Fuzzy Math Among President Trump’s various assertions in last night’s State of the Union address was that tariffs would someday replace the income tax, but that is a mathematical impossibility. The value of imported goods is around $3 trillion, and the income tax generates nearly $5 trillion. Applying the necessary 166 percent tariff would inherently reduce imports and thus cause a shortfall in government revenue. Tariffs rose 186 percent in 2025, and the resulting revenues increased from $170 billion to about $270 billion, but imports fell from the country where tariffs were applied most heavily—China. And the tariff rate applied to China was 23 percent. It would require a 165 percent tariff on $3 trillion worth of import...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.