WEDNESDAY: Finally, the Times explains tariffs!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2025

Shannon Bream takes a dive: President Trump's threats and proposals concerning tariffs have been in the news since basically forever by now.

Yesterday, it finally happened! An explainer piece about the way tariffs work finally appeared in the New York Times!

We'll be brutally honest—we were surprised by the timing. Headline included, here's the way the explainer begins:

Who Pays for U.S. Tariffs, and Where Does the Money Go?

Since his return to office, President Trump has set in motion a global trade war, wielding tariffs to try to achieve multiple goals at once: raising federal revenue, reducing or eliminating trade deficits with other nations and compelling manufacturers to make more of their goods in the United States.

But who actually pays those tariffs, and where does that money go?

Here’s how the process works...

Better late than never, you say? The timing did strike us as odd. But to its credit, the New York Times chose to simplify this topic all the way down.

Continuing directly from above, here's the way the report proceeds. The Times is explaining this very clearly. Will someone alert Shannon Bream?

What is a tariff, and who pays it?

A tariff is essentially a government surcharge on products imported from other countries.

Tariffs are paid by the companies that import the goods. The revenue from U.S. tariffs is paid by U.S. importers to the U.S. Treasury Department.

How does that work?

Here’s an example: If Walmart imports a $100 pair of shoes from Vietnam—which faces a 20 percent tariff under the terms of a preliminary trade deal—Walmart will owe $20 in tariffs to the U.S. government.

That's extremely basic explanation—which is exactly the way a topic like this should be explained. 

You could even call it "Tariffs for Dummies!" But that's exactly the way a topic like this should be explained from the start. 

As the Times report continues, it makes some accurate statements which might sound a bit heretical to some of us Over Here.

You'll have to check that out for yourself. We're going to move to what Shannon Bream did, or failed to do, when she interviewed Howard Lutnick on this past weekend's Fox News Sunday.

Bream is host of Fox News Sunday. Lutnick is the current Secretary of Commerce. At the start of their colloquy, Lutnick assured Bream that August 1 represents a hard and fast deadline concerning tariff deals. 

The following exchange then occurred. At this point, Bream seemed to be playing it tough:

BREAM (7/27/25): Folks are nervous. We have brand new polling on that this week. And we asked in our Fox News polling how people are feeling about things.

The president is under water, by double digits, on the economy, on inflation and [on] tariffs. And they may be reacting to reports like this one from the Yale Budget Lab, estimating that Americans now face "the highest tariff rate since 1910, an average cost of $2,800 per household this year."

So you keep saying that Americans are going to love these deals. They're very skeptical and they're worried at this point. 

Ouch! That seemed like a tough presentation. Lutnick responded with this:

LUTNICK (continuing directly): Well, I think you'll see, as they flow through the market, that what’s going to happen is very few products are actually going to move their price. And basically, 700, 800 billion dollars—maybe it’s possible to get it near trillion dollars of revenue—will come into the United States of America, reducing our deficit.

What do you think is paying for no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, right?

The Secretary continued from there. “I think if you take a look at the whole thing, it’s going to be fannn-tastic.” 

It’s going to be fannn-tastic, the gentleman sillily said. And then, when Lutnick had finished his bout of cheerleading, Bream simply moved ahead with a different apparent challenge.

Along the way, there they had gone again! For perhaps the ten millionth time, a member of the Trump administration had conveyed the impression that money somehow "comes into the United States" when tariff payments are made.

For perhaps the ten millionth time, he had conveyed the impression that foreign entities will be sending us big buckets of cash when those tariffs fully kick in. 

That isn't the way it works, the Times has now explained. And no, that isn't the way it works—but could someone alert Shannon Bream?

Bream is much more fair-and-balanced than the bulk of the players at Fox. Also, she isn't a dope. Lutnick probably knows where the money comes from. We'll guess that Bream definitely does.

That said, the Trump admin has been selling that particular con ever since tariffs were born. When Lutnick stated the con once again, Bream chose to move right along. 

This is the way our discourse works. On various fronts, in various ways, it has worked this way for a long time.