One of President Trump’s objectives over the next four years is to have US revenues from tariffs become so massive that the Internal Revenue Service is no longer needed, his commerce secretary revealed Wednesday.
“His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
The former CEO of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald expanded a day later on his belief that Trump’s sweeping tariff plan will be a boon for the US economy.
“As the president said, reciprocal tariffs, either you bring yours down or we’re going to bring ours up. If we go to their level, it will earn us $700 billion a year to be equal to everybody else,” Lutnick said Thursday, during an appearance on FNC’s “America’s Newsroom.”
“And there goes our deficit. And interest rates come smashing down, and the whole economy explodes higher.”
Trump, 78, announced ahead of his inauguration last month that he plans to create an external revenue office tasked with collecting all foreign-sourced revenue, such as income from tariffs.
“For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),” the president wrote in a Jan. 14 Truth Social post. “Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves.”
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly boasted that his tariff plan would bring the American economy back to a “golden age,” noting that before 1913 — when the 16th Amendment gave Congress the power to levy federal income tax — the government was primarily funded from tariffs.
In Wednesday’s interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters, Lutnick also suggested that the Trump administration aims to crack down on the lack of taxes paid by cruise lines.
“Cruise ships — you ever see a cruise ship with an American flag on the back? They have flags of, like, Liberia or Panama. None of them pay taxes,” the commerce secretary explained. “Every supertanker, none pays taxes. Alcohol, all foreign alcohol, no taxes. This is going to end under Donald Trump.”
“And those taxes are going to be paid and Americans’ tax rates are going to come down,” Lutnick added. “That’s what Donald Trump wants to do, balance our budget and cut our taxes.”
Earlier this month, Trump paused the planned implementation of 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, after both nations agreed to crack down on illegal immigration and drug smuggling, but went ahead with a 10% across-the-board tariff on imports from China.
“We’ve got the power. We’ve got to use tariffs. We’ve got to use the External Revenue Service to take care of America and cut the scams and the abuse, the waste. And let’s make America great,” Lutnick told Watters.
“We mean ‘great’ by saying no deficit and, basically, try to eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and our taxes,” he added. “Cut taxes, try, try to get them down because we’re great, and we collect the money.”
