on almost 18,000 products including many types of steel, aluminum, and appliances, and covering $421 billion or over 18% of all U.S. imports. Their review found that for steel, exporters actually dropped their prices to U.S. importers—a group that would encompass builders, wholesalers, canners, and other customers, fully offsetting the tariffs—thereby ducking a big blow to their U.S. sales.
But that was an outlier. Overall, prices for the targeted goods rose 21.9% on average between the time the tariffs struck in 2018 and the close of 2019. The study found that, steel aside, “U.S. consumers have borne the entire incidence of U.S. tariffs.” Americans at the auto lots and supermarkets shouldered what’s known as a “one hundred percent pass-through” of the tariff tax. A second analysis of the first Trump wave from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Who’s Paying for the Tariffs?” (2020), reached a similar conclusion, noting: “We have found that in most sectors, tariffs have been completely passed on to U.S. firms and consumers.” The article doesn’t posit how much goes to consumer prices versus lower margins, but finds the U.S., not foreign companies, felt the full force of Trump’s first round to import taxes.
Fact 2: Tariffs don’t accelerate growth in output and employment, they throttle both
President Trump often trumpets that “tariffs are going to be the greatest thing we’ve ever done for our country.”
But the experience from his first term doesn’t confirm this confidence, according to “The Return of Protectionism,” as updated in January 2020. The paper details that tariff increases do indeed create winners and losers, but on balance, they hurt the economy more than they help. The authors estimate that domestic producers gained $24 billion in sales per year in 2018 and 2019, as tariffs raised prices for competing imports, making U.S.-produced goods more attractive to consumers and businesses. The duties also generated $65 billion in annual tax revenue. Downside: The tariffs raised prices to U.S. customers by $114 billion each year. Hence, according to the reckoning in the Journal of Economics, the U.S. economy suffered a net loss from the first big experiment of $25 billion (the $114 billion extra spent by consumers less the $89 billion from taxes and increased revenues by U.S. companies).
Domestic producers, the study estimates, would have benefited much more if they hadn’t lost $8 billion of their own export sales due to retaliation from abroad. All told, the authors estimate that tariffs shaved 0.13% from annual GDP in 2018 and 2019. Upshot: Sans tariffs, our output would have averaged 4.9% over the two-year span instead of the 4.75% the U.S. achieved. Keep in mind that a tariff increase that’s a fraction of what Trump’s envisioning drove this meaningful zap to GDP.
The most in-depth, historical analysis on the topic, an IMF working paper from 2019, appeared too early to assess the duties imposed in Trump’s first term. But they were a harbinger for what happened then—and what’s ahead. The four authors studied the impact of tariff increases from 1963 to 2014 across 151 nations. Their finding: a rise of 3.5% in import duties shaved 0.4% from annual GDP growth after five years, and led to a 1.5% increase in unemployment. And the authors didn’t calculate the extra pounding from our producers’ loss of exports triggered by retaliation.
Fact 3: Big tariffs will not reduce the Trump-hated trade deficit
A White House fact sheet from February 14 states that the major goal of Trump’s “Fair and Reciprocal Plan” for widespread tariffs is to “reduce our large and persistent annual trade deficit.” Trump talks constantly about how the import duties will narrow the lopsided exchange of goods between the U.S. and our foreign cohorts, rhetorically multiplying the size of the ravines to bolster his case.
But the President’s offensive won’t work, because it collides with a basic law of economics. The annual trade deficit by definition must match the difference between all U.S. savings and all U.S. investment. For many years, American taxpayers and businesses, all in, haven’t been saving nearly enough to fund the huge demand for our stocks and privately issued bonds, new factories and data centers, housing project and stakes in PE funds, and sundry other profit-spinning ventures. The reason: gigantic budget deficits expected to reach a staggering $1.9 trillion this year at the federal level. Uncle Sam is paying high rates to hoover up a huge share of America’s savings that would otherwise flow into private investments.
The U.S. shortage of savings to investment last year hit $971 billion, and it precisely equals the trade deficit in goods of $1.2 trillion, less our services surplus of roughly $300 billion. That savings less investment and the trade deficit must match is called an “identity” in economic jargon. (Services usually aren’t subject to tariffs, so it’s the duties on goods that are will reshape the economy moving ahead.) Why must the numbers equal out? Because foreign nations amassed net proceeds of $971 billion selling stuff to the U.S. in 2024. All that money is denominated in dollars, and those dollars are only good Stateside. Hence, foreigners send all that cash back across our borders to fund all the investments we can’t cover, mainly because such a big chunk of our savings go to funding the ravenous budget deficit.
Foreigners are willing to keep accumulating all those greenbacks because they richly prosper investing in the nation that’s generating the world’s highest returns. As a result, says economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins, “The U.S. has been able to finance the difference between our low savings, driven by the budget deficit, and big investments because of our vibrancy, with relative ease.” The big inflows from abroad are a boon to America, he says, because they allow our citizens to spend a lot more than if we had to balance our own federal budget, and at the same time pour money into new factories, fabs, and transforming old-line family outfits into models of modern efficiency. “We have the reserve currency and biggest and best capital markets,” says Hanke. “If you can finance deficits with money from abroad, they can be a wonderful thing. They’re allowing America to consume much more than we produce.”
Hanke adds that Trump has gotten the trade issue topsy-turvy. “Trump can moan all he wants about foreigners causing our trade deficits,” says Hanke. “But they’re not caused by foreigners engaging in unfair practices. They’re homemade. Any country posting a savings-investment deficiency will post a trade deficit the same size.”
The upshot: Tariffs could lower imports, but unless the U.S. either saves a lot more or invests far less, the trade balance won’t change. In fact, the big legacy from the original Trump tariffs is just that: Exports to China dropped sharply, and overall export expansion lagged the rise in imports. But the trade deficit (including services) expanded 63% since 2019.
Fact 4: Tariffs will do little if anything to shrink the federal budget deficit
The independent, nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimates that tariffs, if enacted as currently planned, would raise around $300 billion in 2026. That’s big money, equivalent to about one-eighth of what the US collected in personal income taxes last year. The question is whether the downdraft on GDP would flatten or lower folks’ incomes to the point where less cash would flow to the Treasury in total than if U.S. didn’t resort to tariffs. Most likely, they’re a false panacea for our fiscal profligacy. For example, the Tax Foundation predicts that the Trump tariffs would shave around $2 trillion from where annual GDP would be without them by around the late 2020s. That drag on growth could easily reduce the growth in tax receipts by more than the tariffs would collect.
Besides, tariffs are widely regarded as a poor tool for raising revenue. “They don’t raise much money unless they’re really high,” says Rose. “And when they’re really high, that just encourages smuggling. Tariffs are a really inefficient means of taxation. In the past 70 years, the world has turned to income and VATs to fund their budgets. No large country uses tariffs.”
Fact 5: We’re not getting fleeced by conniving, protectionist trading partners
Trump’s view that America is getting unjustly skewered by nations that hobble our imports while profiting richly from America’s wide-open markets doesn’t align with the data. Of course, all of our trading partners impose some especially high charges or technical barriers to protect their favorite products. Canada, for example, deploys a “supply management” system to keep dairy prices high within its borders, a system that puts an effective limit on U.S. imports. But the U.S. harbors its own market-closing practices as well, including a quota system for sugar imports and barriers shielding many dairy products, including powdered milk.
But in general, of our major counterparts mainly embrace free trade just as ardently as we do—or as we used to. For example, pre-Trump and retaliation, the EU put an average charge of 1% on US imports, exactly the same toll we imposed on its exports. Last year, the bloc collected just $3 billion in tariffs on U.S.-made goods, less than half what we charged the EU.
Canada and Mexico both exact somewhat higher tariffs on the US than the other way around. The average rate on US goods entering Canada is 3.1%, compared to 2.0% for their products flowing south across our borders. We pay 5.2% to sell stuff in Mexico, 1.8 points more than we our take on goods crossing the Rio Grande. Closing these differences would greatly benefit our exporters. But they’re far too slight to justify a trade war—especially since the backlash from both nations could prove a killer for our producers whose fortunes rely heavily on sending the likes of heavy machinery, chemicals, and plastics to those countries.
Even China exacted just 2.7% on average pre-trade war, while the U.S. since the Trump bumps in 2018 and 2019 was squeezing 10% on imports from its giant rival, a toll he just doubled.
Look at what Trump’s announced, and assume he does all of it. Trump’s planning 25% across-the-board tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and the EU, except for a 10% charge on Canadian energy imports. He’s already doubled the rate on China to 20%. The charge on autos, steel, aluminum, and autos from around the globe, set at the familiar 25%, is already in place, and Trump promises the same rate on all cars, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals. Lumber, copper, and ag products are also in his sights. This immense list covers an astounding $2.1 trillion in imports or around half the 2024 total of $4.1 trillion.
Today, the average tariff charged across all U.S. imports is 2.5%, about double the number before Trump imposed his first round in 2018 and the Biden administration kept most of those levies in place. Now the Tax Foundation estimates that on what’s already been announced, the norm will rise by over 11 points to 13.8%. The long-term cost, it forecasts, will be immense, amounting to a 0.55% reduction in annual GDP, about a one-eighth reduction in what the CBO views as our probable rate of expansion in the years ahead.
Someone may get rich from this trade war, but it’s not going to be America.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
