A research team at Yale keeps a running tally of what the current tariffs are doing to the economy, and its most recent edition puts hard numbers on a question the political slogans work to dodge: when the United States puts a tariff on an imported good, who actually pays it? [1] The data shows it is not foreign governments. It is American households, and the bill does not land evenly.
Who writes the check
Start with the mechanics, because they settle most of the argument on their own. A tariff is a tax, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection collects it at the port of entry from the American company doing the importing, a Ford or a Walmart, not from the exporter abroad. [2] That importer then does what any business does with a new cost: it absorbs some and passes the rest to the customer at the shelf.
The president has told the story the other way. In an August 2025 post on Truth Social, as a new round of tariffs took effect, he wrote: "BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, LARGELY FROM COUNTRIES THAT HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR MANY YEARS, LAUGHING ALL THE WAY, WILL START FLOWING INTO THE USA." [3] Money does flow to the Treasury. The unstated part is who hands it over, and the central bank has now measured it. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that in the first eight months of 2025, U.S. importers and consumers bore about 94 percent of the tariff cost, with foreign exporters absorbing only the remaining 6 percent. Across the full year, the share paid at home stayed close to 90 percent. [2]
Data
| US consumers and businesses | 94% |
|---|---|
| Foreign exporters | 6% |
The part the slogan skips
Knowing Americans pay is half the picture. The other half is which Americans. Here the Budget Lab's figures are blunt. Measured as a share of household income, the tariffs cost the poorest 10 percent of households about 1.1 percent a year and the richest 10 percent about 0.4 percent. [1] The family with the least gives up close to three times the share of the family with the most.
A fair reading has to include the number a defender would reach for. In raw dollars, the top 10 percent pays more: about $2,175 a year against roughly $517 for the bottom 10 percent, in 2025 dollars. [1] That is true, and it is also how a regressive tax always looks. Wealthier households spend more in total, so they pay more in total. What decides a household budget is the bite out of what you actually have, and by that measure the tariff reaches the bottom first.
Data
| Poorest 10% | 1.1% |
|---|---|
| Richest 10% | 0.4% |
Why a tax on goods lands this way
There is no mystery in the pattern. Lower-income households spend a larger share of their income, and more of it on physical goods, the imported or import-competing things a tariff touches. [1] A tax aimed at the checkout line will always weigh more on the people who spend most of their paycheck there. For the average household, the Budget Lab puts the cost between about $760 and $940 a year if the current tariffs lapse on schedule, and higher if they are made permanent. [1]
The bottom line
The slogan says foreign countries pay. The collection process, the central bank's measurements, and the most recent estimates all point the same way: Americans pay, and the households with the least pay the largest share of what they have. A number on a labeled chart is harder to argue with than a line at a rally, which may be the reason the line never mentions the chart.
