Featured Image Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News
Joe Yates
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News
President Donald Trump has been vowing to 'make America great again' for the last decade, and one of his answers for doing that is bringing in more aggressive tariffs.
The 78-year-old spoke at the House GOP retreat at his golf club, the Trump National Doral, in Miami, Florida, where he revealed his plans to make the US 'more powerful than ever before', and it has left people shocked.
"America is going to be very rich again, and it's going to happen very quickly. It's time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before," President Trump said, just one week on from his inauguration.
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"Do you know the United States, in 1870 to 1913, all tariffs - and that was the richest period in the history of the United States, relatively speaking, in other words, relatively - and they set up the great Tariff Commission of 1887.
"And this commission had one function - what to do with all the money that we took in. It was so enormous that they had no idea, it was a blue ribbon committee was set up 1887."
There's a lot of talk being said about tariffs, so let's clear up what they are - they are taxes imposed on foreign goods, meaning many of these goods will cost more to sell in the US.
While Trump has vowed to end federal income taxes, it doesn't mean residents will get away Scot-free. What is likely to happen is that prices will go up on foreign-made goods, meaning the consumer will pay more.
Advanced countries fell out of favor with tariffs following World War II, because they often lead to 'reduced trade, higher prices for consumers, and retaliation from abroad', the Council on Foreign Relations reports.
A tariff is a tax imposed on foreign-made goods, paid by the importing business to its home country’s government.
Back to Trump's speech...
The president continued: "And what to do with all of the money that we had. And again, Teddy Roosevelt [26th POTUS] was a beneficiary, because when [William] McKinley [25th POTUS] was killed, he took over this vast sum of money, and he did all of those national parks and all of the other things.
"And I'm not knocking him, but he was given a vast amount of money, and that was all made through tariffs, as we had no income tax. The income tax came in in 1913.
"As I said in my speech last week, instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be tariffing and taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens. Does that make sense? Right?"
In short, this means Trump has plans to impose tariffs on foreign goods.
After a snippet of his speech was uploaded to Twitter, US citizens were left shocked at the suggested move.
"Wow," typed one person simply, as another commented: "Not a huge fan of him but reducing or completely canceling the income tax would make a huge difference to us."
And a third added: "American citizens shouldn’t pay, we should tariff all of other countries who have used our economy as a piggy bank."