Rubbish Check
ABC News Business (Associated Press wire) · August 13, 2026 source

“White House says it’s losing $19B-$26B a year in revenue as countries dodge tariffs”

R4/ 10
Selective
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates the AP wire headline run by ABC News, claiming the White House "is losing $19B-$26B a year" to tariff dodging, a 4/10 because that figure is a midpoint estimate from a report whose own underlying transshipment estimate spans a nearly ninefold range, $34.2 billion to $303 billion, a detail buried well below the number in the headline.
The Verdict
Selective, not fabricated. The headline correctly attributes the claim to the White House rather than stating it as verified fact, which is the honest part. But it presents a precise-sounding $19B-$26B range as though it rests on solid ground, when the article itself later admits the report's core input, the dollar value of goods being transshipped, ranges from $34.2 billion to $303 billion, an enormous spread that the administration collapsed into a single "central figure" of $75 billion to generate the headline number.

What actually happened

The White House released a report on transshipping, the practice of routing exports through third countries to dodge U.S. tariffs, and estimated resulting federal revenue losses of $19 billion to $26 billion a year. The report specifically highlights that China responded to new tariffs in 2018 by sending their goods to other nations ranging from Mexico to Malaysia for packaging and limited assembly, a practice known as transshipping. Trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters on a conference call that China is laundering its exports through more than 40 countries, and said new trade frameworks would penalize partners who enable the practice.

Key facts

  • Headline figure: the Trump White House said in a new report on Thursday that countries are routing their exports through third countries to avoid U.S. tariffs, estimating that there are tax revenue losses of $19 billion to $26 billion annually.
  • The underlying input for that estimate is far shakier than the headline implies: the report includes a range of estimates for the scale of transshipments to avoid tariffs, citing government and private sector numbers to estimate roughly $34.2 billion to $303 billion of goods transshipped each year.
  • It used a central figure of $75 billion worth of goods being transshipped to estimate how much in tax revenues have been lost.
  • Timing: the report lands ahead of a planned September visit by Chinese Leader Xi Jinping, giving the administration a negotiating cudgel just as talks approach.
  • Context the headline omits entirely: America continues to import more than it exports to the rest of the world, but the trade imbalance so far this year at $371 billion is running about $189 billion lower that it did during the same period last year.

What to watch for

  • Watch whether Navarro's $19B-$26B figure gets independently modelled by economists outside the administration; his past tariff-revenue projections have drawn pushback from independent analysts.
  • Watch for the CBP AI transshipment-detection prototype Navarro mentioned; if it produces actual enforcement data, that will be the real test of whether the estimate holds up.
  • Watch how the September Xi visit shapes any revised transshipment numbers, since this report doubles as leverage ahead of that meeting.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
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