Overview
- The estimate equates to about $132 in extra costs per U.S. holiday shopper, a sum LendingTree warns may prompt cutbacks or added debt.
- Electronics and apparel drive the impact, accounting for over 60% of added consumer costs, with per-shopper increases of about $186 for electronics and $82 for clothing.
- Heavy import reliance links prices to tariff policy, with about 88% of clothing and 69% of electronics sourced from abroad.
- Retailers are modeled to absorb roughly 29.5% of the burden—around $12 billion in 2024—while most costs are passed through to shoppers.
- The findings use Adobe, NRF, Commerce and Census data and assume a 17.8% effective tariff rate with a 70.5% pass-through to consumers; on a 2024 baseline, tariffs would have added $40.6 billion, $28.6 billion of it to consumers.