Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.
Treasury Department data show that revenue from tariffs on imported foreign goods increased substantially in April and May, setting monthly records. But the total is less than half the figure President Donald Trump has cited. At least twice this month, the president has wrongly claimed that the U.S. “brought in $88 billion” from tariffs in “two months.”
We asked the White House for the source of the president’s claim, but we didn’t receive a response. Trump’s figure is close to the tariff collections from October to May, which totaled more than $81 billion, but included about three and a half months under Trump’s predecessor.
Trump first made the claim while speaking to reporters at a June 11 event at the Kennedy Center. “We took $88 billion in tariffs in two months, far beyond what anybody expected,” the president said.
The following day, during a bill signing ceremony at the White House, Trump again said: “We’ve taken in $88 billion in tariffs in two months. $88 billion with no inflation.” As we’ll explain, there’s more to the story on inflation, with economists expecting that the higher tariffs will cause inflation to rise in the coming months.
On other occasions since, he has cited the figure without including a time frame.
As we said, from October to May, which includes more than three months when Joe Biden was president, the federal government received $81.4 billion from tariffs, formally known as customs duties, that are paid by U.S. importers. That’s according to data for fiscal year 2025 that the Treasury Department released earlier this month. (The $81.4 billion was about 65% more than the $49.3 billion received in the same period in fiscal year 2024.)
In addition, as of June 18, the U.S. had collected $5.4 billion in customs duties and excise taxes in June, according to Treasury’s latest daily statement of cash and debt operations. That puts the U.S. closer to $88 billion in tariff revenue for the current fiscal year – but not for any two-month period in that time, as Trump initially claimed.
The U.S. got $22.2 billion from tariffs in May, a record amount in one month, the Treasury figures show. That was up almost 42% from $15.6 billion in tariff revenue in April, and the April total, the previous record, had increased more than 90% from $8.2 billion in March. The most revenue the U.S. has raised from tariffs in a calendar year was $102.3 billion in 2022.
Tariff revenue took off in April, which is when Trump implemented a minimum 10% tariff on U.S. imports of foreign goods. He had announced higher tariff rates on goods imported from dozens of countries, rates that he later paused for 90 days, he said, to negotiate better trade terms with those nations.
Prior to that, in March, Trump put in place a 25% tariff on certain goods imported from Canada and Mexico, and he increased from 10% to 20% a tariff on goods coming from China – a tariff rate on Chinese goods that he would later increase to 145% in April before lowering it to 30% in May. Trump’s administration also has levied new 25% tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, automobiles and auto parts.
More than $28 billion of the revenue from tariffs in the 2025 fiscal cycle was collected in October, November, December and January – a four-month period in which Trump was president for about 11 and a half days.
Inflation
Also, Trump’s claim of $88 billion in tariff revenue with “no inflation” is not the whole story.
Based on the Consumer Price Index, the inflation rate was 2.4% for the 12 months ending in May – which is down from the 3% annualized inflation rate when Trump took office in January. The rate as of May was also only up 0.1 percentage points from the rate of 2.3% in April, suggesting that tariffs have had little impact on inflation and the price of most goods.
(Trump also said on June 18 that there was “a lot of inflation” when he took office, saying there were “four years of the highest inflation in the history of our country” under Biden. Annualized inflation hit 9.1% in June 2022, which wasn’t the “highest” ever, but it had declined considerably before Trump was inaugurated.)
However, some economists still predict that Trump’s second-term tariffs will increase inflation.
“Price increases are coming,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Santander U.S. Capital Markets, told the New York Times for a June 13 story about the tariffs and inflation. He said that consumers “have lucked out a bit, in that retailers have shown restraint” so far in not passing their higher costs from tariffs on to shoppers.
The Times reported that a “buildup in inventories that retailers amassed earlier this year … created a buffer for sellers to offer discounts, such as around Memorial Day, and generally hold off on raising prices until those stockpiles run out.”
In a June 16 opinion piece for MSNBC, Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Biden administration, said once the “temporary factors” that are “for now, holding back price passthrough” are no longer an option, “we should see more of a tariff bump in the inflation data.” Bernstein predicted that an inflation increase could happen in three to six months.
The Federal Reserve also declined to lower interest rates last week, with its chairman, Jerome Powell, citing “uncertainty” over “tariff inflation.” “Everyone that I know is forecasting a meaningful increase in inflation in coming months from tariffs because someone has to pay for the tariffs,” Powell said during a June 18 press conference.
In his own remarks on June 18, Trump criticized Powell for the Fed not lowering interest rates, claiming that Powell “maybe … was a Democrat.”
Powell served in the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, and he was appointed Fed chairman by Trump in 2018 before being reappointed to that post by Biden in 2022. In a June 18 story, the Hill newspaper described Powell as a “lifelong Republican.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.