Watch: Trump claims tariff revenue will cover tax refunds and will eventually eliminate income tax

President Donald Trump said at his Cabinet meeting that next year he will “give back tariff refunds because we got trillions of dollars.”

Watch in the player above.

It’s not clear how that would work or whether Trump will be able to do so without exacerbating the national debt, which he claims his tariffs will also reduce.

The Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that the US government has collected $258.1 billion in tariffs so far this year. This revenue from import taxes is much higher than the $90 billion collected at this time last year. But it’s not trillions, and it’s not clear how Trump can recover the taxes he unilaterally imposed by declaring an economic emergency.

The annual budget deficit for the past fiscal year was $1.8 trillion, much higher than Trump’s tariff revenues.

He watches: Trump floats tariff ‘dividends’ for Americans, but experts question the calculations

However, Trump said he is counting on tariffs replacing income taxes, so much so that “at some point in the not-so-distant future, you won’t even have to pay income tax.”