Trump Floats An All-Tariff Revenue Model

"WASHINGTON -- For a day, Donald Trump had Washington to himself.

The former president on Thursday exulted in praise from Republican lawmakers, met with top business leaders and bankers, batted around extreme policy ideas such as an all-tariff federal revenue system, and took shots at President Biden -- his rival, who was some 4,700 miles away in Italy for a summit with Western allies.

"We're a declining nation. We're a nation that is being laughed at all over the world," Trump declared after gathering with senators not far from the Capitol. "We're going to turn it around, we're going to turn it around fast. The polls are looking like they're very strongly for us."

It was the kind of bravado and showmanship that largely has been missing from Washington since Biden knocked Trump out of the White House nearly four years ago.

But while Biden was enjoying a successful meeting of the Group of Seven major advanced economies overseas, his re-election campaign back home is facing a threat from Trump. Many national and state polls show Trump leading Biden in a tight race.

Trump and his fellow Republicans were upbeat, even giddy, telling jokes, talking strategy and envisioning victory in November. Senators presented Trump, who turns 78 on Friday, with a cake that had two sets of numbered candles on it -- 45 and 47 -- referencing that Trump would be both the 45th and the 47th president if elected again.

Earlier in the day, Trump met with Republican House members, and he also sat down with the influential Business Roundtable which represents chief executive officers of some of the country's biggest employers. He told the group of CEOs that, if he were re-elected president, he would seek to push the corporate tax rate down to 20% from 21%, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

The mood belied a darker backdrop.

It was Trump's first visit to Capitol Hill since his supporters mobbed the Capitol complex on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to halt certification of Biden's victory in the Electoral College. On Thursday, as some protested Trump's visit, one man held a "FAILED COUP" sign.

And it followed his conviction by a Manhattan jury on 34 felony counts for falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.

"Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), the former House Speaker. "Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy. But make no mistake -- Trump has already cemented his legacy of shame in our hallowed halls."

Many Republicans in Congress, in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attacks, might have agreed with Pelosi. But there was perhaps no greater sign of Trump's comeback within his party than his encounter Thursday with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a trusted partner turned critic of the former president following Jan. 6. That rift appeared behind them as McConnell showed up Thursday, shaking hands and fist-bumping Trump. "We had a really positive meeting," the Kentucky senator said. "He got a lot of standing ovations."

Trump floated the idea of an all-tariff federal revenue system, large enough to replace the income tax, during a morning session with the House GOP, according to a GOP lawmaker in attendance.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee has consistently supported higher tariffs as a way to protect domestic industries. He has long backed income-tax cuts, including extensions of the ones he signed in 2017.

An all-tariff approach would combine the two stances and take them to the extreme, reversing more than 100 years of economic policy that encourages free trade and requires higher-income households to pay higher tax rates than the middle class. Such a return to 19th-century fiscal policy could amount to a tax cut for high-income people and, effectively, a tax increase on consumers, who would pay tariffs passed along to them in prices.

Trump also brought up a proposal he recently aired in Nevada, to eliminate taxes on workers' tips. That could create a gap in the income tax and encourage more requests for tips. Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.), who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, said he liked the idea because tips could be considered more like gifts than income.

Trump spoke to members of the Business Roundtable, including chief executives of the nation's largest banks. Expected to be in attendance were JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, Bank of America's Brian Moynihan, Citigroup's Jane Fraser and Wells Fargo's Charlie Scharf, according to people familiar with their schedules.

Dimon and Trump have sparred publicly including earlier this year, after Dimon tried to drum up support for Nikki Haley, leading Trump to call the banker a "highly overrated globalist."

 But Dimon has also said Trump deserved some credit for policies and that he would be prepared to work with him again, as he would any president. Both JPMorgan and Citigroup had paused donations to the congressional representatives who objected to the 2020 election results amid the Jan. 6 riot.

The Trump campaign said in a statement that the meetings with lawmakers would be focused on how Republicans can work together, on policies aimed at "protecting Social Security and Medicare, securing the southern border, and cutting taxes for hardworking families to bring back the booming economy from President Trump's first term."

Trump later held a midday session with Senate Republicans at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP's Senate campaign arm, a few blocks from the Capitol building.

Trump's audience throughout the day included a handful of lawmakers reportedly under consideration by Trump for the vice-presidential slot, including Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio, Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina and Reps. Byron Donalds of Florida and Elise Stefanik of New York. During the meeting with the senators, Trump singled them out but didn't tip his hand how the search was going." [1]

Making things in America might become profitable again. Consumers would pay no tax at all buying American. Consumers would be happy too. 19-th century does not sound as bad as written up here. Some people who profit from work of Chinese might not be very happy. These people put their eggs in one basket of  Nikki Halley already. They lost. Let's move on. Biden? Biden will parrot this exact idea next week. This is what Biden always does.

1. U.S. News: Trump Floats An All-Tariff Revenue Model. Wise, Lindsay; Katy Stech Ferek;
Rubin, Richard.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 14 June 2024: A.4.