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 Causal Effect of News on Inflation Expectations
This paper studies the response of household inflation expectations to television news coverage of inflation.
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The Rise of Inflation Targeting
This paper discusses the interactions between politics and economic ideas leading to the adoption of inflation targeting in the United States.
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Why Can't the Middle Class Invest Like Mitt Romney?
Why can’t middle-income Americans pay effectively no taxes on investments like the wealthy do?
The Revenge of the Supply-Siders
Trump would do well to heed his supply-side advisers again and avoid the populist Keynesian shortcuts of stimulus checks or easy money.
