Tax Foundation finds tariffs raised retail import prices by 7 percent
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is urging some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration’s playbook of using tariffs and other measures to address trade imbalances. Bessent made the remarks on the sidelines of G20 finance minister meetings in Asheville, North Carolina.
Bessent told reporters he had warned other nations at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term that the new U.S. “tariff wall” would mean Chinese goods would flood their markets.
“And unfortunately, I was right,” Bessent said.
The Treasury secretary argued that other G20 nations need to do more to shield their economies from being displaced by Chinese exports. “The rest of the world probably needs to take a hard look at what they should be doing to protect their citizens’ jobs, their manufacturing base, so that everything they do doesn’t get offshored,” Bessent said.
The Trump administration’s tariff policies have drawn criticism from economists and politicians, who say the measures raise costs for U.S. consumers and, in many cases, punish allies. The Tax Foundation, an independent think tank, found that the tariffs imposed throughout 2025 raised the overall retail price of imported consumer goods by roughly 7% relative to pre-tariff trends.
Bessent did not name specific countries in his reported remarks.