Tyler Schipper, associate professor of economics at the University of St. Thomas, spoke with Marketplace about how import and export data can shed light on the real impact of former President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Schipper explained why import price reports have become essential for understanding who is absorbing tariff costs and how these price changes influence U.S. consumers and inflation.
From the conversation:
Tuesday is when we’re supposed to learn more about how imports and exports have been faring from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, though the 43-day government shutdown may still delay that data release.
Until recently, this wasn’t data that Tyler Schipper, an associate professor of economics at the University of St. Thomas, paid all that much attention to.
But lately, with tariffs in the news, “import prices have been one of the reports that people have been going to, and, likewise, that's one of the probably top two or three reports that I am waiting to see for the backlog,” he said.
The BLS data measures import prices before tariffs are applied. That can point to who might be absorbing the cost of the import taxes.
If import prices go up, “that seems to suggest that foreign exporters are not actually doing much cost-sharing, that they are passing most of the prices of tariffs onto the U.S.,” Schipper said.
