Tariff payments by U.S. companies, which have bounced up and down since early 2025 alongside topsy-turvy trade policies, have declined somewhat this year but remain historically high.
A report released last week by the JPMorganChase Institute that focuses on midsize companies sets forth an index of companies’ customs duty payments with a baseline value of 100 as of October 2024. The index reached its peak value, 314, the following October before subsiding to 201 by May 2026.
The index, which is based on JPMorgan’s proprietary bank transaction data, again turned higher in June, the last month for which data is available, rising to 222. Despite the overall pullback this year, the index remained at more than twice its pre-2025 value.
The analysis also found that tariffs have increased for every industry since April 2, 2025, when the Trump Administration announced a broad regime of tariffs.
The industry with the highest tariffs, apparel manufacturing, had a tariff burden of about 3.3% from April 2023 through March 2024, then saw that rise to 5.2% from April 2025 through March 2026.
Midsized companies, the focus of JPMorgan’s report, are generally more exposed to changes in trade policy because they have limited purchasing power, tighter profit margins and fewer capital resources compared with large multinational corporations.
Additionally, the report noted, midsize firms are often underrepresented in policy discussions, despite comprising a significant portion of the public sector.
The report defines midsized companies as those with either annual revenue between $10 million and $1 billion or an employee headcount of 50 to 499.
By law, a U.S. company that imports foreign goods is required to pay customs duties to the federal government. If there is a 25% tariff and the value of the goods is, say, $200,000, the importing company pays $50,000 to the government.
The company then could choose to absorb the tariff cost by keeping prices the same, pass it on through higher prices, or decrease international orders and spend more with U.S. suppliers.
The government’s monthly tariff revenue, as reported in the U.S. Monthly Treasury Statement, peaked at $34 billion in October 2025 and declined to $23.7 billion by June of this year.
Since 2025, payments to foreign counterparties by midsize U.S. companies surprisingly have grown only a bit more slowly than those to domestic ones, with a persistent gap of 6 to 12 percentage points, according to JPMorgan.
That level of stability for international outflows in this tariff environment “suggests that midsize firms could be delaying strategic supply chain decisions until there is more clarity on future [trade] policy,” the report said.
