Monthly tariffs paid by midsize American businesses tripled over the course of 2025, as Trump administration levies have continued to squeeze firms and force difficult financial decisions.
According to data released on February 19 by JPMorgan Chase, the sharp rise was driven largely by higher effective tariff rates on existing importers, not an increase in overall cross-border payment volumes, which remained relatively steady throughout the year. That seems to suggest that midsize companies — defined as those with revenues between $10 million and $1 billion with 500 or fewer employees — weren’t importing more goods, and were instead paying substantially higher tariffs on the same shipments that they were already bringing in.
“That’s a big change in their cost of doing business,” said JPMorganChase Institute director of business research Chi Mac.
The report also found that while some businesses adjusted suppliers or rerouted trade flows over time, most of the tariff burden in 2025 fell on companies that were already engaged in international trade. That left them to manage the higher costs through pricing decisions, cost-cutting or thinner profits rather than through major reductions in import activity.
A separate study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) on February 12 found that 90% of the economic burden of U.S. tariffs has fallen on American companies and consumers, despite repeated claims from President Donald Trump that other countries would shoulder the costs. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett has since attacked the FRBNY's report as "highly partisan," although the vast majority of research over the last year has concluded that tariffs are overwhelmingly paid by U.S. importers, and are often passed on to domestic businesses and households in the form of higher prices.
