When Donald Trump spoke to U.S. generals and admirals in September, the president appeared eager to brag about his trade tariffs. “We’ve taken in trillions of dollars,” he boasted. “We’re rich again.”
He continued to echo that refrain in the weeks and months that followed. At one point last month, Trump claimed he’s expecting tariff revenue to be “in excess of $2 Trillion Dollars,” only to follow up a day later with the expectation that tariff revenue would be “in excess of 3 Trillion Dollars.”
Both figures were spectacularly wrong, and the White House offered no explanation for how the total jumped by $1 trillion in just one day.
The problem, however, isn’t limited to the apparent fact that the president doesn’t know how much a trillion is. Complicating matters further is the fact that tariff revenue still isn’t anywhere close to what he pretends it is. NBC News reported:
For the first time since President Donald Trump rolled out his sweeping global tariff program in April, month-over-month customs receipts declined in November. Last month, the U.S. government collected $30.75 billion in import duties. This was down from $31.35 billion collected in October.
Over the last few months, the monthly increase in tariff money collected by customs has slowed, but November’s total was the first month that collections were lower than the previous month.
The obvious takeaway from that data is that there’s an enormous gap between Trump’s rhetoric and his policy’s reality. Tariffs are bringing in money — that’s not surprising, since tariffs are for all intents and purposes taxes, and taxes generate revenue — but the suggestion that the policy has produced “in excess of 3 Trillion Dollars” is absurd.
The less-obvious takeaway is that the declining revenue totals create a real problem for the Republican administration because the president has already made firm commitments to spend the money he doesn’t have.
According to Trump, tariff revenue will be used to reduce the national debt. And to pay for “dividend” rebate checks. And to pay for a bailout for farmers. And even to finance a new nationwide system of free child care for American families.
In recent weeks, the president has even gone so far as to suggest more than once that tariff revenue will be so robust, he might eventually be able to use the money to eliminate federal income taxes altogether. There’s an old accounting joke that “you can’t spend the same dollar twice.” Under Trump, it’s tempting to revise the line to “you can’t spend the same dollar five times, especially when you don’t have that dollar.” In late July, Trump boasted online, “[O]ur Country is doing very well and can afford just about anything.” It’d be nice if that were true. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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