{"id":183231,"date":"2026-04-02T08:51:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T08:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/183231\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T08:51:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T08:51:07","slug":"whos-winning-under-trumps-tariff-policy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/183231\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s winning under Trump’s tariff policy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On April 2, 2025, Donald Trump shocked the world by announcing “economic independence” for the US, imposing sweeping tariffs on every country in the world. The US Supreme Court has since ruled against\u00a0the\u00a0unprecedented move, but the US president seems keen to double down<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DW analyzed trade data on the origin of US imports over the past year to find out: What have Trump’s tariffs<\/a> achieved? How is the rest of the world adjusting to this new economic order? And who, if anyone, is reaping the benefits?\u00a0<\/p>\n

April 2, 2025: White House announces ‘Liberation Day’\u00a0tariffs\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under the “Liberation Day” tariffs, the White House announced that every country \u2014\u00a0with a few exemptions due to sanctions and pre-existing trade deals \u2014\u00a0would be subject to a 10% baseline tariff\u00a0on all goods they export to the US. Additionally, 85 countries that export more to the US<\/a> than they import would be subject to higher tariffs of up to 50%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I don’t think people expected the US administration to essentially declare a trade war on the entire world,”\u00a0says Haishi Li, economist at Hong Kong University<\/a> whose research focuses on how tariffs and sanctions impact global trade.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chaos broke out immediately,<\/a>\u00a0and global stock markets plummeted. While Trump insisted publicly that “big business is not worried about the tariffs,”\u00a0he\u00a0announced a 90-day pause<\/a> of all tariffs exceeding the baseline 10% rate on April 9.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During this pause, many trading partners such as the European Union<\/a>, Vietnam<\/a> and the United Kingdom<\/a> hastily negotiated trade deals in the hope of bringing down the announced tariff rates. Negotiations with China remained tumultuous<\/a>\u00a0over the next few months, with rounds of tit-for-tat tariffs\u00a0reaching up to 125%. \u00a0<\/p>\n

After multiple last-minute extensions to the 90-day tariff pause, country-specific rates finally came into effect on August 7, 2025.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Early 2025: US importers stockpile in expectation of tariffs\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even before April, it was clear that changes were coming. “Tariffs are going to make us rich as hell,” Trump announced<\/a>\u00a0upon entering his second term in January 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

US companies understood the message: Racing to fill warehouses before costs increased, they dramatically boosted their orders<\/a>, bringing roughly 20% more goods into the country between January and March than the 2022\u20132024 average \u2014 equivalent to a plus of around $184 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anticipating higher tariffs on gold bullion, for instance, the US imported roughly 50\u00a0times its usual volume in early 2025, totaling around $72 billion \u2014 mostly from Switzerland, but also from an eclectic mix of new or unusual suppliers, including Uzbekistan, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Big manufacturers across Asia also saw sharp increases, with Taiwan, Vietnam, and India all recording more exports to the US than usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n

April to July 2025: US companies shift to lower-tariff countries\u00a0<\/p>\n

The suspension period implemented on April 9 meant US importers had a three-month window in which to adjust to the new situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A study by Haishi Li and colleagues found that, overwhelmingly, companies attempted to shift their supply chains to countries with lower tariff rates<\/a>. “Imports were like water, flowing from high-tariff countries to low-tariff countries,”\u00a0Li told DW.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And from no other country did US imports shift away more than from\u00a0China<\/a>, which faced\u00a0by far the highest, and most volatile, tariff threats of any. The US imported goods worth $66 billion less from China between April and July 2025 than during the same period in previous years.<\/p>\n

Canada<\/a>, which was separately threatened<\/a> with tariffs of 25%, also saw a significant drop in its exports to the US, to the tune of\u00a0$24 billion.\u00a0However, the country\u00a0appears to have successfully compensated for this drop by adjusting its trade with other countries: Canada’s overall exports in 2025 were only $1.6 billion lower compared to 2024<\/p>\n

“The countries that benefited most from the tariff threat were the ‘10% countries,’ such as Australia and Latin America countries,” said Li.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But some high-tariff countries also saw huge import surges from US companies: Vietnam<\/a>, Thailand<\/a> and Taiwan<\/a> faced some of the steepest “reciprocal tariffs” \u2014\u00a046%, 36%, and 34% respectively \u2014\u00a0yet the US recorded an additional $34 billion in imports from Taiwan alone between April and July.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“US importers tended to import from countries that were potential substitutes for China,”\u00a0Li said. Many manufacturers in Taiwan and Vietnam already had strong ties with US companies, reinforced during Trump’s first-term trade dispute with China, which pushed production and supply chains toward these and other Asian economies.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

US citizens bear the brunt of tariff costs\u00a0<\/p>\n

So far, the tariffs have not brought production back to the US, says Alex Durante, senior economist at the US-based think tank Tax Foundation, which has tracked the domestic impact of the tariffs<\/a>. “This past year has been quite bad for manufacturing and employment,” he told DW. “In fact, the sectors that are growing tend to be ones relatively insulated from the tariffs because of exemptions like computers and AI-related products.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

And while US importers shifted where they bought from, the total value of imports returned to normal soon after the “Liberation Day”\u00a0announcement on April 2.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One figure that has risen sharply is US customs revenue. In 2025, the US Treasury collected $287 billion in customs duties and related taxes \u2014\u00a0roughly triple the amount in previous years. Early data suggests 2026 is on track to surpass even that total.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This revenue made up around 5%\u00a0of all taxes collected in the US in 2025.\u00a0Recent studies show that the higher tariffs have been almost fully paid by US importers, not foreign exporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a result, US consumers have ended up bearing the brunt of the burden. “We estimated that the tariffs have effectively cost each US household around $1,000 in 2025,”\u00a0said Durante. “This is the cumulative effect of businesses having to raise prices, cut investment, cut employment, or reduce wages to adjust to the tariffs.” \u00a0<\/p>\n

Uncertainty plagues international exporters\u00a0<\/p>\n

Internationally, the months since August 2025 have been marked by hastily brokered \u2014\u00a0and quickly unraveled \u2014\u00a0trade deals, alongside fresh rounds of tariff threats aimed at individual countries or product groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Global trade, economist Li says, has become a lot more uncertain: “If you ask academics, US policy makers, anyone, what will happen this year \u2014\u00a0I don’t think anyone knows.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most recent shock to the precarious new normal of the US tariff landscape came in the form of February’s Supreme Court ruling which struck down the legal basis of Trump’s original “Liberation Day”\u00a0tariffs. With a new 15% blanket tariff rate in place<\/a>, and the US administration seemingly determined to find other ways to levy higher duties\u00a0again, exporters and importers alike are left guessing what the coming months may bring.<\/p>\n

To adapt to this uncertainty, Li says governments may focus on supporting companies to explore new markets outside of the US. “If they can diversify their supply chains, it will make them more resilient, which might be a silver lining.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edited by: Gianna Gr\u00fcn und Andreas Becker<\/p>\n

Data, code and methodology behind this story can be found in this GitHub repository<\/a>. <\/p>\n

More data-driven stories by DW can be found here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On April 2, 2025, Donald Trump shocked the world by announcing “economic independence” for the US, imposing sweeping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-183231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}