Former President Donald Trump joined comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan last week on his show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” discussing numerous topics in the almost three-hour sit-down, including his idea to replace federal income tax with tariffs.
The former president has been hammering the idea of implementing tariffs on items produced outside of the United States should he return to office next January.
During his sit down with Rogan, Trump continued to push his idea of tariffs, even saying he would consider eliminating federal income tax in lieu of the tariffs.
“Yeah, sure. But why not?” Trump said. “Because — ready — our country was the richest in the, relatively, in the 1880s and 1890s, a president who was assassinated named McKinley. He was the tariff king. He spoke beautifully of tariffs. His language was really beautiful. We will not allow the enemy to come in and take our jobs and take our factories and take our workers and take our families unless they pay a big price, and the big price is tariffs. And he’d speak like that, but he was right. And then around, in the early 1900s, they switched over, stupidly, frankly, to an income tax.”
Federal income tax was first put in place during the Civil War in 1861 as a flat tax before it was later repealed in 1872. With the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913 and the Passage of the 1913 Revenue Act, income tax was reinstalled, and tax revenue brackets were created.
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration,” the 16th Amendment says.
The 16th Amendment was passed to address a Supreme Court ruling from 1895, Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.,which invalidated federal income tax. After the ruling, it was all but impossible for Congress to enact a nationwide income tax.
Federal income tax is used to support national defense, veterans and foreign affairs, social programs, community development, law enforcement, and interest on the national debt, according to the IRS.
So, as a replacement for this form of revenue, Trump has proposed placing a 20% tariff on all imports from all countries across the board. This would also include an even higher rate for Chinese imports.
While Trump says this would boost the economy and be enough to replace income tax, experts have said the opposite.
“It would not be possible to raise tariffs rates high enough to cover anywhere close to that amount [of income tax revenue], as imports would decline as the tariff rates increased,” Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, told CNBC earlier this month.
Trump touched on several other topics during his appearance on Rogan, including the assassination attempts, UFOs, and other stories from his rallies, interviews, and life.