Hassett Wants to Punish the Economists Because the Tariff Receipt Has Our Names on It

The newsroom coffee tastes like burnt wire today. Scanner chatter in the background. And that familiar courthouse-air stink you only get when power realizes the spreadsheet is testifying.

Because Kevin Hassett, the White House National Economic Council director, looked at a New York Fed analysis of the Trump administration’s 2025 tariffs and decided the crisis was not higher prices. It was the math.

His fix was not to rebut the evidence. It was to threaten the people who published it.

Discipline the researchers, not the policy

On February 18, 2026, Hassett went on CNBC, called the New York Fed work an embarrassment, and said the researchers should presumably be disciplined. Translation: this is not a policy debate. This is a management threat. It is an attempt to turn an independent research shop into a PR department that never contradicts the line of the day.

The researchers’ point is not exotic. It is the boring, brutal thing anyone who has ever paid a bill understands: tariffs are taxes at the border, and most of the cost lands on the U.S. side.

The Liberty Street Economics post from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, published February 12, 2026, estimates that from January through August 2025, about 94% of the tariff incidence fell on the U.S. side, with foreign exporters absorbing about 6%. By November 2025, exporters were absorbing more, but U.S. importers still bore about 86% of the burden.

And the paper translates that into plain-life consequences: given an average tariff around 13% later in 2025, their results imply import prices for tariff-hit goods rose roughly 11% more than comparable goods not subject to tariffs.

Here is the mechanism: a domestic tax, then a loyalty test

Here is the mechanism: the tariff gets applied; U.S. importers pay it at customs; then the importer eats it, squeezes suppliers, cuts labor costs, or passes it downstream. Downstream is households. Downstream is small businesses buying components. Downstream is anyone trying to run a budget while the invoice keeps getting heavier.

Then comes phase two: politics. Hassett, as reported by multiple outlets, complains the analysis is partisan, academically weak, and incomplete. But the “discipline” talk lands on the exact part that punctures the administration’s messaging that foreigners pay. The quiet part is simple: the fight is not with data. The fight is with what data does to a slogan.

Follow the money: collections, cover stories, and who gets squeezed

Follow the money: tariffs generate U.S. government revenue. That pile of collections is easy to point at as a “win,” while the costs get spread across millions of people in smaller, harder-to-track hits.

Big firms with pricing power can maneuver. Smaller businesses get squeezed. Workers get told to be flexible. Consumers get told it is foreigners doing it, like the cash register has a passport scanner.

Mic-drop: if your economic message requires punishing the economists, what exactly are you afraid the rest of us will notice?