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Trump Tariffs Are Burdening US Families With 'Back-to-School Tax': Analysis
"Trump's back-to-school message to America's families is crystal clear: Don't expect help, just expect less," said one expert.
Aug 14, 2025
Families of students across the United States are facing significantly higher prices for basic supplies as the new school year begins, a cost burden that a new analysis blames on President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs and the massive Republican budget package he signed into law last month.
The analysis, conducted by The Century Foundation (TCF) and Groundwork Collaborative, estimates that prices for supplies such as index cards have surged by more than 40% this year.
Lunch staples have also gotten more expensive, with U.S. families set to pay roughly $163 more on average for juice boxes, strawberries, and other such items this year, according to the new analysis, which characterized the higher costs as a "back-to-school tax" imposed by the president.
"President Trump's policies are forcing families to foot higher bills for back-to-school essentials from binders and lunch-box staples to clothes, shoes, and even laptops," said TCF senior fellow Rachel West. "From his reckless tariffs to his budget law slashing food assistance and federal student loans, Trump's back-to-school message to America's families is crystal clear: Don't expect help, just expect less."
The analysis was released just as new economic data further underscored the impact of Trump's tariffs on prices across the economy, with wholesale prices registering their largest monthly gain since June 2022.
TCF and Groundwork's findings align with a recent survey by the research firm Deloitte, which found that nearly half of U.S. parents and caregivers believe lunch costs on school days will be higher this year than in 2024.
Liz Pancotti, Groundwork's managing director of policy and advocacy, said Thursday that "President Trump's tax and tariff policies have turned the back-to-school season into a budgeting nightmare for hardworking American families."
"From lunch boxes and notebooks to juice boxes and pencils, parents are being squeezed at every turn—paying more for the school supplies and meals their kids need to succeed," said Pancotti. "No family should have to struggle to afford the basics while the wealthy and well-connected cash in on massive tax breaks they do not need."
"Trump's tax and tariff policies have turned the back-to-school season into a budgeting nightmare for hardworking American families."
The budget law that Trump signed last month is set to deliver trillions of dollars in tax breaks largely to the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations while making unprecedented cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid.
Those programs are used in states across the country to determine eligibility for free or reduced-cost school meals, and cuts inflicted by the Trump-GOP law are expected to leave more than 18 million children across the U.S. without access to free school meals in the coming years.
"President Trump's policies—including his erratic, punitive tariffs—are squeezing families' budgets as they prepare to return to school," TCF and Groundwork said Thursday. "Not only has Trump failed to keep his promises to tackle high prices, but his massive budget law will soon drive costs even higher for back-to-school essentials as its cuts to programs that children, families, and college students depend on take hold."
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'Indefensible': Human Rights Watch Rips US Complicity in Israeli Massacres of Starving Gazans
"The U.S. is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians."
Aug 01, 2025
Human Rights Watch said in a report released Friday that the U.S.-backed Israeli military's massacres of Palestinians seeking food aid in the besieged Gaza Strip are "serious violations of international law and war crimes."
Since the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating in the strip in May, Israeli forces have gunned down Palestinians in the vicinity of the organization's hubs on a near-daily basis. Between May 27 and July 31, the Israeli military has killed more than 850 Palestinians near GHF sites, according to United Nations figures.
"Israeli forces are not only deliberately starving Palestinian civilians, but they are now gunning them down almost every day as they desperately seek food for their families," said Belkis Wille, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). "U.S.-backed Israeli forces and private contractors have put in place a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths."
HRW stressed that the U.S. is complicit in Israeli war crimes—including the killings of desperate Palestinians seeking humanitarian assistance—given its continued arming of Israel's military and its support for GHF, which Human Rights Watch noted is "run by two U.S. private subcontracted companies: Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) and UG Solutions, in coordination with the Israeli military."
"On June 26, one month after SRS started distributing aid at the sites, the U.S. government announced it was allocating US$30 million to GHF," HRW observed. "The source of funding for GHF's first month of distributions remains unknown; in its letter to Human Rights Watch, counsel for GHF said it 'received $100 million from a government other than the United States or Israel,' without specifying the government."
"The Trump administration sent the allocation by circumventing congressional approvals," the group added. "The United States is complicit in Israeli violations of the laws of war in Gaza, given its provision of substantial military aid despite knowledge of the continuing grave violations."
As part of its report, HRW interviewed people who are or were on the ground in Gaza and directly witnessed the Israeli military's violence near aid sites.
"One Palestinian man told Human Rights Watch that he left his home at about 9 pm, trying to reach a site that was due to open at 9 am the next day," the group said. "On the way, he said, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and others as they were walking towards the site."
HRW also spoke to Anthony Bailey Aguilar, a retired U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who worked in Gaza as a security contractor for UG Solutions. Aguilar told the group that he witnessed on "numerous occasions" Israeli officers ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Palestinians near food distribution sites.
Additionally, Aguilar and Palestinian eyewitnesses told HRW that they saw "armed guards within the GHF sites using live fire and other weapons against civilians during aid distributions."
"It is indefensible that, instead of using its significant leverage to press Israel to end its ongoing acts of genocide, the U.S. is backing and even funding a deadly mechanism that is resulting in Israeli forces killing starving Palestinian civilians as a method of crowd control," Wille said. "States should urgently act to stop the extermination of Palestinians."
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House GOP Wants to Stop a Ban That Would Keep Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' Off Food Crops
"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said a lawyer at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Jul 15, 2025
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing to block action that would protect farms from toxic "forever chemicals" found in fertilizers made from sewage sludge.
The provision, introduced as part of a government spending bill unveiled Monday, would bar the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from enforcing the findings from a January risk assessment, which found that the sludge contains dangerous amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
According to the environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the act could cause agricultural losses and pose serious risks to public health.
For decades, the federal government encouraged farmers to spread municipal sewage onto their farmland, as it was a good source of nutrients and a preferable alternative to putting the sludge in landfills.
Nearly 20% of U.S. agricultural land is estimated to use this sludge, commonly known as "biosolids," in fertilizer, and 70 million acres of farmland may be contaminated.
These biosolids contain large amounts of PFAS, which are absorbed through the roots of plants and contaminate plant and animal products that end up on store shelves.
These chemicals are known to accumulate in the body for years without degrading and cause increased rates of cancer, decreased fertility, and developmental delays in children.
The EPA's January study found that the risks associated with PFAS in these sewage sludge-based fertilizers "exceed EPA's acceptable thresholds, sometimes by several orders of magnitude." Even very small quantities of these chemicals, it found, could pose major risks.
The GOP bill, however, forbids the EPA from using any funding to "finalize, implement, administer, or enforce" that risk assessment.
"Preventing EPA from protecting public health and our food supply from toxic contamination epitomizes special interest politics at their worst," said PEER science policy director Kyla Bennett, a scientist and attorney formerly with the EPA. "If finalized, this ban will leave ill-equipped state agricultural agencies to deal with a rapidly spreading chemical disaster."
Republicans have faced pressure from chemical manufacturing groups to kill PFAS regulations. In 2023, a report from Food & Water Watch found that eight major companies, including Dow and DuPont, spent a combined $55.7 million to lobby against bills to rein in PFAS between 2019 and 2022. The American Chemistry Council, the industry's lobbying arm, spent over $58.7 million during that same period.
The rule banning action on PFAS is part of a broader effort by Republicans to gut environmental regulations. The bill released Monday slashes EPA spending by over $2 billion, nearly 25%.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has also weakened standards on PFAS in drinking water, which were adopted during the Biden administration.
"Across the country, farms have had to be condemned and livestock slaughtered due to PFAS pollution from fertilizers," said PEER staff counsel Laura Dumais, who filed a lawsuit against the EPA last year for its slow rollout of PFAS regulations. "Further delay in preventing more of these needless tragedies would be unconscionable."
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