Memories of the 28th Century

We don't often thing about taxes on imports in the country. Import tariffs used to be the main source of income for the federal government, but federal; expenditures became so large that they couldn't be covered by income tariffs. Income taxes used to be greatly restricted, and they were only paid by rich people. I remember going into the kitchen, when I was a child, and I heard my father say, “But only rich people pay that.” And my mother replied, “I guess that means that we are rich.”
I didn't know that they were talking about income tax, but I figured that out later. There has been plenty of inflation since then, so even lower middle income people make more than $50,000 a year now, and inflation is increasing. Trump wants the income tax to be replaced with higher import taxes, and he probably will pay less in taxes than he would now, if he bothered paying income taxes, but for many people and some corporations it would result in higher taxes, but the taxes would be in little bites, so they wouldn't notice it immediately. It also would mean that many federal expenditures would have to be eliminated; not that that would be bad, but there are practical limits.
The total value of imports to the United States in 2023 was $3.966 trillion, https://www.macrotrends.net/global-m...states/imports . The total budget of the federal government spent $6.75 trillion in 2022. That makes it difficult for import tariffs to pay the budget, unless the rate would be almost 170%, which would discourage imports.
By contrast, Taxpayers reported more than $14.7 trillion in AGI on 153.5 million tax returns in 2021. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/f...tax-data-2024/ This would indicate that a personal tax rate of abut 45% would cover expenses, and that doessn't include corporate income tax and various related items.

I am not a fan of income taxes, and I think that trimming federal expenditures would be a wonderful thing, but let's be reasonable. It isn't likely that federal expenses will be cut in half, which is about what would be required for a tariff rate under 100% to pay for. It would be easy to cut the federal budget by two trillion, and that would be good for everyone, except the federal employees who lost their jobs. If we kept the income tax where it is and cut those $2 trillion, then we would be able to start reducing the deficit, and that would lead to lower inflation.

The national debt ($35.94 Trillion) is the total amount of outstanding borrowing by the U.S. Federal Government accumulated over the nation’s history. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/amer...national-debt/ If we used thaoe $2 trillion per year that the feds would not be spending to reduce, then the national debt would be eliminated in less than 18 years. That would mean that the people would be able to keep their money, and it means that interest nrates would be lower, maybe> and the U.S. Dollar would be much more valuable, which would make imported goods less expensive.
That is a very general description of how to improve the economy and eliminate the debt, but the devil is in the details. A deflationary period would change the financial sector of the economy tremendously, and the exact results can't be predicted. But we can be certain that after the debt was eliminated and the currency was stable, inflation would be gone, and people and businesses would be in better financial positions, but high tariffs are not the way to get there; cutting federal exenditures is the way to get there.

It might also be a good idea to return to Constitutional money. The U.S. Constitution specifies that the federal government can only emit money that is metal. They knew how paper money could be manipulated, and they were right. Eliminating 250 years of inflation would be beautiful. We could bring back the days when a dollar a day was good pay. But import trriffs are not a significant part of the process. The Great Depression of the 1930's was an example of what happens when trade wars are carried on too long, and punative tariffs were part of that trade war. If people think there is something wrong with having goods produced in China, then they should stop buying things made there.
Rebuilding an economy takes a long time, and it may not even be effective, because something as complicated as a national economy takes its own direction. It would be possible to have a stable currency, but people would use that as they wished.