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tax cuts
President Trump: Give Back the Money and Stop Grabbing More
The White House and Congress can and should provide relief to American families who bore the costs of these illegal tariffs. The administration has the responsibility to design such relief. You took the money illegally; now you should return it.
Feb 23, 2026
President Donald Trump, you took funds from the American people that were never yours to take. Give them back, and end the abuse of power.
Friday, the Supreme Court confirmed what many of us argued from the beginning: Your sweeping tariffs were an unlawful overreach of executive power. The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to set tariffs. Yet you invoked emergency powers you do not have, in response to a supposed national emergency that does not exist. This was a power grab, and the court said so.
President Trump, your tariff regime was illegal, unfair, and detrimental to the American people. You also grossly misrepresented the facts to the American people by claiming that foreign countries were paying. They were not. American families paid.
Over the past year, roughly $140 billion in tariff revenue was collected at US ports. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Kiel Institute, and other independent research institutions reached the same conclusion, that the burden of the tariffs fell overwhelmingly on American importers, businesses, and consumers. Foreign exporters barely reduced their prices, so the tariffs were passed on to Americans and have shown up as higher prices for consumers and businesses.
President Trump, you asked Americans to believe that you stood with working people. Instead, you imposed illegal taxes on them and gave large tax cuts to the richest Americans.
During the past year, on average, American households paid roughly $1,000 or more. For families living paycheck to paycheck, that is not abstract. That is rent stretched to the breaking point. That is groceries rising in price while wages fail to keep up. The working-class Americans who believed your promises were the ones who bore the cost of this power grab.
Each claim you made in favor of the tariffs was unsound and proven to be so. You said that the tariffs would slash the trade deficit. This was wrong because the US trade deficits reflect the low US saving rate, and especially the large US budget deficits. In fact, the US goods deficit in 2025 was $1.241 trillion, worse than the 2024 deficit of $1.215 trillion. You said that you would restore manufacturing jobs. Yet employment in manufacturing in January 2026 was 12.590 million, compared with 12.673 million in January 2025, a decline of 83,000 jobs year over year.
At the same time, you championed and extended tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest households and large corporations. Independent studies have repeatedly shown that the largest permanent gains from those tax cuts flowed to the top of the income ladder. Your administration’s approach has effectively given tax relief for the rich, covered in part by regressive tariffs hitting the working class and poor. And much of your tax cuts are paid for by red ink, debts pushed into the future, that will be borne by today’s young people in later years.
Working families have paid more at the checkout counter. Wealthy households have received large tax cuts. And young Americans have been burdened with more debts.
And now comes insult added to injury. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made clear the administration’s position. Speaking at the Economic Club of Dallas, he said, “I got a feeling the American people won’t see it,” referring to the prospect of tariff refund checks. He instead dismissed refunds as “the ultimate corporate welfare,” arguing that any repayments would go to importers rather than consumers.
The White House and Congress can and should provide relief to American families who bore the costs of these illegal tariffs. The administration has the responsibility to design such relief. You took the money illegally; now you should return it.
Astoundingly, in response to the Supreme Court decision, you have just announced a new across-the-board 15% tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act, this time supposedly justified on emergency balance-of-payments grounds. Section 122 might possibly give you the temporary authority, for up to 150 days, to impose such a tariff in response to serious balance-of-payments difficulties. Here too, your authority is doubtful because the US is not in a balance-of-payments crisis. Yet even should the courts find that you have the authority, you should not use it.
A 15% across-the-board tariff will simply continue the same regressive tax on the American people that you illegally implemented with the claim of emergency powers. It would once again mean higher prices on food, clothing, electronics, building materials, and countless everyday essentials. It would once again fall hardest on working families who spend the largest share of their income on such goods.
An unlawful regressive tax cannot be remedied by replacing it with a possibly lawful and temporary regressive tax. It’s quite possible that the 15% tariff will be struck down too.
The United States needs real tax reform. Our tax code has become a distorted mess, shaped over decades by presidents of both parties to favor capital over labor, wealth over work, and obscurity over fairness. The tax code needs progressivity. It needs to close loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans and multinational corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, especially in an era when eleven Silicon Valley centibillionaires have $2.6 trillion in personal wealth.
Working Americans are not props in a political narrative. They are parents choosing between medical care and rent. They are families who were told someone else would pay, only to discover the higher prices in their own shopping carts.
President Trump, you asked Americans to believe that you stood with working people. Instead, you imposed illegal taxes on them and gave large tax cuts to the richest Americans. Now your Treasury secretary says the government will keep the money you took, and you have promised to continue to take this money in a different way.
Return the $140 billion that was taken under unlawful authority. Do not impose a new 15% tax on American households. Fix the tax code honestly and transparently through Congress.
The Constitution demands accountability. Justice demands restitution of the funds and an end to your tariff grab. The American people deserve better.
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Trump-GOP Law Slashes Amazon's Tax Bill by 87% as Company Fires 30,000 Workers, Profits Soar
"Congress made a choice: cut assistance for the most vulnerable to double down on a tax code already favoring dominant firms," said one progressive think tank.
Feb 06, 2026
The tax law that congressional Republicans and US President Donald Trump enacted last summer has proved to be a massive boon for Amazon, slashing the corporate behemoth's 2025 tax bill even as its profits surged and it moved ahead with mass layoffs that have cost 30,000 workers their jobs since October.
Citing a new securities filing, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Amazon's "current US taxes, an accounting measure of taxes incurred last year, declined to $1.2 billion from $9 billion" while the company's "pretax US profit increased by 44.5%, to $89.5 billion. On a cash basis, the company paid $2.8 billion in federal income taxes last year after paying more than $7 billion in each of the prior two years."
The 87% decline in Amazon's federal tax bill for 2025 was largely attributable to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's corporate-friendly depreciation tax breaks.
The new securities filing comes just days after Amazon confirmed it axed 16,000 corporate jobs as part of what's believed to be a sweeping effort to replace workers with robots and artificial intelligence models in the coming years.
The Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank, noted that the tax benefits that Amazon and other giant corporations are raking in "didn't come free."
"The same law slashed Medicaid and the [Affordable Care Act] and is now exacerbating our medical debt crisis," the organization wrote on social media. "Congress made a choice: cut assistance for the most vulnerable to double down on a tax code already favoring dominant firms."
In a statement on Friday, Amazon—founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos—said its dramatically lower tax bill "reflects... changes by Congress" purportedly aimed at encouraging "greater investment in the American economy, its innovation, and its workers."
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) noted Friday that Amazon is one of four companies that "have now disclosed that they collectively received $51 billion in federal tax breaks in 2025, much of that likely from the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that was signed into law by Trump over the summer."
"The annual financial reports recently released by Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Tesla disclose that these corporations collectively reported $315 billion in US profits for 2025, and collectively paid just 4.9% of that amount in federal corporate income taxes—with Tesla paying exactly zero," wrote ITEP's Matthew Gardner. "That amounts to a collective tax savings of $51 billion last year for these four giant multinational corporations, versus what they would have paid if they paid the full 21% federal corporate income tax rate."
" Tax cuts pushed through by the Trump administration last year and in 2017 have made it possible for the fastest-growing companies in the world to pay record-low federal income tax rates on their income," Gardner added. "The tax avoidance of these four companies alone blew a $51 billion hole in the federal budget last year, and this is likely just the tip of the iceberg."
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Trump Delivered 22% Boost to Billionaire Wealth in 2025, But Catastrophe for Working Class
"After a year in office, Trump and the GOP majority betrayed their promises to working people, instead serving billionaire elites and wealthy corporations," said the executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.
Jan 20, 2026
The first year of President Donald Trump's second White House term made abundantly clear who he and his Republican allies in Congress serve—and who they don't.
That's the argument of a report published Tuesday by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) marking the one-year anniversary of the start of the second Trump administration, which has so far delivered big for the billionaire class while shafting the working class.
"While American families struggle to pay the bills due to higher tariffs and cuts in public benefits, Trump’s billionaire cronies have never been wealthier," said ATF, noting that "billionaires bet big on Trump and Republicans in the 2024 elections, with just 30 MAGA billionaire families spending $1.4 billion to influence the outcome."
"Their investment seems to be paying off rapidly, with this clique’s collective wealth growing by $408 billion in 2025, an increase of 37.5% from the year prior," the group continued. "Billionaires across the country saw their collective wealth reach a record high of $8.2 trillion in the first year of the second Trump regime. Their total wealth increased from $6.7 billion, a 22% increase in 2025."
In the summer of 2025, Trump and congressional Republicans passed sprawling legislation extending massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, fueling their wealth surge. ATF noted Tuesday that "the top 1% of households alone will get $1 trillion from this tax package."
Meanwhile, in the same legislation, Trump and the GOP's launched an unprecedented assault on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance with cuts that are expected to leave millions without health insurance and food aid in the coming years and inflict significant damage on healthcare systems across the country.
The ATF report also points to the Trump-GOP refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that lapsed at the end of 2025, sending health insurance premiums skyrocketing for millions of people nationwide.
"After a year in office, Trump and the GOP majority betrayed their promises to working people, instead serving billionaire elites and wealthy corporations," David Kass, ATF's executive director, said in a statement. "Trump promised lower prices but enacted chaotic tariffs that spiked consumer costs, and also cut billions from SNAP and Medicaid while ballooning the deficit. He eliminated ACA tax credits, making healthcare unaffordable for millions—all to fund trillions in tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy and large corporations."
"With an affordability crisis and historic income inequality," Kass added, "Americans for Tax Fairness will oppose this administration's regressive economic policy."
Entering year two of Trump's second White House term, Republicans are signaling that they have no intention of changing course. Last week, the Republican Study Committee released its priorities for a possible second reconciliation bill—a list that includes repeal of the estate tax, a move that would benefit a small sliver of rich Americans.
"After a year of broken promises around affordability and control of government, this is what House Republicans have come up with: legislation that further enriches the richest of the rich at the expense of working Americans” Leor Tal, campaign director of the progressive advocacy coalition Unrig Our Economy.
“After the Republican tax law made the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in history," said Tal, "Republicans should stop raising costs on working families and, instead, focus on helping their constituents afford basic items like groceries and stop stripping even more Americans of vital services."
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