The cost of tariffs is always split between suppliers and consumers, roughly in proportion to the elasticity of demand.

I agree that that is typically true, but in the particular case of the 2018 tariffs on China, the cost pretty much fell entirely on consumers.

> Overall, using standard economic methods, we find that the full incidence of the tariff falls on domestic consumers, with a reduction in U.S. real income of $1.4 billion per month by the end of 2018

> We find that the U.S. tariffs were almost completely passed through into U.S. domestic prices

https://www.nber.org/papers/w25672.pdf

Thanks for the link! It looks like initially the price spikes by pretty much the tariff rate, and then over the following months returns back in line with the long term trend line.

This makes sense because we also see a significant reduction in import volume from of the goods being taxed, so it implies producers are finding alternate suppliers to avoid the China-specific tariffs at close to the China-supplier price.

> The cost of tariffs is always split between suppliers and consumers, roughly in proportion to the elasticity of demand.

The trick is there. It's possible to have China paying for all the tariffs or the other way around. It's probably going to be more complex though: Different products, currency fluctuations and possible rise of other markets.

Yeah, but it also knocks down oil and other commodity prices that constitute a large portion of Chinese imports.