Who bears the burden of US tariffs? Evidence from export prices

Who bears the burden of US tariffs: American importers and consumers or foreign exporters? We address this question using monthly export price and tariff data at the tariff line level for all US trading partners between January and July 2025, a period of unprecedented breadth in tariff changes across products and partners. We estimate the elasticity of exporter prices with respect to tariffs using a long log-difference specification, and cross-check results with a first-difference estimator following Cavallo et al. (2025). We find that exporters absorb approximately 10 percent of the tariff increase through lower export prices, with the remaining 90 percent falling on US importers and consumers.