For President Donald Trump, tariffs, not just the idea but also the emotional response, make it “the most beautiful word” in the English language. For him, the beauty of tariffs lie in their supposed ability to solve the country’s biggest financial problems, serving as both a replacement for income tax and a fix to the country’s towering federal deficit. Yet that cure may be more of an illusion than a solution, as experts say tariffs are a faulty revenue-making device.
“As a revenue tool, they’re very weak,” Kyle Pomerleau, an international tax policy expert and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Fortune. “They do raise some revenue, but just not enough to really move the needle one way or the other.”
