Trump Expands on Dubious Daily Tariff Revenue Claim

President Donald Trump has added to his unsupported claim that the U.S. is making “$2 billion a day” from tariffs by saying that the country was losing $2 billion or $3 billion “a day” under President Joe Biden. Economists told us that Trump appears to be wrongly comparing a very high – and unlikely – estimate of potential daily revenue from his tariffs with a figure reflecting the average daily U.S. trade deficit during Biden’s last year in office.

“My best guess would be that Trump is probably conflating different concepts,” Robert C. Johnson, an associate professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame, told us.