April 2, 2026, marks one year since Liberation Day — the executive order imposing reciprocal tariffs on goods imported from most U.S. trading partners. For millions of Americans with no savings in their monthly budgets, it is a price increase they did not choose and cannot absorb.
What Has Already Been Said — And What It Misses
Over the past year, much has been said, and much has been missed 0. The National Taxpayers Union said that the U.S. trade deficit increased, farmers faced retaliatory tariffs that gutted export markets, and domestic manufacturers dependent on imported inputs saw costs rise faster than any competitive benefit materialized. The Center for American Progress said small‑business importers paid an average of $306,000 in additional tariff costs, 100,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, and the average American worker paid higher prices with no offsetting wage increase. Scripps News said that 90 to 95 percent of tariff costs were passed directly to consumers, causing prices to increase an additional 2 percent on top of existing inflation over the past year. The Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that most emergency tariffs were unconstitutional, but said nothing about how or when funds would be returned to companies.
Women were identified early as especially exposed to tariff costs. A 2018 USITC working paper found a $2.77 billion higher tariff burden on women’s apparel than on men’s clothing in 2015. The Feminist Majority Foundation reported that single‑parent households, 81 percent headed by women, spend about 40 percent of their income on goods, compared with 20 percent for top earners. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs will push between 650,000 and 875,000 more Americans into poverty.
What those aggregate estimates do not show is who is most likely to fall below the poverty line. This analysis answers that question by identifying households for whom the annual increase in food costs from Liberation Day tariffs exceeds the gap between their Supplemental Poverty Measure resources and the Supplemental Poverty Measure threshold. Food cost increases are estimated at 12.5 percent of household resources, multiplied by a 5.6 percent tariff‑driven increase in food prices. All estimates use the Supplemental Poverty Measure, population weights, and income quintiles constructed from SPM family resources. These estimates enable tracing the effects across the income distribution.
Who the Aggregate Hides
Liberation Day tariffs push 2.62 million households and 7.37 million people below the poverty line. Nearly all of those households and individuals are in the lowest income quintile: 2.45 million households and 6.36 million people (see Table 1). A much smaller number appear in the second quintile: 165,370 households and 1.01 million people. The middle, fourth, and top quintiles may experience financial strain, but in this analysis, they do not experience income losses large enough to push them below the poverty line.
Table 1. Households and People Pushed Below the Poverty Line, by Income Quintile: 2024
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) 2025.
Analysis: Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race (WISER), April 2026
Black and white female-headed households are 20% and 26% of all households in the lower 20% of SPMftotval incomes that slipped below the poverty line (see Table 2). Asian female‑headed households are 3 percent, and Hispanic female‑headed households are 18 percent. Women accounted for 68 percent of households that slipped below the poverty line as a result of the Liberation Day tariffs. The number of people who fell below the poverty line provides insight into family size. Indigenous American and Multiracial female‑headed households had the largest average household size, 3.3 and 3.8 people, respectively. Hispanic male‑headed households are 7 percent of all households that moved below the poverty line. White male‑headed households are 12 percent. More than 1‑in‑10 people who fell below the poverty line due to tariffs were in a white male‑headed household.
Table 2. Households and People Pushed Below the Poverty Line by Race and Sex: 2024
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) 2025.
Analysis: Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race (WISER),
Marital status shows how household structure affects poverty status. For example, married‑headed households make up 18.7 percent of all households that fell below the poverty line – 8.9 percent women and 9.8 percent men. The people in these households comprise 14 percent of all the people who slipped below the poverty line. Widowed women are 8 percent of the households, but contribute a smaller share to the number of people who fell below the poverty line. This suggests widowed women leading households in the lower 20 percent are more likely to live alone, making them doubly vulnerable — living alone and fiscally insecure. A similar pattern holds for divorced and separated women.
Table 3. Households and People Pushed Below the Poverty Line, by Marital Status and Presence of Children: 2024
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) 2025. Analysis: Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race (WISER), April 2026.
Never-married-headed households accounted for 42 percent of all households that slipped below the poverty line, with women accounting for 30 percent of these households. But nearly 70 percent of those who fell below the poverty line resided in these households. The focus on never‑married households is often on households with children, as ‘never‑married and poor’ mainly means ‘single parents.’ The data show that single adults without children make up a large share of those harmed by the tariffs. Never‑married households with children, 21.8 percent, and never‑married households without children, 19.4 percent, make up a similar share of all the households that slipped below the poverty line. The number of people in never‑married male‑ or female‑headed households without children is nearly the same, 1.89 million.
Liberation Day was sold as a jobs policy. The data show it is also a food policy that functions as a regressive tax on households with no savings to absorb it.
Share the Data Portrait with anyone who still thinks tariff impacts look the same across race, sex, and family structure.
Next week, gas prices will be added to the analysis.
Stay sharp, and optimistic,
Rhonda V. Sharpe
President
