• sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    I love how the contents of the article are even funnier than the headline

    The donation program has existed since 1996, with a total of $67.3 million contributed — an amount that remains negligible compared to the federal debt.

    Yeah but the program probably costs nothing to run. It’s free money for the government. And I am sure they could run an ad campaign to raise more money. Get a billionaire or 2 to donate some for “their country”.

    Meanwhile, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio is sounding the alarm

    Who the hell is ray dalio and why should we care about this … lawyer associate??? Why is half the article about this random guy’s opinions?

    He said the data shows that import duties are expected to generate $2.8 trillion in revenue over 10 years.

    But the administration hasn’t even settled on what the tariff rates are …

    “Even in Washington DC math, that is a $400 billion surplus,” Bessent said.

    It really must be some special kind of Washington math because what nunbers is this guy even adding and subtracting?

    In an interview last week with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, Bessent added that the administration had already collected nearly $100 billion in tariff revenue so far this year and is “on track for $300B this year.”

    According to this database, us imports from Jan to may were $1.55 trillion. Add an extra $300 billion for June. That’s about a 5.5% average tax on imports.

    Or well, we can be extra generous and remove June and January. June because data for it is not out so the $100 billion treasury revenue might not be including that, and January because trump wasn’t in back then. That’s an amount of imports $1.22 trillion, leading to a 8.2% average revenue from tariffs.

    So the trump admin isn’t even raising upto 10% revenue based on their minimum tariff rate even in the most generous estimation.