Trump’s Trade, Tariffs & Surpluses – Top 3 Takeaways July 14th, 2025
Takeaway #1: What’s up with trade, tariffs and Liberation Day 2.0?
Ok, it’s premature to declare victory on Trump’s tariff policy – especially as it pertains to what may happen on August 1st, which based upon the 21 countries he’s sent tariff letters to over the past week stating that the current 10% across the board tariffs will rise significantly, has the makings of potentially being Liberation Day 2.0. As I broke out last week, new trade deals are only in place with China, the U.K. and Vietnam – or countries representing only 18.6% of US trade. That means there’s a super high game of trade chicken currently taking place as President Trump has vowed that August 1st is a hard deadline and that he won’t delay implementing higher tariffs this time. An apparent reason for a stall tactic by other countries, in waiting to agree to new trade deals, is that many are attempting to wait out what might happen with lawsuits challenging President Trump’s authority to unilaterally implement universal tariffs. The August 1st deadline isn’t an arbitrary date. It’s a timed calculation by President Trump. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s tariffs citing a lack of executive authority to issue Liberation Day tariffs. A day later the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted a temporary stay on the CIT's ruling, allowing the tariffs to remain in effect pending the government's appeal. The next key date happens to be none other than July 31st when oral arguments are scheduled in the case. Trump wants these trade deals done so that the outcome of the case is moot. For other countries it’s a roll of the dice to hold out and hope to win in the U.S. legal system. While we wait to watch what will be...
Takeaway #2: Trump was right about everything...or at least the tariff thing
Starting with economists, there are no shortage of “experts”, pundits and pinheads too, that don’t fundamentally understand the economy or at least don’t know how to account for it fully, but that weigh in on it anyway. The examples are too many to mention, but they are pervasive during Trump’s two administrations. From the impact of President Trump’s 1st term Tax Cut and Jobs Act and tariff policy – which was exceedingly positive leading to the best overall economy in U.S. history preceding the pandemic, to what we’ve already seen with the real-world impact of Trump’s Liberation Day 10% across the board tariff policy (and what will probably be with the recently signed BBB), experts, pundits and pinheads (some of which is redundant), having already been proven to be dead wrong. On Friday, we received one of the more significant monthly budget reports from the Treasury Department in modern American history. What made it so special? Two things. It was the first monthly report that is said to have fully accounted for the impact of President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs on the U.S. economy. It of course also is important to know where the U.S. economy stood entering the impact of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The answer was better than literally any economist had predicted. What did Friday’s report show? How big of a deficit do you think the United States ran in June? How much more debt did the U.S. add during the month? $100 billion? $200 billion? A gazallion dollars? None of the above because...
Takeaway #3: The U.S. had a budget surplus in June
That’s right, for the second month out of three full months of reporting during the Trump administration, the United States Treasury ran a surplus – or in other words a profit – of $27 billion during the month. Why? How? Three big reasons. 1) Revenue to the Treasury increased a whopping 13% year-over-year driven by a strong economy and 2) Record tariff revenue of just about $27 billion during the month – which was up about 500% year over year and 3) Spending by the Treasury dropped year-over-year in part driven by federal government DOGEing and fewer federal government employees. And so the point is this. On the economy, Trump was right about everything in his first administration, while almost all others reporting, discussing and projecting his polices were wrong. What we’ve already seen through the first five months of Trump’s second term is that he’s been right about all his economic related policies yet again – while the aforementioned have been pretty much wrong about everything yet again. So, with the BBB set to kick in along with Trump’s Liberation Day 2.0 tariffs looming on the horizon too – there's one of two ways to look at this. The way that most media, most “experts” more pundits who’ve been wrong on Trump for a decade (how you can be wrong that long and still employed is beyond me – I suppose institutionalized TDS could explain it?)...or through the prism that Trump has been right about everything.