One line runs through the administration's case for its tariffs: that foreign countries, and China above all, pay them - not American consumers. There is a single official data series built to test exactly that, and it was released this week. It does not support the claim.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' import price index measures what foreign exporters actually charge, before the tariff is added. If foreign sellers were absorbing the tariff by cutting their prices, this index would be falling. In June it did the opposite: prices on goods imported from China rose 0.9 percent on the month, and overall US import prices were up 7.1 percent over the year [1].
Economists have put a number on who bears the cost. A study by Gita Gopinath and Brent Neiman found that about 92 percent of the cost of the 2025 tariff increases has fallen on US buyers - importers and, ultimately, consumers - up from about 81 percent during the 2018-19 tariffs [2]. Foreign exporters, in other words, largely held their prices; Americans paid the difference [2].
Data
| 2018-19 tariffs | 81% of the tariff cost borne by US buyers |
|---|---|
| 2025 tariffs | 92% of the tariff cost borne by US buyers |
The record this sets straight is not complicated. When a tariff is added to a price the foreign seller did not lower, the importer pays more, and that cost moves down the chain to the shelf. The claim that 'China pays' describes a transfer that the one index designed to measure it says is not happening - the money is coming, in the main, from American wallets [1][2].
