If you buy goods at a store, you get a receipt telling you the amount of sales tax you pay. Work at a job, and your pay stub reports how much was deducted for payroll taxes. The amount you pay in income taxes is likewise no secret from you.

But if you buy goods subject to a tariff from a retailer, President Donald Trump doesn’t want you to know how much tariffs added to the price. When Amazon considered such disclosures, the White House attacked the plan as “a hostile and political act.” President Trump spoke with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Amazon quickly retreated.

Left to their own devices, sellers might want to disclose how much tariffs added to their prices, both so consumers wouldn’t blame them for price increases and to accommodate buyers who want the information. No doubt many sellers, however, will be dissuaded from doing so by the combination of the president’s opposition and punitive tendencies. Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin has proposed a bill that would require retailers to disclose what tariffs were costing them. But the bill has no chance of passage in a Republican-controlled Congress.

Still, when one government interferes with the market, another can sometimes step in. Maryland should pass a law obliging retailers to disclose the amounts tariffs add to the prices Marylanders pay for their goods.

Such laws would serve several purposes. Marylanders have a right to know what their government costs them, just as they do with other taxes they pay. Better informed citizens enhance public participation in lawmaking.

Tariff disclosure laws would also reduce disputes over whether retailers have taken advantage of tariffs to pad their bottom lines. During the high inflation of the Biden presidency, some accused businesses of using inflation to justify greater price increases than needed to cover their costs. Consumers who know how much tariffs have increased prices can ascertain whether price hikes exceed the amount of the tariffs.

Disclosure laws don’t affect only consumer conduct. For example, after Los Angeles required restaurants to disclose health grades at their entrances, the number of hospitalizations for food-borne illnesses dropped. Restaurateurs who didn’t want a C grade posted on their door presumably cleaned their premises more thoroughly, thus benefiting all patrons, not just those who paid attention to the grades. Similarly, obliging retailers to state tariff amounts may restrain tariff increases, which would benefit all who don’t want to pay higher prices, whether they pay attention to the disclosures or not.

Tariff disclosure laws should be implemented in ways that do not themselves increase prices. Small businesses and items that bear only small tariffs should be excepted. Sellers should be free to make good-faith estimates of the tariff amount charged per item. Retailers should have low-cost options about how to present the information, perhaps on a receipt or a sign. But just as many states have enacted unit pricing laws — cost per pound or quart, for example — without imposing substantial compliance costs, it should be possible to do the same for the tariffs. Surely disclosing tariffs is no more costly for fast food chains than disclosing calorie counts. What about claims that such laws would be “hostile and political”? If they are, then so was the founding of our country. Colonists’ objections to tariffs led to the Boston Tea Party. Tariff disclosure laws would be in keeping with that history.

Tariff disclosure laws would also be consistent with the purported values of the Trump administration. A president who signed an executive order titled Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship on his inauguration day should not censor Americans’ attempts to learn what his policies cost them.

And they resonate with the policies of the first Trump administration. When the federal government sent checks to Americans during the pandemic, President Trump’s name appeared on the checks. If Trump can claim credit for putting money into American pockets, Americans deserve to know when he is taking money out.

The cost of government should not be a secret. Nothing could be more American than disclosing the amounts we pay in tariffs. Marylanders deserve to know.

Jeff Sovern (jsovern@law.umaryland.edu) is the Michael Millemann Professor of Consumer Protection Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.