President Trump left President Biden an interesting card to play: the tariffs Trump imposed on imports from China and several other places.

Biden has left most of those tariffs in place. But with inflation now sizzling at a four-decade high of 8.5%—and threatening to torpedo Biden’s presidency—those tariffs could serve as a release valve taking a bit of the sting out of rising prices.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that reducing a variety of import tariffs could lower inflation by 1 to 2 percentage points. That might sound small, but at a midpoint it would save the average household about $800 per year. It might also give Biden something he desperately needs: Tangible evidence he’s doing something about inflation, besides just talking about it.

Biden so far has blamed the rising price of gas and many other things on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine. But only about one-third to one-fourth of the gas price hikes during the last 12 months came after the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. Other Democrats blame greedy oil companies for jacking up oil and gas prices more than necessary. Economists, however, say inflation is a complex phenomenon with many causes, including supply chains still kinked from the COVID pandemic and an abrupt shift in consumer spending patterns.

The Federal Reserve has finally begun to address inflation with a series of interest rate hikes that may or may not get the job done. There’s not normally much the U.S. president can do to rein in price hikes, as Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter learned during the last big battle against inflation, in the 1970s.

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But the Peterson research argues that tariff policy could give Biden something to work with. The United States imports about $2.8 trillion worth of goods per year. About half of that merchandise arrives with no tariffs, while the average tariff on Chinese imports rose to about 19% under Trump. The average tariff on all imports is about 6%.