Tariff Fight Shows Who Really Pays: You Do

The Tax Foundation says Trump's tariffs have raised the average U.S. household's tax burden by $820 in 2026. That's the bill ordinary people are paying while two sets of politicians fight over who gets to write the invoice.

Sixty-five percent of respondents to the CNBC Voter Poll on Nov. 3 said the duties have hurt the U.S. economy. Twenty-two percent said they helped. Now the party that just won Tuesday's midterm landslide says it's ready to act, with a first-100-hours legislative push and a pile of investigations aimed at the president's signature trade policy.

Who Has the Power

Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, D-Mich., told MS NOW's "Morning Joe" Thursday that ending the tariff regime, especially the trade war against Canada, is something Democrats "absolutely have to do immediately." Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic minority leader who could be elected House speaker, said at a late-August press conference: "We should restore congressional authority as it relates to tariffs, because the Trump tariffs are making life more expensive for the American people."

Read that again. The remedy on offer isn't ending the taxing of people's groceries and hardware by decree. It's moving the decree from one building to another. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, poised to lead the Senate Finance Committee, said he'd work to ensure Congress has the final say so future presidents can't reenact the tariffs. Same machine, different hands on the lever.

And the hands at the top aren't shy about what's at stake for them. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland asked Trump on Oct. 28 to hand over records related to tariff exemptions, alleging Trump has used the exemption power to cut "sweetheart deals" for industries whose leaders have given the president gifts. Exemptions for friends, tariffs for everyone else. That's what discretionary power looks like when nobody can say no.

Who Gets Crushed

Trump has hiked tariffs on nearly every country since taking office in January 2025, setting off trade wars, notably with Canada and China. The latest lawsuit, filed Oct. 20, targets his use of a Great Depression-era law to impose 50% tariffs on a range of Canadian goods. Another accuses him of trying to recreate the near-global "liberation day" tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down as illegal in late February. The administration has been ordered to refund $166 billion collected under that policy.

The money trail is revealing. Tariffs brought in only around $300 billion between January 2025 and July 2026, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model. About $138 billion of that has been refunded since the Supreme Court ruling, with nearly $20 billion more still to come. Meanwhile Trump claimed before Election Day that tariffs let him promise every U.S. adult a $5,000 "dividend" check if Republicans won both chambers, a plan costing roughly $1.2 trillion. The numbers don't cover it. The promise was a campaign prop.

What They're Calling "Order"

Don't expect a clean fix from the new majority. They'll lack a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Trump is poised to lean on his veto, which takes two-thirds of both chambers to override. He's said he'll use it to force Democrats to the negotiating table. Kit Johnson, a senior tax manager for BDO's customs and international trade group, told CNBC: "Absent the brute force of a veto-proof coalition, Congress might consider other political solutions, such as adding riders on 'must-pass' bills or negotiation with the administration."

Riders. Negotiation. Bargaining over the cost of living in a closed room.

And Trump isn't bargaining on the merits. "If I took tariffs off — we have 3,000 plants under construction right now. Every single plant would stop building," he told CNBC's Eamon Javers Wednesday. That's the language of ownership: build what we say or watch it all stop.

No source here reports any community organizing, mutual aid, or direct action against the tariffs. What the record shows is a courtroom fight, a committee fight, and a veto standoff, with the people paying the $820 left as spectators. A number of GOP lawmakers came out against the duties during the campaign, as opponents blamed inflation on tariffs and the Iran war. Everyone's against the bill until they're in charge of sending it.