Fact check: Trump and Vance keep falsely describing how tariffs work

Washington CNN —

Former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance continue to falsely describe how one of their major policy proposals, across-the-board tariffs, would work.

Trump has falsely, and repeatedly, claimed that China – not US importers – pay the tariff.

At a rally in Arizona in mid-August, he claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, is lying when she refers to his tariff plan as a “Trump tax.”

“She is a liar. She makes up crap … I am going to put tariffs on other countries coming into our country, and that has nothing to do with taxes to us. That is a tax on another country,” Trump said.

In September, he repeated the claim during an interview with Fox News: “It’s not a tax on the middle class. It’s a tax on another country.”

And he said again during a rally in Wisconsin Saturday that “it’s not going to be a cost to you, it’s going to be a cost to another country.”

Vance said in late August that as a result of tariffs Trump imposed during his presidency, “prices went down for American citizens.”

“They went up for the Chinese but they went down for our people,” Vance added.

But that’s not true.

Facts First: Trump and Vance’s claims about how tariffs work are false. A tariff is a tax that is paid by US businesses – not other countries – when a foreign-made good arrives at the American border. One of the intended goals of a tariff is to raise prices on foreign-made goods, and studyafter studyshow that the duties do drive up costs for Americans.

Tariffs are a tax

Here’s how tariffs work: When the US puts a tariff on an imported good, the cost of the tariff usually comes directly out of the bank account of an American buyer.

“It’s fair to