The Middle Column: No side. Just the record.

No side taken · Sources attached · Corrections public

Both of these quotes are real. So is the number in the middle.

One claim you will hear

“tariffs serve many purposes...and the main purposed was to charge countries that make tons of money off of their exports to pay some of that money to America.”

Quoted exactly as posted, Michigan, October 2026.

The Middle Column 90% the share of the tariffs’ economic burden that fell on U.S. firms and consumers through November 2025.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, February 2026.

Another claim you will hear, in the form it usually takes

Tariffs are a tax paid entirely by American consumers, and they are wrecking the economy.

This claim circulates in many wordings, so it is stated in its common form, without quotation marks. Quotation marks on this site mean exact, sourced words.

The record: The duty is collected from the American importer, and it is not collected from the foreign country. Most of the cost lands in the United States, and not all of it lands here, because foreign exporters absorbed a share of it as the year went on. The measured damage is real, and it is a drag on the economy rather than a wreck of it. Read the full brief, MC-0001 →

$194.9B
duties collected in FY2025, paid by U.S. importers of record. Verified

$1.24T
2025 goods trade deficit, a record. The China deficit shrank to $202B, its smallest in 20+ years. Verified

~$1,000
average household cost of the tariffs in 2025, and about $700 in 2026 after the Supreme Court ruling. Corroborated

The Launch Shelf: the back catalog

Every brief opens the same way: each claim presented the way it actually circulates, quoted exactly when the words are sourced, the record in the middle, the receipts attached. Draft means written and checked under the Method, and open to correction, in public, forever.

File	The argument	The middle number	Status
MC-0001	Tariffs: who actually pays	90%	Draft
MC-0002	Medicare for All: the cost math	$28,303	Draft
MC-0003	Michigan’s school millage: who pays it	$0	Draft
MC-0004	The Rapid: the $63 million “loss”	$108	Draft
MC-0005	The VA vs private care	79% / 40%	Draft
MC-0006	Canada and the UK: the wait times	30.0 wks	Draft
MC-0007	“49% pay nothing”: the tax claim	60%	Draft

You can debate what to do about the facts here. The facts are not the debate.

Debatable / Not Debatable

Not debatable: whether the bridge was built in 1962. It was. There is a plaque, and the plaque is not an opinion.

Not debatable: who writes the check to Customs. That is a reading assignment, not an argument.

Debatable: whether a 30-week wait is an acceptable price for universal coverage. Two honest people can land on opposite sides of that. The 30 weeks is not part of the debate.