Inflation on many everyday items was entirely due to tariffs, NY Fed says

Tariffs added 2.9 percentage points to inflation across 67 goods categories by February 2026, according to researchers at the New York Federal Reserve. The finding puts a hard number on how much of the price pressure in everyday items traced directly to President Donald Trump's tariff program.

The researchers concluded that prices on many everyday items would have declined last year and early this year without the tariffs. That framing matters: in these 67 categories, the New York Fed attributes the inflation to tariffs in full, not partially.

The tariff plan Trump unveiled at the White House on April 2, 2025 sits at the center of the analysis, and the New York Fed's work covers the period from that rollout through February 2026.

Interpretation: a central bank research arm isolating a tariff-specific contribution gives policymakers and markets a cleaner way to separate one-time price-level effects from broader inflation momentum. That distinction shapes how rate-setters may weigh goods inflation in upcoming decisions, though the study itself does not address policy implications.

The 2.9-point figure is concentrated in goods, and the research covers 67 categories specifically, so it should not be read as a measure of total economy-wide inflation.