Trump's idea to replace income taxes with tariffs is a "sure way" to hurt the poor and help the rich

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday proposed a new solution to getting rid of the U.S. income tax: an “all tariff policy," the preemptive Republican nominee told GOP lawmakers, according to CNBC. In the meeting, Trump's first visit back to Capitol Hill since Jan 6, 2021, Trump attended a Republican "pep talk" in which he reiterated his belief that import taxes could replace those on income, a policy that reduce the tax burden on wealthy Americans while jacking up prices paid by consumers. To bring tariff revenues even close to income tax levels would require a dramatic spike in import taxes, much higher than Trump’s proposed 10%. “Broadly substituting tariffs for income tax is a sure way to hit hard low and middle-income Americans and reward top,” David Kamin, a tax policy expert at New York University School of Law, wrote on X. Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and a Nobel Prize winner in economics, did some quick math and posted on X that a "first-pass estimate" suggests Trump's proposal "would require an *average* tariff rate of 133 percent.” The Biden administration wasted no time in attacking Trump’s embrace of inflationary tariffs.