By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.
This is the methodology for most studies. Science is just trying to understand the observable world with measurements.
Of course Americans are paying for the tariffs. There’s the possibility that sellers would eat the costs (by lowering prices proportionately to account for the tariffs), but that only happened 4% of the time.
I’m not especially surprised, but I did think it’d be even closer to 0% than it is.
Like Adam Savage said: The difference between science and screwing around is recording the results.
Fair point. I’m just saying it could be published in Well, Obviously Monthly.