“We have billions of dollars coming into our Treasury – billions – from China. We never had 10 cents coming into our Treasury; now we have billions coming in,” President Trump claimed on January 24, 2019. On May 5, he tweeted: “For 10 months, China has been paying Tariffs to the USA.”
Of course, this is false. Tariffs are import taxes that companies pay when importing goods into the United States. And they usually pass these increased costs onto consumers. Was Trump lying or ignorant? At that point, it was clearly ignorance.
But in Trump’s State of the Union address in February of this year, he proclaimed, “As time goes by, I believe that tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.” That still seems like ignorance.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published an analysis in February that found that over 90 percent of Mr. Trump’s 2025 tariffs were passed on to U.S. consumers and businesses as higher costs. It found that from January through August of last year, U.S. importers bore 94 percent of tariff costs.
The tariffs have increased consumer costs by roughly $1,230–$1,700 per household annually, raised manufacturing costs, and impacted global trade relations. The tariffs have generated over $214 billion in revenue but also triggered increased inflation and food prices. Please note that Trump is causing some of the inflation he is so concerned about – re: Fed Chair Powell. He has wanted Fed Chairman Powell to lower interest rates.
Trump is still seething after the Supreme Court invalidated tariffs he imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act – a wartime law that authorizes the president to regulate imports when the country is faced with an “unusual and extraordinary” national security threat.
Why does Trump keep insisting that foreign companies pay U.S. tariffs? Is he lying, or is he still ignorant about tariffs? A strong case could be made for either answer. There is a record of his telling over 31,000 lies during his first term, and his ignorance on tariffs was on display back then. But there were more.
An article in Time magazine in 2019, during Trump’s first term as president, warned us that, among all the gambles in electing the most politically inexperienced candidate ever to the highest elected office in the world, the danger of ignorance may prove the greatest.
Early in the Covid pandemic, during a meeting with pharmaceutical executives, Trump showed his ignorance by asking whether seasonal flu vaccines could work against the Coronavirus. And of course, this got worse with Trump publicly encouraging his top health officials to study the injection of bleach into the human body as a means of fighting COVID.
His officials obviously ignored that request, but apparently could not thwart an ignorance that “could kill millions.” Trump claims that he did not know Iran might attack its neighbors and close the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S. and Israel attacking Iran. He insisted that none of the experts thought this possible, even though almost every expert outside the Trump administration believed it was both possible and likely.
Both tendencies could be at play here-ignorance of the consequences and lying about expert advice he received, with him typically overruling their advice, that is, if he allowed any experts into discussion-another problematic practice.
Regardless of whether by lies or ignorance, the consequences may be dire for many people: fuel and fertilizer shortages causing problems in the U.S., but life-and-death situations in developing countries.
