Trump’s Tariff Policies Continue to Hurt Eastern Shore Consumers by Wilson Dean

The damage being done to the Eastern Shore’s economy by President Trump’s relentless obsession with tariffs is largely being overshadowed by the barrage of more explosive news dominating the headlines. The shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump’s war in Iran, his tirades against the Pope, and the tens of thousands of references to him in the still unreleased Epstein Files all push ongoing developments in Trump’s tariff games to the sidelines.

Yet while all these newsworthy items dominate our attention, Trump’s tariffs—and the retaliatory reactions to them by affected nations around the globe—continue to erode our economy’s strength and hurt consumers, both on the Eastern Shore and throughout the U.S.

As an economist, I must begin with the simple explanation that Trump’s tariffs may put some pressure on exporting countries, but they are effectively a tax on U.S. importing businesses and consumers. Three options exist for dealing with tariffs.

First, the exporting country may reduce the price of its goods if it feels it needs to remain competitive, which reduces the total tariff cost because the tariff is applied against a lower price. Second, the importing business in the U.S.—that initially pays the full cost of the tariff—can reduce the amount of the resulting tariff by absorbing some of the tariff cost internally before passing it along to the consumer. Third, the remainder of what the importer decides not to absorb is paid directly by the consumer. As will be discussed, the burden almost always falls on the consumer.

President Trump’s imposition of tariffs has been a journey marked by total chaos. To document each blow-by-blow account of this soap opera is a lengthy and boring undertaking that I will avoid here, but a few highlights (and lowlights) are provided below.

Upon the January 20th, 2025 inauguration of his second term, President Trump immediately announced his intention to issue broad tariffs. He began immediately by issuing tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada. This was followed by his self-proclaimed “Liberation Day” directed at 180 nations on April 2nd, 2025, that precipitated their sudden pause a week later as financial markets exploded in a dramatic rejection of his dictates. Over the remainder of 2025 and early into 2026 Trump initiated a series of expanding tariffs which was brought to an abrupt halt when the Supreme Court declared the tariffs illegal by rejecting his justification for issuing them (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act).

Having had the central basis of his tariff policies overturned by this decision, President Trump characterized it as a “ridiculous ruling,” and referred to the Justices as “unpatriotic” and “disloyal.” He then immediately issued a 10 percent global tariff effective for 150 days under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 with the promise of more tariffs to follow.

The results of the tariffs thus far have not been positive for consumers, both throughout the U.S. and on the Eastern Shore. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation reports that the tariffs cost an average family $1,000 in 2025, an amount that could reach $2,300 in 2026 if last year’s tariff levels remain in place. In February 2026, Governor Wes Moore’s Administration estimated each Maryland household had paid an average of $1,744 under the tariffs.

Just a few examples of the products imposing this tax on Americans include vehicles, where Trump’s tariffs have added an additional $6,000-$8,000 to the price. Tariffs on clothing made in China have registered a 17.5 percent increase, including a 49 percent rise in the price of children’s apparel. Tariffs on washing machines and dryers have increased prices by 12 percent. These are items that virtually all families need, resulting in a disproportionate amount of financial burden being absorbed by middle- and lower-income families. This is occurring nationwide and consumers on the Eastern Shore are not escaping it.

There are two additional considerations that bear emphasizing when evaluating the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the consumer. First, American consumers are taking the majority of the financial hit from the tariffs, not the countries that have been the target of Trump’s tariffs or even the American businesses initially paying the import fee.

In a Wall Street Journal article at the end of January of this year, President Trump claimed most of the burden was falling on foreign exporters and middlemen but characteristically offered no substantive evidence. In contrast, a study of January-November 2025 activity by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University concluded that U.S. businesses and consumers were forced to shoulder 90 percent of the tariff amount. Another study from the Federal Reserve just issued on April 8th, 2026, concluded that exporting countries and U.S. importers were no longer absorbing the cost of tariffs, leaving it to consumers to assume the entire burden in what the study referred to as their fully paying each direct “dollar for dollar” price increase.

Second, although the Supreme Court has now declared the tariffs illegal, how will consumers—who overwhelmingly ended up paying for the tariffs—retrieve their money? No clear path has been established yet, and it is apparently going to be up to consumers to fight their own battles with virtually no help from the Trump Administration.

Prospects for consumers being repaid will be highest where importing companies have separately labelled the amount of the tariffs included in the consumer’s final purchase price. Companies delivering these goods directly to consumers (e.g., FedEx, UPS, DHL) have routinely done this.

The situation is much murkier for selling companies who simply incorporated the tariff, or a portion of the tariff, into their sales price without further identification. As a result, there is no real record of the exact amount of the tariff that was passed along to consumers against how much the sellers reduced their prices to remain competitive, so the chances of consumers recovering any amount at all under these circumstances appear slim at best.

On top of that, when making purchases themselves from foreign vendors, consumers have had to pay the tariffs themselves, leaving open the question as to how they can force vendors in another country to return their payments.

Yet another two major obstacles stand in the way of consumers being refunded for the illegal tariff charges. First, the Trump Administration has now invoked new tariffs and plans more, so companies are already having to pay out these new amounts, long before they will ever see any payback from the tariffs, they paid that have now been declared illegal. As a result, companies are not in a hurry to drain their balance sheets by repaying consumers.

Second, the only purpose of Trump’s tariffs is to benefit selected American businesses and to fill federal government coffers with money paid by American consumers to help offset the enormous tax benefits granted to the wealthy in Trump’s major tax legislation last year. Nowhere in that equation is there anything about benefitting the American consumer, so it comes as no surprise that the Trump Administration has done nothing to prompt businesses to return the consumers’ money.

In most instances, it is impractical for individual consumers to pursue their refunds individually, so a number of class action lawsuits are underway in an attempt at reimbursement. In addition, Governor Wes Moore wrote President Trump in February requesting that tariffs paid by Marylanders (estimated at $4 billion) be sent to the Maryland Comptroller, who in turn would figure out how to return them to those affected in the state. Predictably, no direct response has been forthcoming.