Tariffs, Who Pays for Them

Wall Street Journal article (here’s the Apple News link) summarizing a research report from the German Kiel Institute:

Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe.
…
By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

U.S.A. U.S.A.

Or as John Gruber at Daring Fireball comments:

This is what economists expected, but it’s always important to measure actual results, no matter how obvious the conclusions seem in advance.

But the real reason for me posting this hear is that there are a lot of ‘predictions for 2026’ podcasts and articles floating around and most of them are skirting around one of the biggest issues our world is facing in many decades: “political uncertainties”… to put it mildly.