President Donald Trump is threatening NATO member countries with higher tariffs if they refuse to back an American acquisition of Greenland. But Trump's efforts are unlikely to be persuasive for one simple reason: Americans have borne the greatest burden of Trump's tariffs, not foreign exporters.
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a nonpartisan German think tank, released a report on Monday finding that American importers and consumers bore 96 percent of the tariff burden under the first 11 months of the Trump administration. Trump praised his protectionist policies for raising $8 trillion in revenue and foreign investment in August and inflated that number to $18 trillion in December. In reality, tariffs raised $288.5 billion in gross tariff and excise tax revenue in 2025. Applying the Kiel Institute's finding to this figure, Americans paid a whopping $277 billion in import taxes, while foreign exporters paid only $11.5 billion.
