Did U.S. President Donald Trump write on social media that he would increase tariffs on China for every 1,000 "likes" he gets? No, that's not true: The viral image of the supposed screenshot of his account was fake. The promise to increase levies on China based on likes did not appear on Trump's social media, as of this writing.
The claim originated from a post (archived here) published on X on April 11, 2025. It opened with a single laughing emoji:
😂
The post shared what appeared to be a screenshot of Donald Trump's account on social media that read:
Every 1,000 likes I'll make the tariffs on China bigger.
This is what it looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot by Lead Stories)
The account's name, profile picture and checkmark color in the shared image matched those on Trump's profile on Truth Social (archived here), but there were no traces of the purported post.
A Google search across his account on Truth Social for the precise wording of the post in question did not produce any matches:
(Source: Google screenshot by Lead Stories)
A search across the archived version of Trump's account did not show any results, either:
(Source: Trumpstruth.org screenshot by Lead Stories)
A search across Google News did not lead to any credible media reports about the purported promise to increase tariffs on China based on "likes".
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Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Donald Trump are here.
