---
title: "Who paid the 2025 tariffs? (research idea)"
description: "Tariffs and the trade war appear on 184 recent papers, mostly in the economics journals, but only 47 carry a price, pass-through, incidence or inflation keyword, and \"tariff pass-through\" on 3. The 2025 tariff rounds were larger and broader than those of 2018. Did foreign exporters cut prices this time, or did consumers pay again?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/tariff-pass-through-in-the-2025-trade-war
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/tariff-pass-through-in-the-2025-trade-war.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Who paid the 2025 tariffs? (research idea): Tariffs and the trade war appear on 184 recent papers, mostly in the economics journals, but only 47 carry a price, pass-through, incidence or inflation keyword, and \"tariff pass-through\" on 3."
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["economics", "trade", "macroeconomics"]
keywords: ["tariffs", "import tariffs", "trade war", "tariff pass-through"]
---

# Who paid the 2025 tariffs?

Tariffs and the trade war appear on 184 recent papers, mostly in the economics journals, but only 47 carry a price, pass-through, incidence or inflation keyword, and "tariff pass-through" on 3. The 2025 tariff rounds were larger and broader than those of 2018. Did foreign exporters cut prices this time, or did consumers pay again?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 184 papers carry a tariff or trade-war keyword (119 in economics journals, 43 in finance): "US-China trade war" on 48, "tariffs" on 39, "import tariffs" on 18, "trade war" on 12. Only 47 of them also carry a pass-through, consumer-price, price, incidence, inflation or welfare keyword, and "tariff pass-through" appears on 3.

## Questions

- Did import prices at the border fall after the 2025 tariffs, as they mostly did not in 2018, and did the answer differ by exporter country and product?
- How much of the tariff reached retail prices, and how quickly?
- Did importers reroute through third countries, and did that limit the pass-through?

## Data that could help

Monthly import price indices and customs data by product and origin, retail scanner prices, and the tariff schedules with their effective dates.

## Next step

Estimate border price changes by product for the 2025 tariff rounds using monthly customs unit values and compare them with the 2018 estimates.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| tariffs | 3 | #776 | 0, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 1, 1, 3, 4, 0, 1, 3, 4, 3, 3, 2, 1, 4, 3, 5, 6, 4, 6, 2, 2, 5, 4, 0, 4, 6, 3, 3, 1, 3, 5, 3 | 101 |
| import tariffs | 0 | – | 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 0, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2, 1, 4, 0, 1, 1, 3, 0, 2, 2, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 0, 0 | 49 |
| trade war | 2 | #1303 | 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 4, 0, 1, 1, 1 | 27 |
| tariff pass-through | 0 | – | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 | 5 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Who paid the 2025 tariffs?. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/tariff-pass-through-in-the-2025-trade-war

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-tariff-pass-through-in-the-2025-trade-war,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Who paid the 2025 tariffs?},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/tariff-pass-through-in-the-2025-trade-war}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).