For a year the tariffs have been described as a machine that prints money - billions coming in, a windfall for the Treasury, a down payment on the national debt. The Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Review for June 2026 reports what the machine actually did last month, and it ran backward.
In June, net customs duties were negative [2]. The Treasury paid out more in tariff refunds than it took in on new tariffs. The refunds trace to the Supreme Court's February 2026 ruling against the tariffs; once the Court said the money should not have been collected, it started going back, and in June the outflow beat the inflow [2]. Net tariff revenue, for the month, was less than zero.
The monthly ledger reflects it. The federal government ran a $126 billion deficit in June 2026, against a $27 billion surplus in June 2025 - a swing of more than $150 billion [1]. Revenues came in $32 billion below the prior June, a drop the CBO attributes largely to the fall in net customs collections after the ruling, while outlays rose $122 billion [1].
Data
| June 2025 | 27$B |
|---|---|
| June 2026 | -126$B |
The annual picture is the one the windfall story most needs to avoid. Through the first nine months of fiscal 2026 the deficit reached $1.4 trillion - about $35 billion more than the same stretch last year, which means this year's deficit has now overtaken last year's rather than shrinking beneath it [1][3]. Over the trailing 12 months, the government borrowed $1.8 trillion [2].
Precision is owed here, because the honest version is strong enough without stretching. Over the full nine months, customs duties are still a net increase year over year - the tariffs did collect real money before February [3]. It is June alone, on the refunds, that went negative. That is the fact worth carrying: not that tariffs never raised a dollar, but that the government spent June handing dollars back, while the deficit they were supposed to shrink grew past where it stood a year ago [1][2][3].
