President Donald Trump's critics have repeatedly asserted over the past several months that his tough trade policies, and particularly his tariffs on imported goods, would wreak havoc on the U.S. economy and consumers with soaring inflationary price increases.

That hasn't really happened yet, and the Trump White House cheered an economic report on Friday, which showed that price inflation in September beat the higher expectations of analysts, according to Breitbart.

The data suggest that Trump's tariffs have not had the broadly negative impact that many "experts" had predicted, though the president's critics will likely still maintain that the full effect hasn't been felt yet by consumers, and that the economy will be utterly ruined any day now.

September's inflation numbers beat expectations

Breitbart reported that while economists had anticipated inflation to rise by 0.4% over September, as it did in August, the consumer price index actually only increased by 0.3%.

When September's prices are compared with the same month one year ago, they are up on average about 3%, just slightly below the predicted 3.1% increase and well below the far higher inflation rates that plagued much of former President Joe Biden's tenure in office.

The report further noted that for nearly all of the categories that get tracked, prices rose at marginally slower rates than had been expected by analysts.

Trump's economic agenda is working

In a White House press release on Friday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "Inflation came in below market expectations in September thanks to President Trump’s economic agenda."

"This is good news for American families, and it’s a shame the Democrats are using them as 'leverage' to fund health care for illegal aliens," she added. "Democrats choosing to keep the government closed will likely result in no October inflation report, which will leave businesses, markets, families, and the Federal Reserve in disarray."

The release went on to note that, since President Trump took office, inflation has averaged around 2.5%, just slightly above the normal 2% target the Federal Reserve shoots for, and only half as much as the 5% inflation that former President Biden averaged over his four years.

It was also pointed out that, in comparison to Biden, Americans under Trump have seen their wages increase, gas prices substantially reduced, and costs coming down across the board for a wide variety of goods and services.

The White House proceeded to quote Bloomberg News' Senior Editor Chris Anstey, who acknowledged, "These readings will also bolster the Trump administration’s argument that inflation is under control and tariffs aren’t triggering a cost-of-living surge."

So who is paying the higher costs under Trump's tariffs?

CBS News has been among the many media outlets to consistently lambast President Trump's tariff and trade policies as being dangerously inflationary, and continued to perpetuate that narrative in an article published earlier this week, before September's better-than-expected numbers were released.

Yet, even as that article insisted that consumers would soon feel the "bite" of tariff-inflated pricing for most goods, it was acknowledged that, at least so far, Americans have not been hit with the full impact of Trump's tariffs, which have instead been largely absorbed by U.S. importers, foreign exporters, and retailers.

Indeed, research from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and Goldman Sachs suggests that, of the tariff-induced price increases, only about one-third to one-half of that cost hike has been passed along to consumers, with retail companies, importers, and exporters all eating roughly 20% of the increase themselves, rather than risk losing valuable customers or pricing themselves out of the lucrative U.S. market.