Setting aside the sheer logistical impossibility of financing the federal government through tariffs alone, it is unclear what exactly would be achieved.
I almost say do it, triple-double-multiplier tariff added on everything! From water to bathroom visits to minutes of watched television, sodas to butter, corn to newspapers, even icecubes must not escape tariffs to make the country great again…
Then I give it 6 months, after which I suspect personal hells will open up…
Say, what about sales taxes eh? Seems those remain, hmm, so it’s actually a tariff on top of taxes?
Sales taxes are state/city level taxes, there are no federal sales taxes (yet). But he is essentially using the tariffs as a way to enact sales taxes without really adding a sales tax.
With the tariffs he can add a massive tax on the people which Republicans would normally be very much against, but he can say it is about being pro American and most of them forget about all of the extra money they will be paying.
This shifts the tax burden further onto middle/lower income homes and lets him give more income tax cuts to higher earners without increasing the deficit so much that congress would turn on him.
The Republicans have actually been talking about this for a long time they called it the “fair tax”. Their fair tax plan was basically a flat ~23% federal sales tax that would replace income tax, but they could never get their base behind it.
Someone on Trump’s team realized that we buy so much from other countries that he could accomplish the same thing the fair tax aimed to do via tariffs while selling them to his party as “buy American”. His lower/middle income base eats that up, and his campaign donors see it as killing their overseas competition.
If it weren’t for the other countries reciprocating it would have been a good plan for them.
I almost say do it, triple-double-multiplier tariff added on everything! From water to bathroom visits to minutes of watched television, sodas to butter, corn to newspapers, even icecubes must not escape tariffs to make the country great again…
Then I give it 6 months, after which I suspect personal hells will open up…
Say, what about sales taxes eh? Seems those remain, hmm, so it’s actually a tariff on top of taxes?
Sales taxes are state/city level taxes, there are no federal sales taxes (yet). But he is essentially using the tariffs as a way to enact sales taxes without really adding a sales tax.
With the tariffs he can add a massive tax on the people which Republicans would normally be very much against, but he can say it is about being pro American and most of them forget about all of the extra money they will be paying.
This shifts the tax burden further onto middle/lower income homes and lets him give more income tax cuts to higher earners without increasing the deficit so much that congress would turn on him.
The Republicans have actually been talking about this for a long time they called it the “fair tax”. Their fair tax plan was basically a flat ~23% federal sales tax that would replace income tax, but they could never get their base behind it.
Someone on Trump’s team realized that we buy so much from other countries that he could accomplish the same thing the fair tax aimed to do via tariffs while selling them to his party as “buy American”. His lower/middle income base eats that up, and his campaign donors see it as killing their overseas competition.
If it weren’t for the other countries reciprocating it would have been a good plan for them.
Many other countries have them at the national level too.