The Trump administration’s tariff policy has proven decidedly unpopular with the American electorate, with many believing that the added duties have contributed to lingering inflation and higher prices at retail. The topic of who pays the tariffs—importers, supply chain partners or consumers—has been a topic of discussion since President Donald Trump took office last year.

Dr. Sheng Lu, professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware, examined the issue through a new lens, seeking to discover whether most apparel retailers indeed passed along the additional cost of duties to their shoppers, or whether they actually opted to absorb the lion’s share themselves.

Lu assessed monthly U.S. government data from January 2015 through December 2025 for the study, with the aim of identifying trends in pricing structure that could support or refute tariff increases. Instead of just looking only at the prices paid by shoppers, the analysis weighed the impacts of three factors that Lu believes are interconnected: U.S. apparel import tariff rates, U.S. apparel import prices and U.S. apparel retail prices. He also looked at retail sales shifts to see shifts in consumer demand amid the tariff fluctuations.

Lu’s research, published in the Research Journal of Textile and Apparel, revealed some striking findings.

“Challenging the common perception that higher tariffs inevitably lead to higher clothing prices, the findings suggest that tariff increases do not necessarily translate into proportionally higher retail prices,” the academic wrote.

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