As Trump moves to end trade war with China, business asks: Was it worth it?

And contrary to Mr. Trump’s claim that the Chinese are paying the tariffs, several studies show they are being passed on to American consumers in the form of higher prices on imported goods.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs “were almost completely passed through into U.S. domestic prices,” the economists Mary Amiti of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Stephen J. Redding of Princeton University and David Weinstein of Columbia University wrote in a paper released late last week, “so that the entire incidence of the tariffs fell on domestic consumers and importers up to now, with no impact so far on the prices received by foreign exporters.”

The economists concluded that tariffs had already reduced incomes in the United States by nearly $7 billion, and that the total cost to the economy had been even larger, because of price increases. By the end of last year, they estimate, the tariffs were costing consumers and importers a total of nearly $4.5 billion a month.