Tariffs Raising U.S. Prices, Study by NY Fed Finds

Contrary to what the Trump administration has maintained since launching a series of tariffs beginning last April, the imposition of such import taxes has resulted in higher costs for American businesses and shoppers. That’s the conclusion of a just-released report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, one of a dozen such entities nationwide that supervise financial institutions and distribute currency in their respective regions.

“We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers,” a quartet of economists wrote in a blog that appeared on the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s website. In its coverage of the news, CNNBusiness noted that recent reports from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Congressional Budget Office came to a similar conclusion.

White House spokesman Kush Desai defended the tariff agenda, CNN reported, noting inflation had cooled and corporate profits have gone up even as “America’s average tariff rate has increased nearly sevenfold. The reality is that President Trump’s economic agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, tariffs and energy abundance are reducing costs and accelerating economic growth.”

Meanwhile, the news service noted, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the legality of Trump’s tariffs is due any day, a decision that could potentially derail a major part of the president’s economic agenda.