As Americans gear up for another bustling holiday season, shoppers may find their budgets stretched further than expected—not by retailers’ markups, but by tariffs. According to a new LendingTree analysis, current tariffs amount to what is essentially a $29 billion tax on the 2025 holiday shopping season, hitting families and individuals right as they fill their carts with gifts for loved ones.
LendingTree’s study reveals that at current rates, tariffs would have raised the overall cost of 2024 winter holiday gift shopping by $40.6 billion. Crucially, $28.6 billion—over 70% of this increase—would have been passed directly onto consumers. That translates into an estimated $132 in extra costs for the every holiday shopper in the United States.
Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief consumer finance analyst, emphasized that anything increasing the cost of holiday shopping creates “real challenges for consumers.” For most Americans, he added, “spending an extra $132 at the holidays is significant.”
Maybe it isn’t “earth-shattering for some,” he said, but he predicted it may prompt people to cut back on gift-giving this year or even take on extra debt, calling it “a choice no one wants to have to make.”
Electronics and clothing carry the heaviest burden
The report shows not all gifts are impacted equally. Electronics and clothing or accessories are particularly hard-hit, accounting for more than 60% of the additional consumer costs. The average extra tariff cost per shopper was estimated at $186 for electronics, and $82 for clothing or accessories.
With 88% of all clothing and 69% of electronics being imported, the holiday shopping lists of many Americans are tightly linked to global supply chains—and thus, to tariff policies. In total, consumers spent an estimated $377.7 billion on imported goods for gifts during the 2024 winter holiday shopping season.
Retailers are not immune to the pressure, either, as the analysis calculated they would have absorbed about 29.5% of the total tariff burden in 2024, some $12 billion. While retailers share in the pain, experts say much of the cost ultimately makes its way to consumers, particularly as companies pass on expenses to remain profitable.
LendingTree disclosed its estimates were based on data from Adobe, the National Retail Federation (NRF), the Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau, The Budget Lab at Yale and its own data. The researchers then applied an estimated 17.8% effective tariff rate and assumed a 70.5% pass-through rate from retailers to consumers, based on the midpoint of the range from the Budget Lab’s study. Researchers also adjusted the 2024 U.S. adult population for the 81% who reported buying holiday gifts to LendingTree and, to calculate the burden per shopper, applied the NRF’s category-level shopping percentages and divided each category’s consumer tariff burden by its number of shoppers.
Despite the significant costs outlined by LendingTree, Americans are unlikely to abandon electronics and clothing as go-to holiday gifts. Schulz acknowledged that, though prices are climbing, demand for these categories remains strong, and families may simply be forced to “suck up the higher costs or give fewer of those items as gifts.”
