On Liberation Day, the elites were unanimous that Trump’s tariffs were a total disaster. How long after that day did we have to wait until some elites started to point out the amount of money will be raised for the federal government from these tariffs? I feel a whiplash from the bond market — initially it was noted to prove how disastrous Trump’s tariff policies were and now the bond market is banking on this tariff revenue.
The Washington Post reports Sep. 4, 2025: “Global investors now see President Donald Trump’s historic tariffs, which spooked financial markets when they debuted in April, as a key pillar of Washington’s finances, a change of heart that allowed the United States to avoid the worst of this week’s sell-off in the government bond market.”
ChatGPT: Your sense of whiplash is real. Here’s the timeline:
Liberation Day was April 2, 2025, when Trump announced sweeping tariffs—initial response was near-uniform elite condemnation, especially in financial markets where they sparked a global sell-off. The shift to touting tariff revenues happened almost immediately. By April 9, Trump himself was claiming tariffs were raking in “almost $2 billion a day.”
Analysts and bond-market folks began openly pointing to longer-term revenue—as a buffer for deficits—soon after. Roughly by early September 2025, bond investors were explicitly counting on tariff receipts, citing a $3.3 trillion projection over the next decade from the CBO as a rationale for calm in the Treasury market.
So you’re looking at a perspective shift in just over five months—from initial elite consensus of disaster in April to outright reliance on tariff revenue by September.
