“Who’s paying for the tariffs? US importers mainly. September import price index data shows that US importers are continuing to pay most of the tariffs. The index shows prices before tariffs are applied. If foreign exporters were bearing a large portion of the tariff burden, we should expect to see a large decrease in the index. Instead, we’re seeing fairly stable import prices overall, or in the case of China, a slight decline, illustrating that the bulk of the tariff burden is falling on US importers.”
Seems like we’ll never officially know that the tariffs are or aren’t working (from Erika York on Substack), because the only way things are made “official” these days, it seems, is for a sufficiently large (or loud?) portion of the party-in-power’s base to cognitively dissent from their belief that their party, or their Supreme Leader, is always right about everything.
But, if we allow the data to be the Official here, tariffs don’t seem to be working.
They’re increasing tariff revenue (“the year’s total to $205 billion compared to $65 billion by the same point in 2024”), but the revenue is coming off the back of imports, which means that that the importer (American companies, and consumers downstream) are paying them and thus raising the money.
But the figure is obviously celebrated by the White House.
“Amazing news, everyone! We’ve raised tariff revenue by 215%! President Trump is making those countries pay for not producing their products in our country. He’s saving you. He loves you!”
Hey man, look, the more we import, the more other countries are exporting to us, and the more the reality of not reshoring manufacturing drums on. Though, no one accepts that.
Am I wrong about this? It seems very obvious to me, but I’m not an economist and am trying to interpret what seems like a Very Wonderful Trump (insert-political-figure) Psyop.
If you say version, “Tariffs are meant to discourage importing so that we rebuild our manufacturing base and thus become more self-sufficient in our supply chain”…..
Then you should not celebrate tariff revenue going up over some sufficiently long time horizon because you’re still importing.
Oh, and he bailed out the farmer’s yesterday that he screwed earlier in the year. And this video below is what I mean at the top of this post:
Until folks like this farmer connect the dots, this is never officially a failure. The data isn’t in control here; the Narrative is.
I find this whole thing very dumb. And I am somewhat concerned that it seems so obvious to me that my thinking may, in fact, be quite off. So beware of an update on thinking in case I turn out to be quite off.
EDIT: 1:25 PM, 12/9/25
More data (“lame!”) to refute a piece of the Narrative.
Also, as a classical liberal I take issue with celebrating that the president needs to convince China to purchase “American” soybeans when the president seemingly has caused China to look elsewhere to purchase their soybeans (Brazil, etc.), not because it aligns with the market dynamics but because it’s politically necessary.
UPDATE: 4:16 PM, 12/9/2025
