One day before the pause on most U.S. tariffs went into effect on April 8, President Donald Trump claimed during the Republican National Committee (RNC) dinner that the United States was “making a fortune on tariffs: $2 billion a day.”
This is an amount he has repeated again and again and has even increased. However official government data and economic experts outright refute Trump’s claim.
Hakan Yilmazkuday, a professor of economics at Florida International University (FIU) and a member of the College of Research, Rankings and Reputation, described Trump’s figure as “significantly inflated” and noted that it “is not supported by current trade data,” such as that reported by the U.S. Treasury Department, in response to a query from elDetector about the Republican president’s claim.
The Data Shows His Claim is False
On April 8, 2025, the day Trump made the declaration, $192 million in revenue from “customs duties and certain excise taxes” was recorded , according to data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. This amount does not reflect tariffs alone, as the agency publishes the breakdown only monthly.
Looking at full-month data, the Treasury Department reports that:
In February, the first full month after President Trump took office, $7.247 billion in tariffs were collected — a daily average of $258.82 million. In March 2025, collections increased to $8.168 billion — a daily average of $263.48 million .
While March saw an increase compared to the previous month, the daily figure is significantly lower than the amount Trump claimed the country collects daily in tariffs, without citing or providing a source.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) stated on April 14—in a statement to CNBC, following the announcement of the universal tariffs (April 2)—that:
“Since April 5, CBP has collected more than $500 million under the new reciprocal tariffs, contributing to more than $21 billion in total tariff revenue from 15 presidential trade actions implemented since January 20, 2025.”
The article published by the American financial news network adds that the “average” collected is “$250 million per day.”
On the other hand, Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, stated in a March 30, 2025 , interview with Fox News :
“We’re going to raise approximately $100 billion just from the auto tariffs… In addition, the other tariffs are going to raise approximately $600 billion a year,” although he did not provide sources to support those figures.
If you take the annual amount mentioned by Navarro ($700 billion) and divide it by the 365 days of the year, the result is approximately $1.92 billion per day in 2025, a figure close to what Trump has cited in his statements.
However, Yilmazkuday explained that:
“The high figure of ‘$2 billion a day’ is likely based on unrealistic assumptions that ignore the slowing effect that higher tariffs have on import volumes (i.e., the reduction in import demand due to higher tariffs), leading to an overestimation of potential revenues.”
He added that “although higher tariffs clearly increase government revenues, the consensus of most recent economic analyses is that they are unlikely to generate net economic gains for the U.S. economy as a whole.”
The nonprofit Tax Foundation, which specialises in analysing U.S. tax policies, estimates that “tariffs will lead to a decrease in imports of nearly $800 billion in 2025.”
Overall, Trump’s claim of $2 billion per day is nearly eight times higher than the verified average of $250–260 million/day, as shown by the official government data above.
Some media outlets requested information from the White House press team to find out the sources Trump based his claim on, but received no response before the publication deadline.