The Effects of Tariffs, One Year Into Trump’s Trade Experiment – The New York Times

The Effects of Tariffs, One Year Into Trump’s Trade Experiment

Five charts show the impact on the economy after a year of sweeping trade changes by the Trump administration.

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Note: Data is through Oct. 2025. Source: U.S. International Trade Commission. The New York Times.

By Ana Swanson

Ana Swanson covers international trade and reports from Washington.

Feb. 2, 2026, Updated 11:34 a.m. ET

Over the past year, President Trump carried out what was essentially a grand experiment with the U.S. economy, by raising tariffs to levels not seen in a century. It was an exercise that pitted Mr. Trump, a longtime proponent of tariffs, against business owners who paid the levies and mainstream economists who criticized the plan.

America imports trillions of dollars of foreign goods each year, and tariffs are a tax on those purchases. Over the past year, Mr. Trump raised average U.S. tariffs to about 17 percent, the highest level since 1932, in the wake of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Mr. Trump’s stated aim was to reinvigorate American industry and bring jobs back to the United States.

These new surcharges have had a significant impact. They have caused businesses to speed up, delay and cancel purchases, or find new countries to source products from. They have raised a significant amount of revenue for the government, much of it from American businesses. And they have caused the U.S. trade deficit to shrink and prices of American goods to rise. At the same time, they have not yet been the panacea for the factory sector that Mr. Trump had promised.

Here are some of the effects.

Skyrocketing revenue

One of the most tangible effects of Mr. Trump’s trade policy has been a drastic increase in the revenue the government takes in from tariffs. The United States collected an estimated $287 billion in customs duties, taxes and fees last year, nearly triple the amount in 2024.

Source: Treasury Department. The New York Times.

This amount is still small compared with the more than $2 trillion earned annually from income taxes, but it gives the government a significant new source of money for its spending, whether that’s funding the military or Social Security, or paying interest on the U.S. debt.

There’s an important caveat, however. This money was paid to the government by so-called “importers of record,” most of which are American companies.

While the Trump administration has said that foreign firms will end up paying the tariffs, most economists believe that American businesses and consumers bear most of the burden.

Editor’s Note: Featured image at top is WP AI. –DrWeb

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