Tariffs are a tax that arrives at the border and exits at the register: customs duties are shown the day they are banked, the trade balance and import/export prices show what they act on (import prices lead goods CPI), and the live counters spread the latest Treasury figures across the clock — interest on the debt per second, the debt itself, tariff revenue — stated plainly as a linear interpolation between publishes. Source: Treasury FiscalData (Daily Treasury Statement, Debt to the Penny, Interest Expense), BEA and BLS via FRED — keyless, public, re-checkable.
Three Treasury ledgers the CPI never shows: what tariffs actually collect, what the federal debt costs to carry, and the trade flows tariffs act on. All of it is read from Treasury FiscalData — the Daily Treasury Statement, Debt to the Penny and the monthly Interest Expense report — and from the BEA and BLS via FRED. Nothing on this page feeds the Gauge; it is the fiscal context around it.
Customs duties are deposited daily and shown the day they are banked: $310 million on October 15, 2026, a 21-day average of $1,265 million a day, and $26.6 billion over the 30 days from September 16, 2026 to October 15, 2026 against $31.8 billion in the same 30 days a year earlier (-16%). The daily series runs from January 2, 2018. A tariff is a tax paid at the border by the importer; how much of it reaches shelf prices is what the goods components of the gap decomposition watch for, and import prices are the first place it shows.
Total public debt outstanding was $40.39 trillion on October 15, 2026, up $2.45 trillion from a year earlier. Interest on the debt: $1,360 billion over the trailing twelve months (October 2025 to September 2026), +11.5% against $1,220 billion in the twelve months before. The latest month, September 2026, was $92.6 billion (+1.4% year over year); fiscal 2026 to date, 12 months from October 2025, $1,360 billion. Spread evenly across the clock the twelve-month total is about $43,138 of interest every second — the rate the page's live counter ticks at, stated plainly as a linear interpolation between Treasury publishes rather than a measurement. Interest expense rises with both the stock of debt and the rate at which maturing Treasuries are refinanced, so it lags the Fed's policy rate by the average maturity of the debt.
The goods-and-services trade balance was −$105.6 billion in August 2026; a wider deficit subtracts from GDP through net exports even when it reflects strong domestic demand. The BLS import price index was 152.2 (September 2026, +8.1% year over year) and the export price index 170.8 (+11.6%). Import prices lead goods CPI: a tariff or a weaker dollar raises what the US pays abroad first, and goods inflation follows with a lag of a few months — the pipeline page places the index in that chain.
Reading the three together: rising customs receipts with rising import prices is a tariff being passed through; rising receipts with flat import prices is the importer absorbing it. The Gauge (3.45%) reads the shelf end of that chain daily.