Trump says tariffs don’t cause inflation, they cause wealth. Check your receipts.

New economic theory just dropped in Montana. Peer review is pending. Very pending.

Last Wednesday night in Kalispell, Donald Trump explained tariffs to a crowd that’s been paying them for a year and a half. “Tariffs don’t cause inflation. They cause wealth.” Whose wealth he didn’t say. Not the people at the checkout, according to everyone who measures this for a living.

The Federal Reserve’s own economists found the 2025 tariffs raised core goods prices 3.1% through February, which they say explains all of the excess inflation in that category. Yale’s Budget Lab puts the current tariff bill at about $1,100 a year for the average household. That’s not wealth. That’s a subscription you didn’t sign up for.

Same night, he also defended his love for the word. When he called “tariffs” his favorite word, he said, the fake news asked “what about the word God? What about the word wife, family?” Then he cleared up that by “union” he meant “the union of marriage.” Nobody asked. Very romantic, in a customs-duty kind of way.

Fun fact for the next rally: the biggest batch of his tariffs is the one the Supreme Court struck down in February, and Customs is now refunding it. Wealth, it turns out, sometimes comes back with interest.