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Original Title: Research Report by Goldman Sachs and Others Reveals -

Tariff Policies Are Becoming More and More Visible to American Consumers

According to Bloomberg News in the United States, Goldman Sachs, an American financial institution, released a latest study on October 12th. The study shows that the transmission of tariffs to American consumer prices has entered an acceleration period. This not only adds uncertainty to the US Treasury market, but also means that American consumers are becoming the main bearers of tariff costs. Goldman Sachs economists Elsie Peng and David Mericle calculated in the report that as of June this year, apart from US enterprises still bearing 64% of the tariff costs to maintain market share, consumers bear 22%; if the latest round of tariffs follows the previous pattern, by the end of the year, the proportion of consumer burden will soar to 55%, while the proportion borne by enterprises will drop to 22%.

The report of Goldman Sachs also pointed out that the US government's series of tariffs and trade restrictions have disrupted the global trade order. Although US government officials insist that trading partners will bear the tariff costs, the reality is that US importers need to pay tariffs to the US Customs and Border Protection Agency, and when enterprises pass on the tariff costs, consumers will face higher commodity prices.

Some domestic producers in the United States have taken advantage of the tariff barriers to raise prices, further intensifying the inflationary pressure. The Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank published an article stating that the pricing data shows that tariffs are having a gradually emerging impact, and the prices faced by American consumers are still rising. The "Tariff Tracker" of the Pricing Laboratory at Harvard Business School monitors the prices of 350,000 various goods sold by major retailers in the United States daily. The research shows that imported goods affected by tariffs have increased by an average of about 5%, and the prices of domestic goods are also higher than the regular level. The domestic goods also show a significant "follow-up effect", being particularly prominent in categories with an import dependence of over 50%.

Data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that as the core inflation indicator of the Federal Reserve, the US core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index rose by 2.9% year-on-year in August, reaching a new high since February. Goldman Sachs predicts that driven by tariffs, this index will rise to 3% by the end of the year. So far, tariffs have cumulatively pushed up the core personal consumption expenditure prices by 0.44% in the United States. The cost pressure at the upstream production end is more significant. Data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in August shows that the producer price index (PPI) rose by 0.9% month-on-month in July, the largest increase since June 2022; the year-on-year increase was 3.3%, far higher than 2.3% in June and the market expectation of 2.6%, and the highest level since February. The US Cable News Network pointed out that the sharp increase in producer costs indicates that higher prices will soon be passed on to consumers.

The Yale University Budget Laboratory recently released a study showing that the newly imposed tariffs have pushed the average effective tariff rate in the United States up to 18.3%, the highest level since 1934. The laboratory assessed that these newly imposed tariffs are expected to increase the average additional expenditure for American families by $2,400 this year, with clothing and footwear prices likely to rise by 38% and 40% respectively in the short term. What is more notable is that tariffs are essentially a cumulative tax, and this effect is particularly evident in the short term. This means that if measured by the proportion of tax burden to income, the tariff burden borne by the lowest-income families will be much heavier than that of the highest-income families, which will undoubtedly further exacerbate social inequality.

Analysis suggests that the negative effects of the US tariff policy are continuing to manifest. Chris Rupkey, the chief economist of research company FWDBonds, said: "Producers are suffering from inflation, and passing on tariff costs to already exhausted consumers is just a matter of time." Professor Laura Feldenkamp from Columbia University in the United States believes that the US trade protectionist actions not only directly increase the burden on domestic people's lives and push up inflation, but also disrupt the stability of global supply chains.

(Editors: Lei Zheqiong, Jiang Jie)