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And that tariff bounty will jump to more than $500 billion on an annual basis starting next year, according to Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent.

The annuity Trump has created with his tariffs will yield about $90 billion a year from European Union (EU) imports alone, tariffed at 15 per cent.

Imports from Canada, if tariffed at the same 15 per cent, would add another $60 billion or so to the kitty every year for as long as the tariffs are in place.

“We’re finding hundreds of billions of dollars of cash is pouring into our country because of the tariffs,” Trump said in a White House press briefing last month. “It’s so beautiful to see it.”

The anticipated annual tariff proceeds equal roughly 10 per cent of total U.S. government revenues. In the past, duties on imports have not exceeded two per cent of federal revenues.

What will Trump do with the money, one of the largest tax increases ever imposed on the American people?

Trump has said he will use the bonanza to reduce the national debt. But the tariff revenues, as large a sum as they might be, would make only a small dent in the U.S. national debt of $37.4 trillion.

It’s more likely the tariff receipts will be applied to the U.S. deficit, where the impact — and Trump’s bragging rights — would be greater. The annual income from tariffs forecast by Bessent equals about one-quarter of the projected deficit.

In an Aug. 31 report, the impartial Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated that the tariffs could increase U.S. revenues by $4 trillion over the coming decade.

But “if that (tariff) revenue isn’t forthcoming, investors might become more worried about the fiscal outlook and less willing to lend to the U.S. government, driving up longer-term interest rates,” Bill Dudley, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, warns in a recent Bloomberg essay.   

America’s already high interest rates are stifling business investment and job creation and are a drag on credit-financed consumer spending.

The CBO warns that the additional tariff revenue will shrink the U.S. economy due to reduced business investment and consumer spending with a tariff-induced rise in prices.

The Yale Budget Lab estimates the average cost of Trump’s tariffs at $2,400 per American household this year. That amount will rise as the Trump administration negotiates hoped-for trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, and other countries with which Trump has yet to strike a deal.

Bond investors are treating the extraordinary tariff revenues as a permanent new fixture of America’s fiscal reality.

That was Trump’s argument in declaring on Aug. 31 that the U.S. will be “completely destroyed” if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds an Aug. 29 U.S. federal appeals court’s ruling that many of Trump’s tariffs are illegal.

The appeals court ruling did not apply to Trump’s sectoral tariffs on imported Canadian steel, aluminum and autos.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to uphold or overrule the appeals court decision in November.

Either way, the impact of the Supreme Court decision will be dramatic.

“If the bulk of Trump’s tariff program is nullified by the court some analysts will cheer, inflation will subside, growth may improve, and the (U.S. Federal Reserve Board) may be more inclined to ease monetary policy,” said Thierry Wizman, a global rates strategist at Macquarie Group.

“But if the focus is on debt and deficits at that time, the bond markets may riot,” said Wizman, recalling the frantic sell-off of U.S. Treasuries on news of the appeals court ruling.

Fact is, Trump’s tariff annuity is fragile.

There is nothing stopping U.S. trading partners from scrapping the handshake deals they’ve done with Trump, which are not binding treaties ratified by parliaments.

They could reverse themselves on agreements to not impose counter-tariffs on the U.S. and to open their markets wider to American imports.

And an inflationary tariff regime will test the tolerance of Americans for rising prices.

American consumers have begun to switch to non-tariffed domestic goods, now that Walmart, ɫɫ�� Depot, Best Buy and other retailers have said they will pass on to consumers their higher tariff costs.

The excess tariff revenue “also illustrates how difficult the tariffs, if they stick, will be to unwind later,” Dudley says.

“No future administration will be able to cut $500 billion a year from spending.”

That is, as the tariff windfall becomes more entrenched in America’s public finances, the more precarious they become.