Newly released research from the New York Federal Reserve provides damning evidence that higher prices seen at retail are a direct result of President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.
In a recently released white paper, Fed economists assessed the prices of 67 commonly purchased products against consumer spending insights from 2022, finding that the cost of those items was 2.9 percent higher as of February 2026.
Without the duties, the writers surmised that the price of those same goods would have fallen by 1 percent early this year. Inflation on consumer goods had gone back to a slightly negative pre-Covid-19 average throughout 2024, prior to the introduction of new duties. The price hikes picked up throughout 2025, mirroring the tariffs. In all, around 26 percent of the tariff increases enacted last year were reflected in retail prices paid by consumers.
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The paper summed up the phenomenon as such: for every percentage point increase in average tariffs, the price of consumer goods increases by around one-quarter of 1 percent after a period of a year.
“Roughly two-thirds of the effect arises because tariffs raise the prices of imported consumer goods,” it said.
The remaining one-third of the effect comes from indirect impacts. And while that bump can’t be traced to tariffs with a straight line, it nonetheless undermines the Trump administration’s stated goal of creating a fertile environment for American manufacturing to replace offshore imports.
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