Tariff Tracker
Tracking the Short-Run Effects of Tariffs on Consumer Price: Tariffs on imports can raise consumer prices, but the extent and timing of that impact vary. Costs can be absorbed by foreign exporters, domestic firms, or passed through to consumers at the retail level. During the 2018–19 trade war, our research showed that U.S. firms initially absorbed most of the tariff burden, resulting in delayed and limited price increases at the retail level. In our new study—Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs—we examine the effects of the 2025 tariff measures in real time using high-frequency pricing data and product-level detail.
This page presents the main graphs from the paper. The full paper is available here: Tracking the Short-Run Price Impact of U.S. Tariffs (Cavallo, Llamas, Vazquez, 2025).
To measure the impact of the 2025 tariffs, we construct daily price indices using online data from four major U.S. retailers. These prices are collected on a daily basis by PriceStats. We obtained detailed information on country of origin for each good—sourced through UPC lookups or generative AI models—as well as to tariff classifications using Harmonized System (HS) codes. We use a simple unweighted matched-model approach to build the price indices, tracking the products over time and chaining geometric averages of daily price relatives within each group. The resulting indices provide high-frequency, real-time insights into how tariffs affect consumer prices by country and exposure.
