Tariffs May Outlast Trump as Duties Bring $30 Billion Monthly

U.S. import duties now generate $20 billion to $30 billion a month, a revenue stream many executives expect to survive Trump's departure in January 2029 and reshape trade policy for years.

"Politicians need to raise funds to pay for all the things that they do, and it's hard for them to look at a stream of revenue and turn it down," said Rick Woldenberg, chief executive of Learning Resources, the educational-toy maker that was lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case invalidating some of Trump's tariffs earlier this year.

The effective tariff rate — duties collected divided by the value of imports — peaked near 11 percent in Trump's second term before easing to about 7 percent, according to Robert McClelland, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. That compares with a peak of 3 percent in his first term, a level that held roughly steady under President Joe Biden. Import duties on steel now stand at 50 percent, benefiting Cleveland-Cliffs, the largest steel supplier to the U.S. auto industry.

The steady revenue stream gives any successor a financial reason to keep tariffs in place, even as the 2028 campaign splits on the policy. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have framed duties as a tool for trade fairness, while Democrats including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have denounced them as a tax on consumers.

Supply Chains Rewire Around Tariffs

Companies have begun restructuring supply chains in ways they are unlikely to reverse. Off-road vehicle maker Polaris aims to cut the share of its cost of goods sold originating from China to below 5 percent by the end of 2027, chief executive Mike Speetzen told analysts this week, reducing its tariff burden. "We expect to see meaningful savings over the coming years should tariff policy remain consistent with where things stand today," he said.

Foreign automakers, among the most exposed to the duties, have responded by expanding U.S. manufacturing, a shift Jennifer Safavian, chief executive of the lobby group Autos Drive America, said will likely continue regardless of future tariff policy. Australian off-road accessories maker ARB told shareholders last fall it did not expect Washington to move away from tariffs once Trump leaves office.

A Revenue Stream Hard to Abandon

The political math favors persistence. Import duties deliver $20 billion to $30 billion to the Treasury every month, and John Iselin, associate director of economic analysis at the Budget Lab at Yale, said that money could be hard for any president to forgo. A new administration might shift which industries it protects or how it deploys tariffs as a diplomatic lever, he said, but "you could imagine a certain level of tariffs staying in place designed to serve a particular agenda."

The stakes extend beyond Washington. Import prices rose 7.1 percent from June 2025 to June 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the U.S. economy expanded at a sluggish 1.5 percent annual pace in the second quarter. Tariffs have cost businesses across the country billions of dollars and stoked inflation that continues to run above the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target, complicating the outlook for the midterm elections in November.

Lourenco Goncalves, chief executive of Cleveland-Cliffs, argued the duties are here to stay. "There's nobody that will come and say, 'Oh, you know what? It's a good thing to import steel from China. Let's go ahead and let China go back to their control over the market,'" he told analysts last week. Biden did not overturn the first-term steel duties, he noted, so the next president's party may prove immaterial.

For Woldenberg, whose company sued again last week after Trump imposed new duties, the durability of tariffs is a question of incentives. "For the question of what happens after Trump, the answer is who knows?" he said. "Politicians need to raise funds to pay for all the things that they do, and it's hard for them to look at a stream of revenue and turn it down."

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.