Who Really Pays Import Tariffs?
To be honest, we must acknowledge that the importer pays all the costs of an importation.
John F. Di Leo | February 24, 2026
Ever since the concept of using tariffs as an overpowering policy tool appeared, a peculiar question has hovered around the discussion:
“Who actually pays these tariffs?”
Part of the problem is a philosophical device of President Trump’s own argument: since he is using them as a weapon to drive policy, he argues that it’s the exporting country that pays them – largely since, if buyers decide against a purchase because of the tariff, it’s the exporting country that suffers, so it’s fair to say that the exporting country pays the tariffs.
But that’s just a rhetorical device. To be honest, we must acknowledge that the importer pays all the costs of an importation, and that includes any taxes and fees levied on it.
Let’s first look at what we’re talking about.
For as long as there has been commerce – thousands of years now – there have been tariffs of some kind. A country’s Customs ministry stations agents at its seaports, bridges, and other ports of entry, checks the quantity, value, and nature of each shipment coming in, and assesses some form of tax on them.
This process started out simply, and by the late 20th century, each country published a book several inches thick, now called a Harmonized Schedule, dividing all the goods in the world into thousands of codes, each with its own specific standard rate of duty. Sometimes it’s a fixed amount per unit of measure, like “four cents per liter;” usually it’s a percentage of the import’s total purchase price, such as “5% of the total entered value.”
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/02/who_really_pays_import_tariffs.html
