Tariffs raised prices for imported and U.S.-made goods—with the biggest policy exposure in metals and autos

An NBER working paper estimates 26% pass-through to consumer-goods prices and says indirect increases took nine to 12 months to arrive.

Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise and David Weinstein estimate that a uniform 10% tariff would raise consumer-goods prices about 2.6%: roughly 1.7 percentage points from costlier imported finished goods, 0.77 points from imported inputs used by U.S. producers and 0.17 points from domestic firms raising markups as foreign competition became more expensive.

ContextThe authors map tariffs and producer prices into 67 non-oil CPI goods categories, covering about 75% of consumer-goods spending and 20% of the full CPI basket. The 2025 tariff package was broad, but the paper says policy exposure was especially concentrated in steel and aluminum and motor vehicles and parts. Other product-specific tariffs covered copper, lumber and timber, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and, later, semiconductors. Tariffs on those inputs can also raise prices for domestically made products that use them. The border-price effect appeared almost immediately, while higher input costs and domestic markups took nine to 12 months to work through supply chains. The authors estimate tariffs contributed about 2.2 percentage points to goods inflation in their sample by February 2026, but call that counterfactual illustrative rather than a forecast of total CPI. The July 2026 paper is a working paper and has not been peer reviewed.