Congressional Democrats say Trump tariffs will cost US households more
than $2,500 this year
[March 13, 2026] By
PAUL WISEMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is scrambling to replace the
revenue the federal government lost when the Supreme Court struck down
his biggest and boldest tariffs last month.
If the effort succeeds, congressional Democrats warn in a study out
Friday, the administration's import taxes will cost American households
an average of $2,512 in 2026, up 44% from $1,745 in tariff costs last
year. And this at a time when U.S. consumers are already angry over the
high cost of living and the war with Iran is pushing up energy prices.
“Despite a Supreme Court ruling that much of Trump’s tariff agenda is
illegal, the Trump administration refuses to provide relief for
families," said Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on
the Joint Economic Committee. "As American families continue to struggle
with high costs, the President keeps choosing to institute new tariffs
that will push prices even higher.”
Calling the study “phony,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said
"President Trump will continue using tariffs to renegotiate broken trade
deals, lower drug prices, and secure trillions in investments for the
American people.”
Trump last year invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers
Act (IEEPA) to impose double-digit tariffs on almost every country on
Earth.
But the Supreme Court ruled Feb. 20 that the law did not give the
president the authority to levy tariffs. The government now must provide
refunds — expected to come to around $175 billion — to the importers who
paid the IEEPA tariffs now declared illegal.
The administration has moved quickly to impose new tariffs, and Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessent has said that that new levies “will result in
virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.″
Trump has already announced a 10% tariff, invoking Section 122 of the
Trade Act of 1974, and may raise it to 15%. But those levies can only
last 150 days unless Congress agrees to extend them. And the Section 122
tariffs are also being challenged in court.
A sturdier option is Section 301 of the same 1974 trade law, which
authorizes the president to impose tariffs and other sanctions on
countries engaged in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory”
trade practices. Trump, accusing China of using unfair tactics to gain
an advantage in high tech industries, used Section 301 to impose tariffs
on Chinese imports in his first term, and they withstood legal
challenges.
On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, announced a
sweeping Section 301 investigation into whether 16 U.S. trading
partners, including China and the European Union, are overproducing
goods, flooding the world with their products and hurting American
manufacturers.
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 “The United States will no longer
sacrifice its industrial base to other countries that may be
exporting their problems with excess capacity and production to us,”
Greer said in a statement. The probe is widely expected to end in a
new round of hefty tariffs.
“The fact that they launched 301 investigations is not surprising,”
said trade lawyer Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a
former U.S. trade official. “We all knew that’s what they were going
to pivot to. The challenge is that this is way more sprawling than
anyone expected.'' That is because so many countries were targeted
and because the inquiry — whether countries have excess industrial
capacity and are overproducing goods — ”can be framed pretty
broadly.''
The administration is rolling out another Section 301 investigation
into banning imported goods made by forced labor. Greer told
reporters Wednesday that additional Section 301 investigations could
cover issues such as digital services taxes, pharmaceutical drug
pricing and ocean pollution.
The administration is also expected to make more use of Section 232
of Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows the president to impose
tariffs on goods deemed to be threats to national security after an
investigation by the Commerce Department. The U.S. already has
Section 232 tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos and auto parts and
other products.
The report from Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee finds that
the new tariffs will increase the burden on American households this
year. That is partly because the tariff revenue would be collected
for the full year; Trump needed time to impose tariffs in 2025 and
occasionally suspended them.
The Democrats also assume that American households will absorb 100%
of the tariff cost. They cite a Congressional Budget Office report
concluding that importers can pass along 70% of the tariff costs to
consumers. But the tariffs also allow domestic producers to raise
prices — because of less competition from imports and increased
demand for their tariff-free products. Combined, passed-along costs
from importers and higher prices from domestic companies effectively
mean that consumers end up footing the entire U.S. tariff bill,
according to CBO.
The Trump administration's new tariff push comes as the war in Iran
pushes up the price of gasoline and other commodities in the runup
to November's midterm elections. Voters are already disgruntled by
high prices.
“If the affordability and other political issues really start to
become cumbersome, that certainly can impact all this,” Majerus
said. "What the world’s going to look like two months from now is
going to be very different from what it is now.''
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