The Yale Budget Lab released updated tariff impact analysis on April 2, and the numbers have not changed in the direction the administration promised. Under the current tariff regime, the burden on households in the lowest income decile is approximately three times that of households in the top decile — 1.1 percent of post-tax income versus 0.4 percent if the Section 122 tariffs expire as scheduled, and nearly 1.9 percent versus 0.6 percent if they are made permanent. In dollar terms, bottom-decile households face an average annual loss of roughly $430 under the expiration scenario and $740 if the tariffs are extended. Top-decile households lose $1,810 and $3,100 respectively — a larger absolute figure that represents a fraction of their income.
That is the structural definition of a regressive tax. It does not require intent to function that way. Tariffs are applied to imported goods, and low-income households spend a higher share of their income on essential goods — food, clothing, household products — many of which are imported. The math runs in one direction regardless of the political framing around it.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found that nearly 90 percent of the tariff burden has fallen on U.S. businesses and consumers, not on foreign exporters as the administration has consistently claimed. The Tax Foundation estimated U.S. households paid $1,000 more in 2025 for the same goods they were already purchasing. That figure, like the Yale analysis, is not distributed evenly. Lower-income families who spend a larger proportion of their earnings on necessities absorb the sharpest price increases with the fewest buffers.
Black households are disproportionately concentrated in lower income deciles, carry higher rates of food insecurity, and are more likely to rely on discount retailers that source products internationally — precisely the supply chains most exposed to tariff compression. The January 2026 expansion of SNAP work requirements, which research shows disproportionately affects Black households facing labor market discrimination and higher rates of chronic illness, compounds a food access crisis that tariff-driven price increases are accelerating simultaneously.
The administration has framed tariffs as a mechanism to protect American workers and rebuild manufacturing. Economists across the ideological spectrum are in broad agreement that tariffs do not generate the job growth promised in communities already hollowed out by prior trade shocks — and that the workers they do affect most directly are those the administration claims to be protecting.
The Yale Budget Lab’s full April 2 analysis is available at budgetlab.yale.edu. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s distributional analysis is available at itep.org.