We have lower prices than under Joe Biden. Inflation is zero. Tariffs will replace income taxes. Ignorance has always been the policy of the Trump administration.
That last statement is actually true. The rest ... not so much.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump once again claimed that prices are "coming down tremendously." Except, of course, they aren't. Inflation is up again to the highest level since Trump took the helm and started a policy of using tariffs and the threat of tariffs to bludgeon the world into bribing him.
The bribery part is going great. But the result for the rest of America has been increased prices for groceries, electricity, and the overall cost of living. Some prices have increased directly because of Trump's on-off-on-off-who knows approach to tariffs.
Retailers warn that, though they've largely been eating the cost of tariffs so far, they aren't going to take the hit forever. A major "sticker shock" is on the way.
That could come as soon as January, according to economists, as holiday discounts come to a close and retailers run low on inventory they secured at pre-tariff prices. Major retailers like Kohlâs, Abercrombie, Williams-Sonoma and Under Armour have all warned of price increases starting as early as late December or January.
But Trump has an answer for everything: Lie Harder. And right now, he's lying his massive, hairy buttocks off.
Trump claims that his tariffs are a huge success that has filled government coffers with money that will soon trickle down to individual Americans.
"Next year is projected to be the largest tax refund season ever, and we're going to be giving back refunds out of the tariffs, as we have taken in literally trillions of dollars," Trump said early in the meeting. "We're going to be giving a nice dividend to the people in addition to reducing debt."
Before you start counting on that tariff bonus check, be warned that "literally trillions" means something very different in Trumpese.
The truth is that tariff revenues peaked at around $30 billion a month, with almost every dime of it being paid by U.S. importers and retailers. As of September, the total revenue from all customs duties, including tariffs, was estimated at $165.2 billion. That compares to about $65 billion in 2024, an increase in revenues of only about $12.5 billion a month. Meaning that the check Trump just cut to try and keep farmers in his corner was roughly a full month of tariff revenue.
Trump has claimed that the tariffs are bringing in so much that they will replace income tax. However, individual income taxes bring in around $2.4 trillion each year (about half of government revenue). That's #200 billion per month. Payroll taxes bring in another $1.7 trillion each year, or $141 billion per month.
Tariffs aren't even close to being able to replace income taxes, and wouldn't be even if Trump imposed a 100% tax on all imports. Individual income taxes are the single biggest source of revenue, providing roughly half of all government funds.
But hey, corporations only paid about $530 billion last year, andâthanks to Trump and his "Big Beautiful Bill"âthat number will be even lower this time around. So sure, maybe Trump will declare that the 0% that so many corporations pay already will become the permanent corporate tax rate and cover the difference with the tariff revenue. Having consumers foot the bill for corporate taxes sounds exactly like something Republicans would cheer.
While inflation may grab the headlines as the number one concern of most Americans, there's something else happening that should be top of the list. That something is jobs.
"The job market isn't collapsing but it is certainly losing steam," said Oren Klachkin, financial markets economist at Nationwide.
Tariffs are failing to generate the kind of revenue that Trump promised, but they are failing much harder when it comes to generating the promised glut of manufacturing jobs. In fact, Trump just presided over the ninth straight month of declining jobs in the manufacturing sector, with many of those losses directly caused by the uncertainty created by Trump's ever-changing tariffs.
The Institute for Supply Management survey on Monday also showed some manufacturers in the transportation equipment industry linking layoffs to President Donald Trump's sweeping duties, saying they were "starting to institute more permanent changes due to the tariff environment." They added "this includes reduction of staff, new guidance to shareholders and development of additional offshore manufacturing that would have otherwise been for U.S. export."
Note that last part: Because of the economic uncertainty generated by Trump, U.S. manufacturers aren't bringing jobs back to the U.S., they are building additional offshore manufacturing that takes jobs away from the U.S.
People aren't just seeing their price of staying warm this winter soar as they are forced to compete for electricity with the AI billionaires Trump is protecting; they're seeing their jobs completely evaporateâoften because of the same AI that's slurping up their water and power.
Meanwhile, Trump's biggest response, in addition to helping the billionaires who literally hand him gold bricks, is to cover up how bad things are getting. That means not just lying about inflation and tariffs, but blowing off job reports.
How bad is it? Bad enough that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warns that when Trump does bother to give us numbers, those numbers can't be trusted.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell pointed on Wednesday to a job-market risk that economists have been worried about for months: Official statistics could be drastically overstating recent hiring. Powell said that Fed staffers believe that federal data could be overestimating job creation by up to 60,000 jobs a month.
Rather than the gains that Trump's administration has been claiming, the Fed's analysts think that the U.S. has been losing about 20,000 jobs a month since April. Big gains reported in the fall may have been half the size claimed.
With the Trump administration using the mushroom principle of keeping people in the dark and feeding them bullshit, Americans now have to look to private sources to get more accurate information.
The U.S. labor market slowdown intensified in November as private companies cut 32,000 workers, with small businesses hit the hardest, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.
While big companies actually added workers for the holidays, many small businesses couldn't hold out in hopes that Santa would save them. No mom and pop business wants to let people go right before the holidays, but that's exactly what happened. More than 120,000 people at companies employing fewer than 50 people saw their jobs evaporate in just one month.
It's not as if lying is anything new for Trump. This isn't even the first time he's lied about jobs or inflation. But a long, cold winter is just getting started, with Americans facing higher energy prices, fewer jobs, and retailers about to spring a nasty post-Christmas surprise.
Trump can keep on lying about how none of this matters, but there's growing evidence that he's only lying to himself.
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