Fact check: Could Trump's trade tariffs pay off the US deficit?
During a July 20 interview on CBS's Face the Nation, Lutnick told host Margaret Brennan that the US is collecting close to $30bn a month in tariffs. 'You got to remember – this is going to pay off our deficit. This is going to make America stronger,' he said.
But the maths falls short.
Multiplying the most recent month of US tariff collections by a full decade would not cover the 10-year costs of President Donald Trump's new tax-and-spending legislation, much less all federal deficits during that decade. The current tariffs are slated to increase on August 1, including levies ranging from 20 percent to 40 percent for 21 countries, based on what the Trump administration has said.
An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – Congress's nonpartisan number-crunching arm – also projects that 10 years of tariff revenue increases under Trump will not pay for the added deficits from his bill or the cumulative deficits over the next decade. The projected added deficit from the bill is $3.4 trillion, on top of the existing projected deficit over the next decade of $21.8 trillion.
'I can't envision a scenario where the tariff revenues eliminate the deficit,' said Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks the federal budget.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
How much is the US collecting from Trump tariffs?
The federal government has been taking in higher tariff revenues under Trump's more aggressive tariff policies. Currently, the tariffs are a baseline 10 percent for all countries, plus additional tariffs on some products such as steel. Economists say consumers will ultimately swallow much of the tariff increases.
Federal tariff revenue tracked by the Penn-Wharton Budget Model shows that, up to July 11, the federal government had collected about $100bn in tariffs so far this year. During the same period in 2024, before Trump took office, the federal government had collected less than $48bn in tariff revenue.
In June 2025, the most recent monthly data available, the federal government took in $27bn in tariffs, according to the Treasury Department. A year earlier, that figure was $6bn. That's an increase of $21bn a month because of Trump's trade policies.
If the government were to continue collecting tariff revenue at the June 2025 pace for a full decade – 120 months – that would produce $2.52 trillion in tariff revenue.
That is in the ballpark of what the CBO published in June. Taking into account the potential economic shrinkage from higher tariffs, such as higher consumer prices, CBO projected that the boost in tariff revenue would reduce total federal deficits by $2.8 trillion over 10 years.
How does this tariff revenue compare with the federal deficit?
Without adding in the deficits from the bill Trump just signed, CBO's baseline projection for the cumulative deficits over the next 10 years is almost $21.8 trillion. That is about seven times the size of the CBO's projected tariff revenues over the same period.
And the projected tariff revenue under Trump would not fully cover the added deficits just from the 'megabill' Trump signed. According to CBO estimates, the law Trump signed on July 4 will raise deficits by $3.4 trillion beyond their previous trajectory over the next 10 years, which exceeds CBO's tariff revenue projection.
There is uncertainty about how much tariff revenue Trump's policies will generate, because he has frequently announced and then paused higher tariffs.
'It is hard to know what the end game is,' Ellis said. 'Is it high tariffs to generate revenue, which would reduce economic activity, or is it to rebalance the trade and eventually lower tariffs', and thus their revenue?
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscally hawkish group, has noted that Trump's tariff policies have been challenged in court, and the initial ruling by the Court of International Trade went against the administration.
If the initial ruling is upheld on appeal, then Trump would lose his power to unilaterally enact many of the tariffs he has been imposing, and the new tariff revenues now being generated would largely dry up.
And even if Trump's tariff powers are upheld on appeal, Trump's successor could reverse them by executive order, meaning any tariff revenues would cover the next four years, not the next 10 years.
Our ruling
Lutnick said tariffs are 'going to pay off our deficit'.
Trump's on-again, off-again pattern for implementing tariffs makes estimates tricky. But two projections show that the Trump administration's tariff revenues would not cover the next 10 years of projected deficits.
The CBO said it expects tariff revenues to reach $2.8 trillion over the next 10 years, while a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the tariffs collected in June 2025 would reach $2.52 trillion.
Both sums are only a fraction of the nearly $22 trillion in cumulative deficits projected over the next 10 years.
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