On Monday, President Donald Trump made a suggestion that might be the single greatest idea he’s ever had, and given how many of those he’s been cranking out lately, that’s really saying something. The president said that tariffs on adversarial nations could, eventually, replace the income tax.
And at that moment, the clouds parted across the heavens and bright rays of sunshine splashed down on America, bathing her in the golden light of economic freedom.
During an interview with Rachel Campos-Duffy, a correspondent with Fox News, Trump stated that if current tariffs are successful in rebalancing global trade to be of benefit of America, he might decide to collect revenue by that route instead of robbing people’s pocketbooks via the Internal Revenue Service.
“There is a chance that the money from tariffs could be so great that it would replace [the income tax],” Trump told Campos-Duffy.
“Between 1870 and 1913, tariffs on other nations’ imports were the only form of revenue collected by the U.S. government, Trump explained. It wasn’t until 1913 and the ratification of the 16th Amendment that a permanent income tax was introduced; at the time, less than 1% of Americans had to pay it, according to Investopedia,” Trending Politics News reported.
The president then said that those early years of our country was “when our nation was the richest.”
The Fox News journalist later stated that the president “loved the question” seemingly recognizing how appealing the idea of shifting half of the revenue collection to run our government off the backs of Americans and onto other nations.
“He’s seeing this as another form of revenue. In fact, he talked about just how much revenue was coming into the country… This is something I think he’s really committed to doing,” she went on to say. “How amazing would that be?”
The average federal income tax rate was 14.9% in 2021, the latest year in which data is available, according to the Tax Foundation. The top 1% of earners pay nearly 46% of all federal incomes taxes while the top 50% of earners account for nearly all of the revenue brought in by the government.
A whiplash of tariff adjustments has been the modus operandi of the Trump administration since “Liberation Day” on April 2nd, the start of historically high tariffs on countries around the globe. President Trump later rescinded many of those astronomical figures after claiming that upwards of 70 countries have approached the U.S. about “making a deal” to renegotiate their own tariffs on U.S. goods.
China is taking the hardest hit with tariffs on all goods sitting at 125 percent, though the president revealed he may have a little mercy and will exempt some consumer electronics and the critical parts for U.S. supercomputing and A.I. capabilities from the massive economic smackdown he delivered on the Red Dragon.
And this isn’t the first time that Trump has put forth the idea of allowing Americans to keep more of their hard earned money instead of the government taking it and essentially lining other politicians pockets with it, under the disguise of programs to benefit society, by changing the country’s priorities.
The Department of Government Efficiency has been taking a chainsaw to federal spending and the money saved from this cost cutting could end up as “DOGE Dividends,” check that would be sent out to qualifying Americans.
“Could be a lot. I mean, if it’s twenty percent, we could give back a lot of money to the taxpayer,” the president responded when asked how much it could mean for the average American family, going on to add a DOGE dividend would “give an incentive for the taxpayer to go out and report things to use where we can save money.”
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