I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard journalists and pundits talk along the lines of ‘Trump doesn’t understand how tariffs work.’ I call bullsh!t. He’s stupid to be sure but not THAT stupid. Trump knows damn well foreign counties, or even their businesses don’t pay a single penny in tariffs to the U.S. He knows it’s the U.S. business owner/company receiving the imports that pays the tariff to the government. THEN they pass along the cost to consumers. I say Trump knows this. He KNOWS it and has all along.
Tariffs are a form of a sales tax, or value-added tax. And because those selling products that had tariffs slapped on them charge the same price for some ‘Acme Widget’ or food item no matter who’s doing the buying, it’s a REGRESSIVE tax. It hits average income and poor people much harder than it does rich, or even very well-off ones. That’s not just fine to Trump, it’s the way he wants things to be! Generate revenue for the government via a tax but have average, working class and poor people take the brunt of the screwing he’s dishing out. When he’s tormented (which is a lot these days) this is the kind of thought that gives Trumpty warm fuzzies.
For all Trump’s grandiose claims that tariffs (paid he claims by foreign governments) can fund our country or at least eliminate the annual deficit, they don’t and never will. Still, Trump’s tariffs bring in an eye-popping amount to the Treasury as this article from Fox Business tells us. Yes, I’m citing Fox as a source, because PZ’s conservative lurkers will of course try to discount the premise of this article:
The U.S. has collected more than $200 billion in tariff revenues this year, underscoring the scale of President Donald Trump‘s trade duties as a significant source of government income.
Tariff revenues hit $31.4 billion in August, the largest monthly total in 2025. September has already climbed to $29.7 billion and is on pace to set a new high.
That’s a whole lot more than chump change. However, since so many everyday products people have no choice but to buy, everything from food and other items at the grocery store, clothing, shoes, household items etc. average folks are hit with Trump’s Tariff Tax everywhere they turn. And when it comes to electronics or even bigger ticket items like appliances or automobiles, many people simply can’t afford the extra cost.
I really want to emphasize two things. Tariffs are essentially a more complicated sales tax. People seldom think about what they pay in sales taxes each year. Perhaps when they buy something really expensive that costs a thousand bucks or more, or a car, they look and say ‘wow!’ But groceries, gas, lunch (if you don’t brown bag), and all the stuff you see in the aisles at Walmart or Target or wherever adds up over the course of a year. I don’t even want to think about how hard this hits families with children given all the stuff they have to buy from diapers to later on ever changing clothes as their kids grow, to school supplies and lord knows what all.
Unlike income taxes which depending on your paycheck growing in percentage as you reach certain thresholds, sales taxes are the same for a given item for anyone who buys a given item. Say an ‘Acme widget. They are considered regressive taxes because the impact on most Americans, especially the working class and poor, is so much greater. There are some things people have to buy on a regular basis. Food for example.
To keep it simple let’s say a person spends a hundred bucks at the grocery store each week and pays five percent sales tax. That’s five bucks. Multiply that by 52 weeks and it becomes $260. And for a family it takes MORE than a hundred bucks a week to put food on the table. Let’s say double the amount above and it’s over five hundred dollars at the end of the year. THAT is a lot of money to working class and poor people. Even for some solidly middle class folks, and that’s just for food. Add in all the other stuff you buy and most people pay over a thousand a year in sales taxes. For families it adds up into multiple thousands.
While it’s not as direct, Trump’s tariffs do the exact same thing – add in an extra cost you pay every time you buy something. It’s a REGRESSIVE tax that hits everyone from the middle class on down to poor people (which means most people) a lot harder. Which brings me to the second point I again want to make. Donald Trump freaking KNOWS this. And I’d bet everything I have (admittedly not much anymore) he LOVES it. He gets to crow about money flowing in, knowing most of that tariff revenue is coming not from rich people like him but the masses who DON’T make six figures a year or more. He lies about it and because our country has been so dumbed down by decades of conservative efforts to gut education, Trump gets away with his blatant LIE.
Remember how I mentioned I’ve linked to a Fox Business article to pre-empt conservative readers of this blog (one in particular who sometimes comments to articles)? There’s another part of the article I wanted to highlight. I swear when I read it I scrolled up to make sure it WAS an article from Fox. It’s often overlooked but they do have some people that actually know stuff and report some truths. I’m amazed this part slipped past the editors:
Still, the source of tariff revenue is important to note. American businesses pay these import taxes to the federal government, but the cost often falls on consumers, as companies raise prices to pass off the economic burden.
Yes, you read that right and yes it comes from one of Fox’s branches. If only the big three evening opinions hosts would sometimes admit this during their ‘three hour white-power hour’ programming bloc. But sometimes you get some actual accuracy from Fox and I’ll give credit where it’s due. For anyone reading this and especially our small (probably) number of conservatives that log on, go to the link. It’s a short story with a lot of financial figures but easily understood and not at all long. For our progressive readers, when some MAGA repeats Trump’s LIES about foreign countries paying all this money into the U.S. Treasury, hit them with this!
However one last time and with feeling, do NOT buy into journalists/pundits talk when they lament Trump’s lack of understanding how tariffs work. They know goddam well what I’ve said here which is that Trump knows EXACTLY how they work. It’s a tax he’s unilaterally imposed to provide the government money. A tax that avoids him having to get Congressional Republicans from upping the tax rate on rich people!
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“Yes, you read that right and yes it comes from on of Fox’s branches. If only the big three evening opinions hosts would sometimes admit this during their ‘three hour white-power hour’ programming bloc. But sometimes you get some actual accuracy from Fox and I’ll give credit where it’s due.”
Well, Rupert designed his American “news” enterprise in a specific fashion. The *main* “news” network (which, nearly a quarter century ago, successfully asserted in court that it was “entertainment” rather than “hard” news) was never set up to provide real news, but rather conservative-focused propaganda (under the assertion of being “fair and balanced”–remember the origin of the whole affair was the lie that mainstream news was “liberal”) that could be fed to the rubes. The BUSINESS channel, however, was designed primarily for BUSINESS people and its hosts needed to be conservatives but also fairly knowledgeable about how business really works–even when the news might not be all that great (i.e., if the stock market suffered a 20% drop because the GOPers–in Congress or the White House–did or said something stupid, they might not come right out and say the word “stupid” but they would certainly indicate that the drop was the result of the GOP’s policies/actions).
Sometimes, the channels’ different perspectives seem a case of “the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.”
I remember when Reagan put tariffs on Harley’s, European goods, Japanese autos & steel. That never gets talked or written about.
Just boycott, it fucking works.
This shit is all down to Republican policy, never forget that. Trump’s just the brazen frontman for it.
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled. Mark Twain
It’s impossible to free people from chains they revere. Voltaire,(paraphrase).
There’s no amount of factual information that will disengage members of this identity cult…until the head of the serpent dies. Hard to say how far down the road to a fascist hell we’ll have traveled by then.