The Fed’s Tariff Study Assumes Its Own Conclusion
\n\nThe New York Fed has posted yet another paper by Mary Amiti and a team of economists on the costs of tariffs. It’s widely being read as showing that tariffs have pushed up consumer prices, with many reports claiming that goods inflation ran 2.9 percentage points higher because of tariffs.
\n\nIn reality, however, the paper shows no such thing.
\n\nIn the first place, the paper does not show and does not even claim that tariffs pushed up overall inflation by 2.9 percentage points. Its sample covers just 20 percent of the consumer basket. Translate the estimate into a contribution to overall consumer prices and you get roughly six-tenths of a percentage point, before accounting for anything happening elsewhere in the economy.
\n\nThe idea that tariffs drove overall inflation higher is challenged by the fact that over the year the paper studies, inflation actually fell. In February 2025, when the tariffs began, overall consumer prices were up 2.8 percent from a year earlier, and core prices, excluding food and energy, were up 3.1 percent. By February 2026, those rates had fallen to 2.4 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively. The claimed tariff contribution to…
Original source: https://www.breitbart.com/economy/
