Washington, Dec 11 (AP) Sweeping taxes on imports have cost the average American household nearly USD 1,200 since Donald Trump returned to the White House this year, according to calculations by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

Using Treasury Department numbers on revenue from tariffs and Goldman Sachs estimates of who ends up paying for them, the Democrats' report Thursday found that American consumers' share of the bill came to nearly USD 159 billion — or USD 1,198 per household — from February through November.

"This report shows that (Trump's) tariffs have done nothing but drive prices even higher for families,” said Sen Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the economic committee. “At a time when both parties should be working together to lower costs, the president's tax on American families is simply making things more expensive.” In his second term, Trump has reversed decades of US policy that favoured free trade. He's imposed double-digit tariffs on almost every country on earth. According to Yale University's Budget Lab, the average US tariff has shot up from 2.4 per cent at the beginning of the year to 16.8 per cent, the highest since 1935.

The president argues that the import taxes will protect US industries from unfair foreign competition, bring factories to the United States and raise money for the Treasury.

“President Trump's tariffs have actually secured trillions in investments to make and hire in America as well as historic trade deals that finally level the playing field for American workers and industries," said White House Spokesman Kush Desai. "Democrats spent decades complaining about lopsided trade deals undermining the American working class, and now they're complaining about the one president who has done something about it.” The taxes are paid by importers who typically attempt to pass along the higher costs to their customers.

Democrats did well in elections last month in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because voters blame Trump and the Republicans for the high cost of living, just as they'd blamed Trump's predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the same thing a year earlier.

Economist Kimberly Clausing of the UCLA School of Law and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, last week told a House subcommittee that Trump's tariffs amount to “the largest tax increase on American consumers in a generation, lowering standards of living for all Americans.'' Clausing, a Treasury Department tax official in the Biden administration, has calculated that Trump's import taxes ”amount to an annual tax increase of about USD 1,700 for an average household.'' (AP) RD RD

Tariffs have increased consumer costs, averaging about $1,200 per US household from February to November. Democrats' calculations, using Treasury revenue data and private-sector incidence estimates, attribute roughly USD 159 billion in consumer-borne tariff costs - about USD 1,198 per household - for February through November, and academic estimates place the annualized burden higher; the measures reflect a shift to widespread double-digit tariffs justified as industrial protection and revenue, while critics characterise them as a regressive tax raising living costs.