Kevin Hassett’s recent call to “discipline” Federal Reserve researchers over a New York Fed study on tariffs is not just a political swipe. It is a troubling signal about the growing willingness of policymakers to delegitimize economic analysis they find inconvenient or unsupportive.
Disagreement with research is a normal, healthy part of scientific inquiry. But attempts to intimidate researchers because their findings conflict with a preferred narrative undermine the credibility of policymaking itself. At a moment when trade policy is already generating uncertainty across markets, this kind of rhetoric risks turning economic debate into a loyalty test rather than an evidence-based process.
The New York Fed study in question found that US firms and consumers absorbed the vast majority of tariff costs in 2025, with importers bearing roughly 94 percent of the burden early in the year and still around 86 percent by November. These findings are not outliers. Similar conclusions have been reached by researchers at the Kiel Institute, Harvard University, Yale Budget Lab, and the Congressional Budget Office, all of which point to high pass-through of tariffs into US import prices.
The basic economic mechanism is well understood: when tariffs are imposed, domestic buyers often face higher costs because foreign exporters rarely slash prices enough to offset the duties. Hassett may disagree with the methodology or emphasis, but calling the research “an embarrassment” that would fail a first-semester economics course dismisses a body of evidence that aligns with decades of empirical trade literature.
Hassett’s principal criticism — that the study focused on prices rather than quantities — deserves debate, not disciplinary threats. Economists have long examined tariff incidence through price movements precisely because they reveal who ultimately pays. Quantity adjustments, wage effects, and currency adjustments can matter, but they are separate channels that require rigorous modeling and time to evaluate. Simply asserting that tariffs will raise domestic wages or improve consumer welfare does not invalidate evidence showing that price pass-throughs are substantial. Policy analysis requires grappling with tradeoffs, not declaring victory by ignoring uncomfortable metrics.
More concerning is the broader context. The administration has repeatedly attacked institutions and analysts whose conclusions diverge from its messaging, from pressuring private sector economists to dismissing unfavorable labor statistics.
Federal Reserve officials, including Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, have warned that such attacks risk compromising the central bank’s independence, a cornerstone of credible monetary policy. Although the Federal Reserve’s current credibility may be open to debate, deliberately undermining it further is imprudent. A strength of the Federal Reserve system lies in its decentralized research structure, where district banks produce analysis that does not necessarily reflect official policy positions. Demanding punishment for economists who publish data-driven findings erodes that institutional integrity and sends a chilling message to researchers across the policy landscape.
There is nothing wrong with policymakers arguing that tariffs could produce broader strategic benefits, whether through reshoring, geopolitical leverage, or sectoral wage gains. Those claims should be debated openly, supported by models and evidence, and tested against real-world outcomes. But dismissing empirical research as “partisan” simply because it challenges a policy narrative turns economic discourse into political theater where bully pulpits have the advantage.
If policymakers want to persuade markets and the public, they should present competing analyses. Hassett could have assailed the Fed study on the basis of tradeoffs, methodological assumptions, or competing interpretations of the data, rather than resorting to vacant dismissal.
Ignoring the economic effects of tariffs in the face of strong empirical evidence risks veering into a form of modern economic Lysenkoism where political loyalty takes precedence over analysis and communal scientific review. (Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist who rejected established genetic science, instead promoting politically-favored agricultural theories that aligned with Stalinist ideology. Under his influence, dissenting scientists were silenced, imprisoned, or purged, illustrating how injecting ideology into research handily squelches scientific progress.)
The issue here is not whether tariffs are good or bad policy, although the administration has already conceded the harms associated with them. It is whether economic research can proceed without fear of reprisal when its conclusions prove inconvenient. Undermining that principle will surely generate a measure of sycophantic political applause, but carries long-term costs — not only for American economic health, but for scientific inquiry itself.
