Who’s the ‘TACO’ Now? Trump Reaping Billions In Tariff Revenue While Other Countries Back Down
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
President Donald Trump’s global trade war is paying dividends for the federal government to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, which the Financial Times pointed out are coming with very little international pushback.
The FT published a report on Wednesday detailing how Trump’s tariffs, the highest since the 1930s, have yet to spark any significant retaliation from the U.S.’s largest trading partners – except for China and Canada.
Trump’s derisive “TACO” nickname, an acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” may actually signal a win for the president – the fact that he has managed to delay any major retaliation from trading partners while still managing to collect on his tariffs.
The FT noted that Trump’s “10 per cent global tariff, 50 per cent levies on steel and aluminium, and 25 per cent on autos” have resulted in $64 billion dollars in new revenue for the U.S. in the second quarter of this year, a whopping $47 billion increase over the same quarter last year.
Reuters reported that the U.S., as a result, is on track to take in more than $100 billion dollars. “For the first nine months of fiscal 2025, the customs take reached records of $113.3 billion on a gross basis and $108 billion on a net basis, nearly double the prior-year collections. The government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30,” reported Reuters, breaking down the data and adding:
Based on those results, tariffs have now grown into the fourth-largest revenue source for the federal government, behind individual withheld receipts at $2.683 trillion for the fiscal year, non-withheld individual receipts at $965 billion and corporate taxes at $392 billion.
In the space of roughly four months, tariffs as a share of federal revenue have more than doubled to around 5% from about 2% historically.
The FT also added a key piece of information that may surprise many Trump critics, noting that American consumers are not shouldering the tariff burden alone – although U.S. consumers are certainly paying a large share.
“The cost of Trump’s tariffs are also not falling solely on American consumers, supply chain experts say, as international brands look to spread the impact of cost increases around the globe to minimise the impact on the US market,” reported the FT, rebuking one of the major criticisms launched at Trump’s tariffs – that they are a defacto tax on American consumers.
The FT does warn, however, that international retaliation is likely to come soon rather than later. The European Union has “planned counter-tariffs” at the ready, but has waited to levy them while in negotiations with Trump. The EU is now set to announce its retaliatory measures on August 1st, Trump’s deadline for increasing global tariffs with countries he has not struck trade deals with.
