New York Federal Reserve Bank researchers are reporting what was utterly predictable: The Trump administration's tariffs on China, at the core of the disastrous trade war President Donald Trump launched, aren't being borne by the Chinese as Trump promised, but by U.S. consumers.

Anyone minimally competent in trade issues would have understood that from the outset. Trump apparently didn't understand it, or didn't care, as he engaged in tough talk to support ill-considered policies grounded more in emotion than sound analysis. For all his bluster about socking it to China, it's American buyers who are feeling the pain.

Trump's tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of Chinese goods was ostensibly in response to China's unfair trade practices regarding intellectual property. That's a real issue but one that needed to be addressed through negotiation, not by blowing up this country's biggest trade relationship. The clear fact is that Trump just wanted a trade war, believing they're "good, and easy to win," to use his now-infamous declaration.

Tariffs are just taxes on imported goods. They're imposed on the importers, since the U.S. would have no way to enforce a tax on exporters based in China or any other country. The importers being taxed by Trump's tariffs are generally American companies, which usually pass on any additional costs to consumers in the form of higher prices.

In theory, China could have responded to Trump's tariffs by lowering the prices of its exports enough to absorb them, thus avoiding retail price hikes that reduce their popularity with American consumers. That would have effectively made real Trump's oft-repeated claim that China is paying for the tariffs.

But according to the exhaustive review of trade data by the Federal Reserve's Research and Statistics Group in New York, that's not what's happening. China hasn't obliged Trump's plans by significantly lowering its export prices, meaning the roughly $40 billion in annual tariff revenue has come mostly from American consumers' pockets in the form of higher prices.

That cost is just one way Trump's trade war has backfired. China has also responded with its own retaliatory tariffs — another thoroughly predictable development — focused on American agriculture. Those tariffs are why the administration has had to spend tens of billions of dollars bailing out struggling U.S. farmers who relied on the Chinese market.

With so much attention today on Trump's erratic foreign policy, it's been easy to overlook the disastrous effects of his trade war. It is costing American consumers and producers billions of dollars to no good end. The president's fellow Republicans — whose party traditionally has supported free trade and tax reduction and who were never on board with this war — should be the loudest voices demanding a truce.

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