From Tariffs to the Dinner Table: US Beef Prices Under 2025 Tariff Policies

ABSTRACT The 2025 US tariff policies provide a natural experiment to examine how import restrictions affect domestic prices. We construct a partial‐equilibrium Armington model in which the pass‐through of a tariff into retail prices decreases with a product's domestic supply elasticity and increases with its import dependence. We test these predictions using 2024–2026 US metropolitan‐level price data and a difference‐in‐differences design that compares beef products against alternative protein products and other consumer items. We find that tariffs significantly increased beef prices by approximately 8%–11% ($1.7–$2 per pound), with larger effects when domestic supply was more constrained and import dependence was higher, as the model predicts. These findings imply tariff assessments should weigh uneven consumer incidence, not aggregate price effects alone.