Can Tariffs Replace Income Taxes?
We need to deal in reality instead of wishful thinking.
Can tariffs replace income taxes paid by Americans earning an income under $200,000 annually, as President Trump has suggested?
We seem to have entered a new world in 2025, or rather, reincarnated an older America whose tax receipts were heavily built on tariff payments. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recently stated that tariffs could replace income taxes paid by Americans making up to $150,000 per year.
And certain economic nationalists have urged that there is a vital causal connection here worth recalling in an “American system” of tariffs and protectionism, and the growth of American industry. They argue that America’s Gilded Age wasn’t regressive economically; in fact, the country exploded in growth, commerce and inventions.
Economic Dynamism
The Price of Stagnation: Britain’s Retreat from Dynamism
We face a basic issue: we do not let cities or communities grow or die.
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London and the Architecture of Creative Growth
Preserving London's creative dynamism will require humility from policymakers and a commitment to keeping the city liveable.
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The New Frontier of Capital: What SpaceX’s IPO Tells Us About American Capital Markets
The ultimate trajectory of SpaceX remains uncertain, a reflection of the inherent nature of progress at the frontier rather than a flaw in the system that produced it.
Chicago’s “Disappearing Middle Class” Can Be Found in Its Proliferating Upper Middle-Class Neighborhoods
The middle class has not been hollowed out; rather, the overall decline stems from the net movement of families upward into the upper-middle class.
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Is Economics a Failure?
Rather than ending with “economics is broken,” Alexander Rosenberg’s deliberately provocative book 'Blunt Instrument' argues that “economics is useful for a different reason than economists often say.” That is a serious and worthwhile thesis.
Locke, Meet Claude
The concern is not regulation per se. It is a regulation that outruns its justification by arriving before the evidence, foreclosing the technology before its benefits are understood, and insulating the powerful from competition that would otherwise discipline them. That is the pattern worth resisting.
