It is one of the most repeated lines in American politics, and it is wrong in a way you can measure on a receipt. "You're not paying for those tariffs," Donald Trump has said. "China's paying for those tariffs." [1] It is a comforting thing to hear, because it means the trade war is somebody else's bill. It is not. The bill comes to you, at the register, and the people who study this for a living have already added it up.

How a tariff actually works

Here is the mechanic of it, because the whole claim lives or dies on one fact. A tariff is a tax collected by US Customs from the American company that imports the goods. [1] China does not write a check to the US Treasury. The importer does, the moment the container clears the port, and from there the cost moves the only direction costs ever move: down the line, onto the store, and onto you. [4] A Chinese exporter can lose sales if prices climb, but the payment itself, the tariff, is made by an American.

WHO PAYS

  • A tariff is paid by the US importer to US Customs, not by China [1]
  • That cost gets passed down to the store, then to your cart [4]

What the studies found

You do not have to take my word for the direction. Economists have measured who actually absorbed the cost. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that in the first eleven months of 2025, foreign exporters ate somewhere between 6 and 14 percent of the tariff cost. [2] The rest, the overwhelming majority, landed on American consumers and businesses. Separate work from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Kiel Institute put the American share at 94 to 96 percent. [3] Same answer, three different sets of researchers: you are paying for those tariffs.

THE BOTTOM LINE

  • "China's paying for those tariffs": False [1]
  • US importers pay the tariff; about 94 to 96% of the cost lands on Americans [2][3]
  • The trade war is not somebody else's bill. It is on your receipt.

The claim is not a small exaggeration. It points the payment at the wrong country. China does not pay the tariff. You do, a little at a time, in the price of the things you were already buying. The honest version does not fit on a hat, but it fits on a receipt: a tariff is a tax, and the person who pays it lives here.