By Chao Deng

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Wednesday criticized a New York Fed study that found American firms and consumers have shouldered the bulk of the burden of President Trump's tariffs, saying that the authors should be "disciplined."

The report, published last week, said U.S. importers bore 94% of the cost of tariffs in the first eight months of 2025, and that a 10% tariff caused only a 0.6 percentage point decline in foreign export prices. By November, the portion of tariffs borne by the U.S. was still high at 86%, according to the study.

The authors used foreign export prices from U.S. Customs in their analysis and examined price changes to isolate the effects of tariffs. The results were consistent with recent findings from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, that American consumers and importers absorbed 96% of last year's tariff increases.

Speaking on CNBC, Hassett said the Fed's study "was an embarrassment" and that the researchers didn't take into consideration "how quantities moved." He didn't elaborate on what he meant by that but said prices have gone down in the U.S. and pointed to recent economic data showing overall inflation slowing.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 18, 2026 12:19 ET (17:19 GMT)

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