I believe the idea is to replace the internal revenue service (income taxes) by the external revenue service (tariffs). The tariffs are kind of a hidden sales t

I believe the idea is to replace the internal revenue service (income taxes) by the external revenue service (tariffs). The tariffs are kind of a hidden sales tax, with the hidden drawback of making cross border manufacturing pretty painful. The auto industry is especially impacted by this, with parts crossing the US/Can/Mx borders pretty frequently. I doubt this scheme would work, but from what I understand the rich typically prefer sale taxes to wealth/income taxes since they only consume a small fraction of their net worth in goods, preferring to invest (which wouldn't be taxed). They're also not regressive, meaning that poorer people would end up paying a larger portion of their income in taxes.