this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Import tariffs cannot possibly replace income tax. It's not even vaguely possible. A 25% import tariff on literally everything would mean that Americans would have to import (AFTER the reduction in demand for imported products caused by tariffs) 4 times the amount the US government takes in income taxes. The US government gets on the order of 4 Trillion dollars in income tax. So Americans would have to import 16T total DESPITE the tariffs to make this up.
There is simply no world in which this works.
Plus the goal of using tariffs to eliminate the income tax is directly counter to the goal of reducing trade deficits and bringing back manufacturing, since to keep the income tax eliminated you need US consumers to continue importing and paying the fucking tariffs.
So not only does the math not math, if the tariffs succeeded at one of their stated goals they would necessarily fail at the other.
Okay, but what if the tariffs were higher? Say, 200%? Then we would only have to import half our entire government budget worth of goods!