2025 tariff passthrough

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is-paying-for-the-2025-u-s-tariffs/

The conclusions are in line with other research, including from the Budget Lab at Yale, Goldman Sachs, the Tax Foundation, the German-based Kiel Institute for the World Economy, as well as academic research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-wonkish-note-on-tariffs-and-inflation

Why haven’t things been worse?

https://rbaldwin.substack.com/p/why-did-us-import-prices-rise-at

Studies

2018 tariffs

Other tariffs

Lately, discussions around tariffs have focused on prices, sometimes called inflation. But that’s not what matters for economic efficiencies. Higher prices are primarily a transfer from consumers to producers and the government.

The deadweight loss comes because tariffs push companies (and consumers) to change their behavior in ways that use up more real resources for the same outcome—building plants in suboptimal locations, reorganizing supply chains, and developing elaborate workarounds like seat removal. These distortions represent pure economic losses that benefit no one. It’s like forcing someone to take a longer route to work—the extra gas purchases help the gas station (although it hurts whatever you don’t spend money on). But extra time is simply a wasted resource; no one benefits. So even when tariffs “succeed” in moving production to the US, they create waste that goes beyond just higher prices.