Moody's: Trump tariffs cost $8B
- Mark Zandi said on May 6 the economic debate over Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs is over — the damage is now visible in jobs and prices. - Trade Partnership Worldwide’s March tally showed businesses paid more than $8 billion under replacement Section 122 tariffs, after the White House swapped legal tools. - The bigger issue is durability — tariffs now look less like a short shock and more like a standing layer of cost.
Tariffs are the story here — not as a forecast, but as a bill that has already arrived. That is the shift in the latest round of commentary from Moody’s Analytics and trade researchers. Mark Zandi said the argument has moved from “will this hurt?” to “this has hurt,” while new customs data showed businesses paid more than $8 billion in March under the Trump administration’s replacement tariff regime. ### What changed this week? The new piece is the tone. Zandi, Moody’s Analytics’ chief economist, said the “Liberation Day” tariffs have done “significant damage” to the U.S. economy, pointing to job growth that has stalled and inflation pressure that has picked back up. That matters because Zandi is not talking about a model anymore — he is talking about what he says the data now show after a year of tariff escalation. ### What is the $8 billion number? It is the March cost to U.S. businesses from tariffs imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, the fallback authority the administration used after the Supreme Court knocked out the earlier IEEPA tariff structure. In a reading of Census Bureau trade data. ### Why are people talking about Section 122? Because it is the legal workaround that kept the tariff machine running. After the Court invalidated the earlier “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs and related fentanyl tariffs, the administration moved within hours to a broad Section 122 surcharge on imports from nearly all countries. Atlantic Council’s tracker says that surcharge expires on July 24, 2026, unless Congress extends it. ### How big is the tariff wall now? Still historically high. The Budget Lab at Yale put the U.S. average effective tariff rate at 11.0% as of April 2, 2026, including the Section 122 and Section 232 measures. If Section 122 expires on schedule, Yale says that rate would still sit at 8.2% — unusually high by postwar standards. Tax Foundation estimates the temporary Section 122 tariffs alone will raise $24 billion in 2026. ### Who feels that first? Import-heavy businesses do. Retailers, manufacturers, auto supply chains, and firms buying components from abroad get hit first because they pay the tariff upfront. But the catch is that tariffs do not stay neatly on an importer’s spreadsheet. Some firms eat the cost, some pass it on, and some delay orders or rework sourcing. Call it a one-off disruption.
