A New York Times article recently speculated that the money flowing into federal government coffers from President Donald Trump’s tariffs amounts to “such a substantial stream of revenue” that it “could end up being hard to quit.” But Democrats should find it easy to argue that they would gladly end what is a regressive tax increase that vastly outweighs the amount of Trump’s tax cuts.
CNN tabulated that under Trump’s tariff regime, “since April, when the president began imposing a 10% tariff across nearly all goods, among several other steeper levies that followed, The government collected a total of $100 billion in tariff revenue, three times the amount collected during the same four months last year.” But that understates the increase, because each month has produced more tariff revenue than the previous month, peaking at $29.6 billion in July. And that’s before the latest wave of global tariffs kicked in yesterday.
Projecting the annual cost of Trump’s tariffs remains impossible because the president constantly changes the rules. He could announce a new deal with or punishment for a particular country at any moment.
We also don’t know which tariffs will survive the court. Already, the Trump administration has lost rulings by the United States Court of International Trade and by a district judge in the District of Columbia, though the decisions have been stayed pending appeals. Not only could the Supreme Court eventually rule that Trump lacked the legal authority to impose some tariffs, it could force his administration to pay back wrongfully harmed businesses.
But Trump, presumably, would never accept defeat. He could try re-imposing tariffs by creatively interpreting existing laws and continuing the cat-and-mouse game with the judiciary until his term ends. Or he could pressure the Senate (if it is still Republican-controlled) to junk the filibuster and pass legislation giving him explicit tariff-raising powers.
Despite all these political and judicial uncertainties, the fresh tariff revenue data does allow us to make a reasonable, back-of-the-napkin projection of how much extra cost taxpayers are coughing up thanks to Trump’s tariffs, and to compare that to how much they are saving from Trump’s income tax cuts.
We already have projections for how much the Trump tax cuts enacted through budget reconciliation this summer will cost the federal government (and, in turn, save taxpayers and corporations). For example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated that the various tax cut provisions for individuals and businesses amounted to $5.3 trillion over 10 years. About $3.6 trillion of that comes from merely extending existing provisions from Trump’s 2017 tax reform package that were due to expire. That means less money for federal government coffers than the current law anticipated. But for individuals and businesses, extensions of existing tax provisions don’t change their bottom lines. As far as they are concerned, the new tax cuts total about $1.7 trillion.
But how much more are individuals and businesses paying in tariffs? According to the data tabulated by CNN, tariff revenue in 2024 totaled $98.4 billion. If the July 2025 tariff number of $29.6 billion reflects what we will be paying going forward, the annual cost will be $355.2 billion. That’s $256.8 billion more than last year. Over a 10-year window, that’s $2.6 trillion in added tariff costs, nearly a trillion more than the new tax cuts.
That calculation doesn’t account for other aspects of the budget reconciliation bill that push more costs on individuals, such as Medicaid and food assistance cuts. Nor does it factor in the regressive nature of both the tariff increases and new tax provisions. According to a Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis of the budget reconciliation bill, by 2033, households in the bottom 40 percent of income will, on net, lose after-tax income, while other households make gains, and the wealthiest make the most significant gains.
The poorest families will also bear the brunt of the tariffs. They will likely feel squeezed harder soon, as businesses have been trying to absorb the higher costs but are warning that they will soon pass more costs on to consumers.
This system will not be hard to quit.
The Times article suggested lawmakers “may be hesitant to roll back the tariffs if that would mean a further addition to the federal debt load, which is already raising alarms on Wall Street. And replacing the tariff revenue with another type of tax increase would require Congress to act, while the tariffs would be a legacy decision made by a previous president.”
But Democrats are eager to campaign on repealing Trump’s extreme tariffs; a repeal can be truthfully portrayed as a tax cut for working families, offset with new revenue from taxes on the wealthy. A Democratic presidential candidate can promise to lift Trump’s tariffs by executive order. Democratic congressional candidates can promise to raise taxes on the rich on a party-line vote through budget reconciliation.
The GOP has long been known as the party of tax cuts. Trump ended that era. Democrats are poised to reap the political benefits.
