MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/. US tariff policy has failed as an instrument of foreign policy pressure, while its costs are being passed almost entirely onto American consumers, leaving them worse off, associate professor with the Department of World Economy at the Higher School of Economics’ Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs Ksenia Bondarenko wrote in a column for TASS.
"Much of the rhetoric in 2025 was built around the claim that ‘foreigners pay the tariffs.’ However, a study by the Federal Reserve shows the opposite: by the seventh month after a tariff is imposed, its cost is almost entirely passed through to American consumers via retail prices - a ‘100% pass-through.’ The authors put it in very simple terms: ‘If a retailer’s wholesale cost rises by $1 because of tariffs, after seven months the retailer will raise the retail price by the same $1’," Bondarenko wrote.
As a result, tariffs introduced in November 2025 contributed a cumulative 3.1% to the increase in consumer goods prices by February 2026, adding 0.8 percentage points to core inflation overall, the expert noted. "So yes, the government did receive additional revenue, but that money was effectively taken from the pockets of ordinary American consumers rather than from the profits of foreign exporters. This is where the widest gap between the political narrative and the economic reality of the entire tariff saga becomes apparent," the HSE associate professor wrote.
