Paulina Gamino runs Misfit Toys, a small retail toy store. She told NPR this week that toys her shop used to sell at $25 are now priced at up to $45 because of import tariffs, and that she’s cutting back orders because customers won’t pay the new prices.

The story is small-scale and entirely legible. Tariffs raise the cost of imported goods. Retailers pass some of that cost to consumers. Consumers buy less. Small retailers — who don’t have the negotiating leverage of major chains to absorb costs or renegotiate supplier terms — feel it first and hardest.

For thirty years, China’s economic growth was the closest thing the global economy had to a reliable engine. That engine is sputtering, and the effects are spreading in ways that do not respect trade allegiances.

The proximate causes are well documented: a property sector that has not recovered from the Evergrande collapse, consumer confidence that has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, youth unemployment running above 15%, and deflationary pressure that signals demand weakness rather than price stability. The structural causes run deeper — a demographic cliff, a model of export-led growth that trading partners are increasingly resisting, and a domestic consumption base that the government has tried and failed to cultivate as a replacement driver.

Most tariff coverage focuses on the geopolitics. Here is the part that affects you directly.

When the US imposes a 25% tariff on imported goods, the foreign country does not absorb the cost. The importer does. And the importer passes it to the retailer. And the retailer passes it to you. Tariffs are, in practical terms, a consumption tax paid by domestic buyers — not a penalty paid by foreign exporters.