The US claims $81.5 billion bonus revenue from Trump tariffs but that's a drop in the ocean compared to its spending deficit

US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled "Make America Wealthy Again" at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. — (Image credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued a press release stating that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has collected $106.1 billion since the commencement of the current administration in January. A whopping $81.5 billion of that sum is directly attributed to Trump's tariffs, and is pitched as a huge win that will "make America richer and reverse a broken trade system," according to one unnamed senior DHS official.

The press release goes on to say, "CBP took enforcement action to secure $16.3 billion in additional revenue because of targeted reviews of over 35,000 shipments flagged as high-risk for duty evasion or subject to additional payments owed." Still, I can't help but wonder who's really footing this bill?

If you're a little hazy on the latest Trump tariff details, uh, you're not the only one—it remains a long, ongoing story. The top line summary is that Trump implemented a number of far-reaching tariffs and reciprocal levies in a bid to both apply pressure to global trade partners and to encourage US consumers to buy goods manufactured within the States. Our Jacob has written an excellent rundown of how the US tariffs affect PC gaming hardware specifically, though I'm also partial to Channel 4 News' TikTok tariff explainer using Warhammer minis.

As Channel 4 notes in its wargaming explanation, there are a number of ways companies can offset the cost of these tariffs. However, passing that cost onto the American consumer by raising prices is the most likely strategy, with the CEOs of retail giants Best Buy and Target saying as much back in March. No wonder it's felt nigh on impossible to pick up a new Nvidia GPU at MSRP, let alone a decent price.

While that's a truly eye-watering amount of money, it's worth noting that the US government collected $3.29 trillion in revenue between October 2024 and May 2025—the Trump tariffs' $81.5 billion is a smidge over 2% of that. Furthermore, the US government's revenue has only increased by 6% (which is still a winding $194 billion) compared to a similar period between October 2023 and May 2024.

It'll be interesting to see what the figures look like for the 2025-2026 period ahead. However, it's also entirely possible that the average US-based consumer will have more on their mind than someone else's billions by that time—and no, I'm not just talking about Trump claiming to have found a buyer for TikTok.

According to both The Guardian and The Telegraph, the US dollar has experienced its worst first half-year since 1973, at least in part due to the ever shifting economic situation ushered in by Trump's tariffs. Now, with Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which aims to beef up defence spending by cutting welfare and healthcare programmes, it seems that whatever happens over the next 12 months, the American people might be stuck with paying the bill.

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Jess has been writing about games for over ten years, spending the last seven working on print publications PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When she’s not writing about all things hardware here, she’s getting cosy with a horror classic, ranting about a cult hit to a captive audience, or tinkering with some tabletop nonsense.