Have Tarrifs worked?

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For the fiscal year to date, the U.S. budget deficit totaled $1.004 trillion, about 12% lower than the comparable period in 2025, as government revenues rose faster than spending.

Customs duties totaled $151 billion through the first five months of the fiscal year, up about $113 billion, or 294%, from a year earlier.

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Outlays exceeded receipts by $308 billion in February, roughly in line with the deficit recorded in the same month a year ago.

For the fiscal year to date, the deficit totaled $1.004 trillion, about 12% lower than the comparable period in 2025, as government revenues rose faster than spending.

Helping narrow the gap was a sharp increase in tariff collections. Customs duties totaled $151 billion through the first five months of the fiscal year, up about $113 billion, or 294%, from a year earlier.

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LINK

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stout

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This guy, for example, is defining "working" as collecting money.

I don't know anyone who would have disputed that from the outset.

The American people have been taxed and money has been collected. That's what we told you would happen.

Is the scale of that graph purposely meant to be misleading?

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The American people have been taxed

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Can’t one choose to be rational and alter their habits to avoid this tax?

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Can’t one choose to be rational and alter their habits to avoid this tax?

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No, and the reason why has been explained a zillion times.

So you wake up thinking what can I bitch about this man again and again. You like Groundhog Day but funnier.

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Tariffs are more of a fair tax than the current system, wouldn't you agree?

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Tariffs allow the federal government to pick winners and losers. As shitty as the current system is I don't see the upside to adding another layer of shite.

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They did bring in a lot of money and no one is going to be refunded. They will remain in place or be reimposed under a different authority.

And it will take years for the ultimate results to be seen.

I hope most or all of them are still in place when democrats regain power, whenever that may be. They'll never get rid of them. Because they need to be in place. The sky screamers will be silent.

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Where do you get that the tariffs will not have to be refunded? Looks to me like there is still plenty of push for that to happen.

Refunds

Also, if the tariffs stay in place in won't be because "they have to." It will be because they are a liberal idea to begin with, so the Democrats won't object to them. Just like Biden didn't.

I personally think the next Democrat who takes office WILL get rid of these, simply because of the punitive and petty way Trump went about imposing them in the first place. I think this time around they'll see it as an opportunity to curry favor with many of the nations that Trump pissed off. and get rid of most if not all of them.

That's if Trump doesn't back off of them himself, which is what I originally predicted, and what brings us to this:

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And it will take years for the ultimate results to be seen.

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Nope. The ultimate results are in the OP's graph. My original prediction was that by this summer the negative effects on businesses and consumers would become impossible to hide and impossible to deny, and it looks like were are right on track for that prediction to come true.

And the Democrats are going to start swinging that club going into the midterms when it does reach that critical mass.

My original prediction was that Trump was going to back off the tariffs to save the midterms, but there's been so much stuff that has happened since then that I couldn't have anticipated, I might have underestimated his resolve to continue with a bad idead regardless of the cost on the tariffs.

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Do some of you really think big companies can move production/manufacturing from one country to another in a year? How about 2 years?

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How about three years? When Trump is no longer in office and the tariffs can disappear with the swipe of an auto-pen?

And that's why "pledging to invest in American manufacturing" means dick.

Not only that, but whether it's even a good thing for Americans if manufacturing comes back here depends entirely upon whether a company will encounter a sharp increase in labor costs by moving back here.

If they do, then everyone in America who buys that product will pay more for it for the benefit of a few thousand people who will have jobs that pay $45,000 a year instead of $37,000 a year.

No most companies don’t have the ability to do that. A competent administration would have provided companies incentives over time to make moves abroad before being hit with tarrifs.

And you know what makes it even more challenging? When policy changes weekly based on how the old man on Truth Social is feeling.