Yes, there is tariff revenue coming in. But no, you're not getting a rebate (unless you're a farmer)

With recent talk about repurposing tariff funds and possible bailouts of farmers, I wanted to take a look at the numbers involved, and see if that was even possible.

About a month ago, the Congressional Budget Office gave an update on how much tariffs were bringing in and how much higher they were compared to 2024.

As of November 15, we estimate that the effective tariff rate for goods imported into the United States is about 14 percentage points higher than the roughly 2.5 percent it was a year ago, measured by applying current tariff rates to 2024 trade flows. We now project that increases in tariffs implemented from January 6, 2025, to November 15, 2025, will decrease primary deficits (which exclude net outlays for interest) by $2.5 trillion over 11 years if the higher tariffs persist throughout the 2025–2035 period. By reducing the need for federal borrowing, those tariff collections will also reduce federal outlays for interest by $0.5 trillion. In total, the tariff changes will reduce deficits by $3.0 trillion. Those estimates do not account for effects on the size of the economy. The additional budgetary effect of the economic changes will be incorporated in CBO's next set of economic and baseline budget projections that will be published in The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036.

Our current estimates are smaller than those from August (reflecting the effects of tariffs implemented between January 6 and August 19, 2025), which projected an 18 percentage point increase in the effective tariff rate, a $3.3 trillion decrease in primary deficits, and a $0.7 trillion reduction in interest outlays. Roughly two-thirds of the downward revisions result from adjustments to reflect new data. Modifications to tariffs, which on net lowered the effective tariff rate (although rates on certain products were higher in November than they were in August), also reduced the estimated effect on the deficit.

Since then, we've seen tariff revenue numbers come in for October and November, and it indicates that we are getting around $20 billion to $25 billion a month more in customs duties than we were getting at the start of 2025.

So I'd say a reasonable estimate for would be around $275 billion for 12 months of these tariff taxes, but that number may diminish over time as consumers and companies adjust (IF companies ever change their sourcing and manufacturing of materials). So CBO's $3 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade seems to be in line.

That $3 trillion in tariff revenue would make up around 60% of the nearly $5 trillion in lost revenue that is projected to happen from Tax Scam 2.0 over the same time period. But hey, if you combine it with the cuts to programs such as Medicaid, Obamacare tax crdits, and SNAP, total deficits would only end up increasing around $700 billion in total over the next decade between the tariffs and the One Big Bunch of Bollocks passed back in July.

(Reminder - that's increasing the deficit beyond the baseline budget deficits of those years, which were already projected to be between $1.7 trillion and $2.6 trillion in each year.)

Keep those numbers in mind when Trump blathers his BS about a $2,000 "tariff refund check". The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget ran the numbers, and said tariffs wouldn't come close to that kind of check.

President Trump proposed paying a dividend of “at least $2,000 a person” with new tariff revenue in a post on Truth Social this weekend. The post noted that “high income people” would be excluded from the dividend and also discussed paying down the national debt.

Assuming these dividends are designed like the COVID-era Economic Impact Payments, which went to both adults and children, we estimate each round of payments would cost about $600 billion.1 In comparison, President Trump’s new tariffs currently in effect have raised approximately $100 billion thus far and – including those tariffs that have been ruled illegal pending a Supreme Court appeal – are projected to raise about $300 billion per year.

While the President did not specify the frequency with which dividends would be paid, nor the precise amount (he said “at least $2,000 a person”), we estimate that $2,000 dividends would increase deficits by $6 trillion over ten years, assuming dividends are paid annually. This is roughly twice as much as President Trump’s tariffs are estimated to raise over the same time period.

Yeah, don't think anyone living in the real world has an appetite for adding even more to the deficit and our already-rising long-term interest rates with a gimmick like this. And while a $500-per-person relief check may be able to be afforded from the tariff revenue, that sure isn't going to make up for the higher inflation that CBO says tariffs have caused for this year.

Recently, TrumpWorld has also been talking about another taxpayer-funded reaction to tariff costs - this one targeted to farmers.

President Donald Trump announced the $12 billion bailout package alongside Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday afternoon during a roundtable with farmers at the White House. The money comes from a U.S. Department of Agriculture fund, Politico reports.

Up to $11 billion is slated for farmers who grow row crops, such as corn, soybeans, sorghum and cotton. Rollins said eligible farmers will know how much money they will receive by the end of the month, and the dollars will move by the end of February 2026.

The other $1 billion will be reserved for farmers who grow specialty crops like fruits and vegetables, she said.

So where would this $12 billion come from? It’s actually not from tariffs.

In his first term, Trump provided bailouts to tariff-impacted farmers using what's called the Commodity Credit Corporation fund at the US Department of Agriculture.

The plan is to use the same mechanism this time around, despite concerns that the fund is running low and may require additional money to be appropriated by Congress.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins offered reporters some clarification, saying that "the tariffs we consider an offset" and confirming that the direct source of the funding would again be the Commodity Credit Corporation fund.

To fill it, she added, "We had to, kind of, move some things around, but we've got that $12 billion set aside." Rollins added that the president is open to adding more money in the future if needed.

What is former Cotton Bowl Queen Brooke Rollins talking about when it comes to finding funds in the CCC to bail out farmers?

The CCC program is considered to be mandatory spending, just like Social Security, Medicare, and SNAP (well, when the President isn’t illegally impounding SNAP, of course). As part of last month’s deal to end the government shutdown, programs at the US Department of Agriculture were extended for another year. This includes both SNAP and the CCC through next September 30, and Congress’s information sheet on the CCC and its financing setup says there is quite a bit of flexibility to pay for bailouts like the one the Trump Administration wants to do.

CCC recoups some money from authorized activities (e.g., sale of commodity stocks, loan repayments, and fees), though not nearly as much money as it spends, resulting in net expenditures. Net expenditures include all cash outlays minus all cash receipts, commonly referred to as "cash flow." CCC outlays or expenditures represent the total cash outlays of the CCC-funded programs (e.g., loans made, conservation program payments, commodity purchases, and disaster payments). Outlays are offset by receipts (e.g., loan repayment, sale of commodities, and fees). In practice a portion of these net expenditures may be recovered in future years (e.g., through loan repayments).

CCC also has net realized losses, also referred to as nonrecoverable losses. These refer to the outlays that CCC will never recover, such as commodities sold or donated, uncollectible loans, storage and transportation costs, interest paid to the Treasury, program payments, and operating expenses. The net realized loss is the amount that CCC, by law, is authorized to receive through appropriations to replenish its borrowing authority (see Figure 2).

Notice the huge jumps in Fiscal Year 2020 and 2021. Those are to pay back the billions in bailouts that Trump Admin 1.0 gave to farmers from 2018 through 2020. The borrowing authority limit for CCC is $30 billion, which was breached during those Trump 1.0 bailouts, but Congress and President Trump agreed to “front” some of those funds to USDA through extra taxpayer dollars, which kepy the CCC from the prospect of shutting down due to too much money being borrowed for the bailouts.

As the fact sheet notes, the funds for the CCC bailout in Trump 2.0 would have to be set aside when USDA has its next budget year start on Oct 1, 2026.

Many farm program payments are required to be made annually in October (e.g., Agricultural Risk Coverage, Price Loss Coverage, Conservation Stewardship Program, and the Conservation Reserve Program). In most years, CCC has enough room within the borrowing authority limit to make these payments before receiving its annual appropriated reimbursement. In years of high expenditures, CCC could reach its borrowing authority limit before receiving its appropriation. If CCC reaches its borrowing limit, all functions and operations of CCC would be suspended until the borrowing authority is restored through the reimbursement that is pursuant to an appropriation.

So it won’t directly be “tariff funds” that will be used to pay back farmers who have suffered tariff-related losses. But given that tariff funds are mixed in with other tax dollars when it comes to Uncle Sam paying his bills, it’ll be part of the way that these bailouts are paid for. As well as the other typical way we pay for this and most other government activities - taking on more debt.

All this tariff revenue shifting seems pretty ham-handed, and it isn't doing much to protect or grow American industries. So what is this accomplishing? A partial offset of regressive tax cuts with even more regressive tariffs? But hey, tariffs do serve as a nice way from Trump 2.0 to solicit bribes from businesses who might want exceptions from the duties, aren't they?

Fed cuts rates again, even as its own data shows inflation staying over its target

The Federal Reserve had its widely anticipated decision on interest rates Wednesday, and they continued to loosen up the money spigot.

Fulfilling expectations of a “hawkish cut,” the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee lowered its key overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point, putting it in a range between 3.5%-3.75%.

However, the move carried caution flags about where policy is headed from here and featured “no” votes from three members, which hasn’t happened since September 2019....

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, at his post-meeting news conference, said the reduction puts the Fed in a comfortable position as far as rates go.

“We are well positioned to wait and see how the economy evolves,” Powell said.

Stocks rose following the decision, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average adding 500 points. Treasury yields moved mostly lower.

Wall Streeters sure love their rate cuts, no matter what happens in the real economy. But the interest rate cut was expected. The real news was what Fed officials were thinking about that real economy for 2026 and beyond, so let's click on to the Fed's economic projections, and see what they're saying.

For GDP, Fed officials generally thought we'd see stronger growth than they were thinking 3 months ago. In particular, the Fed officials are bumping the median growth projection for 2026 from 1.8-1.9% to a place well above 2%.

The Fed also thinks unemployment will tick up a bit from September's 4.4% figure for the rest of this year, but then will stop rising and tick back down by a similar amount next year.

,/p> And lastly, the Fed thinks inflation will drop a bit next year from 2025's rate of nearly 3%. But they still think it will be well above its alleged 2% target.

I find that last part on inflation interesting in a few ways. The first is because that PCE Index was just updated for September in last week's income and spending report, and it showed that inflation is no different over the last year as it was between September 2023 and September 2024. And worse, PCE inflation for groceries had a 0.4% increase in September after an August increase of 0.5%, which put the 12-month jump in PCE grocery prices at 2.4%, the largest increase in nearly 2 years, and double what it was a year ago.

You'd think that the Fed's projections of continued economic growth, slightly lower unemployment and inflation above the Fed's target would lead to a greater possibility of higher interest rates next year. But that's not what the majority of Fed officials were projecting in their "dot plot" of where they thought rates would be in comparison to today's post-cut range of 3.5%-3.75%.

Yes, a couple of those dot points are from people trying to kiss up to Trump and lessen their ridiculous debt burden. But that dot plot indicates to me that the Fed thinks the real world economy is weak and in danger of getting worse next year. It also tells me that all of the talk about the Fed being dedicated to a 2% inflation rate isn't really true. Because if they're not going to raise rates as inflation stays above 2% for the 5th straight year and the economy continues to grow, that 2% figure isn't as important to the Fed as we were being told all these years.

I'm fine with that, as this country grew just fine in the '80s and '90s, even though inflation consistently was above 3%. I'd prefer another 1% of inflation over 1% of unemployment, and it seems the Fed is finally coming around to that thinking as well. Naturally, it happens when Republicans are in charge, and yes, I don't find that 100% coincidental.

ADP shows another month of lost jobs, with small firms getting hammered

Even though the government's job numbers have been delayed and have yet to catch up from October's and November's shutdown, the ADP company has continued to release their monthly jobs numbers. And today's November report from ADP showed some surprisingly bad news.

The U.S. labor market slowdown intensified in November as private companies cut 32,000 workers, with small businesses hit the hardest, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.

With worries intensifying over the domestic jobs picture, ADP indicated the issues were worse than anticipated. The payrolls decline marked a sharp step down from October, which saw an upwardly revised gain of 47,000 positions, and was well below the Dow Jones consensus estimate from economists for an increase of 40,000….

Education and health services led gainers with 33,000 hires, while leisure and hospitality added 13,000. But a broad-based decline across industries drove the total lower.

The biggest loss came in professional and business services, which saw a decline of 26,000. Others shedding jobs included information services (-20,000), manufacturing (-18,000), and financial activities and construction, both of which saw losses of 9,000.

The rate of pay also slowed, with workers staying in their jobs seeing a 4.4% year-over-year increase, down 0.1 percentage point from October.

As UW-Madison’s Menzie Chinn notes in Econbrowser, ADP’s reports indicate that private sector job growth has basically flatlined in the 2nd half of 2025, and declined in 4 of the last 7 months.

Chinn also splits up ADP’s breakdown of employment changes between larger and smaller private sector employers. And like a lot of things in our economy these days, it shows serious bifurcation.

Notice that decline in small employers? That includes a net loss of 69,000 in November, and even that is deceptive, as ADP says the smallest employers got especially wrecked last month.

And ADP reports that around 43.5% of Americans work for businesses that have less than 50 employers. So a lot of us are in sectors and small businesses that are basically in recession over the last few months. You wonder why consumer sentiment sucks so much these days?

Naturally this meant that the stock market went up, because bad news in the real economy is good news for Wall Street greedheads and others strung out on debt.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 408.44 points, or 0.86%, to finish at 47,882.90. The S&P 500 traded up 0.30% to end the day at 6,849.72, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.17% to settle at 23,454.09.

Payrolls processor ADP reported that private payrolls surprisingly declined by 32,000 in November. Economists polled by Dow Jones had expected an increase of 40,000 for the month. Despite the tough reading, traders were likely betting that the private job losses will lead the Fed to slash rates at its last meeting of the year on Dec. 10.

“The labor market, that’s what people are going to focus on,” Scott Welch, Certuity’s chief investment officer, said in an interview with CNBC. “The numbers will come in as they come in, and it’ll either lead toward a cut or not, but I suspect that there’s no question there will be a cut next week.”

Markets are pricing in an 89% chance of a cut next Wednesday, which is much higher than the odds from mid-November, according to the CME FedWatch tool. Investors anticipate that a lower rate environment will spur loan growth and give a jolt to the U.S. economy, leading shares of key financial stocks like Wells Fargo and American Express higher Wednesday.

“The market is hinged on the Fed, and so if they don’t cut, it’s not going to turn out well,” Welch added.

Oh, so the only way out of a debt-fueled Bubble of empty promises is to get lower interest rates so already-tapped consumers with dimmer job prospects might borrow more money that they don't have. With many having big increases in health care premiums set to hit in a month.

Cool way to have an economy, isn't it? No flaws with this AT ALL!

As Trump 2.0 continues, US consumers keep feeling worse.

We’ve seen consumer sentiment get worse in the country as we’ve gotten deeper into 2025 and Trump Administration 2.0, and we found out on Friday that consumers were at some of their lowest points yet, just as the Holiday shopping season was set to start up.

US consumer sentiment deteriorated slightly in November as Americans fretted about high prices, weaker incomes, and mounting layoffs, nearing record lows.

That’s according to the University of Michigan’s final reading of its survey of consumers. Preliminary data released earlier this month showed plunging sentiment for November, with overall sentiment hitting 50.3 amid concerns about the effect of the government shutdown on the economy. Sentiment improved a bit after the shutdown ended Nov. 12, reaching a level of 51 — lower than October’s 53.6 and down 29% from one year ago….

What’s more, 69% of consumers now expect unemployment to rise in the year ahead, more than double the rate from this time last year. The perceived probability of losing one’s job is also worse this month and at its highest level since 2020, according to Joanne Hsu, the director of the survey of consumers.

Young people are feeling especially dire. For Americans aged 18 to 34, expectations for losing one’s job in the next five years hit the highest level since 2012.

Remember last year, when low-info voters thought "businessman Trump" would get us back to the economy of 2019? Right now, I think a lot of those people would accept going back to the economy of 2024 at this point.

But we also saw a September jobs number on Thursday that showed surprising growth, and inflation continues to run at around 3%. So while consumer sentiment in the country is awful, Fed officials are clearly cross-pressured when it comes to deciding whether they should contiunue to cut interest rates. Which brings added attention to any hints a Fed official may give on next month's meeting, such as we saw on Friday.

Odds for another interest rate cut jumped Friday after New York Fed president John Williams signaled he could support a cut when the central bank meets in December.

“I still see room for a further adjustment in the near term to the target range for the federal funds rate to move the stance of policy closer to the range of neutral,” Williams said in a speech in Chile.

Though he still sees room to cut, Williams said he believes tariffs have temporarily stalled progress toward the Fed’s 2% inflation goal. He estimates tariffs are contributing a half a percentage point to three-quarters of a percentage point to inflation. He expects that inflation will come back down over the next year.

Williams' comments carry added weight because he is the vice chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee and one of what’s unofficially known as the “troika,” the group of leaders at the Fed, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell and vice chair Philip Jefferson.

And after a sizable drop in the markets over the previous 10 days, that was all Wall Street traders needed to hear in order to buy back in on Friday.

US equities had perked up early Friday after the New York Fed president John Williams said he sees room for a cut in the "near term." That led rate-cut bets for the Fed's next meeting to spike, with traders pricing in 75% odds of a December cut, up from around 40% on Thursday. Williams' remarks come amid evidence of a deeply divided Fed heading into its final meeting of 2025.

While stocks have seesawed, cryptocurrencies are feeling even greater heat — signs that the risk-off mood still haunts markets. Bitcoin sank on Friday to trade as low as $82,000, deepening a slide from record-high levels just more than a month ago. It is now heading for its worst month since the crypto collapse of 2022.

Doesn’t that sum things up well? That the only way for the stock market to go up is to be either gamble on unfulfilled projections of AI growth or hopes that the economy is bad enough that rate cuts continue? Not really what you want in the real world.

We still have yet to have information regarding overall retail sales for the US in September and October, which would indicate whether that negative consumer sentiment has translated into lower consumer activity. But it sure seems like there are plenty of headwinds in people’s minds and in their pocketbooks to keep Q4 from having much (if any) growth, and that’s before the large amount of announced layoffs start to translate into lost jobs and incomes.

Jobs data is back! At least thru September

After last week’s end of the federal government’s shutdown, we are starting to see some of the economic reports that have been long-delayed. The biggest of which so far was released (today), showing what happened to the US jobs market two months ago.

The US economy added 119,000 positions in September, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Thursday, an unexpected boost to the labor market that has lately shown signs of a possible slowdown.

Wall Street economists expected a gain of around 50,000 positions, according to data from Bloomberg. While the September number beat economists’ expectations, revisions to prior months’ data showed August’s payrolls lost 4,000 jobs, compared to the previously reported gain of 22,000. July also showed a slightly smaller boost of 72,000 positions, instead of 79,000.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, crept up to 4.4% in September, the highest level since October 2021, slightly exceeding August’s level of 4.3% and above the rate of 4.1% seen a year ago. The number of unemployed people grew slightly in September, reaching 7.6 million from August’s count of 7.4 million.

That’s surprising payroll growth, given that ADP had earlier reported a loss of 32,000 private sector jobs in September (later revised to a loss of 29,000).

I looked into the full jobs report, and I’ll note that 18,000 of the 119,000 jobs added were due to higher-than-normal hiring in education for state and local public schools, as well as private schools. And a lot of the rest of the 101,000 jobs were due to lower-than-normal seasonal layoffs in positions like construction contractors, retail trade, and leisure/hospitality. That may well reflect the fact that the payroll survey took place in the week after Labor Day, which may as well still be Summer these days. Let’s see if those “gains” get a snapback with the cooling weather of the next 2 months.

For the other stats, wages growth was “bleh”, at 0.246% overall and 0.254% for non-supervisory workers. Both failed to keep up with the 0.3% increase in inflation for September, which would mean a loss in real average hourly earnings for the 4th time in the 6 months measured after March, and a failure to gain for the 7th time in the 10 months measured since Trump was elected in November. Not good.

The unemployment rate rose for the “good reason”, with increases in labor force (+470,000), employment (+251,000) and unemployed (+219,000), so not a major alarm from that standpoint. But I’ll also add that the number of long-term unemployed continued to rise.

Which indicates to me that Americans who are being laid off are less likely to be quickly hired elsewhere. And that makes sense when you look the first release of unemployment claims information since the shutdown ended.

If you only went by the topline, it seemed to indicate things were still OK in mid-November.

In the week ending November 15, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 220,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's level. The 4-week moving average was 224,250, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week's average.

But the increase in long-term unemployment reverberated in the UI claims report, as the number of Americans on unemployment hit a 4-year high.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.3 percent for the week ending November 8, unchanged from the previous week's rate. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending November 8 was 1,974,000, an increase of 28,000 from the previous week's level. This is the highest level for insured unemployment since November 6, 2021 when it was 2,041,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,960,250, an increase of 6,750 from the previous week's average. This is the highest level for this average since November 20, 2021 when it was 2,004,250.

In addition, more federal employees were filing unemployment claims in October and early November due to the shutdown and Trump Administration layoffs that were done in response.

With over 34,400 additional federal employee claims vs last year, then combine with the seasonally-adjusted 1,974,000 figure of state claims (which do not count the federal employee claims), and we have exceeded 2 million continuing unemployment claims for the first time in 4 years.

Put it together, and you see a jobs market that was inconsistent but still growing in early September, while things seemed to be a bit worse 2 months later. We won’t see the October jobs numbers, since the government was shut down for the entire month, so we won’t see the 1-month effect of the 100,000+ federal employees that took part in the DOGE-related deferred resignation program, which took effect on September 30.

Those resignations won’t all show up in the unemployment claims info (although it appears some did), but we can look at November’s figures that come out next month, and get a good gauge of what effect that has had on the US jobs market overall. And I’d be surprised if unemployment isn’t higher in that November report, which would put us at the highest non-COVID/aftermath level since early 2017.

As more of these data points get released, it seems like things won’t show a crash as much as a slowdown in the economy where many areas are at or near recession, and Americans generally aren’t able to keep up with rising costs. We still haven’t seen how the consumer performed overall in September and October, other than anecdotal data from companies on their earnings calls, and that’ll be another indicator of whether things are just slower than what was going on this Summer, or if we are about to tip over into an outright decline.

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.

More places get wheel taxes in Wis, but maybe there's a better way to fix the roads

Although it’s not as rapid an increase as we saw in the 2010s, the Wisconsin Policy Forum noted that wheel taxes in Wisconsin continue to go up in the mid-2020s.

Statewide revenues from local option vehicle registration fees – commonly called wheel taxes — totaled more than $70 million in fiscal year 2025. This marks a dramatic increase from a decade ago, when such fees raised less than $10 million for local governments throughout Wisconsin.

These revenues underwent a very rapid period of growth across the state from 2015 through 2021, during which time the number of municipalities, towns, and counties with wheel taxes more than tripled. After 2021, total statewide revenue growth from wheel taxes began to slow considerably.

But then in fiscal year 2025, total statewide wheel tax revenues increased 12%, their largest annual increase since 2019. This is due in part to the fact that more communities have adopted them, as shown in Figure 1. Large cities that recently adopted wheel taxes include Eau Claire, Fitchburg, Oshkosh, Sun Prairie, and Wauwatosa.

We are now at a point that nearly half of Wisconsin's population lives in a community that has a wheel tax, compared to less than 1 in 6 a decade ago.

I will add that the City of Milwaukee was allowed to put in a 2% sales tax in 2023 to add to its revenue-generating abilities, unlike the vast majority of communities in Wisconsin. But most of those Milwaukee sales tax funds can only be used to shore up the City’s pension funds or pay for police staffing (see page 3 of this report for that information).

As a result, Milwaukee has had to turn to wheel taxes as a source of funding for road repairs. And with those local taxes being required by state law to be a flat fee regardless of the type of vehicle or light truck, the Policy Forum notes that keeping the wheel tax at the same amount means that more of Milwaukee’s property tax and other revenues have to be tapped for the rising cost to fix roads.

A look at how Milwaukee’s wheel tax revenue has changed relative to inflation illustrates how the buying power of these dollars recently has eroded. In fiscal year 2022, just after increasing its wheel tax, Milwaukee collected a total of $10.2 million in inflation-adjusted revenues. By 2025, those revenues had eroded to $9.2 million on an inflation-adjusted basis.

With this dynamic at play — and other local revenue options tightly constrained under state law — some communities that previously adopted wheel taxes are now considering raising them further. The city of Milwaukee first imposed its wheel tax in 2008, at $20, then increased it to $30 in 2021. Mayor Cavalier Johnson proposed increasing it in the 2026 budget, and the city’s Common Council ultimately adopted an $11 increase, bringing it to a total of $41.

And it’s not just Milwaukee that is dealing with this concern, as the Policy Forum notes that inflation-adjusted wheel taxes are actually lower than they were 4 years ago.

Relying on flat-fee wheel taxes doesn’t seem to be a sustainable or equitable way for municipalities to pay for transportation and transit costs in our state. While the increase in shared revenues has put off some of the strains for a couple of years, it’s also worth remembering that smaller communities and towns got much larger increases in those funds, while the cities and counties were somewhat left behind, despite being the communities whose local roads and streets are more likely to take on traffic from both residents and non-residents.

Seems like there needs to be some more reforms in how local governments in Wisconsin can raise funds. And the easiest one to me is a variation of something Governor Evers wanted to do in the most recent budget.

Allow counties, other than Milwaukee County, to impose an additional sales tax of up to 0.5 percent and allow municipalities with populations over 30,000, other than the city of Milwaukee, to impose a sales tax of up to 0.5 percent to diversify local revenue sources and better empower local governments to fund police and fire protection, transit, roads, and other important services, if approved by local referendum. This includes the flexibility to allow counties to set their tax rates in 0.1 percent increments from 0.1 to 1.0 percent. Municipalities would also have the flexibility to set their rates in 0.1 percent increments from 0.1 to 0.5 percent.

But the GOP Legislature didn’t go for that, so communities that range in population from Madison to Manitowoc are constrained when it comes to paying for roads and other needs. Which makes it no wonder why those communities are the most likely to turn to wheel taxes on their residents to make up the difference.

So why not allow cities, villages and counties that have a vehicle registration fee to levy a local sales tax of up to 0.25%, with a portion of those sales taxes being designated for the funds that would be raised from those registration fees? In return, those communities would have to end their wheel taxes. I’d then throw in an additional provision where all Wisconsin communities are allowed to levy an additional sales tax of 0.25%, with ½ of those funds used to limit property taxes on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

It also would pass off some of the taxes to pay for local roads and services from community residents to out-of-towners who go to those communities to shop, eat, and visit. That seems like a fairer situation, and since sales taxes are connected to the prices of what is taxed, it also doesn't leave the communities as susceptible to falling behind if inflation picks up.