The mantra, repeated by everyone from mainstream economists to factions of the GOP, has been clear: A tariff is a tax on consumers. Businesses said the same, with three -quarters of importers in a recent New York Fed study declaring they planned to pass on some tariff costs to customers. 

But halfway into the year and well into the most consequential reshuffling of trade in half a century, tariff-fueled inflation is missing in action. 

The tariffs are certainly in place: The Treasury so far has collected a record-setting $100 billion in customs duties, and is on track to pull in $300 billion this year. The tariffs are paid by U.S. importers—think Walmart and other retailers—when goods cross the border into the U.S. It takes some time to work their way into the system, but eventually higher prices get passed onto consumers. Those higher prices directly influence the overall price levels in inflation measures.  

Except there’s a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, and coated in a puzzle. One place tariffs aren’t showing up? In the inflation numbers. 

For four months, official inflation readings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics have come in under expectations, with the latest inflation reading a relatively modest 2.4%. The president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) this week released a brief arguing that import prices have actually been falling. 

Why doesn’t the data show a tariff hit? Here’s what leading economists told Fortune. 

It’s too soon

Though tariffs have been discussed for months, they haven’t actually been in place for that long.

“Regarding the impact of tariffs on prices, the timeframe used by the CEA is way too short to draw any definitive conclusions,” said the fiscally conservative National Taxpayers Union said in a critique on the study, which looked at prices through May. “Trump’s 10% nonreciprocal tariffs were only imposed in April.”

Tariffs on steel and aluminum went into effect in March and increased in June, while Chinese imports have been subject to a 30% tax since March; dozens more “reciprocal” tariffs, initially announced in early April, have now been postponed. 

Meanwhile, official government price data takes time to collect and release. As of mid-July, the most recent data for the Consumer Price Index and Personal Consumption Expenditures deflator, covers May. 

Big businesses are stockpiling

Immediately after tariffs were announced, importers rushed to bring in goods before they were subject to a higher rate. Businesses brought in so many goods, with no corresponding sales, that it briefly flipped the U.S.’ GDP into negative territory. (In economist math, imports count as a negative to GDP.) 

That surge means that businesses could still be largely selling goods brought in under pre-tariff prices. 

“Businesses stockpiled inventory, and presumably haven’t had to raise prices on goods because they’re sitting on the shelf. Eventually they will, and once they start to raise prices it’ll start impacting consumers,” said Eric Winograd, chief U.S. economist at AllianceBernstein, to explain this theory.

No one knows how much to raise prices

Uncertainty, in a word, is “the most important reason” the hard data doesn’t yet show tariff impact, according to Eugenio Aleman, chief economist at Raymond James. 

“Business owners price their goods at replacement cost. If they have to buy the same good in the future, they have to increase the price [charged to the customer] if the price of the replacement is higher,” he told Fortune. The problem, though, is uncertainty. “Everybody knows the prices that firms will pay for replacement goods will be higher, but nobody knows by how much. That uncertainty is keeping many firms from repricing their goods.”

It’s coming out of profits instead

Businesses, particularly small businesses, could be choosing to eat the cost of tariffs for the time being. Unlike large businesses, they have a smaller client base and could be reluctant to hike prices, Aleman said. 

“Maybe small firms are eating some large portion of the tariffs. Why? Because they can’t afford to lose clients,” he said. One potential data point indicating this possibility is recent Commerce Department figures showing growth in proprietors’ income—a proxy for small businesses—flatlining in May. Aleman stressed that more than one month of data would be needed to determine if this is the case. 

Recent Bank of America research shows the amount of tariffs paid by small businesses in May nearly doubled from 2022 levels. “Small businesses may be, in some ways, more susceptible to tariff pressures than larger businesses, given their access to capital is more limited,” the note read. 

They’re scared of Trump

An added factor is the bully pulpit of Truth Social, which Trump has wielded freely at even the largest retailer thinking of hiking costs.

“If the president sees significant pass-through of tariffs via prices, you’ll see a lot more public policy, probably via Twitter,” Jeff Klingelhofer, a managing director at Aristotle Pacific, told Fortune. 

Customers won’t pay higher costs

Klingelhofer previously suggested that companies would take the brunt of the tariff impact because they’re the only ones who could afford to, with consumers being “tapped out” after years of high inflation. Former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm also noted that  companies today are less quick to hike prices now than they were during pandemic inflation, when Americans were flush with cash and eager to spend it. 

In 2021 and 2022, “consumers up and down the income distribution, had some cash, and there were a lot of corporate earnings calls saying ‘We’re passing these [costs] through,’ and the consumer could kind of handle it,” she told Fortune. 

Three years later, Americans have spent all the excess savings accumulated during Covid, and businesses “realize if they increase prices dramatically, they could be losing customers,” she said. “There is more hesitation. There is some raising of prices, but not the exuberance” of the pandemic.

Inflation might never come

That’s the position of Mark DiPlacido, policy advisor at American Compass, a conservative economic outfit that supports tariffs as a way to rebalance the U.S. economy.

“Foreign exporters have ended up absorbing a lot of [the costs], and businesses—very little has gotten to consumers at this point,” he said. Japanese carmakers, he noted, are slashing prices—sometimes nearly 20%—to compensate for the added costs U.S. buyers will pay. In other words, “Japan itself and Japanese companies are eating the costs of the tariffs.”  

Every economist Fortune spoke with made some version of this point—that a tariff, rather than giving a blank check for a seller to boost prices, sets off a complicated negotiation between importers, exporters, and American end buyers. Finding the balance of which party pays how much will take time, and will be individual for each good and sector of the economy.

“Tariffs are a tax on imported goods,” Sahm said. “Nobody wants to pay the tax, so who is the weakest link? Walmart can go in and tell their Chinese producers, ‘You have to cut the price.’ Maybe in the pandemic the consumers said, ‘OK, I’ll pay it—I’m not really happy about it, but I have the money.”

The final answer, she added, “can be very specific to the business, the industry, and also the general macroeconomic conditions.” 

The CEO of Crash Champions, which reported $2.75 billion in revenue last year, came from a small town in Indiana, where earning a college degree was neither a given nor an expectation. 

“We didn’t have much from a financial standpoint,” he told Fortune. “College and big career planning weren’t ever a discussion in my family.”

Ebert had an entrepreneurial spirit and started mowing lawns for people at age 10 or 11. His real interest, though, was cars, and he couldn’t wait to open the hood on his first car, change its oil, and take its wheels off. 

“For me, a car meant freedom,” he recalled. “I still remember the first time I was in a car by myself, thinking about how I could go anywhere I want right now.”

But at age 16, he wrecked his first car: a two-seater Ford EXP. Not wanting to make an insurance claim or get his insurance canceled, he visited a local car repairman and asked him if he could show Ebert how to fix his car. The repairman did—and that launched Ebert into a career of repairing cars. 

Six-figure jobs without a degree

Ebert took a job with the repairman after high school, therefore coming “literally, by accident” into the industry. Now he oversees a company that’s seen 130x revenue growth since 2019 and employs more than 10,000 people. 

And like Ebert, 83% of his workforce doesn’t have a college degree. 

“I’ve done really, really well in life not having gone to college,” he said. “And I’m not anti-college. I think there’s definitely things that college is great for. But I also know that it’s not an opportunity for everyone.”

Ebert’s company is ahead of the curve when it comes to employing people without a four-year degree. College has historically been viewed as a one-way ticket to a lucrative career, but younger generations are starting to catch on it’s not the only path to success. Many Gen Zers are taking trade jobs and aren’t burdened by student loan debt. Plus, some make more than six figures doing so. 

At Crash Champions, technicians make more than $100,000 a year, Ebert said. In the first quarter of 2025, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the median weekly earnings of the nation’s 120.9 million full-time wage and salary workers was $1,194, which equates to roughly $62,000 annually. That means Crash Champion workers make about 1.6 times that of the average U.S. worker.

“We view college as a bonus, not a requirement,” Ebert said. Of course, there are certain positions that require a specific degree, he added, like how their controller and chief legal officer needed degrees. 

Despite not requiring college degrees for most of its jobs, Crash Champions focuses on continued learning. It created a leadership development program focused on topics like culture and retention, financial and operational leadership, strategic leadership, communication and recognition, continuous learning, as well as delegation mastery and team employment. Thousands of employees have participated in these programs. 

Courtesy Crash Champions

“We can recruit the best technicians. We can train the best technicians, [but] if they’re working for bad managers, they’ll leave and go elsewhere,” Ebert said.

Crash Champions also offers an apprenticeship program where they can “start technicians from scratch,” he said. They’re placed with a team member whom they work with for a couple of years then are off on their own.

Crash Champions’ growth story

Ebert credits his employees with many of the company’s accomplishments.

“A key to my success has been surrounding myself with better people, smarter people than me, people that have done things that I haven’t done,” he said. 

Still, Ebert was the mastermind behind the company. After high school, he moved up to the suburbs of Chicago and stayed with his grandparents for a couple of years and got a job at a body shop. At the time, he still wanted to start his own business, but “being a young kid who didn’t know anybody,” he knew that’d be a challenge, and said starting his own body shop would be “a little over [his] head.”

With an entrepreneurial spirit, though, Ebert researched different businesses, and eventually opened his own Subway franchise by cash-advancing $100,000 on credit cards. Although that first location didn’t make any money, he decided to open a second “thinking that was going to be the path to making money.” 

But he was wrong. That one didn’t make money either. So with that, he went back to his car-repair roots, and approached a local car repairman, and they opened a bodyshop together in 1999, when Ebert was 26. His business partner, who was 20 years older than him, retired in 2014 and sold the business to Ebert in 2014. 

That became the start of Crash Champions, which was first named Lennox after a town in Illinois. Ebert changed the name of his business to Crash Champions, which originates from the idea that the bodyshop is a hero in a customer’s time of need after an accident. 

“I wanted to make the shops nice, tear down some of those stereotypes, make it a place that people would want to come, a place that people would want to work,” he explained.

Courtesy Crash Champions

After taking over the business, Ebert knew he wanted to expand, and he acquired a struggling bodyshop—which quickly snowballed into buying the business’ third and fourth locations, all within about a year. 

At the time, Ebert was still using Small Business Administration financing, and “basically grew it as far as” he could in the Chicago area. He wanted to acquire more shops, but couldn’t with SBA financing, so he worked with an investment banker who suggested private equity as an alternative to debt. Ebert was initially hesitant to do that, but recognized industry trends like tech advancements in vehicle repair would require more capital. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift in strategy, but Ebert also saw a need for his business model on a national scale. 

Crash Champions’ major growth came in 2021. Service King Collision, another large auto body repair company, had grown too quickly and made poor business decisions, leading them to financial trouble. Debt was coming due in 2022 and it wasn’t going to be able to pay. The company’s bondholders, mainly Clearlake Capital, would likely take it over, so Ebert proactively contacted Clearlake to merge Service King’s business with Crash Champions to expand his business. 

Those turned into 330 of Crash Champions’ current 650 locations, and the company saw its revenue skyrocket from $327.1 million in revenue in 2021 to $2.1 billion in 2022. For this year, it’s projecting around $3 billion and plans to “ramp [up] growth next year,” Ebert said. 

“I don’t want to stop until we’re number one. We’re the third largest in the country today,” Ebert said, referencing Caliber Collision and Gerber Collision & Glass. “There’s a ton of growth ahead for the company. We slowed a little bit here in the last year or two, because we grew so fast, and we wanted to get more sophisticated and more ready to be even bigger.”

In 2006, Loren Castle, the CEO of refrigerated cookie dough empire Sweet Loren’s, was a fresh-faced 22-year-old who had just graduated from the University of Southern California. But three months later, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: a cancer that originates in the lymphatic system. While going through chemotherapy for six months, Castle was wrangling the issue of eating healthier while figuring out what her career would look like. 

“After [recovering], my doctor said, ‘Go be normal and get a real job,’” Castle recalls to Fortune. “I was like, ‘I can’t be normal anymore.’ Life is really precious, I want to make sure I find something that I’m super passionate about. I wasn’t happy working for someone else in a job that I just wasn’t really passionate about.”

Four years after working unfulfilling corporate and restaurant-industry jobs, she finally found that passion—and turned it into a booming million-dollar business. Today, her healthy refrigerated cookie dough brand lines the aisles of 35,000 supermarkets, including chains like Whole Foods, Target, and Costco. 

Sweet Loren’s rolled in $97 million in gross sales in 2024, and is on target to reach a staggering $120 million run rate this year. 

“The goal is to take over the whole refrigerated dough section, and really become the number one player in the space,” Castle continues. “While the big guys are asleep at the wheel, we know how to speak to millennials and Gen Z, the future shopper…I’m just really passionate about this because it started from a personal need.”

Quitting her ‘real job’ to serve health-conscious cookie lovers

New York-based Castle wasn’t inspired to start Sweet Loren’s because of her love for baking—in fact, she did little of it before her diagnosis. While her friends were out partying, her illness had forced her to change the way she lived, including the way she ate. 

Having a big sweet tooth, Castle was disappointed in the lack of wholesome cookie dough brands. So she took cooking classes and studied nutrition on the days she didn’t have cancer treatment, opting for “super-powered” healthy foods, and formulated her own healthy sweet treat.

“I started making my own recipe, practicing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of batches. And finally I [made] these recipes that I was like, ‘Wait a minute, like, this is the best cookie I’ve ever had,’” Castle says. “It turned what was a really scary, negative time in my life into like a superpower.”

Castle started test-running batch after batch of health-conscious cookies while working other jobs on the side. During those years she worked at a boutique PR company, helped manage a restaurant, and had a role at a wine business. She was bouncing between roles that didn’t fulfill her. But surviving cancer—and wanting to turn the nightmare of the illness into something positive—was the push she needed to finally start her own business. 

“Life is short. I don’t want regrets. I was so keenly aware of my feelings. If I wasn’t in love with something, it was really hard to make myself do it,” Castle said. “It got to that point of, ‘I don’t like my boss, I don’t want to be making him money.’”

After three years of trying and failing to find a job she loved and was passionate about, Castle pulled the plug and veered into entrepreneurship at 26. 

Now, what started as a personal necessity has become a game-changer for a much wider audience. Castle has enjoyed massive success by tapping into cravings for healthy sweet treats, especially among consumers with allergies or dietary restrictions. Selling nut-free, dairy-free, and vegan cookie doughs, pie crusts, puff pastry, and pizza doughs, Sweet Loren’s reached a niche that has since blossomed into a bigger movement. 

Propelling Sweet Loren’s to a $120 million success 

Castle had already amassed a hoard of cookie fans from having her friends and families test the batches. But her real big break came in 2011, when she entered a baking contest in New York City: The Next Big Small Brand Contest for Culinary Genius. She swept the competition, winning both the people’s choice award and judge’s award. 

Sweet Loren’s was officially on the map, and suddenly, hundreds of families were emailing the brand weekly asking for new dietary-sensitive options. In addition to the healthy cookie dough she was producing, they wanted nut-free, gluten-free, vegan-friendly sweet treats. 

“Once I launched allergen-free [products], they became our number one SKU overnight,” she says.

Courtesy of Sweet Loren’s

Castle says that her brand is now the number one natural cookie dough brand in the U.S., without private equity backing, VC funding, or glitzy billboard ads. 

“It’s not like we’re pouring $50 million into Super Bowl ads and things like that. I think it’s just that we really solved a problem,” Castle says. “They just love the quality of the product and tell their friends and become advocates for it. Because we’re raising the bar on what packaged food can taste like, and what the ingredients can be like. It’s more of a premium.”