States of Presidential Tariffs 

Operating expenses for American firms that buy foreign imports subject to tariffs have increased under President Donald J. Trump’s trade policy. It’s all part of his MAGA plan to improve market conditions for U.S. firms in what he has described as unfair competition with global rivals.

What are the recent costs of tariffs for U.S. importers and their domestic paying customers? Well, the total is $175 billion between March and October 2025, according to We Pay the Tariffs, a coalition of 800 small businesses, based in Washington, DC.

WPTT is also part of an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is anticipated to make a decision soon. Over 1,000 American importers are seeking tariff refunds.

The state with the largest economy paid the most money in tariffs. In California, where it was hyper-expensive to live before the president imposed tariffs on April 2, businesses and consumers paid $34 billion between March and October 2025. Businesses and consumers in Texas shelled out $18 billion, the next largest tariff expenditure during this 8-month period.

Enterprises and their customers in Georgia and Michigan paid $11 billion and $10 billion, respectively, between March and October 2025. Florida had a $6 billion tariff increase for the same period.

The Trade Partnership Worldwide compiled the numbers for all 50 states, based on updated Census tariff data, according to Dan Anthony, WPTT executive director and president of TPW. The White House can’t claim that it is unaware of the negative impacts of the tariffs on households and small businesses, according to him.

“The administration clearly understands tariffs are hurting affordability,” Anthony said in a statement. “Otherwise, why delay new Section 301 tariffs on China and Nicaragua and postpone furniture tariff hikes until after the 2026 midterm elections?”

Affordability is a recent buzzword. It’s shorthand for precarious living and working conditions of America’s working families after a decades-long shift of income and wealth from the bottom and middle to the top under Red and Blue administrations.

Corporations moving U.S. factories to foreign nations where wages are lower and environmental laws are weaker is one way that shift has happened. Another is fiscal policy, with President Trump’s tax cuts in his first and second terms to enrich corporate and wealthy donors an example.

Four days after Anthony’s statement above, the president announced new import tariffs of 25 percent on goods from countries doing business with Iran. The multiethnic nation of 92 million people is the site of a lethal anti-government rebellion with unclear assistance from American (CIA) and Israeli (Mossad) forces now, as Trump threatens an attack.

What is clear in Iran? Well, China, the industrial workshop of the world, is also the largest buyer of Iranian oil. On that note, China has surpassed the U.S. as the biggest economy in the world. Economics shapes politics. Thus there is a bipartisan consensus of anti-China fever in Congress and the White House.

Stateside, Trump’s tariffs will further hike prices of Chinese products that American firms buy. They will to varying degrees pass on to their customers the higher cost of imports subject to tariffs. This spurs inflation, a general rise in prices.

Against that backdrop, the president’s poll numbers reflect a Blue-Red divide over his tariff policies. Democrats oppose tariffs while Republicans approve them generally, though businesses and consumers in Blue and Red states are feeling economic pain. How long Republicans will continue to support Trump’s tariffs that increase the costs of living is anybody’s guess.

Meanwhile, Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Georgia Representative, are leaving politics. Her move after a falling out with Trump and the departures of other allies of the president bodes ill for the GOP to maintain its thin majority over Democrats in this year’s midterm elections. That of course assumes that there will be such elections.

Drilling down on the economic impacts of Trump’s tariffs, we turn to a new survey from the Association of Supply Chain Management and CNBC. According to supply chain professionals who responded, the tariffs are causing job layoffs to double and business investment to decrease.

The two economic impacts are connected. Capital investment, private and public, drives economic growth. When it slows, so does job creation.

Foreign firms that export products to the U.S. do not pay the presidential tariffs, an economic fact that holds true in Blue and Red states. Just ask U.S. importers and their customers in all 50 states.

In a recent speech before the Detroit Economic Club, Trump claimed that Chinese importers are paying presidential tariffs. Apparently, U.S. importers and their customers, Blue and Red, did not get this memo.

According to the president, “China is one of our biggest taxpayers right now. China, would you ever believe you would hear that?”

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