Trump is proposing a 10% tariff. Economists say that amounts to a $1,700 tax on Americans.

Former President Donald Trump is committed to reinforcing one of his most characteristic trade policies – tariffs – if he is re-elected next November, imposing generalized duties of 10% on all products imported into the USA from abroad. The idea, he he saidis to protect American jobs as well as raise more revenue to offset an extension of their 2017 tax cuts.

But that proposal would likely backfire, effectively acting as a tax on US consumers, say economists across the political spectrum. If tariffs are enacted – with Trump also proposing a 60% or more tax on Chinese imports – a typical middle-class family in the US would face about $1,700 a year in additional costs, according to to the right-leaning Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Meanwhile, the left-leaning Center for American Progress also chewed the numbers and projects about $1,500 a year in extra costs for a typical family. The reason, according to experts: U.S. companies that import goods from abroad typically pass the cost of tariffs onto American consumers; In this sense, national manufacturers often increase their own prices.

Who would pay the price?

The biggest impact of higher import tariffs would likely fall on low- and middle-income consumers because they spend a greater share of their income on goods and services than wealthier Americans, according to Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely of Peterson Institute.

“If you are an economist, you immediately know that tariffs are taxes. If you put a tariff on imported goods, that means they will become more expensive” and competitors may raise their prices, Clausing told CBS MoneyWatch.

Trump is selling “snake oil,” Lovely added. “It’s really made on steroids, and you have to speak up a little louder and say, ‘This is really going to affect you.'”

The bottom line, Clausing and Lovely said, is that Trump’s tariff proposals would likely raise consumer prices, a concern after two years of rising inflation. The typical American family would feel the greatest pain from materials and goods purchased by U.S. companies, such as lumber for construction, and which would be passed on to them through $610 in additional annual costs, the Center on American Progress analysis estimated.

Middle-class families would also pay $220 more a year for cars and other vehicles, $120 more for gasoline and other petroleum products, and $90 a year in additional food costs, according to the policy analysis firm.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not respond to requests for comment.

Tariffs have long been used to advance U.S. trade policies from both the right and left, as well as to curry favor with unions. And Americans generally support tariffs because they believe they protect U.S. jobs from foreign manufacturers.

In practice, policymakers tend to apply specific tariffs that serve to protect a specific industry or product. For example, President Joe Biden last month instituted a new tariff in Chinese electric vehicles, semiconductors, batteries, solar cells, steel and aluminum. The objective is to prevent China from undercutting US companies and threatening domestic manufacturing jobs, according to the Biden administration.

“The basic thing is that people look at tariffs as a job saver and say, ‘It’s going to cost me a little more and I want to do it because I want to help steelworkers,'” Lovely said. But, she added, “we see a lot of misunderstanding about how trade works and what tariffs mean for people.”

Do tariffs protect jobs?

Lovely and Clausing point to existing evidence about the impact of tariffs enacted by Trump during his presidency, when he placed taxes on Chinese products like this Mexican products. But instead of protecting employment, the offshoring of US jobs continued during Trump’s presidency, according to to Reuters, citing data from the Labor Department.

“People are selling a bill of goods, but the data shows that it doesn’t help them in their daily lives,” Clausing said. “That’s the hard part about being an economist: Everything lines up and people say, ‘No, the tariffs look good.'”

Famous MIT economist David Autor and his co-authors he said in a January research article that Trump’s 2018-2019 trade war “has so far failed to provide economic aid to the American heartland”, failing to increase employment in protected sectors. In fact, the retaliatory tariffs on countries targeted by the Trump administration have had the effect of “clear negative impacts on employment, particularly in agriculture,” Autor concluded.

The only success of Trump’s trade war, Autor concluded, was political. “Residents of regions most exposed to import tariffs became less likely to identify as Democrats, more likely to vote to re-elect Donald Trump in 2020, and more likely to elect Republicans to Congress,” the researchers wrote.

It’s likely that many Americans didn’t notice the price increases during the 2018-19 Trump trade war because they were targeted more than a widespread 10% tariff would be, Lovely and Clausing said.

“If you look at the set of imports targeted by Trump in his presidency, it was maybe a tenth of trade, and companies like Walmart may have spread some of that price increase across products, so it’s really not transparent,” Clausing said. . “My prediction is that if the worst happens and he puts a 10% tariff on everything, people will notice that.”