Donald Trump used his appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast to reiterate his support for replacing income tax with tariffs.
Rogan asked Trump if he was “serious” about the idea.
“Why not?” Trump replied.
“Our country was the richest, relatively, in the 1880s and 1890s. A president who was assassinated named McKinley, he was the tariff king. He spoke beautifully of tariffs. His language was really beautiful. We will not allow the enemy to come in and take our jobs and take our factories and take our workers and take our families, unless they pay a big price, and the big price is tariffs. He’d speak like that, and he was right.
“And then around the early 1900s, they switched around, stupidly, to an income tax. And you know why? Because a lot of countries were putting pressure on America. We don’t want to pay tariffs.”
Trump then said that domestic politicians benefit from an income-tax rather than a tariff system, because foreign interests “control our politicians.”
“We were so rich [in the 1880s], we had so much money, they didn’t know what to do,” Trump continued.
“So they set up a blue-ribbon commission on tariffs, and the sole purpose was what to do with all the money we had. We were so rich, because we were taxing other people for coming in and taking our jobs.”