Trump Treasury Secretary Gives Up Game on Tariff Revenue

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is using the cleanup from the implosion of Donald Trump’s illegal tariffs to set the stage for all that tariff revenue to disappear.

Speaking at the Economic Club of Dallas on Friday, Bessent claimed that in spite of the Supreme Court’s decision to block Trump’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a new series of tariffs imposed under other statutes would ensure the revenue was “virtually unchanged.”

But Bessent warned that at least $175 billion of tariff revenue that the U.S. government had already collected would likely evaporate. “I got a feeling the American people won’t see it,” Bessent said, his fingertips pressed together like a cartoon supervillain.

But if Americans don’t see those funds, there would only be one person to blame: Trump. Promises to fund sweeping tax cuts, bridge payments to farmers, deficit reduction, and phony $2,000 rebate checks all went up in smoke—because they weren’t his promises to make.

Clearly, Bessent deserves some blame too, because he didn’t bother to see if the president’s fees were actually legal before he went to collect them.

The Supreme Court’s majority ruling did not say the federal government could keep the money from the improperly collected tariffs, but conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned in his dissenting opinion that doling out refunds could get messy.