Despite harsh criticism from President Donald Trump, Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle on August 13 doubled down on his forecast that tariffs will begin to hit consumer wallets hard come fall.

This followed a hostile post by Trump on his Truth Social media platform August 12, in which he suggested that CEO David Solomon “get a new Economist” or consider resigning.

Mericle said in a CNBC interview August 13 that the firm is confident in its research.

“We stand by the results of this study,” he said on CNBC's “Squawk on the Street.” “If the most recent tariffs, like the April tariff, follow the same pattern that we’ve seen with those earliest February tariffs, then eventually, by the fall, we estimate that consumers would bear about two-thirds of the cost.”

Trump expressed fury over a Goldman note over the weekend by economist Elsie Peng, asserting that, while exporters and businesses thus far have absorbed most of Trump’s tariffs, that burden will switch in the months ahead to consumers. “For the most part, Consumers aren't even paying these Tariffs, it is mostly Companies and Governments, many of them Foreign, picking up the tabs,” Trump said in a post. 

According to the Guardian, in April, Goldman also warned sweeping U.S. tariffs would weigh on global growth and prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates more aggressively than previously expected.

Other economic experts agree with Goldman. Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase, on August 13 predicted that tariffs could subtract 1% from GDP and add 1-1.5% to inflation. Some of that inflation has already occurred, he said.

“It appears that the downward trend in core inflation has been broken as tariffs start to feed through into retail prices,” UBS senior economist Brian Rose wrote in a note August 13, also. “We expect inflation to continue on a gradual upward trend as businesses pass along their higher costs, but slowing shelter inflation and push-back from increasingly stretched consumers should help offset some of the tariff impact.”

CNN reported August 14 that the latest Producer Price Index, which measures the average change in prices paid to producers, jumped 0.9% from June, lifting the annual rate to 3.3%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. PPI serves as a potential bellwether for the prices consumers may see in the months ahead. 

CNN added that, earlier this week, the Consumer Price Index for July showed that falling gas prices kept a lid on overall consumer price hikes, but that tariff-sensitive goods continued to get more costly. 

CNBC said no one is predicting runaway inflation — more like monthly gains of 0.3%-0.5%. That’s enough to push the Federal Reserve’s preferred core measure to somewhere in the low- to mid-3% range.

Trump came into office promising to lower everyday consumer prices, and claiming that tariffs were essential to achieving several goals — bringing manufacturing back within the U.S. and thereby creating more jobs with higher salaries, using them as a threat to force foreign trading partners to subsidize domestic industries less and buy American goods more, and bolstering U.S. coffers with billions of dollars to offset domestic tax cuts.

However, most economists say tariffs cannot simultaneously achieve all these goals. In fact, says The New York Times, many of Trump’s aims contradict one another. The same tariffs that are supposed to increase U.S. manufacturing are also making life painful for U.S. manufacturers, by disrupting their supply chains and raising the cost of their raw materials.

Further, a failure to reform to immigration policy — an effort that has been hampered for decades —  combined with an aggressive push to remove all illegal immigrants from the U.S. and revoke the legal status of many other migrants, threatens the domestic workforce at a time when the president seeks to ramp up domestic production. 

Read More: U.S. Tariff and Deportation Policies on Collision Course in Agribusiness

The Guardian reports that Trump’s anti-immigrant policies could collapse the U.S. food industry, as immigrants make up more than half of farmworkers in high-producing states such as California and Florida. 

The construction and hospitality industries also rely heavily on immigrant labor, much of it performed by workers with no legal status to work in the U.S. The American Immigration Council reckons that estimate that nearly 14% of people employed in the construction industry and 7.1% in hospitality are “undocumented,” and it is estimated that around 21% of those who work in warehouses and fulfillment centers —  often hired by staffing agencies with lax protocols — are doing so without legal status.

In February 2025, even as Trump was insisting that tariffs on U.S. imports would be paid by foreign governments or businesses, and not U.S. consumers, White House senior trade adviser Peter Navarro admitted that prices might rise as result of the new import taxes. But Navarro, also known as Trump’s Tariff Czar, argued that an increase in  wages, combined with tax cuts and greater foreign investment in U.S. businesses, would put enough money in American pockets to offset rising prices. “If real wages rise faster than any other types of inflation, people are still better off,” he said.