Tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump after he returned to the White House earlier this year cost the average American household nearly $1,200, the Associated Press reported, citing calculations by Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.
Citing Treasury Department figures on tariff revenue and Goldman Sachs estimates of who will ultimately bear the cost, the Democratic report released Thursday said U.S. consumers paid about $159 billion, or $1,198 per household, between February and November.
The problem of higher prices
“This report shows that (Trump’s) tariffs have done nothing but drive up prices for families,” Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the economy committee, was quoted as saying by the AP. “At a time when both parties should be working together to reduce costs, the president’s tax on American families is simply making things more expensive.”
During his second term, Trump reversed decades of American policy that supported free trade. He imposed double-digit rates in almost all countries. According to Yale University’s Budget Lab, the average U.S. tariff has risen from 2.4% earlier this year to 16.8%, the highest level since 1935, the report said.
What does Trump claim?
Trump has consistently emphasized that the tariffs will protect domestic industries from unfair foreign competition, attract factories to the United States and generate revenue for the Treasury Department.
“President Trump’s tariffs have effectively secured trillions in investment to be made and leased in America, as well as historic trade deals that finally level the playing field for American workers and industry,” the news outlet quoted White House spokesman Kush Desai as saying. “Democrats have complained for decades about unbalanced trade deals undermining the American working class, and now they’re complaining about the only president who has done anything about it.”
In particular, importers usually pay taxes and try to pass on the increased costs to their customers in most cases.
Democrats did well in last month’s elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because voters hold Trump and Republicans responsible for the high cost of living. That mirrors how voters blamed Democrat Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessor, for the same problem a year earlier.
Last week, economist Kimberly Clausing of UCLA School of Law and the Peterson Institute for International Economics told a House subcommittee that Trump’s tariffs represent “the largest tax increase on American consumers in a generation, reducing the standard of living for all Americans.” Clausing, the Treasury Department’s tax official in the Biden administration, calculated that Trump’s import taxes “amount to an annual tax increase of about $1,700 for the average household.”
(With input from agencies.)
