Newly released research from the New York Federal Reserve provides damning evidence that higher prices seen at retail are a direct result of President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.

In a recently released white paper, Fed economists assessed the prices of 67 commonly purchased products against consumer spending insights from 2022, finding that the cost of those items was 2.9 percent higher as of February 2026.

Without the duties, the writers surmised that the price of those same goods would have fallen by 1 percent early this year. Inflation on consumer goods had gone back to a slightly negative pre-Covid-19 average throughout 2024, prior to the introduction of new duties. The price hikes picked up throughout 2025, mirroring the tariffs. In all, around 26 percent of the tariff increases enacted last year were reflected in retail prices paid by consumers.

The paper summed up the phenomenon as such: for every percentage point increase in average tariffs, the price of consumer goods increases by around one-quarter of 1 percent after a period of a year.

“Roughly two-thirds of the effect arises because tariffs raise the prices of imported consumer goods,” it said.

The remaining one-third of the effect comes from indirect impacts. And while that bump can’t be traced to tariffs with a straight line, it nonetheless undermines the Trump administration’s stated goal of creating a fertile environment for American manufacturing to replace offshore imports.

According to the economists, “Tariffs raise the prices of goods made at home, not just the imports they tax—an effect that standard passthrough estimates largely miss,” and that’s because “producers pay more for imported parts and materials, and…raise their markups when competing imports cost more.”

While the direct impacts of duties take hold swiftly, as duties cause import prices to jump in real time, the indirect effect takes between nine to 12 months to work its way through supply chains, the white paper said. “As a result, tariffs have a larger and more drawn-out impact on consumer prices than the direct effect alone would suggest.”

Mercifully for shoppers, the effect of tariffs on consumer goods prices has likely reached its peak. Not so happily, however, the average price of goods is likely to remain elevated, the paper said.

The tariffs’ effect on the price of goods had eased to about 2 percent in August from the 3 percent seen in February, likely on the back of the Supreme Court’s first-quarter decision to invalidate the president’s “reciprocal” tariffs and the federal government’s distribution of refunds to brands and retailers.

But moving into the fall, “the tariff effect on the price level edges up again,” the economists wrote—mostly due to the imposition of new 50 percent tariffs on more than $20 billion in Canadian goods like clothing and textiles, as well as early industry reactions to the tariff hike on Canadian autos slated for January 2027.