CNBC Anchor Stunned by Trump Tariff Revenue as She Laughs Off Yuge Question — ‘Who’s Paying For It?’

CNBC anchor Sara Eisen marvelled at the “increasingly significant” revenue from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, even as she laughed off the question of who bears the cost for them.

Trump’s tariffs have long been predicted to cause inflation. As recently as last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) that the policies are projected to cause inflation and other negative impacts on the economy. But the projected spike in inflation has not materialized, for a variety of possible reasons.

On Monday morning’s edition of CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Eisen gushed about the revenue side of the equation, while waving off the question of “who pays it”:

SARA EISEN: We’re getting to this weird place where the Fed is kind of caught in between its mandates of worrying about future high inflation, which it thinks it’s coming from tariffs or having to worry about the jobs market, which is showing some softening.

But guys, I wanted to focus on tariffs right now because we are approaching this July 9th, some are calling it Liberation Day part two.

We’ll see what happens when the Liberation day exemptions expire, where he brought those revenues back to, or those tariffs back to 10%.

But look how much we’ve been collecting in revenues! And I did this in part because Wilfred’s here and he can talk about the UK trade deal.

But just– this is the monthly numbers and they have gone up a lot. June is actually set for another big increase of $27 billion. That is money coming into U.S. coffers from tariffs.

(LAUGHS) Now who pays it? That’s a matter of discussion, right?

Is it the US consumer? We know it’s the US importer, right? They have to pay it to bring stuff in to this country. And we are collecting a lot of revenue. So far, guys, $121 billion has flowed into the US government since the start of the fiscal year.

It’s still a tiny portion of the overall revenues that the US Government gets, but it’s increasingly a lot, especially– We haven’t seen it in terms of the consumer paying off higher inflation.

WILFRID FROST: It’s really fascinating to see the significance of it.

Watch above via CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.