The Media’s Urge to Be “Fair” to Trump Is Killing the Republic

Uh, no. Here are a few facts and figures, none of which appear in the article. Federal revenue from all sources in recent years has been around $4.7 trillion (it varies from year to year depending on the strength of the economy). Typically, customs fees account for about 2 percent of that revenue. Commit that to memory, please: 2 percent. So that even if tariff revenue doubles, it will account for 4 percent of all federal revenue. It could double again—which incidentally would mean tariffs so high as to stifle much international trade—and still account for only 8 percent of all federal revenue.

So where does federal revenue come from? About half—that is, around $2.4 trillion or so—comes from the personal income tax. Another third, or roughly $1.6 trillion, comes from payroll taxes. And then about 10 percent, or just under $500 billion, comes from corporate taxes. I know all these numbers off the top of my head, and if I know them, the guy who covers tax policy from Washington for The New York Times ought to know them, too. Maybe he does, which would make his decision not to include them in a piece like this all the more bewildering, because they provide vital context. But all Duehren has to say on this point is that “income and payroll taxes remain by far the most important sources of government revenue.”

That’s a very vague and fuzzy way of putting it. It obscures reality and gives no sense of the scale of what a laughably tiny amount of money Trump’s doubling of tariff revenue amounts to. A billion here, a trillion there; people don’t know the difference. If a reader bothers to stop and think about it, she might think that a trillion is what, 10 times larger than a billion, kind of like 1,000 to 100? No. A trillion is one thousand times larger than a billion. So the idea that this new tariff revenue is remotely meaningful next to the revenue taken in from income and payroll taxes is absurd. It would be as if the Times’s culture desk noticed that Yanni had suddenly doubled his sales in 2025 and ran a story saying hey, Taylor Swift, lookout!