Tariff payments made by midsize U.S. companies have pulled back from their October 2025 high but remain more than twice pre-2025 levels, according to a new report from the JPMorgan Chase Institute.
The report, “Tracking International Payments: How Are Midsize Firms Responding to Continued Tariff Pressure?,” is a follow-up to the institute’s earlier analysis of how midsize firms — companies generally with $10 million to $1 billion in revenue or 50 to 499 employees — are navigating a volatile trade policy environment. The institute drew on de-identified JPMorgan Chase transaction data from a sample of midsize clients active since 2023.
Researchers Chris Wheat, Chi Mac and Ole Agersnap found that tariff payments by midsize firms roughly tripled over the course of 2025 following the announcement of near-universal tariffs on April 2 of that year, peaking in October. Payments then declined through early 2026, with a sharp drop in March that coincided with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. As of June 2026, the most recent month in the data, tariff payments were down about a third from the October peak but still more than double where they stood before 2025.
The path of federal tariff revenue overall — tracked through Customs Duties receipts in the U.S. Monthly Treasury Statement — followed a similar arc, the report found, rising sharply in spring 2025, peaking near $34 billion in October and falling to roughly $22 billion to $24 billion in the following months.
The report cautions that the trend may not hold. Since the IEEPA ruling, the administration has pursued other legal avenues to impose comparable tariffs, including a temporary 10% universal tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which has since expired, and tariffs of 10% to 12.5% imposed in June under Section 301 of the same law following a forced-labor enforcement investigation. Legal challenges to those measures remain unresolved.
Despite the swings in tariff rates, the report found that international payments by midsize firms have grown more slowly than domestic payments since 2025, with a gap of 6 to 12 percentage points persisting between the two. The authors said the relatively stable level of international payments — even as tariffs rose and fell — may reflect uncertainty that is causing firms to delay strategic supply-chain decisions rather than react in real time, compounded by several-month lags between when goods are imported and when payment is made.
At the industry level, the report found that tariff burdens — tariffs paid as a share of total inflows — rose across every sector examined. Apparel manufacturers and leather and allied product manufacturers face the heaviest burdens by far, each now spending roughly 5% of inflows on tariffs, though both industries also carried relatively high burdens before 2025. Machinery manufacturing and electrical equipment, appliance and component manufacturing have crossed the 2% threshold, driven in part by tariffs on steel, aluminum, copper and graphite. Food manufacturing saw the largest proportional increase of any industry, with its tariff burden growing more than sevenfold from a low base.
Geographically, tariff burdens remain highest in major port regions — the Northeast and the Pacific coast — reflecting their concentration of trade with Europe and Asia, respectively. But the largest relative increases have occurred elsewhere: Tariff burdens more than tripled in the Great Lakes region and the Southeast, both home to significant heavy-manufacturing supply chains, including transportation equipment. Those regions now face higher tariff burdens than any region did before 2025, the report noted.
The institute said it will continue to monitor international payment trends for early signals of how firms are adjusting, noting that established supplier relationships tend to be long-lasting and that some firms may be delaying major changes by absorbing tariff costs or drawing down stockpiles built up ahead of the 2025 increases.
