You’ve probably noticed it at the checkout line. The ground beef that used to sit comfortably within your weekly budget now makes you pause. The coffee you buy without thinking costs noticeably more than it did a year ago. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re wondering whether this is just a rough patch – or something more structural.
There’s been a lot of noise around Trump’s tariff policy since it began rolling out in 2025. Most of the early commentary zeroed in on specific groups: farmers in the Midwest, manufacturers in the Rust Belt, and ports in the South. The story felt geographically contained. Like something that was happening somewhere else to someone else. But new research suggests that was never the full picture – and that the Trump tariffs’ economic impact has been quietly reaching into all 50 states, including yours.
The reality is more interconnected, more layered, and more personal than most headlines have conveyed. Here’s what the data actually shows.
What the Fortune Research Study Found
A peer-reviewed study, published by the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association, examined where and how goods are produced, shipped, and consumed in each U.S. state. The researchers, from Ohio State University and Cornell University, arrived at a conclusion that cuts against the simple narrative that tariffs only hurt the states most tied to global trade.
The research found that Trump’s tariffs effectively revealed 50 different trade vulnerabilities across the country, each shaped by a state’s own production and consumption patterns – and by the end of 2025, even states that had never depended heavily on buying goods from abroad were feeling tariff tremors in their own way.
The authors found that tariffs caused “immediate shocks” for net-importing states, which were suddenly tasked with absorbing the bulk of levy payments. But consequences for states that rely on exporting agricultural products internationally weren’t far behind, as U.S. trading partners swiftly moved to retaliate.
Even states that neither import nor export significant quantities of goods ultimately had to pay the price of tariffs in the form of higher food prices, as farmers began passing costs down to consumers. In other words, the Fortune research on tariff impact by state makes clear there was no hiding place.
The Tariff Costs Hitting Every Household
To understand the scale of what this means for individual families, it helps to start with the total picture. A Tax Foundation analysis found that the Trump tariffs represent the largest U.S. tax increase as a percent of GDP since 1993, amounting to an average tax increase per U.S. household of $1,500 in 2026.
That’s not a theoretical future cost. Small businesses with fewer resources were among the first to be forced to raise prices, eventually joined by companies including Amazon, Walmart, and Target. By 2026, U.S. businesses and consumers were covering almost 90% of tariff costs, according to Federal Reserve research cited in a recent Fortune article.
The question of who actually pays tariffs has been one of the most contested claims in the broader debate around Trump’s trade policy effects. The White House has argued that foreign countries absorb the burden. The data doesn’t support that. A study from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that importers and consumers in the U.S. bear 96 percent of the tariff burden. That’s consistent with what multiple independent analyses have found.
In 2025, the United States raised average tariff duties from 2.4% to an 80-year high of 9.6%, according to researchers at UCLA and Yale. A tariff rate at that level hasn’t been seen since the years following World War II – and it’s working its way through the economy in slow but measurable ways.
Which States Are Most at Risk – and Why
So how does this break down at the state level? An analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that manufacturing-intensive states – including Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee – as well as trade-dependent states like Georgia, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Texas – are among the most vulnerable to fiscal disruptions linked to increased import costs.
The Pew analysis goes further than just identifying names on a map. It looks at the specific mechanisms driving exposure. States with large coastal ports – such as New Jersey (where imports make up 18.1% of GDP), South Carolina (16.6%), Georgia (16.5%), Texas (14.7%), and California (12.0%) – may feel tariff pressures directly through shifting shipping volumes and logistics disruptions.
Agricultural and energy states face a different but equally serious threat. For states with lower reliance on imported goods, the bigger risk comes from retaliatory tariffs affecting their export-driven economies. Louisiana is a clear example: exports made up 26.5% of its GDP in 2024 – the highest share of any state – with energy and chemicals among the most vulnerable to potential retaliation.
States with strong manufacturing sectors, like Tennessee, are also considered highly vulnerable. In 2024, imports made up about 22% of Tennessee’s economy – roughly double the national average – and the state relies heavily on imported chemicals, electronics, and transportation equipment, meaning when tariffs raise those costs, the effects ripple through local industries and eventually show up in state revenues.
The budget consequences are already beginning to register at the state level. More than half of U.S. states have revised their revenue forecasts downward for fiscal 2026 to account for tariff-related uncertainties and other mounting fiscal disruptions.
The Agricultural Trade Collapse
Perhaps the most striking single data point in the Fortune research on tariff impact relates to agricultural exports. In the first half of 2025, U.S. agricultural exports to China fell to $5.5 billion from $12 billion in 2024, according to AgAmerica, an agricultural lender – driven primarily by a dramatic collapse in Chinese soybean purchases, which pushed tens of thousands of American soybean farmers into the middle of an escalating trade war.
U.S. soybean exports to China fell 78% through August 2025, while corn exports collapsed by 99%. Those are not rounding errors. For farming communities in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and elsewhere, those numbers translate directly to income lost, land values falling, and financial stress spreading through small towns that depend on agriculture.
The study also identified damage from the U.S.-Canada trade relationship, which deteriorated significantly through 2025. Canada cracked down on U.S. alcohol imports, delivering a direct blow to Kentucky and Tennessee, both states built around bourbon and whiskey industries that depend heavily on Canadian buyers. Northeastern states that had historically sold close to two-thirds of their milled grain, non-cereal crops, and live animals and fish to Canada found that the market had suddenly contracted.
The Tax Foundation also estimates that threatened and imposed retaliatory tariffs, as of September 2025, affected $223 billion of U.S. exports based on 2024 import values. Those aren’t hypothetical trade flows – they represent real businesses, farms, and workers on the losing end of a global tit-for-tat.
The Grocery Store Is Where Most Americans Feel It
For the majority of Americans who don’t work in export industries or live near a major port, the most direct point of contact with state economic damage from tariffs is the grocery store. As farmers have faced higher costs for livestock feed, fertilizer, and machinery, those higher costs now appear on grocery store shelves as food inflation. With prices for items like fertilizer expected to rise even higher, all American consumers are likely to feel the sting of more expensive food, regardless of where they live.
Following the April 2025 “Liberation Day” tariff announcement alone, proposed tariffs drove food prices up 1.6% – equivalent to an entire year of prior grocery inflation – while all 2025 tariff actions combined pushed food prices up 2.8% and fresh produce up 4%.
In December 2025, food prices grew at their fastest monthly rate since fall 2022. The price of beef increased 16%, and coffee rose by nearly 20% between January and December 2025.
About 75% of food products imported into the U.S. already face import duties, with many rates in the 10% to 30% range, according to the Tax Foundation. Since August 6, 2025, Brazilian coffee has been subject to a 50% tariff – a cost U.S. roasters are likely to pass on.
The effects aren’t abstract. A 2025 survey by the Associated Press and NORC found that 53% of respondents said rising grocery prices are a significant source of stress.
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The Long-Term GDP Risk
Beyond the immediate financial pressure on households and states, researchers are flagging longer-term concerns about the structural damage from Trump trade policy effects.
A 2025 analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget Model projected that Trump’s tariffs will reduce long-run GDP by about 6% and wages by 5%, with a middle-income household facing a $22,000 lifetime loss. The note cautions that these figures reflect estimates at a specific tariff configuration and may shift as policy evolves.
The Tax Foundation’s analysis takes a more modest but still meaningful view. The average effective tariff rate was 7.7% in 2025 – the highest since 1947. The same analysis found that the permanent Section 232 tariffs alone will reduce long-run U.S. GDP by 0.2% before accounting for any foreign retaliation.
Despite claims that the tariffs would bolster American manufacturing, the manufacturing industry lost 77,000 jobs from April to December 2025, according to data reviewed by the Center for American Progress.
There is some ongoing complexity in the story. Although many economists predicted slower growth and even a possible recession, U.S. GDP has continued to grow, which has been partially attributed to Trump backing away from some of the initial high tariff rates. The Supreme Court also struck down a substantial portion of the tariffs earlier in 2026. But the full effect of tariffs on consumer prices has yet to be realized, with economists estimating a lag of 12 to 18 months before tariff effects reach consumers fully – placing peak pressure between April and October 2026.
What This Means for You
The core finding from the Fortune research on tariff impact deserves to be stated plainly: there is no part of the country that has been insulated from the economic damage of Trump’s tariffs. When the federal government imposes tariffs on imports, the effects often ripple far beyond cargo ships and customs offices – tariffs have the potential to significantly influence state budgets by increasing uncertainty in economic forecasts, raising the costs of public projects, and disrupting revenue streams.
For most households, the practical upshot is this: the economic damage from Trump tariffs by state is showing up on grocery receipts, in state budget decisions, and in the form of reduced export income for farmers whose product ends up in everything from breakfast cereal to cooking oil. The question isn’t whether tariffs are affecting your cost of living. It’s a question of which channel they’re coming through.
The concrete thing you can do right now is look at your grocery spending carefully – especially in categories like beef, coffee, canned goods, and fresh produce, which have absorbed some of the steepest tariff-related price increases over the past year. Food prices were already up 2.9% year-on-year in January 2026 according to USDA data, and the Yale Budget Lab has projected an effective annual food cost increase of roughly $1,500 for a typical U.S. household. Switching to store-brand versions of tariff-affected items, buying staples in bulk before further price increases, and paying close attention to which categories are rising fastest are practical ways to protect your household budget while the broader trade picture continues to shift.
The tariff story isn’t over. But the evidence that it’s everyone’s story – not just certain states or certain industries – is now hard to dispute.
A.I. Disclaimer: This article was created with AI assistance and edited by a human for accuracy and clarity.
Read More: 8 U.S. States Hit Hardest by Grocery Tariff Price Hikes