The average American family could be subjected to an added tax burden of more than $1,700 per year if former President Donald Trump wins the November election.

The Republican presidential nominee has vowed to wrestle China into economic submission by upping tariffs on imports from the country by a whopping 60 percent or more. If that threat comes to fruition, the U.S. could be in danger of “reverting to an antiquated approach to funding its government” that will ultimately hit shoppers squarely in the pocketbook, according to a study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).

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“At the beginning of its history, the United States relied on tariffs—taxes on imported goods—as its major source of government revenue,” the group wrote in a study published this month. That changed in the early 1900s “with the enactment of the federal income tax and the advent of a new consensus recognizing tariffs as regressive, burdening the working class while leaving untaxed much of the income accruing to the wealthy.”

In 2024, less than 2 percent of government revenue in high-income countries like the U.S. comes from import taxes and tariffs. But Trump is looking to upend that reality—not just by levying higher duties on China-made goods, but products from all trade partners. The former president has said he supports a 10-percent universal tax increase on goods imported from anywhere in the world.

Trump’s import duty scheme aims to offset the cost of the income tax cuts he has vowed to make if elected. The candidate’s campaign platform has centered on an extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), “the signature legislative accomplishment of his administration,” and he’s hinted at the desire to supplement it with a new round of tax cuts or a lower corporate rate.

“As fiscal policy, the Trump agenda amounts to regressive tax cuts, only partially paid for by regressive tax increases,” analysts wrote. “A lower-bound estimate of costs to consumers indicates that the tariffs would reduce after-tax incomes by about 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution; tariffs would cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution at least $1,700 in increased taxes each year.”

Contrary to the nominee’s assertions that foreign entities—like Chinese producers, for example—bear the cost of added duties, “economists have long understood that tariffs burden domestic purchasers of imported goods,” the report said. Tariffs raise the price of market transactions for both producers and consumers, but “[d]omestic buyers of the good are obviously worse off, as some drop out of the market at the higher price, and those who continue to buy face a higher price.”