Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds

Research contradicts President Trump’s claim that foreigners are footing the bill, and could weaken his hand in the dispute over Greenland

FRANKFURT—Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that his historic tariffs, deployed aggressively over the past year as both a revenue-raising and foreign-policy tool, will be paid for by foreigners. Such assertions helped to reinforce the president’s bargaining power and encourage foreign governments to do deals with the U.S.

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The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices.

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By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

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Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said.

“There is no such thing as foreigners transferring wealth to the U.S. in the form of tariffs,” said Julian Hinz, an economics professor at Germany’s Bielefeld University who co-authored the study.

The $200 billion in additional U.S. tariff revenue last year “was paid almost exclusively by Americans,” Hinz said. That is likely to fuel higher U.S. inflation over time, he said.