President-elect Trump and Republican lawmakers are gearing up to push a massive tax-cut bill through Congress next year but will face pressure to find ways to cover the costs.

While Trump and many of his GOP colleagues argue that well-crafted tax cuts pay for themselves, a vocal band of fiscal hawks within the party are holding out for serious spending cuts.

The $36 trillion federal debt is a point of contention for many Republicans now as they start to consider a top-line budget reconciliation number, a key step toward advancing an eventual tax cut package.

Here’s a look at ways Republicans could consider paying for their tax cuts.

Tariffs

Trump’s campaign pitch for the economy centered on tariffs, a key pillar of his economic agenda during his first administration.

He proposed general tariffs at rates of 10 percent and 20 percent on imported goods, as well as a 60 percent tariff on products specifically from China, one of the U.S.’s main trading partners.

According to one estimate by the conservative Tax Foundation, a 10 percent general tariff would raise $300 billion annually in federal revenues.

Tariffs are levied on importers, who can respond in various ways.

They can stop importing the good unless the exporter lowers their price; they can hold margins steady and pass a price increase along to a retailer; they can take a hit on margins and keep prices the same; they can also order extra goods in advance of the tariff and increase their inventories, as businesses have already been doing.

Prices in the consumer price index didn’t notably increase in 2018 following the first tranche of Trump tariffs, and certainly nowhere close to the scale of the postpandemic inflation.

There is conflicting research on whether consumers bore the brunt of the first round of Trump tariffs.

One study out of the Federal Reserve of New York and Columbia University found tariffs “were almost completely passed through........

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