Trump Gets Brutal Fact Check As He Continues To Lie About Tariffs

Donald Trump insists that the US is pulling in more than $2 billion a day from his tariffs, but those claims have been undercut by his own government agencies. After The Washington Post dug even deeper into the numbers, they found that the rates being paid to import goods are only marginally higher than what they were under the Biden Administration. In other words, Trump continues to lie and his tariffs aren’t doing much of anything to raise revenue in this country. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Just a few days ago, Donald Trump claimed that during the Biden administration, the United States was losing $2 billion a day importing goods from other countries. But thanks to his tariffs, of course, the United States is now making $3 billion a day. So that is, of course, a $5 billion difference. Now, I don't know, because Trump did not explain how we were actually losing 2 billion a day under Biden. But you know, that doesn't matter because now we're making 3 billion a day. Everybody wins. Boy, this is great, except of course for the fact that Donald Trump's own treasury department and customs, they've told us that no, that's actually not even close to the truth. In fact, we're not even making a 10th of that. So the Washington Post decided to dig into this, right? I mean, Trump's own government saying, Hey, this guy's not being honest about what the tariffs are bringing in.

So the Washington Post did a little fact check, and here is what they found. The monthly treasury report detailed, the tariffs added up to 8.16 billion for the month of March, or $263 million a day. During the Biden administration, we were bringing in 210 million a day. So that's only an increase of $53 million a day, which yes, seems like a lot of money, but when you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in trade, 53 million a day is peanuts. And it sure as hell isn't anywhere near the $3 billion a day that Donald Trump says We're pulling in. Um, Glen Kessler with the Washington Post wrote this, we will be generous and assume all of the collections were customs duties. On April 15th, the day after Trump spoke, customs and excise taxes were 250 million. On April 18th, this past Friday, the government collected 323 million. That's an increase, perhaps reflecting some impact from his tariff hike, but it's still almost one 10th of Trump's $3 billion claim.

Trump is pedaling two nonsense numbers. First, tariffs are already bringing in 3 billion a year. He's off by a factor of 10. Second, that Biden was losing 2 billion a year. That reflects a misunderstanding of trade, though with profound consequences. Trump is wrong to suggest this money is being collected by countries, and this is the important part. Economists agree that tariffs essentially attacks on domestic consumption are paid by importers such as US companies, which in turn pass on most or all of the cost to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products, meaning Americans will face higher prices for goods. So that $263 million a day that the country's bringing

In, um, you're paying that, you're paying that in the cost of goods that you purchase, whether it's from the grocery store, from the hardware store, from the car, lot doesn't matter. You are paying that 263 million that Donald Trump is bragging about. Oh, and by the way, when you buy those things, you're also paying a sales tax on 'em. So you're, you're actually getting taxed twice now on 'em because of Donald Trump's policies that are barely bringing in more than we were bringing in when Biden was running the show. So, yeah, Trump is lying as per usual. That shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. The problem is that this fact check is not blowing up all over the news, and it needs to, people need to be made aware of the real numbers and of how much Donald Trump is exaggerating them, because if they're not, they're gonna take his word for it and they're gonna think, oh boy, we're getting rich as a country off this. No, nobody's getting rich, and you are the ones who are getting screwed. I.