Dems: Tariffs Cost Households $1,200   12/11 06:01

   Sweeping taxes on imports have cost the average American household nearly 
$1,200 since Donald Trump returned to the White House this year, according to 
calculations by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sweeping taxes on imports have cost the average American 
household nearly $1,200 since Donald Trump returned to the White House this 
year, according to calculations by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic 
Committee.

   Using Treasury Department numbers on revenue from tariffs and Goldman Sachs 
estimates of who ends up paying for them, the Democrats' report Thursday found 
that American consumers' share of the bill came to nearly $159 billion -- or 
$1,198 per household -- from February through November.

   "This report shows that (Trump's) tariffs have done nothing but drive prices 
even higher for families," said Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the top 
Democrat on the economic committee. "At a time when both parties should be 
working together to lower costs, the president's tax on American families is 
simply making things more expensive."

   In his second term, Trump has reversed decades of U.S. policy that favored 
free trade. He's imposed double-digit tariffs on almost every country on earth. 
According to Yale University's Budget Lab, the average U.S. tariff has shot up 
from 2.4% at the beginning of the year to 16.8%, the highest since 1935.

   The president argues that the import taxes will protect U.S. industries from 
unfair foreign competition, bring factories to the United States and raise 
money for the Treasury.

   "President Trump's tariffs have actually secured trillions in investments to 
make and hire in America as well as historic trade deals that finally level the 
playing field for American workers and industries," said White House Spokesman 
Kush Desai. "Democrats spent decades complaining about lopsided trade deals 
undermining the American working class, and now they're complaining about the 
one president who has done something about it."

   The taxes are paid by importers who typically attempt to pass along the 
higher costs to their customers.

   Democrats did well in elections last month in Virginia, New Jersey and 
elsewhere largely because voters blame Trump and the Republicans for the high 
cost of living, just as they'd blamed Trump's predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, 
for the same thing a year earlier.

   Economist Kimberly Clausing of the UCLA School of Law and the Peterson 
Institute for International Economics, last week told a House subcommittee that 
Trump's tariffs amount to "the largest tax increase on American consumers in a 
generation, lowering standards of living for all Americans.'' Clausing, a 
Treasury Department tax official in the Biden administration, has calculated 
that Trump's import taxes "amount to an annual tax increase of about $1,700 for 
an average household.''