Trump’s Tariffs Just Canceled Your Tax Cut

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So let me get this straight Markowski, you’re saying Trump raised our taxes? Yeah, yeah he did. But the big unifil bill! Hold on, pay close attention. Listen, okay, I’ve had certain things over the years I’ve tried very hard, very hard to explain to people, corporate tax being one, how it’s a tax on the consumer, inverse relationships with interest rates.

pricing, risk into insurance, all sorts of things that for whatever reason it may be, people get this idea in their head and it’s wrong and they can’t get past it. They can’t. And tariffs are one of those things. And it most certainly been one of those things over the past year. here are the numbers. The numbers. Yeah, yeah. You think you got a tax cut.

So you think you got a tax cut in a big beautiful bill, do you? Yeah, you think you got one. Well, not really. Not really, because tariffs wiped it out. Again, I know you’re being told, the countries are absorbing the cost. They’re absorbing the cost. No, they’re not. If foreign companies were absorbing the costs, import prices

would drop to keep their products at the same price in US stores. Foreigners would have to lower their products prices to make room for the tariff. Yeah, US import prices unchanged in 2025. However, look at other numbers here. 100 % pass through from tariffs to import prices.and therefore on US consumers and firms. OK? Federal Reserve Bank of New York did the study. 100%. Now, let’s look at the numbers. Pay attention. Pay attention. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that taxpayers will receive about $0.00.

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Yay! $188 billion reduction in federal tax liability for 2025 that they would not have received if the president’s tax cuts hadn’t become law. Those refunds and tax benefits, they’ve been offset. Yeah.

by the 195 billion in new tariffs collected in 2025. You understand the math there? Yes, you did. You did. 2026. Again, I gotta give a shout out to Phil Graham put these numbers together. The Congressional Budget Office projects that Trump’s tariffs will generate 331 billion

in 2026, while the CBO estimates the new tax cuts will save taxpayers $230 billion. Families and businesses will be worse off on net.

Am I wrong there? You understand the math? You get it? Mr. Trump’s new tariffs from his second term will have cost American consumers and businesses $443 billion, while the tax cuts will have provided them with $379 billion. Now, if he finds some way, Trump finds some way to restore his tariffs to the levels they were before the Supreme Court stepped in,

The tariff tax in 2026 will be 44 % larger than the new tax cuts contained in the big beautiful bill. Are you following me here? These are just numbers. is basic algebra.

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Yeah, the American consumer bears a direct cost of the tariff bill. However, the other thing about the big beautiful bills, most of the tax refunds go through businesses. The CBO estimates that businesses are absorbing 30 % of the tariffs costs while consumers are paying 70%. But individuals received only $60.5 billion or 32 % of the new tax cuts for calendar year 2025.

while businesses received about twice that amount at 127.7 billion. However, okay, using my logic, technically, okay, that is savings to the consumers too. Saving to the consumers too, because again, it’s priced into the product and services that corporations provide. Again, defenders of the president’s policy say that tax cuts,

Not only provided new benefits that also extend provisions that would have expired. Again, I don’t know if people are going to be voting based upon that. I really don’t. For the most part, mean, nothing changed for me. Same bloody thing. And again, you know, the reality is, is that Democrats were elected. Most of the tax cuts would have remained as well. Interesting point.

was back when the Bush tax cuts expired, Obama actually extended 90 % of the expiring provisions. You don’t get credit for that. You get hammered for the stuff that you end up taking away. For whatever reason it may be, and I don’t get it. It’s again,

I’m sorry, there was that, I don’t know, was a general that was put in charge of handling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Remember, I always had that line that stuck with me. was being interviewed by the media. Someone asked a stupid question. He said, what are you stuck on, stupid? The president, sorry, he’s been stuck on stupid with tariffs for a long time, very long time. He believes that…

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using tariffs to replace income taxes would be popular. Well, let’s look at the history. Americans have always hated them. Britain’s Townshend Acts of 1767, which helped fuel the American Revolution, Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 deep in the Great Depression. They’ve always been toxic. Voters don’t reward politicians for enacting tariffs.

in the election that followed the 1890 McKinley tariffs, tariffs that Mr. Trump has cited as a prototype for his own, Republicans lost 93 representatives, including McKinley, okay? And four senators. So bitter was the subsequent Republican experience with tariffs that a Republican president, William Howard Taft, pushed for the 16th Amendment.

giving Congress the power to impose income tax as an alternative funding source to tariffs. Republican Congress proposed it. State legislatures ratified it with bipartisan support. Republicans feared the income tax, but they had grown to hate tariffs. This is from Phil Graham. And I’m making the same point that I’m making. All he needed to do was to do his big, beautiful bill.

deregulate, have all sorts of welfare reform, doge, just let the tariffs go and we’d be booming right now. And we’re not. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.