President Trump and his officials have touted his sweeping tariff actions as tools to not only ensure fairer trade internationally, but also pay down the federal government’s $36 trillion-plus debt.

As Trump faces pressure from both sides of the aisle over his trade plan, he and officials have partly defended his tariff actions as a key revenue-raiser that can help tackle the nation’s debt and reduce taxes.

But experts say they wouldn’t bet on Trump’s tariff actions as an answer to the nation’s debt problems, and point to conflicting goals from the administration on trade.

“You see a lot of different explanations for the purpose of the tariffs, and one of the central problems is that those different explanations are in conflict with each other, if not, flatly contradictory,” Ben Page, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said in an interview.

While Page and other experts agree that tariffs can help raise revenue, he also pointed to hopes from some Republicans that Trump’s tariffs plans could lead to fairer trade deals and more manufacturing jobs.

“If you do those negotiations, then clearly you’re not going to raise the revenue, because the tariffs will finally go away as part of the negotiations,” Page argued. He also said the goal of raising revenue “is a little bit in tension” with efforts to help boost manufacturing, noting “in order to raise revenue, you still have to have a bunch of imports coming in.”

“I don’t think there's any question that tariffs can raise revenue. It’s a question of how much they can raise, and at what cost,” he said.

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