Trump admits failure on some tariffs, and still BSing about the money they've raised

Oh, so tariffs aren’t really working out?

President Donald Trump is slated to sign an order on Friday reducing tariffs on beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, according to a White House official, a move aimed at lowering costs on groceries as the administration faces pressure from voters to cut prices on everyday goods.

The exemptions would reduce trade levies on the commodities, which can’t be produced in the US in sufficient quantity to meet domestic demand. The exact scope of the tariff reduction, how many total goods are included and how widely it would apply, were not immediately clear.

The move comes as Trump has pivoted to focusing on affordability measures as voters are growing increasingly wary of the economy under his leadership. It is also a tacit acknowledgment that the president’s tariff policies have added to price pressures on US consumers.

The tariffs on some of these products were always stupid, because in some of these cases, the product was not being made in America and could not be made in America. So there was no industry to protect, as Dem Congresswoman Madeline Dean memorably pointed this out in June to Trump's Commerce Secretary,

And dropping the tariffs on higher-priced tomatoes and beef isn’t going to make the farmers of those products happy, as they were reaping the benefits of higher prices. That’s especially the case with beef, as it accompanies a Trump scheme to increase imports of Argentinian beef to bail out his buddy Javier Milei, and both moves would lower the prices that US ranchers are going to get.

On Oct. 29, 14 House Republicans — led by House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., and Trade Subcommittee Chair Adrian Smith, R-Neb. — protested the move in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, calling for more clarity on the deal and demanding “equivalent market access for U.S. beef exports.”

“On average, Argentina exports over $200 million of beef annually to the U.S. while purchasing less than $2 million of U.S. beef in return,” the letter read, calling for “long-term fairness” in any beef deal with Argentina. “We encourage the Administration to ensure that any adjustments to Argentina’s tariff-rate quota or inspection regime be contingent on verified equivalency and reciprocal market access for American beef.”

Smith also joined the entire federal delegation from Nebraska in roundly condemning the deal. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., sought “clarity” for her “deep concerns” about the beef plan. “If the goal is addressing beef prices at the grocery store, this isn’t the way. Right now, government intervention in the beef market will hurt our cattle ranchers,” she wrote on X. “Nebraska’s ranchers cannot afford to have the rug pulled out from under them when they’re just getting ahead or simply breaking even.”

Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., said the deal would “undermine domestic producers,” and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., called the concerns of ranchers “justifiable.” Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., called on Trump to use “market-based solutions” to rising beef costs.

The point from Sen. Fischer is worth tracking, as there may be a couple of months where both producers and consumers are losing out, as the farmers see an immediate dropoff in the prices they get for their beef, but consumers still are paying the higher prices at the store for another month or two.

And let me also point out that TrumpWorld constantly BS’s about how much money is coming in from the tariffs. While it is certainly a lot more than what was being collected in the first 3 months of the year, it also isn’t close to the “trillions” of dollars that Trump claims.

Because of the federal government shutdown, they haven’t released October’s tariff revenue yet, but let’s assume that the $29.7 billion in September holds for the next 3 months. That's about $21 billion more than what was coming in per month with tariffs before April. Shoot that $21 billion a month for 12 months, and it's just over $250 billion a year.

Now let’s use Dean Baker’s estimation of how any type of “tariff rebate” might work, and how many people that would go to, and what it would do to our federal deficit. Baker estimates the revenue from Trump's tariffs to be $270 billion a year, but the point is basically the same.

The latest example is the $2,000 tariff dividend check that Trump is promising us. The arithmetic here is about as simple as it gets. We have roughly 340 million people in the country. Let’s say 10 percent don’t get the check because they meet Trump’s category of “high-income.”

That leaves over 300 million people getting Trump’s $2,000 checks. That comes to more than $600 billion. Trump’s tariffs are raising around $270 billion. That means we will be paying out $330 billion more in Trump tariff dividend checks than he is raising in tariff revenue. That is adding $330 billion to the deficit — this coming from the same guy who is making an obsession of paying down our national debt.

And just to be clear, we were already looking at a budget deficit for 2026 of $1.8 trillion. If we add $330 billion, the deficit for the fiscal year will be $2.1 trillion. To put this in simple language that even a reporter for a major national news outlet can understand, Trump is proposing to add $2.1 trillion to the debt in 2026; he is not paying it down. I acknowledge not being a deficit hawk and am not terrified by a deficit of this size, which is roughly 7 percent of GDP. But I suspect most of the politicians in Washington are, and certainly anyone who thinks we need to be paying down the debt should be screaming bloody murder.

So if we used a dollar-for-dollar rebate, the most Trump and co. might be able to cook up would be a little over $800 per person. It also would blow up the often-repeated Trump line that what’s in Tax Scam 2.0 can be offset by tariff revenue, since it would be getting rebated.

And what's being rebated would be the cost of what Americans have already paid for, with no increase in manufacturing jobs to show for that protection. In fact, Trump/GOP cut Biden-era assistance that was intended to encourage growth in the US manufacturing and usage of electrical vehicles as well as other types of US-based alternative energy projects).

Now some of these tariffs are getting rolled back, which will lessen the amount of any rebate, and is an admission of the foolishness of some of these decisions. So Trump/GOP should get no credit if we see the rate of inflation level off from the higher levels that we are currently paying for.

So let me get this straight: The President’s plan to lower prices is to roll back some of his own tariffs?

— Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (@warnock.senate.gov) November 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM

Bottom line - the old man in the White House and the lackeys around him don't have a clue, and while I have numbers and arguments in this post to back that up, "these guys don't have a clue" is the real story. And the failures and stupid disruptions that have resulted over the last 8 months generate from that point.