Social Security has served as a financial cornerstone for American retirees for nearly nine decades, with Gallup surveys showing up to 90% of retirees rely on monthly payments to cover basic living expenses.
The program’s financial outlook has been deteriorating since the mid-1980s, with the Social Security Board of Trustees projecting a $29.3 trillion unfunded obligation through the year 2100.
The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund, which pays retired workers and survivor beneficiaries, is forecast to exhaust its asset reserves by the fourth quarter of 2032.
Once those reserves are depleted, sweeping benefit cuts of up to 22% are expected to hit more than 71 million traditional Social Security beneficiaries across the country.
Three of President Donald Trump’s policies are now accelerating that timeline in ways that analysts say could shift the depletion date even further forward.
Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, first introduced in April 2025, boosted prices in the goods sector and contributed to a higher-than-expected Social Security cost-of-living adjustment of 2.8% for 2026.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated those tariffs in February 2026, a new round of tariffs ranging from 10% to 12.5% on more than 80 countries took effect last month, adding fresh inflationary pressure to consumer prices.
The Trump-led Iran war is also expected to produce a significant Social Security “Trump bump” in 2027, after Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz triggered the largest energy supply disruption in modern history.
According to The Senior Citizens League, Social Security’s 2027 COLA is pacing at 3.8%, while independent analyst Mary Johnson projects a 3.7% figure, both well above the modest estimates the Trustees use in their long-term financial models.
Larger COLAs mean larger benefit payouts, which drain the OASI’s asset reserves faster and pull the depletion deadline closer to the present.
The third policy factor is Trump’s flagship tax and spending law, widely referred to as the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which provides temporary tax deductions on tips, overtime pay, and an extra standard deduction for seniors aged 65 and older through 2028.
These provisions reduce the pool of earned income subject to the 12.4% payroll tax, which accounted for more than 91% of Social Security’s total income in 2025.
In August 2025, the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Actuary published a 10-year projection in response to a request from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), estimating the law would increase program costs by $168.6 billion from 2025 through 2034.
That same analysis found the Big, Beautiful Bill would shorten the timeline to the depletion of the OASI’s asset reserves by three months on its own.
Combined with outsize COLAs driven by tariffs and the Iran war, the cumulative drag on Social Security’s finances represents a compounding threat to the long-term stability of America’s most relied-upon retirement program.
