New Trump Tariffs Would Cost Average Family $1,700 a Year: New Report

Just as it did during his presidency, tariffs that candidate Donald Trump is proposing could have a devastating impact on American families…and the retailers and suppliers who sell to them.

The average American family could be hit with extra costs of more than $1,700 a year a new study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics is reporting. Trump has promised to slap at least 60% tariffs on anything coming in from China and 10% on all imports regardless of country of origin.

If he is elected and goes ahead with these moves, the U.S. would be in danger of “reverting to an antiquated approach to funding its government,” the study found, as reported in a story in the Sourcing Journal.

“As fiscal policy, the Trump agenda amounts to regressive tax cuts, only partially paid for by regressive tax increases,” the organization wrote. “A lower-bound estimate of costs to consumers indicates that the tariffs would reduce after-tax incomes by about 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution; tariffs would cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution at least $1,700 in increased taxes each year.”

PIIE said its calculation implies “that the costs from Trump’s proposed new tariffs will be nearly five times those caused by the Trump tariff shocks through late 2019, generating additional costs to consumers from this channel alone of about $500 billion per year.”

Sourcing Journal also reports on a study from the Center for American Progress that a new 10-percent tariff would be similar to an annual consumption tax increase of around $1,500 per household. Also, the National Taxpayers Union set its estimate even higher, projecting that household taxes could increase by $2,600 per year—the “largest tax increase since World War II.”

The organization did say that some economists are not as negative on the Trump tariffs and think they could help the overall economy. But overall, it cites experts who ‘have long understood that tariffs burden domestic purchasers of imported goods.”