President Trump has said that his aim in imposing tariffs is to force companies to move production back to the United States. If manufacturers make their goods in America, he argues, they won’t have to pay the tariffs.
But the latest revenue projections proffered by his administration call into question what Mr. Trump wants to achieve with the tariffs he is imposing on both allies and adversaries.
Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser to Mr. Trump, told Fox News on Sunday that the sweeping tariffs the president was imposing would raise about $6 trillion over the next decade, with those revenues going toward funding “the biggest tax cut in American history for the middle class.”
While he insisted that Americans would not bear the cost, those estimates imply that the burden of tariffs could fall heavily on consumers, rather than encouraging companies to reshore supply chains.
Trade experts have argued that using tariffs to raise revenue directly contradicts the goal of using tariffs to bring factories back to the United States. In order for the government to take in so much revenue, Americans would need to continue buying substantial amounts of imported products.
Mr. Navarro said the administration would also lower costs for Americans by bringing down gas prices. Trump officials have said that would be accomplished by drilling for more oil in the United States.
“Tariffs are tax cuts, tariffs are jobs, tariffs are national security,” Mr. Navarro said. “Tariffs are great for America.”
Mr. Trump is expected to introduce global tariffs on other countries this week, and has also repeatedly talked about replacing taxes with tariffs. But the U.S. government raises about $2 trillion from individual and corporate income taxes. In 2024, the United States imported $4 trillion of products, meaning tariffs would have to be extremely high to replace tax revenue.
Calculations by economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggested that tariff revenue could peak at about $780 billion annually with a 50 percent tariff on all imports. After that, the amount of revenue would shrink. That’s because when tariffs reach a certain level, consumers tend to stop buying imported products, meaning the revenue they generate decreases.
The Yale Budget Lab estimated that the auto tariffs scheduled to go into effect on Thursday could raise $600 billion to $650 billion between 2026 and 2035. But those prices would fall heavily on consumers. U.S. vehicle prices would rise by 13.5 percent on average, the equivalent of an additional $6,400 for the price of an average new 2024 car. Every American household would pay an extra $500 to $600 as a result of the tariffs, the group estimated.
Mr. Trump campaigned on reducing inflation that plagued the United States and other countries during the Biden administration.
Mr. Navarro said that tariffs had led to price stability and prosperity in Trump’s first term and would again. “Trust in Trump,” he said.
