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Using Treasury Department numbers on revenue from tariffs and
Goldman Sachs estimates of who ends up paying for them, the
Democrats' report Thursday found that American consumers' share
of the bill came to nearly $159 billion — or $1,198 per
household — from February through November.
"This report shows that (Trump's) tariffs have done nothing but
drive prices even higher for families,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan
of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the economic committee.
“At a time when both parties should be working together to lower
costs, the president’s tax on American families is simply making
things more expensive.”
In his second term, Trump has reversed decades of U.S. policy in
favor of free trade, imposing double-digit tariffs on almost
every country on earth. According to Yale University's Budget
Lab, the average U.S. tariff has shot up from 2.4% at the
beginning of the year to 16.8%, the highest since 1935.
The president argues that the import taxes will protect U.S.
industries from unfair foreign competition, bring factories to
the United States and raise money for the Treasury.
“President Trump’s tariffs have actually secured trillions in
investments to make and hire in America as well as historic
trade deals that finally level the playing field for American
workers and industries," said White House Spokesman Kush Desai.
"Democrats spent decades complaining about lopsided trade deals
undermining the American working class, and now they’re
complaining about the one president who has done something about
it.”
The taxes are paid by importers who typically attempt to pass
along the higher costs to their customers.
Democrats did well in elections last month in Virginia, New
Jersey and elsewhere largely because voters blame Trump and the
Republicans for the high cost of living, just as they'd blamed
Trump's predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the same thing a
year earlier.
Economist Kimberly Clausing of the UCLA School of Law and the
Peterson Institute for International Economics, last week told a
House subcommittee that Trump's tariffs amount to “the largest
tax increase on American consumers in a generation, lowering
standards of living for all Americans.'' Clausing, a Treasury
Department tax official in the Biden administration, has
calculated that Trump's import taxes ”amount to an annual tax
increase of about $1,700 for an average household.''
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