Politics
The Tariffs
Foreign countries would pay. Americans paid about 90% of it. Then the Supreme Court ruled the biggest ones illegal.
The argument
Tariffs are an old, legitimate tool, and wanting to be tougher on trade with China is a real position. This page is about something narrower: what was promised about these tariffs, and what the government’s own data shows happened.
The promise was that other countries would pay, that tariffs would enrich Americans, and that tariffs could replace or sharply cut income taxes, as the Tax Foundation reported. New York Fed economists found Americans paid nearly 90% of the cost. The money raised was a small fraction of income taxes. And the Supreme Court ruled the largest tariffs were never legal to begin with.
1. The promise
Inaugural address, January 20, 2025
we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizensRead the address
The idea, repeated through 2024 and 2025, was that the cost would land on foreign countries and the money would come to Americans.
2. Who actually paid
When a tariff is charged, the American company importing the goods pays it at the border. The question is whether the foreign seller cuts its price to make up for it. If it does, the foreigner pays. If it does not, Americans do.
Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, February 12, 2026
nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers
Their estimate: 94% fell on Americans in early 2025, and 86% by November. A later New York Fed analysis, October 6, 2026, found “nearly 90 percent of the 2025 tariffs were passed through to U.S. import prices,” a separate measure of how much of the tariff showed up in import prices.
Read the analysisThe government’s own import price data says the same thing a simpler way. If foreign sellers had been absorbing the tariffs, the prices they charged would have fallen. The Bureau of Labor Statistics import price index was essentially flat in 2025, down 0.3% from January to December.
3. The money
Figures are through August 2026 unless noted, as of October 12, 2026. Tariffs did raise real money. Customs duties brought in $77 billion in fiscal 2024 and $195 billion in fiscal 2025, according to the Treasury’s monthly statements.
To replace the income tax, they would have needed to bring in about $2.7 trillion. Fiscal 2025’s customs revenue was about 7% of that.
4. The courts
The largest tariffs, the “Liberation Day” rates of April 2025 and the earlier ones on Canada, Mexico, and China, were imposed under an emergency law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, without a vote of Congress.
Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, Supreme Court, February 20, 2026
we hold that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.
The Court also noted that the law “contains no reference to tariffs or duties.” The ruling was about what Congress authorized, not about whether tariffs are constitutional in general.
Because the tariffs were illegal, the money had to go back to the businesses that paid it. As of the August Treasury statement, more than $125 billion in customs refunds had gone out this fiscal year, most of it from May on. Refunds go to the importing businesses, and no reporting shows them being passed on to shoppers.
5. Factories and prices
- Factory jobs. Manufacturing employment is down about 21,000 since January 2025. It fell 93,000 by December 2025 and has partly recovered.
- Factory output is up 3.5% since January 2025, a real point for the policy.
- Factory construction spending is down 28%, though that decline began before the tariffs, as the 2022 to 2024 building boom wound down.
- Prices of heavily imported goods. Since December 2024, toys are up 4.2%, clothing 3.7%, and household furnishings 5.1%.
6. How Utah voted
The Senate voted several times in 2025 on resolutions to end the emergency declarations behind the tariffs, on Canada, on Brazil, and on the global tariffs. Both of Utah’s senators, Mike Lee and John Curtis, voted against all three resolutions, and for the procedural motion that blocked a second try. In April 2025 the Senate split 49 to 49 on ending the global tariff emergency, so it failed. A later procedural vote also tied, and the vice president broke that tie.
What is true on the other side
- The revenue is real. Nearly $200 billion a year is not nothing.
- Tariffs were used as leverage. Japan’s agreement recites a $550 billion investment pledge, and China made commitments on fentanyl in exchange for a tariff cut in November 2025. How binding these pledges are is not yet clear.
- The power is not gone. Justice Kavanaugh, dissenting, wrote that the ruling “is not likely to greatly restrict Presidential tariff authority going forward,” because other laws allow tariffs.
- Factory output rose. The industrial base did not collapse.
The Supreme Court did not rule the tariffs “unconstitutional,” and it was not unanimous; it was a 6 to 3 ruling on what one law allows. He did not end all tariffs after the ruling; new ones replaced them. “Consumers paid 100%” overstates it; the best estimate is close to 90%. And “car prices soared” is not what the new-vehicle price index shows, which is up less than 1%.
The common rebuttals
“Short-term pain, long-term gain.”
That may be a fair argument for tariffs. It was not the promise. The promise was that foreign countries would pay and Americans would be enriched, starting now.
“The courts are just political.”
Three courts ruled the same way, and the Supreme Court majority included justices he appointed. The question was simple: does a law that never mentions tariffs authorize tariffs on nearly every country on earth?
What this means
The tariffs were sold as a tax on foreigners. By the New York Fed economists’ measure, they were mostly a tax on Americans, and the biggest ones were not even legal.