

That seems convoluted but also as stated it wouldn’t be a wash.
A deduction means pretend that portion of income never existed and the taxable portion of it is not charged.
Then generally the deduction has to be above the standard deduction to make sense to use, and the standard deduction is just so high nowadays.
So if you claimed a hypothetical deduction of 1,000, then you reduce your tax burden by only 200 or so, assuming you otherwise had like 20 some odd thousand in deductions to get you close to the standard deduction.
The only way it would be a wash is if it were a refundable tax credit with no qualifications, and that almost never happens for anything. I could imagine a non refundable credit that would make it a wash for anyone with sufficient tax liability.
However, this would make the tariffs an utterly pointless needless complication, needing a whole lot more accounting by sellers and consumers just to get to a similar and simpler position of not doing the tariffs in the first place.
I think he at least roughly understands the economic implications, he just doesn’t care. He’ll just crack to the rhetoric, blame everyone else for the problems, and assume his fan base will eat up every word and let him continue.
Falling that, he just goes all in on ignoring elections and count upon the system to let him do that like it’s a woman with a pussy to grab.