The year is 2024, not 1900.

Replacing income taxes with tariffs is not a serious proposal, and never was.

Donald Trump has no filter between his brain and his mouth, so he often says things off the cuff. Republicans would do well to be discerning about what to defend, what to promote, and what to ignore. Unfortunately, we have a Republican Party filled with sycophants who love to praise Trump at every opportunity, taking what should be considered unserious proposals and explaining that ackchyually, Trump is correct. The most recent example is Trump's proposal to eliminate all income taxes and replace them with tariffs, a mathematical impossibility that should have been ignored.

First, some hard numbers. According to the Treasury Department, 51.73% of all federal government revenue is from income taxes. 34.28% is from payroll taxes, and 9.47% is from corporate taxes. Tariffs make up 1.5% of total federal revenue. In order to replace all existing federal revenue with tariffs, the tax rate would have to be so enormous that it would basically end all imports from other countries. Now take a look at your clothing, smartphone, television and many other things around your house. Where are they made? Not in the United States.

Some would argue that we would make up for it by drastically increasing domestic production and moving manufacturing back to the United States. That would make everything more expensive, but let's assume the impact on consumers is a net zero between wage growth and price growth. The economic growth would not come anywhere near close to making up the loss of tax revenue. The economic growth would not and could not produce an increase in income taxes as the income tax would not exist at all under Trump's proposal. It does not matter that "we used to do it that way" because that is not how the modern world operates.

The only way this would work is if we slash the federal government to almost nothing. We would have the military and that is about all. We would have no Social Security, no infrastructure spending, no welfare benefits, and nothing else. We would have to eliminate almost the entire federal workforce. Even then, we would struggle to maintain a modern military on the very limited revenue we would take in from extremely high tariffs. Plus, we still have an absolutely enormous national debt to pay back with those limited revenues.

Yes, drastically cutting the federal government is a good idea, and much of what the federal government does is not explicitly allowed under the U.S. Constitution. The Tenth Amendment actually does exist, and it reserves much of the authority gobbled up by Washington to the sovereign states. But is Donald Trump really going to be the guy who leads the charge on moving us back to a federal government that looks like it did in 1900? Remember, Trump is a lifelong New York City liberal who viciously attacked other Republicans who wanted to reform Social Security.

Replacing income taxes with tariffs is not a serious proposal, and never was. Even if it gets out of the House of Representatives, it has zero chance of passing the U.S. Senate. There is no viable way to replace the lost revenue. This was the result of Trump mouthing off without discipline or focus. Trump's fanbase would have been better off ignoring it and focusing on what other aspects of Trump's agenda can be promoted effectively. But that does not puff up the Great Orange Ego, does it?