Bulwark Takes - Trump Claims $4 Trillion Victory — It’s All Fake

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Trump is bragging that his tariffs “saved $4 trillion” but it’s pure fake math. The CBO report he cites was twisted beyond recognition, while the reality is tariffs are taxes on us the consumers, inflation is rising, and the deficit is still exploding.

Hey, everybody, Tim Miller from the Bullwark here with my colleague, Jonathan V. Last. He's got a newsletter out today. It's the best newsletter in the business. You've got to go sign up for it at the bulwark.com. And it is about this big push in the MAGA world to rationalize Trump's tariff regime saying that we are going to have $4 trillion in deficit reduction as a result of this. Yeah, exciting. I have to admit, I'm happy you wrote this deep dive newsletter because this has kind of like been in my field. the vision, but I just, it starts to, I see CBO and four trillion and the terror, and I, it just, it starts to get, I just move on. I'm like, I can't, like this, like, it all just feels like a

farago of bullshit and I just, and I, and I couldn't bring myself to care. But here's the gist of it, if you have, um, have missed it. And then J.V. You can explain what exactly is happening here. Trump posted, I guess this was what, over the weekend, um, that he's pleased to announce that the radical left representatives at the CBO, so he takes a hit at the CBO, have now admitted how incredible my tariff strategy has been, saying that Trump's tariffs reduce the deficit by $4 trillion. That goes on and on. That means we're the hottest country in the world. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

So talk to us about that. What is he talking about? What is the CBO report? What is the truth? Yeah. So it's all bullshit. And what happened is CBO puts out a report on. Friday. And it is a revised income from tariffs for 2025. And what CBO says is they said our initial

read on total revenue from tariffs, which we conducted on January 6th. So before Trump came to office, the initial read was that they would get $80 billion in revenue from tariffs in fiscal year 2025. So Trump comes in. He does Liberation Day. Tariff rates all go up like crazy. And they now say, that we're at about $136 billion in revenues taken from tariffs and projecting out to $200 billion by the end of this year, 2025. And CBO then says, and if everything stays exactly the same as it is now until 2035, then when is that? 2035.

God willing, we're all still here. And the singularity hasn't happened. We should be so lucky. Then we will have saved $4 trillion, which we can apply. Those revenues would be applied to the deficit. Now, this is crazy for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that Trump changes the tariffs like every nine days. Right. So this is the assumption that like.

Projecting it out 10 years that was static tariff rates. Right. I mean, you can't even pretend it on like in all seriousness. You can't even really project it out two weeks, right? because he's doing deals. He's, you know, he's doing deals left and right. And who knows what they're all going to be. So it's crazy.

And this is why, so right now in Manga World, everyone is like, Trump just got us $4 trillion. Yeah, let's fucking go. And, you know, the fake news, mainstream media won't report it. Why won't they talk about how he got us $4 trillion? And the answer is the reason is because the report is bullshit. The report is premised on this idea that is impossible, right? These rates are not going to be in effect until 2035.

They just won't. And so that's why nobody's reporting about it. But Hugh Hewitt disagrees with you. I do want to tell you. He says that wherever you are on the, quote, Trump spectrum, CBO analysis validates the presidents believe in tariffs as an essential tool of economic renewal as well as state craft and exposes the fundamental misapprehension of the topic by pretty much everyone on the left and the right. Hugh Hewitt, this proves the fact that we will have this fortuit. I hear your point about how it's bullshit

that like this will not ever actually happen. Well, you can't project out 10 years, et cetera, et cetera. But let's just say you could. Like, let's just say you could, right? Like, four trillion, like doesn't even pay for the tax bill. So this is what we're going to get to, right? So it's all much stupider than this even, right? And so the big beautiful bill was going to increase the deficit by $4.1 trillion over the next 10 years. And so even if the CBO stuff, even if President Trump for life is still, he keeps everything steady as she goes from here on in until 2035 before Barron takes over, he's still already more than spent all of that money. But the other thing is, again, so where does that? money come from? Like, it doesn't come from Sony and Toyota and Volkswagen. It comes from us

because tariffs are a tax, right? The manufacturers might pay the tariffs. It's just a regressive tax shift. Like, right? Even if you take him at his word and you're like, we have a $4 trillion tax cut that disproportionately helps people at the top. Yes. Not entirely. And we're going to replace that with $4 trillion in tariffs that we're getting from consumers. Disproportionately, like lower middle and lower middle class like regular consumers like that's like all it's just a that's what it is straight shift from the middle class to the rich like there's no deficit benefit on balance like even it's bullshit but even if it happened as as as they're arguing like that's all it is it's just a transfer of money from the middle class just more wealth transfer and and the other thing

is that it also makes a bunch of assumptions for instance that there is no inflation right which if you go and read all the way down to the bottom of the report, which clearly Trump didn't do and Hugh Hewitt didn't do, they say, of course, there are a bunch of near-term negative effects. And among those negative effects, they say, you know, economic productivity in America is going to decline. Inflation is going to rise. We're seeing both of those things already. We had first quarter this year was negative GDP growth, which is insane. The producer price index is way up. The Fed is really worried about inflation. So, Like, the CBO report, which Trump is growing about, has a bunch of warnings about things that are happening right now, which they ignore. And then it has a bunch of just bullshit about things that might happen in a decade if by some chance nothing changes. And that's what they focus on. And it's like the biggest piece of fake news. Like, I hate to be reduced to using the term fake news, but that's, I don't know what else to call it. I'm sorry.

I've got to give a contrary view. Let's listen to another perspective. As you know, the stock market went up almost a thousand points on Friday, and it went up not because of this very, I think, terrible. Hello. Who is that back there? I get out of the room. It went up because of something much different.

It went up because it was announced. CBO announced the numbers, and as you know, they gave no credit to tariffs. they said they made a mistake that the trade deficit will be reduced because of Trump's tariffs will be reduced by $4 trillion. Right? Is that what they said?

Right? They said $4 trillion and the market went up like a rocket chip because the tariffs are good. Well, tariffs aren't that usual. The seven wars I stopped four of them were because of the fact that I had tariffs and trade and I was able to say, well, if you do this, if you go fight and if you want to kill everybody, that's okay.

But I'm going to charge you each 100% tariff when you trade with us. There you go. I'm sorry, JVL. The president has said so. You know, market sword. And he even says we're reducing the trade deficit. That's the other weird thing. Like, so here he is.

You don't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know what he's talking. He's not talking about the budget deficit. Now he's talking about the trade deficit. And it's, it's hard to know what the hell is happening here, but this is the President of the United States. And all of these policies are being made by whatever flits through the front of his brain pan while a camera is rolling. Yeah. Like, that's just how all the policies being made. And I'm sorry over at the CBO. You guys will have to, you know, somebody will say something to

him at a meeting and he'll have to, he'll redraw the tariff on Finland and you'll have to go and run the numbers again in three days. Well, I've got some good news, though, for the people at the CBO is they bought themselves a lifeline here you know and Trump's out there fire and fed governors like random people in the defense department who like you know made you know offhand comments about how we're maybe overfocusing on China ever's other threats they're out you know people at random boards are out because they because Laura Lumer came from them CBO's got like a light of line here a little cover now Trump thinks that the radical leftist at the CBO did something that he likes even though they really didn't exactly um but uh you know that means

that we're going to have a congressional budget office of actual professionals still for at least another i don't know month or that's good or two even if things go well well thrilling stuff uh everybody even though we gave you the gist jbio gives you a lot of little easter eggs in his newsletters it's worth it it's worth it go sign up for it theborec.com subscribe to us here on this feed tell your friends about us we'll be back soon a lot of other fake news will be happening out there, but not right here on the sheet. See you soon.