The chief economist at Towson University is breaking down what the new tariffs, signed by President Donald Trump as an economic emergency this weekend, could mean for the average consumer.

“When President Trump came into office in 2016, he imposed tariffs on China and he did do some targeted tariffs on steel imports from Canada and Europe. But these new tariffs that he’s imposing are rather broad-based,” said Dr. Daraius Irani, who is also a part of the Regional Economics Studies Institute (RESI) at Towson.

What is a tariff and what are the new tariffs set to be imposed on China, Canada and Mexico?

A tariff is a tax on imported goods coming into the U.S. Irani said the importer will pay the tariff and then ultimately decide how to allocate that tariff to the consumer. It will vary case-by-case depending largely on the demand for the good.

The president is implementing a 25% additional tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada. However, a lesser tariff, only 10%, on Canadian oil, natural gas and electricity. For imported goods from China, the tariff will be 10%.

What products will the tariffs impact and how much?

“There’s a lot at play here,” said Irani. “So, tariffs are a tax that ultimately households will pay. How much of that tariff a household will pay, depends on various factors, but rest assured it’s not going to be zero, and it won’t be the full amount. It’ll be somewhere in between.”

Imports include a variety of products, goods and items including oil, agricultural goods and vehicles .

“We get a lot of agriculture goods from Canada, tomatoes and those things. Now the U.S. does produce tomatoes, obviously, in our backyard, so the consumers may not feel some of the impact of that tariff,” said Irani. “Alternatively, producers of the tomatoes may say, well, it’s an opportunity for me to raise prices.”

Will these tariffs allow for more manufacturing in the U.S.?

Irani said this may be tough to accomplish for certain industries, particularly oil.

“Even though we produce a lot of oil, we can’t refine our own oil because again the refinery system we’ve set up is geared towards more imported oil. I don’t know the exact process, but it is almost impossible for us to refine our own oil,” said Irani. “We’ve set up systems to refine Canadian oil, Saudi Arabian oil, but oil from the U.S. we don’t necessarily refine here in the U.S.”

Irani said industries and companies may have the option to manufacture in the U.S. but they may not want to make the investment if the executive order is not permanent.

“The question will be is if tariffs are viewed to be transactional in nature, and they may only last this presidency, will the next president lower the tariffs, or will they keep them in?” said Irani. “And so firms are having to decide, do I make the investment of building a whole new factory in the U.S. for a thing that might change next week, next year, next term?”

Irani said even if manufacturing does come back into the U.S., the operation will likely look different than it is in other countries.

“It’s going to be interesting how this shapes out. Quite frankly, even if we do bring back manufacturing into the U.S., it’s going to be basically more high-tech manufacturing,” said Irani. “So instead of, you know, a thousand workers on the production line, it might be only ten workers. It won’t be, as I like to say, your grandfather’s job of bolting on the tires on the car. There’ll be a robot that will do all of that.”

“They’re making it possible for this poison to get in, number one and number two, we have big deficits and it’s something we’re doing,” said the President. “We’ll possibly very substantially increase it or not, we’ll see how it is, but it’s a lot of money coming to the United States.”

What about retaliation?

As far as retaliation goes, the president has said he may escalate the tariffs if the other countries impose their own. Canada quickly responded with their own tariff matching the 25% on up to $155 billion in imports including fruit and alcohol, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced. Mexico also announced retaliatory tariff plans .

“The U.S. has unilaterally decided it wants to increase tariffs on Canada, Mexico, one of our two largest trading partners. They could in turn impose tariffs on U.S. goods, so bourbon, Kentucky bourbon will probably be impacted,” said Irani.

Trade accounts for 67% of Canada’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 73% of Mexico’s and 37% of China’s while only accounting for 24% in the United States, according to the Trump Administration .

The tariffs are set to take effect on Tuesday.