Former President Donald Trump continues running the most issue-focused campaign our nation has ever seen. You would not know it if you followed only the mainstream media echo chambers, but the truth is that our 45th president has been rolling out a detailed and bold policy agenda for over a year.
His recent focus has been on tax reform, and not the type of tax reform we saw during President George W. Bush’s administration or even the first Trump administration. Today’s proposals are at least as significant as President Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts of the 1980s and arguably the most important and boldest tax-reform proposals in a century.
The tax code, federal-government revenue plans and market signals reflected our national policy priorities, values, and principles in the early twentieth century. They incentivized hard work, ingenuity, self-discipline and self-reliance, prioritizing community support oriented at the local level of government through tight-knit communities and strong families. The dichotomy between what we used to be and what we have become is not a new development and was best articulated by the late radio commentator Paul Harvey in his 1965 address, “Freedom to Chains.”
Before the 1913 ratification of the 16th Amendment, which introduced the slippery slope of the income tax, the federal government primarily funded itself through tariffs. Even after World War I, tariffs were briefly the federal government’s primary revenue source. Trump’s proposal for a universal tariff set at 10% is not just a natural extension of his protectionist first-term agenda; it is the first genuinely protectionist, pro-tariff proposal from an American president in decades. It shows America and the world that Trump is a different type of Republican. On actual policy matters, it has proven that he is a more popular Republican brand as well.
The universal tariff will help our national industrial base across the board, encourage the reshoring of jobs and reindustrialization of the country, and lead to a structural change that will fundamentally return American society to this principle: eliminating the income tax. Phasing out the income tax and replacing it with tariffs on imports gets us back to the economy that shot to the top of the world at the turn of the 20th century. Ever since the passage of the 16th Amendment, the individual income tax as a source of federal revenue has shot up higher and higher along with the growth of the central government itself. Replacing taxation on the hard work of Americans with the taxation on imports is at the heart of America First economic nationalism, and it would be the most profoundly revolutionary economic policy change in a century.
This sweeping vision to reorient America’s taxation has been further augmented by more immediately achievable and economically populist policies like “no taxation on tips,” which Trump rolled out last month in a speech in Las Vegas, Nevada — the tip capital of America. While the so-called conventional-wisdom commentators responded with articles about its proposed costs of $250 billion to the federal budget, working-class Americans, including waiters and waitresses, heard a working-class tax cut at a time of rising costs for families and households. Furthermore, Americans across the online X-sphere backed Trump’s proposal with generous tips and a message that often read: “Vote for Trump, no taxes on your tips.”
“No taxation without representation” is a slogan from the early days of the American Revolution. Today, this country suffers under excess taxation on the fruits of our labor and from distant, indifferent and unaccountable representation in our federal government.
Just over a century ago, Woodrow Wilson envisioned a country that would move beyond the supposed shackles of the Constitution. He argued we had outgrown it. Few could predict that the Wilsonian shadow would reach into the next century, but it is time for America to step out of that shadow once and for all.
Just as the Republican Party under Trump has returned to its pro-tariff, strong currency roots, our country can recapture the Founders’ intent of limited self-governance and constitutional government. A more humble and effective federal government financed by tariffs rather than taxation of work will help us peel back a century of republic-erosion. Most politicians take the taxation issue and put even a room full of academics to sleep. Now, a candidate for the highest office in the land, the only candidate campaigning while confronting brutal lawfare and unjust attacks, brought home to the kitchen and restaurant tables this issue’s importance to our lives.
Nine years after first coming down the escalator as citizen Trump, and despite the most manufactured attacks on a presidential candidate in American history, Trump stays laser-focused on the issues facing all Americans and the country’s challenges.
Gavin M. Wax is a New York-based conservative political activist, commentator, columnist, operative, and strategist. He is the Executive Director of the National Constitutional Law Union. He also serves as the 76th President of the New York Young Republican Club and as an Ambassador for Turning Point USA & Live Action. He is the co-author of ‘The Emerging Populist Majority, ‘ which is available now. You can follow him on Twitter at @GavinWax.
Troy M. Olson is an Army Veteran, a lawyer by training, and co-author (with Gavin Wax) of the new book The Emerging Populist Majority, which is available now. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club and co-founder of the Veterans Caucus. He lives in New York City with his wife and son. You can follow him on Twitter and Substack at @TroyMOlson.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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