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• The US gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed a record amount in tar­iffs in Octo­ber as a trade dis­pute between the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Chi­na esca­lat­ed.
• Rev­enue from import tax­es jumped to $7.2 bil­lion that month, the most in his­to­ry and a $1 bil­lion rise from the same time a year ear­li­er.
• While the White House has often assert­ed that for­eign exporters pay tar­iffs, there’s evi­dence that those costs large­ly fall on domes­tic busi­ness and con­sumers.
• Vis­it Busi­ness Insid­er’s home­page for more sto­ries.

The US gov­ern­ment col­lect­ed a record amount in tar­iffs in Octo­ber as a trade dis­pute between the Trump admin­is­tra­tion and Chi­na esca­lat­ed, accord­ing to new data released Mon­day.

Rev­enue from import tax­es jumped to $7.2 bil­lion that month, the free-trade advo­ca­cy groups Tar­iffs Hurt the Heart­land and The Trade Part­ner­ship said. That was the most in his­to­ry and a $1 bil­lion rise from the same time a year ear­li­er.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump slapped steep duties on an addi­tion­al $111 bil­lion worth of Chi­nese imports on Sep­tem­ber 1, hit­ting far more con­sumer prod­ucts than in pre­vi­ous tranch­es. He is sched­uled to fur­ther esca­late tar­iffs this Sun­day as the two sides strug­gle to ham­mer out the details of an inter­im trade agree­ment.

“Even when faced with this stag­ger­ing num­ber, it’s still unclear whether the pres­i­dent will fol­low through with his threat to raise tax­es yet again,” said Jonathan Gold, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Amer­i­cans for Free Trade. “This trade war has last­ed long enough and done enough dam­age.”

While the White House has often assert­ed that for­eign exporters pay tar­iffs, there’s evi­dence that those costs large­ly fall on domes­tic busi­ness and con­sumers. Rough­ly $42 bil­lion in addi­tion­al tar­iffs were paid from Feb­ru­ary 2018 to Octo­ber 2019, accord­ing to the data.

Trade-depen­dent sec­tors like man­u­fac­tur­ing have been hit par­tic­u­lar­ly hard by the trade dis­pute. The free-trade groups said that sev­en swing states — Flori­da, Iowa, Michi­gan, Min­neso­ta, Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia, and Wis­con­sin — had paid an addi­tion­al $7.66 bil­lion in import tar­iffs over the past year and a half.

Chi­na has retal­i­at­ed against the Trump admin­is­tra­tion with tar­iffs of its own on Amer­i­can imports, par­tic­u­lar­ly on polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive agri­cul­tur­al goods. Chi­nese tar­iffs on US exports have totaled $12 bil­lion since the start of the trade war, the free-trade groups said, and topped $1.3 bil­lion in Octo­ber.

Trump has sought to pla­cate farm­ers through a more than $28 bil­lion bailout pro­gram. The Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture has pro­ject­ed that for 2019 more than a third of farm income will come from gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies.