Among the reciprocal tariff levels Trump announced:
China: 34%
European Union: 20%
South Korea: 25%
India: 26%
Vietnam: 46%
Taiwan: 32%
Japan: 24%
Thailand: 36%
Switzerland: 31%
Indonesia: 32%
Malaysia: 24%
Cambodia: 49%
United Kingdom: 10%
Rest of the world: 10%
I’m not sure that that’s necessarily wrong. Excise taxes, import duties, etc. have been around for millennia. In the US, the income tax has only been around since the Civil War (which it was created to pay for).
Taxes on citizens have always been used to run the government those citizens live under. Doesn’t matter if it’s base on income or something else.
The only way to make other countries pay for your government to operate is to invade them and steal all of their resources… like Hitler did.
It’s really not worth trying to make sense of anything this guy says. He is the definition of a bullshitter.
Why would someone run a business exporting goods into a country if they couldn’t charge more than the cost of duties, labor, and materials for the goods?
Don’t forget land sales tax which happened a lot after the Louisiana Purchase and the Gold Rush.