U.S. Tariff Rates Will End 2025 Above 15.0%, Experts Don't Expect These Rates to Come Down Much in 2026

• A year ago, as the dust settled from President Donald Trump’s re-election, Wall Street was confident that he would not follow through on his campaign promises about tariffs. By spring, reality had set in. The world’s largest economy had the highest effective tariff rates in nearly a century, and President Trump was committed to resetting the global trade system.
• At the beginning of 2025, the average United States (U.S.) tariff rate stood near 2.5%. That same rate now stands north of 15.0% after just less than a year of President Trump's second term in office. As the calendar flips to 2026, analysts see only limited opportunities for de-escalation in the year ahead.
• Trump's last major tariff move of the year came in November, when he removed tariffs on goods like coffee and cocoa, but elsewhere the president seems as intent as ever on keeping rates at current levels.
• The latest calculations from the Tax Foundation find that the average applied US tariff rate is 15.8%, while the Yale Budget Lab calculates an overall average effective tariff rate for consumers of 16.8%. Both outlets note these levels mark the highest rates in at least 80 years.
• Meanwhile, a Yahoo Finance review of tariff projections for 2026 saw 15.0% crop up again and again as a general rule of thumb when planning for tariffs in the coming year. In other words: not a major change. As Bloomberg Economics put it in a recent note, the global economy will now have to learn to live with American protectionism.

(Sources: Yahoo Finance & Wall Street Journal)