US consumers are not bearing the full burden of the tariffs in the US-China trade war.

Judged as of May 2019 against tariff pass-through research. True: the evidence shows that less than 100% of the cost of the US tariffs on Chinese goods fell on US consumers and buyers, with some share absorbed by foreign exporters, US firms' margins, or otherwise. Mostly true: pass-through to US buyers was close to complete but measurably below full, or the burden fell mainly on US importers and firms rather than on consumers themselves. Mixed: studies conflict. Mostly false: the main studies find essentially full pass-through to US buyers, and the claim rests only on a technical distinction, such as US firms rather than consumers paying. False: the evidence shows US consumers bore the full burden or more.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from US Trade Policy Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Working Paper No. 19-12), by Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman, and Jenny Tang · 2019

   “We start by documenting that the tariffs were almost fully passed through to the total prices paid by importers, suggesting that the tariffs’ incidence has fallen largely on the United States.”

2. E2 Tariff Passthrough at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from US Trade Policy Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (Working Paper No. 19-12), by Alberto Cavallo, Gita Gopinath, Brent Neiman, and Jenny Tang · 2019

   “Our results suggest that retailers are absorbing a significant share of the increase in the cost of affected imports by accepting lower profit margins on those goods.”

3. E3 Column: Trump’s trade war is politically motivated, yet hurts consumers and GOP voters, study shows Los Angeles Times (Michael Hiltzik column) · 4 March 2019

   “More generally, the economists’ paper shows that the Trump tariffs have been entirely passed through to U.S. consumers. That’s because foreign exporters haven’t moderated the impact of the U.S. tariffs by cutting prices.”

4. E4 New China Tariffs Increase Costs to U.S. Households Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Liberty Street Economics · 23 May 2019

   “Studies, including our own, have found that the tariffs that the United States imposed in 2018 have had complete passthrough into domestic prices of imports, which means that Chinese exporters did not reduce their prices.”

E1 and E4 find that the 2018 tariffs were passed through almost completely to the prices US importers paid, meaning Chinese exporters did not absorb much of the cost and the burden fell largely on the United States. However, E2 finds that at the store level, retailers absorbed a significant share of the higher import costs by accepting lower profit margins. That means consumers did not bear the full burden. E3 says the tariffs were entirely passed through to consumers, but it reaches that conclusion from border import prices. So the claim holds in the sense that US firms absorbed part of the cost, even though the evidence indicates the burden fell largely on the United States [E1][E2].