Alex Mayyasi

And they're kind of both true.

There's this element where the tax is paid by whoever is importing a product.

So that's often an American company, if these are American tariffs.

But that company could choose to pass

The cost of that talks on to consumers, in which case Americans are just paid higher prices for goods.

But it's also possible that the American company that's importing that product might say to the company they're trading with, maybe the Chinese manufacturer, like, hey, because of this tariff, we're going to pay you less.

And they'll force the tariff.

onto that Chinese manufacturer.

And so in a way, the Chinese manufacturer is paying that tariff.

And so it can be different in different cases.

And it's kind of a matter of leverage, right?

Like companies might want to just increase the cost for customers, their customers.

But maybe customers are really price sensitive, and they're worried that won't work.

So maybe they'll just eat the cost themselves.

Or maybe the importer, the American company that's importing TVs or what have you,

They'll be able to say to the Chinese company, the Chinese manufacturer, we're just going to pay you less because we have to pay this tariff.

But if the Chinese manufacturer could say, screw you, I'm just going to sell these TVs elsewhere, then no, the American company is going to have to pay the tariff.

So there is something tricky about tariffs where it is often hard to say definitively who is paying them.

One thing I think about a lot is what happened with bank tellers.

And so there's this great research done by a professor at Boston University that looked at what happened to bank tellers when automated teller machines started getting installed at banks.