President Trump’s tax and tariff policies form the heart of an economic program that he’s promised will help average Americans. The hard data, however, show that he’s actually imposed substantial costs on about 70 percent of Americans.
That’s because of both the growing burdens imposed by both the tariffs and the tax changes that provided no relief to the nearly 43 percent of U.S. households that paid no income tax before, less than nothing to five percent whose taxes went up, and not much to an additional 22 percent of Americans whose small tax benefits are dwarfed by the negative income effects of Trump’s tariffs.
It may get even worse. If the president goes ahead in December with his plan to increase and expand tariffs on imports from China, 80 percent of the country—roughly 102 million households with 258 million people—will be worse off under his economic program.