"Tariffs are taxes that American businesses and consumers pay," stated a letter sent to Washington a month ago by a coalition named Americans for Free Trade, bearing 151 signatures of a wide range of business associations.

In a report released on May 11, Goldman Sachs revised up its estimate of the tariffs' impact on U.S. core personal consumption expenditures. "The costs of the tariffs have fallen entirely on U.S. businesses and households."

Economists at Moody's Analytics also found that U.S.-China trade disputes would slash U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) by 2.6 percentage points and cost the economy 3 million jobs by the final quarter of 2020.

A February report by economic consulting firm Trade Partnership Worldwide found that an average U.S. family of four would pay 2,300 U.S. dollars more in goods and services each year should Washington impose an additional 25-percent tariffs on all goods from China.

In three years, while 334,900 workers will gain jobs as a result of the tariffs against China, around 2.5 million workers will lose jobs, seven for every job gained. The tariffs will cost the U.S. economy more than 5.5 million dollars for every job gained, it said.

"The people who are paying tariffs are (in fact) U.S. citizens ... It's coming out of their pockets," said Gilad Alper, head of research at Israel's Excellence Nessuah Trust Company.

Jeopardizing global growth

With Washington ramping up pressure on China and other trading partners, analysts worldwide have said such self-inflicted tariff hikes will also give a body blow to the global economy.

Global financial markets are experienced turbulence amid growing concerns on U.S.-China trade frictions.

"We are certainly going to see a significant reduction on the world's functional markets. Look at what has been happening on the equity market for the couple of days," said Dawie Roodt, chief economist at African financial services company Efficient Group.

Such gloom will shroud not only global financial markets but also the real economy, analysts noted.

Tariff hikes "will ripple across the global economy and that will definitely be a drag on growth," said Sarah Hunter, chief economist at Australia's BIS Oxford Economics.

In its latest World Economic Outlook report released in April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered its 2019 global growth forecast to 3.3 percent, down 0.2 percentage point from its estimation in January, saying "the downturn was larger and appeared related to a souring of market sentiment, in part because of trade tensions."

"If investors don't have the feeling that this problem can be solved soon, the appetite for investments ... throughout the world is weakening," said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission.

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