Tariff costs to companies this year to hit $1.2 trillion, with consumers taking most of the hit, S&P says

President Donald Trump's tariffs will cost global businesses upwards of $1.2 trillion in 2025, with most of the cost being passed onto consumers, according to a new analysis from S&P Global.

In a white paper released Thursday, the firm said its estimate of additional expenses for companies is probably conservative. The price tag comes from information provided by some 15,000 sell-side analysts across 9,000 companies who contribute to S&P and its proprietary research indexes.

“The sources of this trillion-dollar squeeze are broad. Tariffs and trade barriers act as taxes on supply chains and divert cash to governments; logistics delays and freight costs compound the effect,” author Daniel Sandberg said in the report. “Collectively, these forces represent a systemic transfer of wealth from corporate profits to workers, suppliers, governments, and infrastructure investors.”

Trump in April slapped 10% tariffs on all goods entering the U.S. and listed individual “reciprocal” tariffs for dozens of other countries. Since then, the White House has entered a series of negotiations and agreements while also adding duties on a variety of individual items such as kitchen cabinets, autos and timber.

While administration officials have insisted that exporters will be forced to bear the greater share of the levies, the S&P analysis suggests that is only partly true.

In fact, the firm says that just one-third will be borne by companies, with the rest falling on the shoulders of consumers, under conservative estimates. The figures incorporated a $907 billion hit to covered companies with the remainder to uncovered firms as well as private equity and venture capital.

“With real output declining, consumers are paying more for less, suggesting that this two-thirds share represents a lower bound on their true burden,” said Sandberg, who wrote the report along with Drew Bowers, a senior quantitative analyst at S&P Global.