W hile he sought to portray himself as the polar opposite of former President Donald Trump during the 2020 campaign, President Joe Biden has stuck with some Trump administration policies since taking office, including on the thorny issue of tariffs.

Biden notably lifted some steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union last fall, but those measures remain in effect beyond a certain level of imports. And Biden has maintained nearly all of Trump's tariffs on China, even in the face of high inflation and supply chain shortages.

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"Tariffs are a huge problem and a huge drag," said Tom Lee, a data and policy analyst at the American Action Forum. "At the end of the day, the costs associated with tariffs are higher than the benefits."

According to an AAF analysis, Trump's tariffs affect more than $350 billion of imports and exports, increasing consumer costs by about $51 billion a year. That's because imposing tariffs on a given industry or good affects all the industries that use those goods, and the resulting higher costs tend to get passed on to consumers. Worse, when countries get slapped with tariffs, they usually retaliate with tariffs of their own, further increasing drag.

Lee points to Biden's worker-centric trade agenda, which emphasizes manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, a key voting bloc in any presidential election.

Despite the economic problems caused by tariffs, there is no indication Biden is looking to end them in the near future. In fact, a White House supply chain review from last June mentioned looking into new tariffs on materials such as neodymium magnets, which are used in electric motors and hard disk drives.

"Biden is really as protectionist as Trump," Lee said.

That governing reality is different than what Biden mentioned while campaigning.

“President Trump may think he’s being tough on China,” Biden said during a speech in July 2019 in which he took aim at the Trump tariffs. “All that he’s delivered as a consequence of that is American farmers, manufacturers, and consumers losing and paying more.”

But pressed in January on why he had not yet removed remaining tariffs, which Trump had threatened to leave intact until China purchased more American goods, Biden said he would not remove the duties for the same reason Trump had given.

"I'd like to be able to be in a position where I can say they're meeting the commitments, or more of their commitments, and be able to lift some of it. But we're not there yet," Biden said.

Lifting tariffs would help ease inflationary pressure but only to a small extent, argues Alex Durante, a federal tax economist with the Tax Foundation.

"Biden has elected to keep the tariffs in place because there's been a lot of pressure within his party to appear to be doing something to help the manufacturing sector," he said. "But the evidence suggests tariffs have not actually helped the manufacturing industry."

Tax Foundation research found that tariffs actually hurt domestic manufacturing, even in the absence of retaliation. Despite this evidence, presidents have a long history of imposing tariffs. George W. Bush imposed steel tariffs, while Barack Obama placed tariffs on Chinese tires. Trump's tariffs were broader in scale but weren't fundamentally different from those of other administrations, Durante said.

"Most presidents have imposed tariffs of some kind, pretty much always against the wishes of their economic advisers," he added.

But with prices rising and China threatening to shut down more of its economy via COVID-19-related lockdowns, tariffs could be one more factor weighing down the economy at an uncertain time.

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One popular argument for more American manufacturing came when personal protective equipment became a high-demand item in 2020 and countries moved to keep their domestic supply at home. But Durante argues that a supply crunch can happen any time there's a spike in demand, regardless of whether something is made domestically or in another country.

“What’s important in supply chains is resiliency and diversity,” said Durante. “If you were to manufacture everything in the U.S., it would be very susceptible to U.S. supply shocks. It’s a bit unrealistic and would be quite costly.”