President Donald Trump’s tariffs are slowing economic growth, raising prices, undermining American manufacturing, marginalizing the US geopolitically, and attracting widespread public opposition.

And future presidents may largely preserve them. 

This is because Trump’s trade agenda is succeeding at one of its purported goals: The president’s tariffs are generating a lot of revenue for the US government.

So far this year, Uncle Sam collected more than $152 billion from taxes on foreign imports. If all of Trump’s current tariffs remain in place, they will yield $2.2 trillion of revenue over the coming decade, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

In other words, the president has effectively enacted the largest tax hike in modern US history — without Congress ever taking a vote.

Should the Supreme Court uphold these actions, they could transform America’s approach to fiscal policy. If sweeping taxes on foreign imports do not require congressional approval — while all other forms of taxation do — the US is liable to lean on the former. 

Further, low taxes and growing spending on Medicare and Social Security are poised to swell US deficits over the coming decade. Faced with growing pressure to generate new revenues, future presidents may be reluctant to dig an even deeper hole by repealing Trump’s tariffs. 

None of this means that Trump’s trade agenda is certain to survive. But for a policy that is both politically unpopular and economically unsound, it could prove difficult to dislodge. 

The US is increasingly desperate for revenue – and Congress is increasingly averse to raising taxes

There is a fundamental tension at the heart of American fiscal policy: Our government’s need for revenue is rising, while Congress’s appetite for taxation is declining. 

As the US population ages, providing public pensions and health insurance to older Americans has become more expensive. But instead of increasing taxes to account for this fact, Congress has enacted multiple sweeping tax cuts since 2000. 

Of course, this was primarily the work of Republicans: Under Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, the GOP slashed taxes, to the disproportionate benefit of the wealthy. 

Yet once Republicans lowered the bar for tax rates, Democrats repeatedly refused to raise it back to its previous level. In 2013, President Barack Obama made Bush’s income tax cuts permanent for households earning below $400,000 (which effectively preserved 82 percent of the Bush tax cuts). Under President Joe Biden, meanwhile, Democrats left the bulk of Trump’s first-term tax cuts in place. (Those rate reductions had been set to expire this year, but Kamala Harris vowed to extend them for Americans earning less than $400,000. So even if Democrats had won last November, much of the Trump tax cuts would have survived.)

As a result of all this, federal spending as a percentage of the economy has risen sharply since 2000, while tax revenues have fallen.

Deficits are therefore poised to swell in the coming decades, as the Government Accountability Office illustrated earlier this year, in a chart that does not even account for the impact of Trump’s newly passed tax cut bill:

In the wake of that tax cut, Democrats have once again acquiesced to the newly established, lower rates for non-wealthy taxpayers. For example, although Trump’s decision to eliminate taxation on tips has no sound economic rationale, congressional Democrats have largely embraced it.

The United States is an economic superpower, which prints the world’s reserve currency. We have therefore been able to run large deficits for decades without incurring much tangible economic cost. But that started to change a bit post-Covid, as large deficits helped fuel higher interest rates for both the US government and borrowing public. 

And pressure to increase revenue will likely become even more acute by 2035, when Social Security’s trust fund will be exhausted, according to government projections. At that point, funding Social Security benefits at current levels will require an additional $414.5 billion a year. 

Maintaining Trump’s tariffs wouldn’t be sufficient to solve America’s fiscal challenges. But repealing them would exacerbate those difficulties. Confronted by increasingly burdensome deficits — and a Congress terrified of authorizing substantial tax increases — the next Democratic president may feel that retaining a substantial share of Trump’s tariffs are the best of their bad options.

How Democrats, Republicans, and special interests could conspire to preserve Trump’s tariffs

This scenario is especially plausible if Democrats secure full control of the government. A Democratic trifecta would likely be eager to enact new social spending. And it would be difficult for a president to pursue that aim while unilaterally slashing revenue through tariff relief.

This is not to say that Democrats are likely to preserve all of Trump’s tariffs. Those most antithetical to rational diplomacy — such as heavy levies on Canada — seem destined for repeal. Likewise, a Democrat would surely lift Trump’s zanier sectoral tariffs, such as his proposed 250 percent duty on pharmaceuticals (assuming that ever takes effect). But his universal, baseline tariff could plausibly survive, if perhaps at a lower rate. 

In any case, it is conceivable that future Republican presidents might even build on Trump’s tariffs. The conservative movement would prefer to answer rising deficits with spending cuts. But they’ve perennially struggled to find enough legislatively viable cuts to offset their desired income tax reductions (let alone actually reduce the overall deficit). 

If Republicans find themselves politically incapable of slashing Medicare and Social Security, then further raising taxes on foreign imports may be an appealing backup plan. Conservatives have long favored taxing consumption over labor income or capital gains. And tariffs are a consumption tax, albeit an inefficient one that’s draped in jingoistic garb.

Finally, special interest lobbying could also reinforce Trump’s protectionist regime, under a Republican or Democratic president. 

Any individual tariff tends to have concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, which can make them politically resilient. For example, America has long imposed tariffs on foreign sugar, a policy that aids domestic sugar producers at the expense of consumers. But the cost to each individual consumer is tiny, so sweet-toothed Americans lack sufficient incentive to form a movement for cheaper pastries. By contrast, the benefits of the tariffs to America’s sugar industry are large, which leads it to lobby aggressively for their preservation. As a result, the path of least resistance for elected officials is to keep the sugar duties in place.

This same dynamic applies to many of Trump’s tariffs. US exporters would be better off if all of Trump’s tariffs were lifted, as those trade restrictions increase their costs of production while slowing economic growth. But many would likely benefit from preserving trade protection for their specific industry. So interest group politics could fortify Trump’s trade protectionist regime. 

How free trade could still make a comeback

All this said, it isn’t hard to envision a world where Trump’s tariffs largely expire with his presidency (if not before). 

For one thing, the Supreme Court may well deem much of Trump’s trade agenda unlawful. Most of Trump’s tariffs are premised on a dubious interpretation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which empowers the president to levy duties in response to “unusual and extraordinary” threats amid national emergencies. In the administration’s view, this law authorizes them to impose tariffs on more or less any nation, since America’s trade deficit constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States. Suffice to say, that is not an opinion shared by many legal scholars or economists. 

One court has already ruled Trump’s use of the IEEPA illegal, and the case is now before the federal appeals court.

Were the Supreme Court to strike down Trump’s use of the IEEPA, he could attempt to reimplement his tariffs under different presidential authorities. But those other mechanisms come with more bureaucratic red tape, which is why Trump has leaned so heavily on emergency powers.

Further, even if the judiciary leaves Trump’s tariff regime intact, economic developments could erode its political standing. 

There are signs that the president’s trade policies are undermining growth and elevating prices. Last month, inflation ticked up while hiring slowed — and both job losses and price increases were concentrated in trade-sensitive sectors. Given that many of Trump’s largest tariffs have yet to take effect, it’s reasonable to worry that the costs of his trade agenda will continue to mount. 

Already, that agenda is incredibly unpopular. In a recent Fox News survey, Americans disapproved of Trump’s tariff policies by a 26-percentage-point margin, while just 36 percent approve of his handling of trade in Gallup’s polling. If America tips into a recession during Trump’s term, these numbers are liable to get even worse. In that scenario, it is difficult to imagine that the Democratic Party’s 2028 nominee would not campaign on a promise to reverse most of Trump’s trade agenda. 

Ironically, Trump’s tariffs might be most vulnerable to repeal in a world where Democrats win the White House in 2028, but not full control of Congress. Under those conditions, a Democratic president would face less pressure to generate new revenue, since they would be incapable of enacting ambitious new social programs. Unable to pass partisan legislation, such a Democrat might see lifting tariffs as one of their few tools for both symbolically rebuking Trump’s legacy and materially delivering for voters.

Separately, if this hypothetical future president were concerned with repairing American global prestige and influence, they might view relaxing tariffs on US allies as an imperative. 

Political cowardice could sustain Trump’s trade regime

The future trajectory of American trade policy is therefore unknowable. What seems clear is that Trump’s tariffs have a better chance of enduring than they rightfully should. 

The president’s protectionist agenda is a political and substantive disaster. But it also represents a means of massively increasing revenue without anyone in Congress needing to vote for a tax hike. 

In an ideal world, the US government would not embrace an economically and geopolitically destructive approach to funding itself, just so its elected representatives could dodge the responsibilities of governance. In our decidedly suboptimal universe, this scenario can’t be ruled out.