Tariff revenue falls for the first time since Trump roll-out

Several factors may have helped trigger the recent reversal in the trend of ever-increasing tariff revenues.

But looming large for the Trump administration is a cost-of-living crisis that pushed the administration to announce rollbacks in a number of food-related tariffs in mid-November.

Those included tariffs on coffee and bananas, which the U.S. does not readily produce.

The reversal also included tariffs on beef, a household staple whose cost has soared this year.

In January, the average price per pound of ground beef was $5.54, according to data from the Consumer Price Index. In the latest edition of CPI, published in September, that cost had surged nearly 15%, to $6.32. More recent CPI data will not be released until Dec. 18 due to the government shutdown.

Over the last five years, the cost of beef has skyrocketed by 55%. But not all of that has to do with tariffs. Since the summer, ranchers have been struggling with a flesh-eating parasite that has been infecting livestock.

And while consumers may not yet be seeing a drop in retail prices for these items, it appears that Trump’s tariff reversals have already started to affect the government’s bottom line.

Traditionally, a minor drop in monthly tariff revenues would not set off alarms at the Treasury Department.

But unlike previous presidents, Trump has made some big promises to voters about what this additional tariff revenue might provide for average Americans.

The president has floated the idea of using tariff revenue to justify eliminating individual income taxes. He has also repeatedly proposed using some of the customs receipts to send each American a stimulus check — loosely based on the wildly popular stimulus checks that his administration distributed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in his first term.

Trump has also said tariff revenue will help reduce the national debt.

However, from January through November, only $236.2 billion of tariff money has been collected.

Even if the administration were to put that entire amount toward reducing the national debt, it would cover less than 1% of America’s current $38.38 trillion in outstanding obligations.

A White House spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the tariff revenue dip and how Trump plans to deploy the customs duties.

The tariff money could, however, cover the $201 billion of interest annually on that debt — but only one year’s worth.

In the meantime, the tariff revenue is helping to reduce the budget deficit. In November, the government spent just $173 billion more than it took in, which is less than half the deficit for the same month a year ago.

It’s unclear if the tariff revenue funds will be used for many of Trump’s proposals. But on Monday, the president did put some of the money to work.

Starting next year, the federal government says it will use $12 billion of the tariff money to fund an aid package for farmers affected by the president’s trade war with China. The majority of that package, $11 billion, will be in the form of direct one-time payments, which should start to go out in the new year.

The future of a large swath of Trump’s tariffs also hangs in the balance at the Supreme Court.

Through late September, the most recently available data shows that about $90 billion of the $174 billion in tariff money collected up to that point was done via presidential authority granted under a law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

If the Supreme Court finds that IEEPA did not, in fact, grant Trump the power to impose those unilateral tariffs, and the court strikes them down, it’s possible that most or all of the import taxes collected under the IEEPA law would need to be refunded to the importers who paid them. This would wipe out a significant amount of the tariff revenue that has been collected this year.