Trump Says Tariffs Have Brought in $18 Trillion. That’s Impossible.

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has inflated his previous claims about how lucrative tariffs have been for the United States.

Trump’s new figure: An astonishing $18 trillion.

Trump first used the “$18 trillion” figure during a cabinet meeting on December 2, then repeated it during comments to reporters on December 3 and in an interview with Politico on December 8. He also brought it up, unprompted and somewhat bizarrely, during the announcement on December 4 of a new peace treaty that aims to end hostilities between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On Sunday, Trump revisited the $18 trillion claim while speaking to reporters at the White House. “Because of the tariffs, we’ve taken in more than 18—think of this—more than $18 trillion. There’s never been anything like it,” Trump said. Moments later, he repeated the claim, stating that “we took in more than $18 trillion in 10 months.”

That figure is utterly fantastical—and Trump’s explanation is more than a little confusing. More on that in a moment.

First, it is necessary to swat aside the most outlandish interpretation of this claim—one that is being made by some of the president’s supporters, including some prominent conservative media personalities. They seem to believe that Trump is saying the federal government has collected $18 trillion in tariff revenue this year.

That is both factually wrong and logically absurd.

Start with the facts: Over the first 11 months of this year, the federal government collected $236 billion in tariffs and duties. That number comes directly from the Treasury Department’s monthly reports. And even though it represents a huge increase in tariff collections—Trump’s tariffs are the biggest tax increase since 1993—it plainly does not amount to trillions in new revenue.

In fact, Trump’s tariffs are expected to generate about $2.3 trillion over the course of the next decade (if the Supreme Court doesn’t strike them down or Congress or some future administration doesn’t undo them), according to the Yale Budget Lab. That’s 10 years of higher tariffs and the total is still nowhere near $18 trillion.

Logically, getting $18 trillion in tariff revenue in a single year is impossible. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods last year. You’d have to tax those imports at nearly 600 percent to get $18 trillion in new tariff revenue. Of course, if you taxed imports at that level, you’d end up with roughly the same amount of imports as tariff revenue: zero.

So, no, that is not happening.

Part of the confusion here is the carelessness with which the president uses phrases like “we took in.” Is he talking about the government? If not, then what? Unfortunately, this tendency extends beyond talking points. The Trump administration has repeatedly and intentionally blurred the line between the government and the private sector, and that seems to be what is happening here too.

When Trump says “we took in,” he seems to be referring not to tax revenue from the tariffs but a combination of tax revenue and various investment deals that have been promised by private businesses and foreign governments. Those investments are not being “took in” by the federal government in any way. They are fully private. One might also wonder if they will actually materialize, when the money will actually be spent, or whether such investments would have occurred even without Trump’s tariff threats.

For the president, however, such distinctions and considerations are not a factor.

Still, after accounting all of that, Trump’s $18 trillion figure seems to be wildly exaggerated, even when compared to the Trump administration’s own numbers. 

In April, the White House launched a website tracking the “Trump effect” that is meant to track the “new investment in U.S. manufacturing, technology, and infrastructure” since Trump returned to office.

As of Monday, the White House’s official tally was $9.6 trillion.

How do you get from there to $18 trillion? Only the president seems to know. Or maybe, possibly, he’s just making it all up.