New York Fed researchers track the cost of 67 types of goods. Then they find prices would have dropped by 1% if not for Trump’s tariffs

Prices for a wide range of everyday items would have actually dropped by nearly 1 percent last year and into early this year if not for the tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump, CNBC reports. A new paper from researchers at the New York Federal Reserve indicates that the cost of 67 specific categories of goods was 2.9 percentage points higher as of February due to these levies.

It’s been a long-standing point of debate among economists, as everyone expected the levies to drive up costs, but it was notoriously hard to track the exact ripple effects. Companies aren’t always transparent about how they adjust their pricing models, making it difficult to pin down the data. Now, the New York Fed has cleared that up by showing that for every percentage point increase in the average tariff, consumer goods prices saw a boost of roughly a quarter of a percent one year later.

The authors of the study, Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise, and David Weinstein, noted that the consequences of these policies go beyond just the initial tax. They wrote, “Tariffs have a larger and more drawn-out impact on consumer prices than the direct effect alone would suggest.” While the direct levies account for about two-thirds of the price impact, the rest comes from knock-on effects. This happens when U.S. companies that rely on imported parts or materials are forced to pass those higher costs along to the consumer.

This report provides some of the most concrete evidence on how Trump’s trade policies affected everyday consumers.

President Donald Trump has maintained that foreign exporters would be the ones to absorb these costs, rather than American shoppers. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement, “The Trump administration has consistently maintained that the cost of tariffs will ultimately be borne by foreign exporters who rely on access to the American economy,” despite the research findings suggesting otherwise.

The New York Fed team calculated that about 26 percent of last year’s tariff increases trickled down directly into higher retail prices. The report highlights that annual price growth for the goods they tracked reached a peak at the start of 2026. Even though the Supreme Court struck down many of these tariffs in February, which led to billions of dollars in refunds for retailers, you can still expect to pay elevated prices through 2027.

The White House has already stated it intends to move forward with levies through other measures. Currently, products imported from many different countries are still facing tariffs of about 10 percent. While that rate is often lower than what we saw under the previous round of tariffs, it is still a significant factor in the pricing you see at the store.

The policy has left a lasting mark on the cost of living that isn’t going to vanish overnight, even with the recent legal changes. The researchers, however, didn’t break down exactly which 67 types of goods they looked at.