Trade Deficit Numbers, TACOs, Bond Markets, Court Rulings, and New Steel Tariffs
Media Hit, 5/31/25
I was on the Randy Tobler show again this morning (I’m on at the one hour mark in this video), this time talking about a whole litany of topics. I have no idea how we’re going to get through all of these topics in 30 minutes, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
On to the talking points!
Trade Deficit Numbers
Link: https://www.census.gov/econ/indicators/current/index.html
These are advanced figures, but the gist of it is that the trade deficit fell from last month to this month, with exports rising and imports falling.
Is this a good thing?
No, as I’ve written several times now. See here, here, here, and here.
TACO
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/politics/trump-taco-angry-tariff
This is one of the funniest things to happen in this entire tariff debacle and personally, I love it.
Bond Markets
The Big Beautiful Bill isn’t really saving any money for the federal government. In fact, it’s costing an extra $2+ trillion over the next ten years, at minimum.
That figure comes on the backs of some very charitable assumptions about e.g. tariff revenue, responses by businesses and people to tax cuts, etc.
So is it likely that we’ll get the full revenue they’re projecting? No, absolutely not.
It also includes projections on expenditures for the next ten years. It’s exceedingly rare for the government to stay within their budget, so those expenses are almost certainly on the low side.
Court Rulings
In case you’ve been living under a rock, the US Court of International Trade issued a ruling on the Trump tariffs under the IEEPA.
Here are my thoughts on the initial fallout from this: https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/surprising-court-ruling-signals-trouble-for-trumps-tariffs/
But, like all things “tariff” these days, there have been developments.
Now, it’s being punted to the Supreme Court while the Court of Appeals reinstated the tariffs pending the new ruling.
Trump’s team says they’re exploring alternative pathways to getting these tariffs done. This is horrible.
New Steel Tariffs
Just ridiculous.